“Magnificent! We start at eight. Capacity of the barrack—one hundred and fifty. Décor—pine cones. Posters to be posted in the morning. And now we can have a little talk about art. Who’s most important—the director or the chorus?”
This floored nearly all of us but not our young actress. Like a war-horse at the sound of the bugle, she took off and began talking unstoppably, managing the most remarkable leaps and turns. We heard flashes of Meyerhold and his triangles of forces, of Yevreinov’s Theater for Itself, of Commedia dell’Arte, of actor-creators, of the slogan “Away with the Footlights!”, of theater as collective ritual and goodness knows what else.[23]
Robespierre was in seventh heaven.
“This meets our needs exactly! You will stay here with us and give us some lectures on art. Yes, that’s settled.”
The poor girl turned pale and looked at us in confusion.
“I have a contract… I can in one month… I’ll come back here… I promise you!”
But now it was Robespierre’s turn. He had his own repertoire—an entire play in “beyonsense language.”[24] The most complete possible development of a gesture. The audience to compose plays in its own right, then act them out on the spot. Actors to play the part of the audience, which requires greater talent than any ordinary, routine acting.
Everything was going smoothly. The only disruption to our peaceful scene of cultured comfort came from the little dog, which evidently sensed something sinister about Robespierre. Tiny as a wool mitten, it growled at him with the fury of a tiger, bared its pearly little teeth and then, all of a sudden, threw back its head and began to howl like some common guard dog on a chain. And Robespierre, who was being transported into mysterious realms on the wings of art, for some reason took fright and broke off in mid-sentence.
The actress took her little dog away.
For a minute, everyone fell silent. And then from somewhere not far away, over by the railway embankment, came an almost inhuman cry, like the cry of a goat, full of animal horror and despair. It was followed by three dry, even shots, distinct and businesslike.
“Did you hear?” I asked. “Whatever was that?”
But nobody answered me. It seemed no one had heard.
The pale hostess sat motionless, her eyes closed. The host continued to say nothing. His jaw was trembling convulsively, as if he even thought with a stutter. Then Robespierre started talking excitedly, in a much louder voice than before, about the evening we had been planning. Clearly he had heard something.
The entourage did not join in; they just went on smoking silently. One of them, a snub-nosed lad in a ragged brown soldier’s tunic, pulled out a massive gold cigarette case with an embossed monogram. Out toward it stretched someone’s calloused paw, with broken nails. On this paw was a beautiful cabochon ruby, shining darkly from its deep setting in a massive antique ring. Our guests appeared to be unusual people.
The young actress walked pensively around the table and stood herself against the wall. I felt her calling me with her eyes, but I didn’t get up. She was looking at Robespierre’s back, her lips twitching nervously.
“Olyonushka,” I said, “it’s time we went to bed. In the morning we’ll be rehearsing.”
We nodded a general goodnight and went to our room. Our quiet hostess followed us with a candle.
“Put the light out,” she whispered. “You’ll have to undress in the dark. And don’t, for the love of God, pull down the blind.”
We quickly got ready for bed. Our hostess blew out the candle.
“And remember about the blind. For the love of God.”
She left the room.
I felt warm breathing, close beside me. It was Olyonushka.
“There’s a hole in the back of that wonderful coat of his,” she whispered. “And there’s something dark all around the hole… something terrible.”
“Go to sleep, Olyonushka. We’re all of us tired and on edge.”
The little dog was fretting all night, growling and whimpering. And at dawn Olyonushka said in her sleep, in a loud, spine-chilling voice, “I know why the dog’s howling. There’s a bullet hole in that man’s coat, and there’s dried blood all around it.”
My heart was pounding so fast I felt sick. I’d known this all along, I realized, even though I’d barely glanced at the coat.
We woke up late. A cold gray day. Rain. Outside the window—sheds and barns. Further on—the embankment. All completely deserted. Not a soul to be seen.
Our hostess brought us tea, bread, and ham, then said in a whisper, “My son-in-law slipped out at dawn. We’ve hidden the ham in the shed. If you go outside at night with a lantern, they report you. And it’s no better during the day. One glimpse of you—and along they come. It’s searches day in and day out.”
She was more talkative now. But her face was still saying as little as ever. It was like stone, as if she feared it might say more than she wanted it to.
Gooskin was knocking on the door.
“Are you nearly ready? Our… young friends have been round twice.”
Our hostess left. I half-opened the door and motioned Gooskin in.
“Gooskin, tell me, is everything all right? Will we be allowed to leave this town?” I asked in a whisper.
“Smile, for heaven’s sake, smile!” Gooskin whispered, stretching his mouth into a hideous grimace, like Victor Hugo’s L’homme qui rit. “Smile when you speak. Someone may, God forbid, be watching you. They’ve promised to let us leave and to provide us with an escort. There’s a twenty-five-mile border zone. It starts here. And it’s in this zone that people get robbed.”
“Who by?”
“Who do you think? By them, of course. But if we can get ourselves an official escort, from the headquarters of this hornet’s nest, no one will dare to rob us. But there’s one thing I will say—we must leave tomorrow. Otherwise, I swear to God, I shall be astonished if ever the day comes when I see my dear Mama.”
This was all rather complicated, and certainly not comforting.
“You must stay at home today. Don’t go out anywhere. Say you’re tired and rehearsing. Everyone is rehearsing and everyone is tired.”
“You don’t happen to know where the owner of this house is, do you?”
“I don’t know anything for sure. He may have been executed, or he may have made off somewhere, or he may be sitting right here beneath our feet. Because why else would they be this scared? The doors and windows are open all day and all night. Why don’t they dare close them? Why must they keep proving that they’ve got nothing to hide? But none of this has anything to do with us. Why are we talking about it? Is someone going to pay us for all our talking? Or grant us some kind of honorary citizenship? Things have been going on here that—well, heaven forbid that they should happen to us! What made that young fellow start stuttering? He’s been stuttering for weeks on end. If we’re not going to end up the same, we’d better get out of here—with our trunks and a proper escort.”
We heard a chair move in the dining room.
“Quick, rehearsal time!” shouted Gooskin, backing out of the room. “Come on, sleepy feet, get up now! Heavens, it’s eleven o’clock and they’re still snoring cats and dogs!”
Olyonushka and I stayed in all day, saying we were tired. Averchenko, his impresario, and the actress with the little dog took on the task of making conversation with the shtetl’s apostles of political and cultural enlightenment. They even went out for a walk with them.
23
Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940) was an influential and innovative theater director. In an article written after his death, Teffi explains that the three corners of his “magic triangle” were the actor, the author, and the director and that Meyerhold believed that the author and the actors should communicate with one another via the director (i.e. along the two short sides of the triangle), rather than directly (i.e. along the hypotenuse). Teffi clearly disagreed with all this, observing sarcastically, “The director always sees the author as the enemy of the play. The author’s observations only mess things up. The author wrote the play, but it is the director, of course, who best understands just what the author wanted to say (
24
A reference to