[B-II-4]

[Deemer]

(Treplev returns to the boathouse. He puts the rifle away, then sits on the ground, staring out at the lake. Dorn enters.)

DORN: A kopek for your thoughts.

TREPLEV: They aren't worth that much.

DORN: Ah, you never can tell. Out of whatever misery you are feeling right now might be planted the seed to a great play!

TREPLEV: You're too kind.

DORN: Is it Nina?

TREPLEV: It's always Nina. She is infatuated with Trigorin. If mother knew, she'd be heart-broken.

DORN: So Nina will break your heart, and Boris will break your mother's heart? Is this a prediction?

TREPLEV: It doesn't have to be predicted. It is obvious. Betrayal is part of human nature. The heart does not obey the crude ethics we raise to try and control our passion.

DORN: Well put. You must insert that into a play.

TREPLEV: I may never write a play again.

DORN: Of course you will. That's actually what all this is about. All this suffering. It's the fuel that drives your art.

TREPLEV: Must all artists suffer?

DORN: If they didn't, then how much more miserable our own lives would be - the lives of the rest of us, I mean. You, my friend, are an artist. I am not. In your suffering, you put together a piece of work that, when I watch it, manages to ease my own suffering a little. This is your calling. You heal the soul, the same way that I heal the body.

TREPLEV: I wish I could believe that.

DORN: No, you don't have to be too aware of it or the calling might go to your head. Then your writing would be too self-conscious.

TREPLEV: You are full of so much wisdom.

(Dorn laughs.)

DORN: Not wisdom so much as experience. I have practiced medicine for a long time, after all. You see a good deal as a doctor.

TREPLEV: I am just so tired of heart ache.

DORN: Then write! Write the pain out of yourself!

TREPLEV: Where do I find the energy?

DORN: Out of disappointment. Out of frustration. Even out of hatred.

TREPLEV: Who am I supposed to hate? I could never hate Nina.

DORN: Hate Boris, for breaking your mother's heart. Because you're right, if he gives in to Nina, that is exactly what he will do.

TREPLEV: Mother has lost lovers before.

DORN: But you haven't. You're too young. That's why you are feeling such special pain now.

TREPLEV: They'll never be another woman in my life.

DORN: That is a prediction that never comes true, even though all spurned young lovers make it

TREPLEV: Then I will be the exception.

DORN: I've heard that before, too. I'm not insulting you, Kostya. Just telling you the facts of life. It is an unfortunate truth of existence that we all have to reinvent the wheel. If you ever learned anything from experience, if society ever learned anything from history, what grandiose accomplishments our species could achieve! What heights we could reach! But it never happens - because we never learn anything, not as individuals, not as societies. We have to stumble along and make our own mistakes, which are exactly the same mistakes our parents made, and their parents before them, reinventing the wheel and all the while believing that no one on the planet has ever gone through the deep feelings that we ourselves have gone through. It's a kind of arrogance in the final analysis. That's what distinguishes us from the apes. Arrogance. We are homo arrogance.

TREPLEV: If you believe that - why go on living?

DORN: Because our arrogance is also very amusing! It's laughter that keeps us alive.

TREPLEV: I can't remember the last time I laughed.

DORN: I can fix that.

(He attacks Treplev, trying to tickle him.)

TREPLEV: What are you doing?

DORN: We are going to laugh a little here!

(He continues tickling Treplev, who finally starts laughing, almost painfully, and into this wrestling scene enters Ilya. When Dorn sees him, he stops.)

ILYA: I am taking Junior out of the field so your mother and Polina can go to town.

DORN: Good for you!

ILYA: If they would tell me what's going on, none of this would've happened.

DORN: (pulling his leg) It's absolutely shameful the way they treat you!

ILYA: Absolutely true.

DORN: I'd ask for a raise, is what I'd do.

ILYA: Really?

DORN: Surely you're worth more than you're getting paid.

(Dorn sneaks a wink to Treplev.)

ILYA: Of course I'm worth more.

DORN: Sounds to me like you are holding the winning hand here. You quit and they begged you to stay, is what it sounds like.

ILYA: Yes, I guess they did.

DORN: So a raise is probably a sure thing.

ILYA: I hadn't thought of that. Thank you, doctor.

DORN: I like to see a man get what he's worth.

ILYA: I have to fetch Junior and get the carriage ready. Damn right, I will ask for a raise!

(He moves off.)

(Dorn smiles at Treplev.)

DORN: See how ridiculous we humans are? How comical? You're one of the lucky ones with the talent to document all this in literature.

(The actors move off for intermission.)

TREPLEV: (to audience) We have an intermission.

(End of Act II)

Go to Act III

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