It could cost him a king’s ransom to make sure the story was set straight.
SHE LEANED AGAINST THE STAGE, feeling the ridged edge of the floor cut against the back of her neck. A big empty house, almost tomblike. She might have been anywhere. Standing in the middle of a blank canvas while the artist mixed the colors to paint the scene. It doesn’t take too long to find out that no matter how expansive and different the world, a theater stripped of life is the same everywhere. This was the lull that she detested most. The point before the stage takes form. When everybody is running around confused, as if they have never done this before, and absolutely convinced that nothing is going to work. Then they scream at one another for a while before cowering down to her to adjudicate the matter, only to have her render the same judgment: “Isn’t this what I pay you for?”
She might have gone over the top with Alexandre. It is simply amazing how quickly even the most self-assured can regress into the common insecurities that overtake the room. As lead carpenter, Alexandre had constructed this set at least a thousand times now. Today he was compelled to doom. Nothing was going to work. “I don’t think we can have the set done in time. The impossibilities are too large,” he lamented in that hollow refrain of the amateur. Per usual, Sarah was forced to turn into mother (it didn’t work out well once in its organic biological state, why would it work in this removed case?), and she had to have him explain the problem, thereby reducing the panic to levelheaded planning. “Tell me from start to finish,” she had said to Alexandre, as her eyes drifted around the large hall.
“This theater is not proper for a production of this level of intimacy,” he said. Nodding his head. Waiting for her reply.
“I do not know what you mean,” she said. “Intimate?”
“This set is designed to be personal. As though the audience was peering through the windows of 9, rue d’Antin. But look at the size of this room.” He swept his hand in a dramatic gesture. “It is as if they are looking in from the neighboring rooftop. As though we are turning the audience from members of the cast to simple gawkers. And that is not what you wanted. From the start that is not what you have wanted.”
The trembling panic in his voice was becoming annoying. “What are your suggestions?” she asked, trying to calm down the almost girlish frenzy.
“I am lost, Madame Bernhardt.”
“Are you paid to be lost?”
“I mean in options. I suppose that we could construct a thrust stage. Then at least you can carry your blocking out into the audience. Just bring the stage out to them.”
He was talking like an idiot now. But at least a calmer, slightly more rational idiot. “And how long would that take?”
He thought for a moment. “Provided we get the supplies, I think by the end of the day tomorrow. Assuming we can get the wood easily.”
“Then that leaves one day to reconfigure the design to meet your requirements?”
“I suppose that is right. And we may need to make a rake stage to give the thrust some dimension. But, yes, that would leave about a day. You are right, Madame.”
“And then, Alexandre, you are suggesting that that allows one more half day for the actors to readjust their blocking to accommodate your new stage.”
“That is what I am saying.”
She supposed that all men innately wanted to be mothered. That they wanted the women in their lives to listen, to hold, and ultimately to scold them. That in fact they were incapable of making decisions and acting without brooding, before the conciliatory nuzzle at the maternal bosom. She imagined that at some point it would become tiresome for the men, because god knows it was for the women. But nevertheless, she gave Alexandre what he wanted when she told him he was being foolish. “You think that this production is one that can just be manipulated and twisted to fit your convenience and vision of the day? Do you think that Renoir just alters his paintings because the room that they happen to be hanging in isn’t the perfect dimension? You think he just adds an extra foot to the bottoms, or adds a slight triangle off to the sides for that salon? That that is the only way for him to ensure that his audience has the proper experience.”
Alexandre started to turn away out of instinct, not rebellion.
“You cannot expect the actors to restage the entire production based on the house that we are in. There are subtleties to each movement. Purpose behind each footstep. It’s not a matter of moving the masking tape a few feet in this direction or that direction. Every inch has motive. Every inch has emotion. Every inch retells the story.”
And now that his head had significantly hung low, she came back with calming, reassuring words. (Isn’t that what he expects Mommy to do?) “Trust me and the actors. If the fourth wall is deeper, then we will have to make the intimacy of our lives that much louder. Trust that we will not drown in this giant bubble, but rather that we will fill it. Don’t be such a man, Alexandre—where you have to knock things down all the time to have them make sense to you.”
He nodded without any more words and walked away, looking partially relieved and partly ashamed. And for Sarah, she wondered if there was any part of her life outside the privacy of her hotel room when she didn’t have to act (as though her conviction to the current performance could be that strong). Everybody saw her in whatever roles suited their needs: from the true professionals to the conductor tearing her train tickets, to the man trying to run his tongue along her thighs. Shakespeare was right when he said that all the world was a stage. A real performance for the ages at all times.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kinney at the back of the house watching the whole thing. Hands on his hips, his expression loaded with sternness and judgment. There is nothing worse than a promoter that wants to be involved. They all try to sculpt art out of wadded paper bills. Then Max walked up to Kinney, and she couldn’t even look. She paced the stage back and forth, looking up into the rafters.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting for what?
She didn’t notice Max until she felt the gentle touch of his fingers against her forearm. He had a woman’s hand. Long, delicate fingers, slender from the base to the tips, that moved with a detached fluidity, with a grip that could only tease and never spank. She turned around with a slight degree of irritation, hoping that he had come to offer a furlough from this ridiculousness of pre-preshow anxieties. “Things are looking good” was all he said.
“Don’t start with me, Molly. You know that I love you too much for what I could possibly say. But for now, I can give you a whole list of things you can address to free me from the nonsense. Like you can ask Ibé why he is being so insolent about not having a proper dressing room. He has screamed at me twice: once that the wigs will be visible behind the masking, and twice that he is being set up beside a makeup station and that the pancake bases and cream blushes will ruin his wigs. My wigs, he pointed to me. Do you agree that I should not have to put up with this?”