Astroff. Nothing.
Voitski. You must tell me something! Oh, my God! I am forty-seven years old. I may live to sixty; I still have thirteen years before me; an enternity! How shall I be able to endure life for thirteen years? What shall I do? How an I fill them? Oh, don’t you see? [He presses Astroff’s hand convulsively] Don’t you see, if only I could live the rest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright morning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten and had vanished like smoke. [He weeps] Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me, tell me how to begin.
Astroff. [Crossly] What nonsense! What sort of a new life can you and I look forward to? We can have no hope.
Voitski. None?
Astroff. None. Of that I am convinced.
Voitski. Tell me what to do. [He puts his hand to his heart] I feel such a burning pain here.
Astroff. [Shouts angrily] Stop! [Then, more gently] It may be that posterity, which will despise us for our blind and stupid lives, will find some road to happiness; but we—you and I—have but one hope, the hope that we may be visited by visions, perhaps by pleasant ones, as we lie resting in our graves. [Sighing] Yes, brother, there were only two respectable, intelligent men in this county, you and I. Ten years or so of this life of ours, this miserable life, have sucked us under, and we have become as contemptible and petty as the rest. But don’t try to talk me out of my purpose! Give me what you took from me, will you?
Voitski. I took nothing from you.
Astroff. You took a little bottle of morphine out of my medicine-case. [A pause] Listen! If you are positively determined to make an end to yourself, go into the woods and shoot yourself there. Give up the morphine, or there will
