Suddenly the man thrust him aside and, by moving adroitly, just had time to catch Mila as she passed out. When she came to he murmured, still with that smile that left the expression in his eyes unaltered, “In the old days actors were trained to support heroines who fainted…” He invited them to drink a bowl of soup, which was, in fact, hot water with a little meal floating in it.
Their offer was accepted with a remark Volsky would remember for the rest of his life: “We need voices.” His eyes met Mila’s. Voices… In truth, that was all they had left.
Their lives merged with that of the theater. They assisted in putting up scenery, gave a helping hand to wardrobe, cooked meals for the singers and musicians. And in the evening they went on stage. Volsky believed that by engaging an excess of walk-on actors, the director was seeking to encourage them. But after several performances he realized that this casting related to the frequency with which the actors died. By taking part in the show, the walk-ons were learning all the roles and could thus take over from anyone who, one day, did not return.
Volsky and Mila already knew this Three Musketeers by heart, an operetta written by a certain Louis Varney, the libretto of which had been substantially reworked by a Russian author. The piece had very little in common with the novel by Dumas. Apart from the musketeers, of course. When they got home they lit the fire, rehearsed the songs, and on occasion burst out laughing, as the line about “the hot southern sun” caused a cloud of mist to emerge from Volsky’s mouth… The hardest part was in the first act, when thanks to this “hot southern sun,” Marie, d’Artagnan’s beloved, had to stand there shivering in a pale satin dress.
Everyone strove for the performances to go on as before. But, of course, everything was very different. They acted by candlelight in an auditorium where it was minus twenty degrees. Often the show was interrupted by an air raid siren. The audience would go down into the basement, those who no longer had the strength to do so remaining huddled in their seats, staring at the stage emptied by the sound of bombing… Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.
One evening, just before the performance, one of the musketeers stumbled on the threshold of his dressing room and collapsed, with a surprised smile still on his made-up face… It was not the first death Volsky and Mila had witnessed here at the theater, but this time they were the ones who carried the actor to the cemetery. The road was familiar and along the way the real difference between the performances now staged and the life of the theater before the war was brought home to them. Death was something those singing on stage shared with those listening in the auditorium. A theatrical illusion created so close to extinction acquired the force of a supreme truth.
This truth was even more alive in the concerts the singers gave at the front. Frozen plains, plowed up by shells, makeshift platforms balanced on ammunition boxes, and the faces of soldiers, most of whom would die during the days ahead. Volsky and Mila often found themselves singing songs from The Three Musketeers; this was their “dress rehearsal,” they would say with a smile.
They would not have believed that the front line was so close to Leningrad. When they mounted the platform they could see the frozen oscillogram of spires and domes through the cold gray mist. Their voices seemed to soar up like a fragile screen between this city and the enemy positions. They met the looks of the soldiers, young or older men, some maintaining a certain bold front, others drained, devoid of hope. The songs spoke of sunshine and love. But what could be glimpsed at times in these looks was the terrible brotherhood of the doomed. Yes, the acceptance of death, but also the mad certainty of being more than this body hurled beneath the bombs.
The singers were easy prey now for the machine gun fire from dive-bombing aircraft. And yet it was here, at the front, sharing a meal with the fighting men, that Volsky and Mila regained a little strength. One evening, at the theater Volsky remarked, “Thanks to their mess cooking, I could play d’Artagnan now from start to finish…” In the early days, they recalled, they had had to sit down and catch their breath at the end of each scene.
When Volsky spoke of playing d’Artagnan he was joking, never imagining that one day he could be given a part, albeit a supporting one. However, the allocation of roles was no longer decided by the director but by a silent being, present at every performance. The grim reaper himself, whom the actors used to make the butt of their mockery, to keep their courage up.
The singer who played Marie was fatally wounded in a bombing raid a few yards away from the theater. Mila had to take over for her that same evening. During the interval, while roguish tunes still hung on the air, she ran to the dressing room where the actress, surrounded by singers and musicians, was dying. When she saw Mila, she whispered, “In the second act, when you’re escaping with d’Artagnan, don’t move too fast. Otherwise you’ll be out of breath from running. The first few times, I remember…” Her voice broke off, her eyes fastened on a tall candle flame. The bell announced the start of the next act.
Two days later, Volsky played d’Artagnan. He took over from an actor who had been found lifeless in an apartment with shattered windows.
The show went ahead without mistakes. There were not even any air raid warnings to interrupt it. Only Volsky knew that his performance was hanging by a thread. Halfway through the play his strength deserted him. He did not collapse, however, and continued to brandish his sword and sing lustily. But a split perception took over: his body trudged up the steps to a castle, his voice pealed out in merry runs, while far away from this performance the words of someone at several years’ distance threw out their echo. In the icy darkness of the auditorium, he could see the spectators bowing, apologetic about no longer being able to clap. And onstage a young woman was singing to whom he had just declared his love, following the play’s story line. He sensed that for her their theatrical kiss had been more than a piece of stage business required by the plot. This detail should have amused him, yet he felt an intense sadness that seemed to come from a future in which their stage embrace would have quite a different meaning… He also noticed that the actor playing Porthos was sweating profusely.
Instead of putting him off, this split perception enabled him to carry on right up to the moment when, holding hands, the actors walked forward to greet the audience. Mila was smiling, moved, her face on fire, Porthos was bowing, breathless, brushing the boards with his musketeer’s hat, Volsky could feel the song he had just been singing still throbbing in his throat. It was even possible to imagine the swell of applause and the beautiful bare shoulders of the women in the audience…
His joy then found a selfish rationale, a hunger for admiration which reminded him of that young man drinking his hot chocolate: a summery past that would surely be reborn, life, his young life would resume its course, the nightmare of a starving Leningrad would pass, and the city would not fall!
He went into his dressing room, tossed his plumed hat into an armchair, removed the shoulder belt and sword, peeled away the mustache, wincing into the mirror. And suddenly, in the same reflection, caught sight of Porthos. The man was sitting in a corner, like a punished child, his hands clasped between his knees, his face shining with sweat. Volsky was about to go and clap him on the shoulder, to congratulate him on his performance, when Mila appeared and beckoned to him to come away… The previous night Porthos had managed to get his wife and children onto one of those trucks that evacuated the rare lucky ones out of the besieged city. That morning he had learned that the convoy had been bombed and there were no survivors. He had come to the theater, given a performance. The stage was poorly lit, the audience did not see his tears. Even the cast thought he had a fever and was perspiring, in spite of the cold.