All the World's a Stage

THE VENGEANCE OF GHENGIS KHAN

She might as well not even go to bed. It was the same thing all over again: a face spattered with cabbage and a red beard surrounding lips that sang without making any sound.

In fact the dream always began very pleasantly, with her apparently driving along a country high road, not in an automobile, but in a carriage: the rhythmic clopping of hooves and jangling of harnesses, the gentle swaying of the springs sending sweet, visceral tremors surging upwards from below. No one there beside her, a mood so buoyant, she felt she could soar up into the air, her soul filled with a premonition of happiness, and she doesn’t want anything else at all. Just to keep on swaying like this on the springy seat and waiting for the joy that is already so close…

Suddenly there is a tap at the left-hand window. She looks – and sees a livid face with its eyes closed and scraps of cabbage dangling from its luxurious black moustache streaked with white. A hand with a signet ring on one finger adjusts the necktie and it starts wriggling. It isn’t a necktie, but a snake!

And then another tap – from the right. She jerks round, and there is the singer with the bright red beard. He looks at her soulfully, opens his mouth wide and even extends his arm in a fluent gesture, but she doesn’t hear anything.

Only the tapping on the glass: tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap!

At one time the dreams almost stopped. She wasn’t even very frightened when she saw that familiar bald spot and that glance blazing with hatred below the fused black eyebrows in the third row of the opera stalls at Poor Liza. She had known that he would turn up sooner or later, she was inwardly prepared for it and very pleased with her own self-possession.

But after the performance, when a snake’s head with exactly the same frenzied little eyes had suddenly thrust up out of the rosebuds, the nightmare had overwhelmed her again with even greater, more crushing force. If not for dear Nonarikin, so touchingly smitten with her… Brrrr, it was best not even to think about it.

For two days afterwards she had not allowed herself to sleep, knowing what it would lead to. On the third day tiredness got the better of her and, of course, the awakening was horrific. With screaming, convulsive sobbing and hiccupping. Since then it had been the same thing every night: the same old dream from St Petersburg, but now the snake had taken up residence in it.

In the dormitory of the ballet school, before she went to sleep little Liza often used to act out for her friends the stories of heroines who were dying. Either from slow-acting poison, like Cleopatra, or from consumption, like the lady with the camellias. Juliet killing herself with a dagger was suitable too, because before she finally stabs herself, she declaims a touching monologue. Liza enjoyed lying there with her eyes closed and listening to the girls sobbing. Later they all went in for dance and some even became well known, but a ballerina’s career is short, and Liza wanted to work in the theatre until her old age, like Sarah Bernhardt, and so she chose drama. She dreamed of collapsing lifelessly on the stage, like Edmund Kean, so that a thousand people would see it and sob, even though they thought it was all part of the role, and of drawing her final breath to the sound of applause and shouts of ‘Bravo!’

Liza rushed into marriage early. She was playing Princess Reverie (La Princesse Lointaine) to Sasha Lumpin’s enamoured Prince Geoffroi. Her first success, the first time she had felt the intoxication of universal adoration. In the season of youth it is so easy to confuse a play with real life! Of course, they separated very soon. Actors should not live together. Sasha faded away somewhere in the provinces, and all that remained of him was his name. But a leading lady cannot be called Liza Lumpina, and so she became Eliza Lointaine.

If her first marriage was simply a failure, the second turned out to be a catastrophe. Once again, she had only herself to blame. She was seduced by the dramatic flair of a sudden shift in the direction of life, by the tinsel and glitter of a superficial effect. And ultimately, by a resounding title. How many actresses had married simply so that they would be called ‘Your Excellency’ or ‘Your Ladyship’? But this had an even more grandiose ring: ‘Your Most Exalted Dignity’. That was the title by which the wife of a khan was supposed to be addressed. Iskander Altairsky was a brilliant officer in the Escort Lifeguards, the oldest son of the ruler of one of the khanates of the Caucasus, which had been annexed to the empire during the time of General Alexei Yermolov. He threw his money about and wooed her handsomely, he was good looking, despite his premature baldness, and in addition impetuous and voluble in the Asiatic manner. He declared that he was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of love – and he kept his word. When his superiors refused him permission to marry, he resigned and abandoned his military career. He ruined his relationship with his father and renounced his rights of inheritance in favour of his younger brother; an actress, especially a divorced one, could not be the wife of the heir to a khanate. But the outcast was allocated a very decent annual allowance. And most important of all, Iskander swore not to make any difficulties over the theatre and consented to a childless marriage. What more could she have wished for? Her stage rivals were positively bursting with envy. Lida Yavorskaya, whose title by marriage was Princess Baryatinskaya, even emigrated from Russia – princesses were ten a penny in St Petersburg, but there was only one khatun.

Her second marriage fell apart even more quickly than the first – immediately after the wedding and the wedding night. And the reason was not that in his exorbitant excitement her husband was incapable of proving himself in the appropriate manner (that was actually quite touching, in fact), but the conditions that he propounded to her the following morning. Altairsky’s status as a khatun entailed certain obligations, Iskander told her strictly: ‘I promised not to interfere with your passion for the theatre and I will keep my word. But you must avoid plays in which you will have to embrace men or, even worse, kiss them.’ Eliza had laughed, thinking that he was joking. When it became clear that her husband was absolutely serious, she spent a long time trying to make him see sense. She explained that it was impossible to play a heroine’s roles without embraces and kisses; and furthermore, it was now becoming fashionable to show the act of carnal triumph explicitly on the stage.

‘What triumph?’ the man of the Caucasus had asked, screwing up his face so expressively that Eliza realised immediately that any explanations would be quite useless.

‘The triumph that you failed to achieve!’ she had exclaimed, imitating the great Zhemchuzhnikova in the role of Cleopatra. ‘And now you never will! Goodbye, Your Most Exalted Dignity, the honeymoon is over! There will not be any honeymoon trip. I am applying for a divorce!’

It was appalling to recall what happened then. This scion of an ancient line, a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, sank to the level of base physical assault and foul barracks language, and then went dashing to the writing desk to take out a revolver and shoot his affronter on the spot. Of course, Eliza ran away while he was fiddling with the key, and after that she refused to meet the crazy Chingizid unless her lawyers were present.

In front of witnesses, Iskander behaved in a civilised manner. He explained politely that he would not agree to any divorce, because in his family this was regarded as a grave sin and his father would take away his allowance. He raised no objections to living separately and even declared his willingness to pay his wife alimony, provided that she observed ‘the proprieties’ (Eliza rejected the offer disdainfully – thank God, she earned quite enough in the theatre).

The khan displayed his savage nature when they met face to face. He must have had his wife followed, because he appeared in front of her in the most unexpected places, always without any warning. He just popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

‘Ah, so that’s it!’ he would say with a malign glint in those bulging eyes that she had once found handsome. ‘So the theatre means more to you than my love? Excellent. On the stage you can behave like a harlot. That is your business. But since you are still formally my wife, I will not permit you to drag my ancient name through the mud! Bear in mind, madam, that you can only have lovers in the glow of the footlights and in full view of an audience. Anyone you let into your bed will die. And you will die after him!’

To be quite honest, she wasn’t really very frightened at first. On the contrary, life became a little more exciting. When there was a love scene during a show, Eliza deliberately looked round the auditorium, and if she encountered the withering gaze of her abandoned husband, she played her part with redoubled passion.

Things continued like this until the entrepreneur Furshtatsky became seriously enraptured with her. A distinguished individual with good taste, and the owner of the finest theatre in Kiev, he made her an incredibly generous offer to join his theatre company, showered her with flowers, paid her compliments and tickled her ear with his fragrant moustache. He also made her a proposal of a different kind – of matrimony.

She was prepared to accept both of these proposals. The world of theatre was all abuzz with the news, and once again her rivals were absolutely green with envy.

Then all of a sudden, at a ceremonial banquet held in Furshtatsky’s honour by the trustees of the Theatre Society, he died! Eliza herself was not at the banquet, but she was given a very graphic description of the way the entrepreneur turned crimson, started wheezing and slumped over with his face in a plate of thick country soup.

Eliza cried that evening, of course. She felt sorry for poor Furshtatsky and told herself: ‘It wasn’t meant to be’ and so on. But then the telephone rang and a familiar voice with a breathy Caucasian intonation whispered in the receiver: ‘I warned you. This death is on your conscience’. Even then she didn’t start taking Iskander seriously; he seemed to her like an operetta villain with a bristling moustache and goggling eyes that aren’t really frightening. To herself she thought of him mockingly as ‘Genghis Khan’.

Oh, how cruelly fate had punished her for her flippancy!

About three months after the entrepreneur’s death, which everyone had accepted, without the slightest doubt, as natural, Eliza allowed herself to develop a passion for another man, the heroic tenor at the Mariinsky Theatre. This time no career considerations were involved. The singer was quite simply handsome (oh, that eternal weakness of hers for the good-looking Adonis type!) and he had a breathtaking voice that sent a warm, heady languor flooding through her entire body. At that time Eliza was already working in Noah’s Ark, but was still concluding her concert engagements. And then one day she and the tenor (he was called Astralov) were giving a little one-act play-cum-duet called ‘Redbeard’. A delightful little piece of nonsense: she declaimed and danced a bit and Astralov sang – and he was so fine and handsome that afterwards they went to Strelna and what was bound to happen sooner or later happened there. And indeed, why not? She was a free, adult, modern woman. He was an attractive man – no great intellect, to be sure, but very talented and gallant. Eliza left in the morning because she had to get to a rehearsal at eleven, and her lover stayed in their hotel room. He was very particular about his appearance and always carried around a toiletry case with a manicure set, all sorts of little brushes, nail scissors and a mirror-bright razor for trimming his beard.

They found him with that razor in his hand. He was sitting in a chair, dead, with his shirt and his beard stained completely red with blood. The police came to the conclusion that after spending the night with a woman, the tenor had slit his own throat while sitting in front of the mirror. Eliza had been wearing a veil and the hotel staff had not seen her face, so it had all passed off without a scandal.

She wept at the funeral (there were quite a number of ladies with tear-stained faces there), tormented by miserable bewilderment: what could she have said or done? This was so unlike the bon vivant Astralov! Suddenly she saw Genghis Khan there in the crowd. He looked at her, grinned and ran one finger rapidly across his throat.

Eliza’s eyes were finally opened.

Murder! It was murder! In fact, two murders; there was no doubt that Furshtatsky had been poisoned. For a few days she was completely bewildered and confused, as if she were delirious. What should she do? What should she do?

Go to the police? But, in the first place, there was no proof. They would think it was all the wild ravings of a hysterical young woman. In the second place, Astralov had a family. And in the third place… In the third place, she was absolutely terrified.

Genghis Khan had gone insane, his jealousy had become a paranoidal obsession. Everywhere – in the street, in a shop, in the theatre – she sensed that she was being followed. And this was no persecution mania! In her muff, in her hatbox, even in her powder compact, Eliza discovered little scraps of paper. There was not a word on them, not a single letter, only drawings: a skull, a knife, a noose, a coffin… In her suspicious state of mind she dismissed several maids because she thought they had been bribed.

The nights were worst of all. In her distressed and lonely condition (lovers were out of the question!) Eliza had repulsive dreams in which eroticism mingled with appalling images of death.

She thought about him often now. The moment would come when Genghis Khan’s insanity reached its climax and then the monster would kill her. It could happen very soon now.

But then why did she not turn to anyone for help?

There were several reasons.

Firstly, as we have already said, there was no proof and nobody would believe her.

Secondly, she was ashamed of her own horrendous stupidity – how could she have married such a monster? It serves you right, you little idiot!

Thirdly, she was tormented by remorse for two lives that had been lost. If you’re guilty, then you must pay.

And in addition – the most terrible reason of all – Eliza had never before felt the fragile beauty of the world so keenly. The psychiatrist she consulted very cautiously about Genghis Khan, without naming any names, told her that the condition of paranoiacs worsened in autumn. This is the final autumn of my life, Eliza told herself, as she looked at the poplars starting to turn yellow, and her heart contracted in sweet despair. A moth flying towards a candle flame probably feels much the same thing. It knows it is going to die, but doesn’t want to turn aside…

The one and only time she had blurted out her fear, in a moment of weakness, had been about ten days ago, to that soul of kindness, Olga Knipper. The dam had burst, so to speak. Eliza didn’t explain anything specific, but she wept and babbled incoherently. Afterwards she was sorry she had done it. With her Germanic tenacity, Olga had pestered Eliza with questions. She had telephoned and sent notes, and after that business with the snake she had come rushing round to the hotel, hinted mysteriously about some man who would help Eliza in any situation, gasped and sighed and pried. But it was as if Eliza had turned to stone. She had decided that whatever must be could not be avoided, and there was no point in getting other people involved.

There was only one way to get rid of this good-hearted meddler, and it was a cruel one: to provoke a quarrel with her. And Eliza knew how to do that. She said a lot of offensive, absolutely unforgivable things about Olga’s relationship with her deceased husband. Olga cringed and burst into tears and her tone of voice became cold and formal. ‘God will punish you for that,’ she said – and left.

He will punish me, Eliza thought languidly, and soon. On that day she felt so numbed, barely even alive, that she didn’t repent in the least. She only felt relief at having been left in peace. Alone with her final autumn, insanity and nightmares.

‘Tap-tap-tap! Tap-tap-tap!’ The tapping on the glass came again and Eliza rubbed her eyes, driving away the appalling dream. There was no carriage, and no dead men pressing their faces avidly against the glass.

The darkness was lightening. The outlines of objects had already appeared, she could see the hands of the clock on the wall: a few minutes after five. Dawn would break soon and, like a little nocturnal animal, the fear would creep away into its burrow until the evening twilight came again. She knew that now she could go to sleep without being afraid, there were no nightmares in the morning.

But suddenly there it was again, a quiet ‘tap-tap-tap’.

She raised herself up on her pillow and realised that her awakening had been false. The dream was continuing.

She was dreaming that she was lying in her hotel room just before dawn, looking out of the window, and there was a dead face with a red, dishevelled beard – huge and blurred. Lord God, have pity!

She pinched herself and rubbed her eyes, which were gluing themselves shut again. Her vision cleared. No, it wasn’t a dream!

There was a huge bunch of peonies swaying outside the window. A hand in a white glove appeared out of it and knocked: ‘tap-tap-tap’. Then a face appeared beside it, not a dead one, but very much alive. The lips below the moustache with twirled ends stirred in a soundless whisper, the eyes goggled as they attempted to make out the interior of the room.

Eliza recognised one of her most tenacious admirers – the Life Hussar Volodya Limbach. The St Petersburg cohort of reckless theatre lovers included quite a number of young officers. Any even slightly well-known actress, singer or ballerina always had these noisy, exuberant youths among her retinue. They engineered ovations, threw heaps of flowers, could even hiss at a rival actress, and on the day of a premiere or a benefit performance they unharnessed the horses from the carriage and pulled the sovereign of their hearts through the streets themselves. Their adoration was flattering and useful, but some of the young men did not know where to stop and allowed themselves to cross the line between adoration and harassment.

If Eliza’s condition had been different, she might possibly have laughed at Limbach’s prank. God only knew how he had managed to clamber onto the cornice of a high first-floor window. But this time she flew into a fury. Damn the young pup! What a fright he had given her!

She leapt up off the bed and ran to the window. Making out an unclad white figure in the half-light, the cornet pressed his face avidly against the glass. Without even bothering to think that the boy might fall and break his neck, Eliza turned the catch and pushed the flaps of the window, which swung wide open.

The bouquet went flying down through the air and Limbach himself was knocked off balance by the blow, but he wasn’t sent tumbling into the abyss. In contradiction of the laws of gravity, the young officer hung suspended in mid-air, swaying to and fro and turning gently around his own axis.

The mystery was explained: the impudent young man had lowered himself from the roof on a rope that was wound round his waist.

‘Divine one!’ Limbach exclaimed in a choking voice, and started speaking in brief phrases. ‘Let me in! I wish only! To kiss the hem! Of your nightgown! Reverently!’

Eliza’s fury suddenly evaporated, its place taken by the terrible thought that if Genghis Khan found out about this, the foolish boy would be killed!

She cast a glance along Tverskaya Street, which was absolutely deserted at this time in the morning. But how could she be sure that the cursed maniac was not hiding somewhere in a gateway or behind a street lamp?

Without saying a word, Eliza shut the window and closed the curtains. Entering into negotiations, expostulating or scolding would only increase the risk.

But Limbach would not back down. Now she would have no peace from him even at night, in her own room. And the worst thing of all was that the window looked straight out onto the street…

During their Moscow tour the company of Noah’s Ark was staying in the ‘Louvre-Madrid’ on the corner of Leontiev Lane. The ‘Louvre’ was the name of a luxurious hotel with a façade overlooking Tverskaya Street. The director, leading man and leading lady lived here, in deluxe apartments. The more modest part of the complex, the ‘Madrid’ lodging rooms, had windows that looked out onto Leontiev Lane. This was where the other actors were quartered. Visiting companies often stayed in this twin establishment, which seemed to be specially adapted for the theatrical hierarchy. The wits of the theatre scene had dubbed the long corridor connecting the magnificent hotel and the modest lodging rooms ‘the impassable Pyrenees’.

If this happened again, she would have to exchange rooms with someone on the other side of the Pyrenees, Eliza thought, calming down slightly and even starting to smile. After all, it is hard to remain indifferent in the face of such insane amatory follies. He had come dashing down here from St Petersburg, the little devil. Probably without saying a word to his superiors. And now he would spend a long stretch in the guardhouse. But that wasn’t the most terrible thing that could happen to him…

TERRIFYING

Following the uproar at the performance of Poor Liza, the theatre was written and talked about so much that Stern changed his original plans and decided not to halt the performances. The scale of the furore over Noah’s Ark was quite unprecedented: speculators were selling on tickets, not for three times their price, but for almost ten times. Additional seats had been set out in the auditorium, at absolutely every point where it was possible. With every entrance she made, Eliza felt two thousand eyes peering avidly at her, as if they were waiting for something outlandish to happen to the prima donna. But she abandoned her former habit and tried not to look out into the hall. She was afraid to see that glance blazing with hatred from under those fused eyebrows…

They performed each of the old productions again once: Poor Liza, The Three Sisters and Hamlet. They were received very well, although Noah Noaevich was dissatisfied. During the analytical sessions after the performance, when everyone drank champagne, wrote entries in the ‘Tablets’ and made flattering or barbed comments to each other, the director complained that ‘the emotional intensity’ was falling.

‘Irreproachable, but vapid,’ he exclaimed. ‘Like Stanislavsky! We are losing all of our lead. A theatre without uproar, provocation and scandal is only half a theatre. Give me scandal! Give me the pulsing of blood!’

The day before yesterday there had been a scandal in Hamlet, and the object of it had once again been Eliza. It was less impressive than on 5 September, but it was hard to say which was more repulsive – to see that snake or to suffer Emeraldov’s despicable tomfoolery!

If there was one person Eliza simply could not bear, it was her primary stage partner. A pompous, unintelligent, petty, envious, vainglorious peacock! He simply could not accept the fact that she was indifferent to his chocolate-box charm and that the public appreciated her more. If not for the small group of hysterical young ladies who electrified the rest of the audience with their squealing, everyone would have noticed long ago that the king was naked! He couldn’t act properly, only shoot fire out of his eyes. And the brute actually tried to kiss her properly, on the lips. He even tried to thrust his tongue in!

The day before yesterday he had gone way beyond the limit. In the scene where Hamlet tries to woo Ophelia, Emeraldov had played the Prince of Denmark like some licentious ruffian. He had hugged her tight, squeezed her breasts and then, to the horror and delight of the audience, pinched her on the buttock, like an officer’s orderly pinching the maid!

Offstage Eliza had slapped him hard across the face, but Emeraldov had only smirked like the cat that got the cream. She was sure that at the critique the impudent scoundrel would get a real roasting, but Stern actually praised this ‘innovative discovery’ and promised that the next day all the newspapers would write about it. They did write about it, and moreover that yellow-press rag Kopeck Life went as far as to hint transparently at a ‘special relationship’ between Mme Altairsky-Lointaine and the ‘irresistible Mr Emeraldov’, putting in a comment on ‘the African passion that erupted so directly on the stage’.

If things went on like this, in order not to disappoint the public Noah Noaevich would have to come up with new tricks every time – in accordance with his own ‘theory of sensationalism’. Would he let crocodiles loose on the stage then? Or make the actresses perform naked? Vulpinova had already suggested that in The Three Sisters she should come out on stage in dishabille, supposedly to emphasise how slovenly and shameless Natalya became once she felt at home in the Prozorovs’ house. But who would want to feast his eyes on Xanthippe Petrovna’s bony ancient relics?

Rehearsals for The Cherry Orchard were in full swing – every morning, starting at eleven. But somehow the production wasn’t coming together. How much sensationalism could there be in The Cherry Orchard, even in a new interpretation? Noah Noaevich himself seemed to realise that he had shot wide of the mark with this play, but he didn’t want to admit his mistake. That was a pity. Eliza wanted so much to play something piquant, refined and unusual. She did not like the role of Chekhov’s seventeen-year-old ingénue in the least. The character was boring and one-dimensional, there was almost nothing to play. But discipline is discipline.

At a quarter to eleven she got into the automobile. The status of the leading man and the leading lady entitled them to an open car, while the others were given travel allowances for a cab, but today Eliza was travelling alone, thank goodness: Emeraldov had not spent the night at the hotel (that often happened with him).

Holding on to her wide-brimmed hat with the ostrich feathers, Eliza set off along Tverskaya Street. She was recognised – people shouted greetings after her and the driver hooted his horn as a sign of appreciation. Eliza enjoyed these rides, they helped to charge her with creative energy before the rehearsal.

All actors have a special ploy of their own, a cunning little trick that helps them get into the magical condition of Acting. Vulpinova, for instance, always had to quarrel with someone to raise her energy to the required level. Reginina deliberately dawdled and drew things out, so that she would arrive late and the director would shout at her. Plump Aphrodisina smacked herself on the cheeks (Eliza had seen this several times). Everyone knew that Lev Spiridonovich Sensiblin drained his little flask. And Eliza required a brief ride with the wind in her hair, accompanied by cries of greeting – or a walk along the street with a fleeting stride, so that people would recognise her and turn their heads.

With flushed cheeks and all a-jangle inside, she ran up the staircase, threw off her wrap, took off her hat, looked at herself in the mirror (rather pale, but it suited her face) and walked into the hall, punctual to the minute, at precisely eleven. All the others, except for Reginina and Emeraldov, were sitting facing the stage, in the front row. Stern was standing up above them, holding his watch, already prepared to explode. Nonarikin was hovering behind him, empathising with his feelings.

‘I don’t understand how it is possible to treat one’s colleagues, and one’s art, come to that, so disrespectfully,’ Vulpinova began in a honeyed voice.

Mephistov took up the refrain.

‘Would they have been late for the real Noah’s Ark too? The man who lays claim to the position of our company’s leading actor seems to regard all of us as menials. Including the director. Everyone has to wait, while he condescends to finish his breakfast! And these eternal late arrivals of Reginina’s! You work your way into the character, prepare yourself, put yourself in the mood to act, and then instead…’

At this point red-faced Vasilisa Prokofievna came running into the hall with her usual cry of: ‘I’m not late, am I?’ Vulpinova said: ‘Ha-ha-ha’, Stern grabbed at his temples, Nonarikin shook his head reproachfully. They could have started now, but Emeraldov had still not appeared. It wasn’t like him. No matter where he spent the night and with whom, Hippolyte always showed up for rehearsals on time, even when his hangover was so bad that he could barely stagger along.

‘Someone go and take a look in the changing room. Our handsome hero’s face is probably so puffy he can’t powder over the bags under his eyes,’ Sensiblin suggested.

‘You go yourself. There aren’t any servants here,’ his former wife snapped contemptuously.

Shiftsky made a joke.

‘How’s that, no servants? What about me?’

But he didn’t get up off his seat. In the end, of course, the ever-dependable Vasya Gullibin went.

What a bore, thought Eliza, suppressing a yawn. Mephistov’s right. This way the mood for acting will evaporate completely.

She took a little mirror out of her reticule and started practising the facial expressions of her character: innocent joy, touching agitation, tender affection, slight fright. Everything girlish and gentle, in pastel tones.

Stern was scolding Nonarikin for something. Kostya Shiftsky was making Serafima laugh, Vulpinova was bickering shrilly with Reginina.

‘Ladies and gentlemen… Noah Noaevich!’

Vasya was standing by the wing of the stage. His voice trembled and broke. Everyone turned round and the noise faded away.

‘Did you find Emeraldov?’ Stern asked angrily.

‘Yes…’ Gullibin’s lips started trembling.

‘Well, where is he, then?’

‘In his dressing room… I think he’s… dead.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

Noah Noaevich went dashing backstage, with the others following behind him. The little mirror jolted and bounced in Eliza’s hands. At that moment she wasn’t really thinking anything, she was simply stunned and followed the others.

They were all frightened, disoriented, bewildered. Although it was clear at first glance that Hippolyte was dead (he was lying on the floor, on his back, with one twisted hand thrust up into the air), someone tried to lift him up and blow into his mouth and someone else shouted ‘Doctor! Doctor!’

Eventually Noah Noaevich shouted:

‘What are you doing? Can’t you see that he’s already cold? Everybody get back! Nonarikin, telephone the police. They must have their own doctor… What’s that they’re called? A coroner.’

Eliza cried, of course. She felt terribly sorry for Emeraldov, who had been so impossibly handsome in life, lying there now on the floor with his face contorted; one of his trouser legs was hitched up, but Hippolyte didn’t care.

They stood there, huddling in the doorway, waiting for the police. Reginina recited a prayer with solemn feeling. Aphrodisina sobbed, Mephistov and Vulpinova discussed in whispers who the dead man could have spent the night with. Sensiblin sighed: ‘This is what all the womanising and drinking got him, the pitiful playboy. But I warned him.’ Unable to stand around doing nothing, Nonarikin tried to tidy things up; he righted a chair that had been knocked over and picked up a tin goblet (a stage prop from Hamlet). ‘Now where do I get a Lopakhin?’ Noah Noaevich asked, but it wasn’t clear whom he was asking.

Eventually a police officer and a doctor arrived, asked everyone to go out and closed the door. The examination of the body took a long time. With the exception of Noah Noaevich, the men went to the buffet to drink to the memory of the newly departed. The first reporter showed up – God only knew where he had sniffed out the news of the tragedy. And then another one arrived, and another. Photographers appeared too.

Eliza immediately went to her own room (her contract, like Emeraldov’s, entitled her to a private dressing room). She sat down in front of the mirror, wondering how to dress for the send-off. The funeral would be in St Petersburg, not here – Hippolyte had a wife, who hated the theatre and everything connected with it. Now her fickle husband would finally return to her and she would consign him to the ground as she saw fit.

Eliza tried out various shades of grief on her face.

Then someone started making a noise in the corridor; she heard footsteps and agitated voices and someone even shrieked. Eliza realised that the police had finished and it was time to go out to the press. She got up and threw on her feather boa from The Three Sisters – the line and colour were appropriately funereal. She set her eyebrows at a mournful angle and turned down the corners of her mouth. Her forehead and cheeks were pale, for quite natural reasons. And at the thought of poor Hippolyte her eyes immediately turned moist; in the photographs they would glisten. What terrible misfortune, how ghastly, Eliza told herself, working up her mood.

But this wasn’t the really ghastly part yet. That began when Zoya Comedina’s little freckled face was thrust in at the door.

‘Can you imagine, Eliza? The doctor says that Emeraldov killed himself. And out of unrequited love too! Now who could have expected that, from Emeraldov of all people! The reporters have gone plain crazy!’

And she went dashing on with the astounding news.

But Eliza recalled the entrepreneur Furshtatsky. And something else as well – only now, at this very moment.

When Hamlet-Emeraldov pinched Ophelia and some people in the theatre gasped and others guffawed, Eliza had noticed out of the corner of her eye that someone in a black frock coat jumped abruptly to his feet and walked towards the exit. At the time she was baffled and bewildered and she didn’t look more closely, but now that picture appeared in front of her eyes as clearly as if it were a photograph. Eliza’s glance possessed a quality that is important for an actress: it registered every detail in her memory.

The man who walked out of the auditorium had square shoulders, a twitchy stride and a gleaming bald patch. It was Genghis Khan, quite definitely – she had no doubt about that now.

Eliza suppressed her scream and grabbed hold of the table to prevent herself from falling. But she fell anyway. Her legs buckled as if they were made of limp rags.

Hippolyte Emeraldov’s send-off was managed by Noah Noaevich in person, and he treated this sad event like a theatrical production.

It made an impressive spectacle. The coffin was carried out through the entrance of the theatre with all due honours, to applause and keening from an entire choir of inconsolable female mourners – the leading man’s bereft admirers. The square was crowded with people. The procession, extending to well over half a mile in length, travelled halfway across the city to the Nikolaevsky railway station.

Eliza walked immediately behind the hearse with her head lowered and not looking around. She wore a veil, which she occasionally raised to wipe away her tears.

The state of terror and panic that had gripped her since the moment when she guessed the true cause of Hippolyte’s death had released her for the present. Eliza sensed people’s eyes on her and she was completely in character. The dead man, clad in the costume of Cyrano de Bergerac (that was his most famous role), except for the false nose, was transported in an open coffin, and it was not hard to imagine herself as Roxana seeing her prematurely deceased hero off on his final journey.

Before the train departed, Stern delivered a magnificent speech that set the women in the crowd sobbing, some of them hysterically.

‘A great actor has left us, an enigma of a man who carries away with him the secret of his death. Goodbye, friend! Goodbye, most talented of my pupils! Oh, how luminously you lived! Oh, how darkly you have departed! From light through darkness to an even more radiant Light!’

Eliza was also supposed to say some farewell words, as the deceased’s partner, but after Stern’s airs and graces, she didn’t want to appear like a fool, so she flung one hand up to her throat as if trying to force the lump of grief through it. Failing, she wilted and simply dropped a white lily into the coffin without speaking.

That seemed to have gone quite well. What is so good about a veil? You can examine faces through it and no one will notice. So that was what Eliza did. Oh, how they were looking at her! With tears, with admiration, with adoration.

Suddenly her attention was caught by a raised hand in a snow-white glove. It clenched into a fist and the thumb turned downwards in the gesture used to condemn a conquered gladiator to death. Eliza shuddered and shifted her gaze from the glove to the face – and everything was suddenly veiled in mist. It was him, Genghis Khan. Baring his teeth triumphantly in a smile of vengeance.

Eliza fainted for the second time that day. Her nerves had worn very thin.

On the way back from the station to the hotel Noah Noaevich admonished her, shouting above the roar of the engine.

‘The scene with the lily was marvellous, I won’t argue about that. But fainting was overdoing it. And then, why fall so crudely, so inelegantly? The sound as your head hit the asphalt could be heard ten paces away. When did you become a devotee of the naturalistic school?’

She didn’t answer, she hadn’t fully recovered yet. Let Stern think whatever he wanted. Her life was over in any case…

They didn’t go to the theatre to hold a wake. That would have been vulgar philistinism. The director said: ‘The best funeral feast with which to honour an actor is the continuation of work on his final show,’ and he announced an emergency meeting to redistribute the roles. The company supported the proposal ardently. They had been haggling since the day before over who would play Erast, Vershinin, Hamlet and Lopakhin.

