TUZENBAKH. Who knows? Perhaps our age will be called a great one and remembered with respect. Now we have no torture-chamber, no executions, no invasions, but at the same time how much suffering there is!
SOLYONY [in a high-pitched voice]. Chook, chook, chook. . . . It's bread and meat to the baron to talk about ideas.
TUZENBAKH. Vassily Vassilyevitch, I ask you to let me alone . . . [moves to another seat]. It gets boring, at last.
SOLYONY [in a high-pitched voice]. Chook, chook, chook. . . . . .
TUZENBAKH [to VERSHININ]. The suffering which one observes now -- there is so much of it -- does indicate, however, that society has reached a certain moral level. . . .
VERSHININ. Yes, yes, of course.
CHEBUTYKIN. You said just now, Baron, that our age will be called great; but people are small all the same. . . [gets up]. Look how small I am. [A violin is played behind the scenes.]
MASHA. That's Andrey playing, our brother.
IRINA. He's the scholar of the family. We expect him to become a professor. Father was a military man, but his son has gone in for a scholarly career.
MASHA. It was father's wish.
OLGA. We've been teasing him today. We think he's a little in love.
IRINA. With a young lady living here. She'll come in today most likely.
MASHA. Oh, how she dresses! It's not that her clothes are merely ugly or out of fashion, they're simply pitiful. A weird gaudy yellowish skirt with some sort of vulgar fringe and a red blouse. And her cheeks scrubbed till they shine! Andrey is not in love with her -- I won't admit that, he has some taste after all -- it's simply for fun, he is teasing us, playing the fool. I heard yesterday that she is going to be married to Protopopov, the chairman of our District Council. And a very good thing too. . . . [At the side door] Andrey, come here, dear, for a minute!
[Enter ANDREY.]
OLGA. This is my brother, Andrey Sergeyevitch.
VERSHININ. My name is Vershinin.
ANDREY. And mine is Prozorov [mops his perspiring face]. You're our new battery commander?
OLGA. Can you believe, Alexandr Ignatyevitch comes from Moscow.
ANDREY. Really? Well, then, I congratulate you. My sisters will let you have no peace.
VERSHININ. I've had time to bore your sisters already.
IRINA. See what a pretty picture-frame Andrey has given me today! [Shows the frame] He made it himself.
VERSHININ [looking at the frame and not knowing what to say]. Yes. ., it is a thing. . . .
IRINA. And that frame above the piano, he made that too!
[ANDREY waves his hand in despair and moves away.]
OLGA. He's a scholar, and he plays the violin, and he makes all sorts of things with the fretsaw. In fact he's good all round. Andrey, don't go! That's a way he has -- he always tries to make off! Come here!
[MASHA and IRINA take him by the arms and, laughing, lead him back.]
MASHA. Come, come!
ANDREY. Leave me alone, please!
MASHA. How funny he is! Alexandr Ignatyevitch used to be called the love-sick major at one time, and he wasn't a bit offended.
VERSHININ. Not in the least!
MASHA. And I'd like to call you the love-sick violinist!
IRINA. Or the love-sick professor!
OLGA. He's in love! Andryusha is in love!
IRINA [claps her hands]. Bravo, bravo! Encore! Andryusha is in love!
CHEBUTYKIN [comes up behind ANDREY and puts both arms round his waist]. Nature our hearts for love created! [Laughs, then sits down and reads the newspaper which he takes out of his pocket.]
ANDREY. Come, that's enough, that's enough. . . [mops his face]. I haven't slept all night and this morning I don't feel quite myself, as they say. I read till four o'clock and then went to bed, but it was no use. I thought of one thing and another, and then it gets light so early; the sun simply pours into my bedroom. I want while I'm here during the summer to translate a book from the English. . . .
VERSHININ. You read English then?
ANDREY. Yes. Our father, the Kingdom of Heaven be his, oppressed us with education. It's funny and silly, but it must be confessed I began to get fatter after his death, and I've grown too fat in one year, as though a weight had been taken off my body. Thanks to our father we all know English, French and German, and Irina knows Italian too. But what it cost us!
MASHA. In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury! Not even a luxury, but an unnecessary encumbrance, like a sixth finger. We know a great deal that's unnecessary.
VERSHININ. What next! [laughs] You know a great deal that's unnecessary! I don't think there can be a town so dull and dismal that intelligent and educated people are unnecessary in it. Let's suppose that of the hundred thousand people living in this town, which is, of course, uncultured and behind the times, there are only three of your sort. It goes without saying that you cannot conquer the mass of darkness round you; little by little, as you go on living, you'll be lost in the crowd. You'll have to give in to it. Life will get the better of you, but still you'll not disappear without a trace. After you there may appear perhaps six like you, then twelve and so on until such as you form a majority. In two or three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, marvellous. Man needs such a life and, though he hasn't got it yet, he must have a presentiment of it, expect it, dream of it, prepare for it; for that he must see and know more than his father and grandfather [laughs]. And you complain of knowing a great deal that's unnecessary.
MASHA [takes off her hat]. I'll stay to lunch.
IRINA [with a sigh]. All that really ought to be written down. . . .
[ANDREY has slipped away unobserved.]
TUZENBAKH. You say that after many years life on earth will be beautiful and marvellous. That's true. But in order to have any share, however far off, in it now we must be preparing for it, we must be working. . . .
VERSHININ [gets up]. Yes. What a lot of flowers you have! [Looking round] And delightful rooms. I envy you! I've been knocking about all my life from one wretched lodging to another, always with two chairs and a sofa and stoves which smoke. What I've been lacking all my life is just such flowers . . . [rubs his hands]. But there, it's no use thinking about it!
TUZENBAKH. Yes, we must work. No doubt you think the German is getting sentimental. But on my honour I am Russian and I can't even speak German. My father belonged to the Orthodox Church. . . [a pause].
VERSHININ [walks about the stage]. I often think, what if you were to begin life over again, knowing what you're doing! If one life, which has been already lived, were only a rough sketch so to speak, and the second were the final copy! Then, I think, every one of us would try before anything else not to repeat himself, anyway he would create a different setting for his life; would have a house like this with plenty of light and masses of flowers. . . . I have a wife and two little girls, my wife is in delicate health and so on and so on, but if I were to begin life over again I would not marry. . . . No, no!