Act One: The Garden at Dusk

The garden of Ivanov's estate, in a province of central Russia. On the left, the front of the house, with a terrace; one window open. In front of the terrace, a wide half-circle of lawn, from which paths lead off into the garden. Garden seats and tables. On one of the tables, a lamp is burning. Evening is coming on. As the curtain rises, a duet for piano and cello is being practised inside the house.

Nikolai Alekseyevich Ivanov sat at a table, reading. He was thirty-five, a landowner, and a permanent member of the district board for peasant affairs. Borkin, his distant relative and the manager of his estate, came up from the depths of the garden in high boots, with a gun, a little tipsy; he crept up behind Ivanov and aimed the gun at his face, for a joke. Ivanov jumped up. "Misha, what are you doing? . . . You frightened me. I'm upset enough as it is, and now you come with your stupid jokes."

Borkin laughed, and then talked of money. The day after tomorrow the interest was due to Zinaida Savishna Lebedeva, who had lent Ivanov money; the workmen had to be paid; and there was nothing. Borkin was full of schemes, each wilder than the last: Ivanov should sell the strip of land by the river to the neighbours; or he should buy it; or he should build a dam and set up a mill; or Ivanov's uncle, old Count Shabelsky, who lived with them on charity, should marry the rich young widow Babakina, and they could all share the money. Ivanov would hear none of it. "Leave me alone."

The doctor, Lvov, came out of the house. He was young, honest, earnest, recently qualified, and very conscious of his honesty. He told Ivanov plainly that his wife, Anna Petrovna, had consumption; she must be taken to the Crimea at once, or she would die; and she must not be upset. "I can't take her to the Crimea," said Ivanov; "I have no money." And she would not go without him. And his life was so tangled.

Then Ivanov spoke to Lvov as to a friend, and Lvov did not want to hear it:

"My dear friend, you finished at the university only last year; you are still young and full of courage, and I am thirty-five. I have the right to advise you. Don't marry a Jewish woman, or a neurotic, or a bluestocking; choose for yourself something ordinary, grey, without bright colours, without any unnecessary sounds. In general, build your whole life on the conventional pattern. The greyer and more monotonous the background, the better. My dear man, don't fight thousands single-handed, don't tilt at windmills, don't beat your head against walls . . . May God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, progressive schools, passionate speeches . . . Shut yourself up in your shell, and do the little task God has given you . . . That's warmer, more honest, and healthier. But the life I've lived — how tiring it is! Oh, how tiring!"

Anna Petrovna was born Sarra Abramson, the daughter of a rich Jewish family. To marry Ivanov she had been baptised, and her parents had cursed her and cut her off. The district believed Ivanov had married her for a dowry that never came.

He went on, more to himself: five years ago he had married Anna for love. "She was a remarkable woman . . . She gave up her faith for me, left her father and mother, gave up wealth . . . And now? I don't love her any more. How or why it happened, I don't understand. Now she is suffering, her days are numbered, and I run away from her like the worst kind of coward, from her pale face, her sunken chest, her pleading eyes . . . I am ashamed to admit it." He did not know himself. He had been like a labourer who overstrains himself: young, strong, he had heaped on his back a load that broke it. Now, at evening, his wife's sorrow and her love tormented him, and he went out — every evening — to the Lebedevs, to escape.

Lvov listened, and in his heart condemned him.

Count Shabelsky, Ivanov's uncle on his mother's side, an old man in a dressing gown, came out, with Anna. The Count was bored, cynical, penniless, and full of spite against everyone, himself most of all; he made jokes, and complained that Ivanov never took him anywhere. Anna was cheerful, as consumptives often seem, and teased him.

Ivanov said he was going to the Lebedevs. Anna begged him to stay, just this once. "Stay at home tonight, Kolya." "My darling, you must understand . . . If I stay at home, I feel such misery . . . It's as if something is gnawing at me." He went. The Count, left behind again, grumbled that his nephew never took him anywhere.

Anna was left alone with the doctor. She sat by the lamp. "Do you know, doctor, I'm beginning to think that fate has cheated me . . ." She spoke of her husband: "When I first met him, I loved him at once . . . He spoke, and I believed every word . . . Now he goes off every evening, and I don't even know where." Lvov could not keep silent: he told her, bitterly, that her husband was a cold, heartless man, who had married her for money and now left her to die alone. Anna defended Ivanov; but the doubt had been sown.

From the garden, an owl cried. Anna shivered. Then she made up her mind: she would not sit here alone. She would follow him, and take the Count with her. She would see for herself where he went every evening.