Selected plays

been here since I have come, and I haven't had a real talk with him yet or made much of him. He thinks I'm disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are such friends? I think it's because we are both boring and tedious. Yes, tedious. Don't look at me in that way, I don't like it.

VOYNITSKY. How can I look at you otherwise when I love you? You are my joy, my life, and my youth. I know that my chances of being loved in return are infinitely small, don't exist, but I ask nothing of you. Only let me look at you, listen to your voice --

HELENA. Hush, some one will overhear you.

[They go toward the house.]

VOYNITSKY. [Following her] Let me speak to you of my love, don't drive me away, and this alone will be my greatest happiness!

HELENA. Ah! This is agony! [Both go into the house.]

TELEGIN strikes the strings of his guitar and plays a polka. MME. VOYNITSKAYA writes something on the margins of her pamphlet.

The curtain falls.

ACT II

The dining-room of SEREBRYAKOV'S house. It is night. The tapping of the WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard in the garden. SEREBRYAKOV is dozing in an arm-chair by an open window and HELENA is sitting beside him, also half asleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. [Rousing himself] Who is here? Is it you, Sonya?

HELENA. It's me.

SEREBRYAKOV. Oh, it is you, Nelly. This pain is intolerable.

HELENA. Your shawl has slipped down. [She wraps up his legs in the shawl] Let me shut the window, Alexander.

SEREBRYAKOV. No, leave it open; I am suffocating. I dreamt just now that my left leg belonged to some one else, and it hurt so that I woke. I don't believe this is gout, it is more like rheumatism. What time is it?

HELENA. Half past twelve. [A pause.]

SEREBRYAKOV. I want you to look for Batyushkov's works in the library tomorrow. I think we have him.

HELENA. What?

SEREBRYAKOV. Look for Batyushkov tomorrow morning; we used to have him, I remember. Why do I find it so hard to breathe?

HELENA. You're tired; this is the second night you've had no sleep.

SEREBRYAKOV. They say that Turgenev got angina of the heart from gout. I am afraid I am getting angina too. Oh, damn this horrible, accursed old age! Ever since I have been old I have been hateful to myself, and I am sure, hateful to you all as well.

HELENA. You speak as if we were to blame for your being old.

SEREBRYAKOV. I am more hateful to you than to any one.

HELENA gets up and walks away from him, sitting down at a distance.

SEREBRYAKOV. You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing