All The World's A Stage

by Boris Akunin

  She had opened the door of the service entrance herself. According to Noah Noaevich’s theory, the theatre should not be an actor’s second home, but his first, so every member of the company had his or her own key. The nightwatchman was not at his post, but Eliza attached no importance to that. She walked up to the floor on which the dressing rooms were located, then along a long, dark corridor, breathing in the aroma of the roses. She turned a corner – and stopped.

  Emeraldov’s door was standing wide open. The light was burning inside and she could hear voices.

  ‘Are you c-certain that he stayed here after all the others left?’ someone asked. She thought she had heard that stammer before somewhere.

  The watchman replied.

  ‘What would I want to lie for? The day before yesterday they played Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a sentimental play. After the performance the gentlemen took a drink and got a bit rowdy. Well, that’s always the way. Then they went off home. But Mr Emeraldov stayed here. I glanced in, thinking he hadn’t turned the light off again. But he said to me: “You be off now, Antip. I’ve got an appointment”. He was in a merry mood, singing some little song or other. He’d already changed out of his working clothes – you know, them trousers with the baggy knees, the hat with the feather, the sword. And he brought the mugs with him, the ones they drink out of at the feast. Beautiful, they are, with eagles.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you t-told me. And did someone c-come to see him then?’

  ‘I won’t tell a lie. I didn’t see anyone.’

  Eliza stood in the door, outraged.

  Well, well, at their first meeting this gentleman, Erast Ivanovich, no, Erast Petrovich, with some rather unusual surname, had made a good impression on her. Handsome, a good age for a man, about forty-five, with the advantageous combination of a fresh face and noble grey hair. The only thing was that his taste in clothes was not quite right – excessively elegant, and what man of insight wore a pearl in his necktie nowadays? But his manner was irreproachable. It was obvious immediately that he was man of society. Perhaps she might even have been interested in him, if only he did something worthwhile. But a repertoire manager – that was boring, that was for someone like Gogol’s Bashmachkin. He had called himself a traveller, it was true. Most likely he was a fanatical theatre lover, one of those society drones who dreamed of getting into the world of theatre. Quite a common type. In the Art Theatre there was a former general who played third-level roles without being paid for it.

  ‘I didn’t think you were the curious kind, sir,’ Eliza said disdainfully when he noticed her.

  As soon as the dramatic death of Hippolyte Emeraldov had become known, the building had come under a genuine siege – reporters, inconsolable admirers and lovers of scandal had all but climbed in through the windows. But the ‘traveller’ had obviously acted more cunningly. He had come at a late hour, after the crowd had dispersed, and slipped the nightwatchman a banknote.

  ‘Yes, madam, there are many curious aspects to this business,’ Fandorin (that was his surname) had replied in an equally cool tone, and without even the slightest sign of embarrassment.

  ‘I ask you to leave. Outsiders are not allowed in here. When all is said and done, it’s indecent!’

  ‘Very well, I shall go. In any case, I have already seen everything.’ He bowed slightly, almost casually, in farewell, and told Antip: ‘Madam Lointaine is quite right. Lock the door and don’t allow anyone else in. Goodbye, madam.’

  ‘“Goodbye”?’ she asked in a hostile tone of voice. ‘Have you changed your mind about coming to work as our repertoire manager?’

  ‘Yes, I have. But we shall see each other soon.’

  And now they really had seen each other.

  ‘I would like to have a f-few words with you in private,’ grey-haired Fandorin said to the director, still acting out his agitation in the same inept manner. A man with eyes of ice could not know what agitation was! ‘But I can wait until you have finished …’

  ‘No, no, by no means. We will have a talk immediately, and quite definitely in private.’

  Stern took the ‘traveller’ by the arm and led him away.

  ‘Busy yourselves with something. I’ll be back soon. Take a close look at the new Lopakhin. You should each work out a sketch of your psychological relationship with this man … Please come to my study, Erast … mmmm … Petrovich.’

  However, Stern’s ‘soon’ stretched out into quite a lengthy period. There was no point in Eliza taking a closer look at the new Lopakhin: firstly, in the course of the play her Anya had hardly any contact at all with the peasant’s son; and secondly, in any case Lopakhin would be played in the production by Leonidov or someone else equally great, but most certainly not by Nonarikin, no matter what a lovely man he might be.

