In the whole five years I have only seen her fade under the weight of her sacrifices, seen her worn out by her struggle with conscience, but, as God can see, not a sideways glance at me, not a word of reproach! ... And what did I do? I stopped loving her ... How? Why? What for? I do not understand. There she is suffering, her days are numbered, and like the worst of cowards I flee from her pale face and sunken chest and pleading eyes ... I’m ashamed, ashamed!

[A pause.

A young girl, Sasha, is touched by my misfortunes. She declares her love for me - for someone who is virtually an old man11- and I am intoxicated, I forget everything in the world, I feel a spell like music‘s, and I cry, ‘A new life! Happiness!’ And the next day I believe in that life and that happiness as little as I do in the house goblin12 ... What is the matter with me? Into what abyss am I driving my life? What is wrong with my nerves? It only takes a sick wife to prick my self-esteem, or if a maid fails to please or a gun misfires, then I become rude, foul-tempered and unlike myself ...

[A pause.]

I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I do not understand! Why don’t I just put a bullet through my forehead! ...

LVOV [entering]: I need to have a candid talk with you, Nikolay Alekseyevich.

IVANOV : Doctor, if we’re going to have a candid talk every day, I haven’t the strength for it.

LVOV: Would you be good enough to hear me out?

IVANOV: Every day I hear you out and I still fail to understand what actually it is you want from me.

LVOV: I speak clearly and precisely, and only someone without a heart could fail to understand me ...

IVANOV : That my wife is close to death — I know; that I am irreparably guilty before her - I also know; that you are an honest, straight man - I know too! What more do you want?

LVOV: I am indignant at human cruelty ... A woman is dying. She has a father and a mother whom she loves and whom she would like to see before she dies; they know very well that she will die soon and that she still loves them, but - damnable cruelty - it’s as if they want to amaze Jehovah with their religious rigour: they still curse her! You, a man for whom she sacrificed everything - her faith, her own home, tranquillity of conscience - you in the most obvious way and with the most obvious intentions drive over every day to those Lebedevs!

IVANOV: Ah, I haven’t been there now for two weeks ...

LVOV [not listening to him]: With people like you one needs to speak directly, with no beating about the bush, and if you don’t feel like listening to me, then don’t! I’m accustomed to calling things by their proper name ... You need this death to achieve new feats of valour; maybe you do, but could you really not wait? If you let her die in the natural way of things and didn’t go on breaking her with your arrant cynicism, would Lebedeva with her dowry really leave you? If not now, then in a year or in two years you would have time, you amazing hypocrite, to turn the girl’s head and get hold of her dowry just as effectively as now ... Why are you in a hurry? Why do you need your wife to die now and not in a month, in a year? ...

IVANOV : This is torment. Doctor, you’re a very bad physician if you assume a man can restrain himself for ever. It costs me a terrible effort not to reply to your insults.

LVOV: Enough. Who do you want to fool? Drop that mask.

IVANOV: You clever man, just reflect. You think I’m the easiest thing in the world to understand. Right? I married Anna to get a large dowry ... They gave me no dowry, I made a mistake and now I am hounding her from this world to marry another woman and take her dowry... Yes? How easy and straightforward ... Man is such a simple and uncomplicated machine ... No, doctor, we all have too many wheels, screws and valves for us to be able to judge each other by first impressions or from two or three external indications. I don’t understand you, you don’t understand me, and we don’t understand ourselves. One can be an excellent doctor - and at the same time have absolutely no knowledge of people. Drop your self-assurance and agree with that.

LVOV: Do you really think you are so opaque and I have so little brain that I can’t distinguish wrong-doing from honesty?

IVANOV : We are clearly never going to see eye to eye ... For the last time I ask, and please give an answer without preamble, what actually do you want from me? What are you aiming for? [Irritatedly] And whom do I have the honour of addressing - my prosecutor, or my wife’s doctor?

LVOV: I am a doctor and as a doctor I demand that you alter your behaviour ... It is killing Anna Petrovna.

IVANOV: But what am I to do? What? If you understand me better than I understand myself, speak frankly: What am I to do?

LVOV: At the very least, don’t act so publicly.

IVANOV : Oh, my God! Do you really understand yourself? [Drinks some water.] Leave me. I am a thousand times guilty, I will answer before God, but no one authorized you to torture me every day ...

LVOV: But who authorized you to insult the truth in me? You have poisoned my spirit and made me suffer. Until I ended up in this district, I assumed there were fools, lunatics, people who had affairs, but I never believed that there were criminal persons who deliberately and consciously directed their will towards evil ... I respected and loved human beings, but when I saw you ...

IVANOV : I’ve heard all this already!

LVOV : Have you? [Sees SASHA coming in; she is wearing a riding habit.] Now, I hope, we understand one another very well! [Shrugs his shoulders and goes out.]

VII

(IVANOV and SASHA.]

IVANOV [alarmed]: Shura, you here?

SASHA: Yes, me. How are you? Didn’t you expect me? Why haven’t you been to see us for so long?

IVANOV: Shura, for God’s sake, this is risky! Your coming here could have a terrible effect on my wife.

SASHA: She won’t see me. I came in by the back door.