Boris Akunin: All the World's a Stage

Clucking his tongue, Masa took the mutilated item of furniture and tried to sit on it – the chair sagged crookedly.

‘Do you have nothing to say? Surely you will not refuse this little request of mine? I shan’t survive it if you too abandon me!’ the great writer’s widow said with the intonations of Arkadina appealing to Trigorin in The Seagull .

‘How could I p-possibly dare,’ Erast Petrovich said dismally. ‘When do I need to be at the theatre?’

‘You are an absolute dear! I knew that I could count on you! The performance today is at eight. Now let me explain everything to you…’

Never mind , Fandorin consoled himself. When all is said and done, this outstanding woman deserves to have me spend one evening on her foolish whim. And if a call about the Stolypin case comes before then, I’ll explain to her that it’s a matter of national importance.

But no one called before the evening, either from St Petersburg or from Kiev. Erast Petrovich put on a white tie and set off for the performance, struggling in vain to master his annoyance. Masa was ordered to stay beside the telephone and if necessary to come rushing to the theatre on the motorcycle.

Fandorin himself went by horse cab, knowing that when there were performances taking place simultaneously in the Bolshoi, Maly and Noveishy theatres, there would be nowhere to park an automobile on Theatre Square. The last time, when he went to see Wagner’s Valkyrie , he had been incautious enough to leave his Isotta Fraschini between two cabs, and a frisky trotter had fractured his chrome-plated radiator – afterwards it had taken two months for a new one to be delivered from Milan.

In the few hours since the actress’s telephone call, Erast Petrovich had gathered a little bit of information about the theatre company with which he was about to spend the evening.

He had discovered that this company, which had appeared in St Petersburg the previous season, had created a genuine furore here in the old capital, enchanting the public and dividing the critics into two irreconcilable factions, one of which lauded the genius of the director Stern to the skies, while the other called him an ‘artistic charlatan’. They had also written a lot about Eliza Altairsky-Lointaine, but here the range of opinions was somewhat different: from ecstatically adoring among the benevolently disposed reviewers, to condescendingly sympathetic among the malicious – they regretted the waste of talent involved when such an excellent artiste was obliged to squander her gift in the pretentious productions of Mr Stern.

In general, a great deal had been written about Noah’s Ark, and written with passion; it was simply that Fandorin never read through the newspapers as far as the pages which discussed the theatrical news. Unfortunately, Erast Petrovich was no lover of the dramatic art and took absolutely no interest in it; if he ever did happen to be in a theatre, it was always, without exception, for an opera or a ballet. He preferred to read good plays with his eyes, so that his impressions would not be spoiled by directorial ambition and poor acting (after all, even in the most absolutely wonderful production there was certain to be one actor or actress who would strike a false note and spoil everything). It seemed to Fandorin that the theatre was an art form doomed to extinction. When the cinematograph came into its own, acquiring both sound and colour – who then would spend a substantial amount of money in order to contemplate cardboard scenery, while pretending that they couldn’t hear the prompter’s whispering and didn’t notice the swaying of the curtain and the excessive maturity of the prima donnas?

For its Moscow tour Noah’s Ark had rented the building of the former Noveishy Theatre, which now belonged to a certain ‘Theatrical and Cinematographic Company’.

On arriving at the famous square, Erast Petrovich found himself obliged to get out beside the fountain – the congestion created by the carriages and the public made it impossible to drive up to the actual entrance. Moreover, it was strikingly obvious that the crush in front of the Noveishy Theatre was much denser than in front of the Maly Theatre located opposite it, with its perennial production of Ostrovsky’s Storm , or even in front of the Bolshoi Theatre, where the season was currently opening with Twilight of the Gods .

As he had intended, Fandorin first made his way to the playbill, in order to acquaint himself with the membership of the company. It was most likely, since it seemed to be quite customary in the close little world of actors, that the harrowing torments of the leading lady were the result of scheming by one of her colleagues. In order to solve the appalling mystery and be done with this idiotic business as quickly as possible, he had to make a note of the names of individuals relevant to the case.

The title of the show finally ruined the reluctant theatregoer’s mood completely. He gazed with a gloomy eye at the foppish poster with its ornamental flourishes, thinking that this evening would prove to be even more distressing than had been expected.

Erast Petrovich very much disliked Karamzin’s novella Poor Liza , which was regarded as a masterpiece of literary sentimentalism, and for this he had extremely serious, personal grounds of his own, which had nothing at all to do with literature. It was even more painful to read that the production was dedicated ‘to St Elizaveta’s Remembrance Day’.

It will be precisely thirty-five years ago this month , Fandorin thought. He closed his eyes for a moment and shuddered, driving away the appalling memory.

In an attempt to rouse himself to action, he gave free rein to his irritation.

‘What an idiotic fantasy – staging old-fashioned trash in the t-twentieth century!’ he muttered. ‘And where have they found a plot for an entire “tragedy in three acts”, even if there is no interval? And the seat prices have been increased!’

‘Interested in a seat, sir?’ asked a little man with a cap pulled down over his eyes, who had popped up under Fandorin’s elbow. ‘I’ve got a ticket for the orchestra stalls. I was dreaming of attending the performance myself, but have been obliged to abandon the idea, owing to family circumstances. I can let you have it. I bought it from a third party, so I’m afraid it’s a bit pricey.’ He ran a quick glance over the London dinner jacket, the geometrically perfect lapels, the black pearl in the tie. ‘Twenty-five roubles, sir…’

The sheer gall of it! Twenty-five roubles for a seat, and not even in a box, but simply in the stalls! One of the newspaper stories about the Noah’s Ark tour, a highly venomous one, entitled ‘Prices Increased’, had been devoted to the incredibly high cost of tickets for a performance by the company from out of town. Its manager, Mr Stern, was a remarkably gifted entrepreneur and he had invented a highly effective way of selling tickets. The prices of seats in the boxes, orchestra stalls and dress circle were twice or even three times the usual cost; but tickets for the tiered stalls and the gallery never even reached the box office, they were allocated for purchase by students – through the medium of a cheap lottery. The lottery tickets were distributed among the young men and women for fifty kopecks each and one out of every ten won a ticket for the theatre. Any lucky winner could either attend the production that everyone was writing and talking about, or sell the ticket just before the performance, thereby obtaining a rather handsome return on his fifty kopecks.