Boris Akunin - All the World's a Stage

The face… No, the face was different, but that expression of the eyes, that trusting smile, that anticipation of happiness and open acceptance of destiny! How could all of that be reproduced so authentically, so relentlessly? He even squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t protest when the hussar took his field glasses back, whispering angrily:

‘Give them back, give them back, I want to adore her too!’

To watch poor Liza fall in love with the happy-go-lucky Erast and watch him betray her love for other infatuations, allowing her life to be destroyed, was painful and yet at the same time… revivifying – yes, that was the strange but absolutely precise word for it. As if Time with its sharp claws had stripped away the horny, calloused skin covering his soul and now it was oozing blood as it recovered its sensitivity and vulnerability.

Fandorin closed his eyes once again; he couldn’t bear to watch the scene of Liza’s lapse from virtue, which was presented by the director in an extremely bold, almost naturalistic manner. The maiden’s naked arm, with the fingers outstretched, was first picked out by a bright beam of light, then it started drooping, sinking downwards like a wilting flower stem.

‘Oh, well done, Lointaine!’ Tsarkov exclaimed when everyone started applauding. ‘Her acting is miraculous! As good as the late Komissarzhevskaya!’

Fandorin cast an angry glance at him. What he had said seemed like blasphemy to Erast Petrovich, who was finding the owner of the box more and more irritating. Several times some person or other came in to whisper with him – although that didn’t really matter all that much when Liza, that is, Eliza Lointaine, wasn’t on stage. During the musical interludes Fandorin’s talkative neighbour leaned across his armchair and began sharing his impressions or telling Erast Petrovich something about the theatre or the performers. For instance, concerning the romantic lead, Emeraldov, Tsarkov said disdainfully that he was ‘not a partner up to her level’. This seemed wrong to Erast Petrovich. He was wholeheartedly on the side of this character, he didn’t feel jealous when the theatrical Erast embraced Liza and, in defiance of all logic, he hoped that the young nobleman would see reason and return to his beloved.

Fandorin only began listening to the experienced theatre enthusiast’s tittle-tattle when Tsarkov said something about the prima donna. Thus, during a long scene that Erast Petrovich found uninteresting – set in a gambling club, with the hero’s officer friend trying to persuade him to stop, while the card sharp egged him on to try to recover his losses, Tsarkov communicated something about Altairsky-Lointaine that brought a frown to Fandorin’s face

‘Ah, yes, Lointaine is definitely a pearl of great price. Thank God that a man has turned up who will not begrudge the funds to provide a worthy setting. I am thinking of Mr Shustrov of the Theatrical and Cinematographic Company.’

‘Is he her b-benefactor?’ Erast Petrovich asked, suddenly aware of an unpleasant, chilly sensation in his chest and feeling angry with himself because of it. ‘Who is he?’

‘A very capable young entrepreneur, who inherited a gingerbread and cracknel bakery from his father. He studied in America and manages his business in the tough American style too. He crushed all his competitors and then sold his cracknel kingdom for a very good price. Now he’s creating an entertainment empire – a new venture, with great prospects. I don’t think he has any romantic interest in Altairsky. Shustrov is an unromantic man. It is really more of an investment, with a view to her potential as an artiste.’

He carried on, saying something else about the Napoleonic plans of the former cracknel manufacturer, but Fandorin, having calmed down now, was no longer listening and he even interrupted the babbler with a rather uncivil gesture when Liza appeared on the stage again.

Although Erast Petrovich’s other companion did not importune him with conversation, Fandorin found him just as irksome as Tsarkov. Every time Altairsky-Lointaine made an entrance, he responded with howls of ‘Bravo!’ and his resounding voice left Fandorin’s ears deafened.

‘Stop that! You’re distracting me,’ Fandorin repeatedly told him angrily.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Cornet Limbach muttered, without tearing himself away from his field glasses, but only a second later he yelled again. ‘Divine! Divine!’

The actress had a multitude of ecstatic admirers in the auditorium. In fact it was rather strange that all their howling didn’t prevent her from playing her part – it was as if she didn’t hear them. Which was not the case with her partner, Mr Emeraldov – when he made his first entrance and women’s voices started squealing and shrieking in the hall, he pressed his hand to his heart and bowed.

Under other circumstances the emotional response of the audience would have irritated Fandorin, but today he was almost a different person. He seemed to have a lump in his own throat and did not find the audience’s reactions excessive at all.

Despite his own agitation, which was probably provoked less by the actors’ performance than by his own memories, Fandorin did note that the reaction of the auditorium was in fact determined by the psychological patterning of the production, in which comic scenes alternated with sentimental ones. By the time the finale came, the audience was sitting there, sobbing in hushed silence, and the curtain fell to thunderous applause and cheers.

A minute before the ending, the striped whistler entered the box and stood respectfully behind its owner. He was pressing his green briefcase against his side with his elbow and holding a little notebook and pencil in his hands.

‘Well then,’ Tsarkov said to him. ‘I’ll thank her and Stern in person. Arrange something or other absolutely top class. Emeraldov can make do with you. Give him my card. Well, and some wine, I suppose. Which does he like?’

‘Bordeaux, Chateau Latour, twenty-five roubles a bottle,’ the striped man said, glancing into the little book. He whistled quietly. ‘He certainly has good taste.’

‘Half a dozen… Hey, you, be quiet!’ The final remark was to the hussar, who had started shouting: ‘Loi-oin-taine! Loi-oin-taine!’ the moment the curtain came down.

Erast Petrovich offended the cornet too.

‘Let me have those,’ he said, confiscating the boy’s field glasses again. He wanted very badly to take a look at what the astounding actress’s face was like when she was no longer acting.

‘But I have to see her accept my basket!’

The young officer tried to tear the field glasses out of Fandorin’s hand, but he might as well have tried to tear the sword out of the hands of the bronze figures of Minin and Pozharsky on Red Square.

‘Consider it the price of your seat,’ Erast Petrovich hissed, adjusting the little wheel.

No, not the least bit like her , he told himself. About ten years older. The face isn’t oval, but more angular. And the eyes aren’t youthful at all, they’re weary. Ah, such eyes …

He put down the field glasses, because he suddenly felt unaccountably dizzy. Well, well, what next?

The actors did not come out for their bows by turns, in the way it was usually done in the theatre, but all at once: the male and female leads at the front, with the others in the second row. The one who had played Death, that is, Noah Stern himself, did not appear at all – he remained brilliantly absent, so to speak.

The applause continued unabated as attendants carried flowers out onto the stage from both sides, first the bouquets, and then the baskets – the smaller ones first, followed by the larger ones. About half of the tributes went to Emeraldov and half to Altairsky. Other players received perhaps one or two bouquets, but not everyone got something.