The speech that Noah Noaevich gave to the actors was quite different in kind from the one at the railway station.

‘He was a mediocre actor, but he died beautifully. You might say that he sacrificed himself on the altar of his theatre,’ he said with deep feeling, and after that he changed to a strictly businesslike tone and didn’t look particularly mournful any longer. ‘Thanks to Hippolyte everyone is writing about us and talking about us. In view of this, I suggest a bold move. We announce a month of mourning. We won’t replace Emeraldov in the existing repertoire. Let’s say that we accept the losses as a tribute to the memory of an outstanding artist. We close down the Sisters, Liza and Hamlet.’

‘Sublime, teacher!’ Nonarikin exclaimed. ‘A noble gesture!’

‘Nobility has nothing to do with it. The public has already seen our repertoire. Without Emeraldov and his hysterical admirers the shows will lose half their electricity. It would be a mistake to cancel the increased prices, but I can’t allow any empty seats in the hall. From here on, my friends, we shall concentrate on rehearsals for The Cherry Orchard. I ask everyone to be here on the spot at eleven. And don’t be late, Vasilisa Prokofievna, or I shall start fining you, in accordance with the terms of the contract.’

‘You always have to bring everything down to money! A trader in the temple, that’s who you are!’

‘People don’t buy tickets for the temple, Vasilisa Prokofievna,’ Stern retorted. ‘And church lectors don’t get paid three hundred roubles a month, regardless of the number of services, that is, performances.’

Reginina turned away haughtily without condescending to reply.

‘In order to maintain the impetus and put some money in the till we shall hold several concerts in memory of Emeraldov. At the first one, the auditorium will be filled by his female admirers, who will come especially from St Petersburg. Suicide is fashionable at the moment. If we are lucky, some fool will follow her idol in laying hands on herself. And we shall also honour her memory in a special concert.’

‘But that’s terrible!’ Gullibin whispered. ‘How can you be so calculating about such things?’

‘Iniquitous cynicism!’ the grande dame who had been offended by the threat of a fine declared in a loud voice.

But Eliza thought: Stern isn’t a cynic, for him life is unimaginable without theatricality, and theatricality is unimaginable without flamboyancy. Life is a stage set, death is a stage set. He is just like me: he would like to die on the stage to applause and sobbing from the audience.

‘This is all wonderful,’ Sensiblin boomed calmly, ‘but whom do you intend to introduce into the role of Lopakhin?’

The director had his answer ready.

‘I shall try to find someone on the side. Perhaps I’ll be able to persuade Lyonya Leonidov to work with us temporarily – out of solidarity with our misfortune. He is familiar with the role and shifting the emphases is child’s play for an actor of his stature. And for the rehearsal period I’ll put in Nonarikin. You know the text, don’t you, Georges?’

His assistant nodded eagerly.

‘Well, that’s excellent. I’ll play Simeon-Pishchik and the passer-by. And we can throw the stationmaster out altogether, Chekhov doesn’t give him a single word to say. We’ll start this very moment. All of you, please open your folders.’

At that moment the door (they were sitting in the green room) creaked.

‘Now who is it?’ Noah Noaevich asked irritably; he couldn’t bear it when outsiders showed up during a rehearsal or a meeting.

‘Ah, it’s you, Mr Fandorin!’ The expression on the director’s thin face changed instantly and it was lit up by a charming smile. ‘I’d given up hope already…’

Everyone looked round.

Standing there in the doorway, holding a grey English top hat with a low crown, was the candidate for the post of repertoire manager.

THE THEORY OF RUPTURE

‘Noah Noaevich, they informed me on the t-telephone that you were here,’ he said, stammering slightly. ‘I offer you my condolences and beg your pardon for disturbing you on this sad day, but…’

‘Do you have some news for me?’ the director asked with brisk interest. ‘Come in, do, come in!’

‘Yes… I mean no. Not in that sense, but in a d-different one, rather unexpected…’

The new arrival was holding a leather folder under his arm. He bowed reticently to the assembled company.

Eliza gave a cold nod and turned away. How clumsily he portrays embarrassment, she thought. He is probably not familiar with the feeling. He didn’t look embarrassed yesterday, in a far more awkward situation.

Yesterday Eliza had been in a state of exalted emotion, sobbing and trembling in a nervous, jittery chill. And late in the evening, overcome by a sudden impulse, she had dashed to the theatre, holding in her hands a huge bouquet of black roses. She wanted to place the flowers on the spot where he had died, this man whom she so much disliked and had involuntarily doomed, as a gesture of repentance.

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-mannered 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.

‘Why 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?

‘Ladies and gentlemen! My friends!’ Stern exclaimed, surveying his colleagues with his eyes all aglow. ‘Miracles do not only happen on the stage. Today, as if in recompense for our loss, fate has presented us with a most generous gift. Look at this man…’ He indicated his companion with a sweeping gesture. ‘Who is he, in your opinion?’

‘The repertoire manager,’ someone answered in surprise. ‘We’ve already seen him today.’

‘Mr Fandorin, Erast Petrovich,’ prompted Shiftsky, who had returned unnoticed at some moment or other. He had always possessed a quite outstanding memory for names.

‘No, my comrades! This man is our saviour! He has brought us a quite fantastically promising play!’

Nonarikin gasped.

‘But what about The Cherry Orchard?’

‘To hell with The Cherry Orchard! Take the axe to it, your Lopakhin is right! Erast Petrovich’s play is new, and no one except me has read it! It is ideal in every respect. In the complement of roles, the theme and the plot!’

‘Where did you obtain it, Mr Repertoire Manager?’ Reginina asked. ‘Who is the author?’

‘He is the author!’ Stern laughed, delighted by the general amazement. ‘I explained to Erast Petrovich what kind of play we need, and instead of searching for one he sat down and – hey presto! – wrote it himself. In ten days! Exactly the kind of play that I was dreaming about! Even better! This is phenomenal!’

Of course, there was hubbub. Those who were satisfied with their parts in The Cherry Orchard were indignant; the others, on the contrary, expressed their ardent approval.

Eliza said nothing for a while, looking at the handsome, grey-haired man with new interest.

‘Enough arguing,’ she said eventually. ‘When will we be able to acquaint ourselves with the text?’

‘This very moment,’ Noah Noaevich declared. ‘I have run my eyes over it. As you know, I possess the skill of photographic reading; however, this text has to be heard. The play is written in blank verse.’

‘Oh, really?’ said Gullibin, astounded. ‘In the style of Rostand, is it?’

‘Yes, but with an oriental flavour. How timely this is! The public is crazy about everything Japanese. Please, Erast Petrovich, take my seat and read.’

‘But I have a st-stammer…’

‘That’s not important. Please, ladies and gentlemen!’

Everyone applauded and Fandorin, tugging on his neat black moustache, took a sheaf of paper out of a folder.

‘TWO COMETS IN A STARLESS SKY,’ he read out, and explained: ‘This is a title in the tradition of the Japanese theatre. My text is eclectic to some degree, something has been taken from kabuki, something from joruri, the old puppet theatre form, that is, from…’

‘Just read it, you can explain everything that’s not clear afterwards,’ Stern interrupted impatiently, winking at the actors, as if to say: Just you wait, now I’ll see you gasp.

‘Very well. Of course. I beg your pardon.’ The author coughed to clear his throat. ‘There is also a subtitle: “A puppet theatre play in three acts with songs, dances, tumbling tricks, sword-fighting scenes and michiyuki.’

‘What’s that?’ Sensiblin asked. ‘I didn’t understand the last word.’

‘That is a traditional kind of scene, in which the characters are on a journey,’ Fandorin explained. ‘For the Japanese the concept of the Path or the Road is very important, and so the michiyuki scenes stand out especially.’

‘That’s all, no more questions!’ Stern growled. ‘Read!’

Everyone settled down in their seats. No one knows how to listen to a new play like the actors who are going to play in it.

The same tense expression appeared on all their faces – each of them was trying to work out which part he or she would get. As the reading proceeded, one after another the listeners relaxed, having identified their roles. This reaction alone was enough to demonstrate that they liked the play. It’s a rare thing to find a play in which every actor has an impressive entrance, but Two Comets belonged to precisely this category. The characterisations fitted very neatly, and so there was nothing to quarrel over.

Eliza also identified her own part with no difficulty: the geisha of the first rank Izumi. Very interesting. She could sing and, what was more, dance as well – well, God be praised; Eliza had graduated from ballet school, after all. And she could have such kimonos made, and such hairstyles!

It was simply astounding how she could have been so blind – a woman who apparently wasn’t stupid and had seen something of life. How could she have failed to appreciate Mr Fandorin at his true worth? His grey hair and black moustache were so very stylish! And what a pleasant, manly voice he had. While he was reading his stammer disappeared completely. That was actually rather a pity – this slight speech defect really had a certain charm to it.

Ah, what a play it was! Not a play, but a miracle!

Even Xanthippe Petrovna Vulpinova was ecstatic. And no wonder – she didn’t often get such an appetising role.

‘Bravo, Erast Petrovich!’ the villainess called out first of all when the author said: ‘Curtain. The end’. ‘A new Gogol has appeared amongst us.’

Everyone jumped to their feet and gave a standing ovation. They shouted:

‘This is a hit!’

‘The season will be ours!’

‘Banzai!’

Kostya Shiftsky made everyone laugh by imitating a Japanese accent.

‘Nemirovich and Stanislavsky will commit hara-kiri,’ and he mimed plump Nemirovoch-Danchenko and skinny Stanislavsky with his pince-nez, slitting open their stomachs.

The only one not to join in the universal jubilation was Nonarikin.

‘I didn’t understand what parts you and I will get, teacher,’ he said with mingled hope and suspicion.

‘Well I, naturally, shall be the Storyteller. A unique opportunity to direct the tempo of the action and the actors’ playing from right there onstage. A combined producer and director, a brilliant innovation. And you, my dear Georges, will get three roles: the First Assassin, the Second Assassin and the Invisible One.’

The assistant director glanced at the notes he had made during the reading.

‘But I beg your pardon! Two of these roles have no words, and the third has words, but no one can see the character!’

‘Naturally. He is an Invisible One. But what expressive lines! And then, the Invisible One is the core, the driving motor of the action. And in the roles of the hired killers you can demonstrate your brilliant sword-fighting skills. You told me yourself that at military college you were the top cadet in the fencing class.’

Flattered by these compliments, Nonarikin nodded, but somewhat uncertainly.

