Читать книгу THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV - Anton Chekhov - Страница 114

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ORLOVSKY, VOYNITSKY, and FYODOR IVANOVICH (the latter dressed in Circassian attire with a papakha (a fur cap) in his hand)

VOYNITSKY (listening to the music): It’s Elena Andreyevna playing … my favourite aria… (The music coming to an end.) Yes … it’s a fine piece. … It seems never to have been so boring here as it is now… .

FYODOR: You’ve never tasted real boredom, my dear fellow. When I was a volunteer in Serbia, there I experienced the real thing! Hot, stuffy, dirty, head simply splitting after a drinking bout… Once I remember sitting in a dirty little shed… Captain Kashkinazi was there, too… Every subject of conversation long exhausted, no place to go to, nothing to do, no desire to drink — just sickening, you see, sickening to the point of putting one’s head in a noose! We sat, in a frenzy, gazing at one another. … He gazes at me, I at him; he at me, I at him… We gaze and don’t know why we’re doing it… An hour passes, you know, then another hour, and still we keep on gazing. Suddenly he jumps up for no reason, draws his sabre and goes for me… Hey presto! … I, of course, instantly draw my sabre — for he’ll kill me! — and it started: chic-chac, chic-chac, chic-chac, … with the greatest difficulty we were at last separated. I got off all right, but to this very day Captain Kashkinazi walks about with a scar on his face. See how desperately bored one may get! …

ORLOVSKY: Yes, such things do happen.

ENTER SONYA.