Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series

GAEV. It smells of patchouli here.

ANYA. I’m going to bed. Good-night, mother. [Kisses her.]

LUBOV. My lovely little one. [Kisses her hand] Glad to be at home? I can’t get over it.

ANYA. Good-night, uncle.

GAEV. [Kisses her face and hands] God be with you. How you do resemble your mother! [To his sister] You were just like her at her age, Luba.

[ANYA gives her hand to LOPAKHIN and PISCHIN and goes out, shutting the door behind her.]

LUBOV. She’s awfully tired.

PISCHIN. It’s a very long journey.

VARYA. [To LOPAKHIN and PISCHIN] Well, sirs, it’s getting on for three, quite time you went.

LUBOV. [Laughs] You’re just the same as ever, Varya. [Draws her close and kisses her] I’ll have some coffee now, then we’ll all go. [FIERS lays a cushion under her feet] Thank you, dear. I’m used to coffee. I drink it day and night. Thank you, dear old man. [Kisses FIERS.]

VARYA. I’ll go and see if they’ve brought in all the luggage. [Exit.]

LUBOV. Is it really I who am sitting here? [Laughs] I want to jump about and wave my arms. [Covers her face with her hands] But suppose I’m dreaming! God knows I love my own country, I love it deeply; I couldn’t look out of the railway carriage, I cried so much. [Through her tears] Still, I must have my coffee. Thank you, Fiers. Thank you, dear old man. I’m so glad you’re still with us.

FIERS. The day before yesterday.

GAEV. He doesn’t hear well.

LOPAKHIN. I’ve got to go off to Kharkov by the five o’clock train. I’m awfully sorry! I should like to have a look at you, to gossip a little. You’re as fine-looking as ever.

PISCHIN. [Breathes heavily] Even finer-looking… dressed in Paris fashions… confound it all.

LOPAKHIN. Your brother, Leonid Andreyevitch, says I’m a snob, a usurer, but that is absolutely nothing to me. Let him talk. Only I do wish you would believe in me as you once did, that your wonderful, touching eyes would look at me as they did before. Merciful God! My father was the serf of your grandfather and your own father, but you – you more than anybody else – did so much for me once upon a time that I’ve forgotten everything and love you as if you belonged to my family… and even more.

LUBOV. I can’t sit still, I’m not in a state to do it. [Jumps up and walks about in great excitement] I’ll never survive this happiness… You can laugh at me; I’m a silly woman… My dear little cupboard. [Kisses cupboard] My little table.

GAEV. Nurse has died in your absence.

LUBOV. [Sits and drinks coffee] Yes, bless her soul. I heard by letter.

GAEV. And Anastasius has died too. Peter Kosoy has left me and now lives in town with the Commissioner of Police. [Takes a box of sugar-candy out of his pocket and sucks a piece.]

PISCHIN. My daughter, Dashenka, sends her love.

LOPAKHIN. I want to say something very pleasant, very delightful, to you. [Looks at his watch] I’m going away at once, I haven’t much time… but I’ll tell you all about it in two or three words. As you already know, your cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts, and the sale is fixed for August 22; but you needn’t be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there’s a way out. Here’s my plan. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots and are then leased off for villas you’ll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

GAEV. How utterly absurd!

LUBOV. I don’t understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.

LOPAKHIN. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you advertise now I’m willing to bet that you won’t have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they’ll all go. In a word, you’re saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you’ll have to put things straight, and clean up… For instance, you’ll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn’t any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard…

LUBOV. Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don’t understand anything at all. If there’s anything interesting or remarkable in the whole province, it’s this cherry orchard of ours.

LOPAKHIN. The only remarkable thing about the orchard is that it’s very large. It only bears fruit every other year, and even then you don’t know what to do with them; nobody buys any.

GAEV. This orchard is mentioned in the “Encyclopaedic Dictionary.”

LOPAKHIN. [Looks at his watch] If we can’t think of anything and don’t make up our minds to anything, then on August 22, both the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be up for auction. Make up your mind! I swear there’s no other way out, I’ll swear it again.

FIERS. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them, and it used to happen that…

GAEV. Be quiet, Fiers.

FIERS. And then we’d send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented… They knew the way…

LUBOV. What was the way?

FIERS. They’ve forgotten. Nobody remembers.

PISCHIN. [To LUBOV ANDREYEVNA] What about Paris? Eh? Did you eat frogs?

LUBOV. I ate crocodiles.

PISCHIN. To think of that, now.

LOPAKHIN. Up to now in the villages there were only the gentry and the labourers, and now the people who live in villas have arrived. All towns now, even small ones, are surrounded by villas. And it’s safe to say that in twenty years’ time the villa resident will be all over the place. At present he sits on his balcony and drinks tea, but it may well come to pass that he’ll begin to cultivate his patch of land, and then your cherry orchard will be happy, rich, splendid…

GAEV. [Angry] What rot!

[Enter VARYA and YASHA.]

VARYA. There are two telegrams for you, little mother. [Picks out a key and noisily unlocks an antique cupboard] Here they are.

LUBOV. They’re from Paris… [Tears them up without reading them] I’ve done with Paris.

GAEV. And do you know, Luba, how old this case is? A week ago I took out the bottom drawer; I looked and saw figures burnt out in it. That case was made exactly a hundred years ago. What do you think of that? What? We could celebrate its jubilee. It hasn’t a soul of its own, but still, say what you will, it’s a fine bookcase.

PISCHIN. [Astonished] A hundred years… Think of that!

GAEV. Yes… it’s a real thing. [Handling it] My dear and honoured case! I congratulate you on your existence, which has already for more than a hundred years been directed towards the bright ideals of good and justice; your silent call to productive labour has not grown less in the hundred years [Weeping] during which you have upheld virtue and faith in a better future to the generations of our race, educating us up to ideals of goodness and to the knowledge of a common consciousness. [Pause.]

LOPAKHIN. Yes…

LUBOV. You’re just the same as ever, Leon.

GAEV. [A little confused] Off the white on the right, into the corner pocket. Red ball goes into the middle pocket!

LOPAKHIN. [Looks at his watch] It’s time I went.