‘Japanese sword-fighting differs substantially from the Western v-variety,’ Fandorin remarked, beginning to stammer again. ‘Some d-degree of training will be required.’

‘Yes. The problem that concerns me is all the Japanese realia. All those gestures, musical instruments, songs, facial expressions, rhythms of movement, and so on. We shall have to find a live Japanese from somewhere and take him on as a consultant. I cannot allow myself to put on a hotchpotch like the production of Madam Butterfly at Milan.’ Stern frowned anxiously, but the author of the play reassured him.

‘I have thought about that, naturally. Firstly, I myself have a good grasp of Japanese matters. And secondly, I have brought you a Japanese. He is waiting in the foyer.’

Everyone simply gasped, and Eliza thought: this man is a magician, all he needs is a cloak spangled with stars and a magic wand. Just imagine it – he takes a real live Japanese around with him!

‘Then call him quickly!’ Noah Noaevich exclaimed. ‘Truly, you were sent to us by the god of the theatre! No, no, stay here! Gentlemen, call an usher, let him bring our Japanese guest here. And in the meantime, Erast Petrovich, I would like to ask, since you are so prudent, whether you might perhaps have any thoughts concerning who should play the part of this… what is his name…’ He glanced into the play. ‘…this Si-no-bi with the alias of the Inaudible One? As far as I understand it, the Sinobi are a clan of professional killers, like the Arab assassins. In your play he juggles, walks a tightrope and dodges a knife blade.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Sensiblin. ‘We don’t have a hero. If only Emeraldov were alive…’

‘I find it hard to imagine Hippolyte strolling along a tightrope,’ Reginina remarked.

‘Yes, that is a problem,’ Nonarikin put in. ‘An insoluble one, I’m afraid.’

The director disagreed with him.

‘Insoluble, my hat. We can find some acrobat from a circus. Circus performers can sometimes be quite artistic.’

‘Perhaps we don’t necessarily need a professional actor,’ the miraculous Erast Petrovich suggested commonsensically. ‘The part of the Inaudible One has no words, and his face remains concealed by a mask right to the very end.’

‘Tell me,’ said Stern, peering hopefully at Fandorin, ‘when you were living in Japan, did you engage in all these various oriental tricks? No, no, don’t refuse me. With your figure and appearance you could make an excellent partner for Eliza!’

The handsome man hesitated and looked in her direction for the first time.

‘Yes, I can do all of that, even walk a tightrope, but… I wouldn’t dare to go out on stage… No, no, please spare me that.’

‘You ask him, Eliza! Implore him! Go down on your knees!’ Noah Noaevich shouted out excitedly. ‘Just look at those features. There is so much elegance in them! So much strength! When the Inaudible One takes off his mask at the end and his face is picked out by a beam of light, the audience will go wild!’

Eliza extended her arm towards the author in the gesture of Desdemona begging for mercy and sent him her absolutely most radiant smile – no man had ever been able to stand against that.

But the conversation was interrupted, because an usher glanced in at the door.

‘Noah Noaevich, I’ve brought him. Come in, my good gentleman.’

This remark was addressed to a short, stocky oriental individual in a two-piece check suit. He took several steps forward and bowed to everyone from the waist, without bending his back, at the same time removing his straw boater. His ideally round, shaven head gleamed as if it had been polished.

‘Mikhair Erastovit Fandorin,’ he proclaimed loudly, introducing himself, and bowed again.

‘Is he your son?’ Stern asked the author in amazement.

‘He’s not a relative,’ Fandorin replied drily. ‘His real name is Masahiro Sibata.’

‘Phenomenal,’ said Noah Noaevich, drawling his favourite word as he avidly examined the man from the East. ‘Tell me, Mikhail Erastovich, do you happen to know how to juggle?’

‘Dzugger?’ the Japanese asked. ‘Ah. I can do a rittur.’

He took a watch out of his breast pocket, a penknife out of his trouser pocket, half of a round cracknel out of a side pocket and started deftly tossing all these things up in the air.

‘Magnificent!’ A predatory expression with which Eliza was very familiar appeared on the director’s face. That was how Noah Noaevich looked when some especially daring creative idea was gestating in his head. ‘And have you ever walked on a tightrope?’ He clasped his hands prayerfully. ‘Even just a little bit! I have read that your nation is exceptionally nimble in physical gymnastics.’

‘I can do a rittur,’ Fandorin junior replied, and after a moment’s thought added cautiously: ‘If it is not too high.’

‘Phenomenal! Simply phenomenal!’ Stern exclaimed, almost with tears in his eyes. ‘We won’t harass you, Erast Petrovich. I understand that at your age it is strange to go out on to the stage. I have a more grandiose idea. Ladies and gentlemen, we shall have a genuine Japanese acting in our play! That will add authenticity and novelty to the production. Just cast a glance at this face! Do you see that Asiatic modelling, that visceral strength? A statue of the Buddha!’ Under the director’s outstretched hand, the Japanese thrust out his chest, knitted his brows and narrowed his already narrow eyes. ‘We shall keep it a secret until the opening night that the leading male role is being played by a Japanese. But when he removes his mask at the moment of revelation, there will be a furore. There has never been a leading man of this kind on the European stage! And tell me, my friend, could you portray the passion of love?’

‘I can do a rittur,’ Mikhail-Masahiro replied imperturbably.

He looked round, selected Aphrodisina as his object and fixed her with a glance that was suddenly aflame. The wings of his small nose distended voraciously, the veins stood out on his forehead and his lips trembled slightly, as if he were struggling to hold back a groan.

‘Mamma mia!’ Simochka babbled in a feeble voice, blushing bright red.

‘Phenomenal!’ Stern boomed ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. But I still haven’t asked the most important question; will you agree to act in your foster father’s play? We all ask you to do it, everyone here. Ask him!’

‘Please do it, please!’ the actors roared.

‘The success of the play and the new playwright will depend on this,’ Stern proclaimed solemnly. ‘You wish to help your foster father, don’t you?’

‘Very much.’

The Japanese looked at Fandorin, who was standing there with a completely stiff face, as if he found everything that was happening extremely unpleasant.

Mikhail Erastovich said something rather long in a strange-sounding language, addressing Fandorin senior.

‘Sore va tasikani soo da kedo…’ Fandorin senior replied, as if admitting something reluctantly.

‘I agree,’ said the Japanese, bowing first to Stern and then to all the others.

The company burst into applause and joyful exclamations.

‘I’ll order the set design today from Sudeikin or Bakst, whichever one is free,’ said Noah Noaevich, switching to a businesslike tone. ‘The costumes are not a problem. There is something left over from our production of The Mikado, there’s something in stock in the storerooms here, and our predecessors staged Jones’s Geisha. We’ll make the rest. And we’ll rustle up plenty of props from the Theatrical and Cinematographic Company. We’ll restructure the stage. Nonarikin: typewritten texts by roles, in the folders as usual. Absolute secrecy! Until the announcement no one must know what we are putting on. We’ll simply inform the press that The Cherry Orchard is cancelled. And we’ll make sure to announce that we have found a stronger play!’

Eliza noticed that Fandorin shuddered and even squirmed at those words. Perhaps he was no stranger to modesty after all? How sweet!

‘Weekends are cancelled!’ Stern boomed. ‘We are going to rehearse every day!’

UNFORGIVABLE WEAKNESS

He was strange, this Erast Petrovich Fandorin. During the days that followed Eliza became more and more convinced of that. He definitely liked her, there was no doubt about it. But then, she had not often encountered men who looked at her without desire. Except for someone like Mephistov, who seemed genuinely to hate beauty. Or Noah Noaevich, with his obsession for the theatre – he was capable of seeing an actress only as an actress, a means for the realisation of his creative concept.

Men who lusted after a woman behaved in one of two ways. They either flung themselves directly into the attack. Or – if they were of a proud disposition – they pretended to remain indifferent, but nonetheless tried hard to make an impression.

At first Fandorin seemed to be trying to appear indifferent. During the rehearsal, or rather, during the break, he struck up a trivial conversation, with a disinterested air. Something about Queen Gertrude’s goblet and the keys to the properties room. Eliza replied politely, smiling inwardly. How funny he is, thinking he can fool me with this twaddle. He just wants to hear the sound of my voice, she thought. And she also thought that he was very handsome. And touching. With the way he glanced out from under his thick eyebrows – and blushed. She had always found men who still possessed the ability to blush, even at a mature age, very appealing.

She had already anticipated that he would break off the conversation, as if he was bored with it, and would walk off with a casual air, but would be sure to squint back at her to see what she was thinking. Had she been impressed or not?

But Fandorin behaved differently. He suddenly stopped questioning her about which members of the company had access to the properties room, blushed even more deeply, raised his eyes resolutely and said:

‘I won’t try to pretend. I’m a poor actor. And I think you cannot be fooled in any case. I am asking you about one thing, and thinking about something completely different. I think I am in love with you. And it is not simply that you are talented, beautiful and all the rest of it. There are special reasons why I have lost my head… It doesn’t matter what they are… I know very well that you are spoilt for admirers and accustomed to ad-doration. It is torment for me to jostle in the crowd of your worshippers. I cannot compete with the freshness of a young hussar, the wealth of Mr Shustrov, the talents of Noah Noaevich, the good looks of the leading men, etc., etc. I had only one chance of attracting your interest – to write a play. For me this was a feat requiring a greater effort than it cost Commodore Robert Peary to conquer the North Pole. If not for the constant g-giddiness that has not left me since the moment we first met, it is most unlikely that I would ever have written a drama, and especially one in verse. Being genuinely in love works miracles. But I wish to warn you…’

Here Eliza interrupted him, alarmed by that ‘But’.

‘How well you speak!’ she said agitatedly, taking hold of his hot hand. ‘No one ever talks to me so simply and seriously. I can’t give you an answer now, I have to puzzle out my own feelings! Swear that you will always be so open with me. And for my part, I promise you the same!’

It seemed to her that her tone and her words had been correct: sincerity in combination with tenderness and a quite clear, but at the same time chaste, invitation to develop their relationship. But he understood her differently and smiled ironically with just his lips.

‘Are we going to be “just friends”? Well, that is the kind of answer I expected. I give you my word that I shall never burden you again with my sentimental c-confessions.’

‘But I didn’t mean it in that way at all!’ she exclaimed in alarm, fearing that this dry stick would keep his promise, that would be just like him. ‘I have friends without you. Vasya Gullibin, Sima Aphrodisina, Georges Nonarikin – he’s a ridiculous man, but selflessly devoted and noble. But all that’s not the thing… I can’t be absolutely candid with them. They’re actors too, and actors are a special kind of people…’

He listened without interrupting. But the way he looked sent an ecstatic tremor through her, like at the most exalted moments when she was onstage. Tears welled up in her eyes, and elation filled her breast.

