The Cherry Orchard

He is wearing an old-fashioned livery and a tall hat

but still a peasant of the peasants

Madame Ranévsky has been five years abroad.

[The stage is empty. One hears all the doors being locked, and the carriages driving away. All is quiet. Amid the silence the thud of the axes on the trees echoes sad and lonely. The sound of footsteps. FIRS appears in the doorway R. He is dressed, as always, in his long coat and white waistcoat; he wears slippers. He is ill.]
FIRS [going to the door L. and trying the handle]. Locked. They’ve gone. [Sitting on the sofa.] They’ve forgotten me. Never mind! I’ll sit here. Leonid Andréyitch is sure to have put on his cloth coat instead of his fur. [He sighs anxiously.] He hadn’t me to see. Young wood, green wood! [He mumbles something incomprehensible.] Life has gone by as if I’d never lived. [Lying down.] I’ll lie down. There’s no strength left in you; there’s nothing, nothing. Ah, you ... job-lot!
[He lies motionless. A distant sound is heard, as if from the sky, the sound of a string breaking, dying away, melancholy. Silence ensues, broken only by the stroke of the axe on the trees far away in the cherry orchard. ]

ANYA [clasping her hands]. What beautiful things you say! [A pause.] Isn’t it enchanting here to-day!
TROPHIMOF. Yes, it’s wonderful weather.
ANYA. What have you done to me, Peter? Why is it that I no longer love the cherry orchard as I did? I used to love it so tenderly; I thought there was no better place on earth than our garden.
TROPHIMOF. All Russia is our garden. The earth is great and beautiful; it is full of wonderful places. [A pause.] Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls. Do not human spirits look out at you from every tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every stem? Do you not hear human voices? ... Oh! it is terrible. Your orchard frightens me. When I walk through it in the evening or at night, the rugged bark on the trees glows with a dim light, and the cherry trees seem to see all that happened a hundred and two hundred years ago in painful and oppressive dreams. Well, well, we have fallen at least two hundred years behind the times. We have achieved nothing at all as yet; we have not made up our minds how we stand with the past; we only philosophise, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It is so plain that, before we can live in the present, we must first redeem the past, and have done with it; and it is only by suffering that we can redeem it, only by strenuous, unremitting toil. Understand that, Anya.

DUNYASHA [to YASHA]. What happiness it must be to live abroad!
YASHA. Of course it is; I quite agree with you. [He yawns and lights a cigar. ]
EPHIKHODOF. It stands to reason. Everything abroad has attained a certain culmination.
YASHA. That’s right.
EPHIKHODOF. I am a man of cultivation; I have studied various remarkable books, but I cannot fathom the direction of my preferences; do I want to live or do I want to shoot myself, so to speak? But in order to be ready for all contingencies, I always carry a revolver in my pocket. Here it is. [Showing revolver.]
CHARLOTTE. That’s done. I’m off. [Singing the rifle over her shoulder.] You’re a clever fellow, Ephikhódof, and very alarming. Women must fall madly in love with you. Brrr! [Going.] These clever people are all so stupid; I have no one to talk to. I am always alone, always alone; I have no friends or relations, and who I am, or why I exist, is a mystery.

[Exit slowly.]

LOPAKHIN [ironically]. Oh, extraordinary!
TROPHIMOF. Mankind marches forward, perfecting its strength. Everything that is unattainable for us now will one day be near and clear; but we must work; we must help with all our force those who seek for truth. At present only a few men work in Russia. The vast majority of the educated people that I know seek after nothing, do nothing, and are as yet incapable of work. They call themselves the ‘Intelligentsia,’ they say ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ to the servants, they treat the peasants like animals, learn nothing, read nothing serious, do absolutely nothing, only talk about science, and understand little or nothing about art. They are all serious; they all have solemn faces; they only discuss important subjects; they philosophise; but meanwhile the vast majority of us, ninety-nine per cent., live like savages; at the least thing they curse and punch people’s heads; they eat like beasts and sleep in dirt and bad air; there are bugs everywhere, evil smells, damp and moral degradation.... It’s plain that all our clever conversations are only meant to distract our own attention and other people’s. Show me where those crèches are, that they’re always talking so much about; or those reading-rooms. They are only things people write about in novels; they don’t really exist at all. Nothing exists but dirt, vulgarity and Asiatic ways. I am afraid of solemn faces; I dislike them; I am afraid of solemn conversations. Let us rather hold our tongues.