Selected plays

IRINA'S hand.] We've had a splendid time here.

FEDOTIK [to KULYGIN]. This is a little souvenir for you . . . a note-book with a pencil. . . . We'll go down this way to the river . . . [As they go away both look back.]

RODE [shouts]. Halloo-oo!

KULYGIN [shouts]. Good-bye!

[RODE and FEDOTIK meet MASHA in the background and say good-bye to her; she walks away with them.]

IRINA. They've gone . . . [Sits down on the bottom step of the verandah.]

CHEBUTYKIN. They have forgotten to say good-bye to me.

IRINA.Well, what about you?

CHEBUTYKIN. Why, I somehow forget, too. But I'll see them again soon, I'm setting off tomorrow. Yes . . . I have one day more. In a year I shall be on the retired list. Then I'll come here again and I'll spend the rest of my life near you. . . . There's only one year now before I get my pension. [Puts a newspaper into his pocket and takes out another.] I'll come here to you and arrange my life quite differently. . . . I'll become such a quiet . . . hon. . . honorable . . . well-behaved person.

IRINA. Well, you do need to arrange your life differently, dear Ivan Romanitch. You certainly ought to somehow.

CHEBUTYKIN. Yes, that's the way I feel. [Softly hums] 'Tarara-boom-dee-ay -- Tarara-boom-dee-ay.'

KULYGIN. Ivan Romanitch is incorrigible! Incorrigible!

CHEBUTYKIN. You ought to take me in hand. Then I would reform.

IRINA. Fyodor has shaved off his moustache. I can't bear to look at him!

KULYGIN. Why, what's wrong?

CHEBUTYKIN. I might tell you what your face looks like now, but I better not.

KULYGIN. Well! It's the thing now, modus vivendi. Our headmaster is clean-shaven and now I'm second to him I've taken to shaving too. Nobody likes it, but I don't care. I'm content. With moustache or without moustache I'm equally content [sits down].

[In the background ANDREY is wheeling a baby asleep in a baby carriage.]

IRINA. Ivan Romanitch, darling, I'm dreadfully uneasy. You were on the boulevard yesterday, tell me what was it that happened?

CHEBUTYKIN. What happened? Nothing. Nothing much [reads the newspaper]. It doesn't matter!

KULYGIN. The story is that Solyony and the baron met yesterday on the boulevard near the theatre. . . .

TUZENBAKH. Oh, stop it! Really . . . [with a wave of his hand walks away into the house].

KULYGIN. Near the theatre. . . . Solyony began pestering the baron and he couldn't keep his temper and said something offensive, . . .

CHEBUTYKIN. I don't know. It's all nonsense.

KULYGIN. A teacher at a divinity school wrote 'nonsense' at the bottom of an essay and the pupil puzzled over it thinking it was a Latin word . . . [laughs]. It was terribly funny . . . . . . . . They say Solyony is