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

I understand. He’s getting rich, he’s busy, he can’t bother about me. If I had some money, even a little, even only a hundred roubles, I’d throw up everything and go away. I’d go into a convent.

Trofimov. How nice!

Varya. [ToTrofimov] A student ought to have sense! [Gently, in tears] How ugly you are now, Peter, how old you’ve grown! [ToLubov Andreyevna, no longer crying] But I can’t go on without working, little mother. I want to be doing something every minute.

EnterYasha.

Yasha. [Nearly laughing] Epikhodov’s broken a billiard cue! [Exit.]

Varya. Why is Epikhodov here? Who said he could play billiards? I don’t understand these people. [Exit.]

Lubov. Don’t tease her, Peter, you see that she’s quite unhappy without that.

Trofimov. She takes too much on herself, she keeps on interfering in other people’s business. The whole summer she’s given no peace to me or to Anya, she’s afraid we’ll have a romance all to ourselves.

What has it to do with her? As if I’d ever given her grounds to believe I’d stoop to such vulgarity! We are above love.

Lubov. Then I suppose I must be beneath love. [In agitation] Why isn’t Leonid here? If I only knew whether the estate is sold or not! The disaster seems to me so improbable that I don’t know what to think, I’m all at sea… I may scream… or do something silly. Save me, Peter. Say something, say something.

Trofimov. Isn’t it all the same whether the estate is sold today or isn’t? It’s been all up with it for a long time; there’s no turning back, the path’s grown over.

Be calm, dear, you shouldn’t deceive yourself, for once in your life at any rate you must look the truth straight in the face.

Lubov. What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn’t it because you’re young, because you haven’t had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn’t it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me.

I was born here, my father and mother lived here, my grandfather too, I love this house.