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The same and KHROUSCHOV (the Wood Demon)

KHROUSCHOV (coming out of the house): Why am I not a painter? What a wonderful group!

ORLOVSKY (joyously): My dear godson!

KHROUSCHOV: My congratulations to the new-born. How do you do, Julie? How fine you look to-day, Godpa!

(Kissing ORLOVSKY.) Sophie Alexandrovna .’. .

(Greeting the rest of the company.)

ZHELTOUKHIN: How can you be so late! Where have you been?

KHROUSCHOV: At a patient’s.

JULIE: The pie has gone cold.

KHROUSCHOV: It doesn’t matter, Julie, I’ll eat it cold. Where shall I sit?

SONYA: Sit down here… .

(Pointing to a seat beside her.)

KHROUSCHOV: The weather is wonderful, and I have a ravenous appetite… Yes, I’ll have some vodka… .

(Drinking.) To the new-born! I’ll have this little pie… . Julie, give it a kiss, it’ll taste better… (She kisses it.) Merci! How are you, godpa? I haven’t seen you for a long time.

ORLOVSKY: Yes, it is a long time. I’ve been abroad.

KHROUSCHOV: I heard about it … and envied you. And how are you, Fyodor?

FYODOR: All right, your prayers support us, like pillars..

KHROUSCHOV: How are your affairs?

FYODOR,: I must not grumble. I am having a good time. Only, my dear fellow, there’s a lot of running to and fro. Sickening! From here to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus back here — continuously on the move, until I’m dazed. You know, I’ve got two estates there!

KHROUSCHOV: I know.

FYODOR: I am engaged in colonization and in catching tarantulas and scorpions. Business is going all right, but as regards “my surging passions, keep still! “ — all is as it used to be.

KHROUSCHOV: You’re in love, of course?

FYODOR: On which account, Wood Demon, we must have a drink. (Drinking.) … Gentlemen, never fall in love with married women! My word, it’s better to be wounded in the shoulder and shot through the leg, like you obedient servant, than to love a married woman… It’s such a misfortune! …

SONYA: Is it hopeless?

FYODOR: Hopeless indeed! Hopeless! … In this world there’s nothing hopeless. Hopeless, unhappy love, oh, ach! — all this is just nonsense! One has only to will. … If I will that my gun shall not miss fire, it won’t. If I will a woman to love me, she shall love me. Just so, Sonya, old chap! If I pick out a woman, I think it’s easier for her to jump to the moon than to get away from me.

SONYA: What a terrific fellow!

FYODOR: She won’t get away from me! I hardly have time to say three words to her before she’s already in my power… Yes. … I have only to say to her: “My lady, whenever you look at the window you must remember me. I will it.” And she remembers me a thousand times a day. Moreover, I bombard her every day with letters… .

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Letters surely aren’t a safe method; she may receive them, but she may not read them.

FYODOR: You think so? H’m I … I have been living in this world for thirty-five years, and somehow I haven’t yet come across such phenomenal women as would have the courage not to open a letter.

ORLOVSKY (looking admiringly at hirn): See! My dear son, my beautiful son! I, too, was like that. Precisely, to a degree! Only that I was not in the war; but I drank and threw money about — terrible!

FYODOR: Misha, I do love her, seriously, hellishly… . Were she only to agree, I would just give her everything and all. … I would carry her to the Caucasus, to the mountains, we should live like singing birds. … I should guard her, Elena Andreyevna, like a faithful dog, and she would be to me as our marshal of nobility sings: “Thou wilt be the queen of the universe, thou my dearest.” Oh, she does not know how very happy she could be!

KHROUSCHOV: And who’s that lucky woman?

FYODOR: If you know too much, you’ll age quickly… . But enough about that. Now, let’s sing from a different opera. I remember, it’s about ten years ago — Lennie was still at school then — we were celebrating his birthday as we are now. I rode home — Sonya on my right arm, and Julie on my left, and both held on to my beard. Now, let’s drink the health of the friends of my youth, of Sonya and Julie!

DYADIN (laughing aloud): That is fascinating! That is fascinating!

FYODOR: Once, it was after the war, I was having drinks with a Turkish pasha in Trebizond. … All at once he asks me ——

DYADIN (interrupting): Let’s drink a toast to friendly relations. Vivat friendship! Here’s luck!

FYODOR: Stop, stop, stop! Sonya, I claim attention! I am having a bet, damn it! I am putting three hundred roubles on the table! Let’s go after lunch to play croquet, and I bet that in one round I shall get through all the hoops and back.

