VOITSKI. [Laughing] Bravo! Bravo! All that is very pretty, but it is also unconvincing. So, my friend [To ASTROFF] you must let me go on burning firewood in my stoves and building my sheds of planks.
ASTROFF. You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone. Oh, I don’t object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground. [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make? Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in your eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and — and — after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and I — [Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a tray] however — [He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all nonsense, anyway. Goodbye.
He goes toward the house. SONIA takes his arm and goes with him.
SONIA. When are you coming to see us again?
ASTROFF. I can’t say.
SONIA. In a month?
ASTROFF and SONIA go into the house. HELENA and VOITSKI walk over to the terrace.
HELENA. You have behaved shockingly again. Ivan, what sense was there in teasing your mother and talking about perpetuum mobile? And at breakfast you quarreled with Alexander again. Really, your behaviour is too petty.
VOITSKI. But if I hate him?
HELENA. You hate Alexander without reason; he is like every one else, and no worse than you are.
VOITSKI. If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious your life must be.
HELENA. It is tedious, yes, and dreary! You all abuse my husband and look on me with compassion; you think, “Poor woman, she is married to an old man.” How well I understand your compassion! As Astroff said just now, see how you thoughtlessly destroy the forests, so that there will soon be none left. So you also destroy mankind, and soon fidelity and purity and self-sacrifice will have vanished with the woods. Why cannot you look calmly at a woman unless she is yours? Because, the doctor was right, you are all possessed by a devil of destruction; you have no mercy on the woods or the birds or on women or on one another.
VOITSKI. I don’t like your philosophy.
HELENA. That doctor has a sensitive, weary face — an interesting face. Sonia evidently likes him, and she is in love with him, and I can understand it. This is the third time he has been here since I have come, and I have not had a real talk with him yet or made much of him. He thinks I am disagreeable. Do you know, Ivan, the reason you and I are such friends? I think it is because we are both lonely and unfortunate. Yes, unfortunate. Don’t look at me in that way, I don’t like it.
VOITSKI. How can I look at you otherwise when I love you? You are my joy, my life, and my youth. I know that my chances of being loved in return are infinitely small, do not exist, but I ask nothing of you. Only let me look at you, listen to your voice —
HELENA. Hush, some one will overhear you.
[They go toward the house.]
VOITSKI. [Following her] Let me speak to you of my love, do not drive me away, and this alone will be my greatest happiness!
HELENA. Ah! This is agony!
TELEGIN strikes the strings of his guitar and plays a polka. MME. VOITSKAYA writes something on the leaves of her pamphlet.
The curtain falls.
ACT II
The dining-room of SEREBRAKOFF’S house. It is night. The tapping of the WATCHMAN’S rattle is heard in the garden. SEREBRAKOFF is dozing in an armchair by an open window and HELENA is sitting beside him, also half asleep.
SEREBRAKOFF. [Rousing himself] Who is here? Is it you, Sonia?
HELENA. It is I.
SEREBRAKOFF. Oh, it is you, Nelly. This pain is intolerable.
HELENA. Your shawl has slipped down. [She wraps up his legs in the shawl] Let me shut the window.
SEREBRAKOFF. No, leave it open; I am suffocating. I dreamt just now that my left leg belonged to some one else, and it hurt so that I woke. I don’t believe this is gout, it is more like rheumatism. What time is it?
HELENA. Half past twelve. [A pause.]
SEREBRAKOFF. I want you to look for Batushka’s works in the library tomorrow. I think we have him.
HELENA. What is that?
SEREBRAKOFF. Look for Batushka tomorrow morning; we used to have him, I remember. Why do I find it so hard to breathe?
HELENA. You are tired; this is the second night you have had no sleep.
SEREBRAKOFF. They say that Turgenieff got angina of the heart from gout. I am afraid I am getting angina too. Oh, damn this horrible, accursed old age! Ever since I have been old I have been hateful to myself, and I am sure, hateful to you all as well.
HELENA. You speak as if we were to blame for your being old.
SEREBRAKOFF. I am more hateful to you than to any one.
HELENA gets up and walks away from him, sitting down at a distance.
SEREBRAKOFF. You are quite right, of course. I am not an idiot; I can understand you. You are young and healthy and beautiful, and longing for life, and I am an old dotard, almost a dead man already. Don’t I know it? Of course I see that it is foolish for me to live so long, but wait! I shall soon set you all free. My life cannot drag on much longer.
HELENA. You are overtaxing my powers of endurance. Be quiet, for God’s sake!
SEREBRAKOFF. It appears that, thanks to me, everybody’s power of endurance is being overtaxed; everybody is miserable, only I am blissfully triumphant. Oh, yes, of course!
HELENA. Be quiet! You are torturing me.
SEREBRAKOFF. I torture everybody. Of course.
HELENA. [Weeping] This is unbearable! Tell me, what is it you want me to do?
SEREBRAKOFF. Nothing.
HELENA. Then be quiet, please.
SEREBRAKOFF. It is funny that everybody listens to Ivan and his old idiot of a mother, but the moment I open my lips you all begin to feel ill-treated. You can’t even stand the sound of my voice. Even if I am hateful, even if I am a selfish tyrant, haven’t I the right to be one at my age? Haven’t I deserved it? Haven’t I, I ask you, the right to be respected, now that I am old?
HELENA.