by Nancy Kress
“Forget the odds,” I said. “Who hasn’t been cast yet?”
“Well, we need to see,” she said, ticking off roles on her fingers. I recognized the parody instantly: Gregory Whitten himself. Her very face seemed to lengthen into the horse-faced scowl so beloved by Sunday-supplement caricaturists. “We must have two royal ladies—no, they must absolutely look royal, royal. And DeStogumber, I need a marvelous DeStogrumber! How can anyone expect me to direct without an absolutely wonderful DeStogumber—”
The theater doors opened. “We are ready for you onstage, Miss Bishop.”
“Thank you.” The parody of Whitten had vanished instantly; in this public of one stagehand she was again Barbara Bishop, controlled and cool.
I settled into a seat in the first row, nodding vaguely at the other hangers-on scattered throughout the orchestra and mezzanine. No one nodded back. There was an absurd public fiction that we, who contributed nothing to the play but large sums of money, were like air: necessary but invisible. I didn’t mind. I enjoyed seeing the cast ease into their roles, pulling them up from somewhere inside and mentally shaking each fold around their own gestures and voices and glances. I had not always known how to see that. It had taken me, from such a different set of signals, a long time to notice the tiny adjustments that go, rehearsal by rehearsal, to create the illusion of reality. Perhaps I was slow. But now it seemed to me that I could spot the precise moment when an actor has achieved that precarious balance between his neocortical knowledge of the script and his older, ESIR knowledge of the feel of his character’s epoch, and so is neither himself nor the playwright’s creation but some third, subtler force that transcends both.
Barbara, I could see, had not yet reached that moment. Whitten, pacing the side of the stage, was directing the early scene in which the seventeen-year-old Joan, a determined peasant, comes to Captain Robert de Baudricourt to demand a horse and armor to lead the French to victory over the English. De Baudricourt was being played by Jason Kellig, a semisuccessful actor whom I had met before and not particularly liked. No one else was onstage, although I had that sensation one always has during a rehearsal of hordes of other people just out of sight in the wings, eyeing the action critically and shushing one another. Moths fluttering nervously just outside the charmed circle of light.
“No, squire!” Barbara said. “God is very merciful, and the blessed saints Catherine and Margaret, who speak to me every day, will intercede for you. You will go to paradise, and your name will be remembered forever as my first helper.”
It was subtly wrong: too poised for the peasant Joan, too graceful. At the same time, an occasional gesture—an out-flinging of her elbow, a sour smile—was too brash, and I guessed that these had belonged to the Rouen barmaid in Joan’s ESIR. It was very rough, and I could see Whitten’s famous temper, never long in check, begin to mount.
“No, no, no—Barbara, you’re supposed to be an innocent. Shaw says that Joan answers ‘with muffled sweetness.’ You sound too surly. Absolutely too surly. You must do it again. Jason, cue her.”
“Well, I am damned,” Kellig said.
“No, squire! God is very merciful, and the blessed saints Catherine and Margaret who speak to me every day, will intercede for you. You will go to paradise—”
“Again,” Whitten said.
“Well, I am damned.”
“No, squire! God is very merciful, and the blessed saints Catherine and Margaret, who speak to me every—”
“No! Now you sound like you’re sparring with him! This is not some damned eighteenth-century drawing-room repartee! Joan absolutely means it! The voices are absolutely real to her. You must do it again, Barbara. You must tap into the religious atmosphere of your ESIR. You are not trying! Do it again!” Barbara bit her lip. I saw Kellig glance from her to Whitten, and I suddenly had the impression—I don’t know why—that they had all been at one another earlier, before I had arrived. Something beyond the usual rehearsal frustration was going on here. Tension, unmistakable as the smell of smoke, rose from the three of them.
“Well, I am damned.”
“No, squire! God is very merciful, and the blessed saints Catherine and Margaret, who speak to me every day, will intercede for you. You will go to paradise, and your name will be remembered forever as my first helper.”
“Again,” Whitten said.