‘I’m tired of playing parts all the time, of always being an actress! Here I am talking to you and I think: a dialogue like Elena Andreeva’s with Dr Astrov in the third act of Uncle Vanya, only better, much better, because almost nothing breaks through to the outside. That’s the way to keep things from now on: fire on the inside, and on the outside – a crust of ice. My God, how afraid I am of turning into Sarah Bernhardt!’

‘I b-beg your pardon?’ His blue eyes opened wide in surprise.

‘My perpetual nightmare. They say that the great Sarah Bernhardt is never natural. That is the principle of her existence. At home she walks about in a Pierrot costume. She lies down to sleep in a coffin, not a bed, in order to imbue herself with the tragic spirit of existence. She is entirely feigned passion, entirely affectation. That is the terrible danger lying in wait for every actress – to lose oneself, to turn into a shadow, into a mask!’

And she burst into tears, putting her hands over her face. She wept bitterly and in earnest – until her nose turned red and her eyes puffed up – but she still kept glancing through her fingers to see how he was looking at her.

Oh, and how he was looking! She wouldn’t barter a look like that for an ovation from a full house!

Of course, the relationship could not remain at this stage for long. Friendship with a handsome man is something out of a romantic ballad. Such things don’t happen in real life.

On the third day, following the regular rehearsal, Eliza went to his house, to a small annexe hidden away in an old, quiet side street. The pretext for the visit was a respectable one: Erast had suggested that she choose a kimono for her role, as well as some fans and some other Japanese trinkets, of which he had a huge number at home. She didn’t have anything of that sort in mind at all, word of honour. She was simply curious to take a look at how this mysterious man lived. A house can tell a great deal about its inhabitant.

And the house did, indeed, tell her a great deal about Erast Petrovich – almost too much, in fact, she couldn’t make sense of all of it at once. There was ideal order everywhere here. You could even say there was lifeless order, as is often the way with inveterate, pedantic bachelors. There were no traces at all of permanent female inhabitation, but here and there Eliza’s keen glance spotted little bits and pieces that looked like keepsakes from previous passions: a miniature of a young blonde in the depths of a bookcase; an elegant comb of the kind that was fashionable about twenty years ago; a little white glove, seemingly forgotten under a mirror. Well, so he had not lived like a monk all his life, that was only natural.

There were no awkward silences. Firstly, in the company of this man, it was not uncomfortable in the least to say nothing. Erast Petrovich had a quite fantastic mastery of the difficult art of the pause; he simply looked at her and she no longer felt bored. And secondly, there were so many interesting things in the house, she wanted to ask him about everything, and he gladly started telling her, after which the conversation moved on of its own accord, in any direction.

Eliza felt absolutely safe – even with just the two of them alone in an empty house, a gentleman like Erast Petrovich would not stoop to doing anything improper. There was only one thing she had failed to take into account: intelligent conversations with an intelligent man always had an arousing effect on her.

How did it all happen?

It began with an absolutely innocent thing. She started examining some prints and asked about an outlandish creature: a fox in a kimono, with a tall hairstyle.

‘That’s a kitsuné, a Japanese werewolf,’ Fandorin explained. ‘A supremely guileful creature.’ She said that the kitsuné looked terribly like Xanthippe Vulpinova, and indulged herself by passing several pejorative comments about that rather unpleasant individual.

‘You speak of M-Madam Vulpinova with bitterness,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Is she your enemy?’

‘But surely you can see? That malicious, petty creature simply hates me!’

And then he delivered one of those little speeches, of which she had heard so many in the last three days and to which, although she thought of them ironically to herself as ‘sermons’, she had already become accustomed. She had even come to like them. They were, perhaps, even the most charming thing about talking to the ‘traveller’.

‘Never make that mistake,’ Fandorin said with a very serious air. ‘Don’t denigrate your enemies, don’t call them offensive names, don’t describe them as paltry and contemptible. By doing that, you demean yourself. Who are you in that case, if you have such a despicable enemy? If you respect yourself, you will not be the enemy of those who are not worthy of respect. If a stray dog barks at you, you won’t go down on all fours and b-bark back at it. Furthermore, if an enemy knows that you regard him with respect, he will respond in kind. This does not s-signify reconciliation, but it helps in avoiding mean tricks in the course of the struggle, and it also makes it possible to conclude the war with a peace, instead of killing.’

He was remarkably handsome when he talked this charming nonsense.

‘You are a man of genuine culture,’ Eliza said with a smile. ‘At first I took you for an aristocrat, but you are a classic member of the intelligentsia.’

Fandorin immediately launched into a diatribe against the intelligentsia – he was unusually talkative today. It was probably her nearness that affected him in that way. Although there was another possible explanation (it occurred to Eliza later). As an intelligent man and connoisseur of psychology, Erast Petrovich might have noticed how powerfully his ‘sermons’ affected his listener and deployed this weapon to the full. Ah, she still hadn’t learned to understand him!

The oration in the course of which Eliza finally melted completely was this:

‘I do not regard that as a compliment!’ Fandorin exclaimed heatedly. ‘The “classic member of the intelligentsia” is a b-being who is harmful, even ruinous, for Russia! The estate of the intelligentsia might seem likeable enough, but it possesses a fatal flaw, which was noted so accurately and mocked by Chekhov. A member of that estate is capable of bearing hardships with dignity, he is capable of maintaining his nobility in defeat. But he is absolutely incapable of winning in a battle with a boor or a blackguard, who are so numerous and so powerful here. Until such time as the estate of the intelligentsia learns to f-fight for its ideals, there will never be anything decent and worthwhile in Russia! But when I say “fight”, I do not mean a fight according to the rules of the boor and the blackguard. Or else you will become exactly the same as they are. It has to be a fight according to your own rules, the rules of an honourable individual! It is customary to think that Evil is stronger than Good, because it places no limitations on its means – it ambushes slyly, strikes furtively and below the belt, it attacks with odds of ten against one. So it would seem that if you fight Evil according to the rules, it is impossible to win. But assertions like that result from stupidity and, b-begging your pardon, impotence. The intelligentsia is a thinking estate, and that is where its power lies. If it loses, that is because it has made poor use of its main weapon, the intellect. One need only apply the intellect for it to become clear that the noble man has an arsenal more powerful and armour far more impregnable than those of even the most adroit conspirators from the Okhrana or revolutionary leaders who send altruistic young boys to their deaths. You will ask what they consist of, this arsenal and the armour of the noble m-man, who does not stoop to base means of struggle…’

Eliza had no intention of asking about anything of the sort. Erast Petrovich’s excitement as he spoke and his tone of voice affected her more powerfully than any aphrodisiac. She finally gave up trying to resist the weakness flooding through her body, closed her eyes and laid her hand on his knee with a gentle sigh. Eliza never did find out what the arsenal and armour of the honourable individual consisted of. Fandorin stopped speaking in mid-phrase and, naturally, drew her towards himself.

After that, in the way that things happened with her in such cases, she remembered snatches and separate images – mostly touches and smells, rather than visual impressions. The world of love was magical. In that world she became a completely different being, she did unimaginable things and was not even slightly embarrassed. Time altered its pace. Reason blanked out benignly, ineffably beautiful music played and she felt like a classical goddess, soaring on a cloud.

But then there was a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder. Quite literally – a storm had blown up outside. Eliza raised her head, glanced towards the window and saw that it was completely black. Darkness had already fallen, and she hadn’t even noticed. But when the darkness was illuminated by a flash of sheet lightning, Eliza’s reason returned instantly, bringing with it its constant companion, the fear that she had completely forgotten about.

What have I done? Oh, egotist! Criminal! I’ll destroy him, if I haven’t already.

Pushing her beloved’s head, which glimmered silver in the faint light, off her shoulder, she jumped up, rummaged about on the floor and started getting dressed.

‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’ he asked in astonishment.

Eliza shouted frantically, with tears in her eyes:

‘This must never, do you hear me, never happen again!’

He gaped at her open-mouthed. But Eliza ran out of the house, straight into the lashing downpour.

Oh, horror! Horror! Her very worst fears were confirmed: there under the awning of the gates was a dark, thickset figure. Someone had been lurking opposite the open window and spying…

‘Oh God, save him, save him!’ Eliza pleaded, running along the wet pavement with her heels clattering. Running with no idea of where she was going.

A HEART ON A CHAIN

Afterwards, of course, she calmed down a bit. Probably a chance passer-by had simply been sheltering from the storm under the arch of the gates. Genghis Khan was a terrifying man, but not a ubiquitous devil.

But what if it really had been him? Should she not warn Erast about the danger?

She hesitated for a while before deciding not to. If she told Fandorin everything, as a man of honour, he would start watching over his beloved, and would refuse to leave her alone. And then Iskander would be certain to find out about their relationship. Eliza would never survive yet another loss, especially one like this.

She allowed herself one indulgence: she dreamed a bit about how everything could have worked out for them, if it weren’t for her bad karma (she had gleaned that croaking Japanese word from the play). Ah, what a couple they would have made! A famous actress and a dramatist who, though no longer young, was insanely talented. Like Olga Knipper and Chekhov, only they wouldn’t have parted, but lived together happily for a long, long time – until they were old. Eliza didn’t go on to dream about old age, though. Oh, bother that!

That was another reason why she couldn’t put Erast’s life at risk: her responsibility to literature and the theatre. A man who had never taken up the pen before and then suddenly created a masterpiece – yes, yes, a masterpiece! – could become a new Shakespeare! Let Mephistov pull a wry face and whisper that this little play was convenient for Stern’s theory, but there was nothing else interesting about it. He was simply furious that he had been handed a skimpy little role, the most disagreeable of all. A play that was dictated by love could not help but be great! And there was no greater homage for a woman than to be an artist’s inspiration, his muse. Who would remember a girl called Laura, that little girl Beatrice or the frivolous Anna Kern if not for the great works dedicated to them? Thanks to Eliza Lointaine, a glorious new name would shine in the firmament of dramatic art. So how could she allow it to be extinguished because of her?

She took a grip on herself and chained up her poor heart. The next day, when Fandorin came rushing to see her in order to discover what was wrong, Eliza was reserved and even cold with him. She pretended not to understand why he addressed her in such a familiar manner. She made it clear that what had happened the day before had been cancelled out. It quite simply had not happened – and that was all there was to it.

