Boris Akunin - All the World's a Stage

‘What development? A global conflagration is about to flare up, and our Gaev will be consumed by it, along with his most venerable cupboard. You’re always complicating things, Lev Spiridonovich… Right, let’s move on.’ Stern jabbed his finger at little Comedina. ‘We’ll age Zoya a bit – and you’ll play the conjuror, Charlotta. Shiftsky gets the servant Yasha. Aphrodisina is the maid Dunyasha. I’ll take Feers. And you, Nonarikin, will play Simeonov-Pishchik and all sorts of bits and pieces like Passer-By or Station Master…’

‘Simeonov-Pishchik?’ Stern’s assistant echoed in a tragic whisper. ‘Pardon me, Noah Noaevich, but you promised me a big part! You liked the way I played Solyony in The Three Sisters ! I was counting on Lopakhin!’

‘Most venerable cupboard yourself,’ Sensiblin muttered rather loudly, also obviously dissatisfied with his role.

‘Ho-ho, Lopakhin!’ said Emeraldov, twirling his finger beside his temple as he mocked the director’s assistant.

The half-pint ‘principal boy’ intervened on Nonarikin’s behalf.

‘And why not! It would be really interesting! What sort of Lopakhin will you make, Hippolyte Arkadievich? You don’t look like a peasant’s son.’

The handsome devil simply brushed her aside, like a gnat.

‘When you gave me Solyony to play, I thought you’d started believing in me,’ Nonarikin carried on in a whisper, clutching at the director’s sleeve. ‘How can I play Pishchik after Solyony?’

‘Let go of me, will you!’ Stern exclaimed angrily. ‘You didn’t play Solyony, you simply “represented” him. Because I let you play yourself. A poor man’s Lermontov!’

‘Don’t you dare say that!’ The assistant’s pale face came out in crimson blotches. ‘You know, that’s just the last straw. After all, I’m not asking for much, I’m not fishing for the director’s job.’

‘Ha-ha,’ said Noah Noaevich, emphasising the syllables separately. ‘That’s all we need. So you have ambitions to direct, do you? Some day you’ll astound everyone. You’ll put on a show that will make everyone gasp.’

He said this in a frankly mocking tone, as if he were trying to provoke his assistant into a fracas.

Fandorin screwed up his face in anticipation of screams or hysterics or some other kind of outrageous behaviour. But Stern demonstrated that he was a superlative psychologist. In response to the direct affront, Nonarikin collapsed, shrivelling up and letting his head droop.

‘What am I?’ he asked quietly. ‘I’m nothing. Let it be as you wish, teacher…’

‘Right, that’s the way now. Colleagues, collect your copies of the text. My remarks, as usual, are in red pencil.’

Dissatisfied silences. Everyone took a copy out of the pile lying on the table, and Erast Petrovich noticed that the folders were different colours. Obviously, each colour signified a particular persona – yet another tradition, perhaps? The leading man unhesitatingly took the red folder. The prima donna took the pink one and handed a light blue one to Reginina, saying: ‘Here’s yours, Vasilisa Prokofievna.’ The ‘philosopher’ gloomily tugged out the dark-blue folder, Mephistov took the black one, and so on.

Just then an attendant looked in and said that ‘Mr Director’ was wanted on the phone. Stern had obviously been expecting this call.

‘Half an hour’s break,’ he said. ‘Then we get down to work. In the meantime, I ask each of you to glance through your role and refresh your memory of it.’

No sooner had the manager gone out than the taboo on the subject that everyone was excited about ceased to operate. Everyone started talking about what had happened the day before, and nothing could have suited Fandorin better. He sat there, trying not to attract any attention to himself, watching and listening, hoping that the guilty party would give himself or herself away somehow.

To begin with, emotions predominated: sympathy for ‘dear Eliza’, admiration for Nonarikin’s courageous feat. At the men’s request, he unwound the bandages on his hand and showed them the bite.

‘It’s nothing,’ the director’s assistant said courageously. ‘It doesn’t even hurt any more.’

But the peaceful phase of the general discussion did not last for long.

The fuse was lit by the female intriguer.

‘How deftly you managed to pull your own hand away, Eliza,’ Vulpinova remarked with an unpleasant smile. ‘I would have just frozen in fright and been bitten. But it was as if you knew there was a snake hidden in the flowers.’

Altairsky swayed back on her feet, as if she had been slapped across the cheek.

‘What are you insinuating?’ Gullibin protested. ‘Surely you’re not trying to say that Eliza set the whole thing up herself?’

‘The idea never entered my head!’ said the schemer, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘But now that you bring the subject up… A yearning for sensational fame drives some people to take even more desperate steps than that.’

‘Don’t listen to her, Eliza!’ said Gullibin, taking the stunned Altairsky by the hand. ‘And you, Xanthippe Petrovna, you’re doing this deliberately. Because you know that everybody suspects you.’

Vulpinova gave a loud laugh.

‘Why of course, who else? But I happen to have noticed a certain curious little detail. As a true knight, during the bows you usually snatch the most beautiful basket and personally hand it to the lady of your heart. But this time you didn’t. Why?’

Gullibin couldn’t think of any answer to that and merely shook his head indignantly.

Mr Mephistov smacked his lips and declared sombrely:

‘I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. That is, at anyone.’ And he ran his glance over each of them in turn.

Everyone reacted differently when the villain directed his suspicious gaze at them. Some protested, some cursed and swore. Comedina stuck out her tongue. Reginina laughed derisively and went out into the corridor. Sensiblin yawned.

‘Oh, to hell with all of you. I think I’ll just go out for a smoke and study my part…’

However, a genuine fracas failed to materialise. A couple of minutes later everyone had drifted away, leaving the two ‘villains’ rather disappointed.

‘Anton, dear, you could pull a trick like that just to throw the cat among the pigeons,’ Vulpinova said to her stage partner, apparently out of sheer inertia. ‘Confess, did you do it?’

‘Drop that now,’ Mephistov responded listlessly. ‘Why should we bait each other? I’ll go and sit in the theatre and try on Yepikhodov for size. What sort of role is that…’

The scheming woman appeared to be still unsatisfied. Since there was no one left in the green room apart from Fandorin, she tried her claws on the newcomer.

‘Mysterious stranger,’ she began insinuatingly. ‘You appeared so suddenly. Just like that basket yesterday, and no one knows who sent it.’

‘I beg your pardon, I have no time,’ Erast Petrovich replied coolly, and got up.

First he looked into the auditorium. Several of the actors were sitting in there, looking into their various-coloured folders, each of them alone and widely separated from the others. Eliza was not among them. He went into the corridor, where he walked past Shiftsky, who had ensconced himself on the windowsill, past Sensiblin, who was puffing on his pipe, and past gloomy Nonarikin, who was staring at his one and only page of text.

He found Altairsky-Lointaine on the stairs. She was standing at the window with her back to Erast Petrovich and hugging her own shoulders. The text in the pink cover was lying on the banisters.

Enough of this playing the fool , Fandorin told himself. I like this woman. At any rate, I find her interesting, she intrigues me. So I have to start talking to her.