MARINA (after shaking her head.) No sense to it! The Professor gets up at twelve o’clock, though the samovar’s10 been boiling away from early morning, waiting on him. Before they came we always had dinner between noon and one, like everybody else, but now they’re here it’s going on seven. At night the Professor reads and writes, and all of a sudden, round about two, the bell rings . . . What’s the matter, goodness gracious? Tea! Wake folks up for him, set up the samovar . . . No sense to it!
ASTROV. And how much longer are they staying here?
VOINITSKY (whistles). A century. The Professor has decided to take root here.
MARINA. Just like now. The samovar’s on the table two hours, and they go off for a walk.
VOINITSKY. Here they come, here they come . . . Don’t fret yourself.
Voices are heard: from the bottom of the garden, returning from a walk, come SEREBRYAKOV, YELENA ANDREEVNA, SONYA, and TELEGIN.
SEREBRYAKOV. Beautiful, beautiful . . . Magnificent vistas.
TELEGIN. Outstanding, Your Excellency.
SONYA. Tomorrow we’ll go to the forest preserve, Papa. Would you like that?
VOINITSKY. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s tea time!
SEREBRYAKOV. My dear friends, send my tea to the study, if you’ll be so kind! I have something more to do today.
SONYA. And you’re sure to enjoy a visit to the forest preserve . . .
YELENA ANDREEVNA, SEREBRYAKOV, and SONYA go into the house; TELEGIN goes to the table and sits beside MARINA.
VOINITSKY. The weather’s hot, stifling, but our prodigy of learning wears an overcoat and galoshes with an umbrella and gloves.11
ASTROV. Which shows he takes care of himself.
VOINITSKY. But isn’t she fine! Really fine! In all my life I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.
TELEGIN. I may be riding in the fields, Marina Timofeevna, or strolling in a shady garden, or looking at this table, and I have this feeling of inexplicable bliss!12 The weather is enchanting, the birdies are singing, we live, all of us, in peace and harmony—what more could we ask? (Accepting a glass.) My heartfelt thanks!
VOINITSKY (dreamily). Her eyes . . . Wonderful woman!
ASTROV. Talk about something else, Ivan Petrovich.
VOINITSKY (listlessly). What am I supposed to talk about?
ASTROV. Nothing new?
VOINITSKY. Not a thing. The same old stuff. I’m just the same as ever I was, no, worse, I’ve got lazy, all I do is growl like an old grouch. 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.
ASTROV. And the Professor?
VOINITSKY. And the Professor as usual sits alone in the study from morn to darkest night 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! He’d be better off writing his autobiography. What a first-rate subject that is! A retired professor, you know what that means, a pedantic old fossil, a guppy with a terminal degree . . . Gout,[3] rheumatism, migraine, his poor old liver’s bloated with envy and jealousy . . . Now this guppy lives on his first wife’s estate, lives there reluctantly 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. (Jittery.) Just think about the luck he’s had! The son of a humble sexton, a seminary student on a tuition scholarship, he’s acquired academic degrees and chairs, the title “Your Excellency,” married the daughter of a senator,[7] and so on and so forth. That’s not the important thing, 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, his conceit! His pretensions! He’s gone into retirement and not a single living soul has ever heard of him, he is totally obscure; which means, for twenty-five years he took up someone else’s place. But look at him! he struts about like a demigod!
ASTROV. Sounds like you’re jealous.
VOINITSKY. Of course I’m jealous! 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 saw her just now—married him when he was an old man, made him a gift of her youth, beauty, independence, her brilliance. What for? Why?
ASTROV. She’s faithful to the professor?
VOINITSKY. Sorry to say she is.
ASTROV. 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 pathetic youth and vital feeling in yourself—that’s not immoral.
TELEGIN (in a plaintive voice). Vanya, I don’t like it when you say things like that. Why, now, honestly . . . Anybody who cheats on a wife or husband is, I mean, a disloyal person, someone who might even betray his country!
VOINITSKY (annoyed). Turn off the waterworks, Waffles![8]
TELEGIN. Excuse me, Vanya. My wife ran away with the man she loved the day after our wedding on account of my unprepossessing looks. I didn’t shirk my duty despite it all. I love her to this day, and I’m faithful to her, I help however I can, and sold my estate to educate the kiddies she bore to the man she loved. Happiness was denied me, but what I did have left was my pride. What about her? Her youth has gone now, her beauty, subject to the laws of nature, has faded, the man she loved has passed away . . . What does she have left?
Enter SONYA and YELENA ANDREEVNA; after a while, enter MARIYA VASILYEVNA with a book; she sits and reads; they give her tea and she drinks it without looking.
SONYA (hastily, to the nanny). Nanny dear, some peasants have come. Go and talk to them, and I’ll do the tea . . . (Pours tea.)
MARINA exits. YELENA ANDREEVNA takes her cup and sits in the swing, as she drinks.
ASTROV (to Yelena Andreevna). I came here to treat your husband. You wrote that he’s very ill, rheumatism and something else, but it turns out he’s as healthy as a horse.
YELENA ANDREEVNA. Last night he was moping, complaining of pains in his legs, but today they’re gone . . .
ASTROV. And I was breaking my neck, forty-five miles at a gallop. Well, never mind, it’s not the first time. So it won’t be a total loss, I’ll stay the night here, at least I’ll get some sleep “to be taken as needed.”13