“Well, I am damned.”
“No, squire! God is—”
“Again.”
“Really, Gregory,” Barbara began icily, “how you think you can judge after four words of—”
“I need to hear only one word when it’s as bad as that! And what in absolute hell is that little flick of the wrist supposed to be? Joan is not a discus thrower. She must be—” Whitten stopped dead, staring off-stage.
At first, unsure of why he had cut himself off or turned so red, I thought he was having an attack of some kind. The color in his face was high, almost hectic. But he held himself taut and erect, and then I heard the siren coming closer, landing on the roof, trailing off. It had come from the direction of Larrimer—which was, I suddenly remembered, the only hospital in New York that would do ESIR.
A very young man in a white coat hurried across the stage. “Mr. Whitten, Dr. Metz says could you come up to the copter right away?”
“What is it? No, don’t hold back, damn it, you absolutely must tell me now! Is it?”
On the young technician’s face professional constraint battled with self-importance. The latter won, helped perhaps by Whitten’s seizing the boy by the shoulders. For a second I actually thought Whitten would shake him.
“It’s her, sir. It really is. We were looking for fifteenth-century ESIR, like you said, and we tried the neos for upper class for the ladies in waiting, and all we were getting were peasants or non-Europeans or early childhood deaths, and then Dr. Metz asked—” He was clearly enjoying this, dragging it out as much as possible. Whitten waited with a patience that surprised me until I realized that he was holding his breath. “—this neo to concentrate on the pictures Dr. Metz would show her of buildings and dresses and bowls and stuff to clear her mind. She looked dazed and in pain like they do, and then she suddenly remembered who she was, and Dr. Metz asked her lots of questions—that’s his period anyway, you know; he’s the foremost American historian on medieval France—and then he said she was.”
Whitten let out his breath, a long, explosive sigh. Kellig leaned forward and said “Was . . .”
“Joan,” the boy said simply. “Joan of Arc.”
It was as if he had shouted, although of course he had not. But the name hung in the dusty silence of the empty theater, circled and underlined by everything there: the heavy velvet curtains, the dust motes in the air, the waiting strobes, the clouds of mothlike actors, or memories of actors, in the wings.
They all existed to lend weight and probability to what had neither. One in a million, one in a billion.
“Is Dr. Metz sure?” Whitten demanded. He looked suddenly violent, capable of disassembling the technician if the historian were not sure.
“He’s sure!”
“Where is she? In the copter?”
“Yes.”
“Have Dr. Metz bring her down here. No, I’ll go up there. No, bring her here. Is she still weak?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said.
“Well, go! I told Dr. Metz I wanted her here as soon as he absolutely was sure!”
The boy went.
So Whitten had been informed of the possibility earlier. I looked at Barbara, suddenly understanding the tension on stage. She stood smiling, her chin raised a little, her body very straight. She looked pale. Some trick of lighting, some motionless tautness in her shoulders, made me think for an instant that she was going to faint, but of course she did not. She behaved exactly as I knew she must have been willing herself to, waiting quietly through the interminable time until Joan of Arc should appear. Whitten fidgeted. Kellig lounged, his eyelids lowered halfway. Neither of them look
ed at Barbara.
The technician and the historian walked out onto the stage, each with a hand under either elbow of a young girl whose head was bandaged. Even now I feel a little ashamed when I remember rising halfway in my seat, as for an exalted presence. But the girl was not an exalted presence, was not Joan of Arc; she was an awkward, skinny, plain-faced girl who had once been Joan of Arc and now wanted to be an extra in the background of a seventy-five-year-old play. No one else seemed to be remembering the distinction.
“You were Joan of Arc?” Whitten asked. He sounded curiously formal, as out of character as the girl.
“Yes, I . . . I remember Joan. Being Joan.” The girl frowned, and I thought I knew why: She was wondering why she didn’t feel like Joan. But ESIR, Barbara has told me, doesn’t work like that. Other lives are like remembering someone you have known, not like experiencing the flesh and bone of this one—unless this one is psychotic. Otherwise, it usually takes time and effort to draw on the memory of a previous incarnation, and this child had been Joan of Arc only for a few days. Suddenly I felt very sorry for her.
