Pause.
IRINA. I’m tired. No, I don’t like the telegraph office, I don’t like it.
MASHA. You’re getting thinner . . . (Whistles under her breath.) And younger, for your face looks just like a sweet little boy’s.
TUSENBACH. It’s the way she does her hair.
IRINA. I’ve got to look for another job, this one’s not for me. What I so wanted, what I dream of is definitely missing in this one. Drudgery without poetry, without thought . . . (A knock on the floor.) The doctor’s knocking. (To Tusenbach.) Knock back, my dear. I can’t . . . I’m tired . . . (TUSENBACH knocks on the floor.) He’ll be here in a minute. Somebody ought to do something about him. Yesterday the Doctor and Andrey were at the club and lost again. They say Andrey lost two hundred rubles.
MASHA (indifferently). What can you do now!
IRINA. Two weeks ago he lost, back in December he lost. If only he’d hurry up and lose everything, maybe we’d leave this town. Honest to God, I dream of Moscow every night, I’m getting to be a regular obsessive. (Laughs.) We’ll move there in June, and till June there’s still . . . February, March, April, May . . . almost half a year!
MASHA. Just so long as Natasha hasn’t found out about his losses.
IRINA. I shouldn’t think it matters to her.
CHEBUTYKIN, only just got out of bed—he was napping after dinner—enters the reception room and combs out his beard, then sits there at the table and pulls a newspaper out of his pocket.
MASHA. Here he comes . . . Has he paid his room rent?
IRINA (laughs). No. For eight months not the slightest kopek. Apparently he’s forgotten.
MASHA (laughs). How pompously he sits!
They all laugh; pause.
IRINA. Why are you so silent, Colonel?
VERSHININ. I don’t know. I’d like some tea. Half my kingdom for a glass of tea!30 I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning . . .
CHEBUTYKIN. Irina Sergeevna!
IRINA. What do you want?
CHEBUTYKIN. Please come over here. Venez ici!31 (IRINA goes and sits at the table.) I can’t live without you. (IRINA lays out a game of solitaire.)
VERSHININ. What do you say? If there’s no tea, let’s at least philosophize.
TUSENBACH. Let’s. What about?
VERSHININ. What about? Let’s dream a little . . . for instance, about the life to come after us, some two hundred or three hundred years from now.
TUSENBACH. How about this? The people who come after us will fly in hot-air balloons, suit jackets will be cut in a different style, maybe they’ll discover a sixth sense and put it to use, but life will stay just the same, life will be hard, full of mysteries, and happy. And a thousand years from now men will sigh in just the same way: “Ah, life is a burden!”—and just as they do now, they’ll be scared and resist having to die.
VERSHININ (after giving it some thought). How I can put this? I have the impression that everything on earth should be changing little by little and is already changing before our very eyes. In two hundred, three hundred, all right, a thousand years—the time span’s of no importance — a new and happy life will come into being. This life is something we won’t take part in, of course, but we’re living for it now, we work, oh, and we suffer, we are creating it—and this is the one and only purpose of our existence and, if you like, our happiness.
MASHA laughs quietly.
TUSENBACH. What’s come over you?
MASHA. I don’t know. All day long I’ve been laughing, ever since this morning.
VERSHININ. I finished school at the same grade you did, I didn’t go to the Military Academy; I read a great deal, but I don’t know how to choose books and maybe I don’t read what I should, and yet the more I live, the more I want to know. My hair’s turning gray, any day now I’ll be an old man, but I know so little, ah, so little! But even so, I think what’s most important, what really matters I do know, and know it through and through. If only I could prove to you that there is no happiness, there shouldn’t be and will not be for any of us . . . All we should do is work and go on working, as for happiness, that’s the lot of future generations.
Pause.
Not my lot but that of future generations of future generations.
FEDOTÍK and RODÉ appear in the reception room; they sit down and sing quietly, strumming on the guitar.
TUSENBACH. To your way of thinking, a person’s not supposed to dream of happiness! But what if I am happy!
VERSHININ. No.
TUSENBACH (clasping his hands together and laughing). Obviously, we’re not communicating. Well, how can I convince you? (MASHA laughs quietly.) (Wagging a finger at her.) Go ahead and laugh! (To Vershinin.) Not just two hundred or three hundred, but even a million years from now, life will be the same as it’s always been; it won’t change, it will stay constant, governed by its own laws, which are none of our business or, at least, which we’ll never figure out. Birds of passage, cranes, for instance, fly on and on, and whatever thoughts, sublime or trivial, may drift through their heads, they’ll keep on flying and never know what for or where to. They fly and will keep on flying, whatever philosopher they may hatch; and let them philosophize to their heart’s content, so long as they keep on flying . . .
MASHA. Then what’s the point?
TUSENBACH. The point . . . Look, there’s snow falling. What’s the point of that?
Pause.
MASHA. It seems to me, a person ought to believe in something or look for something to believe in; otherwise his life is empty, empty . . . To live and not know why cranes fly, why children are born, why stars are in the sky . . . Either you know why you live or else it’s all senseless, gobbledy-gook.
Pause.
VERSHININ. Still it’s a pity that youth has flown . . .
MASHA. In one of Gogol’s stories, he says: It’s a sad world, my masters!32
TUSENBACH. And I say: it’s hard to argue with you, my masters! You’re too much . . .
CHEBUTYKIN (reading the paper). Balzac was married in Berdichev.33 (IRINA sings quietly.) That’s something to jot down in the book. (Jots it down.) Balzac was married in Berdichev. (Reads the paper.)
IRINA (laying out a game of solitaire; pensively). Balzac was married in Berdichev.
TUSENBACH. The die is cast.34 You know, Mariya Sergeevna, I’ve turned in my resignation.
MASHA. So I’ve heard. And I doubt anything good will come of it. I don’t like civilians.
TUSENBACH. Doesn’t matter . . . (Rises.) I’m not good looking, what kind of military figure do I cut? Besides, it doesn’t matter, anyway . . . I’ll go to work. At least once in my life I’ll do some work, so I can come home at night, collapse on my bed exhausted and fall fast asleep in an instant. (Going into the reception room.) I suppose workingmen sleep soundly!