Читать книгу The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov - Anton Chekhov - Страница 100

Table of Contents

ELENA ANDREYEVNA AND VOYNITSKY

VOYNITSKY: The narrow-minded fellow! Everyone is permitted to say stupid things, but I dislike it when it is done with pathos.

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: You have again behaved impossibly, George! Why need you have argued with Marie Vassilievna and Alexander, and spoken about perpetuum mobile? How petty it is!

VOYNITSKY: But if I hate him?

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: There’s nothing to hate Alexander for; he’s like all the rest… .

(SONYA and JULIE pass into the garden with croquet balls and mallets.)

VOYNITSKY: If you could see the expression on your face, your movements! … You’re too lazy to live! Oh, what laziness!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Oh, lazy, boring! (After a pause.) Everyone scoffs at my husband before my eyes, without minding my presence. Everyone looks at me with compassion: “Poor woman, she has an old husband! “All, even very kind people, would like me to leave Alexander.… That sympathy, all those compassionate glances and sighs of pity come simply to this. As the Wood Demon has just said, all of you nonsensically destroy forests, and soon none will be left on the earth. Just as nonsensically do you all destroy man, and soon, thanks to you, there will remain on earth neither faithfulness, nor purity, nor the capacity for self-sacrifice. Why can’t you look unconcernedly at a faithful wife, if she’s not yours? The Wood Demon is right. There’s lurking in all of you a demon of destruction. You spare neither forests, nor birds, nor women, nor one another.

VOYNITSKY: I don’t love this philosophy!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Tell that Fyodor that his impudence bores me. It’s loathsome in the end. To look into my eyes and to speak aloud in the presence of all about his love for a married woman — how wonderfully witty!

VOICES IN THE GARDEN: Bravo! Bravo!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: But how nice the Wood Demon is! He often comes to us, but I’m shy and have never talked to him, as I should have liked to; I did not make a friend of him. He may think that I am ill-natured or proud. George, probably you and I are such good friends because we both are dull and boring people! Bores! Don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it.

VOYNITSKY: But how else can I look at you, if I love you? You are my happiness, my life, my youth! … I know that the chances of your returning my love are nil, but I want nothing more, only allow me to look at you, to hear your voice… .