She only had to hold out for the first two minutes. Eliza knew that as a proud man he would not start trying to clarify their relationship, let alone pursuing her. And she was right. After two minutes Fandorin turned deadly pale, lowered his eyes and chewed on his lips as he struggled with himself. When he looked up again, the expression of his eyes was completely different – as if someone had closed the curtains tightly.

‘Well then, goodbye,’ he said. ‘I shall not trouble you again.’ And he left.

God only knew how she managed not to burst into tears. She was only saved by an actor’s habit of controlling the external expression of her feelings.

After that he stopped coming to the rehearsals. In fact, there was no particular need for him to come. All the questions about the Land of the Rising Sun could be answered by the Japanese, who took his work with exemplary seriousness: he arrived before everyone else and left after everyone else, and proved to be exceptionally diligent. Noah Noaevich could not have been more delighted with him.

All in all, getting rid of Fandorin had proved even easier that Eliza thought. She even felt rather annoyed about it. Arriving at the theatre at eleven, she kept waiting to see whether he would show up, and summoning up the inner strength to be firm. But Erast didn’t come and the effort of summoning was wasted. Eliza was suffering. She consoled herself with the thought that it was all for the best and the pain would be blunted in time.

Working on her part helped her a lot. There were so many interesting things about it! It turned out that Japanese women, and especially geishas, walked differently from European women and bowed differently, and they spoke and sang and danced in special ways. Eliza imagined herself as a living embodiment of the most elegant of the arts, a devoted acolyte of ‘yugen’, the Japanese ideal of unmanifest beauty. It was not easy to grasp this concept: what was the point of Beauty if it concealed itself from sight and shrouded itself in veils?

Noah Noaevich spouted new ideas every day like a fountain. He suddenly started restyling the already complete design of the play: ‘Since the play is written for a puppet theatre, let’s play it in puppet style!’ he declared. ‘The actors not involved in a scene put on black robes and turn into puppeteers. They seem to lead a character about, tugging on his strings.’ And he demonstrated a jerky style of movements. ‘The point is that the characters are puppets in the hands of karma, of implacable Fate. But at a certain moment, Eliza, your puppet suddenly snaps its strings and starts moving like a living person. That will be spectacular!’

During the breaks, emerging from the enchanted onstage condition in which one feels neither fear nor pain, Eliza seemed to clench up tight as the appalling burden of reality descended on her with all its dead, dusty weight. The phantom of Genghis Khan hovered in the dark depths of the wings, murdered love scraped at her heart with a cat’s sharp claws, and if she went out into the corridor, there was a dead maple leaf sticking to the windowpane – autumn, probably the last autumn of her life…

The only breath of air during these unavoidable intervals in work were her conversations with Fandorin junior. Naturally, Eliza didn’t dare to demonstrate her interest in Erast Petrovich too clearly, she had to restrain herself, but even so, every now and then, between the discussions of Japanese bits and pieces, she managed to direct the conversation to more important matters.

‘But you have been married?’ Eliza asked one day when Mikhail Erastovich happened for some reason to mention that he was a bachelor.

‘No,’ the Japanese replied with a joyful smile. He smiled joyfully almost all the time, even when there was no apparent reason for it.

‘And your… stepfather?’ she went on casually. As a matter of fact, she still hadn’t discovered in what circumstances Erast had acquired such an unusual stepson. Perhaps as a result of marriage with a Japanese woman? She decided to investigate that subject later.

Mikhail Erastovich thought for a bit, thought again and replied:

‘Not to my recorrection.’

‘Have you known him for a long time?’

‘More than cirty years,’ the Japanese said radiantly. Eliza had already grown accustomed to his imperfectly pronounced but entirely understandable and almost correct Russian.

She cheered up a bit at that: so Erast (he was about forty-five, wasn’t he?) had never been married. For some reason she felt glad about that.

‘Why hasn’t he ever married?’ she asked, pursuing the theme.

The round face of the Japanese took on a serious expression. He rubbed the stubble on the top of his head (Stern had ordered him not to shave his head for the show, it was unromantic).

‘He was unabur to find a woman worthy of him. That is what he tord me many times.’

‘Well, well, what high self-opinion!’ A caustic note crept into Eliza’s voice. ‘And did he try very hard?’

‘He tried very hard,’ Mikhail Erastovich confirmed. ‘Many women wished to marry him. He tried and he tried – he used to ask me: What do you cink, Masa? No, I said, she is not worthy. He agreed. He orways ristens to what I say.’

Eliza sighed and took note of that.

‘So he tried a lot of women?’

‘Very many! There were genuine princesses, there were revorutionaries. Some women were rike andjers, others were worse than the devir.’

‘Beautiful?’ she asked, forgetting about caution. The conversation had turned out too enthralling altogether.

Masa (that name suited him better, she thought, than ‘Mikhail Erastovich’) grimaced in a strange manner.

‘My master has sutrange taste,’ he said, and then, seeming suddenly to recall something, he corrected himself. ‘Very beautifur.’

And he even demonstrated exactly how beautiful they were: with a huge bust, full sides, immensely wide hips and tiny little eyes.

Fandorin really does have strange passions, Eliza concluded. He likes big women, I’m not to his taste at all.

At that point she started pondering and became sad, and the conversation ended. Eliza didn’t even ask why Masa called Fandorin ‘master’.

On closer acquaintance, however, it emerged that not all information acquired from the Japanese should be taken on trust. Her stage partner proved to be no novice when it came to telling a few fibs, or at least fantasising a little.

When, following some complicated manoeuvring, Eliza once again succeeded in directing the conversation to the subject of Erast and asked what he actually did, Masa replied briefly.

‘He rescues.’

‘Whom does he rescue?’ she asked, astounded.

‘Whoever he has to, he rescues them. Sometimes he rescues his homerand.’

‘Who?’

‘His homerand. Mother Russia. He has saved it about ten times arready. And he has saved the whore worrd three or four times,’ Masa declared, dumbfounding her and continuing to glow with his usual smile.

Well now, Eliza said to herself. It could well be that the information about the princesses and revolutionaries is from the same category.

September came to an end. The city turned yellow and was pervaded with a smell of tears, sadness and nature’s dying. How well this matched the condition of her own soul! At night Eliza hardly slept at all. She just lay there with her hands set behind her head. The pale orange rectangle on the ceiling, a projection of the window illuminated by a street lamp, looked like a cinema screen, and on it she saw Genghis Khan and Erast Petrovich, the geisha Izumi and the Japanese assassins, pale images of the past and the blackness of the future.

During the second night of the month of October the regular ‘screening’ concluded in a sudden shock.

As usual, she was running through the events of the day and the course of today’s rehearsal. She counted the number of days since she had seen Fandorin (an entire fifteen!) and sighed. Then she smiled, recalling the latest scandal in the theatre company. Someone had played the hooligan again and written an idiotic entry in the ‘Tablets’: ‘SEVEN 1S UNTIL THE BENEFIT PERFORMANCE’. No one knew when it had appeared – they hadn’t looked into the log for a long time, since there were no performances. But then some ‘phenomenal aphorism’ had occurred to Stern and he opened the book – and there were the scribbles in indelible pencil on the page for 2 October. The director threw a hysterical fit. His target was the venerable Vasilisa Prokofievna, who had only just recalled what magnificent benefit performances she used to have in the old days: with silver trays, and grandiloquent addresses, and box-office takings of thousands. Only Noah Noaevich could possibly have imagined Reginina secretly slavering over the indelible pencil and vandalising the sacred book with those crooked letters. How amusingly he had pounced on her! And how thunderously she had expressed her outrage! ‘Don’t you dare to insult me with your suspicions! I’ll never set foot in this den of iniquity again!’

Suddenly two immense black legs appeared, aimlessly swinging to and fro, on the ‘ceiling screen’ that Eliza was watching. She squealed and jerked upright on the bed. It was a moment before she thought of looking in the direction of the window. And when she did look, her fear turned to fury.

The legs were not chimerical, but perfectly genuine, in cavalry boots and jodhpurs. They were descending slowly, with a sword scabbard beating against them; then came a hitched-up hussar’s jacket and finally Cornet Limbach in toto, lowering himself down on a rope. He hadn’t shown up for two weeks after the previous incident – no doubt he had been sitting in the guardhouse. But now here he was back again, out of the blue.

This time the brat had prepared more thoroughly for his invasion. Standing on the windowsill, he took out a screwdriver or some other tool (Eliza couldn’t see it very well) and started fiddling with the window frame. The closed catch grated quietly and started turning.

This was just the last straw!

Jumping up off the bed, Eliza repeated the same trick as the last time: she pushed opened the window flaps. But this time the result was different. While he was twisting his screwdriver or whatever it was that he had, Limbach must have loosened his grip on the rope, or perhaps he had let go of it completely. In any case, he cried out pitifully at the sudden blow, turned a somersault in mid-air and went flying downwards.

Transfixed with horror, Eliza leaned out over the windowsill, expecting to see a motionless body on the pavement (after all, it was a high first floor, a good fifteen feet), but the cornet proved as agile as a cat and landed on all fours. Spotting the empress of his heart leaning out of the window, he pressed his hands imploringly to his breast.

‘To fall to my death at your feet is happiness!’ he shouted out in a ringing voice.

Eliza laughed despite herself and closed the window.

However, things could not go on like this. She would have to swap rooms with someone after all. But with whom?

It could be with Comedina. The ‘leading boy’ was always given the worst accommodation. And if Limbach climbed in the window again, Zoya, tiny little thing that she was, would still be able to see him off. If she wanted to, of course, Eliza thought slyly. And if she didn’t want to, then two birds would be killed with one stone: Zoya would have her amusement, and the little officer would leave Eliza alone.

She spluttered with laughter as she imagined the brash cornet’s amazement when he discovered the substitution. And there was probably no need to warn Zoya. It would turn out more interesting that way – a little scene from the commedia dell’arte. It was only one short step from the appalling to the comic in life.

Only was there a mirror in Zoya’s little kennel? She could ask to have the one here moved.

Eliza couldn’t live in a room without any mirrors. If she didn’t look at herself at least once every two or three minutes, she got the feeling that she didn’t really exist. This psychosis, rather common among actresses, goes by the name of ‘reflectiomania’.

ACROSS THE PYRENEES

Eliza herself observed the events that transpired in the ‘Louvre-Madrid’ the following night only in part, and so she had to reconstitute the overall picture from the accounts of eyewitnesses.

It should be mentioned that late that evening the electricity went off in the hotel and the lodging rooms. It was too late to call the electricians and the dramatic events took place either in complete darkness or by the uncertain light of kerosene and candles.

The best place to start is with Zoya Comedina’s account.

