Scene 1 · 11

MARY IVÁNOVNA. But nowadays everything seems savage and stupid to you. After all, he must live; you lived!

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [getting irritable] I lived when I did not understand; and when nobody gave me good advice. However, it does not depend on me but on him.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. How not on you? It's you who don't give him an allowance.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. I can't give what is not mine!

MARY IVÁNOVNA. Not yours? What do you mean?

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. The labour of others does not belong to me. To give him money, I must first take it from others. I have no right to do that, and I cannot do it! As long as I manage the estate I must manage it as my conscience dictates; and I cannot give the fruits of the toil of the overworked peasants to be spent on the debaucheries of Life-Guardsmen. Take over my property, and then I shall not be responsible!

MARY IVÁNOVNA. You know very well that I don't want 350to take it, and moreover I can't. I have to bring up the children, besides nursing them and bearing them. It is cruel!

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Mary, dear one! That is not the main thing. When you began to speak I too began and wanted to talk to you quite frankly. We must not go on like this. We are living together, but don't understand one another. Sometimes we even seem to misunderstand one another on purpose.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. I want to understand, but I don't. No, I don't understand you. I do not know what has come to you.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Well then, try and understand! This may not be a convenient time, but heaven knows when we shall find a convenient time. Understand not me—but yourself: the meaning of your own life! We can't go on living like this without knowing what we are living for.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. We have lived so, and lived very happily. [Noticing a look of vexation on his face] All right, all right, I am listening.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Yes, I too lived so—that is to say, without thinking why I lived; but a time came when I was terror-struck. Well, here we are, living on other people's labour—making others work for us—bringing children into the world and bringing them up to do the same. Old age will come, and death, and I shall ask myself: “Why have I lived?” In order to breed more parasites like myself? And, above all, we do not even enjoy this life. It is only endurable, you know, while, like Ványa, you overflow with life's energy.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. But everybody lives like that.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And they are all unhappy.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. Not at all.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Anyhow, I saw that I was terribly unhappy, and that I made you and the children unhappy, 351and I asked myself: “Is it possible that God created us for this end?” And as soon as I thought of it, I felt at once that he had not. I asked myself: “What, then, has God created us for?”

Enter Man-servant.

MARY IVÁNOVNA [Not listening to her husband, turns to Servant] Bring some boiled cream.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. And in the Gospels I found the answer, that we certainly should not live for our own sake. That revealed itself to me very clearly once, when I was pondering over the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. You know?

MARY IVÁNOVNA. Yes, the labourers.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. That parable seemed to show me more clearly than anything else where my mistake had been. Like those labourers I had thought that the vineyard was my own, and that my life was my own, and everything seemed dreadful; but as soon as I had understood that my life is not my own, but that I am sent into the world to do the will of God …

MARY IVÁNOVNA. But what of it? We all know that!

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Well, if we know it we cannot go on living as we are doing, for our whole life—far from being a fulfilment of His will—is, on the contrary, a continual transgression of it.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. But how is it a transgression—when we live without doing harm to anyone?

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. But are we doing no harm? Such an outlook on life is just like that of those labourers. Why we …

MARY IVÁNOVNA. Yes, I know the parable—and that he paid them all equally.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH [after a pause] No, it's not that. But do, Mary, consider one thing—that we have only one life, and can live it well, or can waste it.

MARY IVÁNOVNA. I can't think and argue! I don't sleep 352at night; I am nursing. I have to manage the whole house, and instead of helping me, you say things to me that I don't understand.

NICHOLAS IVÁNOVICH. Mary!

MARY IVÁNOVNA. And now these visitors.