OLGA. Father died just a year ago, this very day, the fifth of May, your saint’s day,7 Irina. It was very cold, snowing, in fact. I never thought I’d live through it, you had fainted dead away. But a year’s gone by now, and we don’t mind thinking about it, you’re back to wearing white, your face is beaming. (The clock strikes twelve.) The clock struck then too. I remember, when Father was carried to his grave, there was music playing, they fired a salute at the cemetery. He was a general, commanded a whole brigade, but very few people showed up. Of course, it was raining at the time. Pelting rain and snow too.
IRINA. Why remember?
Behind the columns, in the reception room near the table, BARON TUSENBACH, CHEBUTYKIN, and SOLYONY appear.
OLGA. Today it’s warm, the windows can be thrown open, and the birch trees aren’t even budding yet. Father was put in charge of a brigade and we all left Moscow eleven years ago, and I distinctly remember, it was early May, why, just this time of year, everything in Moscow would already be in bloom, warm, everything would be bathed in sunlight. Eleven years have gone by, but I can remember everything there, as if we’d left yesterday. Oh my goodness! I woke up this morning, saw the light pouring in, the springtime, and joy began to quicken in my heart, I began to long passionately for my beloved home.
CHEBUTYKIN. To hell with both of you!
TUSENBACH. You’re right, it’s ridiculous.
MASHA, brooding over her book, quietly whistles a tune under her breath.8
OLGA. Don’t whistle, Masha. How can you!
Pause.
Because I’m at the high school all day long and then have to give tutorials well into the night, I’ve got this constant headache, and my thoughts are those of an old woman. As a matter of fact, the four years I’ve been working at the high school, I’ve felt as if every day my strength and youth were draining from me drop by drop. While that same old dream keeps growing bigger and stronger . . .
IRINA. To go to Moscow. To sell the house, wind up everything here and — go to Moscow . . .
OLGA. Yes! Quick as you can to Moscow.
CHEBUTYKIN and TUSENBACH laugh.
IRINA. Brother will probably become a professor, he certainly won’t go on living here. The only thing holding us back is our poor old Masha.
OLGA. Masha will come and spend all summer in Moscow, every year.
MASHA quietly whistles a tune.
IRINA. God willing, everything will work out. (Looking out the window.) Lovely weather today. I don’t know why my heart feels so light! This morning I remembered that it was my saint’s day, and suddenly I felt so happy, and remembered my childhood, when Mama was still alive. And such wonderful thoughts ran through my head, such thoughts!
OLGA. You’re simply radiant today, you look especially pretty. And Masha’s pretty too. Andrey’d be good looking, only he’s putting on too much weight, and it doesn’t suit him. And I’m aging just a bit and getting terribly thin, I suppose because I get cross with the girls at school. Well, today I’m free, I’m home, and my head doesn’t ache, I feel younger than I did yesterday. I’m only twenty-eight . . . Everything is for the best, everything is God’s will, but I do think that if I were married and could stay home all day, things might be better.
Pause.
I’d love my husband.
TUSENBACH (to Solyony). You talk such rubbish, a person gets sick and tired just listening to you. (Entering the drawing-room.) I forgot to mention. Today you’ll be getting a visit from our new battery commander Vershinin. (Sits at the baby grand piano.)
OLGA. Is that so? That’ll be nice.
IRINA. Is he old?
TUSENBACH. No, not really. Forty at most, forty-five. (Quietly plays by ear.) A splendid fellow, by all accounts. And no fool, that’s for sure. Only he does talk a lot.
IRINA. Is he interesting?
TUSENBACH. Yes, so-so, but he’s got a wife, a mother-in-law, and two little girls. His second wife at that. He goes visiting and tells everybody that he’s got a wife and two little girls. He’ll tell it here too. The wife’s some kind of half-wit, with a long braid, like a schoolgirl, only talks about highfalutin stuff, philosophy, and she makes frequent attempts at suicide, apparently in order to give her husband a hard time. I would have left a woman like that ages ago, but he puts up with it and settles for complaining.
SOLYONY (entering the drawing-room from the reception room with CHEBUTYKIN). With one hand I can’t lift more than fifty pounds, but with both it goes up to two hundred pounds. Which leads me to conclude that two men are not twice as strong as one, but three times as strong, even stronger . . .
CHEBUTYKIN (reads the paper as he walks). For loss of hair . . . eight and a half grams of naphthalene in half a bottle of grain alcohol . . . dissolve and apply daily . . .9 (Makes a note in a memo book.) Let’s jot that down, shall we! (To Solyony.) Listen, as I was saying, you stick a tiny little cork in a tiny little bottle, and pass a tiny little glass tube through it . . . Then you take a tiny little pinch of the most common, ordinary alum . . .
IRINA. Ivan Romanych, dear Ivan Romanych!
CHEBUTYKIN. What, my darling girl, light of my life?
IRINA. Tell me, why am I so happy today? I feel as if I’m skimming along at full sail, with the wide blue sky above me and big white birds drifting by. Why is that? Why?
CHEBUTYKIN (kissing both her hands, tenderly). My own white bird . . .
IRINA. When I woke up today, I got out of bed and washed, and suddenly it dawned on me that I understand everything in the world and I know how a person ought to live. Dear Ivan Romanych, I know everything. A person has to work hard, work by the sweat of his brow, no matter who he is, and that’s the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to his life, his happiness, his moments of ecstasy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be a manual laborer who gets up while it’s still dark out and breaks stones on the road, or a shepherd, or a schoolteacher, or an engineer on the railroad . . . My God, what’s the point of being human, you might as well be an ox, an ordinary horse, so long as you’re working, rather than a young woman who gets up at noon, has her coffee in bed, and takes two hours to dress . . . oh, isn’t that awful! Sometimes when the weather’s sultry, the way you long for a drink, well, that’s the way I long for work. And if I don’t get up early and work hard, stop being my friend, Ivan Romanych.
CHEBUTYKIN (tenderly). I will, I will . . .
OLGA. Father drilled us to get up at seven. Nowadays Irina wakes up at seven and stays in bed at least till nine, thinking about things. And the serious face on her! (Laughs.)
IRINA. You’re used to treating me like a little girl, so you think it’s strange when I put on a serious face. I’m twenty years old!
TUSENBACH. The longing for hard work, oh dear, how well I understand it! I’ve never worked in my life. I was born in Petersburg, cold, idle Petersburg, to a family that didn’t know the meaning of hard work or hardship. I remember, whenever I came home from school, a lackey would pull off my boots, while I’d fidget and my mother would gaze at me in adoration and be surprised when anyone looked at me any other way. They tried to shield me from hard work. And they just about managed it, only just! The time has come, there’s a thundercloud looming over us, there’s a bracing, mighty tempest lying in wait, close at hand, and soon it will blow all the indolence, apathy, prejudice against hard work, putrid boredom out of our society. I shall work, and in twenty-five or thirty years everyone will be working. Every last one of us!