nything to-day. Your father has a very
difficult nature. [He takes a bottle out of the sideboard] May I? [He
pours himself a glass of vodka] We are alone here, and I can speak
frankly. Do you know, I could not stand living in this house for even a
month? This atmosphere would stifle me. There is your father, entirely
absorbed in his books, and his gout; there is your Uncle Vanya with his
hypochondria, your grandmother, and finally, your step-mother--

SONIA. What about her?

ASTROFF. A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the
clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course,
beautiful to look at, but don't you see? She does nothing but sleep
and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no
responsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an
idle life can never be a pure one. [A pause] However, I may be judging
her too severely. Like your Uncle Vanya, I am discontented, and so we
are both grumblers.

SONIA. Aren't you satisfied with life?

ASTROFF. I like life as life, but I hate and despise it in a little
Russian country village, and as far as my own personal life goes, by
heaven! there is absolutely no redeeming feature about it. Haven't you
noticed if you are riding through a dark wood at night and see a little
light shining ahead, how you forget your fatigue and the darkness and
the sharp twigs that whip your face? I work, that you know--as no one
else in the country works. Fate beats me on without rest; at times I
suffer unendurably and I see no light ahead. I have no hope; I do not
like people. It is long since I have loved any one.

SONIA. You love no one?

ASTROFF. Not a soul. I only feel a sort of tenderness for your old nurse
for old-times' sake. The peasants are all alike; they are stupid and
live in dirt, and the educated people are hard to get along with. One
gets tired of them. All our good friends are petty and shallow and see
no farther than their own noses; in one word, they are dull. Those that
have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis.
They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy
sharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of
the eye, and say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or,
if they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I
like the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat; that is strange, too.
Simple, natural relations be