“What’s your first name?” Whitten said.
“Ann. Ann Jasmine.”
Witten winced. “A stage name?”
“Yes. Isn’t it pretty?”
“You must absolutely use your real name. What acting have you done?”
The girl shifted her weight, spreading her feet slightly apart and starting to count off on her fingers. Her voice was stronger now and cockier. “Well, let’s just see: In high school I played Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and in the Country-Time Players—that’s community theater—I was Goat’s Sister in The Robber Bridegroom and Aria in Moondust. And then I came to New York, and I’ve done—oh, small stuff, mostly. A few commercials.” She smiled at Whitten, then looked past him at Kellig and winked. He stared back at her as if she were a dead fish.
“What,” said Kellig slowly, “is your real name?”
“Does it matter?” The girl’s smile vanished, and she pouted.
“Yes.”
“Ann Friedland,” she said sulkily, and I knew where the “few commercials, mostly” as well as the expensive ESIR audition had come from. Trevor Friedland, of Friedland Computers, was a theater backer for his own amusement, much as I was. He was not, however, a co-backer in this one. Not yet.
At the Friedland name, Kellig whistled, a low, impudent note that made Whitten glance at him in annoyance. Barbara still had not moved. She watched them intently.
“Forget your name,” Whitten said. “Absolutely forget it. Now I know this play is new to you, but you must read for me. Just read cold; don’t be nervous. Take my script and start there. No—there. Jason, cue her.”
“You want me to read Joan? The part of Joan?” the girl said. All her assumed sophistication was gone; her face was as alive as a seven-year-old’s at Christmas, and I looked away, not wanting to like her.
“Oh, really, Greg,” Kellig said. Whitten ignored him. “Just look over Shaw’s description there, and then start. I know you’re cold. Just start.”
“Good morning, captain squire,” she began shakily, but stopped when Barbara crossed the stage to sit on a bench near the wings. She was still smiling, a small frozen smile. Ann glanced at her nervously, then began over.
“Good morning, captain squire. Captain, you are to give me a horse . . .” Again she stopped. A puzzled look came over her face; she skimmed a few pages and then closed her eyes. Immediately I thought of the real Joan, listening to voices. But this was the real Joan. For a moment the stage seemed to float in front of me, a meaningless collection of lines and angles.
“It wasn’t like that,” Ann Friedland said slowly.
“Like what?” Whitten said. “What wasn’t like what?”
“Joan. Me. She didn’t charge in like that at all to ask de Baudricourt for horse and armor. It wasn’t at all . . . she was more . . . insane, I think. What he has written here, Shaw . . .” She looked at each of us in turn, frowning. No one moved. I don’t know how long we stayed that way, staring at the thin girl onstage.
“Saint Catherine,” she said finally. “Saint Margaret.” Her slight figure jerked as if shocked, and she threw back her head and howled like a dog. “But Orleans was not even my idea! The commander, my father, the commander, my father . . . oh, my God, my dear God, he made her do it, he told me—they all promised—”
She stumbled, nearly falling to her knees. The historian leaped forward and caught her. I don’t think any of us could have borne it if that pitiful, demented figure had knelt and begun to pray.
The next moment, however, though visibly fighting to control herself, she knew where—and who—she was.
“Doctor, don’t, I’m all right now, it’s not—I’m all right. Mr. Whitten, I’m sorry, let me start the scene over!”
“No, don’t start the scene over. Tell me what you were going to say. Where is Shaw wrong? What happened? Try to feel it again.”
Ann’s eyes held Whitten’s. They were beyond all of us, already negotiating with every inflection of every word.
