The Cherry Orchard

a little oftener. How grey your lives are! How much nonsense you talk. Lopahin That’s true. One may say honestly, we live a fool’s life pause. My father was a peasant, an idiot; he knew nothing and taught me nothing, only beat me when he was drunk, and always with his stick. In reality I am just such another blockhead and idiot. I’ve learnt nothing properly. I write a wretched hand. I write so that I feel ashamed before folks, like a pig. Lyubov You ought to get married, my dear fellow. Lopahin Yes⁠ ⁠… that’s true. Lyubov You should marry our Varya, she’s a good girl. Lopahin Yes. Lyubov She’s a good-natured girl, she’s busy all day long, and what’s more, she loves you. And you have liked her for ever so long. Lopahin Well? I’m not against it.⁠ ⁠… She’s a good girl pause. Gaev I’ve been offered a place in the bank: 6,000 roubles a year. Did you know? Lyubov You would never do for that! You must stay as you are. Enter Firs with overcoat. Firs Put it on, sir, it’s damp. Gaev Putting it on. You bother me, old fellow. Firs You can’t go on like this. You went away in the morning without leaving word looks him over. Lyubov You look older, Firs! Firs What is your pleasure? Lopahin You look older, she said. Firs I’ve had a long life. They were arranging my wedding before your papa was born⁠ ⁠… laughs. I was the head footman before the emancipation came. I wouldn’t consent to be set free then; I stayed on with the old master⁠ ⁠… a pause. I remember what rejoicings they made and didn’t know themselves what they were rejoicing over. Lopahin Those were fine old times. There was flogging anyway. Firs Not hearing. To be sure! The peasants knew their place, and the masters knew theirs; but now they’re all at sixes and sevens, there’s no making it out. Gaev Hold your tongue, Firs. I must go to town tomorrow. I have been promised an introduction to a general, who might let us have a loan. Lopahin You won’t bring that off. And you won’t pay your arrears, you may rest assured of that. Lyubov That’s all his nonsense. There is no such general. Enter Trofimov, Anya and Varya. Gaev Here come our girls. Anya There’s mamma on the seat. Lyubov Tenderly. Come here, come along. My darlings! Embraces Anya and Varya. If you only knew how I love you both. Sit beside me, there, like that. All sit down. Lopahin Our perpetual student is always with the young ladies. Trofimov That’s not your business. Lopahin He’ll soon be fifty, and he’s still a student. Trofimov Drop your idiotic jokes. Lopahin Why are you so cross, you queer fish? Trofimov Oh, don’t persist! Lopahin Laughs. Allow me to ask you what’s your idea of me? Trofimov I’ll tell you my idea of you, Yermolay Alexeyevitch: you are a rich man, you’ll soon be a millionaire. Well, just as in the economy of nature a wild beast is of use, who devours everything that comes in his way, so you too have your use. All laugh. Varya Better tell us something about the planets, Petya. Lyubov No, let us go on with the conversation we had yesterday. Trofimov What was it about? Gaev About pride. Trofimov We had a long conversation yesterday, but we came to no conclusion. In pride, in your sense of it, there is something mystical. Perhaps you are right from your point of view; but if one looks at it simply, without subtlety, what sort of pride can there be, what sense is there in it, if man in his physiological formation is very imperfect, if in the immense majority of cases he is coarse, dull-witted, profoundly unhappy? One must give up glorification of self. One should work, and nothing else. Gaev One must die in any case. Trofimov Who knows? And what does it mean⁠—dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive. Lyubov How clever you are, Petya! Lopahin Ironically. Fearfully clever! Trofimov Humanity progresses, perfecting its powers. Everything that is beyond its ken now will one day become familiar and comprehensible; only we must work, we must with all our powers aid the seeker after truth. Here among us in Russia the workers are few in number as yet. The vast majority of the intellectual people I know, seek nothing, do nothing, are not fit as yet for work of any kind. They call themselves intellectual, but they treat their servants as inferiors, behave to the peasants as though they were animals, learn little, read nothing seriously, do practically nothing, only talk about science and know very little about art. They are all serious people, they all have severe faces, they all talk of weighty matters and air their theories, and yet the vast majority of us⁠—ninety-nine percent⁠—live like savages, at the least thing fly to blows and abuse, eat piggishly, sleep in filth and stuffiness, bugs everywhere, stench and damp and moral impurity. And it’s clear all our fine talk is only to divert our attention and other people’s. Show me where to find the crèches there’s so much talk about, and the reading-rooms? They only exist in novels: in real life there are none of them. There is nothing but filth and vulgarity and Asiatic apathy. I fear and dislike very serious faces. I’m afraid of serious conversations. We should do better to be silent. Lopahin You know, I get up at five o’clock in the morning, and I work from morning to night; and I’ve money, my own and other people’s, always passing through my hands, and I see what people are made of all round me. One has only to begin to do anything to see how few honest, decent people there are. Sometimes when I lie awake at night, I think: “Oh! Lord, thou hast given us immense forests, boundless plains, the widest horizons, and living here we ourselves ought really to be giants.”