‘I always fall asleep like a cat. As soon as my head touches the pillow, I’m gone. And this was an imperial bed, you could say. A bed of swan’s down! Pillows of angels’ feathers! And before that I lounged in a hot bath to my heart’s content. Anyway, there I am, sleeping sweetly and dreaming that that I’m a frog, sitting in a swamp and it’s warm and damp there, but I’m lonely. I swallow unappetising mosquitoes and croak. What are you laughing at, Eliza? It’s true, honestly! Suddenly – thwack! – an arrow thrusts itself into the ground. And then I realise that I’m not just any amphibian, I’m a frog-princess, and now a handsome prince will appear to get his arrow back. If I grab hold of that arrow and hold on tight, it will bring me good fortune.

‘The prince immediately appears and puts me on the palm of his hand. “Oh,” he says, “how green you are and how pretty! And what wonderful little warts you have! Let me give you a kiss!” And he really does kiss me, hotly and passionately.

‘Then I suddenly wake up and what do you think? The prince isn’t a prince, but some fop or other with a little moustache and he’s panting into my face and slavering my lips with kisses. Oh, did I yell! He tried to put his hand over my mouth – and I sank my teeth into his finger.

‘I sat up and I was going to yell again, only when I looked, I saw I knew him. That cornet of hussars. The one who showers you with flowers. The window was wide open and there were tracks on the windowsill.

‘So he looks at me and waves his finger about, with his face all twisted.

‘“Who are you?” he hisses. “Where did you come from?”

‘With my short hair, he took me for a boy.

‘I say to him: “No, where did you come from?”

‘He puts his fist up against my nose. “Where is she?” he whispers. “Where’s my Eliza? Tell me, you little devil!” And then he goes and twists my ear, the rotten beast.

‘I got frightened. “She’s moved to the Madrid, to room number ten,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. I just blurted out the first thing that came into my head. Word of honour! What are you laughing at? Don’t you believe me? Well, you should. Why didn’t I kick up a rumpus when he left? Well, I was really frightened, I couldn’t even catch my breath. Honest to God.’

No witnesses were found to the bold cornet’s traversal of the dark Pyrenean corridors from the Louvre to Madrid, so the next episode of the drama was played out directly in room number ten.

‘I don’t know how the miscreant managed to open the door without waking me up. I’m a very light sleeper, I wake up at the slightest stirring of the air… Don’t lie, Lev Spiridonovich, I have never snored. And anyway, how would you know how I sleep now? Thank God, it’s a very long time since you kept me company. I want him to go out. I won’t tell the story with him here!

‘…And through my light doze I hear someone whispering: “Queen, Empress, ruler of heaven and earth! I am ablaze with passion at the aroma of your perfume”. I should mention that at night I always perfume myself with “Fleur de Lys”. And then someone starts kissing me on the neck and the cheek, and presses his lips against mine. Naturally, I decided that I was dreaming. And what point is there in being shy in a dream? And then, since there are no men around, I ask you, which of us wouldn’t like to have a dream like that? Well, naturally, I fling my arms open to embrace this miraculous reverie… Stop giggling, or I won’t tell you!

‘Now it all happened in pitch darkness, note, so I couldn’t even recognise that despicable boy…

‘But when he turned brazen and tried to take the kind of liberties that I don’t permit myself even in dreams, I finally realised that this wasn’t a dream, but an absolutely genuine assault on my honour. I pushed the blackguard off, and he fell onto the floor. I started shouting. And that disgusting Limbach, realising that his intentions had been foiled, ran off into the corridor.’

Whereas Zoya’s story inspired absolute trust (apart from her directing the villain to room number ten by accident), Reginina’s story required a few corrections. Otherwise it was hard to explain why she took so long to shout out to the rest of Madrid and why Limbach had suddenly become ‘despicable’ and ‘disgusting’ to her, although previously she had been well disposed towards him.

It was far more probable that Limbach, drowning in Vasilisa Prokofievna’s monumental corpulence, realised he had come to the wrong place, started floundering about and had broken free, thereby provoking the grande dame’s indignant howling.

However that might be, the next point on the night raider’s route was known for certain. At the sound of screaming, Sensiblin looked out of room number eight with a lamp in his hand and saw an agitated figure with a sword dangling on its belt running hell for leather along the corridor.

Turning a corner, Limbach ran into Xanthippe Petrovna. She had also stuck her nose out of her room, clad only in her nightshirt and curlers.

This is her story.

‘I was served a bad turn by my perpetual kind-heartedness. When I heard shouting, I got out of bed and looked out into the corridor, in case someone needed help.

‘A young man came dashing towards me. I didn’t recognise him immediately as your admirer, Limbach. But he told me he who he was and clasped his hands together imploringly on his chest.

‘“Hide me, madam! They’re chasing me! If I end up with the police, I’ll get at least a month in the guardhouse!”

‘You know, I’m always on the side of anyone who’s being pursued by the police. So I let him in and bolted the door shut, like a stupid fool!

‘And what do you think? That ingrate started molesting me! I tried to make him see reason, I lit the lamp, so he could see that I’m old enough to be his mother. But he was like a madman! He tried to tear off my shirt and chased me round the room, and when I started screaming and calling for help, he bared his sword! I don’t know how I’m still alive. In my place anyone else would take the brute to court, and instead of the guardhouse, he’d end up serving hard labour – for attempted rape and murder!’

Of course, there was even less truth in this than in what Vasilisa Prokofievna had said. There was no doubt that Limbach had spent several minutes in Vulpinova’s room. It is also possible that he entered the room of his own accord, hoping to sit out the commotion. But as for molestation – that seemed rather doubtful. Most likely Vulpinova herself had tried to solicit his attention, but committed the blunder of lighting the lamp, and the poor cornet was horror-struck at the appearance of his rescuer. It was also entirely possible that he lacked the tact to conceal his revulsion, and Xanthippe Petrovna would most certainly have been insulted by that. Offended and infuriated, she was capable of reducing anyone to fear and trembling. It was easy to imagine that Volodya, already badly frightened, had been obliged to snatch out his sabre – just as D’Artagnan bared his sword when he fled from Her insulted Ladyship.

He had definitely darted out into the corridor with his blade bared. A bevy of agitated actors had already congregated there: Anton Ivanovich Mephistov, Kostya Shiftsky, Sima Aphrodisina and Nonarikin. At the sight of an armed villain, everyone except the bold Georges hid in their rooms.

By that time these incredible reversals of fortune had rendered Volodya half berserk.

He dashed at the deputy director, brandishing his sabre.

‘Where is she? Where is Eliza? Where have you hidden her?’

Georges – a bold heart, but not the brightest of intellects – backed away towards the door of room number three, blocking it off.

‘Only over my dead body!’

But it was all one to Limbach at this stage – so be it, over a dead body. He knocked Nonarikin to the floor with a blow of his sword hilt to the forehead and found himself facing the room that had previously been occupied by Zoya.

Subsequent events required no reconstruction, because Eliza had observed them herself and been directly involved.

Exhausted by her chronic lack of sleep, the previous evening she had drunk a tincture of laudanum and slept through the entire ruckus. She was only woken by the loud toing and froing right outside her room. Eliza lit a candle, opened the door – and found herself face to face with Limbach, anguished and crimson-faced from all his running about.

He flung himself at her with tears in his eyes.

‘I’ve found you! My God, all the torments I’ve suffered!’

Still drowsy and not thinking clearly, she moved out of the way and the cornet evidently took this as an invitation.

‘This whole place is full of erotomaniacs!’ he complained (these words explain Eliza’s subsequent assumptions concerning Reginina and Vulpinova). ‘But I love you! Only you!’

The explanation in the doorway of her room was interrupted when Vasya Gullibin came running out from round the corner. He was a heavy sleeper and the last inhabitant of ‘Madrid’ to wake up.

‘Limbach, what are you doing here?’ he shouted. ‘Leave Eliza alone! Why is Georges on the floor? Did you strike him? I’m going to call Noah Noaevich!’

Then the cornet nimbly darted inside, locking the door behind him. Eliza and he were left alone together. One couldn’t exactly say that she was frightened by this. In her time she had seen all sorts of hotheads. Some of them, especially officers and students, had committed worse antics than this. And in any case, Volodya behaved rather meekly. He went down on his knees, dropped his sword on the floor, grasped the hem of her negligee and pressed it reverently to his breast.

‘Let me be killed for your sake… Let them even throw me out of the regiment… My aged parents will never survive it, but even so, there is no life for me without you,’ he declaimed rather inarticulately but with true feeling. ‘If you spurn me, I shall slit my stomach open, as the Japanese did during the war!’

At the same time his fingers seemingly inadvertently crumpled up the fine silk fabric, so that it gathered into folds, rising higher and higher. The hussar broke off his tearful lament in order to lean down and kiss Eliza on her bare knee – and there he stayed, his kisses creeping higher and higher.

A chilly shudder suddenly ran through her. Not from the shamelessness of his touches, but from a terrible thought that had occurred to her.

What if fate has sent him to me? He is desperate, he is in love. If I tell him about my nightmare, he will simply challenge Genghis Khan to a duel and kill him. And I shall be free!

But immediately she felt ashamed. To risk the boy’s life for egotistical considerations of her own was a shameful idea.

‘Stop,’ she said in a weak voice, putting her hands on his shoulders (Limbach’s head was already completely hidden under the negligee). ‘Get up. I need to talk to you…’

She herself did not know how it would all have ended: whether she would have had the courage or, on the contrary, the cowardice to embroil the boy in a deadly intrigue.

Things never reached the stage of an explanation.

The door was torn off its hinges by a mighty blow. The hotel doorman, Gullibin and Nonarikin – with a crimson lump on his forehead and his eyes blazing – jostled in the doorway. They were moved aside by Noah Noaevich, who ran an outraged gaze over the indecent scene. Eliza smacked Limbach in the teeth with her knee.

‘Get out from under there!’

The cornet got up, tucked his cold weapon under his arm, ducked under the outstretched arms of the doorman and darted out into the corridor, howling: ‘I love you! I love you!’

‘Leave us,’ Stern ordered.

His eyes hurled lightning bolts.

‘Eliza, I was mistaken in you. I regarded you as a woman of the highest order, but you take the liberty…’ And so on and so forth.

She didn’t listen, but just looked down at the toes of her slippers.

Terrible? Yes. Shameful? Yes. But it is more forgivable to risk the life of a stupid little officer than the life of a great dramatist. Even if the duel were to end with Limbach being killed, Genghis Khan would still disappear from my life. He would go to prison, or flee to his khanate, or to Europe – it doesn’t matter where. I would be free. We would be free! This happiness can be paid for with a crime… Or can it?