SONYA: I accept the bet; only I haven’t got three hundred roubles.

FYODOR: If you lose, you are to sing to me forty times.

SONYA: Agreed.

DYADIN. That is fascinating! That is fascinating!

ELENA ANDREYEVNA (looking at the sky): What bird is that?

ZHELTOUKHIN: It is a hawk.

FYODOR: Friends, let’s drink the hawk’s health!

(SONYA laughs aloud.)

ORLOVSKY: Now, she has started. What’s the matter?

(KHROUSCHOV laughs aloud.)

ORLOVSKY: Why are you laughing?

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Sophie! It is not right!

KHROUSCHOV: Oh, I am so sorry! … I’ll stop presently, presently…, ORLOVSKY: This is laughing without reason.

VOYNITSKY: Those two, you’ve only;o lift up your finger, and they burst out laughing. Sonya! (Lifting his finger.) Look now! …

KHROUSCHOV: Stop it! (Looking at his watch) Well, I have eaten and drunk, and now I must be off. It’s time I went.

SONYA: Where to?

KHROUSCHOV: To a patient. I’m as tired of my medical practice as of an unloved wife, or a long winter… .

SEREBRYAKOV: But, look here, medicine is your profession, your work, so to say… .

VOYNITSKY (ironically): He has another profession. He digs peat on his estate.

SEREBRYAKOV: What?

VOYNITSKY: Peat! A mining engineer has calculated with absolute certainty that there is peat on his land worth seven hundred and twenty thousand roubles. It isn’t a joke.

KHROUSCHOV: I don’t dig peat for the sake of money.

VOYNITSKY: Why do you dig it then?

KHROUSCHOV: In order that you should not cut down forests.

VOYNITSKY: Why not cut them? To hear you, one might think that forests only existed for the courtships of youths and maidens.

KHROUSCHOV: I never said anything of the sort.

VOYNITSKY: What I have had the honour of hearing you say up to now in defence of forests is all antiquated, not serious, and tendentious. Pray forgive me. I say this not without grounds, I know almost by heart all your arguments in defence… For instance… (Raising the tone of his voice and gesticulating, as though imitating KHROUSCHOV.) You men are destroying the forests, but they adorn the earth, they teach man to understand beauty and inspire him with a sense of majesty. Forests soften harsh climates. Where the climate is milder, there man exerts less effort in his struggle with nature, and therefore man there is gentler and kindlier. In countries with a mild climate people are handsome, alert, easily excited, their speech is elegant, their movements graceful. Arts and science flourish there, their philosophy is not gloomy, their relations to women are full of fine courtesy. And so on and so on… All this is fine, but so unconvincing that you must allow me to go on burning wood in the fireplaces and building wooden barns.

KHROUSCHOV: Cut forests, when it is a matter of urgency, you may, but it is time to stop destroying them. Every Russian forest is cracking under the axe, millions of trees are perishing, the abodes of beasts and birds are being ravaged, rivers are becoming shallow and drying up, wonderful landscapes are disappearing without leaving a trace; and all this because lazy man has not got the sense to stoop, to pick up fuel from the ground. One must be a barbarian (pointing to the trees) to burn that beauty in the fireplace, to destroy what we cannot create. Understanding and creative power have been granted to man to multiply what has been given him, but hitherto he has not created, he has only destroyed. The forests grow less and less, the rivers dry up, wild birds disappear, the climate is spoilt, and every day the earth grows poorer and uglier. You look at me ironically, and all I am saying seems to you antiquated and not serious, but when I pass by woods belonging to the peasants, woods which I have saved from being cut down, or when I hear the rustling of the young forest, which I have planted with my own hands, I realize that the climate is to a certain extent also in my power; and if a thousand years hence man is to be happy, I too shall have had a share in it. When I plant a little birch tree and then see how it is growing green and shaking in the wind, my soul is filled with pride from the realization that, thanks to me, there is one more life added on earth

FYODOR (interrupting): Your health, Wood Demon!

VOYNITSKY: All this is very fine, but if you looked at the matter, not from a novelette point of view, but from a scientific point of view, then

SONYA: Uncle George, your tongue is covered with rust. Do keep quiet!

KHROUSCHOV: Indeed, George Petrovich, let’s not discuss it. Please.

VOYNITSKY: As you like!

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Ah!

SONYA: Granny, what’s the matter?

MARIE VASSILIEVNA (to SEREBRYAKOV): I had forgotten to tell you, Alexander… I’m losing my memory. … I had a letter to-day from Kharkov, from Paul Alexeyevich… .He asks to be remembered to you… .

