HELENA. Yes, you promised to show me what you had been doing. Have you got time now?
ASTROV. Of course I have!
He lays the portfolio on the table, takes out a sketch and fastens it to the table with thumb-tacks.
ASTROV. Where were you born?
HELENA. [Helping him] In St. Petersburg.
ASTROV. And educated?
HELENA. At the Conservatory there.
ASTROV. Then this probably won't interest you.
HELENA. Oh, why not? It's true I don't know country life very well, but I've read a great deal about it.
ASTROV. I have my own desk there in Ivan's room. When I'm absolutely too exhausted to go on I drop everything and rush over here to forget myself in this work for an hour or two. Ivan and Miss Sonya sit rattling at their counting-boards, the cricket chirps, and I sit beside them and paint, feeling warm and peaceful. But I don't permit myself this luxury very often, only once a month. [Pointing to the picture] Look there! That is a map of our district as it was fifty years ago. The green tints, both dark and light, represent forests. Half the map, as you see, is covered with it. Where the green is striped with red the forests were inhabited by elk and wild goats. Here on this lake, lived great flocks of swans and geese and ducks; as the peasants say, there was a power of birds of every kind. Thick as clouds in the sky. Beside the hamlets and villages, you see, I have dotted down here and there the various settlements, farms, hermit's caves, and water-mills. This country carried a great many cattle and horses, as you can see by the quantity of blue paint. For instance, see how thickly it lies in this part; there were great herds of them here, and every house had three horses. [A pause] Now, look lower down. This is the district as it was twenty-five years ago. Only a third of the map is green now with forests. There are still some elk, but there are no goats left. The blue paint is lighter, and so on, and so on. Now we come to the third part; our country as it appears today. We still see spots of green, but not much. The elk, the swans, the wood-grouse have disappeared. It is, on the whole, the picture of a regular and slow decline which it will evidently only take about ten or fifteen more years to complete. You may perhaps object that it is the march of progress, that the old order must give place to the new, and you might be right if roads and railways had been run through these ruined woods, or if factories and schools had taken their place. The people then would have become better educated and healthier and richer, but as it is, we have nothing of the sort. We have the same swamps and mosquitoes; the same disease and want; the typhoid, the diphtheria, the burning villages. We are confronted by the degradation of our country, brought on by the fierce struggle for existence of the human race. It is the consequence of the ignorance and unconsciousness of starving, shivering, sick humanity that, to save its children, instinctively snatches at everything that can warm it and still its hunger. So it destroys everything it can lay its hands on, without a thought for the morrow. And almost everything has gone, and nothing has been created to take its place. [Coldly] But I see by your face that you're bored.
HELENA. I know so little about such things!
ASTROV. There is nothing to know. It simply isn't interesting to you, that's all.
HELENA. Frankly, my thoughts were elsewhere. Forgive me! I want to submit you to a little examination, but I'm embarrassed and don't know how to begin.
