[Laughs.] Any girl would marry you and bring a dowry.’

[ANNA PETROVNA opens the window and looks down below.]

He says, ‘Do you want me to try and arrange for you to marry Marfusha?’ Qui est-ce que c’est7Marfusha? Oh yes, it’s that Balabalkina ... Babakalkina ... the one like a washerwoman.

ANNA PETROVNA: Is that you, Count?

SHABELSKY: What is it?

[ANNA PETROVNA laughs.]

[In a Jewish accent] Vy are you loffing?

ANNA PETROVNA: I remembered a remark of yours. Do you remember, you were saying at dinner? A thief pardoned, a horse ... How did it go?

SHABELSKY: A Jew baptized, a thief pardoned, a horse mended — all for the same price.

ANNA PETROVNA [laughing]: You can’t make a simple joke without an injection of venom. You are a poisonous man. [In a serious voice] Joking apart, Count, you’re very poisonous. It’s hideously boring to live with you. You’re always grumpy, complaining, you find everyone bad, good for nothing. Tell me frankly, Count: did you ever speak well of anyone?

SHABELSKY: What kind of a test is this?

ANNA PETROVNA: We’ve now lived under the same roof for five years, and I’ve never heard you talk of other people calmly, without bile and without your making fun of them. What harm have people done you? And do you really think that you are better than everyone else?

SHABELSKY: I don’t think that at all. I’m like everyone else, another loathsome swine in a skullcap.8 A vulgarian, a worn-out shoe. I am always criticizing myself. Who am I? What am I? I used to be rich, free, reasonably happy, but now ... a hanger-on, a sponger, the court jester. I vent my indignation and scorn, and in response to me people laugh: I laugh and they shake their heads at me sadly and say the old man’s gone round the bend ... But more often than not they don’t hear me or pay me any attention ...

ANNA PETROVNA [quietly]: It’s shrieking again ...

SHABELSKY: What’s shrieking?

ANNA PETROVNA: The owl. It shrieks every evening.

SHABELSKY: Let it shriek. Things can’t be worse than they are already. [Stretches.] Oh, my dear Sara, if I won a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand, I’d show you a thing or two! ... I’d be gone in a flash. I would leave this hole where I eat the bread of charity and I wouldn’t set foot here again till the Last Judgement...

ANNA PETROVNA: But what would you do if you won?

SHABELSKY [after thinking]: First I would go to Moscow and listen to the gypsies. Then ... then I’d go off to Paris. I’d take an apartment there, go to the Russian church ...

ANNA PETROVNA: And what else?

SHABELSKY: I’d sit for whole days on my wife’s grave and think. I’d sit like that on her grave till I dropped dead. My wife is buried in Paris ...

[A pause.]

ANNA PETROVNA: It’s dreadfully boring. Shall we play another duet?

SHABELSKY: All right. Set out the music.

[ANNA PETROVNA goes off.]

V

[SHABELSKY, IVANOV and L VOV.]

IVANOV [appearing with Lvov in the avenue]: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you’re still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice.