The Seven of Calvary

by Anthony Boucher

  He was still in something of a daze as he began what was to prove the most momentous stage appearance of his life.

  “Watch your next entrance-cue, Elvira. You miss it nine times out of ten.”

  “Tell Harold to check your make-up, Paul. We can’t see your eyes at all under that spot.”

  “Now by the Mass, Don Juan, this time you lie!”

  “If it were but to lie with thee, my chick …”

  “Even money we have to cut that line the second night …”

  “Check that green spot for the statue’s entrance. It’s not center stage, it’s right center.”

  “Then let blood flow, Don Félix. What care I, Be it from sword-pierced hearts or shattered maidenheads?”

  “It’s a classic. I guess you can get by with any kind of a line in a classic.…”

  “Maybe someday we’ll have an honest-to-god theatre in this university. I’m so goddamned sick of horsing around on a lousy lecture platform—”

  “Did you see the notice in the Daily Cal.?”

  “Did I? They got my name wrong and they forgot to say I played in Death Takes a Holiday.”

  “Maybe they were just being charitable, darling.…”

  “God’s doom has hung ere this so close o’er me That I could feel Jehovah’s awful breath Searing my cheeks. …”

  “My God, he’s cut five pages of the script!”

  “How can I make my entrance?”

  “Ad-lib. Do anything. But get on there!”

  “You were wonderful in the love scene, Laurel.”

  “Thanks loads.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone look so completely seduced. Drexel’s marvelous at casting.…”

  “I thought I’d blow for sure when Nathan said, ‘And is this puny wench the side of Preville?’”

  “He’s muffed that line at every rehearsal. There’s always one hitch like that in every show.”

  “I don’t give a good god damn if your mother and your grand-mother and your grand-mother’s illegitimate great-aunt are going to be out front. You can not wear a brassiere with that low-necked second-act bodice!”

  “Two blades I bear, Don Sancho; one is victor In death—in love, the other …”

  “Has anybody got a drink for God’s sake?”

  “What I want to know is, how did Don Juan ever get anywhere in clothes like these?”

  “That’s a quick black-out on the convent scene, Roy. If you dim, you kill the whole effect.”

  “I’m damned if I see why Drexel dragged in this Lennox person. Just because he’s a friend of Lamb’s—I’ve been in ten shows here on this stage, and if I haven’t earned a good lead by now …”

  “I don’t know what happened. My mind just went blank. I’ll have that speech cold tomorrow.”

  “Lights!”

  “Snap up your cues there!”

  “Places!”

  “That last scene drags like hell in the middle. Speed it up tomorrow!”

  “Check that!”

  “Stand by to help Elvira on that quick change!”

  “If you’re prompting this show, Miss Davis, for God’s sake prompt it!”

  “Speed up that change!”

  “Mark that cross!”

  “Places!”

  “Fix that spot!”

  “Okay?”

  “Check!”

  In short, a dress rehearsal, as such undistinguishable from any other. Undistinguishable, that is, up to eleven-thirty.

  The second act was finished a little before eleven, which was not half bad. Martin had had nightmares of rehearsing till three or four—a not unheard-of occurrence. The cast was still fairly chipper, but Drexel nonetheless advised a fifteen-minute rest before taking up the third act, which was short but strenuous in the extreme.

  The house lights went on, and Martin, standing beside a table of third-act props, looked out into the auditorium. Alex and Cynthia had apparently come over with Mona. At least, the three were sitting together and talking excitedly. All of the small audience, in fact, seemed to be deeply interested in the play, which, despite its great and lasting popularity in Spain and Latin America, had hitherto been completely unknown to English-speaking audiences.

  Some of the audience began drifting backstage during this informal pause. Among them Martin noticed Dr. Griswold of the Spanish Department and with him, to Martin’s surprise, the Leshins. It was the first time that he had ever seen them apparently satisfied with each other’s company.

  Dr. Griswold peered through the backstage mob, looking more than ever like Don Quixote in modern dress, until he caught sight of Martin.

