MASHA. What’s this for, Mama?
POLINA ANDREEVNA. Pyotr Nikolaevich asked for his bed to be made up in Kostya’s room.
MASHA. Let me . . . (Makes the bed.)
POLINA ANDREEVNA (sighs). Old folks are like children . . . (Walks over to the writing desk and, leaning on her elbows, looks at the manuscript.)
Pause.
MEDVEDENKO. Well, I’m going. Good-bye, Masha. (Kisses his wife’s hand.) Good-bye, Mama dear. (Tries to kiss his mother-in-law’s hand.)
POLINA ANDREEVNA (annoyed). Well! Go if you’re going.
MEDVEDENKO. Good-bye, Konstantin Gavrilych.
TREPLYOV silently offers his hand; MEDVEDENKO exits.
POLINA ANDREEVNA (looking at the manuscript). Nobody had the slightest idea, Kostya, that you would turn into a real writer. And now look, thank God, they’ve started sending you money from the magazines. (Runs her hand over his hair.) And you’re handsome now . . . Dear, good Kostya, be a little more affectionate to my Mashenka.
MASHA (making the bed). Leave him be, Mama.
POLINA ANDREEVNA (to Treplyov). She’s a wonderful little thing. (Pause.) Women, Kostya, ask nothing more than an occasional look of kindness. I know from experience.
TREPLYOV gets up from behind the desk and exits in silence.
MASHA. Now he’s gone and got angry. You had to bring that up!
POLINA ANDREEVNA. I feel sorry for you, Mashenka.
MASHA. That’s all I need!
POLINA ANDREEVNA. My heart bleeds for you. I do see everything, understand everything.
MASHA. It’s all nonsense. Unrequited love — that’s only in novels. Really silly. Just mustn’t lose control or go on waiting for something, waiting for your ship to come in . . . If love ever burrows into your heart, you’ve got to get rid of it. They’ve just promised to transfer my husband to another school district. Once we’ve moved there — I’ll forget all about it . . . I’ll rip it out of my heart by the roots.
Two rooms away a melancholy waltz is played.
POLINA ANDREEVNA. Kostya’s playing. That means he’s depressed.
MASHA (noiselessly makes a few waltz steps). The main thing, Mama, is to have him out of sight. As soon as they transfer my Semyon, then believe you me, I’ll forget in a month. This is all so silly.
The door left opens. DORN and MEDVEDENKO wheel in SORIN, in his armchair.
MEDVEDENKO. I’ve got six at home now. And flour almost two kopeks a pound.
DORN. It gets you going in circles.
MEDVEDENKO. It’s all right for you to laugh. You’ve got more money than you could shake a stick at.
DORN. Money? After thirty years of practice, my friend, on constant call night and day, when I couldn’t call my soul my own, all I managed to scrape together was two thousand; besides, I blew it all on my recent trip abroad. I haven’t a penny.
MASHA (to her husband). Haven’t you gone?
MEDVEDENKO (apologetically). How? If they don’t give me horses!
MASHA (bitterly annoyed, in an undertone). I wish I’d never set eyes on you!
The wheelchair is halted in the left half of the room; POLINA ANDREEVNA, MASHA, and DORN sit down beside it; MEDVEDENKO, saddened, moves away to one side.
DORN. So many changes around here, I must say! They’ve turned the drawing-room into a study.
MASHA. It’s more comfortable for Konstantin Gavrilych to work here. Whenever he likes, he can go out in the garden and think.
The WATCHMAN taps his board.
SORIN. Where’s my sister?
DORN. Gone to the station to meet Trigorin. She’ll be back any minute.
SORIN. If you found it necessary to write for my sister to come here, it means I’m seriously ill. (After a silence.) A fine state of affairs, I’m seriously ill, but meanwhile they won’t give me any medicine.
DORN. And what would you like? Aspirin? Bicarbonate? Quinine?
SORIN. Uh-oh, here comes the philosophizing. Oh, what an affliction! (Nodding his head towards the divan.) That made up for me?
POLINA ANDREEVNA. For you, Pyotr Nikolaevich.
SORIN. Thank you.
DORN (sings). “The moon sails through the midnight sky . . .”76
SORIN. There’s this subject for a story I want to give Kostya. The title should be: “The Man Who Wanted to.” “L’Homme qui a voulu.”77 In my youth I wanted to be an author — and wasn’t; wanted to speak eloquently—and spoke abominably (mimicking himself) “and so on and so forth, this, that, and the other . . .” and in summing up used to ramble on and on, even broke out in a sweat; wanted to get married—and didn’t; always wanted to live in town—and now am ending my life in the country and all the rest.
DORN. Wanted to become a senior civil servant—and did.
SORIN (laughs). That I never tried for. It came all by itself.
DORN. Complaining of life at age sixty-two is, you must agree — not very gracious.
SORIN. What a pigheaded fellow. Don’t you realize, I’d like to live.
DORN. That’s frivolous. By the laws of nature every life must come to an end.
SORIN. You argue like someone who’s had it all. You’ve had it all and so you don’t care about life, it doesn’t matter to you. But even you will be afraid to die.
DORN. Fear of death is an animal fear . . . Have to repress it. A conscious fear of death is only for those who believe in life everlasting, which scares them because of their sins. But in the first place, you don’t believe in religion, and in the second — what kind of sins have you got? You worked twenty-seven years in the Department of Justice — that’s all.
SORIN (laughs). Twenty-eight.
TREPLYOV enters and sits on the footstool at Sorin’s feet. MASHA never takes her eyes off him the whole time.
DORN. We’re keeping Konstantin Gavrilovich from working.
TREPLYOV. No, not at all.
Pause.
MEDVEDENKO. Might I ask, Doctor, which town abroad you liked most?
DORN. Genoa.
TREPLYOV. Why Genoa?
DORN. The superb crowds in the streets there. In the evening when you leave your hotel, the whole street is teeming with people. Then you slip into the crowd, aimlessly, zigzagging this way and that, you live along with it, you merge with it psychically and you start to believe that there may in fact be a universal soul, much like the one that Nina Zarechnaya acted in your play once.78 By the way, where is Miss Zarechnaya these days? Where is she and how is she?
TREPLYOV. She’s all right, I suppose.
DORN. I’m told she seems to be leading a rather peculiar life. What’s that all about?