page 22 / After: three whole years! Eh? — To graduate from the university and kill time! I don’t understand you, gentlemen! I definitely do not understand you! What are you waiting for?
VOINITSEV. I don’t have to work at a prep school! I’m not starving to death, I don’t feel any special calling for the teaching profession, I’m not going to die any time soon . . . What’s the rush? (Laughs.) Let’s not talk about it.
ANNA PETROVNA. Anyone who doesn’t mind loafing for three years, of course, is going to have no trouble loafing for ten or even twenty . . . But let’s change the subject.
page 23 / Replace: I do not like the fact . . . Russian scoundrel!
with: It’s painful to remember, dear Porfiry Semyonych! His illness, death, creditors, the sale of the estate . . . and to all this add in our enmity . . . It’s horrible! . . . His death was bestial, inhuman . . . The man died as only a man could die who was a lecher to the marrow of his bones, rich in his lifetime, a beggar at his death, a man with a defective mind and an unbearable temper . . . I had the misfortune to be present at his demise: he lost his temper, cursed and swore, wept, roared with laughter . . . He contorted his face, he balled his fists and looked around for his flunkies’ ugly mugs . . . From his eyes flowed the champagne, once drunk by him and his parasites on the money of those who wore rags and ate mush . . . I made an effort to get him to make a confession . . . I was supposed to begin my talk in a pious tone, I remember . . . I reminded him of those he had flogged, insulted, raped, I reminded him of the Sebastopol campaign,5 when he, along with other patriots, shamelessly robbed his nation . . . And I reminded him of something else . . . And he stared me in such amazement! He was surprised, burst out laughing . . . What crap, and I quote, are you spouting! To be a hard-bitten scoundrel and at the same time not to want to admit it— that’s the terrible characteristic of the Russian scoundrel!
page 23 / After: excuses for the dead . . . — I’m sitting at his bedside . . . It’s stuffy, dark all around . . . All around poverty after wealth, dirty, untidy, everything flung about over . . . Playing cards scattered underfoot, whisky bottles rolling around . . . A drunken orderly snoring in the hall . . . He’s making faces . . . A depression chokes me, a horrible depression, never in my life will I forget that depression! It all starts to make me sick, turns my hair gray . . . Here they are on my temples, those gray hairs . . . Remarkable those gray hairs! I often see them on my contemporaries! . . . The ideas that wandered through my mind! If I had known then how to write down those thoughts and could read them to you now, you would say that life is disgusting to very last detail. And he turned gray too after he died . . . He turned gray from viciousness . . . “We’re beggars now, Mishka,” he says, “we’re dying! . . . And where are my friends now, what’s become of them? Where are they? Where now are those highnesses, excellencies, honors, whose presence once made the glasses tremble, the tables turn pale and the flies run for cover? Where? The quality don’t want beggars, not them, don’t want dying men, but rich and depraved idiots!” So he says, and gnashes his teeth . . .
page 24 / After: Never been sick a day in my life . . . — My heart once ached on account of the female sex, but that ailment doesn’t need cough drops and drugs . . .
page 24 / After: a wonderful double-barrel! — Damned if there’s a better one!
page 26 / After: Spare us, please. —
TRILETSKY. And your wife’s got so plump! (Looks at Sasha through his fist.) Short and stout . . . In a year’s time she’ll be round as a ball.
SASHA. When are you going to stop talking nonsense!
TRILETSKY. Never . . . You’re getting fat, sister! My congratulations! (To Platonov.) You must be feeding her well. Which means you’re a honest man! Is your Kolka all right? (Gets up and sits next to Ivan Ivanovich.)
SASHA. He is.
Enter PETRIN and VENGEROVICH SR.
page 26 / Before: If you have tears, — It’s a long time since I’ve seen him. I suppose he’s become quite big for a little boy.
page 28 / After: In the first place . . . — I have beheld the groceries, and therefore I can inform you . . .
page 29 / After: have time to make acquaintances? — I won’t tell her anything, but I don’t think she knows yet that we’re are being visited by a certain Platonov . . . If she does, she will probably recognize you.
page 30 / After: I do find it strange! —
PLATONOV. I don’t see anything strange about it. It would have been strange, if it were someone besides Abram Abramych who crawls into other people’s purses and other people’s envelopes . . . He’s a specialist at that sort of thing.
SASHA tugs Platonov by the sleeve.
GLAGOLYEV SR. I’m not saying that . . . But . . . don’t get involved, Mikhail Vasilich!
VENGEROVICH SR. I may be a swindler, but I tend to take offense when someone qualifies me by the name swindler . . . Therefore I ask . . .
PLATONOV. Don’t ask, please! I understand you . . .
VENGEROVICH SR. Excellent, then. Since we understand one another, we will not stoop to behaving foolishly. Let us not insult one another for no rhyme or reason . . .
page 30 / After: at home? — From this day forth I shall believe you!
GLAGOLYEV SR. Good afternoon, Mariya Yefimovna!
GREKOVA. You didn’t believe me before?
TRILETSKY. How can I put it? Sometimes I believed you, sometimes I didn’t. I don’t usually believe women much.
GLAGOLYEV SR. (laughs). Nikolay Ivanovich can’t help making compliments! Good afternoon, Mariya Yefimovna!
page 31 / After: Already jumping to conclusions! — Oh you women!
page 34 / After: She’s coming! —
VENGEROVICH JR. (entering). Don’t forget that Auerbach is a Jew, Heine is a Jew . . .
SOFYA YEGOROVNA. That doesn’t mean much to the masses . . . It may have a certain meaning for me, but hardly for the masses . . . If someone other than me is to believe you, you need something more persuasive . . .
page 35 / After the stage direction: Laughter. —
GLAGOLYEV SR. Or a quiet angel flew by.
PLATONOV. A quiet angel has no business here.
page 37 / After: to answer your question . . . —
TRILETSKY (to Bugrov). A wonderful fellow, that Platonov! Look at him: a marquis, the most authentic marquis, and a schoolteacher, just everything. Believe then in suum cuique!6
GLAGOLYEV SR. That remark was made in a tone suggesting there is something disgraceful, humiliating about teaching . . . If our most kind Mikhail Vasilich made a blunder, it is only that, in starting out life and picking a career, he lost sight of the fact that in society one must present a handsome exterior, but this blunder from Mikhail Vasilich’s point of view is, so far as I know, not a blunder.
PLATONOV. I didn’t pick out my career and didn’t make a blunder. I never picked out anything and never made anything.