“I don’t have to feel it again. I remember what happened. That wave of . . . I won’t do that again. It was just when it all came rushing back. But now I remember it, I have it, I can control it. It didn’t happen like Shaw’s play. She—I—was used. She did hear voices, she was mad, but the whole idea to use her to persuade the Dauphin to fight against the English didn’t come from the voices. The priests insisted on what they said the voices meant, and the commander made her a sort of mascot to get the soldiers to kill . . . I was used. A victim.” A complicated expression passed over her face, perhaps the most extraordinary expression I have ever seen on a face so young: regret and shame and loss and an angry, wondering despair for events long beyond the possibility of change. Then the expression vanished, and she was wholly a young woman coolly engaged in the bargaining of history.
“I know it all, Mr. Whitten—all that really happened. And it happened to me. The real Joan of Arc.”
“Cosgriff,” Whitten said, and I saw Kellig start. Lawrence Cosgriff had won the Pulitzer Prize for drama the last two years in a row. He wrote powerful, despairing plays about the loss of individual morality in an institutionalized world.
“My dear Gregory,” Kellig said, “one does not simply commission Lawrence Cosgriff to write one a play. He’s not some hack you can—”
Whitten looked at him, and he was quiet. I understood why; Whitten was on fire, as exalted with his daring idea as the original Joan must have been with hers. But no, of course, she hadn’t been exalted, that was the whole point. She had been a dupe, not a heroine. Young Miss Friedland, fighting for her name in lights, most certainly considered Joan the Heroine to be an expendable casualty. One of the expendable casualties. I stood up and began to make my way to the stage.
“I’m the real thing,” Anne said. “The real thing. I’ll play Joan, of course.”
“Of course,” Kellig drawled. He was already looking down at her with dislike, and I could see what their rehearsals would be: the chance upstart and the bit player who had paid largely fruitless dues for twenty years. The commander and the Dauphin would still be the male leads; Kellig’s part could only grow smaller under Ann’s real thing.
“I’ll play Joan,” she said again, a little more loudly.
Whitten, flushed with his vision, stopped his ecstatic pacing and scowled. “Of course you must play Joan!”
“Oh,” Ann said, “I was afraid—”
“Afraid? What is this? You are Joan.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “yes, I am.” She frowned, sincerely, and then a second later replaced the frown with a smile all calculation and relief. “Yes, of course I am!”
“Then I’ll absolutely reach Cosgriff’s agent today. He’ll jump at it. You will need to work with him, of course. We can open in six months with any luck. You do live in town? Cosgriff can tape you. No, someone else can do that before he even—Austin!”
“You’re forgetting something, aren’t you, Gregory, in this sudden great vision? You have a contract to do Shaw.”
“Of course I’m not forgetting the contract. But you absolutely must want to continue, for this new play . . . Cosgriff . . .” He stopped, and I knew the jumble of things that must be in his mind: deadlines, backing (Friedland Computers!), contracts, schedules, the percentage of my commitment, and, belatedly, Barbara.
She still sat on the bench at stage left, half in shadow. Her back was very straight, her chin high, but in the subdued light her face with its faint smile looked older, not haggard but set, inelastic. I walked over to her and turned to face Whitten.
“I will not back this new play, even if you do get Cosgriff to write it. Which I rather doubt. Shaw’s drama is an artistic masterpiece. What you are planning is a trendy exploitation of some flashy technology. Look elsewhere for your money.” Silence. Whitten began to turn red. Kellig snickered—at whom was not clear. In the silence the historian, Dr. Metz, began timidly, “I’m sure Miss Friedman’s information would be welcomed warmly by any academic—”
The girl cried loudly. “But I’m the real thing!” and she started to sob.
Barbara had risen to take my arm. Now she dropped it and walked over to Ann. Her voice was steady. “I know you are. And I wish you all luck as an actress. It’s a brilliant opportunity, and I’m sure you’ll do splendidly with it.” They faced each other, the sniveling girl who had at least the grace to look embarrassed and the smiling, humiliated woman. It was a public performance, of course, an illusion that all Barbara felt was a selfless, graceful warmth, but it was also more than that. It was as gallant an act of style as I have ever seen.
