[Goes off.]

SHABELSKY [going after him]: How? Come, teach me.

BORKIN: There’s nothing to teach. It’s very simple ... [Coming back.] Nikolay Alekseyevich, give me a rouble.

[IVANOV silently gives him the money.]

Merci. [To the Count] You’ve still got a lot of trumps in your hand.

SHABELSKY [going after him]: Which ones?

BORKIN: In your place I’d have thirty thousand in a week, if not more. [Exit with the Count.]

IVANOV [after a pause]: Superfluous people, superfluous words, having to answer stupid questions — doctor, all this has exhausted me to the point of making me ill. I’ve become irritable, bad-tempered, unpleasant and petty to the extent that I don’t recognize myself. I have a headache for days on end, I can’t sleep, there’s a noise in my ears ... And there’s absolutely nowhere I can go ... Nowhere ...

LVOV: Nikolay Alekseyevich, I must have a serious word with you.

IVANOV: Speak.

LVOV: I must talk to you about Anna Petrovna. [Sits down.] She has refused to go to the Crimea but she would go with you.

IVANOV [thinking]: For two to go takes money. Also I won’t be given any extended leave. I’ve already taken leave once this year ...

LVOV: Very well. Now let’s go on. The best medicine for consumption is complete rest, and your wife doesn’t have a moment’s rest. She’s constantly upset by your relationship with her. Forgive me, I’m worked up and I must talk frankly. Your behaviour is killing her.

[A pause.]

Nikolay Alekseyevich, make me think better of you! ...

IVANOV: All that is true, true ... I am probably dreadfully to blame, but my thoughts are confused, my soul is paralysed by some kind of sloth, and I haven’t the power to understand myself. I don’t understand other people or myself ... [Glances at the window.] We could be overheard here, come, let’s go for a walk.

[They get up.]

I would tell you the story from the beginning, my friend, but it’s a long story and so complicated you wouldn’t have got to the end of it by morning.

[They walk.]

Anyuta is a remarkable, unusual woman ... For me she changed her faith, she abandoned her father and mother, gave up wealth, and if I demanded another hundred sacrifices she would make them without blinking. Well, I am wholly unremarkable and have sacrificed nothing. But it’s a long story ... The whole point is, my dear doctor [hesitates], that ... to put it briefly, I married for passionate love and swore to love her for ever, but ... five years have passed, she still loves me, but I ... [Throws up his hands.] Now you’re telling me that she will die soon, but I feel neither love nor pity, just a kind of emptiness, exhaustion. To an outside observer this is probably appalling; I myself don’t understand what is happening inside me ...

[They walk out down the avenue.]

IV

[SHABELSKY, then ANNA PETROVNA.]

SHABELSKY [coming in and laughing]: My word, he’s not a crook but a thinker, a virtuoso! We should put up a monument to him. He brings together in his own single person the corruption of today in all its guises: lawyer, doctor, profiteer, accountant. [Sits down on the bottom step oftheterrace.] And I don’t think he has any qualifications, that’s what is surprising ... So what a genius of villainy he would be if he were also a master of culture and the humanities! He says, ‘In a week you could have twenty thousand.’ He says, ‘You also hold the ace of trumps in your hand — your title of count.