MURASHKIN. Stop shouting, the neighbors will hear!
TOLKACHOV. Let the neighbors hear, I don’t care! If you don’t lend me a revolver, somebody else will, I’m no longer among the living! It’s a done
deal!
MURASHKIN. Take it easy, you tore off my button. Try to be calm and collected. I still don’t understand what’s so bad about your life?
TOLKACHOV. What’s bad? You ask: what’s bad? Just let me tell you! Just let me! I’ll spill my guts to you and maybe it’ll take a load off my chest. Let’s sit down. Now, listen to this . . . Ugh, good grief, I’m winded! . . . Let’s take as an example this very day, today. Shall we? As you know, from ten to four I have to make a noise at the office. Overheated, stale air, flies, and the most utter, my dear pal, chaos. My secretary’s away on leave, Khrapov’s2 gone off to get married, the office small fry are obsessed with summer rentals, love affairs, and amateur theatricals. They’re all so drowsy, worn out, haggard, you can’t get a word of sense out of them . . . The secretary’s duties are being performed out by a creature who’s deaf in the left ear and in love; the general public is bonkers, hustling and bustling in and out, losing their tempers, making threats,— it’s such bedlam you want to shout “Help.” A total zoo, all hell broke loose. And the work itself is diabolicaclass="underline" the same old same old, the same old same old, inquiries, reports, inquiries, reports,—as monotonous as the tide ebbing and flowing. You understand, it’s simply enough to make your eyes pop out of your skull. Let me have some water . . . You leave the daily grind broken, worn to a frazzle, you should be eating dinner and falling into bed, but no! — remember you’ve rented a place in the country, which means you’re a slave, a piece of crap, a loofah, an icicle, and it’s your job to run around, like a headless chicken, filling orders. The folks at our country place have a sweet little habit: if a vacationer goes to town, then, every vacationing twerp, not to mention his wife, has the power and right to foist a heap of errands on him. The wife demands that I stop by the dressmaker’s and bawl her out because she made the bodice too loose but the shoulders too narrow; Sonichka has a pair of shoes to be exchanged, my wife’s sister wants twenty kopeks’ worth of crimson silk for a pattern and seven feet of ribbon . . . Wait a minute, I can read it to you. (Pulls a list out of his pocket and reads it.) Globe for lamp; one pound ham sausage; five kopeks’ worth of cloves and cinnamon; castor oil for Misha; ten pounds granulated sugar; get from home the brass mortar and pestle for the sugar; carbolic acid, insect powder, ten kopeks’ worth of face powder; twenty bottles of beer; smelling-salts and a corset for Mme. Chanceau, size eighty-two . . . oof! and get from home Misha’s fall overcoat and galoshes. That’s the order of my wife and family. Now for the errands for my beloved friends and neighbors, may they rot in hell. The Vlasins are throwing a nameday party for their Volodya tomorrow, I’ve got to buy him a bicycle; Lieutenant-Colonel Vikhrin’s
3 wife is in an interesting condition, so I’m obliged to drop in on the midwife every day and ask her to pay a call. And so on, and so on. There are five lists in my pockets and my handkerchief is all in knots. So, old pal, in the interval between work and the train you run around town like a dog with its tongue hanging out, — on the run, on the run, and cursing your life. From the department store to the pharmacy, from the pharmacy to the dressmaker, from the dressmaker to the butcher, and then back to the pharmacy. One place you trip over yourself, another place you lose your money, in a third place you forget to pay and they chase you down making a scene, in the fourth place you step on a lady’s train . . . phooey! All this heavy exercise drives you frantic and makes you such a wreck that all night long your bones ache and you dream of crocodiles. Well, sir, your errands are run, everything’s bought, now how are you supposed to pack up this whole kit and kaboodle? For instance, do you put the heavy brass mortar and pestle in with the glass lampshade or the carbolic acid with the tea? How do you pack the bottles of beer with the bicycle? It’s slaving in the brick yards of Egypt, a brain teaser, a riddle! No matter how much you wrack your brains and try to be clever, you always end up smashing and spilling something, and at the station and on the train you’ll be standing, your arms spreadeagled, your legs bowed, holding a package under your chin, covered with shopping, cardboard boxes and the rest of the crap. Then the train pulls out, passengers start to dump your things all over the place: your stuff is occupying other people’s seats. They yell, they call the conductor, they threaten to have you thrown off, and what can I do? I stand there and bug out my eyes, like a whipped mule. Now for the next installment. I get back to my cottage. There you should have a nice drink for all these righteous labors, a bite to eat and a bit of a snooze — am I right?