  “I like it,” he said, as he slipped between a pair of Sevillian gallants, nearly tripping over their clumsily adjusted swords. “I don’t think much of the play, as you may remember from the seminar, but I like your translation.”

  “Thanks,” Martin answered. “That means something from you. And I still think it’s a swell piece of theatre, even if it isn’t Literature for seminars.”

  Dr. Griswold blinked an appreciative smile.

  “It is very interesting, Mr. Lamb,” Dr. Leshin added. “I know next to nothing of the Spanish theatre, but I find this piece fascinating.”

  “And you, Mrs. Leshin?”

  “Chiefly I am surprised that Mr. Lennox can act so well.”

  Martin repressed several comments at once.

  “So am I,” Dr. Griswold agreed. “The only chance for acting that I had as an instructor was in controlling myself at faculty meetings.”

  Cynthia, Alex, and Mona now joined the group at the prop-table. Cynthia was gushing with excitement, and even Alex was interested. “I think it’s too damned thrilling for words, Martin!” Cynthia was exclaiming. “And Paul is simply swelegant. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Leshin?” she added in a markedly uncalm voice.

  “Mr. Lennox has indeed greatly surprised me,” the doctor’s wife replied.

  “Now you surprise me, Mrs. Leshin,” said Cynthia a little too sweetly.

  Martin was uncomfortable. As the little group around him shifted to allow for the flowings of the rest of the crowd, he felt that they all moved around one axis—the direct line of antagonism between these two women. He was glad that Paul had remained in the dressing-room for the brief rest.

  Dr. Griswold’s dry voice broke the tension. “I’ve been telling Martin,” he was saying to Dr. Leshin, “that he ought to try his hand at something of Lope de Vega’s. Fuenteovejuna has been sorely neglected in view of its sociological interest to—”

  There was a tinkle of breaking glass. Martin turned and saw one of the two glasses that had stood on the prop-table now lying in fragments on the floor. “God damn it!” he exclaimed. “Who the devil knocked that down?”

  “Mr. Lamb …!” Mrs. Leshin was regarding him with raised eyebrows.

  “Sorry. You can scarcely help barking at people in a hubbub like this. Oh, well, it doesn’t much matter. Only one glass is really used in this scene, so the one that’s left will be enough. The other’s just for looks—not a real hand-prop. But these little things are so damned annoying at a rehearsal.”

  “Places for act three!”

  The helterskelter backstage wanderings began to assume obedient order to the disembodied voice.

  Dr. Griswold, the Leshins, Cynthia, Alex,—all slipped back into the auditorium with murmured congratulations and good wishes. Mona, who had not spoken a word, remained behind for an instant.

  “You do bring luck, Mona,” said Martin, touching her hand lightly.

  “I’m glad,” and she was gone.

  Martin’s gaze returned to the fragments of glass lying on the floor, and the little pool of colored water which the audience had been supposed to take for sherry. He had turned around the instant he heard the crash, but no one had been standing near the table. Or was there one—? For some reason at the moment obscure to him, he was very badly puzzled by this trifling incident, possibly simply because it freed his mind for an instant o
f the major worries of the evening.

  But there was no need for such worrying. Martin’s statement had been perfectly true. The glass that was left was quite enough.

  The brief first scene of the third act, in which Martin, as Don Félix, hears the confession of his sister Elvira and swears vengeance upon her betrayer, went off with admirable tension. The audience lost all pretense of informality and indifference; they were enjoying Theatre in its most exciting aspect, and thrilled to the chill of imminent death which pervaded the auditorium.

  As the lights dimmed and Martin left the stage, there was even a brief patter of applause. Paul, waiting in the wings, seized his hand. “Grand work, Martin.”

  “I surprised myself,” Martin admitted. “If we can only keep it up for the strangulation scene.…”

  “I’ve never been so moved in my life as tonight. If this is the theatre, even amateur, I’m damned if I’ll ever teach history again.”

  The lights slowly went up on the stage—act three, scene two, a room in the ancestral home of Don Juan. The low comedian who was playing Don Juan’s manservant got a sizable laugh on his opening business.

