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

[Looks at his watch] I’m going away at once, I haven’t much time… but I’ll tell you all about it in two or three words. As you already know, your cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts, and the sale is fixed for August 22; but you needn’t be alarmed, dear madam, you may sleep in peace; there’s a way out. Here’s my plan. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots and are then leased off for villas you’ll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

Gaev. How utterly absurd!

Lubov. I don’t understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.

Lopakhin. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you advertise now I’m willing to bet that you won’t have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they’ll all go. In a word, you’re saved. I congratulate you.

Only, of course, you’ll have to put things straight, and clean up… For instance, you’ll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn’t any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard…

Lubov. Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don’t understand anything at all. If there’s anything interesting or remarkable in the whole province, it’s this cherry orchard of ours.

Lopakhin. The only remarkable thing about the orchard is that it’s very large.

It only bears fruit every other year, and even then you don’t know what to do with them; nobody buys any.

Gaev. This orchard is mentioned in the “Encyclopaedic Dictionary.”

Lopakhin. [Looks at his watch] If we can’t think of anything and don’t make up our minds to anything, then on August 22, both the cherry orchard and the whole estate will be up for auction. Make up your mind! I swear there’s no other way out, I’ll swear it again.

Fiers. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them, and it used to happen that…

Gaev. Be quiet, Fiers.

Fiers. And then we’d send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented… They knew the way…

Lubov. What was the way?

Fiers. They’ve forgotten.