—but it is not to be. My darling wifie has seen to that for quite some time. You’ve hardly had a spoonful of soup, when she pounces wham! on yours truly and it’s—wouldn’t you like to go out to an amateur theatrical or a dance social? You can’t say no. You’re a husband and the word “husband” translated into vacation language means a dumb pack-animal, which you can travel on and load with as heavy a burden as you like, with no fear of interference from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. So you go and gape at Scandal in a Respectable Family or some other stupid farce,4 you applaud on your wife’s command while you’re drooping, drooping, drooping, and expect every minute you’ll have a stroke right on the spot. At the social you watch the dancers and collect partners for the wife, and if there aren’t enough partners, then you yourself have got to dance the quadrille. You’re dancing with Miss Two-Left-Feet, smiling like an idiot, and thinking all the while, “How long, O Lord?” You get home after midnight from the theater or the dance, and you’re no longer a man, you’re a bag of bones, ready for the scrap heap. But now at last you’ve reached the finish line: you strip off your things and get into bed. It’s wonderful, you close your eyes and doze off . . . It’s all so lovely, so poetic: it’s nice and warm, don’t you know, and the kids aren’t screaming in the next room, and the wife isn’t there, and your conscience is clear—what more could you ask for. You’re about to fall asleep — and suddenly . . . suddenly you hear: bzzzz! . . . Mosquitoes! (Leaps up.) Mosquitoes, damn, blast and anathematize them, mosquitoes! (Shakes his fists.) Mosquitoes! It’s the Plagues of Egypt,5 the Spanish Inquisition! Bzzz! It buzzes so pathetically, so mournfully, you’d think they’re begging your pardon, but once the bastards take a bite out of you, you’re up scratching for an hour. So you smoke, and you squash them, and you put your head under the covers — no escape! At the bitter end you spit in disgust and surrender to be torn to pieces: dig in, damn you! You barely have time to get used to the mosquitoes when there’s a new plague of Egypt: in the living room your wife begins to practice her ballads with her tenors. They sleep all day, and at night they rehearse amateur concerts. Oh, my God! A tenor is a torment far worse than mosquitoes. (Sings.) “Say not that her youth was wasted . . .” “Once again I stand bewitched before thee . . .”6 Oh, the ba-a-stards! They’ve destroyed me, body and soul! To drown them out just a bit, I’ve got this trick: I tap my finger on my forehead next to my ear. So I’m tapping away till around four in the morning, when they finally take their leave. Ugh, let me have some more water, pal . . . I’m done in . . . Well, sir, you’ve had no sleep, you get up at six and it’s— forward march to the station to catch the train. You run, for fear you’ll miss it, through the mud, fog, cold, brr! Then you get to town, and the whole merry-go-round starts over again. That’s how it goes, pal. My life, I assure you, stinks, I wouldn’t wish a life like this on my worst enemy. Can you imagine, it’s undermined my health! Shortness of breath, heartburn, shattered nerves, indigestion, spots before my eyes . . . Believe you me, I’ve turned into a mental case . . . (Looks around.) This is just between us . . . I plan to consult an eminent specialist in psychosis.7 A hell of a mood comes over you at times, pal. So in those moments of aggravation and craziness, when the mosquitoes bite or the tenors sing, suddenly your eyesight blurs, suddenly you jump up, run around the house like a maniac, shouting: “I crave blood! Blood!”8 In fact, at times like those you do want to stick a knife in somebody or bash his head in with a chair. That’s what summer rentals can do to you! And nobody’s sorry for you, nobody sympathizes, it’s as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. People even laugh. But you understand, I’m a living creature, I want to go on living! This isn’t a farce, it’s a tragedy! Listen, if you won’t let me have a revolver, then at least show some sympathy!