ZHELTUKHIN. Please start on the appetizers. Please do. (Near the appetizers.) The Serebryakovs haven’t come, Fyodor Ivanych isn’t here, neither is the Wood Goblin . . . They’ve abandoned us!
YULYA. Godfather dear, would you like some vodka?
ORLOVSKY. Just a tiny drop. That’s it . . . That’ll be enough.
DYADIN (tying a napkin around his neck). What a wonderful manager you are, Yuliya Stepanovna! Whether I’m driving across your fields or walking in the shade of your orchard, or contemplating this table, everywhere I see the sovereign power of your magic little hands.4 Your good health!
YULYA. I’ve got my hands full, Ilya Ilyich! Yesterday, for instance, Nazarka didn’t drive the turkey chicks into the henhouse, they spent the night in the dewy grass, and today five of the chicks dropped dead.
DYADIN. That shouldn’t happen. The turkey is a delicate fowl.
VOINITSKY (to Dyadin). Waffles, cut me a slice of that ham!
DYADIN. With particular pleasure. It’s a beautiful ham. One of the wonders of the Arabian Nights. (Cuts a slice.) I am slicing it for you, Zhorzhenka, according to all the laws of art. Beethoven and Shakespeare couldn’t slice it like this. Only the knife’s a little dull. (Hones the knife on another knife.)
ZHELTUKHIN (shuddering). Vvvv! . . . Stop that, Waffles! I can’t stand it!
ORLOVSKY. Tell us about it, Yegor Petrovich. What’s going on at your place?
VOINITSKY. Nothing’s going on.
ORLOVSKY. Anything new?
VOINITSKY. Nothing. It’s all old. The way it was last year is the way it is now. As usual, I talk a lot and do very little. My old magpie of a maman goes on babbling about women’s rights; one eye peers into the grave, while the other pores over her high-minded pamphlets, looking for the dawn of a new life.
ORLOVSKY. What about Sasha?
VOINITSKY. The Professor, unfortunately, still hasn’t been nibbled away by the moths. From morn to darkest night he sits alone in the study and writes. “With straining brain and furrowed brow, We write for nights and days, Yet all our poetry somehow Can never meet with praise.”5 I feel sorry for the paper! Sonechka reads high-minded pamphlets as she always did and keeps a very high-minded diary.
ORLOVSKY. What a darling, what a dear . . .
VOINITSKY. With my powers of observation I ought to be writing a novel. The subject is begging to be put down on paper. A retired professor, a pedantic old fossil, a guppy with a terminal degree . . . Gout, rheumatism, migraine, liver complaints and all sorts of stuff. As jealous as Othello.6 Living reluctantly on his first wife’s estate, because he can’t afford to live in town. Endlessly griping about his bad luck, although as a matter of fact he’s incredibly lucky.
ORLOVSKY. Come now!
VOINITSKY. Of course he is! Just think about the luck he’s had! Let’s put aside the fact that the son of a humble sexton, a seminary student on a tuition scholarship, acquired academic degrees and chairs, the title Your Excellency, married the daughter of a senator,7 and so on. That’s not what matters, though. Check this out. For precisely twenty-five years the man reads and writes about art, although he understands absolutely nothing about art. For twenty-five years he chews over other people’s ideas about realism, naturalism, and the rest of that rubbish; for twenty-five years he reads and writes about stuff that intelligent people have known for ages and fools couldn’t care less about—which means, for twenty-five years he’s been pouring the contents of one empty bottle into another emptier bottle. And add to that, what success! What celebrity! What for? Why? What right has he got?
ORLOVSKY (laughs loudly). Envy, envy!
VOINITSKY. Yes, envy! Look at his success with women! Not even Don Juan enjoyed such unqualified success! His first wife, my sister, a beautiful, gentle creature, pure as that blue sky overhead, noble, open-hearted, with more admirers than he had students, loved him as only pure angels can love beings as pure and beautiful as themselves. My mother, his mother-in-law, adores him to this day, and to this day he inspires her with awe and reverence. His second wife, a woman with looks, brains—you’ve seen her—married him when he was an old man, made him a gift of her youth, beauty, independence, her brilliance . . . What for? Why? And such a talent, a fine musician! It’s wonderful the way she plays the piano!
ORLOVSKY. A talented family one and all. An exceptional family.
ZHELTUKHIN. Yes, Sofya Aleksandrovna, for instance, has a magnificent voice. A wonderful soprano! I never heard anything like it in Petersburg. Though, you know, it’s a little forced in the higher octave. Such a pity! The higher octave for me! That higher octave! Ah, if she had that octave, I’ll wager my head, she’d be able to produce . . . something wonderful, believe you me . . . Sorry, gentlemen, I’ve got to have a word with Yulya . . . (Takes Yulya aside.) Send someone on horseback to them. Send a note to say that if they can’t come now, they might at least drop in for dinner. (More quietly.) But don’t act like a fool, don’t embarrass me, write it in good Russian . . . Drop has only one p . . . (Aloud and tenderly.) Please, my dear.
YULYA. All right . . . (Exits.)
DYADIN. They say that the professor’s lady wife, Yelena Andreevna, whose acquaintance I have not the honor of enjoying, is distinguished not only by spiritual beauty, but by physical beauty as well.
ORLOVSKY. Yes, she’s a splendid young lady.
ZHELTUKHIN. She’s faithful to the professor?
VOINITSKY. Sorry to say she is.
ZHELTUKHIN. Why sorry?
VOINITSKY. Because this faithfulness is phony from start to finish. It’s all sound and no sense. To cheat on an old husband you can’t stand—that’s immoral; to try and stifle the vestiges of youth and vital feeling in your-self—that’s not immoral. Where the hell is the sense in that?
DYADIN (in a plaintive voice). Zhorzhenka, I don’t like it when you say things like that. Why, now, honestly . . . I’m even trembling . . . Gentlemen, I don’t possess any talent or flowery eloquence, but allow me to declare without magniloquent phrases as my conscience dictates . . . Gentlemen, anybody who cheats on a wife or husband is, I mean, a disloyal person, someone who might even betray his country!
VOINITSKY. Turn off the waterworks!8
DYADIN. Excuse me, Zhorzhenka . . . Ivan Ivanych, Lyonechka, my dear friends, consider the mutability of my fate. It is no secret, it is not veiled by the shadows of obscurity,9 that my wife ran away with the man she loved the day after our wedding on account of my unprepossessing looks . . .
VOINITSKY. And was quite right to do so.
DYADIN. Excuse me, gentlemen! In the aftermath of that event I have not shirked my duty . . . I love her to this day, and I’m faithful to her, I help any way I can, and I have bequeathed my estate to the kiddies she bore to the man she loved. I have not shirked my duty and I’m proud of it. I’m proud! Happiness was denied me, but what I did have left was my pride. What about her? Her youth has flown now, her beauty, subject to the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved has passed away, may he rest in peace . . . What does she have left? (Sits down.) I mean this seriously, and you laugh.