KULIGIN, BORIS, KUDRIASH, and SHAPKIN.

KULIGIN. What have you to do with him, sir? We can't make it out. What can induce you to live with him and put up with his abuse?

BORIS. A poor inducement, Kuligin! I'm not free.

KULIGIN. But how are you not free, allow me to ask you. If you can tell us, sir, do.

BORIS. Why not? You knew our grandmother, Anfisa Mihalovna?

KULIGIN. To be sure I did!

KUDRIASH. I should think we did!

BORIS. She quarrelled with my father you know because he married into a noble family. It was owing to that that my father and mother lived in Moscow. My mother used to tell me that she could hardly endure life for three days together with my father's relations, it all seemed so rough and coarse to her.

KULIGIN. Well it might! you have to be used to it from the first, sir, to be able to bear it.

BORIS. Our parents brought us up well in Moscow, they spared no expense. They sent me to the Commercial Academy, and my sister to a boarding school, but they both died suddenly of cholera. We were left orphans, my sister and I. Then we heard that our grandmother was dead here, and had left a will that our uncle was to pay us a fair share of her fortune, when we came of age, only upon one condition.

KULIGIN. And what was that, sir?

BORIS. If we showed a proper respect for his authority.

KULIGIN. Then there's no doubt, sir, you'll never see your fortune.

BORIS. No, but that's not all, Kuligin! First he finds fault with us to his heart's content, and ends none the less with giving us nothing, or some tiny dole. And then he'll go making out that it's a great favour, and that he ought not to have done even that.

KUDRIASH. That's just the way the merchants go on among us. Besides, if you were ever so respectful to him, who's to hinder him from saying you're disrespectful?

BORIS. To be sure. And indeed he sometimes will say: I've children of my own, why should I give money away to outsiders? Am I to wrong my own like that?

KULIGIN. It's plain, sir, you're not in luck's way.

BORIS. If it were only me, I wouldn't care! I'd throw it all up and go away. But I'm sorry for my sister. He did write for her to come too, but mother's relations wouldn't let her, they wrote she wasn't well. It frightens me to think what the life here would be for her.

KUDRIASH. Of course. The master's no decent manners at all.

KULIGIN. In what capacity do you live with him, sir; what arrangement has he made with you?

BORIS. Why, none whatever; "you live with me," he says, "and do what you're told, and your pay shall be what I give you," that's to say, in a year's time he'll settle up with me as he thinks fit.

KUDRIASH. That's just his way. Not one of us dare as much as hint at a salary, or he storms till he's black in the face. "How do you know," he'll say, "what I have in my mind to do? Do you suppose you can see into my heart? Maybe, I shall be so disposed as to give you five thousand." It's no use talking to him! Only you may be pretty sure he's never been disposed that way in his life.

KULIGIN. It's a hard case, sir! You must try and get the right side of him somehow.

BORIS. But the point is, Kuligin, that it's impossible. Why, even his own children can never do anything to please him; so it's hardly likely I could!

KUDRIASH. Who could please him, when his whole life's spent in bullying people? Especially where money's at stake; no accounts are ever settled without storms of abuse. Often people are glad to go short of their due, if only he'll let them off quietly. Woe to us if anyone vexes him in the morning! He falls foul of everyone all day long.

BORIS. Every morning my aunt entreats us with tears in her eyes: "Don't anger him, friends! Dear boys, don't anger him!"

KUDRIASH. But you can never avoid it! If he goes to the bazaar, it's all up! He scolds all the peasants. Even if they ask him less than cost price they never get off without abuse. And then he's upset for the whole day.

SHAPKIN. He's a bully—there's no other word for him.

KUDRIASH. A bully? I should think he is!

BORIS. And what's fatal is if some man offends him, whom he daren't be rude to. Then all his household have to look out for themselves!

KUDRIASH. Bless my soul! That was a joke though. Didn't that hussar let him have it on the Volga, at the ferry! Oh, a lovely shindy he kicked up afterwards, too.