  “Well,” said Paul, “here goes.” He shook Martin’s hand firmly and strode onto the stage. Martin looked after him with warm admiration. Ashwin’s reasonings had vanished completely from his mind.

  Dialogue between Don Juan and the manservant. Fairly bawdy, but it got the laughs. The stage-manager rapped loudly on a wooden board, and the servant exited. Don Juan’s soliloquy—an inspired moment, which evoked almost involuntary applause. The servant re-entered, ushering in Don Félix (Martin), and exited again. The big scene of the play began.

  The brief stichomythy between Don Juan and Don Félix moved well; but then came an awkward moment.

  “Though, as you say, you come to murder me,” spoke Paul-Don Juan,

  “Let us rejoice our gullets ere we die.

  Sherry’s the life-blood of your true Sevillian.

  Honor my cellar, sir, if not my soul.”

  After which speech, he was supposed to take one glass from the center table, offering the other with a gesture to Don Félix. Paul carelessly took the one glass which stood there, then gestured hospitably at the empty table. A mild titter rippled over the audience.

  “Ay, if I knew it to be only sherry,” Martin replied regardless,

  “But death has hid in greater wines than yours.”

  The momentary amusement of the audience passed off, and the scene continued. Paul drained the pseudo-sherry at one vicious gulp, and launched into his big speech, a magnificent tirade in which, facing instant death at the hands of Don Félix, he still rails at virtue and glorifies impenitence. Despite the vigor with which he delivered the speech, Paul’s stage-fright, Martin noticed, was becoming curiously obvious. His pupils were dilated, and his arms were twitched by odd jerks and shudders.

  At last the long speech, which ran fully four minutes, was ended, and Martin, with a raging snarl, tossed aside his sword.

  “With fœtid blood I will not stain my steel,

  But rather wrest life from thy lying throat!” With a leap, he seized Paul by the throat.

  Now a strangulation scene is a difficult piece of theatrical business. The strangler must give the effect of great effort while exerting none at all, and the victim must preserve the appearance of passivity in the midst of extravagant contortions. Martin was accustomed in this scene simply to set his face in an expression of great and virulent hatred, and to let Paul do all the work.

  Tonight Paul was superb. His limbs jerked briefly, then suddenly stretched out stiff. His head fell back, and his very face seemed to change. It might, thought Martin, be just the lighting; but his cheeks grew dusky and congested, his eyes threatened to pop from their sockets.

  Martin released the body to speak his curtainline of vengeance accomplished, and Paul fell into a curious position which he had not used at any rehearsal. It was at once grotesque and terrifying. His body seemed rod-stiff and arched, resting on the head and the heels. It was an oddly convincing and yet slightly shocking death-pose.

  Martin stepped backstage from the body, pantomiming the awful reaction of the justified murderer after his accomplished crime. The lights dimmed, but the scene remained sharp in his mind. He saw the terrible stiffness of the corpse and the macabre fixed smile on its face—another new touch of Paul’s which blended the satirically unreal with ghastly actuality. He felt for an instant the truth of the whole scene. The feeling of full identification with a character came upon him as he had never known it before. He was Don Félix, the killer. And he noticed two discordant and irrelevant details. Paul’s modern briar pipe had fallen from his costume in the struggle and lay beneath the arched back, and on the table, where the glass had stood, was a small scrap of paper unspecified in any prop list.

  The lights had dimmed to complete darkness. There was an instant of perfect silence, and then a burst of the loudest applause that had ever come from such a miniature audience. So gradual had been the dimming that Martin could still see vaguely. He could see that Paul had relaxed from his amazing rigidity, but still lay on the stage. Martin was puzzled and stepped forward. Behind him he could hear the stagehands rapidly striking the set. He bent over Paul, scarcely knowing what he expected.

  Paul Lennox lay very still. He was breathing heavily as though in utter physical exhaustion. Martin touched his face lightly. His skin was covered with sweat and his lips trembled.

