FIRS. Mistress mislaid her purse.
CHARLOTTA (looking). Here’s a fan . . . And here’s a hanky . . . smells of perfume.
Pause.
Nothing else. Lyubov Andreevna is constantly mislaying things. She’s even mislaid her own life. (Quietly sings a little song.) I haven’t got a valid passport, Granddad, I don’t know how old I am, and I always feel like I’m still oh so young . . . (Puts her cap on Firs; he sits motionless.) O, I love you, my dear sir! (Laughs.) Ein, zwei, drei! (Takes the cap off Firs and puts it on herself.) When I was a little girl, my father and momma used to go from fairground to fairground, giving performances, pretty good ones. And I would be dressed as a boy and do the death-defying leap and all sorts of stunts, and so forth. And when Poppa and Momma died, a German gentlewoman took me home with her and started teaching me. Fine. I grew up, then turned into a governess. But where I’m from and who I am — I don’t know . . . Who my parents were, maybe they weren’t married . . . I don’t know. (Pulls a pickle from her pocket and eats it.) I don’t know anything.
FIRS. I was twenty or twenty-five, we’re goin’ along, me and the deacon’s son and Vasily the cook, and there’s this here man sittin’ on a stone . . . a stranger like, don’t know ‘im . . . Somehow I git skeered and clear off, and when I’m gone they up and killed him . . . There was money on him.
CHARLOTTA. Well? Weiter.
FIRS. Then, I mean, comes a trial, they start askin’ questions . . . They convict ‘em . . . And me too . . . I sit in the penal colony two years or so . . . Then nothing, they let me go . . . A long time ago this was.
Pause.
You can’t rec’llect all of it . . .
CHARLOTTA. It’s time for you to die, Granddad. (Eats the pickle.)
FIRS. Huh? (Mutters to himself.) And then, I mean, we’re all riding together, and there’s a rest stop . . . Uncle leaped out of the wagon . . . took a sack . . .and in that sack’s another sack. And he looks, and there’s something in there — jerk! jerk!
CHARLOTTA (laughs, quietly). Jerk, jerk! (Eats the pickle.)
We hear someone quickly walking along the road, playing a balalaika . . . The moon comes up . . . Somewhere near the poplars VARYA is looking for Anya and calling, “Anya! Where are you!”
Curtain (Al & 2)
ACT THREE
page 1019 / After: “liking you very much, too.”
How are you?
Voice: “O, when I seen you, my heart got very sore.” (A)
page 1019 / After: Guter Mensch, aber schlechter Musikant. —
PISHCHIK. Well, I don’t understand your schlechter-mechter. Lyubov Andreevna will favor me today with a loan of one hundred eighty rubles . that I do understand . . .
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA. What sort of money do I have? Leave off. (A)
page 1019 / After: Here is a very nice rug. — there are no moth-holes in it, no little stain. Very nice. (A)
page 1026 / After: in a gray top hat — in a tailcoat (A)
page 1026 / After: to powder her nose — tries to do it without being noticed (A)
page 1026 / After: my heart pound, Firs Nikolaevich — We’ve been drinking cognac, (A)
page 1027 / After: This very minute, out of here! Out! — Out! You riffraff! (A)
page 1029 / After: Don’t laugh at me! — There’s no need, no need, no need! (A)
ACT FOUR
page 1036 / After: but that money won’t last long. — Well, Uncle got a job at the bank . . . (A)
page 1038 / After: twenty-four years . . . — (Astounded.) Can you imagine! (A)
page 1041 / After: fill my whole being . . . — My friends, you, who feel this as keenly as I do, who know . . . (A)
page 1041 / After: I’ll sit just one little minute — I’ll sit a while . . . This feels good, it feels grand . . . (A)
NOTES
1 According to Stanislavsky, Chekhov wavered between the pronunciations Vishnevy sad (accentuated on the first syllable, “an orchard of cherries”) and Vishnyovy sad (accentuated on the second syllable, “a cherry orchard”). He decided on the latter. “The former is a market garden, a plantation of cherry-trees, a profitable orchard which still had value. But the latter offers no profit, it does nothing but preserve within itself and its snow-white blossoms the poetry of the life of the masters of olden times” (My Life in Art).
2 This subtitle was used in the Marks edition of 1904. On the posters and publicity the play was denominated a drama.
3 To a Russian ear, certain associations can be made with the names. Lyubov means love, and a kind of indiscriminate love characterizes Ranevskaya. Gaev suggests gaer, buffoon, while Lopakhin may be derived from either lopata, shovel, or lopat, to shovel food down one’s gullet—both earthysounding. Simeonov-Pishchik combines an ancient autocratic name with a silly one reminiscent of pishchat, to chirp, something like De Montfort-Tweet. A pishchik is a “swozzle,” or pipe, used by puppeteers to produce the voice of Petrushka, the Russian Punch.
4 He is named for the Orthodox Saint Thyrsus (martyred 251).
5 “It’s an old manor house: once the life in it was very opulent, and this must be felt in the furnishings. Opulent and comfortable” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 14, 1903). “The house in the play has two stories, is big. After all, in Act Three, there’s talk about ‘down the stairs’ ” (to Stanislavsky, November 5, 1903). Stanislavsky decided that the estate was located in the Oryol province near Kursk, possibly because the area is rich in potter’s clay and would justify the Englishmen in Act Four finding “some sort of white clay” on Pishchik’s land.
6 In an earlier version, the boy’s age was five or six. At that time Chekhov still saw Ranevskaya as an old woman. He reduced her age when it became clear that Olga Knipper would play the part.
7 Literally, “with a pig’s snout in White-Bread Row,” the street in any city market where fine baked goods are sold.
8 “Lopakhin must be not be played as a loudmouth, that isn’t the invariable sign of a merchant. He’s a suave man” (Chekhov to Olga Knipper, October 30, 1903). “Lopakhin is a merchant, true; but a very decent person in every respect; he must behave with perfect decorum, like an educated man with no petty ways or tricks . . . In casting an actor in the part, you must remember that Varya, a serious and religious young girl, is in love with Lopakhin: she wouldn’t be in love with some little moneygrubber . . .” (Chekhov to Stanislavsky, October 30, 1903). “Lopakhin—a white waistcoat and yellow high-button shoes; walks swinging his arms, a broad stride, thinks while walking, walks a straight line. Hair not short, and therefore often tosses back his head, while in thought he combs his beard, back to front, i.e., from his neck toward his mouth” (Chekhov to Nemirovich- Danchenko, November 2, 1903).
According to L. M. Leonidov,
[Chekhov] told me that Lopakhin outwardly should either be like a merchant or like a medical professor at Moscow University. And later, at the rehearsals, after Act Three he said to me: