In America (32 page)

“Yes,” said Maryna.

He looked at her sharply. “I don't discourage you, or disarm you, with all this prattle?”

“No.”

“Ah, I see. You are proud, you are confident. You are probably intelligent. Well,” he snorted, “that's no asset for an actor.”

“I have been told that before, Mr. Barton.”

“I suppose you have.”

“But you could be more condescending. You could have said to me that intelligence is no asset for a woman.”

“Yes, I could have said that. I shall hereby make note not to say it to you.” He stared at her with curiosity and irritation. “I tell you what, Madame I-can't-pronounce-your-name. Let's get this over with. Are you prepared to do something right now?”

Of course she was not. “Yes.”

“And we'll part as friends, right? No hard feelings. And it will be my pleasure to invite you to my box any evening this week.”

“I shall not waste your time, Mr. Barton.”

Barton slapped the desk. “Charles! Charles!!” A young man peeped through the door. “Go run over to Ames's office and tell him to hold tight, I won't be free for another half hour. And send William to put some lamps on the stage, and a table and chair.”

“A chair is enough,” said Maryna.

“Forget the table!” shouted Barton.

As Barton led her from his office through a maze of corridors, he said, “And what are you going to do for me?”

“I was thinking of Juliet. Or Marguerite Gautier. Or perhaps Adrienne Lecouvreur. These are all roles I have played many times in my native country and have now learned in English.” She paused, as if hesitating. “I think, if you have no objection, I shall show you my Adrienne. That was the role in which I made my debut at the Imperial Theatre in Warsaw, and it has always brought me luck.” Barton whistled, and shook his head. “Yes, the climax of Act Four, when Adrienne recites to her rival, in front of a glittering assembly, the insulting tirade from
Phèdre,
and from that straight into Act Five.”

“Perhaps not all of Five,” said Barton quickly. “And I won't need
Phèdre.
”

“In any case,” Maryna continued imperturbably, “I shall require the good offices of a young friend, who is waiting in the lobby and has my copy of
Adrienne
with her, to join me on the stage to read.”

“We had Ristori in San Francisco with her troupe doing that only two years ago. But she was at the Bush. Of course she did it in Italian. Maybe she did one speech in English—no matter, you couldn't understand a word she said. After she paid for most of her reviews, the public came, and in the end it was quite a success.”

“Yes,” said Maryna, “I was sure that you were familiar with the play.”

They had reached the wings. Before her was the dim stage, and waiting at the center a plain wooden chair. A stage! She would be walking again onto a stage! Maryna paused for a moment, a moment of genuine hesitation, so overcome was she by excitement and joy, which she supposed Barton would interpret as stage fright. No, not even stage fright, but ordinary panic, the panic of the amateur who, having passed herself off as a professional, is about to be caught out in her deception.

“Well,” he said, “here you are.”

“Yes,” she said. Here I am.

“The stage is yours,” he said, and left by the steps on the right, pausing midway to pull an envelope out of his pocket and slice it open with a stiletto.

“Put aside your doubts,” said Maryna, meaning his damned letter, “and
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
”

“Ah, Mark Antony to the plebs.” Barton turned back to look at her. “You should hear how Edwin Booth delivers those lines.”

“I have.”

“Really. And where, may I ask, did you see our great tragedian? I'm not aware that he has yet made any European tours.”

She stamped her foot lightly. “Where I am standing now, Mr. Barton. Last September. His Mark Antony, and his Shylock.”

“Here? So you've been to the California Theatre! But of course, you told me you've been in the state for a while.” He had reached his seat in the middle of the tenth row. “Now, you
must
be my guest sometime this week.”

Maryna beckoned to a timorous Miss Collingridge to remove her sailor hat, come on the stage, and occupy the chair, from which she would read (without emotion) the lines of Maurice, Adrienne Lecouvreur's beloved, and, at the end of the act, the few lines of Michonnet, the prompter at the Comédie-Française, Adrienne's dearest friend as well as hopeless candidate for her love.

