NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You see the others do understand!
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Who? Alexander Petróvich, who gets money out of you?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. He and others: Tónya and Vasíly Nikonórovich. But even if nobody understood it, that would make no difference.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Vasíly Nikonórovich has repented, and has got his living back, and Tónya is at this very moment dancing and flirting with Styópa.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. I am sorry to hear it, but it does not turn black into white, and it cannot change my life. Mary! You do not need me. Let me go! I have tried to share your life and to bring into it what for me constitutes the whole of life; but it is impossible. It only results in torturing myself and you. I not only torment myself, but spoil the work I try to accomplish. Everybody, including that very Alexander Petróvich, has the right to tell me that I am a hypocrite; that I talk but do not Act! That I preach the Gospel of poverty while I live in luxury, pretending that I have given up everything to my wife!
MARY IVÁNOVNA. So you are ashamed of what people say? Really, can’t you rise above that?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. It’s not that I am ashamed (though I am ashamed), but that I am spoiling God’s work.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. You yourself often say that it fulfils itself despite man’s opposition; but that’s not the point. Tell me, what do you want of me?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Haven’t I told you?
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But, Nicholas, you know that that is impossible. Only think, Lyúba is now getting married; Ványa is entering the university; Missy and Kátya are studying. How can I break all that off?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Then what am I to do?
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Do as you say one should do: have patience, love. Is it too hard for you? Only bear with us and do not take yourself from us! Come, what is it that torments you?
Enter Ványa running.
VÁNYA. Mamma, they are calling you!
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Tell them I can’t come. Go, go!
VÁNYA. Do come! He runs off.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. You don’t wish to see eye to eye — nor to understand me.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. It is not that I don’t wish to, but that I can’t.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. No, you don’t wish to, and we drift further and further apart. Only enter into my feelings; put yourself for a moment in my place, and you will understand. First, the whole life here is thoroughly depraved. You are vexed with the expression, but I can give no other name to a life built wholly on robbery; for the money you live on is taken from the land you have stolen from the peasants. Moreover, I see that this life is demoralising the children: “Whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble,” and I see how they are perishing and becoming depraved before my very eyes. I cannot bear it when grown-up men dressed up in swallow-tail coats serve us as if they were slaves. Every dinner we have is a torture to me.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. But all this was so before. Is it not done by everyone — both here and abroad?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. But I can’t do it. Since I realised that we are all brothers, I cannot see it without suffering.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. That is as you please. One can invent anything.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH hotly It’s just this want of understanding that is so terrible. Take for instance to-day! I spent this morning at Rzhánov’s lodging-house, among the outcasts there; and I saw an infant literally die of hunger; a boy suffering from alcoholism; and a consumptive charwoman rinsing clothes outside in the cold. Then I returned home, and a footman with a white tie opens the door for me. I see my son — a mere lad — ordering that footman to fetch him some water; and I see the army of servants who work for us. Then I go to visit Borís — a man who is sacrificing his life for truth’s sake. I see how he, a pure, strong, resolute man, is deliberately being goaded to lunacy and to destruction, that the Government may be rid of him! I know, and they know, that his heart is weak, and so they provoke him, and drag him to a ward for raving lunatics. It is too dreadful, too dreadful. And when I come home, I hear that the one member of our family who understood — not me but the truth — has thrown over both her betrothed to whom she had promised her love, and the truth, and is going to marry a lackey, a liar …
MARY IVÁNOVNA. How very Christian!
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Yes, it is wrong of me, and I am to blame, but I only want you to put yourself in my place. I mean to say that she has turned from the truth …
MARY IVÁNOVNA. You say, “from the truth”; but other people — the majority — say from “an error.” You see Vasíly Nikonórovich once thought he was in error, but now has come back to the Church.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That’s impossible ——
MARY IVÁNOVNA. He has written to Lisa! She will show you the letter. That sort of conversion is very unstable. So also in Tónya’s case; I won’t even speak of that fellow Alexander Petróvich, who simply considers it profitable!
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH getting angry Well, no matter. I only ask you to understand me. I still consider that truth is truth! All this hurts me very much. And here at home I see a Christmas-tree, a ball, and hundreds of roubles being spent while men are dying of hunger. I cannot live so. Have pity on me, I am worried to death. Let me go! Good-bye.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. If you go, I will go with you. Or if not with you, I will throw myself under the train you leave by; and let them all go to perdition — and Missy and Kátya too. Oh my God, my God. What torture! Why? What for? Weeps.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH at the door Alexander Petróvich, go home! I am not going. To his wife Very well, I will stay. Takes off his overcoat.
MARY IVÁNOVNA embracing him We have not much longer to live. Don’t let us spoil everything after twenty-eight years of life together. Well, I’ll give no more parties; but do not punish me so.
Enter Ványa and Kátya running.
VÁNYA and KATYA. Mamma, be quick — come.
MARY IVÁNOVNA. Coming, coming. So let us forgive one another! Exit with Kátya and Ványa.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. A child, a regular child; or a cunning woman? No, a cunning child. Yes, yes. It seems Thou dost not wish me to be Thy servant in this Thy work. Thou wishest me to be humiliated, so that everyone may point his finger at me and say, “He preaches, but he does not perform.” Well, let them! Thou knowest best what Thou requirest: submission, humility! Ah, if I could but rise to that height!
Enter Lisa.
LISA. Excuse me. I have brought you a letter from Vasíly Nikonórovich. It is addressed to me, but he asks me to tell you.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Can it be really true?
LISA. Yes. Shall I read it?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Please do.
LISA reading “I write to beg you to communicate this to Nicholas Ivánovich. I greatly regret the error which led me openly to stray from the Holy Orthodox Church, to which I rejoice to have now returned. I hope you and Nicholas Ivánovich will follow the same path. Please forgive me!”
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. They have tortured him into this, poor fellow. But still it is terrible.
LISA. I also came to tell you that the Princess is here. She came upstairs to me in a dreadfully excited state and is determined to see you. She has just been to see Borís. I think you had better not see her. What good can it do for her to see you?
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. No. Call her in. Evidently this is fated to be a day of dreadful torture.
LISA. Then I’ll go and call her. Exit.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH alone Yes — could I but remember that life consists only in serving Thee; and that if Thou sendest a trial, it is because Thou holdest me capable of enduring it, and knowest that my strength is equal to it: else it would not be a trial.… Father, help me — help me to do Thy will.
Enter Princess.
PRINCESS. You receive me? You do me that honour? My respects to you. I don’t give you my hand, for I hate you and despise you.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. What has happened?
PRINCESS. Just this, that they are moving him to the Disciplinary Battalion; and it is you who are the cause of it.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Princess, if you want anything, tell me what it is; but if you have come here merely to abuse me, you only injure yourself. You cannot offend me, for with my whole heart I sympathise with you and pity you!
PRINCESS. What charity! What exalted Christianity! No, Mr. Sarýntsov, you cannot deceive me! We know you now. You have ruined my son, but you don’t care; and you go giving balls; and your daughter — my son’s betrothed — is to be married and make a good match, that you approve of; while you pretend to lead a simple life, and go carpentering. How repulsive you are to me, with your new-fangled Pharisaism.
NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Don’t excite yourself so, Princess. Tell me what you have come for — surely it was not simply to scold me?
PRINCESS. Yes, that too! I
