The Cherry Orchard / Вишневый сад. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Tell me, where are those créches we hear so much of? and where are those reading-rooms? People only write novels about them; they don’t really exist. Only dirt, vulgarity, and Asiatic plagues really exist… I’m afraid, and I don’t at all like serious faces; I don’t like serious conversations. Let’s be quiet sooner.

Lopakhin. You know, I get up at five every morning, I work from morning till evening, I am always dealing with money – my own and other people’s – and I see what people are like.

You’ve only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I think: “Oh Lord, you’ve given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.”

Lubov. You want giants, do you?… They’re only good in stories, and even there they frighten one.

Epikhodoventers at the back of the stage playing his guitar.

[Thoughtfully] Epikhodov’s there.

Anya.

[Thoughtfully] Epikhodov’s there.

Gaev. The sun’s set, ladies and gentlemen.

Trofimov. Yes.

Gaev. [Not loudly, as if declaiming] O Nature, thou art wonderful, thou shinest with eternal radiance! Oh, beautiful and indifferent one, thou whom we call mother, thou containest in thyself existence and death, thou livest and destroyest…

Varya. [Entreatingly] Uncle, dear!

Anya. Uncle, you’re doing it again!

Trofimov. You’d better double the red into the middle.

Gaev. I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet.

They all sit thoughtfully. It is quiet. Only the mumbling ofFiersis heard. Suddenly a distant sound is heard as if from the sky, the sound of a breaking string, which dies away sadly.

Lubov. What’s that?

Lopakhin. I don’t know. It may be a bucket fallen down a well somewhere. But it’s some way off.

Gaev. Or perhaps it’s some bird… like a heron.

Trofimov. Or an owl.

Lubov. [Shudders] It’s unpleasant, somehow.

A pause.

Fiers. Before the misfortune the same thing happened. An owl screamed and the samovar hummed without stopping.

Gaev. Before what misfortune?

Fiers. Before the Emancipation.

A pause.

Lubov. You know, my friends, let’s go in; it’s evening now. [ToAnya] You’ve tears in your eyes… What is it, little girl? [Embraces her.]

Anya. It’s nothing, mother.