  The poor soul pestered one of them after the other, but no one wanted to ‘establish a psychological relationship’ with him.

  Eliza sat there, muffled up in her shawl, absent-mindedly listening to the conversations.

  Anton Ivanovich Mephistov proposed sardonic conjectures concerning the repertoire manager’s ‘imposing grey locks’ and then asked Sensiblin, as a ‘specialist on grey locks’, how much bluing was required to maintain such a noble whiteness. The phlegmatic Lev Spiridonovich did not rise to the bait.

  ‘You don’t like handsome men, everyone knows that. Drop it, Anton Ivanich, in a man the important thing is not the face, but the calibre,’ he said good-naturedly.

  ‘Just listen to him, how judicious and kind-hearted he is,’ Reginina whispered about her former husband. ‘I don’t understand how I could have lived with this man for seven years! Calculating, vindictive, never forgets a thing! Pretends to be a lamb, and then strikes a sly, underhand blow, bites like a snake.’

  Eliza nodded. She herself disliked rationalising individuals – both in life and on the stage. She and Vasilisa Prokofievna were allies in their attitude to Sensiblin. Eliza was the only one in the entire company who knew why the grande dame hated the ‘philosopher’ and what she could never forgive him for.

  One day, overcome by a sudden impulse to confide in someone, Reginina had told Eliza a story that made her skin creep. How hideously vengeful betrayed husbands could be!

  At the time when this story happened, Vasilisa Prokofievna was still playing heroines and she and Lev Spiridonovich worked together in a first-class imperial theatre. Reginina was playing Marguerite in La Dame aux Camélias – it was a highly successful adaptation of the novel, and the role of the noble courtesan had been written with heart-rending power. ‘The way I died set the entire hall sobbing and blowing their noses,’ Reginina recalled, becoming emotional herself and reaching for her handkerchief. ‘As you know, Eliza, Sarah Bernhardt is usually considered the finest performer of the role of Marguerite Gautier. But believe it or not, I played her even more powerfully! All the foreigners who saw me simply went out of their minds. The European press wrote about the production. You don’t remember, you were still a little girl … And what do you think? Word of my Marguerite actually reached Her. Yes, yes, the great Bernhardt herself! And so she came to St Petersburg. Supposedly on tour, but I knew she wanted to take a look at me. The great day came and they told me: she’s in the audience! My God, what happened to me! On that day Their Majesties came, but of course, all the people of understanding were looking only at the box where Bernhardt was sitting. Would she approve, I wondered. Ah, how I played! And on a continuously mounting crescendo. They told me afterwards that the great Sarah was sitting there more dead than alive – she was eating her heart out with envy. Finally the culmination of the action was approaching. I have a scene with Armand, I am at death’s door. Lev Spiridonovich was playing Armand, he was rather good in that role too. Everyone called us an exquisite couple. But we had had a terrible quarrel, just before the performance. It just happened that in a moment of weakness – I had turned quite dizzy – I yielded to the importunate advances of the second lover, Zvyozdich (he was a very handsome-mannere
d man) and someone snitched to my husband – well, you know the way it is with us. All right, I’m guilty. Hit me, rip my favourite dress to shreds with a knife, be unfaithful to me with someone else in revenge! But what did Lev do? There I am declaiming my crowning line: “My darling, all I ask is that you cry a little for me”. And suddenly … Armand had these beautiful, thick false eyebrows. And two jets of water came shooting out from under them! That villain had fastened on a clown’s water tubes under his make-up! The audience almost split their sides laughing. The tsar laughed, and the tsarina too. Sarah Bernhardt almost had a fit … The worst thing was that I was lying there at my last breath, absolutely shattered, and I couldn’t understand a thing! Afterwards, it’s true, the reviewers wrote that it was a revolutionary interpretation, that it was a brilliant invention that emphasised the tragi-farcical nature of life and the paltry distance between melodrama and slapstick! But never mind that! He stole the most important moment in my life and trampled it underfoot! And since then that man has been dead to me.’

