Selected plays

MASHA [sits down]. Nothing . . . [a pause]. Did you love my mother?

CHEBUTYKIN. Very much.

MASHA. And did she love you?

CHEBUTYKIN [after a pause]. That I don't remember.

MASHA. Is my man here? It's just like our cook Marfa used to say about her policeman: is my man here?

CHEBUTYKIN. Not yet.

MASHA. When you get happiness by snatches, by little bits, and then lose it, as I'm losing it, by degrees one grows coarse and spiteful . . . [Points to her bosom] I'm boiling here inside . . . [Looking at ANDREY, who is pushing the baby carriage] Here's our Andrey, . . . All our hopes are shattered. It's like thousands of people raised a huge bell, a lot of money and of labour was spent on it, and it suddenly fell and smashed. All at once, for no reason whatever. That's just how it is with Andrey, . . .

ANDREY. When will they be quiet in the house? There's such a noise.

CHEBUTYKIN. Soon [looks at his watch]. My watch is an old-fashioned one with a repeater . . . [winds his watch, it strikes]. The first, the second, and the fifth batteries are going at one o'clock [a pause]. And I'm going tomorrow.

ANDREY. For good?

CHEBUTYKIN. I don't know. Perhaps I'll come back in a year. Though goodness knows. . . . It doesn't matter one way or another.

[There is the sound of a harp and violin being played far away in the street.]

ANDREY. The town will be empty. It's as though you put an extinguisher over it [a pause]. Something happened yesterday near the theatre; everyone is talking of it, and I know nothing about it.

CHEBUTYKIN. It was nothing. Foolishness. Solyony began annoying the baron and he lost his temper and insulted him, and it came in the end to Solyony's having to challenge him [looks at his watch]. It's time, I think. . . . It was to be at half-past twelve in the Crown forest that we can see from here beyond the river . . . Piff-paff! [Laughs] Solyony imagines he is a Lermontov and even writes verses. Joking apart, this is his third duel.

MASHA. Whose?

CHEBUTYKIN. Solyony's.

MASHA. And the baron's?

CHEBUTYKIN. What about the baron? [a pause]

MASHA. My thoughts are in a muddle. . . . Anyway, I tell you, you ought not to let them do it. He may wound the baron or even kill him.

CHEBUTYKIN. The baron is a very good fellow, but one baron more or less in the world, what does it matter? Let them! It doesn't matter. [Beyond the garden a shout of 'Aa-oo! Halloo!'] You can wait. That's Skvortsov, the second, shouting. He's in a boat [a pause].

ANDREY. In my opinion to take part in a duel, or to be present at it even in the capacity of a doctor, is simply immoral.

CHEBUTYKIN. That only seems so. . . . We're not real, nothing in the world is real, we don't exist, but only seem to exist. . . . Nothing matters!