"AntonChekhov-Ivanoff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

bitterness and derision. What harm has the world done to you? Is
it possible that you consider yourself better than any one else?

SHABELSKI. Not at all. I think we are all of us scoundrels and
hypocrites. I myself am a degraded old man, and as useless as a
cast-off shoe. I abuse myself as much as any one else. I was rich
once, and free, and happy at times, but now I am a dependent, an
object of charity, a joke to the world. When I am at last
exasperated and defy them, they answer me with a laugh. When I
laugh, they shake their heads sadly and say, "The old man has
gone mad." But oftenest of all I am unheard and unnoticed by
every one.

ANNA. [Quietly] Screaming again.

SHABELSKI. Who is screaming?

ANNA. The owl. It screams every evening.

SHABELSKI. Let it scream. Things are as bad as they can be
already. [Stretches himself] Alas, my dear Sarah! If I could only
win a thousand or two roubles, I should soon show you what I
could do. I wish you could see me! I should get away out of this
hole, and leave the bread of charity, and should not show my nose
here again until the last judgment day.

ANNA. What would you do if you were to win so much money?

SHABELSKI. [Thoughtfully] First I would go to Moscow to hear the
Gipsies play, and then--then I should fly to Paris and take an
apartment and go to the Russian Church.

ANNA. And what else?

SHABELSKI. I would go and sit on my wife's grave for days and
days and think. I would sit there until I died. My wife is buried
in Paris. [A pause.]

ANNA. How terribly dull this is! Shall we play a duet?

SHABELSKI. As you like. Go and get the music ready. [ANNA goes
out.]

IVANOFF and LVOFF appear in one of the paths.

IVANOFF. My dear friend, you left college last year, and you are
still young and brave. Being thirty-five years old I have the
right to advise you. Don't marry a Jewess or a bluestocking or a
woman who is queer in any way. Choose some nice, common-place
girl without any strange and startling points in her character.