Uncle Vanya | Page 6

your tea, mamma.
MME. VOITSKAYA. It seems you never want to listen to what I have to say. Pardon me, Jean, but you have changed so in the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of settled convictions and had an illuminating personality---
VOITSKI. Oh, yes. I had an illuminating personality, which illuminated no one. [A pause] I had an illuminating personality! You couldn't say anything more biting. I am forty-seven years old. Until last year I endeavoured, as you do now, to blind my eyes by your pedantry to the truths of life. But now--Oh, if you only knew! If you knew how I lie awake at night, heartsick and angry, to think how stupidly I have wasted my time when I might have been winning from life everything which my old age now forbids.
SONIA. Uncle Vanya, how dreary!
MME. VOITSKAYA. [To her son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead letter. You should have done something.
VOITSKI. Done something! Not every man is capable of being a writer perpetuum mobile like your Herr Professor.
MME. VOITSKAYA. What do you mean by that?
SONIA. [Imploringly] Mother! Uncle Vanya! I entreat you!
VOITSKI. I am silent. I apologise and am silent. [A pause.]
HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]
VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.
TELEGIN tunes the guitar. MARINA appears near the house, calling the chickens.
MARINA. Chick, chick, chick!
SONIA. What did the peasants want, nurse?
MARINA. The same old thing, the same old nonsense. Chick, chick, chick!
SONIA. Why are you calling the chickens?
MARINA. The speckled hen has disappeared with her chicks. I am afraid the crows have got her.
TELEGIN plays a polka. All listen in silence. Enter WORKMAN.
WORKMAN. Is the doctor here? [To ASTROFF] Excuse me, sir, but I have been sent to fetch you.
ASTROFF. Where are you from?
WORKMAN. The factory.
ASTROFF. [Annoyed] Thank you. There is nothing for it, then, but to go. [Looking around him for his cap] Damn it, this is annoying!
SONIA. Yes, it is too bad, really. You must come back to dinner from the factory.
ASTROFF. No, I won't be able to do that. It will be too late. Now where, where-- [To the WORKMAN] Look here, my man, get me a glass of vodka, will you? [The WORKMAN goes out] Where--where-- [Finds his cap] One of the characters in Ostroff's plays is a man with a long moustache and short wits, like me. However, let me bid you good-bye, ladies and gentlemen. [To HELENA] I should be really delighted if you would come to see me some day with Miss Sonia. My estate is small, but if you are interested in such things I should like to show you a nursery and seed-bed whose like you will not find within a thousand miles of here. My place is surrounded by government forests. The forester is old and always ailing, so I superintend almost all the work myself.
HELENA. I have always heard that you were very fond of the woods. Of course one can do a great deal of good by helping to preserve them, but does not that work interfere with your real calling?
ASTROFF. God alone knows what a man's real calling is.
HELENA. And do you find it interesting?
ASTROFF. Yes, very.
VOITSKI. [Sarcastically] Oh, extremely!
HELENA. You are still young, not over thirty-six or seven, I should say, and I suspect that the woods do not interest you as much as you say they do. I should think you would find them monotonous.
SONIA. No, the work is thrilling. Dr. Astroff watches over the old woods and sets out new plantations every year, and he has already received a diploma and a bronze medal. If you will listen to what he can tell you, you will agree with him entirely. He says that forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The inhabitants of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among them, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility---
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