Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

rakishly on one side, the local scribes, the telegraph and excise clerks.

The doors were wide open. I went in. Someone asked me to take a ticket from the cash desk, but I said carelessly: “Where is the manager, M. Valerianov?” Two clean-shaven young men, sitting on a bench not far from the entrance, were at once pointed out to me. I approached them and halted two steps away.

They were engrossed in their conversation and took no notice of me, so I had time to examine them. One of them, in a light Panama hat and a light flannel suit with little blue stripes, had an air of sham nobility and the haughty profile of a principal lover. He was playing negligently with his walking-stick. The other, in a greyish suit, was extraordinarily long-legged and long-armed; his legs seemed to begin at the middle of his chest and his arms probably extended below his knees. Owing to this, when sitting he had the appearance of an odd, broken line, which, however, one had better describe as a folding measure. His head was very small, his face was freckled, and he had animated dark eyes.

I coughed modestly. They both turned towards me.

“Can I see M. Valerianov?” I asked amiably.

“I am he,” the freckled one answered. “What do you want?”

“You see, I wanted⁠ ⁠…”⁠—something tickled my throat⁠—“I wanted to offer you my services, as⁠ ⁠… as⁠ ⁠… well, as a second comic, or⁠ ⁠… well⁠ ⁠… third clown. Also character parts.”

The principal lover rose and went off whistling and brandishing his stick.

“What previous experience have you had?” Valerianov asked.

I had only been once on the stage, when I took the part of Makarka at some amateur theatricals, but I drew convulsively on my imagination and replied:

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t taken part in any important enterprise, like yours, for example, up till now. But I have occasionally acted in small troupes in the Southwest. They came to grief as quickly as they were organised⁠ ⁠… for instance Marinitch⁠ ⁠… Sokolovsky⁠ ⁠… and there were others too.”

“Look here, you don’t drink, do you?” Valerianov asked disconcertingly.

“No,” I replied without hesitation. “Sometimes at dinner, or with my friends, but quite moderately.”

M. Valerianov looked down at the sand, blinking with his dark eyes, thought for a few seconds, and then said:

“Well, all right, I’ll take you on. Twenty-five roubles a month to begin with and then we’ll see. You might be wanted even today. Go to the stage and ask for the manager’s assistant, Doukhovskoi. He will introduce you to the stage-manager.”

On my way I thought to myself: Why didn’t he ask for my stage name? Probably he forgot. Perhaps he guessed that I had none. And in case of an emergency I then and there invented a name⁠—not particularly sonorous, a nice simple name⁠—Ossinine.

V

Behind the scenes I found Doukhovskoi, a nimble fellow with a thievish, tipsy face. He at once introduced me to the stage-manager, Samoilenko, who that day was acting in some kind of heroic part and for this reason sported golden armour, hessian boots, and the makeup of a young lover. However, through this disguise I could distinguish that Samoilenko was fat, that his face was quite round, with two small cunning eyes and a mouth folded in a perpetual sheep’s smile. He received me haughtily, without even offering his hand. I was inclined to move away from him, when he said:

“Wait a minute; what’s your name? I didn’t make it out.”

“Vassiliev.” Doukhovshoi rushed up with the information.

“Here you are, Vassiliev. Don’t leave the place today. Doukhovski, tell the tailor to give Vassiliev his getup.”

Thus from Ossinine I became Vassiliev, and I remained Vassiliev together with Petrov, Ivanov, Nikolaev, Grigoriev, and Sidorov and others to the very end of my stage career. Inexperienced actor as I was, it was only after a week that I realised that, among all those sonorous names, mine alone covered a human being. The accursed series of names ruined me!

The tailor came, a thin, lame man, wrapped me up in a long, black calico shroud with sleeves, and tacked it on to me from head to foot. Then came the coiffeur, in whom I recognised Theodore’s assistant who had just shaved me, and we exchanged a friendly smile. He put a black wig with love-locks on my head. Doukhovskoi rushed into the dressing-room and shouted:

“I say, Vassiliev, make yourself up.”

I stuck my finger in some kind of paint, but my left-hand neighbour, a severe man with the forehead of a deep thinker, stopped me:

“Can’t you see that you’re using a private box? Here’s the box for general use.”

I saw a large case with divisions full of dirty paint all mixed together; I felt dazed. It was easy enough for Doukhovskoi to shout out: “Make yourself up,” but how was it to be done? I manfully put a white dash along my nose and looked immediately like a clown. I traced cruel eyebrows. I made blue marks under my eyes. Then I reflected: What else could I do? I blinked and managed to insert between my eyebrows two vertical wrinkles. Now I resembled a Red Indian chief.

“Vassiliev, get ready,” someone shouted from the top of the stairs.

I went up and came to the threadbare cloth doors of the back wall. Doukhovskoi was waiting for me.

“You are to go on at once. Devil take it, what on earth do you look like? As soon as they say: ‘No, he will come back,’ go on. Go on and say⁠—he gave some kind of proper name which I’ve forgotten⁠—‘So-and-so is asking for an interview,’ and then exit. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“No, he will come back,” I hear, and pushing past Doukhovskoi I rush on to the stage. What the deuce was the name of that man? A second, another second of silence. The house is like a black, moving abyss. Straight in front of me, on the stage, are strange, roughly-painted faces, brightly lit up by the lamps. Everyone looks at me expectantly. Doukhovskoi whispers something