PISCHIN. My daughter, Dashenka, sends her love.
LOPAKHIN. I want to say something very pleasant, very delightful, to you. [
GAEV. How utterly absurd!
LUBOV. I don't understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.
LOPAKHIN. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you advertise now I'm willing to bet that you won't have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they'll all go. In a word, you're saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you'll have to put things straight, and clean up. . . . For instance, you'll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn't any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard. . .
LUBOV. Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don't understand anything at all. If there's anything interesting or remarkable in the whole province, it's this cherry orchard of ours.
LOPAKHIN. The only remarkable thing about the orchard is that it's very large. It only bears fruit every other year, and even then you don't know what to do with them; nobody buys any.
GAEV. This orchard is mentioned in the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary.'
LOPAKHIN. [
FIERS. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them, and it used to happen that . . .
GAEV. Be quiet, Fiers.
FIERS. And then we'd send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented. . . They knew the way. . . .
LUBOV. What was the way?
FIERS. They've forgotten. Nobody remembers.
PISCHIN. [
LUBOV. I ate crocodiles.
PISCHIN. To think of that, now.
LOPAKHIN. Up to now in the villages there were only the gentry and the labourers, and now the people who live in villas have arrived. All towns now, even small ones, are surrounded by villas. And it's safe to say that in twenty years' time the villa resident will be all over the place. At present he sits on his balcony and drinks tea, but it may well come to pass that he'll begin to cultivate his patch of land, and then your cherry orchard will be happy, rich, splendid. .. .
GAEV. [
VARYA. There are two telegrams for you, little mother. [
LUBOV. They're from Paris. . . . [
GAEV. And do you know, Luba, how old this case is? A week ago I took out the bottom drawer; I looked and saw figures burnt out in it. That case was made exactly a hundred years ago. What do you think of that? What? We could celebrate its jubilee. It hasn't a soul of its own, but still, say what you will, it's a fine bookcase.
PISCHIN. [
GAEV. Yes . . . it's a real thing. [