  ‘That’s terrible, terrible,’ Eliza whispered. ‘Yes, something like that can never be forgiven.’

  One actor could not possibly commit a more heinous crime against another. Anything could be expected of a man who was capable of such cruelty.

  It was no accident, of course, that the cunning Noah Noaevich had brought the divorced couple together in the same company. According to his ‘theory of rupture’, the relations within a company should always be seething on the verge of an explosion. Envy, jealousy and even hatred – any strong emotions created a productive field of energy, which, with skilled management from the director and the correct distribution of roles, was transmitted to the acting, lending it an authentic vitality.

  ‘You know, Eliza,’ Reginina carried on, whispering, ‘I’m not like the others, I don’t envy your success in the least. Ah, there was a time when I made the audience faint with passion. Of course, my present line of characters has its own charms too. But let me tell you honestly, as a friend, that the admirers are the thing that is hardest to manage without. When you play the heroines, the persistent suitors who pursue you everywhere like a pack of hounds are annoying. But afterwards, how badly you miss this – pardon my vulgarity – gaggle of young studs! Oh, you have yet to learn that with age feelings – and sensuality, sensuality – do not grow weaker, but stronger. How sweet and fresh that Cherubino of yours in a hussar’s uniform is! I mean Volodenka Limbach. Why not give him to me, it won’t be any loss to you.’

  Although this was spoken in jest, Eliza had frowned. So rumours were already going round? Had someone seen the boy trying to get into her window? What a disaster!

  ‘He’s not mine at all. You can take him and keep him, together with the sword, the spurs and all the rest of the trappings! Excuse me, Vasilisa Prokofievna, I’ll go and rehearse my part. Or else Stern will come back and start abusing me.’

  She changed seats and opened her folder, but just then Serafima Aphrodisina sat down beside her and started babbling.

  ‘Kostya Shiftsky’s run off. Said he was dashing back to the Madrid. Supposedly he left the folder with his part there. He’s lying, probably. He always lies, you can’t believe anything he says. But where did you go this morning? I knocked, but you weren’t in your room. I wanted to borrow the diamante clip for my hat, it’s delightful, and you don’t wear it anyway. So where were you?’

  Cheerful, bright and thoroughly down to earth, without any inhibitions or duplicity, Serafima had a salutary effect on Eliza’s tormented nerves. It’s a rare thing in the theatre for two actresses not to become rivals, but there was nothing of that sort between them. With her innate common sense, Aphrodisina explained this very simply. ‘You’re attractive to one kind of man, and I’m attractive to a different kind,’ she said once. ‘You’re good at playing sad parts, and I’m good at playing jolly ones. There’s nothing for us to quarrel over, either on the stage or in real life. They pay you more, of course, but then I’m younger.’ Serafima was sweet and spontaneous, a little bit greedy for money, clothes and trinkets, but then at her age that was all understandable and excusable.

  Eliza put her arm round Serafima’s shoulders.

  ‘I went out for a walk. I woke up early and couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘For a walk? Alone? Or with someone else?’ Aphrodisina asked breezily. She adored secrets of the heart, affairs and all sorts of provocative subjects.

  ‘Don’t tell her anything, Eliza,’ said Xanthippe Vulpinova, walking across to them. Here was an individual who simply could not watch calmly while people had a friendly, cheerful conversation. ‘Have you noticed that this party here is always trying to pry something out of you and spying on you? The moment you went away just now, she stuck her nose in your notebook.’

  ‘Don’t you tell lies!’ Aphrodisina exclaimed, jumping to her feet with tears immediately welling up in her cornflower-blue eyes. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself! I just took the pencil out of it for a moment. I had to make a note on my part, and my pencil broke!’

  ‘You’re the one who’s always spying on everyone,’ Eliza told the ‘villainess’ angrily. ‘And worst of all, you didn’t even hear what we were talking about, you just butted in.’

  That was all that Vulpinova needed. She thrust one bony, pointed fist against her side, leaned down over Eliza and proclaimed stridently:

  ‘Attention please! I call all of you to witness! This individual has just called me a spy! Of course, I’m only a little person, I don’t play any leading roles, but I do have my rights! I demand a comrades’ court, as specified in our statutes! No one has the right to insult the actors with impunity!’

