FEDOTIK (after a glance at his watch). There’s less than a hour left. Solyony’s the only one from our battery going on the barge, we’re with the line unit. Three batteries are leaving today in battalions, another three tomorrow— and the town will surrender to peace and quiet.
TUSENBACH. And godawful boredom.
RODÉ. And where’s Mariya Sergeevna?
KULYGIN. Masha’s in the garden.
FEDOTIK. Have to say good-bye to her.
RODÉ. Good-bye, got to go, or else I’ll start bawling . . . (Quickly embraces Tusenbach and Kulygin, kisses Irina’s hand.) We had a wonderful time here . . .
FEDOTIK (to Kulygin). Here’s a souvenir for you . . . a notebook with a tiny little pencil . . . We’ll go through here to the river . . .
They move away, both looking around.
RODÉ (shouts). Hop to it!
KULYGIN (shouts). Good-bye!
Very far upstage FEDOTIK and RODÉ run into MASHA and say good-bye to her; she exits with them.
IRINA. They’ve gone . . . (Sits on the bottom step of the veranda.)
CHEBUTYKIN. And forgot to say good-bye to me.
IRINA. And what about you?
CHEBUTYKIN. Yes, I forgot too somehow. However, I’ll soon be seeing them, I leave tomorrow. Yes . . . Just one day left. In a year they’ll let me retire, I’ll come back here again and live out my life beside you. I’ve just got one little year left before my pension . . . (Puts the newspaper in his pocket, takes out another.) I’ll come back here to you and I’ll change my way of living through and through. I’ll turn into such a nice, quiet, bene . . . benevolent, well-behaved little fellow . . .
IRINA. Well, you ought to change your way of life, my love. You ought to somehow.
CHEBUTYKIN. Yes. I can feel it. (Sings quietly.) “Tarara . . . boom de-ay . . . I sit in gloom all day . . .”63
KULYGIN. Incorrigible, that’s our Doctor! Incorrigible!
CHEBUTYKIN. Well then, it’s up to you to teach me better. Then I’d be corrigible.
IRINA. Fyodor shaved off his moustache. I can’t look at him!
KULYGIN. Why not?
CHEBUTYKIN. I’d love to tell you what your face looks like now, but I’d better not.
KULYGIN. So what! It’s comfortable this way, it’s the modus vivendi.64 Our headmaster never lets his moustache grow, and so, when I was made school inspector, I shaved mine off. Nobody likes it, but it doesn’t matter to me. I’m content. Moustache or no, I’m just as content . . . (Sits down.)
Far upstage ANDREY is wheeling a sleeping infant in a baby carriage.
IRINA. Ivan Romanych, my dear, my darling, I’m awfully worried. You were downtown yesterday, tell me, what happened there?
CHEBUTYKIN. What happened? Nothing. Trivia. (Reads the paper.) Doesn’t matter.
KULYGIN. The story goes that Solyony and the Baron met yesterday downtown outside the theater . . .
TUSENBACH. Stop! Well, really . . . (Waves his hand in dismissal and goes inside the house.)
KULYGIN. Outside the theater . . . Solyony started needling the Baron, and the Baron wouldn’t stand for it, and said something insulting . . .
CHEBUTYKIN. I wouldn’t know. ‘S all hokum.
KULYGIN. In a seminary once a teacher wrote “Hokum” on a composition, and the student thought it was Latin, started to conjugate it—hokum, hok-ium, hokii, hokia.65 (Laughs.) Wonderfully funny. They say Solyony’s in love with Irina and sort of developed a hatred for the Baron . . . That’s understandable. Irina’s a very nice girl. She even resembles Masha, the same sort of moodiness. Only you’ve got the milder temper, Irina. Although Masha has a very nice temper too, of course. I do love her, my Masha.
Offstage, at the bottom of the garden: “Yoo-hoo! Hop to it!”
IRINA (startled). Somehow everything frightens me today.
Pause.
AH my things are already packed, after dinner I’ll send them off. Tomorrow the Baron and I will be married, tomorrow we move to the brickworks, and by the day after tomorrow I’ll be in school, starting a new life. Somehow God will help me. When I took the qualifying exam for the teaching certificate, I even wept for joy, at the integrity of it . . .
Pause.
Any minute now the horse and wagon will come by for my things . . .
KULYGIN. Well, that’s how it goes, but somehow it isn’t serious. Nothing but abstract idealism, and very little seriousness. Still, I wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart.
CHEBUTYKIN (affectionately). My miracle, my dearest . . . My treasure . . . You’ve moved far away from me, I can’t catch up with you. I’m left far behind, like a bird of passage that’s too old to fly. Fly away, my darlings, fly and God bless you!
Pause.
It was a mistake to shave off your moustache, Fyodor Ilyich.
KULYGIN. That’s enough out of you! (Sighs.) So today the military departs and everything will go on again as it did in the past. Say what you like, Masha’s a good, honorable woman, I love her very much and thank my lucky stars. People have such different fates . . . There’s a certain Kozyryov66 who works for internal revenue. He went to school with me, was expelled his senior year in high school because he could never manage to learn the ut consecutivum construction.67 Now he’s awfully poor, ill, and whenever we meet, I say to him, “Greetings, ut consecutivum”—”Yes,” he says, “consecutivum indeed . . .” and then he coughs. But I’ve been lucky all my life, I’m happy, look, I’ve even got the Order of Stanislas second class68 and now I’m teaching others that same ut consecutivum. Of course, I’m a clever man, cleverer than a great many others, but that’s not what happiness is all about . . .
In the house “The Maiden’s Prayer”69 is played on the piano.
IRINA. And tomorrow night I won’t have to listen to “The Maiden’s Prayer,” I won’t have to meet Protopopov . . .
Pause.
There’s Protopopov sitting in the drawing-room; he came by again today . . .
KULYGIN. The headmistress still isn’t here?
Far upstage MASHA saunters quietly across the stage.
IRINA. No. She’s been sent for. If only you knew how hard it is for me to live here alone, without Olya . . . She lives at the high school; she’s headmistress, busy with her work all day, while I’m alone, I’m bored, nothing to do, and the hateful room I live in . . . So I came to a decision: if it’s not my fate to live in Moscow, so be it. After all, it must be fate. Nothing to be done about it . . . Everything is God’s will, true enough. The Baron proposed to me . . . Then what? I thought it over and decided. He’s a good man, a wonderful man really, so good . . . And suddenly, just as if my heart had sprouted wings, I cheered up, I felt relieved and once again I started wanting to work, work . . . Only something happened yesterday, a kind of mystery has been hanging over me . . .