TELEGIN. You mustn’t, Vanya, you mustn’t . . . I can’t take it . . .
SEREBRYAKOV (angrily). I don’t understand, what do you want?
VOINITSKY. To us you were a creature of a higher order, and we learned your articles by heart . . . But now my eyes have been opened! I see it all! You write about art, but not one thing do you understand about art! All your work, which I loved, isn’t worth a tinker’s dam! You bamboozled us!
SEREBRYAKOV. My friends! Try and calm him down, once and for all! I’m going!
YELENA ANDREEVNA. Ivan Petrovich, I insist that you keep quiet! You hear me?
VOINITSKY. I won’t keep quiet! (Blocking Serebryakov’s path.) Stop, I haven’t finished! You ruined my life! I haven’t lived, I haven’t lived! Thanks to your charity I blighted, destroyed the best years of my life! You are my deadliest enemy!
TELEGIN. I can’t take it . . . can’t take it . . . I’m going. (Exits in extreme consternation.)
SEREBRYAKOV. What do you want from me? And what right do you have to take such a tone with me? A nobody! If the estate is yours, then take it, I have no use for it!
YELENA ANDREEVNA. I’m getting out of this hellhole this very minute! (Screams.) I can’t take any more of this!
VOINITSKY. My life is wasted! I’m talented, intelligent, audacious . . . If I had had a normal life, I might have evolved into a Schopenhauer, a Dos-toevsky[40] . . . What a damn fool thing to say! I’m losing my mind . . . Mommy, I’m desperate! Mommy!
MARIYA VASILYEVNA (sternly). Do as Aleksandr says!
SONYA (kneels before the nanny and clings to her). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!
VOINITSKY. Mommy! What am I to do? Don’t, don’t say anything! I know what I have to do! (To Serebryakov.) You’re going to remember me! (Goes to the center door.)
MARIYA VASILYEVNA goes after him.
SEREBRYAKOV. Ladies and gentlemen, what is all this, I mean really? Get that madman away from me! I cannot live under the same roof with him! He lives right there (indicates the center door), practically on top of me . . . Move him into the village, to the servants’ quarters, or I’ll move, but to stay in the same house with him is out of the question . . .
YELENA ANDREEVNA (to her husband). We will leave here today! It is imperative you arrange it this very minute.
SEREBRYAKOV. The most insignificant creature!
SONYA (kneeling, turns to her father; nervously, through tears). Open your heart, Papa! Uncle Vanya and I are so unhappy! (Mastering her despair.) Open your heart!33 Remember when you were younger, Uncle Vanya and Granny would spend nights translating books for you, copying out your writings . . . every night, every night! Uncle Vanya and I worked without a rest, afraid to spend a penny on ourselves, and sent everything to you . . . We had to pay our own way! I’m not saying this right, it’s not what I mean, but you understand us, Papa. Open your heart!
YELENA ANDREEVNA (distraught, to her husband). Aleksandr, for heaven’s sake, have it out with him . . . Please.
SEREBRYAKOV. Very well, I’ll have it out with him . . . I’m not accusing him of anything, I’m not angry, but, you must agree, his behavior is just the slightest degree peculiar. If you insist, I’ll go to him. (Goes out the center door.)
YELENA ANDREEVNA. Be gentler with him, calm him down . . . (Goes out behind him.)
SONYA (clinging to the nanny). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!
MARINA. Never mind, child. Honk, honk, go the geese — and then they stop . . . Honk, honk, honk—then they stop . . .
SONYA. Nanny dear!
MARINA (smooths her hair). You’re shivery-shaky, just like you had a chill! Well, well, little orphan, God is merciful. Some lime-flower tea or raspberry, it’ll pass . . . Don’t grieve, little orphan . . . (Looking at the center door, angrily.) Fly off the handle, will you, you geese, dern ya all!
Offstage a gunshot; we hear YELENA ANDREEVNA scream; SONYA shudders.
Ooh, what’re you up to!
SEREBRYAKOV (runs in, stumbling in fear). Restrain him! Restrain him! He’s gone out of his mind!
YELENA ANDREEVNA and VOINITSKY are struggling in the doorway.
YELENA ANDREEVNA (trying to wrest the revolver away from him). Give it to me! Give it to me, I tell you!
VOINITSKY. Let go, Hélène! Let go of me! (Pulling loose, he runs in and looks around for Serebryakov.) Where is he? Ah, there he is? (Fires at him.) Bang!
Pause.
Missed him? Another fiasco?! (Angrily.) Oh, hell, hell . . . damn it to hell . . . (Throws the revolver on the floor and sits exhausted on a chair.)
SEREBRYAKOV is stunned; YELENA ANDREEVNA is leaning against the wall, feeling faint.
YELENA ANDREEVNA. Take me away from here! Take me away, kill me, but . . . I cannot stay here, I cannot!
VOINITSKY (in desperation). Oh, what am I doing! What am I doing!
SONYA (quietly). Nanny dear! Nanny dear!
Curtain
ACT FOUR
Ivan Petrovich’s room; it is both his bedroom and the office of the estate. By the window are a large table with ledgers and papers of all sorts, a writing desk, cupboards, scales. A somewhat smaller table for Astrov; on this table implements for drawing, paints; beside it a cardboard portfolio. A starling in a cage. On the wall a map of Africa, apparently of no use to anyone here. An enormous divan, covered in oilcloth. At left a door leading to the bedroom; at right a door in the wall. Beneath the right door is a doormat to keep the peasants from tracking in mud. —Autumn evening. Stillness.
TELEGIN and MARINA are seated face to face, winding a ball of knitting yarn.
TELEGIN. You be quick, Marina Timofeevna, or before you know it they’ll call us to say good-bye. They’ve already ordered the horses brought round.
MARINA (trying to wind more quickly). There’s just a bit left.
TELEGIN. Kharkov’s where they’re going.34 That’s where they’ll live.
MARINA. Good riddance.
TELEGIN. They got a scare . . . Yelena Andreevna says, “not one more hour,” she says, “will I live here . . . let’s go, let’s go . . . We’ll live,” she says, “in Kharkov, we’ll give it the once-over and then we’ll send for our things . . .” Traveling light. Which means, Marina Timofeevna, they weren’t destined to live here. Not destined . . . Preordained by fate.
MARINA. Good riddance. Just now they were raising a rumpus, shooting guns—a downright disgrace!
TELEGIN. Yes, a scene that deserves treatment by a painter of shipwrecks and tempests.[43]
MARINA. That my eyes should see such a sight. (Pause.) Once again we’ll live as we used to, the old way. Tea in the morning between seven and eight, dinner between noon and one, sit down to supper in the evening; everything in its place, the way folks do it . . . like Christians. (With a sigh.) It’s a long time, bless my soul, since I’ve had noodles.