SEREBRYAKOV: Thank you, I am very glad.

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: He sent me his new pamphlet and asked me to show it to you.

SEREBRYAKOV: It is interesting?

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: It is interesting, but somewhat odd. He refutes what he himself was defending seven years ago. It is very, very typical of our time. Never have people betrayed their convictions with such levity as they do now. It is terrible!

VOYNITSKY: There’s nothing terrible. Won’t you have some fish, maman?

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: But I want to speak!

VOYNITSKY: We have been talking for the last fifty years about tendencies and schools; it’s time we stopped.

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: It does not please you for some reason when I speak. Excuse me, George, but this last year you have changed so much that I can’t make you out at all. You used to be a man of definite conviction, an enlightened personality… .

VOYNITSKY: Oh, yes! I was an “enlightened personality” from which no one got any light. Permit me to get up. I was an “enlightened personality.” A more venomous joke couldn’t have been uttered! Now I am forty-seven. Up till last year I was deliberately trying, like you, to fog my eyes with all sorts of abstractions and scholasticism, in order not to see real life; and I thought that I was doing the right thing… But now, if only you knew what a great fool I seem to myself for having so stupidly let slip the time when I might have had everything, everything which my old age denies me now!

SEREBRYAKOV: Look here, George, you seem to blame your former convictions for something

SONYA: Enough, papa! It’s dull!

SEREBRYAKOV: Look here! You, as it were, blame your former convictions for something. But it is not they, it’s yourself who is at fault. You forget that convictions without deeds are dead. You ought to have been at work.

VOYNITSKY: Work? Not everyone is capable of being a writing perpeuium mobile.

SEREBRYAKOV: What do you mean to convey by that?

VOYNITSKY: Nothing. Let’s stop the conversation. We aren’t at home.

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: I am completely losing my memory.… I forgot to remind you, Alexander, to take your drops before lunch; I brought them with me, but forgot to remind you.

SEREBRYAKOV: You need not.

MARIE VASSILIEVNA: But you are ill, Alexander! You’re very ill!

SEREBRYAKOV: Why make a fuss about it? Old, ill, old, ill … that’s the only thing I hear! (To ZHELTOUKHIN) Leonid Stepanovich, allow me to get up and to go into the house. It is rather hot here and the mosquitoes are biting.

ZHELTOUKHIN: Please do. We’ve finished lunch.

SEREBRYAKOV: Thank you.

(Goes into the house; MARIE VASSILIEVNA follows him.)

JULIE (to her brother): Go to the professor! It’s awkward!

ZHELTOUKHIN (to her): Damn him! [Goes out.

DYADIN: Yulia Stepanovna, allow me to thank you from the bottom of my soul. (Kissing her hand.)

JULIE: Don’t mention it, Ilya Ilyich! You’ve eaten so little… (The company get up and thank her.) Don’t mention it! You’ve all eaten so little!

FYODOR: What are we going to do now? Let’s now go to the croquet lawn and settle our bet … and then?

JULIE: And then we shall have dinner.

FYODOR: And then?

KHROUSCHOV: And then you all come to me. In the evening we’ll arrange a fishing party on the lake.

FYODOR: Splendid!

DYADIN: That is fascinating!

SONYA: Well, it is settled then. It means we are going now to the croquet lawn to settle our bet… Then Julie will give us an early dinner, and about seven we’ll drive over to the Wood I mean to M. Khrouschov. Splendid! Come, Julie, let’s get the balls.

(Goes with JULIE into the house.)

FYODOR: Vassili, carry the wine to the lawn! We will drink the health of the conquerors. Now, pater, come and let’s have a noble game.

ORLOVSKY: Wait awhile, my own, I must sit with the professor for a few minutes, for it’s a bit awkward. One must keep up appearances. You play my ball for a while, I’ll come presently… . (Goes into the house.)

DYADIN: I am going to listen to the most learned Alexander Vladimirovich. In anticipation of the high delight, which

VOYNITSKY: You’re a bore, Waffle! Go away!

DYADIN: I am going. (Goes into the house.)

FYODOR (walking into the garden, singing): “Thou wilt be the queen of the universe, thou my dearest.” …

[Goes out.

KHROUSCHOV: I’ll leave quietly. (To VOYNITSKY) George Petrovich, I earnestly ask you, let us never talk either of forests, or of medicine. I don’t know why, but when you start discussing these matters, I have a feeling all day afterwards as if I had eaten my dinner out of rusty pots. Allow me!

[Goes out.