The thing is this: your mother told me to convey to you what I’m about to say ... Do you understand? I am not going to be speaking for myself, but following your mother’s instructions.

SASHA: Papa, do be more brief!

LEBEDEV: Your dowry is fixed at fifteen thousand silver roubles. Yes ... Look, so there are no arguments later! Wait, be quiet! That’s just the blossom, but there’ll be berries too. Your dowry is fixed at fifteen thousand, but taking into account that Nikolay Alekseyevich owes your mother nine thousand, a deduction is being made from your dowry ... Well, but later, apart from that ...

SASHA: Why are you telling me this?

LEBEDEV: Your mother told me to!

SASHA: Leave me in peace! If you had some small respect for me and for yourself, you wouldn’t allow yourself to talk to me in such a way. I don’t need your dowry! I didn’t ask for it and I won’t ask for it!

LEBEDEV: Why are you attacking me? In Gogol the two rats sniffed around first and then went off, but with all your emancipation you’ve gone into the attack without even a sniff at what I have to say.2

SASHA: Leave me in peace, don’t insult my ears with your petty calculations.

LEBEDEV [losing his temper and spitting]:The lot of you will either make me stick a knife into myself or else murder someone! One shouts and screeches day in day out, buzzes and nags, counts the kopecks, while the other, intelligent, a humanist and, devil take it, an emancipated woman, can’t understand her own father! I insult your ears! And before I came here to insult your ears, in there [points to the door] I was being drawn and quartered. She can’t understand! She’s had her head turned and lost her senses ... to hell with you! [Goes to the door and stops.] I don’t like it, I don’t like anything about any of you!

SASHA: What don’t you like?

LEBEDEV: Everything! Everything!

SASHA: What do you mean, everything?

LESEDEV: Look, I’m going to sit myself down in front of you and tell you. I don’t like anything, and I can’t even bear to look at your marriage! [Comes up near to Sasha and speaks affectionately.] You must forgive me, Shurochka, maybe your marriage is intelligent, honest, sublime, principled, but something there is not quite right, not right! It’s not like other marriages. You are young, fresh, clean as a piece of glass, beautiful, and he is a widower, he’s frayed, he’s worn himself out. And I don’t understand him, God help him. [Kisses his daughter.] Shurochka, forgive me but something is not quite right. Already people are talking a great deal. For some reason that Sara died on him, then somehow for some reason he suddenly wanted to marry you ... [Animatedly] But I’m being an old woman, an old woman. I’ve become as feminine as a crinoline. Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to anyone, only to yourself.

SASHA: Papa, I too myself feel that something’s wrong ... Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you knew how low I feel! It’s unbearable! It’s awkward and frightening to admit it. Papa, darling, raise my spirits ... teach me what to do.

LESEDEV: What do you mean? What?

SASHA: I’m so frightened, as never before. [Looks round.] I feel that I don’t understand him and that I never will understand him. Over the whole time of our engagement he has never smiled once, he has never once looked me straight in the eye. It’s nothing but complaints, repentance for something or other, hints at some kind of guilt, trembling ... I’m worn out. There are even moments when I think that I ... I don’t love him as strongly as I should. And when he comes over to us or talks to me, I get bored.