Our town is emptying out now.
TUSENBACH. I’ll be back in a minute, dear.
IRINA. Where are you off to?
TUSENBACH. I have to go downtown to . . . to see my comrades off.
IRINA. That’s not true . . . Nikolay, why are you so on edge today?
Pause.
What happened yesterday outside the theater?
TUSENBACH (gesture of impatience). I’ll be back in an hour and we’ll be together again. (Kisses her hand.) Light of my life . . . (Looks into her face.) It’s five years now since I started loving you, and I still can’t get used to it, and you seem ever more beautiful to me. What lustrous, wonderful hair! What eyes! I’ll take you away tomorrow, we shall work, we’ll be rich, my dreams will come true. You shall be happy. There’s just one thing, though, just one thing: you don’t love me!
IRINA. It’s not in my power! I’ll be your wife, and a true one, an obedient one, but there’s no love, what can I do! (Weeps.) I’ve never loved even once in my life. Oh, I’ve dreamt so much about love, I’ve been dreaming about it for so long now, day and night, but my heart is like an expensive piano, locked tight and the key is lost.
Pause.
You seem restless.
TUSENBACH. I didn’t sleep all night. There’s never been anything in my life so terrible that it could frighten me, and yet this lost key tears my heart to pieces, won’t let me sleep. Tell me something.
Pause.
Tell me something . . .
IRINA. What? What? Everything around us is so mysterious, the old trees stand in silence . . . (Puts her head on his chest.)
TUSENBACH. Tell me something.
IRINA. What? What am I to say? What?
TUSENBACH. Something.
IRINA. Stop it! Stop it!
Pause.
TUSENBACH. What trivia, what foolish trifles sometimes start to matter in our lives, all of a sudden, for no good reason. At first you laugh at them, treat them as trifles, and all the same you go on and feel you haven’t the power to stop. Oh, let’s not talk about it! I feel cheerful, as if I’m seeing those spruces, maples, birches for the first time in my life, and they all stare curiously at me and wait. What beautiful trees, and, really, the life we lead in their shade ought to be so beautiful! (A shout: “Yoo-hoo! Hop to it!”) I have to go, it’s time now . . . There’s a tree that’s withered and dead, but all the same it sways with the others in the breeze. So, I guess, if I die too, I’ll still take part in life one way or another. Good-bye, my dear . . . (Kisses her hand.) Those papers you gave me are in my desk, under the almanac.
IRINA. I’ll go with you.
TUSENBACH (alarmed). No, no. (Goes quickly, stops on the path.) Irina!
IRINA. What?
TUSENBACH (not knowing what to say). I haven’t had any coffee today. Ask them to make me some . . . (Exits quickly.)
IRINA stands rapt in thought, then walks far upstage and sits on a swing. Enter ANDREY with the baby carriage; FERAPONT appears.
FERAPONT. Andrey Sergeich, these here papers ain’t mine, they’re official. I didn’t dream ‘em up.
ANDREY. Oh, where is it, where has my past gone to, when I was young, cheerful, intelligent, when my dreams and thoughts were refined, when my present and future glistened with hope? Why, when we’ve barely begun to live, do we get boring, gray, uninteresting, lazy, apathetic, useless, unhappy . . . Our town has existed for two hundred years, it contains a hundred thousand inhabitants, and not one who isn’t exactly like the others, not one dedicated person, past or present, not one scholar, not one artist, not one even faintly remarkable person who might stir up envy or a passionate desire to emulate him. All they do is eat, drink, sleep, then die . . . others are born and they too eat, drink, sleep and, to keep from being stultified by boredom, vary their lives with vicious gossip, vodka, cards, crooked deals, and the wives cheat on the husbands while the husbands lie, pretend to notice nothing, hear nothing, and an irresistibly vulgar influence is brought to bear on the children, and the divine spark in them flickers out, and they become the same miserable, identical dead things as their fathers and mothers . . .71 (To Ferapont, angrily.) What d’you want?
FERAPONT. How’s that? Papers to sign.
ANDREY. You make me sick.
FERAPONT (handing him the papers). A while ago the doorman at the town hall was saying . . . Looks like, says he, this winter in Petersburg there was ten degrees o’ frost.
ANDREY. The present is repulsive, but when, on the other hand, I think of the future, it’s so fine! I start to feel so relieved, so expansive; and a light begins to dawn in the distance, I can see freedom, I can see how my children and I will be freed from idleness, from beer drinking, from goose and cabbage, from after-dinner naps, from degrading sloth . . .
FERAPONT. Two thousand people froze, seems like. The common folks, says he, was scared to death. Either Petersburg or Moscow—I don’t rec’llect.
ANDREY (caught up in a feeling of tenderness). My dear sisters, my wonderful sisters! (Plaintively.) Masha, sister dear . . .
NATASHA (out the window). Who’s talking so loudly out there? Is that you, Andryusha? You’ll wake up Sophiekins. Il ne faut pas faire du bruit, la Sophie est dormée déjå. Vous êtes un ours.72 (Losing her temper.) If you want to talk, then give the buggy and the baby to somebody else. Ferapont, take the baby buggy from the master!
FERAPONT. Yes’m. (Takes the carriage.)
ANDREY (embarrassed). I’m talking softly.
NATASHA (back of the window, petting her little boy). Bobik! Cunning Bobik! Naughty Bobik!
ANDREY (glancing at the papers). All right, I’ll look them over and sign what’s necessary, and you take them back to the council . . .
Exits into the house, reading the papers; FERAPONT wheels the carriage.
NATASHA (back of the window). Bobik, what’s your mommy’s name? Cutie, cutie! And who’s this? It’s Auntie Olya. Say to auntie: Afternoon, Olya!
Itinerant MUSICIANS, a MAN and a GIRL, play the fiddle and the harp. Out of the house come VERSHININ, OLGA, and ANFISA and listen a moment in silence; IRINA comes up to them.
OLGA. Our garden’s like an empty lot, people walk and drive right through it. Nanny, give those musicians something! . . .
ANFISA (gives something to the musicians). God bless you, sweethearts. (The MUSICIANS bow and leave.) Hard-luck folks. When your belly’s full, you don’t have to play. (To Irina.) Afternoon, Arisha! (Kisses her.) My, my, child, lookit the way I live now! The way I live! In the high school in government housing, grand rooms, along with Olyushka — the Lord decreed that for my old age. I’ve not lived like that in all my born days, sinner that I am . . . The housing’s big, on the government money, and I’ve got a whole little room and a little bed to myself. All on the government. I wake up at night and— oh Lord, oh Mother o’ God, there’s nobody happier’n me!