LOPAKHIN. You know, I get up before five every morning. I work from dawn to dusk, well, I always have money on hand, my own and other people’s, and I can tell what the people around me are like. You only have to go into business to find out how few decent, honest people there are. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: Lord, you gave us vast forests, boundless fields, the widest horizons, and living here, we really and truly ought to be giants . . .
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. So you want to have giants . . . They’re only good in fairy tales, anywhere else they’re scary.
Far upstage YEPIKHODOV crosses and plays his guitar.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (dreamily). There goes Yepikhodov . . .
ANYA (dreamily). There goes Yepikhodov . . .
GAEV. The sun has set, ladies and gentlemen.
TROFIMOV. Yes.
GAEV (quietly, as if declaiming). Oh Nature, wondrous creature, aglow with eternal radiance, beautiful yet impassive, you whom we call Mother, merging within yourself Life and Death, you nourish and you destroy . . .
VARYA (pleading). Uncle dear!
ANYA. Uncle, you’re at it again!
TROFIMOV. You’d better bank the yellow in the center doublette.
GAEV. I’ll be still, I’ll be still.
Everyone sits, absorbed in thought. The only sound is FIRS, softly muttering. Suddenly a distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, dying away, mournfully.45
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What’s that?
LOPAKHIN. I don’t know. Somewhere far off in a mineshaft the rope broke on a bucket.46 But somewhere very far off.
GAEV. Or perhaps it was some kind of bird . . . something like a heron.
TROFIMOV. Or an owl . . .
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (shivers). Unpleasant anyhow.
Pause.
FIRS. Before the troubles, it was the same: the screech owl hooted and the samovar never stopped humming.
GAEV. Before what troubles?
FIRS. Before freedom.47
Pause.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. You know, everyone, we should go home. Evening’s drawing on. (To Anya.) You’ve got tears in your eyes . . . What is it, little girl? (Embraces her.)
ANYA. Nothing special, Mama. Never mind.
TROFIMOV. Someone’s coming.
A VAGRANT appears in a shabby white peaked cap and an overcoat; he is tipsy.
VAGRANT. May I inquire, can I get directly to the station from here?
GAEV. You can. Follow that road.
VAGRANT. Obliged to you from the bottom of my heart. (Coughs.) Splendid weather we’re having . . . (Declaims.) “Brother mine, suffering brother . . . come to the Volga, whose laments . . .”48 (To Varya.) Mademoiselle, bestow a mere thirty kopeks on a famished fellow Russian . . .
VARYA is alarmed, screams.
LOPAKHIN (angrily). A person’s allowed to be rude only so far!49
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA (flustered). Take this . . . here you are . . . (Looks in her purse.) No silver . . . Never mind, here’s a gold piece for you . . .
VAGRANT. Obliged to you from the bottom of my heart! (Exits.)
Laughter.
VARYA (frightened). I’m going . . . I’m going . . . Oh, Mama dear, there’s nothing in the house for people to eat, and you gave him a gold piece.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What can you do with a silly like me? I’ll let you have all I’ve got when we get home. Yermolay Alekseich, lend me some more! . . .
LOPAKHIN. At your service.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Come along, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time. And look, Varya, we’ve made quite a match for you, congratulations.
VARYA (through tears). It’s no joking matter, Mama.
LOPAKHIN. I’ll feel ya,50 get thee to a nunnery . . .
GAEV. My hands are trembling; it’s been a long time since I played billiards.
LOPAKHIN. I’ll feel ya, o nymph, in thy horizons be all my sins remembered!51
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. Come along, ladies and gentlemen. Almost time for supper.
VARYA. He scared me. My heart’s pounding.
LOPAKHIN. I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, on the twenty-second of August the estate will be auctioned off. Think about that! . . . Think! . . .
Everyone leaves except TROFIMOV and ANYA.
ANYA (laughing). Thank the vagrant, he scared off Varya, now we’re alone.
TROFIMOV. Varya’s afraid we’ll suddenly fall in love, so she hangs around us all day. Her narrow mind can’t comprehend that we’re above love. Avoiding the petty and specious that keeps us from being free and happy, that’s the goal and meaning of our life. Forward! We march irresistibly toward the shining star, glowing there in the distance! Forward! No dropping behind, friends!
ANYA (clapping her hands). You speak so well!
Pause.
It’s wonderful here today.
TROFIMOV. Yes, superb weather.
ANYA. What have you done to me, Petya, why have I stopped loving the cherry orchard as I used to? I loved it so tenderly, there seemed to me no finer place on earth than our orchard.
TROFIMOV. All Russia is our orchard. The world is wide and beautiful and there are many wonderful places in it.
Pause.
Just think, Anya: your grandfather, great-grandfather, and all your ancestors were slave owners, they owned living souls, and from every cherry in the orchard, every leaf, every tree trunk there must be human beings watching you, you must hear voices . . . They owned living souls — it’s corrupted all of you, honestly, those who lived before and those living now, so that your mother, you, your uncle, no longer notice that you’re living in debt, at other people’s expense, at the expense of those people whom you wouldn’t even let beyond your front hall . . .52 We’re at least two hundred years behind the times, we’ve still got absolutely nothing, no definite attitude to the past, we just philosophize, complain of depression, or drink vodka. It’s so clear, isn’t it, that before we start living in the present, we must first atone for our past, put an end to it, and we can atone for it only through suffering, only through extraordinary, unremitting labor. Understand that, Anya.