Methuen’s Theatre Classics DANTON’S DEATH Bichner Englisk version by James Maxwell; ng by Je ‘by Martin Ess DANTON’S DEATH ‘Bichner English version by Howard Brenton wovzece Bochner trantlared by John MacKendricks introduced by Michael Patterson THE CHERRY ORCHARD Chekhov translated and introduced by Wiha Pron ish version by Pam Gems; ine ened by ice Bron ACCHAE OF English version by Wole Soyinka RIPIDES ‘THE GOVERNMENT UNCLE VANYA tr Gogol translated by Edward ©, Marsh and INSPECTOR Jeremy Brooks; introduced by Edvsard Brawn ENEMIES Gorky translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair THE LOWER perrHs gud Jeremy Brooks introduced by Edward THE MADRAS HOUSE Greoile Beker nradeed by Margery Morgan ‘THE WEAVERS Hauptmann cranslared and introduced Frank Marcus u BRAND Tbsen translated and introduced by Michael uosts Mayer PEER GYNT. up usu PLavs Jerry tansaced by Cyril Comelly and ie Warn Peg lied wh a in ‘ution by Simon Watson-Taylor ‘THE GUARDSMAN Molnar tronlated and inaduced by Frank LA RONDE. Scar comet by Frank and Jace (quelina Marcus ANATOL ‘Schnitaler translated by Frank Marcut THE PLAYBOY oF THE Synge introduced by T. R. Henn ‘WESTERN WORLD tHE PRUITS oF Tolstoy _wranlated ond introduced by UNLIGHTENMENT Michael Frayn SPRING AWAKENING Wedekind translated by Edward Bond; in- sroduced by Edward and Elisabeth Bond Wilde introduced by Adeline Hartcup ‘THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST LADY WINDERMERE’s FAN Wilde introduced by Hesketh Pearson LADY PRECIOUS STREAM Anon adapted by SI. Heung from a segue Chinese plays ‘ence of traditional Anton Chekhov THREE SISTERS A Drama in Four Acts Translated and introduced ty MICHAEL FRAYN METHUEN : LONDONA METHUEN PAPERBACK This translation first published as a paperback original in 1983 by Methuen London Lid 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Translation copyright © 1983 by Michael Frayn Introduction copyright © 1983 by Michael Frayn Chronology copyright © 1978, 1983 by Michael Fraym ISBN 0 413 524507 CAUTION ‘Allrights whatsoever in this play are strictly reservedand application for performance etc., should be made to Fraser & Dunlop (Scripts) Ltd, 91 Regent St., London W1R BRU. No performance may be given unless @ licence had been obtained. ‘This paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publis- her's prior consent in any form of binding or cover ‘other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ‘Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd Bungay, Suffolk 1860 1875 1876 1879 1880 1882 1884 1885 1886 1887 Anton Chekhov Born the son of « grocer and grandson of a serf, in Taganrog, ‘a small port on the Sea of Azov, where he spends his first nineteen years, and which he describes on a return visit in later life as ‘Asis, pure and simple!” His father, bankrupt, flees from Taganrog concealed be- neath a mat at the bottom of a cart. ‘A former lodge: buys the Chekhovs’ house and puts the rest of the family out. Chekhov rejoins his family, who have followed his father to ‘Moscow, and entols at the university to study medicine. Begins contributing humorous material to minor magazines under the pen-name Antosha Chekhonte. Begins contributing regularly to the St. Petersburg humor- ‘ous journal Ostolki - short stories and sketches, and a column on Moscow life. Qualifies as a doctor, and begins practising in Moscow ~ the start of a sporadic second career which over the years brings him much hard work but little income. Begins writing for the St. Petersburg Gazette, which gives ‘him the opportunity to break out of the tight restrictions on length and the rigidly humorous format in which he has worked up to now. ‘Another step up the journalistic ladder — he begins writing, under his own name and for good money, for Novaye ‘vremya. Alexei Suvorin, its millionaire proprietor, an anti- ‘Semitic reactionary who has the concession on all the rail- ‘way bookstands in Russia, becomes Chekhov's close friend, Is a literary success in St. Petersburg. Writes Ieancu as a result of a commission from a producer who wants a light entertainment in the Chekhonte style. The play is produced in Moscow (his first production) to a mixture of clapping and hissing.1892 1894 1896 1897 1898 1899 THREE SISTERS Begins to publish his stories in the ‘thick journals’; has survived his career in comic journalism to emerge as a serious and respectable writer. But at the same time begins ‘writing four one-act farces for the theatre. The Wood Demon (which Chekhov Iater uses as raw material for Uncle Vanya) opens at a second-rate Moscow theatre, and survives for only three performances. ‘Makes the appalling journey seross Siberia (largely in un- ‘sprung carts over unsurfaced roads) to visit and report on the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. Sets out to inter view the entire population of prisoners and exiles, at the rate of 160 0 day. ‘Travels the back country of Nizhny Novgorod and Voron- yezh provinces in the middle of winter, trying to prevent @ recurrence of the previous year’s famine among the peasants. Is banqueted by the provincial governors. Moves to the ‘modest but comfortable estate he had bought himself at ‘Melikhovo, fifty miles south of Moscow. Becomes an en- ‘ergetic and enlightened landowner, cultivating the soil and doctoring the peasants. Spends three months organizing the istrict against an expected cholera epidemic. ‘Starts work on the first of the three schools he builds in the ‘Melikhovo district. ‘The Seagull opens in St. Petersburg, and survives only five performances after a disastrous first night. Chekhov tells Suvorin he won't have another play put on even if he lives, ‘another seven hundred years. Suffers a violent lung haemorrhage while dining with Suvo- rin, and is forced to recognize at last what he bas long closed his eyes to— that he is suffering from advanced consumption. (Is also constantly plagued by piles, gastritis, migraine, dizzy spells, and palpitations of the heart.) Winters in Nice. ‘Moves his headquarters to the Crimean warmth of Yalta, ‘Stanislavsky revives The Seagull (with twelve weeks’ re- hhearsal) at the newly-founded Moscow Arts Theatre, and it is an immediate success. Sells the copyright in all his works, past, present, and furure, 1901 1904 ANTON CHEKHOV vil to the St, Petersburg publisher A. F. Marks ~ a contract which is to burden the rest of his life. Uncle Vanya produced successfully by the Moscow Arts Theatre. Three Sisters produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre, but rather poorly received. Chekhov marries his mistress, Olga ‘Knipper, an actress in the Moscow Arts company, who later creates the part of Ranyevskaya. The Cherry Orchard is produced in January; and in July, after two heart attacks, Chekhov dies in a hotel bedreom in. the German spa of Badenweiler.Introduction Chekhov does not name the provincial town where the three Pro- zorov sisters and their brother live, but we discover its spiritual {identity soon enough; its name is Exile. Like so many others for so many reasons in Russian life and literature, they find themselves in a place which they ste not as ‘here but as there. In their hearts they inhabit Moscow, where the spring comes early and there is love and fame. In the flesh they find themselves resident in some dull town in the north of Russia, where the winter lingers and no one bas ever been heard of. In a letter to Maxim Gorky, Chekhov said it was a town lise Perm, which gives some geographical scale to their plight. Perm is 700 miles from Moscow, in the northern Urals, and at that time there ‘was no direct railway line to Moscow. The 1914 Bacdeker lists a twice-weekly express to St. Petersburg, king about two days, while the ordinary train to the next nearest town of any size along. the line, Yekaterinburg (where the imperial family were shortly to be murdered) took 234 hours. The great Russian distances domi- inate the Prozorovs’ lives. They watch the cranes fiying overhead fon their huge autumn journeys to the south. They welcome the other birds of passage in the play, the soldiers, as they arrive from the ends of the Empire with their baggage of new ideas and old ‘quarrels and boredom and desperate wives; and they watch them depart again, bound maybe for the Chita garrison in Siberia, 2,000 tiles to the east, or for the Kingdom of Poland, 1,400 miles to the ‘west, to live in yet more lodgings ‘with two chairs and one sofa, and stoves that always smoke’; permanent exiles, The play was written in exe, too — in Yalta, 1,300 miles away to the south-west, where Chekhov was banished by his doctors in the last years of his life, in on attempt to stem the consumption that was-to kill him. In hhis letters he refers to Yalta as his prison. He complains ebout the ‘cold, the heat, the cruel wind. He longs for Moscow — and, like the Prozorovs, puts off his planned visit from week to week and THREE SISTERS ix day to day, while he finishes the play. When he finally took it to ‘Moscow to copy it out, in October 1900, he must have felt he was escaping from his own text. ‘The characters in the play ~ the Prozorovs and the soldiers alike = are exiles in time as well as in place. The sisters look wistfully ‘back towards their Moscow childhood, longingly forward to their ‘Moscow future, Tusenbach is waiting for the ‘great healthy storm’ that will blow society clean of idleness and boredom in twenty or thirty years time. Vershinin has his eyes fixed on the ‘astonishingly, ‘unimaginably beautiful’ life that will be lived in another two or three hundred years. Solyony lives in the past; he identifies himself with Lermontov, who died fifty years before. Chebutykin wonders if he has ceased to exist entirely. The only time thet none of them regards as home is the one they actually inhabit, somewhere in the last decade of the nineteenth century. This sense of the difficulty that human beings have of living in the present lies at the very heart of the play. It has been much misunderstood. The vision that, Tusenbach and Vershinin share, of a future in which everything ‘will one way or another be totally changed, is often taken as an ‘expression of Chekhov’s fundamental optimism. The play was cer~ tainly written at the beginning of a new and hopeful century, when belief in progress was high, and when the pressures upon the arch- sic despotism of imperial Russia were plainly becoming irresistible. History, indeed, soon leat its support to the thesis. In almost exactly the twenty yeers he estimated, Tusenbach’s good healthy storm had broken, and Vershinin’s unimaginably beautiful furure ‘was on its way. It’s not surprising that Soviet producers and critics should see Chekhov as the herald of the revolution. But chis inter= pretation of the play is not confined to the Soviet Union. A some- what similar view was taken by the late David Magarshack, one of the most distinguished of Chekhov's translators, whose com- ‘mentary on the plays hes had a good deal of influence on English directors. Magarshack concedes, in his book The Real Chekhov, that the playwright ‘was never impressed by the facile optimism of the revolutionaries who believed that by sweeping away the old order they would establish peace and harmony on earth’, But he argues that ‘in all his plays Chekhov gives expression to his ownx THREE SISTERS i lit views ring them into the mouths of his wn tit es em ee ‘an active interest in the social and political problems of his day’. The only evidence that ‘Magarshack offers for this assertion (apart from the interest shown by Astrov, in Uncle ea destruction of the environment) is this: ‘ “As : writer,” he Pat rigorin say in the second act of The Seagull, “I must speak of the common people, of their sufferings, of their furure. T must spe science, the rights of man, and so on.” * But this is surely the most ‘extraordinary misreading of the passage. ‘The quotation is from: ‘Trigorin’s long speech to Nina about the miseries of being a he) ‘and more especially of being a second-rate one. ‘T have little e re for myself: writer,’ says Trigorin. “The worst thing is that Tm in some kind of daze, and I often don’t understand what it is I'm writing. I love this water here — these trees — this sky. T have a feeling for nature. It arouses strong emotions in me ~ some ea definable longing to write. But I’m not just a landscape-painter, A course — I'm a citizen - I love my country, I love my people, and feel that if I’m a writer then I have an obligation to deal with the people, and their sufferings, and their furure; to deal with eon ‘and the rights of man, and so on and so forth, and deal with it a do, in haste, urged on and snapped at on al sides. I rush back forth like a fox bayed by hounds. I can see that life and science are going further and further ahead, while I fall further and a behind, like a peasant missing a train. And in the end I feel that a I can write is landscapes, and that in ‘everything else I’m false — marrow of my bones.’ orn, plainly, is labouring under the obligation he felt wo do what was expected of the professional writer in Rust in at the ‘time. Chekhov himself was notorious among progressive critics in his day for his failure to fulfil these expectations. He put his own view of the matter beyond any reasonable doubt in his ‘well-known Lid ‘to Alexey Pleshcheyev, which aed and forcefully abjures al litical ‘ ‘ies’, all ‘signs anc els’. . . Crater es to apply his thesis to Three Sisters is 10° more convincing. In his plays, says ‘Magarshack, Chekhov ‘ex- presses the view that ‘would take at least two to three hundred INTRODUCTION xi ‘Years, or pethaps even a thousand years, to bring about a cardinal change in human nature, and in The Three Sisters he makes the ‘idealist Vershinin his mouthpiece on the future of mankind, taking, usuel, great care that the expression of his views should be strictly in character.” Magarshack does not say why he supposes that Vershinin is Chekhov's mouthpiece. There is no evidence, cither within the play or anywhere else in Chekhov's writings, for such an assumption, Why not pick Tusenbsch as the author's Puppet? He is no less sympathetic than Vershinin (and no more 50). He just happens to be saying the opposite, insisting that human life will never fundamentally change, because it follows its own laws. Why not pick Solyony? He, after all, quotes Chatsky, the austere hero of Griboyedov's Woe from Wit (‘I may be odd ~ but ‘who's not odd, Save fools alike as peas in pod’); perhaps Chekhov wishes us to identify him with that woundingly truthful critic of a ‘corrupt society. Or Chebutykin, a fellow doctor? In fact it is plain that Chekhov took a very different view from Vershinin. In the volume of his notebooks that covers the period of Three Sisters he wrote: ‘We struggle to change life so that those who come after us might be happy, but those who come after us ‘Will say as usual: it was better before, life now is worse than it used to be.’ But even if we knew nothing of Chekhov's general attitude, it is obvious from the internal evidence of the play that Vershinin’s views are not the suthor’s, For a start they are parodied by the fatuous optimism of Andrey in Act Four, after he has com- Prehensively denounced the town’s sordid record up to now: ‘The resent is loathsome, but then when I think about the future — ‘well, that’s another story. It all becomes so easy und spacious; and in the distance there’s gleam of light ~ I can see freedom, I can see me and my children being freed from idleness, from roast goose ‘and cabbage, from litle naps after dinner, from ignoble sponging off others ...? ‘And really the whole structure of the play is designed to undercut Vershinin. He insists that life is already becoming ‘steadily casier tnd brighter.’ But more than three years go by in the course of the lay, and nothing changes ~ not at any rate for the better ~ nothing ‘even begins to change, Vershinin philosophises on regardless — : ellexii THREE SISTERS obsessively, never interested in anyone else’s views, plainly secking some rationalisation for the unhappiness of his own life. He is = bore on the subject. What’s marvellous, though, in Chekhov's ‘understanding of him - and of his hearers ~ is that, although be threatens boredom each time he returns to the question, he never does in fact bore ~ he rides boredom down, he becomes eloquent, he caprures the imagination, The truth is that living characters in living fiction rarely parrot their author's opinions; nor do they speak nonsense. They speak for themselves, and their opinions are likely to have the same oblique and complex reletionship to their author’s opinions as their emotions do to his emotions, and their actions to his actions. "A more plausible case could be made for supposing that Chekhov is addressing us direct - and with a rather similar message of long term optimism ~ in Olga’s last specch of the play, when, after the ‘destruction of all the sisters’ hopes, she courageously and resolutely sets her face towards life, and appears to justify her attitude with @ Similar appeal to the future: “We shall be forgotten ~ our faces, our Voices, even how many of us there were, But our sufferings will ‘tum to joy for those who live after us. Peace and happiness will ‘dwell on earth, and people living now will be blessed and spoken ‘well of This is not a hobbyhorse of Olge’s; this is something new, ‘tad the whole play has led up to it. I still doubt, though, whether ‘Chekhov is offering it as a moral or message. I claim no certainty ‘about his intentions here, but the specch is followed by a remark from Chebutykin, From the very beginning of the play, as Magar- ‘shack notes, the separate upstage conversations of Chebutykin and the other officers are used as an ironic counterpoint to what is being said downstage. And there at the end of the play sits Cheb- turykin, upstage and alone, the last remaining member of this chorus, ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ he says to himself after Olga’s ‘speech, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ Well, he sees life one way, because he's ‘Chebutykin, and he’s given up,and she sees it another way, because ‘she’s Olga, and she hasn’t. And if it’s Chekhov speaking through (Olge, then it’s equally Chekhov replying to himself through Cheb- ‘atykin; the drama is within Chekhov exactly as it is within all of tus. Chebutykin’s comment is an apt one, too. Because whatever INTRODUCTION xiii happens to future generations, even if some benefit acer from the sufferings of the three sisters - and there is no plies 8s to how this might happen — it still won't matter as far as these People are concerned, and they are the ones whose fates we have been invited to examine, Drama makes the generalities of the human condition specific in particular men and women; the fate of those who semminoftage is beyond representation of cosiertion. ‘matter.’ The phrase is on everyone’s the play. Masha tries to hush enbinarPaeaae or ea concedes that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to Andrey, os the mummers come or not. ‘Even Vershinin, dejected ar a snore of military and civilians alike, uses it. Indifference is le of the play, not optimism; indifference to a world that offers only indifference in return. All attempts at forward motion cease ee aie for instance - come ced by the undertow of regret. As i Cherry Orchard, something has been lost — seaslicelilicee dost ia front of our cyes — some loss that will never be made be I IC St ‘There are many parallels between the two plays, of course. ‘evenings {in the ballroom that Firs remembers from the old ied the Gayevs', with generals and admirals dancing, echo the name- day arties ‘that Masha recalls from their childhood in Moscow, with thirty or forty officers and a lot of noise. Lopakhin’s purchase of the Gayevs’ house isan abrupt equivalent to the gradual colon sation of the Prozorovs’ house first by Natasha and then by Proto- Popov. Lopakhin’s plan to fell the cherry orchard recalls Natasha’s cs fell the fir avenue. The same problem, too, arises with both Plays in. accommodating the painfulness of the events to Chekhov's insistence on comic detachment. He did not designate Three Sisters pend as he did The Cherry Orchard; he called it a drama. But itanislavsky in his memoirs recalls Chekhov at the first read- ‘through of the play as being ‘certain he had written a light-hearted comedy’, and as being convinced, when the cast wept, that the play was: ‘incomprehensible and destined to fail. Nemirovich-Danchenko remembers him at the same occasion as struggling with a sense ofxiv THREE SISTERS arrassment and repeating several times: ‘I've written a light sage Tac proenacon sould petaps be taken with Some caution. Allowance must probably be made for the awkward hese of this first reading, Olga Knipper, who played Masha and teas soon to become Chekhov's wife, recalls dismayed actors and Tlatrsses muttering that it wasa’t play, that it was unactable, that there were no parts, while che author ‘was smiling in embar~ essment and walking about amongst us, coughing tensely’. Allow- nee mst also be made for Chekhov's desire to lighten the heavi- fess and solemnity which, as he knew from experience, always tmarkedStanislaeky’s productions. What be wanted frm «comic interpretation of the play was perhaps a sense ofthe absurdity of human intentions and the meaninglessass of events perhaps leo the possiblity of lightness, speed, indifference, and irony in PHT hindsight, we might possibly think that Tusenbach bas proved the better of the two prophets, not only beoause he was Fight about the storm, but because of his suggestion chat the time they lie in might be remembered with respect, His assertion that there were no executions then is not quite right ~ there were no Cuil executions in Russia, but, according to the 1900 Brockhaus, general exces could sill be transferred to the military courts for isposal by military law. All the same, a Russian today might look beck, if not with respect, then at least with affection, as Andrey does to evenings out at the Grand Hotel on Resurrection Square, orat Tenors on the comer of Tete Sune. Anyone whe know! ‘Moscow today might feel a pang for the incorporation - eo eee ef ino the grea barren plein 2ow known asthe Square ofthe Fiieth Anniversury ofthe Ocober Revolution. And if you bappen to be walking along the Sadovoye Ring now, you come to a street turning off it to the north-east that starts But as Karl Marx Strect and ends up as Bakunin Street, you night feel something more chan a pang to realise chat this is Old Bosmannaye Street, where the sisters lived their happy days as children (They coulda't have lived i a more Muscovitesound- fing stevt; bazman was a kind of bread, and basmannik was 0 col~ Joquia! name for an inhabitant of the city.) Perm has in fact gone INTRODUCTION a back to being Perm, after leaping to the unfortunate conclusion that it was really called Molotov. And what happened to the Prozorovs themselves when Tusenbach’s good healthy storm broke? They would all have been in their forties by then; so would Tusenbach himself. Did they survive their good healthy ‘wetting? Did they fice to Paris or New York, into yet deeper exile? Or did they remain, to be scattered at some point in the next few decades into camps still further north, still further cast? And did they, as they laboured there, recall Tusenbach’s other successful prediction, that in twenty or thirty years’ time everyone would be working? If the play is about one thing then it is not about the hopes held out by Vershinin, or by Olga, or by any of them. It is about the irony of those hopes ~ about the way life mocks them. Irina’s hopes of redemption by work are betrayed by the actual experi- fence of it; Andrey’s hopes of academic glory are betrayed by Andrey; the sisters” hopes of Moscow are deferred and deferred and then shelved forever. Even, conversely, Anfise’s fear of being ut out into the street is vain - she finds herself better housed and better off than she has ever been before, The only character Whose hopes scem likely to be realised is Natasha, and then be- cause her hopes are so small and conerete and piecemeal ~ another baby, another room of the house to put it in, another little triumph. ‘This is the furure as it’s actually going to be ~ not an unimaginable ‘beauty on earth, but Protopopov in the sitting-room. But the irony goes deeper than this. It wouldn’t make any differ- ‘ence even if their hopes were realised. As Vershinin says, if the sisters actually did live in Moscow they would cease to notice it. Perhaps in their hearts they understand this. Even Irina. She has no ties ~ she could leave for Moscow at any time. But she doesn’t. And Vershinin’s objection is valid not only against the sisters’ hopes but his own as well. ‘Happiness,’ as he says, ‘is not for us ‘and never can be. All we can do is long for it.” Even more ironically, one of the things that destroys their chance of happiness is their hope of achieving it. They are living in their various hypothetical futures ~ in exile not only from Moscow, but from the present. Tusenbsch finds his way back to it briefly in thexvi THREE SISTERS last act, when he notices the beauty of the world around him as if for the first time in his life. But then he is on hit way to be killed hhe has no fature to distract him. | ‘The final irony of the play, though, is its demonstration that we cannot live without the hopes that cut us off from life. We are both poisoned and nourished by the act of hope itself. And when all hopes for ourselves have been destroyed ~ as the sisters’ hopes have been at the end of the play = then we surnmon whatever dogged courage we can muster to confront the rest of our lives ~ fand we start to tell the old consoling story once again; only this time not about ourselves, but about another people, living under ite dif ws, on the far side of the storms. an MICHAEL FRAYN A Note on the Translation This text is intended merely as a translation of the original, and ‘not as an adgptation, gloss, modernisation, or improvement of it. Tt was commissioned for production (by Caspar Wrede, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), and my only ambition is that it might speak to an English audience in the same way as the original text does ro a Russian audience, with so far as I can make possible the same naturalness and glancing eloquence. I have tried to ensure that every line is as immediately comprehensible to the ‘ar as it was in the original. To this end I have been very sparing with names, particularly patronymics, On the other hand, I have expanded 2 few allusions which might otherwise have been un- familiar — to Dobrolyubov and the Panama Affair, for example — and have tried to suggest the way in which Masha and Vershinin, attheir parting, address each other for the frst time (in our hearing, at any rate) by the intimate ty. ‘Much greater difficulties are presented by the many literary allusions in the play. I have completed quotations where necessary to make internal sense, but there is no way of conveying the familiarity which they would all have to a Russian audience. ‘The lines that Masha gets on the brain (‘On a far sea shore an oak tee grows ...") are the opening of the Prologue to Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmilla; a magical invocation of the world of fairy- tales, introducing the story of Ruslan’s attempts to recover his abducted bride, Solyony’s lines, “The peasant had no time to ‘gasp Before he felt the bear’s hard clasp,’ are from Krylov's fable The Peasant and the Workman, about a peasant who is saved from 2 bear when a workman manages to hit it on the head with an ‘exc, and who then complains that this has ruined the value of the ‘bear's skin, Solyony returns to Krylov in Act Three with, ‘We could spell out the moral of the piece - But let us not provoke the geese,’ which is the end of a fable about a flock of geese being driven to market who stand on their dignity because ofxviii THREE SISTERS their noble descent, from the sacred geese who saved the Capitol in Rome, ‘Not teasing the geese” has become a Russian com- monplace. ‘Solyony also quotes Chatsky, the hero of Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit (sec Introduction) ~ ‘I may be odd ~ but who's not odd, Save fools alike as peas in pod?” ~ then goes straight on with a reference to Aleko, Aleko is the hero of Pushkin’s poem The Gypsies, a high- born youth who falls in love with a Gypsy gitl is accepted into her family, and then murders both her and her lover when she proves unfaithful, The relevance to Solyony's own nature is obvious, though the words he seems to be quoting do not actually occur in the original. Lermontov, Solyony’s idol, so admired the poem that he used it as the basis of a libretto for an opera. The lines that Solyony quotes in the last act (‘Rebelliously he seeks the storm, As if in storms there promised peace . .”) are from The Sail, probably Lermontov’s most famous poem, and indeed one of the most cele~ brated evocations in any literature of the lonely defiance of the ‘Romantic hero. "Masha quotes (or slightly misquotes) from two of Gogol’s stories. ‘Living in this world, my friends, is dull work,” is Gogol’s reflection (though in the original he says nothing about living) as he leaves the little town of Mirgorod in the rain and mud of aurumn at the fend of How Ivan Ivanovich quarrelled with Fean Nikiferovich, the story of how two former friends have grown old and grey in the Tawsuit which has arisen after one of them called the other « gander. ‘Silence ... silence ..." is from The Memoirs of a Madman. Or more precisely, ‘Never mind, never mind ... silence,’ which is ‘hat the wretched government clerk in the story tells himself every time he thinks of the unattainable charms possessed by the daugh- ter of the head of his department. ‘Thave been unable to trace the source of Chebutykin’s lines in ‘Act One (‘For love and love alone Was man put in bis earthly hhome’), In a lerter to Stanislavsky, Chekhov says that the song from which Chebutykin sings a snatch as he goes off in Act Three (Won't you deign to eat this date ...”) comes from an operetta ‘whose tide he has forgotten. Vershinin, in the same act, begins to Sing ‘To love must young and old surrender,” the magnificent bess A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION xix oon Once at at of Eugene Onegin, in which Prince Gremin ee aa Cer ae ar sore are beneficial both wo the aa eee of youth. aad to the ‘grizzled, hardened warrior’, a Ps a Vershinin's own feelings is obvious; Gremin tells ee arsed his life has been until Tatyana appeared, ‘and ey of sighs in the mist of my unbappines gave mee ee th ie th happiness’. This is in fact « curious reversal eS a where the unnamed prince who has married ayant makes co ctmment on th sucess ofthe match. Tn the eee poe with the same line Pushkin is discussing not the Pe ee —- but Onegin’s ~ and his view of late love is Joong hee on eae ‘The effects of love upon the a Ba areasb erp as spring. scorns, But in late life it marsh, and strip bare the woods ee Tamm the meadows ita Another considerable problem is sen eqimles re Tony teurng wordesnd fees ie Naren and mom bigs ~ iy ope rato ‘nd is variant oh rendered as ‘Tt doesn’t matter’ (Sec Introduction). wi : roduction). adepeed elie would be closer, but is less capable of bey cronies Aas ‘situations in which it occurs. The effect ce a at aa ‘where it is used so consciously, ME.Characters ANDREY PROZOROV _ NATASHA, his fiancée, later his wife OLGA . MASHA his sisters TRINA | KULYGIN (Fyodor), a teacher in the local high school, and Masha’s husband . LIEUTENANT-COLONEL VERSHININ, the battery com- mander LIEUTENANT THE BARON TUSENBACH ony JUNIOR CAPTAIN SOLYON DR. CHEBUTYKIN, the medical officer SECOND-LIEUTENANT FEDOTIK SECOND-LIEUTENANT RODE ; FERAPONT, an elderly watchman from the local Executive Board . ANFISA, the family’s nonny, now eighty ‘The action takes plac: in the chief town of one of the provinces. The Pronunciation of the Names ‘The following is an approximate practical guide. In gen- etal, all stressed a’s are pronounced as in ‘far’ (the sound is indicated below by ‘aa’) and all stressed o's as in ‘more? (they are written below as ‘aw’), All unstressed a’s and o’s are thrown away and slurred. The u's are pronounced as in ‘crude’: they are shown below as ‘v0’, A y at the be- ginning of a syllable is pronounced as a consonant Ge. as in ‘yellow’, not as in ‘sky’). Where the y is preceded by another consonant the two are pronounced together (ix ‘Fyodor’ is pronounced like ‘if your door’ without the i sound, in two syllables, and not ‘Fee-odor’ or ‘Fer-yordor’ in three). ‘The characters: Andray Prozawrov (Andryoosha) Nataasha Auulga (Awlga Sergayevna, Awlooshka, Awlyechka) Maashe (Marea, Maashenka) Ireena (Ireenooshka, Ireesha) Kooligin (Fyawdor, Fyedya) ‘Versheenin Toozenbakh (Nikolie - as in ‘lie’ meaning ‘untruth’ — Nikolaasha) Solyauny Chebootikin (Eevaan Romaanich) Fedawtik Rawde Ferapawnt Anfeesawedi THREE SISTERS Other names occurring in the play, in elphabetical order: Aleko - Alyeko Basmannaya — Basrmaannayo Berdichev ~ Berdeechev Bobik - Bawbik Dobrolyubov - Dobrolyoobov ‘Gogol - Gazxgol Kirsanov ~ Keersaanov Kolotilin - Koloteefin Kozyrev ~ Kawzirev Krasny — Kraassny Mama ~ Maama ‘Nemetzkaya - Nemetskaya Novo-Devichi ~ Nawvo-Devichi Papa - Paapa Protopopov — Protopawpov Saratov ~ Saratov Skvortzov ~ Skvortzauf Sofochka - Sawfochka Testov - Testov Act One The interior of the Prozorovs’ house. The drawing-room, with colonnade beyond which the main reception room can be seen. It is noon, and the day is bright and cheerful. The table in the ‘big room beyond is being laid for lunch. OLGA, who is wearing the dark blue dress laid down for a teacher in a girls’ high school, stands correcting exercise-books the whole time ~ enalks up and down correcting them. MASHA, in a black dress, her hat in her lap, sits reading a book. 1RINA, in white, stands lost in her own thoughts. OLGA. It’s exactly a year since Father died. A year ago today ~ May the fifth - it was on your name-day, Irina, It was very cold, we had snow. I thought I should never survive it, and there you were lying in a dead faint. But now here’s @ year gone by, and we can think about it again quite calmly. You're back in white, your face is shining . The clock strikes twelve. ‘The clock kept striking then, too. Pause. Iremember the band playing as they carried Father's body on the bier, I remember them firing the volley over the Brave. He was a general, he had a brigade, but not many People came. Though it was raining at the time. Sleeting ~ sleeting hard. IRINA. Why keep barking back? BARON TUSENBACH, CHEBUTYKIN, and SOLYONY appear on the other side of the colonnade, around the table in the main room, ee ae2 THREE SISTERS OLGA. It’s warm today, We can have the windows wide, ‘The birch trees aren'tout yet, though. Father gothis brigade and left Moscow with us eleven years ago, and I can clearly remember what Moscow was like at this time of year, at the beginning of May. ‘Everything would be in blossom already, everything would be warm, everything would be awash with sunshine. Eleven years have gone by, but I remember {tall as ifitwere yesterday. Oh God, I woke up this morning, T saw the blossom, I saw the spring, and I felt such a great surge of joy, such a passionate longing for home. CHEBUTYKIN, Stuff and nonsense, sit! TUSENBACH. Utter rubbish, of course. i MASHA, lost in thought over her book, quietly whistles a nue. | o1ca. Don’t whistle, Masha. How could you? Pause. T'm at school each day, then I give lessons for the rest of the afternoon, and I end up with a perpetual headache, I end up thinking the kind of thoughts I’d have if I were an old woman already. And in fact these last four years since T’ve been teaching I have felt as if day by day, drop by drop, my youth and strength were going out of me. And the only thing that grows, the only thing that gets stronger, is one single dream... ; rriwa. To go to Moscow. To sell up the house, to finish with everything here, and off to Moscow... OLGA. Yes! To Moscow, as soon as ever we can! CHEBUTYRIN and TUSENBACH laugh. rRtWA. Our brother will most likely be a professor. All the same, he won’t want to live here. The only one who's stuck here is poor Masha. ACT ONE 3 ‘OLGA. Masha will come to Moscow for the whole summer, every year. MASHA quietly whistles a tune, IRINA, God willing, it'll all work itself out. (Looking ou of window.) Beautiful weather. I don’t know why my heart is so full of light! This morning I remembered I was the name-day girl, and I felt a sudden rush of joy. I re- membered when I was little, and Mama was still alive. And I can’t tell you what thoughts I felt stirring, what wonderful thoughts! 01a. Today you're all shining, you look lovelier than ever. ‘Masha’s lovely, too. That brother of ours would be a good-looking man, only he’s put on @ lot of weight ~ it doesn't suit him, I've aged, :hough, I've got terribly thin, I suppose from all my irritation with the girls at school. But today I’m free, I’m home, my headache’s gone, and I feel I’ve got younger overnight. I'm twenty-eight, that’s all .. . Everything is for the best, everything is from God, but I can’t help feeling it would be better if I were married and stayed at home all day. Pause. I should have liked a husband. TUSENBACH (to SOLYONY). What nonsense you do talk! T'm sick of listening to you. (Coming into the drawing- room.) 1 forgot to say. You’ll be getting a visit today from. our new battery commander, Vershinin, (Sits down at the upright piano.) OLGA. Good. I shall be delighted. TINA. Is he old? TUSENBACH. Not particularly. Forty, forty-five, at most. (Quietly strums on the piano.) Splendid fellow, by all ac- counts. Certainly no fool. Talks a lot, that’s the only thing.4 THREE SISTERS rriNA, Is he an interesting man? TUSENBACH. He's all right, apart from having a wife and ‘mother-in-law and two little girls. Been married before, 100, He makes his calls, and everywhere he goes he tells ‘everyone he’s got a wife and two little girls. He'll be telling you next. His wife’s a bit touched. Long plait like a schoolgirl all high-fown talk and philosophising. And she makes frequent attempts at suicide, evidently to spite her husband. I'd have left a woman like that long ago, but he puts up with it, and all he does is complain. SOLYONY (coming out of the main room into the drawing- room with CHEBUTYKIN). With one hand I can lift only fifty pounds, whereas with two I can lift 180 ~ 200 even. From which I conclude that two men are not twice as | strong as one, but three times as strong, or even more... CHEBUTYKIN (reading a newspaper as he walks). For falling hair... dissolve quarter of an ounce of mothballs in half a bottle of spirit ... apply daily ... (Writes it down in a | notebook.) Must make a note of that! (To SoLYoNy:) So | there we are, you put the cork in the bottle, with a glass | tube running through it ... Then you take a pinch of common or garden alum... TRINA. Ivan Romanich! Dear Ivan Romanich! CHEBUTYKIN. My little girl! What is it, my precious? rarwa. Tell me, why am I so happy today? As if I were stiling, with the wide blue sky above me, and great white birds soaring in the wind. Why is it? Why? CHEBUTYEIN (issing both her hands, tenderly). My own white bird... F ania. I woke up this morning, I got up, I washed — and suddenly I felt everything in this world was clear to me ~ T felt 1 knew how life had to be lived. Dear Ivan Rom- anich, I can see it all. A buman being has to labour, whoever he happens to be, he has to toil in the sweat of | | } f } ACT ONE 5 his face; that’s the only way he can find the sense and pur- pose of his life, his happiness, his delight. How fine to be a working man who rises at first light and breaks stones on the road, or shepherd, or a teacher, or an engine driver on the railway ... Lord, never mind being human even — better to be an ox, better to be a simple horse, just so long as you work ~ anything rather than a young: lady who rises at noon, then drinks her coffee in bed, ‘then takes two hours to dress ... that’s terrible! In hot weather sometimes you long to drink the way I began longing to work. And if I don’t start getting up early and working, then shut your heart against me, Ivan Romanich. CHEBUTYRIN (tenderly). Pl shut it, PU shut it tight. OLGA. Father trained us to rise at seven. Now Irina wakes at seven and lies there till nine o'clock at least, just think- ing. She looks so serious, though! (Laughs,) IRINA. You're used to seeing me as a child, so then you find it odd when I look serious. I’m twenty! TUSENBACH. A longing to work ~ oh, heavens, how well I know that fecling! I've never done a stroke of work in my life. I was born in Petersburg, that cold and idle city, and none of my family had ever known what it was to work, they'd never known care. When I used to come home from cadet school a servant would pull my boots off for me, while I played the fool. My mother regarded me with an indulgent eye, though, and she was astonished when other people took # different view. I was protected from work. But I only just managed it by