Selected plays

afraid, and I don't at all like serious faces; I don't like serious conversations. Let's be quiet sooner.

LOPAKHIN. You know, I get up at five every morning, I work from morning till evening, I am always dealing with money--my own and other people's--and I see what people are like. You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: 'Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.'

LUBOV. You want giants, do you ? . . . They're only good in stories, and even there they frighten one.

EPIKHODOV enters at the back of the stage playing his guitar. Thoughtfully: Epikhodov's there.

ANYA. [Thoughtfully] Epikhodov's there.

GAEV. The sun's set, ladies and gentlemen.

TROFIMOV. Yes.

GAEV [Not loudly, as if declaiming] O Nature, thou art wonderful, thou shinest with eternal radiance! Oh, beautiful and indifferent one, thou whom we call mother, thou containest in thyself existence and death, thou livest and destroyest. . . .

VARYA. [Entreatingly] Uncle, dear!

ANYA. Uncle, you're doing it again!

TROFIMOV. You'd better double the red into the middle.

GAEV. I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet.

They all sit thoughtfully. It is quiet. Only the mumbling of FIERS is heard. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, which dies away sadly.

LUBOV. What's that?

LOPAKHIN. I don't know. It may be a bucket fallen down a well somewhere. But it's some way off.

GAEV. Or perhaps it's some bird . . . like a heron.

TROFIMOV. Or an owl.

LUBOV. [Shudders] It's unpleasant, somehow. [A pause.]

FIERS. Before the misfortune the same thing happened. An owl screamed and the samovar hummed without stopping.

GAEV. Before what misfortune?

FIERS. Before the Emancipation. [A pause.]

LUBOV. You know, my friends, let's go in; it's evening now. [To ANYA] You've tears in your eyes. . . . What is it, little girl? [Embraces her.]

ANYA. It's nothing, mother.

TROFIMOV. Some one's coming.

Enter a TRAMP in an old white peaked cap and overcoat. He is a little drunk.

TRAMP. Excuse me, may I go this way straight through to the station?

GAEV. You may. Go along this path.

TRAMP. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. [Hiccups] Lovely weather. . . . [Declaims] My brother, my suffering brother. . . . Come out on the Volga, you whose groans . . . [To VARYA] Mademoiselle, please give a hungry Russian thirty copecks. . . .

VARYA screams, frightened.

LOPAKHIN. [Angrily] There's manners everybody's got to keep!

LUBOV. [With a start] Take this ... here you are. . . . [Feels in her purse] There's no silver. . . . It doesn't matter, here's gold.

TRAMP. I am deeply grateful to you! [Exit. Laughter.]

VARYA. [Frightened] I'm going, I'm going. . . . Oh, little mother, at home there's nothing for the servants to eat, and you gave him gold.

LUBOV. What is to be done with such a fool as I am! At home I'll