ANDREY waves his hand in dismissal and moves away.
OLGA. He’s the scholar in the family and plays the violin and makes all sorts of things with his fretsaw, in short, a jack-of-all-trades. Andrey, don’t go away! He’s funny that way—always wandering off. Come over here!
MASHA and IRINA take him by the arms and laughingly escort him back.
MASHA. Come on, come on!
ANDREY. Leave me alone, for pity’s sake.
MASHA. Don’t be ridiculous! They used to call the Colonel the lovesick major and he didn’t get the tiniest bit angry.
VERSHININ. Not the tiniest bit!
MASHA. And I want to call you: the lovesick fiddler!
IRINA. Or the lovesick professor! . . .
OLGA. He’s lovesick! Andryusha’s lovesick!
IRINA (applauding). Bravo, bravo! Encore! Little Andryusha’s lovesick!
CHEBUTYKIN (comes up behind Andrey and puts both arms around his waist). “For love alone did Nature put us on this earth!”17 (Roars with laughter: he’s still holding on to his newspaper)
ANDREY. All right, that’s enough, that’s enough . . . (Wipes his face.) I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night and now I’m not quite myself, as they say. I read until four, then I went to bed, but it was no good. I kept thinking about this and that, and the next thing I knew it’s dawn and the sun’s creeping into my bedroom. This summer, while I’m still here, I want to translate a certain book from the English.
VERSHININ. So you read English?
ANDREY. Yes. Father, rest in peace, overstocked us with education. It sounds silly and absurd, but, still, I must admit, after his death I started putting on weight and, well, I put on so much weight in one year, it’s as if my body were freeing itself of its constraints. Thanks to Father, my sisters and I know French, German, and English, and Irina also knows a little Italian. But what good is it?
MASHA. In this town knowing three languages is a superfluous luxury. Not even a luxury, but a kind of superfluous appendage, a bit like a sixth finger. We know a lot of useless stuff.
VERSHININ. Well, I’ll be. (Laughs.) I don’t think there is or can be a town so boring and dismal that an intelligent, educated person isn’t of use. Let’s assume that among the one hundred thousand inhabitants of this town, which is, I grant you, backward and crude, there are only three such as you. Naturally, it’s not up to you to enlighten the benighted masses that surround you. In the course of your lifetime you must gradually surrender and be swallowed up in the crowd of a hundred thousand, you’ll be smothered by life, but even so you won’t disappear, won’t sink without a trace. In your wake others like you will appear, maybe six, then twelve, and so on, until at last the likes of you will be the majority. In two hundred, three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, stupendous. Man needs a life like that, and if it isn’t here and now, then he must look forward to it, wait, dream, prepare himself for it, and that’s the reason he must see and know more than his father and grandfather saw and knew. (Laughs.) And you complain you know a lot of useless stuff.
MASHA (takes off her hat). I’m staying for lunch.
IRINA (with a sigh). Honestly, I should have taken notes . . .
ANDREY’s gone, he left unnoticed.
TUSENBACH. Many years from now, you say, life on earth will be beautiful, stupendous. That’s true. But to take part in it now, even remotely, a person has to prepare for it, a person has to work . . .
VERSHININ (rises). Yes. By the way, you have so many flowers! (Looking around.) And wonderful quarters! I’m jealous! All my life I’ve knocked around in cramped quarters with two chairs, the same old sofa, and stoves that invariably smoke. The main thing missing in my life has been flowers like these . . . (Waves his hand in dismissal.) Oh, well! That’s how it is!
TUSENBACH. Yes, a person has to work. I suppose you’re thinking: he’s gushing all over the place like a typical sentimental German.18 But, word of honor, I’m a Russian, I don’t even speak German. My father belongs to the Orthodox Church . . .
Pause.
VERSHININ (paces the stage back and forth). I often think: what if a man were to begin life anew, and fully conscious at that? If one life, which has already been lived out, were, how shall I put it?, a rough draft, and the other—a final revision! Then each of us, I think, would, first of all, try hard not to repeat himself, at least we’d create a different setting for our life, we’d furnish quarters like these for ourselves with flowers, great bunches of flowers . . . I have a wife, two little girls, moreover my wife’s not a well woman, et cetera, et cetera, yes, but if one were to begin life from the beginning, I wouldn’t get married . . . No, no!
Enter KULYGIN in a uniform dresscoat.19
KULYGIN (comes up to Irina). Dearest sister, may I congratulate you on your saint’s day and sincerely wish you, from the bottom of my heart, the best of health and all those things proper to wish a young girl of your years. (Gives her a book.) The history of our high school over the past fifty years, written by yours truly. A frivolous little book, written when I had nothing better to do, but you go ahead and read it all the same. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! (To Vershinin.) Kulygin, teacher in the local high school. Civil servant, seventh class. (To Irina.) In that book you’ll find a list of all the alumni of our high school for the past fifty years. Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes.20 (Kisses Masha.)
IRINA. But didn’t you give me this book last Easter?
KULYGIN (laughs). Impossible! In that case give it back, or better yet, give it to the Colonel. Here you are, Colonel. Some day you’ll read it when you’re bored.
VERSHININ. Thank you. (Prepares to go.) I’m most happy to have made your acquaintance . . .
OLGA. You’re going? No, no!
IRINA. You’ll stay and have lunch with us. Please.
OLGA. I insist!
VERSHININ (bows). I seem to have dropped in on a saint’s day party. Forgive me, I didn’t know, I haven’t congratulated you . . . (Goes into the reception room with OLGA.)
KULYGIN. Today, ladies and gentlemen, is Sunday, the day of rest, therefore let us rest, let us make merry each according to his age and station in life. The rugs will have to be taken up for summer and put away until winter . . . With moth balls or naphthalene . . . The Romans were a healthy people because they knew how to work hard and they knew how to relax, they had mens sana in corpore sano.21 Their life moved according to a set pattern. Our headmaster says: the main thing in every man’s life is its pattern . . . Whatever loses its pattern ceases to exist—and in our everyday life the same holds true. (Takes Masha round the waist, laughing.) Masha loves me. My wife loves me. And the window curtains too along with the rugs . . . Today I’m cheerful, in splendid spirits. Masha, at four o’clock today we have to go to the headmaster’s. An outing’s been arranged for the faculty and their families.