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

recall the open, kindly, genuine way in which she shook hands like a woman and a comrade at the same time.

I took her hand. She looked at me attentively and said:

“Listen. Aren’t you ill? You look bad.” And she added in a lower tone: “Perhaps you’re in need of money?⁠ ⁠… eh?⁠ ⁠… may I lend it?⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh no, no, thank you,” I interrupted her with feeling. And suddenly, yielding to the rush of emotion with which her acting had thrilled me, I exclaimed with fire:

“How beautiful you were tonight!”

Probably the compliment, by its sincerity, was a little unusual. She blushed with pleasure, lowered her eves and said laughingly:

“I’m so glad that I gave you pleasure.”

I kissed her hand respectfully. But at that instant a woman’s voice shouted:

“Androssova! Where are you? Come along, we’re waiting for you for supper.”

“Good night, Vassiliev,” she said simply and kindly. Then she shook her head, and just as she was leaving, murmured scarcely audibly: “Ah, you poor one, you poor one⁠ ⁠…”

No, I didn’t feel at all poor at that moment. But it seemed to me that if, in saying goodbye, she had brushed my forehead with her lips, I should have died from happiness.

X

I wasn’t long in taking the measure of the whole troupe. I confess that even before my involuntary actor’s career I never had a high opinion of the provincial stage. But, thanks to Ostrovsky, my idea of acting folk was that, though rough in externals, they were kindly and large in their hearts, happy-go-lucky people, but devoted to art in their way and full of esprit de corps. But now I perceived that the stage was held quite simply by a band of shameless men and women.

They were all heartless, treacherous, and envious of each other, without the slightest respect for beauty and creative power⁠—in a word, base, insensitive souls. And, on the top of it all, they were people of dumbfounding ignorance and deep indifference, hysterical hypocrites, cold liars, with crocodile tears and theatrical sobs, stubbornly stunted slaves⁠—always ready to crawl before their superiors and patrons. It was not without point that Chekhov said once: “There is only one person more hysterical than the actor⁠—it is the constable. See how they both stand in front of a buffet on a bank holiday, make speeches and weep.”

But theatrical traditions were kept up immovably among us. Someone or other, before going on the stage, had the habit of making the sign of the cross. The story of this spread. And each of our principals, before his entrance, would not fail to go through the same performance, looking round sideways while he was doing it to see if anyone was watching him or not. And if they are watching he imagines them to be saying to themselves: “How superstitious he is! What an original creature!”

One of these prostitutes of art, with a goat’s voice and fat thighs, once beat the tailor and, on another occasion, the barber. This also became an established tradition. I have often watched Lara-Larsky throwing himself about the stage with bloodshot eyes, foaming at the mouth, and shouting hoarsely:

“Give me this tailor. I will kill him, this tailor.”

And then, after having struck the tailor and, deep down in his soul, expecting and fearing a return blow, he would stretch his hands out backwards and roar:

“Hold me, hold me, or I shall become in reality a murderer!”

But then how profoundly they would discuss “the holy art” and the theatre! I remember one clear, green July day. Our rehearsal had not commenced. It was rather dark and cool on the stage. Of the principals, Lara-Larsky and his theatrical wife, Medvedieva, had arrived before the others. A few girls and schoolboys were sitting in the pit. Lara-Larsky walked backwards and forwards across the stage. He seemed preoccupied. Apparently he was thinking out some profound new type. Suddenly his wife addressed him:

“Sasha, please whistle that motive that we heard in Paillasse yesterday.”

He stopped short, looked her up and down from head to foot, and said in the actor’s velvety baritone, glancing sideways at the pit:

“Whistle? On the stage? Ha-ha-ha!” (He laughed the actor’s bitter laugh.) “And it’s you who tell me to do this? But don’t you know that the stage is a temple, an altar on which we lay all our best thoughts and hopes? And then suddenly to whistle! Ha-ha-ha.”

All the same, to this very altar, in the ladies’ dressing-rooms, the local cavalry officers and the rich, idle, landed proprietors used to come exactly as they would come to rooms in a maison de tolérance. Of course we weren’t touchy about this sort of thing. How often have I seen something like this: Inside the vineyard arbour a light would be burning, a woman’s laugh could be heard, the click of spurs, the tinkling of champagne glasses, while the theatrical husband, like a sentry on patrol, would be walking backwards and forwards on the path near the entrance, waiting in the darkness and wondering if he would or would not be invited. And the waiter, bringing in the fish au gratin on a highly-lifted tray, would jog against him with his elbow and say dryly:

“Step aside, sir.”

And when he is invited, he will fuss and drink vodka and beer and vinegar while he tells dirty anecdotes about Jewish life.

But all the same they used to talk hotly and proudly about art. Timofeev-Soumskoi, more than once, lectured us on the lost “classic gesture of exit.”

“The classic gesture is lost,” he would say gloomily. “This is how an actor would leave the stage in the past. Like this.” Timofeev would stretch himself out at full length and raise his right hand with his fist clenched except for the index finger, which would stick out like a hook. “Do you see?” And with slow, enormous strides he would move to the door. “That is what was called ‘the classical gesture of exit.’ And now? One just puts one’s hands in