  She got her way. Everyone huddled together around the uproar. But Eliza had no need to defend herself, defenders appeared spontaneously. Good-hearted Gullibin tried to make the troublemaker see sense. And a second faithful champion, Georges Nonarikin, shielded the lady against attack.

  ‘In the director’s absence, his authority devolves on me!’ he declared proudly. ‘And I ask you, Madam Vulpinova, not to shout. The statutes include a clause about misconduct and violation of discipline during a rehearsal!’

  Xanthippe immediately switched her attention to the new target; it was basically all the same to her who she wrangled with.

  ‘Ah, the Knight of the Mournful Visage! Why are you wandering about with Lopakhin’s part, like some nincompoop with a fancy embroidered feed-bag? You’ll see your own ears before you ever get to play that part. Because you haven’t got an ounce of talent! The general cook and bottle washer!’

  Nonarikin turned completely white at this insult, but someone came to his defence in turn. Zoya Comedina jumped up onto a chair – obviously so that she could be seen more clearly – and yelled out with all her might:

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to him like that! Don’t listen to her, Georges. You’re a brilliant actor!’

  This despairing appeal defused the tension and there were peals of laughter.

  ‘What a couple, a real sight for sore eyes,’ Vulpinova crooned happily. ‘You should sit on his shoulder, my dear. And you could go off round the courtyards and the streets singing Beethoven’s song “Me and My Marmot”.’

  The imitation she gave of Comedina sitting on Nonarikin’s shoulder and him turning his hurdy-gurdy and singing was so funny that the laughter grew even louder.

  For some reason the unfortunate assistant director was not furious with the troublemaker, but with his uninvited intercessor.

  ‘Who asked you to interfere?’ he asked her resentfully. ‘Everyone has to put their spoke in!’

  And he withdrew from the scene.

  Eliza sighed. Life was returning to normal. Everything as usual. The ‘Theory of Rupture’ was still in operation. Only Emeraldov wasn’t here …

  She felt sorry for the little ‘principal boy’, who was just left there, abandoned on the chair, where she squatted down, looking like a little sparrow with its feathers ruffled up.

  ‘Wh
y are you so blatant about it, men don’t like that,’ Eliza said gently, moving over to sit by Zoya. ‘Do you like Georges?’

  ‘We’re made for each other, but he doesn’t understand it,’ Comedina complained in a quiet voice. ‘Actually, I ought to hate you. When you’re there, all the men turn towards you, like sunflowers turning towards the sun. Do you think I can’t see that he finds my interest irksome, even offensive? I may play comic parts, but I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Why did you interfere?’

  ‘He’s so proud, and so unhappy. He has so much passion going to waste inside him. I see that sort of thing very clearly. I don’t need much, after all. I’m not you, I’m not pampered.’ Zoya bared her teeth in a clownish grin. ‘Oh, my demands on life are diminutive, and my demands on love are microscopic. To match my own size.’ She pulled a face and slapped herself on the top of her head. ‘I’d be satisfied with a smile and a kind word – even just occasionally. I’m not the kind that men love. I’m the kind that they allow to love them, as a special grace and favour. And then not always.’

  Eliza felt terribly sorry for her – this plain, skinny girl who was funny even in this moment of frank sincerity. Although (Eliza’s professional memory prompted her), hadn’t Comedina used the same tone of comic despair in the role of Victor Hugo’s Gavroche? Once an actress, always an actress.

  They sat beside each other dejectedly without speaking, each thinking her own thoughts.

  And then, after being away for half an hour, Noah Noaevich finally returned and the miracles began.

  TO HELL WITH THE CHERRY ORCHARD!

  Eliza hadn’t seen Stern in such an elated mood for a long time. Recently he had been acting out an upsurge of enthusiasm rather skilfully, but there is no way to deceive the eye of an actress: she could see perfectly well that Noah Noaevich was dissatisfied, that he was concerned about the success of his new production. And now suddenly this soaring elation. What could the reason be?