“Remember, don't act. Just give me the lines.”

“Give,” mouthed Miss Collingridge. “Not
geeve.
”

Maryna smiled. “And don't worry for me,” she whispered. “I shall be”—she was still smiling but now to herself—“I shall be ‘all right.'”

Maryna looked about the empty theatre. How was she to do her best in these dismal circumstances? There were no admiring friends in the seats, no other actors, no painted scenes, no properties (should she have asked for something, a candle, a shoehorn, a fan to serve as the bouquet of poisoned flowers?), no audience to stimulate her. Only the chair to talk to, with Miss Collingridge in it, and one unsympathetic man to judge. And Miss Collingridge looked so abject and small. Perhaps she should imagine it was Ryszard in the chair instead. And would she have her voice, the commanding voice audible without effort (without effort!) at the rear of the second balcony, to say Adrienne's lines in English? In America!

“Just the death scene, the second half of Act Five, Mr. Barton. Do not despair. I shall begin,” she said, the voice was not the actress's voice, “after I have opened the small casket containing the poisoned flowers sent by the Princesse de Bouillon, which I believe are from Maurice, and kissed them. Begin with my reply when Maurice, who has just been shown into my apartment, says to me”—a little fuller than flat-voiced—“
Adrienne! But your hand is trembling. You're ill.
Miss Collingridge…”

Maryna stared at the chair.

Adrienne! But your hand is trembling. You're ill,
said Miss Collingridge evenly, unexpressively.

The gauntlet had been thrown down.

No, no, not anymore.
The words arched from Maryna's mouth. In the actress's voice. She placed her hand over her heart.
The pain is not there.
She brought her hand to her head.
It's there.

Said.

It's strange, it's bizarre,
she continued.
A thousand different, fantastic things without order or connection are passing through my mind.
It was the opposite of what was going on inside Maryna's head, in which a firm, slicing clarity had descended.

And the delirious words gushed from her throat.

What did you say? Ah, I've already forgotten … my imagination seems to be wandering, where is my reason? But I must not lose my mind, no … first of all, for Maurice's sake … and … and for this evening.
Delirium, produced by the working of the subtle poison on the brain.
The theatre has just been opened … the house is already full.
No physical pain yet. No writhing.
Yes, the curtain will rise soon … and I know how impatient and curious the audience is. They have been promised this play for a long time … yes, such a long time … since the first day I saw Maurice … There was an objection to staging it again. It is too old, some said, it seems passé. But I said no, no … and I have a reason. Ah, little do they guess that reason: Maurice has not yet said to me “I love you” … nor have I said so to him … I don't dare. Now in this play there are certain lines that … I can say before everybody and no one will know that I am addressing them to him. It is a clever thought, is it not?

My love, my best love, return to yourself,
said Miss Collingridge for Maurice, still admirably flat. Maryna looked at Miss Collingridge. She was rocking back and forth in the chair and lifting her face, gone all naked with passion, toward Maryna, and Maryna felt the push of Miss Collingridge's emotion passing into her, stirring and soothing some soft uneasy place.
Hush, hush,
she said, as Adrienne, to Miss Collingridge,
I must appear on the stage.

She was grateful to Miss Collingridge: one cannot do one's best on a stage if one does not feel loved. An actor withers without love. Imagine having to do the scene in this empty theatre only for Barton, to whom she now directed all her watchfulness.
What a splendid audience—how numerous, how brilliant! How my movements are watched by every glance. They are kind, very kind to love me thus.
At first he could not have been paying attention at all, he was reading his letter, then he leaned back, clasped his hands behind his head, and seemed to be gazing at the top of the proscenium arch: she dismissed him contemptuously from her thoughts; but looking again she saw—he was leaning forward, his arms folded across the top of the seat in front of him—that she had finally interested him.

Adrienne! She does not see me, she does not hear me.
The brisk, plump, diction-perfect voice of Miss Collingridge, in the role of Maurice.

