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

I didn’t get any sleep for four nights on the journey… I’m awfully cold.

Dunyasha. You went away during Lent, when it was snowing and frosty, but now? Darling! [Laughs and kisses her] We did have to wait for you, my joy, my pet… I must tell you at once, I can’t bear to wait a minute.

Anya. [Tired] Something else now?..

Dunyasha. The clerk, Epikhodov, proposed to me after Easter.

Anya. Always the same… [Puts her hair straight] I’ve lost all my hairpins…

She is very tired, and even staggers as she walks.

Dunyasha. I don’t know what to think about it. He loves me, he loves me so much!

Anya. [Looks into her room; in a gentle voice] My room, my windows, as if I’d never gone away. I’m at home! Tomorrow morning I’ll get up and have a run in the garden…Oh, if I could only get to sleep! I didn’t sleep the whole journey, I was so bothered.

Dunyasha. Peter Sergeyevitch came two days ago.

Anya. [Joyfully] Peter!

Dunyasha.

He sleeps in the bath-house, he lives there. He said he was afraid he’d be in the way. [Looks at her pocket-watch] I ought to wake him, but Barbara Mihailovna told me not to. “Don’t wake him,” she said.

EnterVarya, a bunch of keys on her belt.

Varya. Dunyasha, some coffee, quick. Mother wants some.

Dunyasha. This minute. [Exit.]

Varya. Well, you’ve come, glory be to God. Home again. [Caressing her] My darling is back again! My pretty one is back again!

Anya.

I did have an awful time, I tell you.

Varya. I can just imagine it!

Anya. I went away in Holy Week; it was very cold then. Charlotta talked the whole way and would go on performing her tricks. Why did you tie Charlotta on to me?

Varya. You couldn’t go alone, darling, at seventeen!

Anya. We went to Paris; it’s cold there and snowing. I talk French perfectly horribly. My mother lives on the fifth floor. I go to her, and find her there with various Frenchmen, women, an old abbé with a book, and everything in tobacco smoke and with no comfort at all.

I suddenly became very sorry for mother – so sorry that I took her head in my arms and hugged her and wouldn’t let her go. Then mother started hugging me and crying…

Varya. [Weeping] Don’t say any more, don’t say any more…

Anya. She’s already sold her villa near Mentone; she’s nothing left, nothing.