And if both banks are ours, then you see we’ll have the right to dam the river. Isn’t that so? We’ll build a mill and as soon as we announce our intention of building a dam, then everyone living down river will kick up a fuss, and we will tell them Kommen Sie hier5 — if you don’t want a dam, pay up. Do you see? Zarev’s factory will give five thousand, Korolkov three thousand, the monastery will give five thousand ...

IVANOV: That’s sharp practice, Misha ... If you don’t want to quarrel with me, keep it to yourself.

BORKIN [sitting down at a table]: Of course! ... I thought so! ... You yourself do nothing and you tie my hands.

III

[The same, SHABELSKY and LVOV.]

SHABELSKY [coming out of the house with Lvov]: Doctors are the same as lawyers, the sole difference being that lawyers only rob you, but doctors rob you and kill you too ... Present company excepted. [Sits down on a bench.] Charlatans, exploiters ... Perhaps in some Arcadia there are exceptions to the general rule but ... in my lifetime I’ve got through twenty thousand roubles on treatments and I haven’t come across a single doctor who didn’t seem to me an outright rogue.

BORKIN [to Ivanov]: Yes, you yourself do nothing and you tie my hands. That’s why we have no money ...

SHABELSKY: I repeat, I am not talking of present company ... Perhaps there are exceptions although I must say ... [Yawns.]

IVANOV [shutting his book]: What do you say, doctor?

LVOV [looking back at the window]: The same as I was saying this morning: she must go to the sunshine of the Crimea immediately. [Walks about the stage.]

SHABELSKY [bursts out]: To the Crimea! ... Misha, why don’t you and I become medical men? It’s so simple ... Some little Madame Angot or Ophelia6 has a tickle in her throat and starts coughing out of boredom, so take a sheet of paper and write a prescription following the rules of the profession: first a young doctor, then a trip to the Crimea, in the Crimea a dashing Tartar ...

IVANOV [to the Count]: Oh stop being a pest! [To Lvov] To go to the Crimea one needs money. Even suppose I find it, she still categorically refuses to go ...

LVOV: Yes, she refuses ...

[A pause.]

BORKIN: Tell me, doctor, is Anna Petrovna really so seriously ill that she has to go to the Crimea? ...

LVOV [looking back at the window]: Yes, it’s consumption ...

BORKIN: Pss! ... that’s bad ... I long ago saw in her face that she wouldn’t last long.

LVOV: But ... speak more softly ... you can be heard in the house ...

[A pause.]

BORKIN [sighing]: Our life ... Man’s life is like a flower that blooms in its beauty in the field: a goat comes and eats it up and — there’s no more flower! ...

SHABELSKY: All nonsense, nonsense and more nonsense. [Yawns.] Nonsense and a swindle.

[A pause.]

BORKIN: And, gentlemen, here I am teaching Nikolay Alekseyevich to make money. I gave him a marvellous idea but as usual my powder fell on damp ground. He’s unteachable ... Look at him: melancholy, bitterness, boredom, gloom, depression ...

SHABELSKY [getting up and stretching]: O mind of genius, you think up things for everyone and teach everyone, but why not for once teach me ... Teach me, great brain, show me the way out ...

BORKIN [getting up]: I’ll go and have a swim now ... Goodbye, gentlemen ... [To the Count] You have twenty ways out ... In your place I’d have twenty thousand roubles in a week.