Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

The Great Scene

AVOICE mounted from the depths of the obscurity in which the main floor of the theatre was left, despite the glare of the six dusty stage lamps.

“That’s not the way, Monsieur Fanjard. Won’t you do it over again?”

Fanjard, who had been perched on a chair, which represented the staircase of a château, jumped down and made his way to the front of the stage. Respectfully, yet not without a certain hauteur—his foot on the prompter’s cubbyhole, his elbow on his knee and his hand held to his ear like an ear trumpet—he asked:

“What is it, monsieur?”

The author called back at the top of his voice, as if making head against a tumult:

“I should like to have in that passage more ardor, more passion, more grief. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” answered Fanjard, with a bow.

The author would have been glad to elaborate his meaning. But Fanjard, having already returned to his chair staircase and said to his comrades, “Let us do it over, my friends,” played the climax of the scene again just as he had played it before.

“That’s not right yet! That’s not right yet!” cried the author. “You are on the first step. Mlle. Ravignan lifts her arms toward you. You stop her with a gesture. ‘What is it?’ A silence, you understand, mademoiselle? A silence, a simple silence! You, Monsieur Fanjard, you ask her, almost in a whisper: ‘Your brother? My son?’ You bow your head, mademoiselle. That is enough. He has understood you. Then you, Monsieur Fanjard, you utter a cry, a harrowing cry; all the rest of the scene is only a sob. You see what I want. Let’s try it again!”

With a glacial patience Fanjard played the scene over. But this time his articulation was hardly any more impassioned, and his gestures, barely sketched out, seemed to die away, as if succumbing to some invisible obstacle.

Five o’clock sounded and the players left the stage. The author rejoined Fanjard in the wings. After having gesticulated, shouted, and fumed for three hours, he had a moist skin, a dry tongue, and a hoarse voice. Fanjard, as he made his way toward his dressing room, listened to the other composedly. He was an old actor, reckoned as one of the glories of the stage, and all its noblest traditions survived in him. The author had thrown an arm across his shoulders and talked to him as they walked along.

“It is the capital scene, my dear sir. If it doesn’t go the whole piece will fail. What it needs is emotion, grandeur, despair. Don’t hesitate to let yourself go. You can make, and you ought to make, something sensational out of it. It is just the scene for you.”

“I see—I see very well what you wish. But at rehearsal I can’t let myself go. I need costume, light, atmosphere. But don’t worry.”

Still the author insisted, timid and firm at the same time:

“Certainly I won’t worry. Certainly. But I should like to have you, once before the first night, only once, show me your real quality. Only once; just once. Think of it. We are only three days from the première.”

“Don’t worry,” repeated Fanjard.

Then he went away.

At this moment the director passed by. He asked with a pleasant smile:

“Well, how does it go? Are you satisfied?”

“Satisfied? My dear man, my piece is ruined—you understand, ruined. Mlle. Ravignan is passable. The light effects are a fizzle; Fanjard is bad, bad, bad!”

The director tried to calm him. He had heard many others talk that way, and he knew that in the theatre, better than anywhere else, everything somehow works out. Fanjard was an artist, sure, conscientious, incapable of slighting his roles, let him play them two hundred times. Obstinate? Yes. Unequal at rehearsals? Possibly. But exceeding all expectations when the curtain went up.

The author, still skeptical, shook his head.

“Let’s wait and see, my dear master,” the director protested. (And when a director thus addresses an author who has only a vague claim to such a title, he is using his ultimate argument.) Let’s wait and see. Have more confidence. I am as much interested in the success of your piece as you are. Don’t get worried yourself—and don’t worry him. He is so-so now, perhaps; only so-so. But he will be superb. That I guarantee you.”

The first night arrived.

In the back of a box, alongside the director, the author listened to his play. The first part of it was a torture. With each spectator who entered late, with each seat slammed down, he had the feeling that humanity in general was in a conspiracy to ruin him. Yet the director kept whispering to him:

“It’s a go. It’s a go.”

After the first curtain he wanted to go up to the dressing rooms and give some last suggestions to the actors. But the director dissuaded him.

“Let them alone. Don’t bother them. Believe me, it will be a success.”

The second act had a succès d’estime, and the curtain rose for the third act. Fanjard finally appeared, descending the staircase with an air of nobility. Mlle. Ravignan stretched out her arms toward him. He stopped her with a gesture and said, “What is it?” And then, in a low tone, “Your brother? My son?” She bowed her head, and he, just as at the rehearsals, without a cry, without a sob, began his set speech.

Clinging to the arms of his velvet-covered seat, arching his shoulders, the author growled out, as if he thought he could communicate his own fire to the actor:

“Let go! Let go! Let go!”

But Fanjard continued to the end in a colorless voice. While the curtain descended amid merely courteous applause, the author ran to the wings. The fury which he had held back for eight days nearly strangled him. Fanjard was returning to his dressing room.

“Well, are you satisfied?” the author shouted at him. “You have wrecked my play. Yes, you were going to reserve yourself for the first performance! You should have talent, my dear sir, before you have genius. Effects are not improvised. They are produced by hard work. And, besides, what a role you had! What a scene! A scene to raise the house. A father, a father, who has only one love, one joy in the world—his son. They tell him of his son’s death, and you stand there tranquil, half stupefied! I declaimed the scene, even in writing it. I shouted it.”

Then the old actor answered softly, without anger, without indignation, without any show of wounded pride:

“You are wrong, monsieur; and that is because, fortunately for you, you don’t know. I learned only four hours ago of the death of my son, killed at Craonne; and I did not cry aloud then any more than I do now.”