Selected plays

belong to the Orthodox Church and am just as Russian as you. There is very little of the German left in me -- nothing, perhaps, but the patience and obstinacy with which I bore you. I walk you home every evening.

IRINA. How tired I am!

TUZENBAKH. And every day I'll come to the telegraph office and walk you home. I'll do it for ten years, for twenty years, till you drive me away . . . [Seeing MASHA and VERSHININ, delightedly] Oh, it's you! How are you?

IRINA. Well, I'm home at last. [To MASHA] A lady came just now to telegraph to her brother in Saratov that her son died today, and she couldn't think of the address. So she sent it without an address -- simply to Saratov. She was crying. And I was rude to her for no reason. Told her I had no time to waste. It was so stupid. Are the Carnival people coming to-night?

MASHA. Yes.

IRINA [sits down in an arm-chair]. I must rest. I'm tired.

TUZENBAKH [with a smile]. When you come from the office you seem so young, so forlorn . . . [a pause].

IRINA. I'm tired. No, I don't like telegraph work, I don't like it.

MASHA. You've grown thinner . . . [whistles]. And you look younger, rather like a boy in the face.

TUZENBAKH. That's the way she does her hair.

IRINA. I must find some other job, this does not suit me. What I so longed for, what I dreamed of is the very thing that it's lacking in, . . . It is work without poetry, without meaning. . . . [a knock on the floor]. There's the doctor knocking. . . . [To TUZENBAKH] Knock back, dear. . . . I can't. . . . I am tired.

[TUZENBAKH knocks on the floor.]

IRINA. He will come directly. We ought to do something about it. The doctor and our Andrey were at the Club yesterday and they lost again. I am told Andrey lost two hundred roubles.

MASHA. [indifferently]. Well, it can't be helped now.

IRINA. Two weeks ago he lost money, in December he lost money. I wish he'd hurry up and lose everything, then perhaps we'd go away from this town. My God, every night I dream of Moscow, it's perfect madness [laughs]. We'll move there in June and there's still left February, March, April, May . . . almost half a year.

MASHA. The only thing is Natasha must not hear of his losses.

IRINA. I don't suppose she cares.

[CHEBUTYKIN, who has only just got off his bed -- he has been resting after dinner -- comes into the dining-room combing his beard, then sits down to the table and takes a newspaper out of his pocket.]

MASHA. Here he is . . . has he paid his rent?

IRINA [laughs]. No. Not a kopek for eight months. Evidently he's forgotten.

MASHA [laughs]. How gravely he sits. [They all laugh; a pause.]

IRINA. Why are you so quiet, Alexandr Ignatyevitch?

VERSHININ. I don't know. I'm longing for tea. I'd give half my life for a glass of tea. I've had nothing to eat since the morning.

CHEBUTYKIN. Irina Sergeyevna!