Uncle Vanya | Page 8

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 arm-chair 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 to-morrow. I think we have him.
HELENA. What is that?
SEREBRAKOFF. Look for Batushka to-morrow 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. No one is disputing your rights. [The window slams in the
wind] The wind is rising, I must shut the window. [She shuts it] We
shall have rain in a moment. Your rights have never been questioned by
anybody.
The WATCHMAN in the garden sounds his rattle.
SEREBRAKOFF. I have spent my life working in the interests of
learning. I am used to my library and the lecture hall and to the esteem
and admiration of my colleagues. Now I suddenly find myself plunged
in this wilderness, condemned to see the same stupid people from
morning till night and listen to their futile conversation. I want to live; I
long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in
exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost
past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to

fear death. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not
even forgive me for being old!
HELENA.