Yes, Maryna saw, she had Barton now. Now he would see what she could do.

Can no one aid her? Has she not a friend?
continued Miss Collingridge as Maurice, still tenaciously under control. And then she had to go on, old Michonnet having just entered—
What has happened? Is Adrienne in danger?
—a doubling of distress that fractured Miss Collingridge's composure, for she rose from her chair as she answered hoarsely, for Maurice,
Adrienne is dying!
and fled to the side of the stage.

What is the silly girl doing, Maryna thought, before realizing that she'd done her a real service by ceding the chair.

Who is near me,
Maryna whispered plaintively.
How I suffer! Ah, Maurice, and you too, Michonnet. It is very kind. My head is calm now, but here in my bosom there is something like burning coal consuming me.

Poisoned,
wailed Miss Collingridge as Michonnet from her dark corner.

Maryna glanced at Barton's staring face in the tenth row. He seemed aroused. But had she made him cry?
Ah, the pain increases. You who love me so much, help me!
Then, oh so softly, in tones of accusatory wonderment:
I do not want to die.

That was the line that never failed to ignite a burst of sobs in the audience, a line that touched every heart but those of the callous or the prejudiced. Listening to its echo in her head, Maryna allowed that she had never delivered the line better.
I do not want to die!
She permitted herself a few tottering steps before she sat, slowly.

An hour ago I should have prayed for death as a blessing,
she said quietly,
but now,
without raising her voice,
I want to live.
A little more firmly:
Oh Heavenly powers! Hear me!
Not too loud. Barton can receive every syllable in that hollow heart of his.
Let me live … a few days more … just a few short days with him, my Maurice … I am young and life starts to seem so beautiful.

Ah, it's unbearable,
moaned Miss Collingridge as Maurice.

Life!
Maryna cried. Now the decrescendo would be best.
Life!

Ristori's Adrienne, following Rachel's, would attempt to stand after these words, attempt in vain, and then sink back into the chair. Maryna had always played the moment that way, too—audiences expected it—but inspiration now led her to a new, a better idea. She wrenched her body around to face squarely upstage, as if Adrienne wished to spare her lover and her old friend the sight of the agony devastating her features, keeping her back to Barton a full, endless thirty seconds. Then, slowly, she turned, turned toward him another Adrienne, another face, that of someone already dead.
No, no, I shall not live; every effort, every prayer is in vain. Do not leave me, Maurice. I can see you now, but I shall not be able to see you much longer. Hold my hand. You will not much longer feel its pressure
 …

Adrienne! Adrienne!
cried Miss Collingridge.

There were to be no more words from Michonnet or from Maurice, she had launched Adrienne's final speech, only a few more lines to the end, and though she could see every furrow in Miss Collingridge's waxy face at the side of the stage, she could no longer make out Barton's face at all.
O triumphs of the theatre! My heart will no longer beat with your ardent emotions! And you, my long study of the art I have loved so much, nothing will remain of you when I am gone.
Tone of noble lament as if, for a moment, Adrienne had quite forgotten herself.
Nothing survives us, nothing but memory.
But she remembers now! Maryna looked blindly about her.
There, there, you will remember me, will you not?
(She saw Miss Collingridge nod through her tears at that passable
There, there.
) And, as in a dream, she finished,
Farewell Maurice, farewell Michonnet, my two, my only friends!

There was a moment of silence. She could hear Miss Collingridge sniveling. Then Barton began to applaud rhythmically, echoingly, very slowly. Maryna felt slapped by each sound. Then he took out a handkerchief, blew his nose loudly, and shouted into the dark theatre, “Tell Ames I can't meet him at all. Madame, I … No, wait, I'm coming on stage.”

“Miss Collingridge,” Maryna said softly, “will you meet me at my rooms this afternoon at four o'clock? I must hear Mr. Barton's verdict without a witness.” It was cruel to send the girl away, but she had to confront her destiny alone. Barton, wheezing, came forward and grasped her hand. “May I invite you to lunch with me?”