What is this other, better life the sisters dream and speak about in urgent, breathless voices? “To leave for Moscow, end everything here,” says Irina, and Sasha repeats it in the theatrical voice the actress uses, a voice full of drama and importance. The men from the play are all in the military, although there is no war going on, and they’re called lieutenant and colonel and even baron—an ancient word, because all the barons were disposed of in 1917. “I’m so tired,” says Irina in the third act as Sasha picks at the grains of cement where tiles fell off the side of the stove. “This work is without poetry, without thought. I dream of Moscow every night; I’ve almost lost my mind.”

“I’ve almost lost my mind,” Sasha repeats, trying to sound as desperate as the actress on the radio. “And why I am still alive, why I haven’t killed myself, I don’t understand.”

She doesn’t want Irina to kill herself. She wants her to go on acting.

Then there is a gunshot, sharp and dry as snapped kindling, and Sasha starts sniffling. It wasn’t Irina, but the baron Irina was going to marry who just got killed in a duel, and that means she will never be able to leave this provincial town that is driving her toward insanity and desperation. She will never be able to move to Moscow and live that other life she’s been dreaming about, a life full of poetry and happiness.

Sasha is standing in the corner, hoping that Grandma won’t call her in for dinner yet. The words of the play lap around her like the ripples of the river, washing over every pore of her skin, every fiber of her soul. She is afraid to move, breathing very carefully because she knows there is something big happening right now, more important than the gunshot that killed Irina’s fiancé, weightier than going to Moscow. Something even more significant than the ride on the back of the streetcar, the flogging, and the new respect in Andrei’s eyes.

She imagines the three actresses playing the sisters, in long dresses and makeup, in front of an audience wrapped in prerevolutionary velvet and furs. They are tall and beautiful, and their big eyes, outlined in stage makeup, sparkle with tears. She admires them, but she envies them more. She imagines how they first read the play, repeating every word, committing them to memory the way her teacher tells the students to memorize Pushkin’s poems in her Russian class. She imagines them practicing the scenes, pretending to live in a world she knows nothing about, a world of nobility and servants. A swarm of questions buzzes in her head. How do they know what it feels like to have your supper cooked by a servant, to give parties and live in a house big enough for all those guests?