  “Lights!” Martin did not remember rising, nor could he recognize the voice as his own. “Lights for God’s sake!” The anguished shriek poured into silence and dissipated it. The auditorium began to fill with murmurs. Suddenly the lights came on, a blinding flood of brightness. Gazing at him with terrified fixity, Martin saw Paul’s limbs begin to twitch again, his head to jerk. A groan of agony came from him.

  “Martin!” he cried. “Rub my arms! They’re … Oh Christ! Hold me! Hold me! I can’t …” The twitching grew worse. Martin knew what would follow. That unhuman arch again. The fixed smile was returning to Paul’s face.

  People were crowding onto the little stage. Drexel was trying desperately to assert his authority, without the slightest idea of what to do with it when once asserted. Martin shuddered and turned away, bumping into a stagehand who, himself caught up in the general confusion, had decided simply to disregard it and go on about his business. He was carrying the table which had stood center stage. The bit of paper was still on it.

  Martin seized the stagehand by the arm. “For God’s sake, Mac,” he cried, “leave that table here!”

  “What the hell’s biting you?”

  For answer Martin pointed to the piece of paper. The stagehand set the table down suddenly and moved to a respectful distance. Even he had read of the Seven of Calvary.

  Paul Lennox died in convulsions at the University hospital at six minutes after one on the morning of Friday, April twentieth, thirteen days and an hour or so after the murder of Dr. Hugo Schaedel.

  It was the retiring scholar, Dr. Joseph Griswold, who had taken charge of the confusion in the auditorium and, aided by Mac and another stagehand, had himself driven Paul to the hospital. Martin followed on foot, accompanied by Alex, Cynthia, and Mona. He was glad to leave the auditorium. Everyone there seemed to take for granted that Paul was simply suffering some queer sudden seizure brought on by Martin’s rough handling in the strangulation scene; and all looked on him with a mixture of reproach and wonder.

  Martin all but wished that the general opinion were indeed correct. He himself, he thought, as they walked across the campus, might be wrong; but there were the symptoms, recognized by him too late, there was that strange business of the glasses, and above all there was that piece of paper with the dreadful mark of the Vignards.

  None of the four spoke a word until they had reached the hospital. In the hall Dr. Griswold and a young interne were awaiting them. Dr. Griswold spoke first.

  “It is no use,” he said, “to h
old out false hopes. Dr. Evans cannot give him more than an hour or two.”

  “Where is he?” in anguish from Cynthia, all pretense of indifference or animosity to Paul now vanished.

  “Dr. Evans is with him now,” the interne answered. “It would be better if you waited out here.”

  Then Cynthia broke down. It was the most complete and honest expression of emotion that Martin had ever seen from her. She sank on a bench in the hallway, abandoned to her grief. Alex sat beside her and let her head fall on his shoulder. Suppressing whatever jealousy he might naturally have felt, he tried to comfort her.

  Dr. Griswold drew Martin aside. “I know the things that they had begun to say in the auditorium,” he began. “There seemed to be a feeling that you had … carried realism a bit too far.”

  Martin nodded.

  “You do not need to fear any responsibility, Martin. Mr. Lennox is dying from no such simple cause.”

  “I know,” Martin broke in.

  Dr. Griswold questioned him in silence.

  “Strychnine,” said Martin.

  “True.” Dr. Griswold touched his Quixotic beard in slight confusion. “On the advice of Dr. Evans, I have telephoned to the police. Sergeant Cutting will be here shortly.”

  By that time the auditorium was almost empty. Drexel and a couple of the crew had cleared the stage at last.

  “This probably means no performance tomorrow,” Drexel was complaining. “It’s a damnable disappointment after all these weeks. I simply can’t understand it from Lamb. I can’t imagine him doing a thing like that. I suppose it just goes to show that there’s a little of the beast in all of us.”

  He stood back and surveyed the stage. “There,” he said, “I guess that’ll do for a lecture platform for tomorrow’s eight o’clock … Joe! What’s that scrap of paper over there? Get rid of it.”

  And Joe, who never read a newspaper, picked up the scrap, glanced uncuriously at the funny sort of F on it, and stuck it in the wastebasket.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Tempest in a Wineglass