the skin of my teeth! Because the time has come when the piled thunderclouds arc advancing upon us all. A great healthy storm is brewing, and it’s going to blow our society clean of idleness and indifference, clean of prejudice against work and rotting boredom. I’m going to work, but then in twenty years6 THREE SISTERS time, in thirty years time, everyone will be working. Every single one of us! CHEBUTYEKIN. I shan’t be working. TUSENBACH. You don’t count. SOLYoNy. In twenty years time you won’t be alive, thank God. A couple of years from now and you'll have had a stroke, or I shall have lost my temper and put a bullet through your lovely face. (Takes a bottle of scent out of his pocket and sprinkles his chest and arms.) CHEBUTYKIN (laughs). But I really never have done any- thing at all. From the time I left university I haven't lifted a finger. Not a solitary book have I read even, nothing but newspapers ... (Takes another newspaper out of his pocket.) You see...? I know from reading newspapers ‘who Dobrolyubov was, let’s say, I know he was a famous critic, but what the devil he wrote — heaven knows, not the slightest idea... The sound of knocking from the floor below. Ah... They want me downstairs, I’ve got a visitor. Back inamoment.... Wait here... (Goes out hurriedly, combing his beard.) TRINA. He's up to something. TUSENBACH. Yes. He’s got his special face on. He’s obvi- ously going to come back in a moment with a present for you, 1RINA. Oh, for heaven’s sake! OLGA. Yes, it’s awful. He’s always doing stupid things. MASHA. On a far sea shore an oak tree grows, And from it hangs a golden chains A talking cat forever goes Around that chain and round again. She gets up and hums quietly. ACT ONE 7 OLGA. You’re not very cheerful today, Masha. MASHA, still humming, puts on her hat. Where are you off to? MASA. Home. Terwa. What a funny way to behave... TUSENBACH. Walking out on your sister's party! MASHA. What does it matter? I'll come this evening, Goodbye, my sweet .. . (Kisses 1R1NA.) Best wishes, once again ~ health and happiness ... In the old days, when Father was alive, we'd have thirty or forty officers coming every time it was someone’s name-day, and there was a lot of noise. Whereas today we've scarcely got two people to rub together, and it’s as silent as the tomb... I'm off «+» I’m down in the dumps today ~ don’t take any notice of me. (Laughing through her tears.) We'll have a litte talk later. Goodbye for now, my dear — I'll walk myself some- where, IRINA (displeased). What an odd creature you are OLGA (with rears in her eyes). I understand you, Masha, Sotyony. If a man philosophises, then what comes out is Philosophy, though it may be full o” sophistry. But i woman philosophises, or let’s say two women, then it’s bound to be not so much philosophy as full o° gossipy. ‘MasHA, What do you mean by that, you horribly frightening man? SOLYONY, Never mind. The peasant had no time to gasp. Before he felt the bear's hard clasp. As the poet says. Pause. MASHA (f0 OLGA, angrily). Don’t howl! Enter ANFISA and FERAPONT with a cake. ANFISA. In here, my dear. Come on, you've got clean feet.8 THREE SISTERS (To a1wA:) From the Council, from Protopopov .... It’s a cake. 1RINA. Thank you. Will you say thank you to him? (Takes the cake.) FERAPONT. What? tr1NA (louder). Say thank you to him! oxca. Nanny, give him a piece of cake. Off you go, then, | Ferapont — they'll give you some cake outside. | PERAPONT. What? | ANFISA, Come on, my dear. Off we go ... (Goes out with | FERAPONT.) MASHA. I don’t like that Protopopov man. There’s some- | thing about him that reminds me of a bear. He shouldn’t have been invited. I TRINA. I didn’t invite him. MASHA. That's all right, then. Enter CHEBUTY KIN, followed by @ SOLDIER carrying a silver samovar. There is a murmur of surprise and dis- pleasure. OLGA (hides her face in her hands). A silver samovar! This is awful! Does he think it’s a wedding anniversary? (Goes out to the table in the main room.) rRINA. Ivan Romanich, my sweet, what are you doing? TUSENBACH (laughs). I told you! MaSHA. Ivan Romanich, you're simply shameless! CHEBUTYKIN. My dears, my loves, you're all I have, you’re all that’s most precious to me in the world. I’m nearly sixty - [’m an old man, a lonely, useless old man... ‘There’s no good in me at all except this love I have for you. Ifit weren't for you I should have departed this world a long time ago . .. (To 1RINA:) My dear, my little girl, I've known you since the day you were born... I used to carry you in my arms... I loved your poor dead mother... ACT ONE 9 IRINA. But why such expensive presents? CHEBUTYRIN (through his tears, angrily). Expensive pres- ents... Get along with you! (To the ORDERLY:) Take the samovar in there . .. (Mockingly.) Expensive presents... ‘The ORDERLY takes the samovar into the main room. ANIA (crossing the drawing-room). Some strange colonel, my dears! He’s taken his coat off, my pets — he’s on his way up. Now, Irinushka, you be nice and polite to him +++ (Going out.) It’s past lunchtime already, too ... Ob my lord... TUSENBACH, Vershinin, presumably. Enter VERSHININ. Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin! VERSHININ (to MASHA and IRINA): Allow me to introduce myself — Vershinin. So very glad to be with you at last. But how you've changed! Dear me! IRINA. Do sit down. This is a great pleasure for us. VERSHININ (gaily). I’m so glad! I’m so glad! But there are three of you, aren’t there three sisters? I remember there ‘being three girls. Your faces I don’t recall, but the fact that your father, Colonel Prozorov, had three little girls — that I recall perfectly — indeed I saw it for myself. How time flies! Ah me, how time flies! TUSENBACH. The colonel is from Moscow. irtNA. From Moscow? You're from Moscow? VERSHININ. I am indeed. Your late father was a battery commander there; I was in the same brigade. (To MASHA:) ‘Now your face I believe I do just remember. MasHa. I don’t remember you, though! | IRINA. Olyal Olya! (Calls into the main room.) Olya, come here! OLGA comes out of the main room into the drawing-room.10 THREE SISTERS Colonel Vershinin turns out to be from Moscow. VERSHININ. So you're Olga, you're the eldest ... You're Maria... And you're Irina, you're the youngest... OLGA. You're from Moscow? VERSHININ. I am, I was at university in Moscow and I began my service career in Moscow. I served there for a Jong time, until finally I was given a battery here, and transferred, as you see. I don’t really remember you ~ all I remember is that you were three sisters. Your father has stayed in my memory very clearly. I sit here and close my eyes and I see him as if he were standing in front of me. I used to come to your house in Moscow’... ouGa. I thought I remembered them all, and now suddenly... IRINA. You're from Moscow . blue! OLGA, We're moving there, you see. IRINA. We think we shall actually be there by the autumn. It’s our home town ~ we were born there . . . In Old Bas- mannaya Street... ‘She and o1GA both laugh with delight. MASHA. Out of the blue we've met someone from home. (Animatedly.) Now it’s come back to me! You remember, Olya, we used to talk about ‘the lovelorn major’. You were a lieutenant then and you were in love with somebody, and why it was I don’t know, but everyone used to tease you by calling you the major... VERSHININ (laughs). That’s me. The lovelorn major — that’s right... MasHa. You only had a moustache in those days ... ‘Oh, how you've aged! (Through her tears.) How you've aged! VERSHININ. Yes, when they used to call me the lovelorn It’s like a bolt from the ACT ONE a1 major I was young still, and they were right - I was in love, That’s not the case now, OLGA. But you still don’t have a single grey hair, You've aged, yes, but you're not old yet. VERSHININ. I shall be forty-three next birthday, nonethe- less. Have you been away from Moscow for long? trtNA. Eleven years. What are you doing, Masha, you're crying, you funny thing... (Through her tears.) I’m going to cry, too... MASHA. I'm all right. So which street did you live in? VERSHININ. Old Basmannaya, OLGA. So did we... VERSHININ. At one time I lived in Nemetzkaya Street. I used to walk from there to the Krasny Barracks, There's a rather depressing bridge on the way ~ you can hear the noise of the water underneath it. If you're on your own it strikes a chill into your heart. Pause. But here you have such a broad and brimming river! A ‘magnificent river! OLGA. Yes, only there's the cold here. The cold and the mosquitoes ... VERSHININ. Oh, come now! This is a good healthy Russian climate, The forest, the river... it’s birch country here, too. The good old humble birch ~ I love it above all trees. “It’s a fine place to live. The only odd thing is that the railway station is thirteen miles out of town ... And nobody knows why. SOLYONY. I know why. Everyone looks at him. Because if the station were near then it wouldn’t be far, and if it’s fer then naturally it can't be near.2 THREE SISTERS An awkward silence. TUSENBACH. Something of a humorist, the captain. OLGA. Now I’ve placed you, too. I remember you. VERSHININ. I knew your mother. CHEBUTYKIN. A good woman she was, God rest her soul. 1RINA. Mama’s buried in Moscow. o1Ga. In the Novo-Devichi... MASHA. Can you imagine, I’m already beginning to forget her face. It will be the same with us — we shan’t be re~ membered, either. We shall be forgotten. VERSHININ. Yes. We shall be forgotten. Such is indeed our fate — there’s nothing we can do about it. What we find serious, significant, highly important — the time will come when it’s all forgotten, or when it all seems quite un- important after all. Pause. eventually going to be considered elevated and important, and what people are going to think pathetic and ridiculous, ‘The discoveries made by Copernicus ~ or Columbus, let’s say ~ didn’t they seem uncalled-for and absurd at first? ‘While some empty nonsense written by a crank looked like the truth? And it may be that our present way of life, with which we feel so much at home, will in time seem ‘odd, uncomfortable, foolish, not as clean as it should be — perhaps even wicked. TUSENBACH. Who knows? Perhaps, on the other hand, our way of life will be thought elevated and remembered with respect. There’s no torture now, no executions or inva- sions; and yet, at the same time, there's so much suf- fering. SOLYONY (in a little voice). Cheep, cheep, cheep . . . Ifthere’s one thing the baron loves it’s a nice bit of philosophising. And this is interesting: we can’t possibly know now what's | ACT ONE B TUSENBACH. Will you please leave me alone . ..? (Sits else- where) I's becoming tedious. SOLYONY (in his little voice). Cheep, cheep, cheep... TUSENBACH (to VERSHININ). The suffering to be observed nowadays — and there is so much of it ~ does nevertheless testify to a certain moral elevation that society has achieved ... VERSHININ. Yes, yes, of course... CHEBUTYKIN. You said just now, baron, that our way of life may one day be thought elevated. But people are still as low as ever .. . (Stands up.) Look how low I am. You have to tell me my way of life is elevated just to console me, obviously. A violin is played, off. MasHA, That's Andrey playing ~ our brother, IRINA, He’s the scholar of the family. He’s probably going to be z professor. Papa was a soldier, but his son plumped for an academic career. Masia. At Papa’s wish, OLGA. We've been teasing him today. It appears that he is a tiny bit in love. imina, With a certain young lady who lives hereabouts. She'll be coming today, most probably. MasHA. Oh, but the way she dresses! It’s not just dowdy, it’s not just unfashionable ~ it’s downright pitiful. Some outlandish skirt in a shade of bright yellow, with an ap- palling little fringe - and a red blouse. And those well- scrubbed cheeks of hers! Andrey isn’t in love — that I won't concede - he has some taste, after all. He’s just teasing us, just playing the fool. I heard yesterday she’s to marry Protopopov, the chairman of the local Executive Council. Very suitable . .. (Through the side door.) Andrey! Come here a minute, dear!14 THREE SISTERS Enter ANDREY. OLGA. This is my brother Andrey. VERSHININ. Vershinin. ANDREY. Prozorov. (Wipes his face, which is covered in per- spiration.) You're our new battery commander? OLGA. Can you imagine, the colonel comes from Moscow. ANDREY. Really? Weil, the best of luck to you, because now my sisters will never give you any peace. VERSHININ. I've already managed to weary them. retwa. Look at the picture-frame that Andrey gave me today! (Shows the frame.) He made it himself. VERSHININ (looking at the frame and not knowing what to say) Indeed ... a thing of... 1riNA. And that frame there ~ the one over the piano ~ he made that as well. ANDREY flaps his hand and moves away. OLGA. He’s not only the scholar of the family ~ he also plays the violin and he makes all kinds of litte things with his hands. Well, he’s the complete all-rounder. Andrey, don’t go away! He's got this trick of disappearing all the time. Come back! MASHA and 1R1NA take him by the arms and laughingly bring him back. MasHa. Come on, come on! ANDREY. Leave me alone, will you, please? MaSHA. Youareabsurd! They used to call the colonel here the lovelorn major, and he wasn’t the slightest bit cross about it. VERSHININ. Not at all! MASHA. And I’m going to call you the lovelorn fiddler. IRINA, Or else the lovelorn professor! OLGA, He's in love! Our dear Andrey is in lovel ACT ONE 15 1RINA (clapping). Bravo, bravo! Encore! Our dear little Andrey is in love! CHEBUTYKIN (goes up behind ANDREY and seizes him with both arms around his waist). For love and love alone was man put in his earthly home! (Roars with laughter, still holding the newspaper.) ANDREY. That will do now, that will do . . . (Wipes his face.) I didn't sleep all night, and now I feel a little ragged, as people say. I was reading until four o'clock, then I went to bed, but it was quite fruitless. My thoughts kept going round, and it gets light early here — the sun simply comes stealing into the bedroom. There’s a book I want to trans- late from the English during the course of the summer, while I’m still here. VERSHININ. You read English? Anprey. Yes, Poor Father ~ he piled education on to us. Is ridiculous, but I have to confess that after he died I ‘began to put on weight. A year and I’m out to here. It’s as if my body had shaken off some load. Thanks to Father my sisters and I know French, German, and English. Irina knows Italian as well. But what it cost us! MASHA. Knowing three languages in this town is a pointless embellishment. It’s not even an embellishment — it’s some kind of useless appendage like a sixth finger. We know much more than we need to. VERSHININ. Listen to them! (Laughs.) You know much more than you need to, do you? I think the town so dull and dreary that it has no place for someone of intelligence and education truly doesn’t exist — couldn’t exist. All right, let us concede that among the hundred inhabitants of this town = of this, certainly, rude and backward town. ~ there are no more than three people like you. Obviously you're not going to prevail over the sea of darkness around16 you. In your own lifetime you'll gradually be forced to give ground to that crowd of a hundred thousand ~ you'll be swallowed up in it; life will choke you. All the same, you won't disappear, you won’t be without influence. After you will come maybe six people of your sort, then twelve, and so on, until in the end people like you are in the majority. In two or three hundred years life on earth will be astonishingly, unimaginably beautiful. This is the life that man must have, and if it eludes him in the mean- time then he must have 2 premonition of it, he must wait and dream and make himself ready for it, and this means ‘he must understand more and know more than his father and grandfather did. (Laughs.) And you're complaining that you know much more than you need to. MASHA (takes off her hat). I'll stay for lunch. IRINA (with a sigh), Really, we should have been taking a note of all that... ANDREY is missing. He has gone out unnoticed. TUSENBACH. Many years from now, you tell us, life on earth will be astonishingly beautiful. True. But to have a hand in that life now, albeit a remote hand, we must pre- pare ourselves for it, we must work... VERSHININ (gets up). Yes. But what a lot of flowers you've got! (Looking round.) And magnificent quarters. 1 envy you! I’ve spent all my life knocking about in lodgings with two chairs and a sofa, and a stove that always smokes. | Flowers like these are the very thing my life has lacked +++ (Rubs his hands.) Ab, well, there we are! ‘TUSENBACH. Yes, but we have to work. You're probably thinking, that’s what touches a German heart. But I’m Russian, I promise you. I can’t even speak German. My father’s Russian Orthodox ... Pause. THREE SISTERS ACT ONE 17 VERSHININ (walks about the stage). 1 often think, supposing we could start our life afresh — and this time with our eyes open? Supposing the first life, the one we've already lived, ‘was a kind of rough draft, and the second one was the fair copy! Then what we'd all mostly try to do, I think, would. ‘be not to repeat ourselves. Or at any rate we'd create new: surroundings for ourselves, we'd set up quarters like these. with flowers, with a sea of light . . . I have a wife and two little girls, on top of which my wife is a sick woman, and so it goes on, and anyway, if I were starting life over egain I shouldn’t get married . . . Not for any money! Enter KULYGIN in a uniform tailcoat, KULYGIN (goes up to IRINA). My dear sister-in-law, may I offer you all suitable compliments on this happy day? And my most sincere and heartfelt best wishes for your good health, and for everything else a girl of your age might properly be wished. And may I make you a present of this little book? (Gives it to her.) The history of our school over the last fifty years, written by me. It’s just a little thing I wrote because I had nothing better to do, but read it anyway. Good day, ladies and gentlemen! (To vER- SHININ:) Kulygin ~ teacher in the local high school. Seventh grade of the civil service ~ a lieutenant-colonel of the civilian world! (To rR1NA:) In that little book you'll find 2 list of all those who passed through our school in the last fifty years. Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes. Thave done what I could; let those who can do better. (Kisses masa.) tINA. You gave me some sort of book like this at Easter, surely? RULYGIN (laughs). No! Did I? In that case give it back, or better still give it to the colonel here. Take it, colonel. Read it some time when you're bored.18 VERSHININ. Thank you, (On the point of leaving.) I'm so very pleased to have made your acquaintance . OLGA. You're not going? No, no, no! TRINA. You'll stay and have lunch with us. Please. OLGA. Do stay! VERSHININ (bons). I seem to have chanced upon a name- day. Forgive me ~ I had no idea ~ I didn’t offer you my compliments ... (Goes out with OLGA into the main room.) KULYGIN. Today, ladies and gentlemen, is the Sabbath day, the day of rest, and rest we will, rejoice we will, each according to his age and station. The carpets need to be taken up for the summer and put away till winter ... ‘With insect-powder or mothballs ... The Romans were healthy because they knew how to work ~ and they knew how to rest as well. They had mens sana in corpore sano. Their mind and body were uniform in their development, Our headmaster says that the most important thing in any life is its attainment to the uniform .. . (Takes MASHA by the waist, laughing.) Masha loves me. My wife loves me. ‘The curtains as well as the carpets . .. I’m in merry mood today - I'm in excellent spirits. Masha, we're due at the hheadmaster’s at four o'clock. A little outing is being got up for the teaching staff and their families. Masa. I'm not going. KULYGIN (pained). My dear Masha, why ever not? MASHA. We'll talk about it later ... (Angrily.) All right, P'l g0, only please leave me alone .. . (Moves away.) KULYGIN. After which we shall be spending the evening at the headmaster’s. In spite of his ill health, that man makes a supreme effort to be sociable. A wonderful person. A splendid man. After the staff meeting yester- day he said to me: ‘I’m tired, you know! I'm tired!” (Looks at the clock on the wall, then at his watch.) ‘THREE SISTERS ACT ONE 19 Your clock is seven minutes fast. