Selected plays

MASHA. Home.

IRINA. That's odd! . . .

TUZENBAKH. To walk out on a name-day party!

MASHA. Never mind. . . . I'll come in the evening. Good-bye, my darling. . . [kisses IRINA]. Once again I wish you, be well and happy. In old days, when Father was alive, we always had thirty or forty officers here on name-days; it was noisy, but today there's only a man and a half, and it's as still as the desert. . . . I'll go. . . . I've got the blues today, I'm feeling glum, so don't you mind what I say [laughing through her tears]. We'll talk some other time, and so for now good-bye, darling, I'm going. . . .

IRINA [discontentedly]. Oh, how tiresome you are. . . .

OLGA [with tears]. I understand you, Masha.

SOLYONY. If a man philosophises, there will be philosophy or sophistry, anyway, but if a woman philosophises, or two do it, then it will be so much twiddle-twaddle!

MASHA. What do you mean to say by that, you terrible person?

SOLYONY. Nothing. He had not time to say 'alack," before the bear was on his back [a pause].

MASHA [to OLGA, angrily]. Don't blubber!

[Enter ANFISA and FERAPONT carrying a cake.]

ANFISA. This way, my good man. Come in, your boots are clean. [To IRINA] From the District Council, from Mihail Ivanitch Protopopov. . . . A cake.

IRINA. Thanks. Thank him [takes the cake].

FERAPONT. What?

IRINA [more loudly]. Thank him from me!

OLGA. Nanny dear, give him something to eat. Ferapont, go along, they will give you something to eat.

FERAPONT. Eh?

ANFISA. Come along, Ferapont Spiridonitch, my good soul, come along. . . [goes out with FERAPONT].

MASHA. I don't like that Protopopov, that Mihail Potapitch or Ivanitch. He ought not to be invited.

IRINA. I didn't invite him.

MASHA. That's a good thing.

[Enter CHEBUTYKIN, followed by an orderly with a silver samovar; a hum of surprise and displeasure.]

OLGA [putting her hands over her face]. A samovar! How awful! [Goes out to the table in the dining-room.]

IRINA. My dear Ivan Romanitch, what are you thinking about!

TUZENBAKH [laughs]. I warned you!

MASHA. Ivan Romanitch, you really have no conscience!

CHEBUTYKIN. My dear girls, my darlings, you are all that I have, you are the most precious treasures I have on earth. I shall soon be sixty, I am an old man, alone in the world, a useless old man. . . . There is nothing good in me, except my love for you, and if it were not for you, I