Selected plays

Do you remember, Olya, they used to talk of the 'love-sick major'? You were a lieutenant at that time and were in love, and for some reason everyone called you major to tease you. . . .

VERSHININ [laughs]. Yes, yes. . . . The love-sick major, that was it.

MASHA. You only had a moustache then. . . . Oh, how much older you look! [through tears] how much older!

VERSHININ. Yes, when I was called the love-sick major I was young, I was in love. Now it's very different.

OLGA. But you haven't a single grey hair. You've grown older but you're not old.

VERSHININ. I'm in my forty-third year, though. Is it long since you left Moscow?

IRINA. Eleven years. But why are you crying, Masha, you foolish girl?. . . [through her tears] I shall cry too. . . .

MASHA. I'm all right. And in which street did you live?

VERSHININ. In Old Basmannaya.

OLGA. And that's where we lived too. . . .

VERSHININ. At one time I lived in Nyemetsky Street. I used to go from there to the Red Barracks. There is a gloomy-looking bridge on the way, where the water makes a noise. It makes a lonely man feel melancholy [a pause]. And here what a broad, splendid river! A marvellous river!

OLGA. Yes, but it is cold. It's cold here and there are mosquitoes. . . .

VERSHININ. How can you! You've such a splendid healthy Russian climate here. Forest, river. . . and birches here too. Charming, modest birches, I love them better than any other trees. It's nice to live here. The only strange thing is that the railway station is fifteen miles away. . . . And no one knows why it's so.

SOLYONY. I know why it is. [They all look at him.] Because if the station had been near it would not have been so far, and if it is far, it's because it's not near.

[An awkward silence.]

TUZENBAKH. He's fond of his joke, Vassily Vassilyevitch.

OLGA. Now I recall you, too. I remember.

VERSHININ. I knew your mother.

CHEBUTYKIN. She was a fine woman, the Kingdom of Heaven be hers.

IRINA. Mother is buried in Moscow.

OLGA. In the Novo-Dyevitchy. . . .

MASHA. Would you believe it, I'm already beginning to forget her face. So people won't remember us either; they'll forget us.

VERSHININ. Yes. They'll forget us. Such is our fate, there is no help for it. What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten or will seem unimportant [a pause]. And it's curious that we can't possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem petty and ridiculous. Didn't the discoveries of Copernicus or Columbus, let's say, seem useless and ridiculous at first, while the nonsensical writings of some fool seemed true? And it may be that our present life, which we accept so readily, will in time seem strange, inconvenient, stupid, not clean enough, perhaps even sinful. . . .

TUZENBAKH. Who knows? Perhaps our age will be