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I’m tired.” The violin plays, off. OLGA. Ladies and gentlemen, this way, please. Lunch is served. We're having a pie! ULYGIN. Ab, my dear Olga! My dear, dear Olga! Yester- day I worked from first thing in the morning until eleven at night, went tired to bed, and am today a happy man. (Goes out to the table in the main room.) My dear Olga... . CHEBUTYKIN (puts the newspaper in his pocket and combs his beard.) Pie? Splendid! | MASHA (to CHEBUTYKIN, sternly). Just’ watch you don’t drink anything today. Do you hear? It’s bad for you to drink, CHEBUTYKIN. Oh, pish and tush! That’s all past history. It’s two years since I last went on the spree. (Impatiently.) Goodness, woman, what does it matter? MaSHA. Don’t you dare start drinking, all the same. Don’t you dare, now. (Angrily, but so that her husband shall not hear.) Damnation, another whole evening of boredom at the headmaster’s! TUSENBACH. I shouldn’t go, if I were you ... Very simple answer. CHEBUTYKIN. Don't go, my precious. MasHA, ‘Don’t go,’ that’s right ... This damned life, this intolerable life . .. (Goes into the main room.) CHEBUTYKIN (follows her). Now, now, now! SOLYONY (going through into the main room). Cheep, cheep, cheep... TUSENBAGH. Stop it, will you? That’s enough! SoLYowy. Cheep, cheep, cheep... KULYGIN (cheerfully). Your health, Colonel! A teacher’s what I am, and very much at ease in this house is how I20 feel, Masha’s husband . . .Andadear kind woman sheis. . . VERSHININ. P'm going to drink a toast in this dark vodka .- (Drinks. Your health! (To 0LGa:) I feel so much at home here... Only 1n1NA and TUSENBACH are left in the drawing- room. THREE SISTERS IRINA. Masha’s out of sorts today. She got married at eighteen, when she thought he was the cleverest man in the world, That’s not how it seems now. The kindest, yes, ‘but not the cleverest. OLGA (impatiently). Andrey, will you come! ANDREY (off). Coming. (Enters and goes to the table.) TUSENBACH. What are you thinking about? irtwa, Nothing. I don’t like that Solyony of yours. He frightens me. He just talks nonsense... TUSENBACH. He’s a queer fish. I feel sorry for him and irritated by him at the same time. Mostly sorry, though. I think he’s shy . .. When we're alone together he’s usually very intelligent and friendly, whereas in company he’s rade, he’s forever picking quarrels. Let me just be near you for a little. What are you thinking about? Pause. ‘You're twenty years old ~ I’m not yet thirty. So many years left in front of us ~a long, long corridor of days, full of my love for you... TRINA. Please don’t talk to me about love. TUSENBACH (not listening). I thirst most desperately to live and strive and labour, and this thirst in my heart has merged into my love for you, Irina. And you're beautiful ~ it’s as if you were taunting me — and life seems beautiful in that same way. What are you thinking abou:? 1RINA. You say that life is beautiful. But supposing it only ACT ONE ar seems to be? For the three of us, for me and my sisters, life hasn’t been beautiful up to now — it’s choked us like choking weeds . .. Now the tears have started. Can’t have that ... (Quickly wipes her face and smiles.) Work, that’s ‘what we must do ~ work. That’s why we feel so gloomy, why we see life in such dark colours — it’s because we don’t know what it is to work. We were born of people who despised it... Enter NATASHA. She is wearing a pink dress with a green belt, NATASHA. They're sitting down to lunch already ... I’m. late... (Glances in the mirror in passing and sets herself to rights.) I think my hair’s all right, isn’t it...? (Seeing IRINA.) Irina, dear — best wishes! (Kisses her firmly and at length.) You've got a lot of people here ~ honestly, I’m shamed to be seen ... Hello, baron! OLGA (coming into the drawing-room). And here's Natasha. How are you, my dear? They exchange kisses. | NATASHA. I'm just saying best wishes to Irina. You've got such a lot of company ~ I feel terribly embarrassed ... 016A. Ob, come now — it’s just family and friends. (Lowering her voice, startled.) You're wearing a green belt! My dear, it’s wrong! NATASHA, Green means something bad, does it? OLGA. No, it just doesn’t go... And it looks peculiar, somehow . NATASHA (plaintively). Does it? It’s not really green, though, you see, it’s more sort of neutral. (Follows OLGA into the main room.) In the main room people are sitting down to lunch. The drawing-room is deserted.22 KULYGIN. Irina, here’s to a handsome husband. High time you were getting married, CHEBUTYEIN. Natasha, here’s to a little someone for you, to0. KULYGIN. Natasha already has a little someone. MASHA (taps her plate with a fork). A toast! A short life and a merry one, God help us! KULYGIN. Beta minus for conduct. VERSHININ. Delicious liqueur. What’s it made with? SOLYONY. Black beetles. TRINA (Plaintively). Ugh! How disgusting . OLGA. For supper we're having roast turkey and apple pi Isn’t it wonderful - I've got the whole day at home. I'm home all evening . . . Do come this evening, everyone .... VERSHININ. May I come, too? IRINA, Please. NATASHA. They're very informal here. CHEBUTYKIN. For love and love alone ‘Was man put in his earthly home. (Laughs.) ANDREY (angrily). Will you stop it, all of you? Aren’t you tired of it? Enter FEDOTIK and RODE with a large basket of flowers. FEDOTIK, They've gone in to lunch already, though. RODE (loudly, with a guttural accent). Gone in to lunch? Ob,| yes, so they have... FEDOTIK. Hold on a moment! (Takes a photograph.) Onel Just half a moment more ... (Takes another photograph.) ‘Two! Now we're all set! THREE SISTERS They take the basket and go into the main room, where they are given a noisy reception. RODE (loudly, to TRINA): The best of wishes to you, all the very best! Enchanting weather today, simply magnificent, ACT ONE 23 T’ve been out walking all morning with some of the boys from the school. I take them for gymnastics. If I have my way, the entire high school will be for the high jump! FEDOTIK (to 1RINA): You can move, it’s all right! (Taking a photograph.) You're looking very pretty today. (Takes a ‘top out of his packet.) Oh, and I've got a top for you ... It makes the most amazing sound... tatNA. Ob, how lovely! MasHA. On a far seashore an oak tree grows, ‘And from it hangs a golden chain And from it hangs a golden chain . . . (Pathetically.) What am I saying that for? I’ve had those lines on my brain all day... RULYGIN. Thirteen at table! RODE (loudly). No one here, surely, is superstitious? Laughter. KULYGIN. Thirteen at table means that we have those amongst us who are in love, Not you by any chance, doctor. ..? Laughter. CHEBUTYEIN. I’m an old reprobate, but why Natasha here should be blushing I can’t understand for the life of me. Loud laughter. NATASHA runs out of the main room into the drawing-room. ANDREY follows her. ANDREY. Come on, now, don’t take any notice of them! ‘Wait . .. stop a moment, I beg you... ‘NATASHA, I’m ashamed of myself... I don’t know what's wrong with me, but they were making me a laughing- stock. Leaving the table like that was very ill-mannered,24 THREE SISTERS ‘but I can’t cope with it... I simply can’t .. . (Buries her} face in her hands.) Act Two ANDREY. My dear, I beg you, I implore you ~ don’t upset yourself. They're only joking, I assure you ~ they mean it kindly. My dear, my sweet, they’re all kind, good-hearted| The same people who love me and who love you. Come over here) igh o'clock in the evening. An accordion can just be heard, by the window ~ they can’t see us here. . . (Looks round) off, playing in the street outside. Darkness. Enter NATASHA in NaTAsHA. I'm so unused to being in company . . ‘a housecoat, carrying a candle. She goes across and s:ops outside ANDREY. Ob, you're so young, you're so miraculously andl she door leading to ANDREY's room. beautifully young! My dear, my sweet, don’t upset your-| self so... 1 Trust me, just trust me ...I feel so wonderfull NATASHA. Andryusha? What are you doing in there? = my heart is full of love, full of joy ... They can’t seq» Reading, are you? It's all right, I was just wordering ... us! They can’t, they can’t! Why I first began to love you-|. (Goes across and opens another door, looks inside, and closes when I first began to love you — it’s all a mystery to me) it again.) Make sure there isn’t a candle burning... My dear, my sweet, my pure in heart, be my wife! I love) ANDREY (enters with a book in his hand). What de you want, you, love you ... as I’ve never loved before. . . ‘Natasha? They kis, NATASHA, Just making sure there are no candles alight . : e's Shrovetide ~ the servants are all excited, You've got Enter TWO OFFICERS. Seeing the couple kissing, they} to keep a sharp lookout to stop anything happening. stop in amazement. Twelve o'clock last night I’m on my way through the ining-room and what do I see? there’s a candle burning. ‘Who lit it? -I still haven’t got to the bottom of that. (Purs CURTAIN her candle down.) What time is it? ANDREY (glancing at the clock). Quarter past eight. NaTasHa. Olga and Irina aren’t back yet, either. They're still slaving, poor pets. Olga at her staff meeting, Irina at her telegraph office... (Sighs.) I was saying to your sister only this morning. ‘Irina,’ I said, ‘you must look after yourself, my pet.” But she won’t listen. Quarter past eight, did you say? I’m worried about Bobik. I think he’s notatall well, the poor little sweet. Why is he so cold? Yesterday he had a temperature, and today he’s like ice .. . I'm so worried! ANDREY, It’s all right, Natasha. The child’s perfectly well. NATASHA. He'd better go on to invalid food, all the same.26 THREE SISTERS AcT Two ’m worried about him. And at ten o’clock tonight, so I'm Hello, my old friend. What do you want? told, we're going to have the mummers here. I know it'FERAPONT. The Chairman's sent a book and 2 paper of Shrovetide, but I'd sooner they didn’t come, Andryusha} some sort. Here you are ... (Hands over a book and a ANDREY. Well, I don’t know. They were invited, of course} packet.) NATASHA. He woke up this morning, my little baby boy, andjANDREY. Thank you. Right. Why are you so late? It's gone he looked atme, and all ofasudden hesmiled. Heknewit was, ¢ight now, you know. mel ‘Hello, Bobik!’ I said. ‘Hello, love!” And he laughed PFERAPONT. What? ‘They understand, you see—they understand perfectly well} ANDREY (louder). I said, you're late. It’s past eight o'clock. So, anyway, I'll tell them not to let the mummers in. | FERAPONT. That's right. It was still light when I got here, ANDREY (irresolutely). It’s really up to my sisters. They're) but they wouldn’t let me in. The master’s busy, they said. in charge of the house. So, all right, he’s busy - I’m not in a hurry to get any- NATASHA. They’re in charge, too. Ill tell them. They’re sop where. (Thinking that ANDREY is asking him something.) kind . . . (Moves to go.) I’ve ordered sour milk for supper. What? The doctor says you're to eat nothing but sour milk ANDREY. Nothing. (Examining the book.) Friday tomorrow, otherwise you'll never lose weight. (Stops.) Bobik’s sof m0 one at the office. No matter ~ I'll go in all the same... cold. I’m worried it may be too cold for him in his room do some work. Boring at home... We must put him in another room, at any rate until the weather's warmer. Irina’s room, for example — that would be perfect for a baby. I's dry, it gets the sun all day. ‘You'll have to tell her ~ she can share with Olga for the} time being ... It won’t matter ~ she’s not home during the day, she’s only here at night... Pause. Andrey, my pet, why aren’t you saying anything? ANDREY. Just thinking. Anyway, there’s nothing to say ... NATASHA. No .., Something I meant to tell you . . . Ob, yes, Ferapont - he’s come round from the Council, he wants to see you. ANDREY (yawns), Send him in, Pause. ‘Oh, my dear old friend, how strangely things do change, how life mocks us! Just out of boredom today, just out of idleness, I picked up this book - my old university Jectures, and I had to laugh . .. Dear God, I’m secretary to the local Executive Council ~ a body that Protopopov is chairman of, I'm the secretary, and the most I can hope for is to become a member of it. Me - a member of a local Executive Council! Me - a man who dreams every night that he’s a professor of Moscow University, a distin guished scholar, the pride of Russia! FERAPONT. No idea... I don’t hear too well ANDREY. If you could hear properly I don’t suppose I'd be NATASHA goes. ANDREY, bending close to the candle thai, talking to you. I've got to talk to someone, but my wife ‘she has forgotten, reads his book, Enter FERAPONT. He ti doesn’t understand me, and I'm afraid of my sisters, T ‘wearing an old tattered overcoat, with the collar up andp don’t know why — I’m afraid they'll jeer at me, I’m afraid ‘his ears muffled. they'll shame me ... I don’t drink, I’ve no fondness for28 THREE SISTERS ie id give to be in Moscow taverns, but oh, my friend, what Tr now, sitting in Testov’s in Theatre Square, or the Grand Hotel in Resurrection. FERAPONT. In Moscow — s0 one of the contactors was saying at the Council the other day — there were merchants eating pancakes. One of them ate forty pancakes, and apparently he dropped dead. Bither forty or fifty. I don’t remember. : awpRrEY. You can sit in some enormous restaurant in ‘Moscow — you don’t know a soul = not a soul knows you and yet you don’t feel a stranger. While here you know ‘everyone, and everyone knows you, and you're a stranger all the same, a total stranger ... A lonely stranger. FERAPONT. What? Pause. ing - may have been a lie, of And this contractor was saying — may have ‘course — he was saying how they were going to stretch rope, apparently, right the way across Moscow. ANDREY. What for? cor wes wing No idea, This contractor - TuDREY. Nonsense. (Reads his book.) Have you ever been to Moscow? a FERAPONT (after a pause). Never. It wasn’t God’s will. Pause. Am I to go? ANDREY. You may. Take care of yourself. FERAPONT goes Take care, now. (Reading) You can come back tomorrow and collect these papers .. . Off you go, then . Pause. Act two al He's gone. Doorbell. What a business it alli room with no great haste.) The worse sings, off, as she rocks the baby. Enter MASITA and VERSHININ. While they talk the MAID is lighting | the lamp and the candles. 4 _ Masua. I don’t know. Pause. = (Stretches and goes off into his I don’t know. Being used to something accounts for a lot, of course. For example, it took us a long time after Father died to get used to having no orderlies all of a sudden, But leaving familiarity aside, I think what I'm saying is no more than simple truth. It may not be so in other places, but in our town the most worthwhile people — the most honourable, the most educated ~ are the military, VERSHININ. I’m thirsty. I shouldn’t mind some tea. MASHA (glancing at the clock). They'll be bringing it in moment. I was married off at eighteen, and I was afraid of my husband because he was a teacher and I was only just out of school. I thought then that he was terribly Jeamed and clever and important. That’s no longer the case, though, I regret to say. VERSHININ, Quite... indeed... MASHA. I’m not talking about my husband - I’ve got used to him ~ but among the civilians there are so many people who are vulgar and rude and uneducated. I’m upset by vulgarity ~ it offends me. I feel pain when I see that someone is lacking in refinement, lacking in gentleness and manners. When I find myself emong my husband’s teaching colleagues I do quite simply fee! pain,30 THREE SISTERS VERSHININ, Indeed ... But so far as I can see it doesn’t matter whether they're military or civilians ~ they're equally uninteresting, in this town at least. It doesn’t matter at all! Talk to your local intellectual — be he soldier or be he civilian - and he’s fed up with his wife, he’s fed up with his home, he’s fed up with his estate, he’s fed up with his horses... What characterises the Russian is above all the loftiness of his thinking, but, tell me, why are his aspirations in life so low? Why? Masi, Why indeed? vensinrse Why is he fed up with his children, why is he fed up with his wife? And then again why are his wife and children fed up with him? MasHA. You're a little out of sorts today. VERSHININ. Possibly. I haven’t eaten this evening - I’ve had nothing to eat all day. My daughter's not very well, and when my girls are ill I’m seized with alarm, I'm racked by guilt for their having such a mother. You should have seen her today! What a squalid creature she is! We started squabbling at seven o'clock in the morning, and at nine I walked out and slammed the door. Pause, I never talk about it normally. It’s curious — you're the only one I ever complain to. (Kisses her hand.) Don’t be angry with me. You're the only one. I've no one apart from you, no one at all... Pause. MASHA. What a noise the stove’s making. The wind was moaning in the chimney just before Father died. That same sound exactly. VERSHININ. Are you superstitious? MasHa. Yes, act Two 3r VERSHININ, Strange. (Kisses her hand.) You magnificent, magical woman, Magnificen:, magical! It’s dark in here, but I can see the shining of your eyes. MASHA (sits on another chair). There's more light here... VERSHININ. I'm in love, I'm in love, I’m in love ... In love with your eyes, with the way you move. I dream about it ... Magnificent, magical woman! MASHA (laughing quietly). When you talk to me like that, I don’t know why, but I just find myself laughing, even though it frightens me, Please don’t do it again .. . (Her voice drops.) Or rather do - what does it matter ...? (Covers her face with her honds,) What does it matter? ‘There’s someone coming, talk about something else... Enter 1R1NA and TUSENBACH through the main room. TUSENBACH. My surname is triple-barrelled. The Baron Tusenbach-Krone-Altschauer, But I'm Russian and I’m Orthodox, just like you. I have little of the German left in me ~ only the patience and obstinacy with which I weary you. I escort you home every evening, 1r1NA. I'm so tired! TUSENBAGH, Every day I'm going to come to the telegraph office, and every day I’m going to escort you home. P'll go ‘on doing it for ten years, for twenty years, until you dis- miss me... (foyfully, at the sight of MASHA and VER- SHININ.) Oh, hello, it’s you! tRNA. Here I am, home at last. (To MASHA.) Some woman. came in just now sending a telegram to her brother in Saratov, to tell him her son had died today, and she abso- lutely could not remember the address. So she sent it without one, just to Saratov. She was standing there in tears. And suddenly, for no reason at all, I turned on her. ‘Ob,’ I said, ‘I've no time for all this.” It was such a stupid thing to happen. Is it today the mummers are coming?32 THREE SISTERS MASHA. Yes. IRINA (sits down in an armchair). Rest. Tired. TUSENBACH (with @ smile), When you come home from work you look such a young little, unhappy little thing... Pause. IRINA, Tired. No, I don’t like my work, I don’t like it at all MASHA. You've lost weight ... (Whistles a tune.) You've got younger-looking, and your face has become boyish. TUSENBACH. That's because of the way she does her hair. 1RINA, I shall have to look for another job — this one’s not for me. What I so longed for, what I dreamed of, are the very things it doesn’t have. It’s work with no poetry in it, mindless labour... . Knocking on the floor. ‘The doctor’s knocking. (To TUSENBACH:) Be a dear and knock back ... I really can’t... So tired... TUSENBACH knocks on the floor. He'll be here in a moment. We ought to be formulating some plan of action. The doctor and that brother of ours went to the club yesterday, and they lost again. I gather Andrey lost two hundred rubles. MASHA (indifferently), Spilt milk. TRINA. A formight ago he lost, in December he lost. If only he'd hurry up and lose the lot maybe we'd get out of this town. Dear Lord, I dream of Moscow every night - I'm like a woman possessed. (Laughs.) We're moving there in June, and before we get to June we've got to get through +++ February, March, April, May ... nearly half a year! MASH. Just so long as Natasha doesn’t somehow find out about him losing the money. AcT TWO 33 IRINA. Natasha? I don’t think it matters much to her. CHEBUTYKIN, who has only just got out of bed — he has been taking a rest after dinner — comes into the ballroom ‘and combs his beard, then sits down at the table and takes a newspaper out of his pocket. MASHA. Here he is... Has he paid his rent? IRINA (laughs). No, Not a kopek for the last eight months. It’s gone out of his head, evidently. MASH (laughs). Sitting there so full of himself! They all laugh. Pause. IRINA (Jo VERSHININ). Why are you s0 quiet? VERSHININ. I don’t know. I’m longing for some tea. Half my life for a glass of tea! I haven’t eaten all day . CHEBUTYRIN, Irina! IRINA, What do you want? CHEBUTYKIN. Come here, would you? Venez ici. IRIWA goes and sits at the table, I can’t do it without you. IRINA lays out the cards for patience. VERSHININ. Well, then. If we're not going to get any tea, let us at least refresh ourselves with a little philosophis- ing. TUSENBACH, By all means. What about? VERSHININ. What about? Let us think for a moment about «+, well, for example, about life as it will be after we are gone, two or three hundred years from now. ‘TUSENBACH Well, I suppose that after we are gone, people will fly about in air balloons, and the cut of a jacket will be different, and maybe they’ll discover a sixth sense and develop it. But life will remain the same - difficult, full of34 THREE SISTERS hidden mysteries, and happy. And a thousend years from. now man will still be sighing, ‘Oh, life is hard.’ And yet at the same time he'll be just as afraid of death as he is now, he'll be just as reluctant to die, VERSHININ (after a moment's thought). How can I put it? It Seems to me that everything in this world must gradually change ~ is changing already, in front of our eyes. Two hundred years hence, three huncred years — a thousand, if you like — it’s not a question of how long — but eventually anew and happy life will dawn. No part in this life shall we have, of course, but we are living for it now — working for it — yes, and suffering for it. We are creating this alone is the purpose of our existence. This, like, is our happiness, if you MASHA laughs quietly. TUSENBACH. What's got into you? Masua. I don’t know, All day today I’ve done nothing but Jaugh. VERSHININ. I went to the same cadet school as you ~ I didn’t go on to military academy. I read a lot, but I don’t know how to choose my books, and I may be reading quite the wrong things. But for all that, the longer I live the more I want to know. I'm going grey, I'm nearly an old man already, but I know so little — oh, how little I know! All the same, the most important thing — the most real thing ~ that I think I do know, and know for sure. And how I should love to de- ‘monstrate to you that there is no happiness for us ~ must be none, will be none ... We have simply to work and work, and happiness . . . that will be the lot of our remote descendants, Pause. AcT TWO 35 Not me? Then at least my descendants, and their de- scendants after them. FEDOTIK and RODE appear in the main room. They sit doum and hum quietly, accompanying themselves on the guitar. TUSENBACH. According to you we can’t even dream of happiness. But what if I am in fact happy? VERSHININ. You're not. TUSENBAGH (throws up his hands, claps them together, and laughs). We plainly don’t understand one another. Let me see, now, how can I convince you? MASHA laughs quietly. (Raising his finger 10 her.) You laugh away! (To vER- SHININ; It’s not just two or three hundred years - million years from now, even, life will still be just the same as it’s always been. It doesn’t change; it remains constant; it follows its own laws —laws which have nothing to do with you, or which at any rate you'll never discover. ‘The birds that fly south in the autumn ~ the cranes, for example ~ on and on they fly, and whatever lofty or petty thoughts they have fermenting inside their heads, on they will continue to fly. On and forever on, whatever philoso- phers they may have among them. Let them philosophise away to their heart’s content, just so long as they go on flying. | MASHA. All the same, there is some point? TUSENBACH. Some point ... Look, it’s snowing. Where’s the point in that? Pause. MASHA, It seems to me that a man must have faith, or be seeking it, otherwise his life is empry, quite empty ... To36 THREE SISTERS live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why the stars are in the sky ... Hither you know why you're alive or it’s all nonsense, it’s all dust in the Pause. VERSHININ. All the same, it’s sad one’s youth has gone... MASHA. It says in Gogol: ‘Living in this world, my friends, is dull work!” ‘TUSENBACH. And I say: arguing with you, my friends, is ‘uphill work! So boo to you. CHEBUTYKIN (reading the paper). Balzac was married in Berdichev. IRINA huoms quietly. I might put that down in my little book. (Makes a note.) Balzac was married in Berdichev. (Reads his newspaper.) IRINA (ays out patience. Absently). Balzac was married in Berdichev. TUSENBACH. The die is cast. (To MASHA:) You know, do you, thet I’ve resigned my commission? MASHA. So I heard. And no good do I see in that. I’ve no ‘great love for civilians. TUSENBACH. No matter ... (Stands up.) I’m not a hand- some man — what sort of figure do I cut as a soldier? Not that it matters . . . I'm going to work. For one day in my: life at any rate I'm going to work so that I go home in the evening, fall into bed exhausted, and go straight to sleep. (Moves away into the main room.) Working people must sleep so soundly! FEDOTIK (to IRINA). I went into that shop on Moscow Street today and bought you some coloured pencils. Also this penknife... IRINA. You've got used to treating me as a child, but I’m AcT Two 37 grown up now, you realise... (Takes the pencils and the penknife. Joyfully.) Ohh, they’re lovely! FEDOTIK. And I bought a pocket-knife for myself .. . Take alook at this ... one blade, two blades, three blades, this is for picking your ears, these are scissors, this is for cleaning your nails... RODE (loudly). Doctor, how old are you? CHEBUTYKIN. Me? Thirty-two. Laughter. FEDOTIK. Now I’m going to show you a different patience. (Lays out the cards.) The samovar is brought in. ANFISA hovers around it. NATASHA enters shortly afterwards and also busies herself about the table, Enter SOLYONY. He makes his greetings 10 the company and sits down at the table. VERSHININ. What a wind, though! MasHA. Yes, I'm sick of the winter. I can’t even remember ‘now what summer's like. TRINA (playing patience). It’s going to come out, I see. We shall get to Moscow. FEDOTIK. On the contrary, it’s not going to come out. The ‘eight was on the two of spades, look. (Laughs.) So you ‘won't get to Moscow. CHEBUTYEIN (reads the newspaper). Manchuria. Smallpox rages. ANFISA (crossing to MASHA). Masha, have your tea, dear. (To veRSHININ:) Here you are, colonel ... I'm sorry, dear, I’ve forgotten your name... MasHa. Bring it here, Nanny. I’m not going over there. rea. Nanny! ANFIsa. Coming! NATASHA (to SOLYONY). They understand, you know,38 THREE SISTERS babies, they understand perfectly. ‘Hello, Bobik!” I said. ‘Hello, lovel” And he gave me a kind of special look. You think that’s just a mother talking, don’t you, but no, not at all, I can assure you! He’s a most unusual baby. SOLYONY. If that baby were mine, I'd fry him in a frying- pan and eat him. (Takes his glass of tea into the drawing- room and sits down in the corner.) NATASHA (covering her face with her hands). So coarse! So lacking in breeding! MasHa, Happy the man who never notices whether it’s summer or winter. If I were in Moscow, I think I should be indifferent to the weather... VERSHININ. The other day I was reading the diary that some French cabinet minister had kept while he was in prison, He’d been convicted for his part in the Panama Affair. With what delight, with what ecstasy, does he write about the birds he can see through his cell window ~ birds he'd never noticed before, in his days as a minister. Now that he’s at liberty again, of course, he notices the birds no more than he did in the past. Nor will you notice ‘Moscow once you're living in it. Happiness is not for us and never can be. All we can do is long for it. TUSENBACH (picks up a basket from the table). Where are the sweets? TRINA. Solyony’s eaten them. TUSENBACH. The whole lot? ANFISA (serving tea). Letter for you, dear. VERSHININ. For me? (Takes the letter.) From my daughter. (Reads it.) Yes, of course... (To MASHA:) If you'll excuse me I'll just slip quietly away. I won’t have any tea. (Stands up, agitated.) It’s the same old story... MasHA, What? Or is it a secret? VERSHININ (quietly). My wife has tried to poison herself AcT TWO 39 again. I must go. I'll get away without anyone noticing. Ir’s all very unpleasant. (Kisses MASHA’s hand.) My dear, my good and wonderful woman ... I'll slip quietly out through here .. . (He goss.) ANFISA. Where’s he off to, then? I’ve just poured his tea .. The naughty man. MASHA (losing her temper). Get away from me! Hanging around all the time - there’s no rest from you . . . (Takes her cup of tea to the table.) Silly old woman, I’m sick of you! ANFISA. What are you in such a huff about? My sweet! ANDREY (off). Anfisal ANEISA (mimics him). ‘Anfisal’ He just sits in there . .. (She goes.) MASHA (at the table in the main room, angrily). Let me sit down, will you? (Muddles the cards on the table.) Taking up all the room with cards. Drink your teat TRINA. Masha, you're in @ temper. MASHA. Well, if I’m in a temper don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me! CHEBUTYKIN (laughing). Don’t touch her, don’t touch. . MASHA. You're sixty, but you might as well be six, the way you're always babbling on about God knows what. NATASHA (sighs). My dea: Masha, why do you use expres- sions like that in polite conversation? In good society, with. your looks ~ I'll be quite frank, now — you could be simply enchanting, if it weren’t for the language you use. Je vous prie pardonnez-moi, Marie, mais vous avez des maniéres un peu grossierés. TUSENBACH (suppressing his laughter). Would you . Would you . ..? I think that’s the brandy, isn't it? NATASHA. I] parait, que mon Bobik déja ne dort pas, he’s ‘woken up. My poor poppet’s not very well today. I must go and look at him, do forgive me .. . (She goes.) 240 THREE SISTERS rr1wA, Where's the colonel gone? MASHA, Home. Some extraordinary business with his wife again, TUSENBAGH (goes over to: SOLYONY, holding the brandy decanter). You're always sitting on your own thinking about something, I can’t imagine what. Come on, let’s make it up. Let’s have a glass of brandy. They drink. I shall probably have to play the piano all night. A lot of rubbish, most likely ... Well, who cares? soLyony. What do you mean, make it up? I haven't quarrelled with you, TUSENBACH. You always give me the feeling that something has happened between us. You are an odd fish, I must say. SOLYONY (declaims). I may be odd — but who's not odd, Save fools alike as peas in pod? . .. Aleko, be not angry! TUSENBACH. Aleko? What, in Pushkin? I don’t see what he’s got to do with it... Pause. SOLYONY. When I'm alone with someone it’s all right, I’m like anybody else. But in company I’m morose, I’m awk- ward, and, I don’t know, I talk a lot of rubbish, All the same, I’m more honest, I’m more high-minded than a great many people, And I can prove it, TUSENBAGH. I often get angry with you because you keep picking on me in public. I can’t help liking you, though, I don’t know why. Anyway, who cares? - I’m going to get drunk tonight. Your health, SOLYONY. And yours. They drink. ACT TWO ar T’ve never had anything against you, baron. But I have something of Lermontoy’s character. (Quietly.) 1 even look rather like him . .. Or so people tell me ... (Takes a perfume flask out of his pocket and pours some on to his hands.) TUSENBACH. I’m resigning my commission. Basta! For five years I've been thinking about it, and now at last I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to work. SOLYONY (declaims). Aleko, be not angry . . . Forget, forget your longings and your dreams... As they talk, ANDREY enters quietly with his book and sits by the candle. TUSENBACH. I’m going to work... CHEBUTYKIN (coming into the drawing-room with IRINA). And they entertained us in real Caucasian style — onion soup; followed by a chekhartmd of roast meat, SOLYONY. Cheremshd isn’t meat. It’s ramson like our onion. CHEBUTYKIN. No, my dear boy. Chekhartmd isn’t an onion ~ it’s a roast dish made from mutton. SOLYONY. I tell you cheremshd is onion. CHEBUTYKIN. And I tell you chekharemd is mutton. SOLYONY. And I tell you cheremshd is onion. CHERUTYKIN. I’m not going to argue with you. You've never been to the Caucasus and you've never eaten chekhartmé, SOLYONY. I’ve never eaten it because I can’t stand it. It smells like garlic, ANDREY (beseechingly). That will do, now, gentlemen! I beg of you! TUSENBACH, When are the mummers coming? tRNA. Towards nine, they promised, so any time now. it’s a planta THREE SISTERS TUSENBACH begins to hum the music of a folk-song, ‘Akh vy, seni’. He puts his arm round ANDREY and leads him in the dance that traditionally accompanies the song. First ANDREY and then CHEBUTYKIN take up both song and dance. Laughter. TUSENBACH (kisses ANDREY). Come on, Andryusha, let's drink together, and to hell with it! I'm going to call you Andryusha ~ you call me Nikolasha ~ and we'll drink to- gether. And I’m coming with you, Andryusha, I’m coming to Moscow, I’m going to university. SOLYONY. Which one? There are two universities in Moscow. ANDREY. There’s one university in Moscow. SOLYONY. I tell you there are two. ANDREY. There can be three, for all I care. The more the merrier. SOLYONY. There are two universities in Moscow! Murmuring and hushing. ‘There are two universities in Moscow — the old one and the new one, But if you don’t cate to listen, if you're going to be irritated by what I say, then I can perfectly well not speak. In fact I can go and sit in another room .. . (Goes out through one of the doors.) TUSENBACH, Bravo, bravo! (Laughs.) Ladies and gentle- ‘men, let the festivities commence ~ I’m going to sit down at the piano! He’s a funny fellow, that Solyony .... (Sits down at the piano and plays a waltz.) MASHA (waltzes by herself). The baron’s drunk, the baron’s drunk, the baron’s drunk again! Enter NATASHA. NATASHA (to CHEBUTYKIN). Doctor! (Says something 10 him, then quietly goes out again.) ACT Two 43 CHEBUTYEIN fouches TUSENBACH on the shoulder and whispers something to him. 1rtNa. What’s happening? CHEBUTYKIN. Time we were going. I'll say goodbye. TUSENBACH. Good night. We must be going. rina. I’m sorry, but what about the mummers? ANDREY (embarrassed). There won’t be any mummers. The thing is, my dear, that Natashs says Bobik isn’t entirely well, and therefore . .. Anyway, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter to me either way. IRINA (shrugging). Bobik’s not well! MaSHA. Oh, God help us! If we're being thrown out we'll have to go. (To rR1NA:) It’s not Bobik that’s sick — it’s her ... In there! (She taps her forehead.) Little shop- keeper! ANDREY goes out through the righthand door into his own room. CHEBUTYRIN follows him. People make their farewells in the main room. FEDOTIK. What a shame! I was counting on spending the evening, but if the baby’s ill then of course ... I'll bring him some toys tomorrow. RODE (loudly). I had a good long sleep after dinner specially =I thought I should be dancing all night. It’s only nine o’clock, you know. Masua. Let’s go out into the street and talk for a moment. ‘We'll decide what to do. People can be heard saying goodbye, and there is the sound of TUSENBACH’s cheerful laugh. Everyone goes out. ANFISA and the MAID clear the table and put out the lights. The NURSE can be heard singing. Enter ANDREY quietly, in overcoat and hat, with CHEBUTYKIN. CHEBUTYKIN. Marrying — that’s something I never got44 THREE SISTERS around to, because my life has gone by like 2 flash of lightning. Also because I was madly in love with your mother, who had a husband already. anpReY. Never marry. Never ~ it’s a bore. cueBuTYKIN. That may be, but think of loneliness. Philo- sophise away till you're black in the face, but loneliness is a terrible thing, dear boy ... Though when you come down to it, what does it matter? ANDREY. Let's be off, then. CHEBUTYKIN. What's the hurry? We've plenty of time. anprey. I'm afraid my wife might stop me. CHEBUTYKIN. Ah! ANDREY. This time I’m not going to play. I'll just sit there for a bit, I don’t feel too good . . . What should I do about shortness of breath? cHEBUTYKIN. Why ask me? I don’t remember, dear boy. No idea. ANDREY. Let's go through the kitchen. The doorbell rings, then it rings again. There is the sound of voices and laughter. ANDREY and CHEBUTYKIN go. IRINA (enters). What’s going on out there? ANFISA (in-a whisper). It’s the mummers! The doorbell rings. IRINA. Nanny, tell them there’s no one at home. Say we're sorry. ANFISA goes. IRINA walks about the room, agitated and lost in thought. Enter SOLYONY. SOLYONY (bewildered). No one here . . . Where are they all? TRINA. Gone home. SOLYONY. Odd. You're all on your own in here? IRINA. All on my own. Act TWO 45 Pause. Goodbye. SOLYONY. I behaved just now in a way that showed some want of restraint, some want of tact. But you're not like all the rest of them. You're above them, you're pure, you can see the truth ... You're the only one who can understand me . I’m in love - deeply and boundlessly in love... IRINA. Goodbye. Do go. SOLYONY. I can’t live without you. (Following her.) Oh, my heart's delight! (Through his tears.) Oh, happiness! Sump- ‘tuous, magical, amazing eyes, the like of which I have never seen in any other woman... IRINA (coldly). Stop! Please! SOLYONY. This is the first time I have ever spoken my love for you, and I feel as if I were out of this world, as if I were on some other planet. (Rubs his forehead.) Anyway, what does it matter? Feelings obviously can’t be forced «++ But happy rivals I will not have ... I won't... I ‘swear to you by all the saints, I'l kill any rival... You ‘magical woman! NATASHA comes through, holding a candle. NATASHA (looks first into one room, then into another, and goes past the door leading to her husband’s room.) Andrey's in there. He can go on reading. (To soLvony:) Forgive me, I didn’t know you were here, I’m not dressed for visitors ... SOLYONY. That matters very little to me. Goodbye. (He goes.) NATASHA. My poor dear girl, but you're tired! (Kisses 1mtNA.) You should have been in bed hours ago. trina. Is Bobik asleep?46 THREE SISTERS NATASHA. He's asleep, but he’s very restless. Oh, by the way, my dear, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you, only you've been outall the time, or else I’ve been busy . ..T think it’s too cold and damp for Bobik with the nursery where it is, Now your room would be such a lovely one fora baby. My dear, will you move in with Olga for the time being? TRINA (not understanding). Move where? A toika with bells can be heard approaching the house. NATASHA. You'll be in the same room as Olga, just for the time being, and Bobik will have your room. He’s such a lovel I said to him today, ‘Bobik, you’re mine! All mine!’ And he looked at me with those funny little eyes of his. Doorbell. It must be Olga, She’s terribly late, ‘The MAID goes up to NATASHA and whispers in her ear. NATASHA. Protopopov? What a fool that man is! Protopo- pov’s here ~ he’s inviting me to go for a troika ride with him, (Laughs.) What strange creatures these men are... Doorbell. Somebody else arriving. I could go for a quick ten or fifteen minutes perhaps... (To the MAID.) Say P'll be down directly. Doorbell. ‘The doorbell... That must be Olga .. . (She goes.) The MAID runs out. 1RINA sits torapped in thought. Enter KULYGIN and OLGA, followed by VERSHININ. KULYGIN. Well, bless my soul! I was told they were having | ‘company tonight. AcT TWO 47 VERSHININ, Odd. I only left half an hour ago, and they were waiting for the mummers ... 