Selected plays

alone, but to us four! He ought to know that, if he's a decent man.

KULYGIN. Why do you want to bother about it, Masha? What's got into you? Andryusha is in debt all round, so there it is.

MASHA. It's revolting, anyway [lies down].

KULYGIN. We're not poor. I work -- I go to the high-school, and then I give private lessons, . . . I do my duty. . . . There's no nonsense about me. Omnia mea mecum porto, as the saying is.

MASHA. I want nothing, but it's the injustice that revolts me [a pause]. Go, Fyodor.

KULYGIN [kisses her]. You're tired, rest for half an hour, and I'll sit and wait for you. . . . Sleep . . . [goes]. I'm content, I'm content, I'm content [goes out].

IRINA. Yes, how petty our Andrey has grown, how dull and old he has become beside that woman! At one time he was working to get a professorship and yesterday he was boasting of having succeeded at last in becoming a member of the District Council. He's a member, and Protopopov is chairman. . . . The whole town is laughing and talking of it and he's the only one who sees and knows nothing. . . . And here everyone has been running to the fire while he sits still in his room and takes no notice. He does nothing but play his violin . . . [nervously]. Oh, it's awful, awful, awful! [Weeps] I can't bear it any more, I can't! I can't, I can't!

[OLGA comes in and begins tidying up her table.]

IRINA [sobs loudly]. Throw me out, throw me out, I can't bear it any more!

OLGA [alarmed]. What is it? What is it, darling?

IRINA [sobbing]. Where? Where has it all gone? Where is it? Oh, my God, my God! I've forgotten everything, everything . . . everything is in a tangle in my mind. . . I don't remember the Italian for window or ceiling . . . I'm forgetting everything; every day I forget something more and life is slipping away and will never come back, we'll never, never go to Moscow. . . . I see that we won't go. . . .

OLGA. Darling, darling, . . .

IRINA [restraining herself]. Oh, I'm miserable. . . . I can't work, I'm not going to work. I've had enough of it, enough of it! I've been a telegraph clerk and now I have a job in the town council and I hate and despise every bit of the work they give me. . . . I'm already twenty-three, I've been working for years, my brains are drying up, I'm getting thin and old and ugly and there's nothing, nothing, not the slightest satisfaction, and time is passing and you feel that you are moving away from a real, a beautiful life, moving farther and farther away and being drawn into the depths. I'm in despair and I don't know how it is I'm alive and haven't killed myself yet. . . .

OLGA. Don't cry, my child, don't cry. It makes me miserable.

IRINA. I'm not crying, I'm not crying. . . . It's over, . . . There, I'm not crying now. I won't . . . I won't.

OLGA. Darling, I'm speaking to you as a sister, as a friend, if you care for my advice, marry the baron!

[IRINA weeps quietly.]

OLGA. You know you respect him, you think highly of him. . . . It's true he isn't good-looking, but he is such a thoroughly nice man, so good. . . . A person doesn't marry for love, but to do her duty. . . . That's what I think, anyway, and I would marry without love.