for your hospitality: lit., 'for your bread and salt'
trace horse: In the Russian troika, or cart with three horses, the two outside horses are called trace horses
* * *
The Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov, 1901
Based on the copy-text Plays by Anton Tchekov, translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett, New York, Macmillan, 1916, also available in early Modern Library editions. Scanned by A. S. Man. Translation revised and notes added 1998 by James Rusk and A. S. Man. Some obsolete spelling and idioms have been changed.
The action takes place in a provincial town. Act I
In the house of the PROZOROVS. A drawing-room with columns beyond which a large room is visible. Mid-day; it is bright and sunny. The table in the farther room is being laid for lunch.
OLGA, in the dark blue uniform of a high-school teacher, is correcting exercise books, at times standing still and then walking up and down; MASHA, in a black dress, with her hat on her knee, is reading a book; IRINA, in a white dress, is standing plunged in thought.
OLGA. Father died just a year ago, on this very day -- the fifth of May, your name-day, Irina. It was very cold, snow was falling. I felt as though I should not live through it; you lay fainting as though you were dead. But now a year has passed and we can think of it calmly; you are already in a white dress, your face is radiant. [The clock strikes twelve.] The clock was striking then too [a pause]. I remember the band playing and the firing at the cemetery as they carried the coffin. Though he was a general in command of a brigade, yet there weren't many people there. It was raining, though. Heavy rain and snow.
IRINA. Why recall it!
[BARON TUZENBAKH, CHEBUTYKIN and SOLYONY appear near the table in the dining-room, beyond the columns.]
OLGA. It is warm today, we can have the windows open, but the birches are not in leaf yet. Father was given his brigade and came here with us from Moscow eleven years ago and I remember distinctly that in Moscow at this time, at the beginning of May, everything was already in flower; it was warm, and everything was bathed in sunshine. It's eleven years ago, and yet I remember it all as though we had left it yesterday. Oh, dear! I woke up this morning, I saw a blaze of sunshine. I saw the spring, and joy stirred in my heart. I had a passionate longing to be back at home again!
CHEBUTYKIN. The devil it is!
TUZENBAKH. Of course, it's nonsense.
[MASHA, brooding over a book, softly whistles a song.]
OLGA. Don't whistle, Masha. How can you! [a pause] Being all day in school and then at my lessons till the evening gives me a perpetual headache and thoughts as gloomy as though I were old. And really these four years that I have been at the high-school I have felt my strength and my youth oozing away from me every day. And only one yearning grows stronger and stronger. . . .
IRINA. To go back to Moscow. To sell the house, to make an end of everything here, and off to Moscow. . . .
OLGA. Yes! To Moscow, and quickly.
[CHEBUTYKIN and TUZENBAKH laugh.]
IRINA. Andrey will probably be a professor, he