1RINA, Everyone’s gone. KULYGIN. Has Masha gone, too? Where’s she gone? And why is Protopopov waiting downstairs in a troika? Who is he waiting for? TRINA. Don’t ask me any questions .. . I’m too tired... KULYGIN. Oh, Miss High and Mighty... Oca. The staff meeting has only just finished. I'm ex- hausted. Our headmistress is off sick, so at the moment I’m deputising for her. My head, my head’s aching, oh, my head ... (Sits.) Andrey lost two hundred roubles at cards yesterday ... The whole town’s talking about it... KULYGIN. Yes, the meeting tired me, too. (Sits.) VERSHININ. My wife took it into her head to give me a fright just now. She very nearly poisoned herself. Anyway; it’s all sorted itself out, and I can breathe again .. . So, we have to go? Well, then, may I wish you all the best? (To KULYGIN:) Come on, let’s you and I go on somewhere! I can’t stay at home, I absolutely cannot . .. Come on! KULYGIN. No, I’m too tired. (Stands up.) Tired, tired. My wife’s gone home, has she? TRINA. She must have. KULYGIN, (hisses IRINA's hand). Goodbye, then. Tomorrow and the day after we can rest all day. Good night! (Goes.) Pd love some tea. I wes counting on spending the evening in pleasant company and - oh, fallacem hominum spem! — the illusory hopes of men! Exclamation taking the accus- ative case... VERSHININ. I'll go on my own, then. (He goes with KULY~ GIN, whistling.) oLGa. My head aches, my poor head ... Andrey lost at cards... The whole town’s talking . .. I'm going to bed.48 THREE SISTERS (Goes.) Tomorrow I'm free ... Oh, heavens, how sweet that is! Free tomorrow, free the day after ... My head aches, ob, my poor head ... (She goes.) TRINA (alone). They've all gone. No one here. An accordion plays in the street; the NURSE sings a song. NATASHA (crosses the main room in fur coat and cap, with the MAID following her). I'l be back in half-an-hour. I’m just going to have a bit of an outing. (She goes.) IRINA (left alone, falls into melancholy). Moscow! Moscow! To Moscow! CURTAIN Act Three OLGA’s room — now also IRINA’s. Beds left and right, sur- rounded by screens. It is past two o'clock in the morning. Off- stage the alarm is being sounded for a fire which began much earlier. The household has plainly still not got to bed. MASHA is lying on @ couch, dressed as usual in black. Enter OLGA and ANFISA. Arisa. They're sitting in the hall downstairs now ... I said to them, ‘Come upstairs,’ I said, ‘and then we can do something,’ They just kept crying. ‘It’s Papa,’ they said, “we don’t know where he is. Oh, please God he hasn’t been burnt to death!’ That's what they've got into their heads! There’s some outside, too — and they've no clothes to their backs, neither. OLGA (takes clothes out of the wardrobe). Here, take this grey dress... And this one ... The jacket as well . .. And take this skirt, Nanny ... Lord in heaven, what a thing to happen! The whole of Kirsanov Lane has burnt down, apparently ... Take this... And this ... (Tosses clothes into ANFISA’s arms.) The Vershinins had a terrible fright, poor things... Their house very nearly got caught. They ccan stay the night here . .. We can’t let them go home... . And poor Fedotik! Everything he possessed — he’s nothing left in the world... ANFISA. Olya, love, you'll have to call Ferapont or I'll never carry it all... OLGA (rings). We can ring but we shan’t get anyone ... (Through the doorway.) Could you come here, please, anyone who's there! Through the open door can be seen a window red from50 THREE SISTERS the glow of the fire. The sound of a fire brigade going past the house. ‘What a nightmare! I’m so sick of it! Enter FERAPONT. Here, take these downstairs ... The Kolotilin girls are waiting down in the hall ,.. give the things to them, And give them this... FERAPONT. Right. In 1812 it was Moscow that was on fire, God bless us, weren’t the French surprised! OLGA. Off you go, then. FERAPONT. Right. (He goes.) OLGA. Nanny, dear, let them have it all. We don’t need any of it — tet them have the lot, Nanny, love . . . I’m so tired = Lcan hardly stand ... We can’t let the Vershinins go home ... The girls can sleep in the drawing-room, and the colonel downstairs with the baron . . . Fedotik can go in with the baron, too, or else upstairs in the big living- room ... The doctor’s drunk, horribly drunk — you'd think he’d picked tonight on purpose ~ we can’t put anyone in with him. And Vershinin’s wife in the drawing- room with the girls. ANFISA (exhausted). Olyushka, my dear, don’t turn me out! Please don’t! oLGa. Nanny, you're talking nonsense, No one’s turning you out. ANEISA (Jays her head on 01.GA’s breast). Oh, my own one, ob, my precious, I toil away, I do my work ... But I'l get too feeble, and then they’re all going to say: Out you go! But where will I go? Where can I go? Eighty years old, Eighty-one .. . OLGA. Just you sit down for a moment, Nanny, love ... ‘You poor dear, you're worn out .... (Sits her down.) Have a rest, my love. You've lost all your colour! ACT THREE st Enter NATASHA. NATASHA. They're saying they'll have to quickly set up a charity for the people who lost their homes in the fire. 1 think thar’s an excellent idea. We must always help the poor ~ it’s the duty of the rich. Bobik and Sofochka are fast asleep, for all the world as if nothing had happened. ‘We've got so many people in the house ~ wherever you go it’s full. There’s influenza in town at the moment ~ I’m worried the children might catch it. OLGA (not listening to her). You can’t see the fire from this room. It’s quite peaceful in here... NATASHA. Isn't it... I must be an absolute sight. (In front of the mirror.) People keep telling me I’ve put on weight «+. and it’s not true! Not the slightest bit! Masha’s asleep, though — she’s exhausted, the poor love ... (To ANFISA, coldly.) How dare you sit down in my presence! Get up! Get out! ANFISA goes. Pause. ‘Why you keep that old woman on I can’t understand! OLGA (taken aback). I’m sorry, but J don’t quite under- stand... NATASHA. She's no use here. She's a peasant — she ought to be living in her village . . . I’s just pampering them! I like a little order in the house! There shouldn’t be people in the house we don’t need. (Looks at O1.Ga’s face.) My poor love, you're tired! Our headmistress is tired! When my Sofochka gets bigger and goes to school, though, I'm going to be so frightened of you. oLca. I’m not going to be headmistress. NATASHA. You'll be the one they choose, Olechka. It’s been decided. o1GaA. I shall decline. I can’t do it... [haven't the strength. dd52 THREE SISTERS (Drinks water.) You were so rude to Nanny just then ... T'm sorry, but I can’t bear it... I thought I was going to faint NaTAsHA (alarmed), I’m sorry, Olya, I'm sorry... I didn’t ‘mean to upset you. MASHA gets up, takes her cushion, and goes out angrily. O1GA. You do see, my dear ... We had a peculiar upbring- ing, perhaps, but I can’t bear that sort of thing. It de- Presses me to see anyone treated like that, it makes me ill «++ just feel like giving up! Natasua. I'm sorry, I'm sorry . .. (Kisses her.) OLGA. The slightest rudeness, a harshly spoken word, and it upsets me... NaTasHA. I often say more than I should, it’s quite true, mu my dear, you must agree, she could live in her vil. OLGA. She's been with us for thirty years, NATASHA. But she can’t work now, can she! Hither I don’t understand what you're saying, or you won’t understand what I’m saying ... She’s incapable of work, she does nothing but sleep or just sit there. OLGA. Let her just sit there, NATASHA (in surprise). What do you mean, let her just sit there? She's a servant, isn’t she? (Through her tears.) I don’t understand you, Olya. I have a nanny and a wet- nurse, we have a maid and a cook... What do we need that old woman for? What do we want with her? The alarm is sounded offstage. OLGA I’ve aged ten years in this one night. NATASHA, We've got to come to an understanding, Olga. School for you ~ home for me. You have your teaching — ‘Ihave the household to run. And if I say something about ACT THREE 53 the servants then I know what I’m talking about, I know = what - I - am — talking about ... And I want that thieving old hag out of the house by tomorrow . . . (Stamps her foot.) That old witch . . 1 How dare people cross me sol How dare they! (Suddenly remembering something else.) And really, if you don’t move downstairs we shall be for- ever quartelling. It’s frightful. Enter KULYGIN. KULYGIN, Where’s Masha? We ought to be getting home. ‘Apparently the fire's dying down. (Stretches.) It’s only the one block gone, but there was the wind, of course, and for a start it looked as if the whole town was on fire. (Sits.) Tm exhausted. Olechka, my dear... I often think if it hadn't been for Masha I should have married you. You're a sweet kind woman ... I’m worn out. (Cocks his ear.) oLca. What? KULYGIN. You'd think he'd done it tonight on purpose. The doctor — he’s gone on the spree, he’s quite horribly drunk. You'd think he’d absolutely picked the night! (Stands up.) He's coming up here, I think ... Can you hear? Yes, he (Laughs.) Honestly, what a rascal ... T’'m going to hide ... (Goes to the wardrobe and stands in the corner.) What a villain. ovca. He hasn’t been drinking for two years, and now suddenly he’s up and drunk himself silly ... (Goes with NATASHA away to the back of the roam.) Enter CHEBUTYKIN. With perfectly steady gait, as if sober, he crosses the room, stops, looks round, then goes over to the washstand and begins to wash his hands. CHEBUTYKIN (morosely). To hell with the lot of them ... Lot the rot ... They think I’m a doctor, they think I know how to treat all the ailments under the sun, but I54 THREE SISTERS know absolutely nothing — forgotten anything I ever knew ~ don’t remember a thing ~ absolutely nothing. OLGA and NATASIEA go without his noticing. Well, to hell with them. Wednesday last I treated a woman in town and she died, and it was my fault she died. Yes +++ Twenty-five years back I knew a thing or two, but now I can’t remember anything. Not a thing. Maybe I'm not even humen ~ I just put on this appearance of having arms and legs and head. Maybe I don’t exist at all — I just think I'm walking and cating and sleeping. (WWeeps.) Oh, if only I could be non-existent! (Stops weeping. Morotely,) Well, I don’t know .,, Day before yesterday there was this conversation at the club. ‘Shakespeare!’ they go. ‘Vol- taire...’ I haven’t read a line of any of them — I just put a look on my face as if I had. And the others did the same. But the meanness of it! The shabbiness! And that woman came into my mind, the one I finished off on Wednesday ~-. then everything else came back as well, and I felt as if my whole soul was warped and soiled and ugly ... And off I went and started drinking... Enter IRINA, VERSHININ, and TUSENBACH. TUS- ENBAGH is wearing new and stylish civilian clothes. Trina. Let's sit down here for a moment. No one’s going to come in here. VERSHININ. If it hadn't been for the military the whole town would have gone up in flames. Sterling work! (Rubs hhis hands with pleasure.) Sterling lads and sterling work! RULYGIN (oing across to him). What time is it? TUSENBACH. Gone three already. It’s getting light. tara. Everyone’s just sitting around in the big living- room, No one’s going. That precious Solyony of yours is ACT THREE 55 sitting there, too . .. (To CHEBUTYKIN:) You should be getting to bed, doctor. CHEBUTYKIN. Quite all right ... I thank you ... (Combs ris beard.) KULYGIN (laughs). He’s got himself a litte spiffticated, has our good doctor! (Claps him on the shoulder.) Sterling work! In vino veritas, as the ancients would have it, TUSENBACH. People keep asking me to get up a concert in aid of the victims. IRINA. Yes, but who'd be in it? TUSENBAGH, It could be managed, if that’s what people want. Masha, for instance, is a wonderful pianist. KULYG@IN. Wonderful! IRINA. She’s forgotten it all. She hasn’t played for three years now ... or is it four? TUSENBACH. Absolutely no one in this town knows any- thing about music, not a soul, but I do, and I give you my word that Masha is a magnificent pianist ~ a gifted one, almost. KULYGIN. Quite right, baron. I love Masha very much. She's a splendid woman. TUSENBACH, But imagine being able to play so marvel- lously, and knowing at the same time that nobody, abso- lutely nobody, could appreciate it! RULYGIN (sighs). Quite .. . But would it be entirely suitable for her to take part in a concert? Pause. I don’t know, you see. It might be perfectly all right. Our headmaster is a charming man, I must in all honesty say. ‘Most charming, highly intelligent — but he does have very definite views ... It’s nothing to do with him, of course, but all the same, I could have a word with him if you like...56 THREE SISTERS CHEBUTYKIN picks up a china clock and examines it. VERSHININ. I got absolutely filthy at the fire. I can’t im- ‘gine what I look like. Pause. I heard just in passing yesterday that they’re thinking of some rather remote posting for our brigade. Some say the Kingdom of Poland, some reckon Siberia. TUSENBACH, I heard the same thing. Well, the town will bbe deserted. IRINA. We'll be leaving, too! CHEBUTYKIN (drops the clock, which breaks). Smithereens! Pause. Everyone is upset and embarrassed. KULYGIN (picking up the pieces). Fancy breaking such a valuable object. Ob, doctor, doctor! Gamma minus for conduct! trINA. That was poor Mama's clock. CHEBUTYKIN. Maybe it was ... So, all right, it was ‘Mama’s. Maybe I didn’t break it, and it only seems I did, ‘Maybe we only seem to exist, and in fact we aren’t here at all, I don’t know anything; there isn’t anything anyone knows. (Reaching the door.) What are you staring at? Natasha’s having a little love-affair with Protopopov, and you don’t see it... You just sit here and see nothing, and all the time Natasha’s having a little affair with Protopo- Pov... (He goes, humming a tune from a show - ‘Won't you deign to eat this date. . .?| VERSHININ. So ... (Laughs.) How odd all this is, when you come to think abont Pause. ‘When the fire started I ran home as fast as I could, and the first thing I see is there’s our house, safe and sound | ACT THREE 37 and not in any danger. But there on the doorstep are my two little girls - they’ve got nothing on but their shifts — there’s no sign of their mother — people rushing to and fro — horses galloping - dogs running ~ and on the girls’ faces alarm, terror, entreaty — I don’t know what; and at the sight of those faces my heart contracted within me. God in heaven, I thought, what more will these children have to endure in life’s long course? I snatched them up and I ran and I kept thinking this same thought: what more will they have to endure in this world! The sound of the alarm, Pause. I got here, and here’s their mother, shouting and raging. Enter MASHA with her cushion. She sits down on the couch, And as my little girls stood on the doorstep in their shifts, and the street was red from the flames, and the noise was terrifying, I found myself thinking that it must have been rather like this many years ago when some enemy made a surprise raid, and looted and burnt ... Still, when you really come down to it, there’s an enormous difference between now and then, And when a little more time has passed, two or three hundred years, say, they’ll look back on the life we lead now in just the same way, with just the same mixture of horror and scorn. Everything about the present time will seem awkward and clumsy and terribly uncomfortable and outlandish. Ob, but what a life it’s going to be, surely, what a life! (Laughs.) Forgive me, I've started to philosophise again. May I continue, though? T've a terrible longing to philosophise — I’m in just the mood for it. Pause.58 THREE SISTERS It’s as if the whole world were still asleep. That’s why I say: what a life it’s going to be! All you can do is imagine it... Here we are now with only three people like you in town; but in succeeding generations there will be more, and more, and ever more, until the day dawns when everything has come round to your way of thinking, and everyone has come round to your way of life; and then you in your turn will be relegated to the past, and there will arise people who are better than you ... (Laughs.) ae peculiar mood today. Oh God, but I want to livel (Begins to hum Prince Gremin’s aria from ‘Eugene Onegin’, Act IIL, Scene 1 ~*To love ae ond ola surrender’ J MASHA. Trum-tum-tum . VERSHININ. Tum-tum ... MASHA. Tra-ra-ra? VERSHININ. Tra-ta-ta, (Laughs.) Enter FEDOTIK. FEDOTIK (dances). I’ve lost the lot! Gone up in smoke! I’m cleaned right out! Laughter. IRINA. How can you joke about it? Everything went? FEDOTIK (laughs). The lot. I’m cleaned out. Nothing left. ‘My guitar went, my photographic stuff, all my letters . . . Td got a little notebook to give you — that went, too. Enter SOLYONY. IRINA. No, please, go away. No one’s allowed in here. SOLYONY. Why is the baron, if I’m not? VERSHININ. We must all go, in fact. How is the fire? SOLYONY. Dying down, apparently. No, but I do find it ACT THREE 39 positively odd — why the baron and not me? (Takes out his flask of scent and sprinkles himself.) VERSHININ. Trum-tum-tum? MASHA. Trum-tum. VERSHININ (laughs. To SOLYONY). Come on, we'll go down to the living-room. SOLYONY. All right, I'll note it down in my little book. ‘What does the poem say? We could spell out the moral of this piece — But let us not provoke the geese, (Looking at TUSENBACH.) Cheep, cheep, cheep ... (He ‘goes with VERSHININ and FEDOTIK.) 1RINA. That wretched Solyony has smoked us out . .. (ewon- deringly.) The baron’s asleep! Baron! Baron! TUSENBACH (waking up). I’m tired, though ... A brick- works . . . I’m not rambling — I am in fact shortly going to move away from here and start a job at a brickworks ... Tve already had talks about it. (To rRiNa, tenderly.) You're so pale, so lovely, so fascinating . .. Your pale skin seems to brighten the dark air like light ... You're sad, you're discontented with life... Ob, come away with me, come away and we can work together MASHA, Out you go, now. TUSENBACH (laughing). Oh, you're here, are you? I can’t see. (Kisses 1R1NA’s hand.) Goodbye, then, P'll be going -+. T look at you now and T remember how once upon a time, long, long ago, on your name-day, you were all bright and cheerful, and you talked about the joys of work ... And what a happy life I caught a glimpse of then! Where has it gone? (Kisses her hand.) You've tears in your eyes, Go to bed, it’s getting light already ... another day's beginning ... If only I might devote my life to you! MASHA. Out you go! Really...60 THREE SISTERS TUSENBAGH. I'm going .. . (He goes.) MASHA (ying down). Fyodor? Are you asleep? KULYGIN. Um? MASHA. You should be getting home. KULYGIN. My dear Masha, my dear sweet Masha... 1etNA. She's exhausted. You should let her have a rest, Fedya. KULYGIN. I’m going, I’m going ... My lovely, splendid wife... I love you, my one and only... MASHA (angrily). Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. KULYGIN (laughs). No, truly, she’s an amazing woman. I’ve been married to you for seven years, and it seems like yesterday. On my word of honour. No, truly, you're an amazing woman, I’m content, content, content! MASHA. I’m bored, bored, bored ... (Sits up.) And one thing I can’t get out of my head ... It’s absolutely out- rageous, Te keeps nagging at me — I can’t go on not men- tioning it. I mean about Andrey .. . He’s moi thik house to the bank, and his wife’s got her ands all the money. But in fact the house doesn’t belong just to him — it belongs to all four of us! He must know thet, if he’s got a spark of decency in him, KULYGIN. Masha, what do you want him to do? Poor Andrey owes money right, left, and centre, heaven help him. ‘MasuA. All the same, it’s an outrageous way to behave. (Lies down.) RULYGIN, You and I aren’t poor. I work —I go off to schoo! each day, then I give private lessons... A Sougbtforwaed man, that’s me. A plain, straightforward man ... Ommia mea mac port, as they say~ all have Leary with me, MaSHA. I’m not in need of anything, I’m jus the unfairness of it. vening Pan Je cussed by Pause. ACT THREE 6r Go on, then, Fyodor! RULYGIN (Kisses her). You're tired. Have a little rest for ‘half-an-hour, and I'll sit up and wait for you at home. Off to sleep ... (Moves.) I'm content, content, content. (He goes.) 1RINA. How much lesser a man has our Andrey become, in fact, living with that woman, How the spark bas gone out of him, how he’s aged! Once upon a time he was working for a university chair; yesterday he was boasting about getting a seat at last on the local Executive Council. He’s got a seat, and Protopopov’s the head of it .. . The whole town’s talking, the whole town’s laughing ~ he’s the only ‘one who doesn’t know and can’t see ... Now everyone ‘goes running to the fire while he sits in his room and doesn’t bat an eyelid. All he does is play his violin. (rrit- ably.) Oh, it’s horrible, horrible, horrible! (Weeps.) I just can’t bear any more... I can’t, I can’t... Enter OLGA. She tidies around her bedside table. (Sobs loudly.) Throw me away, throw me away, I can’t goon... LGA. What is it? What's the matter? My love! IRINA (sobbing), Where’s it all gone? Where is it? Ob, heavens, heavens! I've forgotten it all, I've forgotten it . «+ It’s all mixed up inside my head . . . I can’t remember the Italian for window, or ceiling . . . I’m forgetting ital, day by day forgetting it, and life’s going away, and it will never come back, never, and we shall never get to Moscow [see that now ~ we're not going ... OLGA. My love, my love... IRINA (controlling herself). Ob, I’m so unhappy ... I can’t work, I won't work. I’ve had enough! First I was in the telegraph office - now I work for the town council, and T loathe and despise everything they give me to do... I'll62 THREE SISTERS be twenty-four next birthday, I’ve been working forever, and my brain’s dried up, I’ve grown thin, I've grown old, T’ve grown ugly, and nothing out of it, nothing, no kind of satisfaction, and time’s flying, and I keep feeling as if ‘T'm getting further away from the life that’s real and beautiful, further and further away, into some kind of bottomless pit. I’m in despair, and how I'm still alive, how I haven’t killed myself before now, I really don’t o1Ga, Don’t cry, my little girl, don’t cry . .. It hurts me to see you. 1RINA. I’m not crying, ’'m not ... Enough of that There, now I’ve stopped crying. Enough .. . Enough! OLGA. My love, I’m talking to you now as your sister, as your a If you'll take my advice you'll marry the IRINA tweeps quietly. After all, you respect him, you have great regard for him ++ He’s not handsome, it’s true, but he’s a decent, Worthwhile man... And anyway, women don’t marry for love ~ they do it because it’s their duty. That’s what I think, at any rate, and I should marry without love. Anyone who proposed to me — I'd marry him, so long as he was someone worthwhile. Even if he was an old man Vd marry him . IRINA, I kept waiting for us to be in Moscow. That's where ‘I was going to meet the real one. I dreamt about him, I was in love with him ... But it's rumed out to be non- sense, just so much nonsense... . OLGA (embraces her sister). My love, my lovely sister, I do understand. When the baron left the service and came here in an ordinary suit I thought he was so plain that I actually started to ery... . Why are you crying he asked. ACT THREE 6 What could I say? But if it were God’s will for him to marry you, then I should be very happy. Because that’s another matter, another matter entirely. NATASHA, carrying a candle, crosses from the righthand door to the left in silence. MaSHA (sits). She’s roaming about as if she were the one who'd started the fire. oLGa. You are a silly, Masha. Shall I tell you who’s the biggest silly in our family? ~ It’s you. I’m sorry. Pause. MASHA. Dear sisters, I want to make confession. I think I shall die if I don’t say it. I’m going to make my confession to you, then never to another soul .. . I’m going to say it, this very minute. Quietly.) It’s my secret, but you both must know it... I can’t not say it... Pause. P’m in love, I’m in love . .. I’m in love with that man... ‘The one you saw just now ... Oh, what's the use? ~ I’m in Iove with Vershinin ... OLGA (goes t0 her own corner behind the screens). Stop that. T’'m not listening, in any case. asna, But what can I do? (Clutches her head.) First of all I thought, What a strange man! Then I felt sorry for him «+» then I began to be in love with him . . . I began to be in love with his voice, and with the things he said, and with his misfortunes, and with his two little girls... OLGA (behind the screen), I'm not listening, Whatever non- sense you're talking, I'm not listening. MASHA. Ob, Olya, you're the one who's the silly. I'm in love ~ all right, so that’s my fate. So that’s my lot in life +++ He loves me, too... It’s terrifying. Isn’t it? Is it64 THRI wrong? (Takes 1RINA by the hand, and draws her nearer.) Oh, my sweet ... Somehow we shall live our lives, what- ever happens to us... You read some novel and you think, that’s all old stuff, everyone knows all that. But as soon as you fall in love yourself you realise that no one knows anything, and that we each have to solve our own lives ... ‘My loves, my sisters ... I’ve confessed to you. Now I shall be silent. .. Now I shall be like the madman in that story of Gogol’s ... silence... silence... Enter ANDREY, followed by FERAPONT. ANDREY (angrily). What do you want? I don’t understand. FERAPONT (in the doorway, unhurriedly), If T’ve said it once I've said it a dozen times, ANDREY. First of all you can address me as ‘sir’! I do have a tank, you know, I do happen to be a member of the Council. FERAPONT. Sir, it’s the firemen, sir, they're asking please may they take their carts down to the river through the garden. Otherwise they have to keep going round — it’s backbreaking. ANDREY. Very well. Tell them, very well. SISTERS FERAPONT goes, I'm sick of them. Where’s Olga? OLGA comes out from behind the screen. ‘You're the person I’m looking for. Give me the key to the cupboard, will you ~ I’ve lost mine. You know that little key you've got. OLGA silently gives him the key. IRINA goes to her own corner behind the screen. Pause. ACT THREE 65 ‘What an enormous fire, though! It’s begun to die down now. Dama it, he made me so cross, that man Ferapont. ‘That was a stupid thing I said to him... Making him call me sir. Pause. Why don’t you say something, then, Olya? Pause It’s time you stopped all this nonsense. It’s time you stopped pouting about like that for no earthly reason. You're here, Masha, Irina’s here. All right, then, let’s have it out in the open, once and for all. What have you three got against me? What is it? : OLGA. Stop it now, Andryusha. We’ll talk about it tomor- row. (Becoming upset.) What a torment this night has been! ANDREY (very embarrassed). Don’t get upset. I’m simply asking you, perfectly calmly: what is it you've got against me? Just tell me straight out, VERSHININ (off). Trum-tum-tum! MASHA (stand; up. Loudly). Tra-ta-tal (To oLGA:) Good. night, Olga, God bless you. (Goes behind the screen and kisses IRINA.) Sleep well ... Good night, Andrey. Do go away, now, they're exhausted .... you can have it all out tomorrow ... . (She goes.) | OLGA. That’s right, Andryusha — let’s postpone it till to- morrow ... (Goes to her corner behind the screen.) Time for bed. ANDREY. I'll just say what J have to say and then I'll go. Forthwith ... In the first place you've got something against Natasha, my wife — and this I've been aware of from the very day we got married. Natasha is a fine person ~ honest, straightforward, and upright ~ that’s my opin- ees:66 THREE SISTERS ion. I love and respect my wife - I respect her, you understand? — and I insist that others respect her, too. I say it again — she is an honest and upright person, and all Your little marks of displeasure — forgive me, but you're simply behaving like spoilt children, Pause. Secondly, you seem to be angry that I’m not a professor, that I’m not a scientist. But I serve in local government, I am a member of the local Council, and this service I con- sider just as sacred, just as elevated, as any service I could render to science. I am a member of the local Council and proud of it, if you wish to know... Pause. Thirdly . .. I have something else to say . .. I mortgaged the house without asking your permission ... To this I plead guilty, and indeed I ask you to forgive me . . . I was driven to it by my debts ... thirty-five thousand ... I don’t play cards now ~ I gave it up long since — but the main thing I can say in my own justification is that you're girls, and you get an annuity, whereas I had no .. . well, no income... Pause, RULYGIN (in the doorway). Masha’s not in here? (Alarmed.) ‘Where is she, then? That's odd . .. (He goes.) ANDREY. They're not listening. Natasha is an outstanding woman, someone of great integrity. (Walks about in silence, then stops.) When I got married 1 thought we were going to be happy ... all going to be happy ... But my God ... (Weeps.) My dear sisters, my own dear sisters, don’t believe me, don’t trust me... (He goes.) ACT THREE 67 KULYGIN (in the doorway, alarmed). Where's Masha? She isn’t in here, is she? Surprising thing. (He goes.) The sound of the alarm; an empty stage. IRINA (Behind the screens). Olyal Who's that banging on the floor? OLGA. That’s the doctor. He’s drunk. TRINA. No peace tonight. Pause. Olyal (Looks out from behind the screen.) Have you heard? ‘They're taking the brigade away from us, they're posting them somewhere far away. . It’s only rumours. mina, We al be left all on our own if they go... Olyal OLGA. What? nauna, Dear Olya, I do have a lot of respect for the baron, T do have a great regard for him, he’s a fine man, and I'l marry him, all right - only we must go to Moscow! We must ~ I implore you! There’s nowhere like Moscow in the whole wide world! We must go, Olyal We must! CURTAINAct Four The old garden of the Prozorovs? house. A long avenue of fir- trees, at the end of which can be seen the river. On the further bank of the river is the forest. Right ~ the verandah of the ‘house, with a table on which there are bottles and glasses; people have evidently just been drinking champagne. Noon. From time to time people go through the garden on their way from the road to the river; half a dozen soldiers go by in quick time. CHEBUTYRIN, in a genial mood which never abandons him throughout the act, is sitting in an armchair in the garden, waiting to be summoned. He is wearing a peaked military cap and carrying a stick. KULYGIN — wearing a decoration round ‘his neck and no moustache - IRINA, and TUSENBACH are ‘Standing on the verandah seeing off FEDOTIK and RODE, who are coming down the steps. Both officers are in marching order. TUSENBACH (embraces FEDOTIR). You're a good man. We've got on so well together. (Embraces RODE.) One more for you, then ... Goodbye, old friend. trINa. We'll see each other again. FEDOTIR. No, we shan’t. We never will. KULYGIN. Who knows? (Wipes his eyes and smiles.) Now here I am starting to cry. IRINA. We'll meet again one day. FEDOTIK. What ~ in ten, fifteen years time? We'll scarcely recognise each other by then. We'll greet each other like strangers. (Takes a photograph.) Keep still. . . One last one, RODE (embraces TUSENBACH). We'll never sce each other again ... (Kisses re1Na’s hand.) Thank you for every- thing, thank you! ACT FOUR 69 FEDOTIK (with irritation). Stand still, will you! TUSENBACH. God willing, we'll meet again. Write to us, though. Be sure to write. RoDE (looks round the garden). Goodbye, trees! (Calls.) Hup- Fup! Pause. Rove. Goodbys, echo! ; xovyens, Whe knows, you may get married over there in Poland . .. A little Polish wife to put her arms round you and whisper soft words in Polish! (Laughs.) ; FEDOTIK (glancing at his watch). We've less than an hour in hand. Solyony’s the only one from our battery who's travelling on the barge — the rest of us will be marching. ‘Three batteries are leaving today in battalion order, and another three tomorrow — then peace and quiet will descend upon the town. f TUSENBACH. Also frightful boredom. RODE (to KULYGIN). And your wife is where? KULYGIN. Masha? In the garden. FEDOTIK, We must say goodbye to her. ; RODE. Goodbye, then! We must go, or I shall start crying +++ (Quickly embraces TUSENBACH and KULYGIN, and kisses 1n1NA’s hand.) We've had a wonderful life here. . ¥EDUTIK (fo KULYGIN). Something for you to panne ‘me by... Anotebook with its own little pencil ... We'll g0 down to the river through here They depart, both gazing about them. > RoE (calls). Hup-bup! KULYGIN (calls). Goodbye! FEDOTIK and RODE meet MASHA away upstage and make their farewells. She goes off with them.n 7° THREE SISTERS ACT FOUR IRINA. They've gome ... (Sits down om the bottom step of the| IRINA. Doctor, dear, I’m terribly worried. You were there verandah.) yesterday, weren’t you, outside the theatre? Tell me what CHEBUTYKIN. They fo:got to say goodbye to me, happened. IRINA, Did you remember to say goodbye to them? cHEBUTYKIN, What happened? Nothing. Lot of nonsense. CHEBUTYKIN. No, I forgot, too, somehow. Anyway, I shall| (Reads his newspaper.) What does it matter? be seeing them again shortly — I'm off tomorrow. Yes ...| KULYGIN. The story I heard is that Solyony and the baron One more day left, that’s all. A year from now and I'll be| _ met yesterday in the street outside the theatre... getting my discharge. Then I'll come back here again and| TUSENBACH Do stop itl Really! (Flaps his hand and goes off live out my time with you ... Only one year left before} into the house.) my pension, one short year... (Puts his newspaper in his] KULYGIN. Anyway, that’s where it was . . . Solyony began pocket and takes out another one.) Y'm going to come and} to pick on the baron, and the baron lost patience and made stay with you and be a completely reformed character ...] some slighting remark... . I'm going to become such a quiet little ~ I don’t know —} CHEBUTYKIN. I don’t know. It’s all nonsense. proper little, decorous little fellow . KULYGIN. The tale is told of a teacher in a seminary who TRINA. You ought to reform, though, my dear. You really} wrote ‘Nonsense!’ on a pupil's essay. ‘Nonsense!’ he ‘ought to, one way or another. wrote, in good plain Russian. But the boy read it as CHEBUTYEIN, I know. I’m aware of that. (Sings quietly.) | ‘rengyxa’, He thought it was some kind of Latin word Ta-ta-ra boom-de-ay, He tried to read it in the Latin alphabet you Sit in my room all day (Laughs.) You can’t help laughing. Apparently Solyony’s KULYGIN. Incorrigible, the doctor! Quite incorrigible! in love with Irina, and he’s conceived a great hatred for CHEBUTYKIN. Yes, I should have come to you for lessons. the baron ... It’s quite understandable. Trina’s @ very ‘Made you my reform-master. nice girl. She’s like Masha, in fact ~ the same dreamy type. 11NA, Fyodor has shaved off his moustache. I can’t bear to} Only you have a more gentle nature, Irina. Though of ook! course Masha has a very nice nature, too. I love her ~ KULYGIN. Why ever not? Masha. CHEBUTYKIN, P'd tell you what you look like now, but it's VOICES (off, at the end of the garden). Hulloo! Hup-hup! beyond my powers of description. intwa (shudders). I don’t know, I'm jumping at the slightest KULYGIN. Come, come. This is the done thing, this is the | thing today. ‘modus vivendi. Our headmaster is clean-shaven, and I shaved, too, as soon as I became an inspector. No one likes it, but I don’t care. I’m content. With or without a ve got everything ready ~ I’m sending my things off ‘moustache, I’m equally content. (Sits.) after dinner. The baron and I are getting married tomor- row, and it’s tomorrow we're leaving for the brickworks. At the end of the garden ANDREY wheels the baby, asleep, ‘Then the very next day I shall be working in the school in its perambulator. there, and a new life will be starting. Somehow God will Pause.72 THREE SISTERS give me strength! When I was taking the examination to | bea teacher I actually cried for joy. Pause. ‘The cart will be coming for our things very shortly .. . KULYGIN, That's all very fine, but it’s 2 little head-in-the- clouds, somehow. Just a lot of ideas, not quite down to earth, You have my sincerest good wishes, though. CHEBUTYKIN (emotionally). My sweet and lovely girl, my Precious .. . Up and away you've gone ~ there’s no catch- ing you. I've dropped behind, like a bird heading south that’s got too old to fiy. Fly on, my loves, fly on, and God go with you! Pause. Mistake, you know, shaving your moustache off. KULYGIN. Don’t keep om about it! (Sighs.) So the troops will be off today, and everything will go back to the way it was. ‘They can say what they like ~ Masha is a fine up- standing woman, I love her very much, and I bless my lot in life ... Odd how much one person's lot in life can differ from another's ... In the excise department here there works one Kozyrev. He was at school with me, but he got himself thrown out of the fifth form because he simply could not grasp ut followed by a consecutive clause. Now he lives in terrible poverty ~ he’s a sick man into the bargain ~ and whenever I run into him I say, ‘Hello, con- secutive ut!” *Yes,? he says, ‘exactly, it’s all consecutive.’ And he coughs ... Whereas I’ve been lucky all my life, T’m a happy man, I even have the Order of St. Stanislaus, second class, and now I’m teaching others that famous consecutive ut in my turn. I’m a man of some intelligence, of course ~ more so than many ~ but that's not the secret, of happiness ACT FOUR 3 The sound of ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ being played on the piano inside the house. is 1 miwa. The Maiden’s Prayer. And tomorrow evening shan’t be hearing it - I shan’t be coming face to face with Protopopov... Pause. He’s sitting there in the drawing-room. He's even come today... ; ; KULYGIN. Hasn’t our headmistress arrived yet? TRINA. Not yet. She has been sent for. If only you knew how hard it’s been for me, living here alone without Olya She’s resident at the school, and she’s the head- mistress, so she’s busy all day, while I'm on my own, T'm bored, I’ve nothing to do, and I hate the ‘room I live in... So I simply decided ~ if I’m not destined to live in Moscow, then so be it. That’s my lot in life. There's nothing to be done about it . .. Everything is in the hands of God, that’s the truth of the matter. The baron proposed tome... So~I thought about it for a while, aad T made my mind to it. He’s a good, kind man ~ in fact it’s surprising how good and kind he is... And suddenly it was as if my heart had grown wings. My spirits rose, and Iwas seized again by the desire to work, to work . .. But then yesterday something happened, some mysterious thing came looming over me... CHEBUTYKIN. Renyza, As the boy said. Nonsense. NATASHA (out of the window), It’s our headmistress! KULYGIN. Our headmistress has arrived. Come on, then. He goes with 1R1NA into the house. CHEBUTYKIN (reads the paper, singing quietly). ‘Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay, Sit in my room all day...4 THREE SISTERS MASHA approaches; at the end of the garden ANDREY wheels the perambulator. MASHA, So he’s just quietly sitting here, is he? Just having a little sit. CHEBUTYKIN. What if I am? MASHA (sits). Nothing. .. Pause. You were in Jove with my mother? CHEBUTYKIN, Very much, MASHA, And she with you? CHERUTYKIN (after a pause). That I don’t remember. ‘MASHIA. Is my one here? We had a cook once who called her policeman that ~ my one. Is he here, my one? CHEBUTYKIN, Not yet. MASHA. When you snatch happiness in fits and starts and bits and pieces the way I have, and then lose it again the way Iam, you find yourself getting gradually coarser and more foul-tempered ... (Indicates her breast.) It boils up inside me here .. . (Looking at her brother ANDREY, toho is wheeling the perambulator.) Look at Andrey, our lovely brother... All our hopes have foundered. Thousands of people raised the great bell up, much toil and money were expended, then suddenly it fell and shattered. Suddenly, just like that, for no good reason, And so did Andrey... . ANDREY. When are they going to quieten down a bit in the | house? Such a row. CHEBUTYKIN. Won’t be long. (Looks at his warch.) I’ve got an old-fashioned striking watch . . . (Winds the watch, and it strikes.) The first, second, and fifth batteries are leaving on the dot of one... Pause. ACT FOUR 75 And me tomorrow. ANDREY. Forever? | . CHEBUTYKIN. Don’t know. Might come back in a year’s time. Though heaven knows . .. What does it matter? The sound of a harp and fiddle being played somewhere in the distance. ANDREY. The town’s going to be deserted. It’s like a candle being snuffed out. Pause. Something happened yesterday outside the theatre. Everyone's talking about it, but I don’t know what it was. CHEBUTYKIN. Nothing. A lot of nonsense. Solyony began picking on the baron, the baron flared up and insulted him, and the end of it wes that Solyony felt obliged to challenge him to a duel. (Looks at his watch.) About time for it now, I think ... Half-past twelve, in those woods you can see on the other side of the river ... Bang bang (CLaughs.) Solyony thinks he’s Lermontov ~ he even writes verse. Well, a joke’s a joke, but this will be his third duel. | MASHA. Will be whose third duel? CHEBUTYKIN. Solyony’s. ‘MasHA. What about the baron? | CHEBUTYKIN. What about the baron? Pause. MASHA. Everything’s going round and round inside my head. I say they ought to be stopped, though. He could wound the baron ~ or kill him, even. CHEBUTYKIN. The baron’s a nice chap, but one baron more ‘of less — what does it matter? Ler them go ahead. It doesn’t matter!6 THREE SISTERS A Bored (calling, from beyond the garden). Hulloo! Hup- up! CHEBUTYKIN. They're waiting. That’s Skvortzov shouting, One of the seconds. He's sitting in the boat. Pause. Anprey. If you want my opinion, taking part in a duel is ‘quite straightforwardly immoral. So is attending one, even as a doctor. CHEBUTYKIN. It only seems so... We’re not here, there’s nothing in the world, we don’t exist, we only seem to exist ... Anyway, what does it matter? MasHA. That’s right, talk, talk, talk, the whole day long .. (Makes a move to go.) It’s bad enough living in a climate like this — because it will be snowing before we know where we are— but to have to listen to these conversations into the bargain ... (Stopping.) I'm not going into the house — I can’t go in there . .. You’ll tell me when Ver- shinin arrives ... (Goes along the avenue.) The birds are fiying south already ... (Looks up.) Swans or geese ... ‘My loves, my happy loves . .. (She goes.) ANDREY. Our house is going to be deserted. The officers will have gone, you'll have gone, my sister will have got married, and I shall be left alone in the place. CHEBUTYRIN. What about your wife? Enter FERAPONT with some papers. ANDREY. My wife’s my wife. She's honest, she’s decent, she’s — yes ~ good-hearted. But at the same time there’s something in her that reduces her to the level of a little blind furry animal. She’s certainly not a human being, T’'m telling you all this because you're a friend, the only Person I can open my heart to, I love Natasha, it’s true, ‘but sometimes she seems to me amazingly squalid, and ACT FOUR 7 then I don’t know where I am ~ I can’t understand why I love her so, or at any rate did love her . cHEBUTYKIN (stands up). My friend, I’m leaving tomorrow = we may never see each other again. So here is my advice to you. Put on your cap, pick up your stick, and walk out of here . .. Walk out and keep walking, without so much as a backward glance. And the further you go the better. SOLYONY crosses the end of the garden with two other officers. Secing CHEBUTYKIN, he turns towards him, while the other officers continue on their way. SOLYONY. It’s time, doctor! Half-past twelve already. (Greets ANDREY.) CHEBUTYKIN. Coming. I’m sick of the lot of you. (To ANDREY:) Andryusha, if anyone wants me, tell them I'll be back directly . .. (Sighs.) Oh-ob-oh! ANDREY goes. SOLYONY. The peasant had no time to gasp Before he felt the bear’s hard clasp. (They move off together.) What’s all that groaning for, Grandpapa? cHeBUTYKIN. Mind your own business. SOLYONY. Fit and well, are we? CHEBUTYKIN (angrily), Fit as a flea. SOLYONY. There’s no need for Grandpapa to get excited. I ‘shan’t overdo it. I shall just wing him like a woodcock. (Takes out his scent and sprinkles it over his hands.) Vve used up a whole flasiful today, and still they smell. They smell like a corpse. Pause. Well, there we are . .. You remember Lermontov’s poem?B THREE SISTERS ‘Rebelliously he seeks the storm, As if in storms there promised peace...’ CHEBUTYKIN. That’s right, ‘The peasant had no time to gasp. Before he felt the bear’s hard clasp. (He goes with SOLYONy.) Vorces (calling, off). Hup-bup! Enter ANDREY and FERAPONT. FERAPONT. Will you sign the papers... ANDREY (irritably), Get away from me! Get away! I beg of you! (He goes with the perambulator.) FERAPONT. That's what papers are for, you know, to be signed. (Goes away upstage.) Enter 1RINA and TUSENBACH in a straw hat. KULYGIN crosses the stage. KULYGIN (calling). Hulloo, Masha, hulloo! TUSENBAGH. There, by the look of it, goes the only man in town who's glad the troops are leaving. IRINA. That’s understandable. Pause. Our town’s going to be deserted now, TUSENBACH (glancing at his watch). My love, I shall back directly. > My ive oe IRINA. Where are you going? TUSENBACH. I’ve got to go into town. I've got to... see some of my friends off. IRINA. You're not telling the truth . .. Nikolai, why are you so preoccupied today? Pause. ‘What happened yesterday outside the theatre? AcT FOUR 9 TUSENBACH (makes an impatient movement). In an hour 1 shall be back, and with you again. (Kisses her hands.) My precious .. . (Gazes into her face.) Five years have gone by now since I first loved you, and still I can’t get used to it, still you seem to grow more beautiful. Your hair... your eyes ... Tomorrow I’m going to take you away, we're going to work, we're going to be rich, all my dreams will come true. You're going to be happy. Only one thing wrong with it all - just one. You don’t love mel IRINA. That's not within my control. I'll be your wife, Tl be your loyal and submissive wife, but there’s no love there, and there’s nothing I can do about that. (Weeps.) Not once in my life have I ever been in love! Oh, I've dreamt so much about love ~ dreamt about it for so long now, night and day. But my heart is like some priceless grand piano that’s been locked, and the key to it lost. Pause. ‘You look anxious. ‘TUSENBACH. I didn’t sleep all night. There’s nothing ter- rible in my life, nothing I should be afraid of. It’s just this lost Key that torments me and gives me sleepless nights . .. Say something to me. Pause. Say something... IRINA, What? Say what? What is there to say? TUSENBACK. Anything. TRINA. Stop, stop! Pause. TUSENBACH. Ridiculous how such silly little things can sometimes take on a sudden importance in your life, for no reason you can put your finger on. You laugh at them80 THREE SISTERS just as you always did, you think how absurd they are, and yet you go along with it all and feel you haven’t the strength to stop. Oh, let’s not talk about it! I feel cheerful. T look at these fir-trees, at these maples and birches, and it’s as if I’m seeing them for the first time in my life. And everything’s looking at me — with curiosity - waiting. Such lovely trees, and really, such a lovely life there ought to be around them! vorces (off). Hulloo! Hup-hup! TUSENBACH, I must go, it’s past time ... Here’s a tree that’s withered up, yet still it sways in the wind with the others. It will be like that with me, I think, if I should die, I shall still have a hand in life one way or another. Goodbye, my love ... (Kisses her hands.) Those papers you gave me are on the table in my room, underneath the calendar. rrtNA. Pll come with you. TUSENBACH (in alarm). No, no! (Quickly goes, then stops in the avenue.) Trine! IRINA. What? TUSENBACH (not knowing what 10 say), I didn’t have any coffee this morning. Will you tell them to make me some +++ (Quickly goes off.) IRINA stands lost in her own thoughts, then goes away upstage and sits on the swing, Enter ANDREY with the perambulator. FERAPONT appears. FERAPONT. Look, they're not my papers, you know - they’re official. It wasn’t me that thought them up. ANDREY. Oh, where is ity where has it gone, that past of mine, when I was young and clever and light of heart, when I thought and reasoned elegantly, when present and future were both alight with hope? Why, when we have still scarcely begun to live, do we become dull and grey AcT FOUR 81 and uninteresting and idle and indifferent and useless and unhappy ...? Our town has been here for two hundred years, it’s got a hundred thousand inhabitants, and not ‘one of them who hasn’t been exactly like all the others — rnot ons, past or present, who's been ready to die for a cause —not one scholar, not one artist, nobody even faintly remarkable, who might have aroused envy, or some pas- sionate desire to emulate him .. . They've just eaten, and drunk, and slept, and then died ... The next lot have been born, and they in their turn have eaten, drunk, slept, and then, to avoid being stupefied by boredom, they've introduced a little variety into their lives by vile scandal- mongering end vodka and cards and quibbling lawsuits; and the wives have deceived their husbands, while the husbands have put on a lying show of seeing nothing and hearing nothing; and irresistibly this sordid influence has crushed the children, and the divine spark within them has guttered out, and they have become the same miser- able, indistinguishable corpses as their mothers and fathers ... (To FERAPONT, angrily.) What do you want? PERAPONT. What? Oh, sign the papers. ANDRBY. I'm sick of the sight of you. FERAPONT (handing him the papers). The doorman at the revenue office was telling me just now... In Petersburg, Jast winter by all accounts, he said, they had two hundred degrees of frost. anprey. The present is loathsome, but then when I think about the future — well, that’s another story. Itall becomes so easy and spacious; and in the distance there’s @ gleam of light - I can see freedom, I can see me and my children being freed from idleness, from roast goose and cabbage, from little naps after dinner, from ignoble sponging off others...82 THREE SISTERS FERAPONT. Two thousand people froze to death, by all accounts. Everyone was terrified, he said. Bither in Petersburg or in Moscow — I can’t remember. ANDREY (seized by render feeling). My dear sist - erful sisters! (Through his tears.) Masha, my sieter NaTASHA (ar the window). Who's that talking 30 loudly out here? Is it you, Andryusha? You'll wake Sofochka. II ne aut pas faire du bruit, la Sophie est dormée déja. Vous é1es aa (Getting angry.) If you want to talk, give the per- r to someone else. Fé ambulator from the master.” Pee FERAPONT. Take the perambulator, right. (Takes it. ANDREY (embarrassed). I'm talking quietly. > NATASHA (inside the window, petting her baby boy), Bobik! Isn’t Bobik a rascal now! Isn’t Bobik a naughty boy! ana Glancng at a Papers). All right, P'll look through 1m and sign whatever's necessary, and them back to the Council... sm RE ANDREY goes into the house, reading the papers. FERA- PONT pushes the perambulator down t0 the end of the garden. NATASHA (Inside the window). What’s mama called, then, Bobik? There’s a good boy! Who's that, the K i then? That's Auntie Olya. Say, ‘Hello, Auntie Olya!’ 7 Enter swo wandering musicians, a man and a girl, playi Sy girl, playi Fiddle and harp. VERSHINTN, OLGA, and ANFISA cone out of the house and listen to chem for a moment in silence IRINA approaches. : OLGA. Our garden is like a public highway — ‘ people come walking through, they come riding through. N: i these people something . .. ann ACT FOUR 83 ANFISA (gives the musicians something). Off you go, then, my dears, and God go with you. The musicians bow and go off. Poor wretches. It’s not a full stomach makes them play. (To 1R1NA:) Hello, Irishal (Kisses her.) Eh, child, but I’m having the time of my life! At the school, my precious, in the official Government living quarters, along with Oly- ushka. Appointed to me by the Lord in the fullness of my years. Sinner that I am, in all my born days I’ve never lived so . .. Great big apartment it is, and me with a room and a bed all to myself. And everything official from the Government. I wake up in the night - and oh my Lord, oh Mother of God, there’s not a happier soul in all the world! VERSHININ (glances at his watch. To OLGA). We shall be leaving directly. It’s time for me to go. Pause. I should like to wish you all the best ... Where’s Masha? TRINA. She’s somewhere in the garden. I’ll go and look for her. VERSHININ. If you'd be so kind. I am pressed for time. ANFISA. I’ll go and look as well. (Calls.) Mashenka, bulloo! (Goes off with 1RINA to the end of the garden.) Hulloo-ool Hulloo-ool VERSHININ, All things come to an end sooner or later. Now it’s our turn to part. (Looks at his watch.) The town has been giving us something in the style of a luncheon. We drank champagne, the mayor made a speech. I sat there eating and listening, but in spirit I was here, with all of you ... (Looks round the garden.) I’ve grown accustomed to you all. OLGA. Shall we ever see each other again?84 VERSHININ, Probably not, THREE SISTERS Pause, ‘My wife and the two girls will stay on here for a couple of ‘months. Please, if anything should happen, if anything should be needed .. OLGA. Yes, yes, of course. Rest assured, Pause. By tomorrow there won't be a soldier left in town. It will all have become nothing but a memory. And for us of [ course, a new life will be commencing, Pause, Nothing works out as we would have it. I didn't want to be headmistress, but headmistress T've nonetheless become. So there’s no question of my living in Moscow... VERSHININ. Anyway ... Thank you for everything ... Forgive me for anything I may have done wrong ... I've talked a great deal ~ a very great deal, I'm afraid. Forgive me for that, too, and remember me kindly. OLGA (wipes her eyes). Where has Masha got to? VERSHININ, What else can I say to wish you farewell? What is there to philosophise about . ..? Laughs.) Life is hard, To many of us it appears blank and hopeless, but we have and brighter. And by all appearances the time is not far off when it will be quite cloudless. (Looks at his watch.) ‘Time for me to be going, it really is! In days gone by the human race kept itself busy with wars. It filled out its life with campaigns and raids and conquests. But all that now hhas become a thing of the past, leaving behind 2 vast empty space which we for the time being lack the means 85 to fill. But mankind seeks, and will of course find. Ah, speed the day! Pause, if i lemented I tell you, if human industry could be compl : by education, and education by industry. (Looks at his watch.) Time for me to go, though... . LGA, Here she comes. ACT FOUR Enter MASHA. VERSHININ. I’ve come to say goodbye... OLGA goes off a little to one side so as not to hinder their Jarewells. ‘MASHA (ooking into his face). Goodbye ... my love... A prolonged kiss. oLca. Come on, now... MASHA sobs bitterly. - my love, yes . .. Don’t forget! Let me go... I's time. . (To 0LGA:) Take her, please, it really is ... time ... I'm late already ... (Shaken, he hisses OLGaA’s hands, then once again embraces MASHA, and icky goes off.) . ores. Come ‘on, Masha! Stop it, now, my precious... . VERSHININ, Write tome. Enter KULYGIN. KULYGIN (in embarrassment). Never mind, let her cry, let her cry & My dear Masha, my goad, Rina Masha You're my wife, and I’m happy no matter what ... I’m not complaining, I’m not reproaching you . . . Olga can be my witness to that . .. We'll go back to the same old way86 of life we had before, and not a word hint... MASHA (restraining her sobs). On a far sea shore an oak tree grows, And from it hangs a golden chain... And from it hangs a golden chain... I’m going out of my mind ... On a far sea shore... an oak tree grows... LGA. Calm down, now, Masha ... Calm down ... Give her some water, MASHA. D've stopped crying, KULYGIN, She’s stopped crying .. kind... THREE SISTERS will I breathe, not a + She’s good, she’s The sound of a shot, dull and distant. MASHA. On a far sea shore an oak tree grows, And from it hangs a golden chain ... A golden cat forever goes... A talking cat... Tm getting mixed up ... (Drinks water.) A failed life ... Nothing left now that I want ... I shalt calm down ina moment . ... Not that it matters... What is all this about 4 far sea shore? Why have I got this phrase in my head? ‘My thoughts are getting all mixed up. Enter tRNA. LGA. Calm down, Masha. There’s a good girl... inside, shall we? MASHA (angrily). I’m not going in there. (Sobs, but then immediately stops.) I’ve stopped going into that house — T’m not going in now . IRINA. Let’s all sit down together for a moment, even if we don’t say anything. I am leaving tomorrow, after all... Pause, Let’s go ACT FOUR 87 KULYGIN. Look what I took away from some little chap in the third form yesterday . .. (Puts on a beard complete with moustache.) 1 look like the German master ... (Laughs.) Don't I? You have to laugh at some of these boys, MASHA. You do look like that German. OLGA (laughs). Yes, you do. MASHA weeps. irtna. Come on, Masha, KULYGIN. Very like him... Enter NATASHA. NATASHA (to the maid). What is it? Protopopov will sit with Sofochka for a bit, and Andrey can push Bobik. What a business children are... (To 1RINA:) Irina, you're leaving: tomorrow ~ it’s such a shame, Stay a few more days, anyway, why don’t you. (Sees KULYGIN and cries out.) KULYGIN laughs and takes off the beard. Honestly! You gave me a fright! (To 1R1Na:) I've got used to having you around. Don’t think I’m going to find it ‘easy to part with you. I shall have Andrey and that violin of his moved into your room - he can scrape away in there to his heart's content! And then in his old room we'll put Sofochka. She really is an amazing child! Such a poppet! Today she looked at me with eyes like this, and — ‘Mama!’ KULYGIN. An admirable child, it must be said. NATASHA. So tomorrow I shall be all on my own here. (Sighs.) The first thing I’m going to do is to have that avenue of fir-trees cut down, and then this maple here .. . Tt looks such a sight in the evening ... (To 1e1NA:) My love, that belt doesn’t suit you at all... Terrible taste... ‘You need something a little brighter. And all round here88 THREE SISTERS T’'m going to have flowers planted ~ flowers and more flowers ~ and we shall have the scent... (Sharply.) Why is there a fork lying about on the seat out here? (Goes into the te To the MatD.) Why is there a fork lying about on the seat out here, I want to know! (Shouts. i KULYGIN, She's off! aaa A band, off, plays a march. They all listen, OLGA. They’re leaving. Enter CHEBUTYRIN. MASHA. Our men... our ones. So~ fare them welll (To her +usband.) We must go home ... Where are my hat and shawl? kuLyGrN, I put them inside ... Pll go and fetch the (Goes into the house.) = OLGA. That’s right, we can all go home now. It’s time to be moving. CHEBUTYKIN, Olga Sergeyevnal ouGa. What? Pause, What? CHEBUTYKIN. Nothing ... I don’t know how to say it to you.. - Whispers in her ear.) OLGA (frightened). Is not possible! CHEBUTYKIN. I know... It’s a nasty business . . . Tve had enough, I don’t want to say any more... (With irritation Anyway, what does it matter? ae) Masia, What's happened? OLGA (puts her arms round 1R1NA). A terrible day this is My dear, I don’t know how to say it to you... IRINA. What? Tell me quickly, somebody ~ what is it ea, Wan? Tell eo ly ~ what is it? For ACT FOUR 89 CHEBUTYKIN. There’s been a duel. The baron was killed... IRINA (weeps quietly). I knew it, I knew it CHEBUTYKIN (sits on a garden seat upstage). 've had enough ... (Takes a newspaper out of his pocket.) Let them have their little cry... (Sings quietly.) ‘Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay, Sit in my room all day ... Doesn't matter, does it? The three sisters stand huddled against each other. MASHA. Oh, but listen to the band! They're leaving us. One hhas left us altogether — left us forever. We shall remain behind, on our own, to start our life again. We have to live ... We have to live... TRINA (puts her head on OLGA’s breast). A time will come when people will understand what it was all for, what the purpose was of all this suffering, and what was hidden. from us will be hidden no more. In the meantime, though, ‘we have to live... we have to work, that’s all, we have to work! Tomorrow I shall go on my way alone. I shall take: up my teaching post, and devote my life to those who may: have some use for jt. It’s autumn now. Soon winter will come and bring the first falls of snow, and I shall be working, I shall be working ... OLGA (embraces both her sisters). The band plays so bravely = you feel you want to livel Merciful God! Time will pass, and we shall depart forever. We shall be forgotten = our faces, our voices, even how many of us there were. But our sufferings will turn to joy for those who live after us. Peace and happiness will dwell on earth, and people living now will be blessed and spoken well of. Dear sisters, our life is not ended yet. We shall live!90 THREE SISTERS And the band plays so bravely, so joyfully — another moment, you feel, and we shall know why we live and Why Wwe suffer ... If only we could know, if only we could know! The music grows quieter and quieter. kULYGIN, smiling cheerfully, brings Maswa’s hat and shawl. ANDREL Pushes the perambulator with BOBIK sitting in it, CHEBUTYRIN (sings quietly). Ta-ra ... ra... boom-de-ay +++ Sit in my room all day ... (Reads his newspaper.) Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, OLGA. If only we could know, if only we could know! CURTAIN ‘Methuen’'s Modern Plays Aigo Beste The Lark bos Seveant Musgrave’ Armsvore Last Gosbc Armiror's Last Gooch The Busnes of Good Goverment The Royal Pardon The How Rites Up The land of the Mighey Vandatews Fly Shabesear the Sadist Jean Anouilh John Arden Joho Arden and ‘Margaretta D'Arcy Bremen Coffee, My Foot My Tutor, ‘Stallerhof. The Quare Fellow The Hostage Richard's Cork Leg ‘A-A-Americal and Stone ‘Saved Narrow Road to the Deep North The Pope's Wedding Lear The Sea Bingo The Fool and We Come to the River Theatre Poems and Songs The Bundle The Woman The Worlds with The Activists Papers Restoration and The Gat ‘Swonmer and Fables Mother Courage and Her Children The Caucasian Chalh Circle The Good Person of Seechaan The Lie of Galite The Threepenny Opera ‘Saint Joan of the Stockyards The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui The Mother ‘Mr Puntila and His Man Me The Measures Taken and other Lehrsttcke The Days of the Commune Bertolt Brecht