BORIS. Ah, and didn't his family suffer for it! Why, for a fortnight after we were all hiding away in the attics and cupboards.

KULIGIN. Surely that's not the folk coming back from vespers?

[Several persons pass in the background.

KUDRIASH. Come on, Shapkin, let's get a drink! It's no good stopping here.

[They bow and exeunt.

BORIS. Oh, Kuligin, it's awfully hard here for me who've not been used to it. Everyone seems to look with unfriendly eyes at me, as though I were not wanted here, as though I were in their way. I don't understand the ways here. I know this is truly Russia, my own country, but still I can't get used to it.

KULIGIN. And you never will get used to it, sir.

BORIS. Why?

KULIGIN. They're a coarse lot, sir, in our town, a coarse lot! Among the working people, sir, you'll find nothing but brutality and squalid poverty. And we've no chance, sir, of ever finding our way out of it. For by honest labour we can never earn more than a crust of bread. And everyone with money, sir, tries all he can to get a poor man under his thumb, so as to make more money again out of his working for nothing. Do you know the answer your uncle, Saviol Prokofitch, made to the provost? The peasants were always coming to the provost with complaints that your uncle never paid one of them fairly according to agreement. The provost said to him at last: "Look here," says he, "Saviol Prokofitch, you must pay the peasants what's fairly owing to them! Every day they come to me with some complaint!" Your uncle slapped the provost on the shoulder, and says he: "It's not worth while, your Worship, for you and me to waste our breath over such petty details! I have to do with numbers of peasants in the course of the year; you can understand, if I pay them a paltry farthing short, every man of them, it mounts up to thousands, and a capital thing too for me!" Think of that, sir! And the way they treat one another too, sir! They injure each other's trade all they can, and that not so much from self-interest, as from envy. They are always at feud with one another. They entertain in their grand mansions drunken attorneys' clerks, wretched creatures, sir, that hardly look like human beings. And they, for a small tip, will cover sheets of stamped paper with malicious quibbling attacks on their neighbours. And then there's a lawsuit commences between them, sir, and no end to the worry and fret. They bring it before the court here, and go off to the chief town, and there everyone in court is on the look-out for them and they clap their hands with glee when they see them. Words do not take long, but deeds are not soon done. They are dragged from court to court, they are worn out with delays; but they are positively delighted at that; it's just that they want. "I've lost a lot of money," one will say, "but it's cost him a pretty penny too!" I did try to put it all into verse....

BORIS. Why, do you make verse?

KULIGIN. Yes, sir, in the old-fashioned style. I have read Lomonosov and Derzhavin. Lomonosov was a deep thinker, an investigator of nature.... And he was one of us plain working folk too.

BORIS. You should write. That would be interesting.

KULIGIN. How could I, sir! They'd tear me to pieces, they'd skin me alive. Even as it is, sir, I have had to pay for my chattering; but I can't help it, I love to speak my mind freely. I meant to say something about their family life, sir, but we'll talk of that some other time. There's plenty to tell about that too.

[Enter Feklusha and another woman.

FEKLUSHA. De-lightful, my clear, de-lightful! Divinely beautiful! But what's the use of talking! You live in the Promised Land, simply! And the merchant gentry are all a devout people, and famed for many a virtue! liberality and much almsgiving! I am well content, my good soul, full to the brim of content! For their liberality to us will their abundance be greatly increased, especially in the house of Kabanova.

[Exeunt.

BORIS. Kabanova?

KULIGIN. A fanatical hypocrite, sir. She gives to the poor, but her own household she worries to death. (Silence.) All I want, sir, is to find out the secret of perpetual motion!

BORIS. Why, what would you do?

KULIGIN. How can you ask, sir! Why, the English offer millions for it. I should use all the money for public purposes,—we want to provide work for the working people. Here they have hands to work, and no work to do.

BORIS. And you hope to discover perpetual motion?

KULIGIN. Not a doubt, I shall, sir! I have only to scrape up enough money for models. Good-bye, sir!

[Exit.