Peter Orner - Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

Eisendrath tries looking at the scars in the wood of the stage, at the audience, which is nothing but a black muddle. He can feel the hot breath of all the people wafting on his cheeks. He stares back at her, at this Masha who is taller than he in flat shoes, who is miserably married to the jolly ignoramus Kulygin, the schoolmaster. This will be the longest moment of his life, not because time stops, but because it continues to stomp forward and onward like the triple-named soldiers of Vershinin’s own platoon, who pound through the back rooms of this play. Eisendrath’s fear is so palpable at this point it could almost be mistaken for drama. A man in one of the back rows begins to cough ravenously, and his boomings echo as if the entire gym is at the bottom of some canyon, and still Masha locks her exhausted, sorrowful eyes on Eisendrath, eyes that of course are also Susan Stempler’s, begging him to say something, anything, anything at all, just move your lips . We’re about to move from glitch to fiasco. How fast we sink. Eisendrath looks down at his uniform as if there’s a clue in the olive jacket the volunteer costume designer (also playing the crone Anfisa) picked up at the army surplus. Vershinin has a few medals pinned to his chest, not many. This is to show that in spite of his many years of loyal military service, he’s never been much for valor. The Lovesick Major’s head is too much in the clouds. Eisendrath looks around at the set, at the drawing room, at the old but solid, not yet ratty furniture. Weird. It’s all vaguely familiar. And though there’s no chance whatsoever that his lines are lodged somewhere in his brain — Eisendrath is not even certain he’s ever even read this play — he almost feels like settling down, right here in this little gymnasium. Sweat and tears course down Susan Stempler’s cheeks, and her eyes, desperate now — this, the one thing I’ve ever wanted. Can’t you speak at all?

Panic rises in the wings and then a voice, shouting disguised as a whisper:

WINGS: Are you superstitious?

VERSHININ: Are you superstitious?

MASHA: Yes, I am superstitious.

WINGS: That’s strange. (Pause.) You’re a splendid, wonderful woman, splendid, wonderful. It’s dark in here and I can see your eyes shining.

VERSHININ: That’s strange—

(Masha shoves her hand in Eisendrath’s face, and so he kisses it, Susan’s hand. It tastes of sweat and Jergen’s.)

VERSHININ: You’re a splendid, winderful woman. It’s dark and I can hear your eyes shining.

(Masha walks over to the other side of the stage, plops in a chair, crosses her feet.)

MASHA: It’s lighter over here.

Eisendrath tries to move closer to the light, but he can’t, his feet won’t budge, and perhaps thirty seconds pass, maybe even a minute, and he does not hear the wings begging, nearly shrieking now—

WINGS: I love you, I love you…

VERSHININ:

MASHA: When you talk to me like this, for some reason I laugh, though I am frightened. Please don’t say it again… Say it again. Go ahead, I don’t care.

(Masha covers her eyes with her hands.)

WINGS: I love your eyes, I love the way you move…

VERSHININ:

MASHA: Say it! I don’t care! Say it!

VERSHININ:

A play is a fixed planet, and Eisendrath has fallen off by now. But even this doesn’t matter anymore. Love? How would he know it if he saw it? He’d stroke Susan Stempler’s now drenched face if he could reach her, if he could ever reach her.

Do you remember her? It was sunny. Her hair was pulled back and sunglasses rode the top of her head like another pair of darkened eyes. She had white cream on her face. She talked about her father, her mother, her tabby cats, her white-bearded cats, her Siamese. She said she was afraid in London now.

“I’m not a bigot, but when it gets to the point, you don’t see a white face for blocks—” She stopped abruptly and reached for your hand. “Such exquisite hands. Do you play piano? My father played beautifully. He was English. Mother was a Serb. Father met her while looking for oil near Novi Sad. He left her when I was ten. Mother didn’t kill herself right away. She let a reasonable amount of time pass. We lived in Shrewsbury then. I went with father to the funeral. He said Good-bye, Netty to the casket and then shoveled dirt and rocks on it. She has a large headstone. Mother’s family were very cosmopolitan Jews. They read the paper on Saturdays, drove. Hard to believe now when you read what barbarians the Serbs are. Tony Blair’s dumber than toast. And your Clinton’s truly disgusting. My cousin Anna a barbarian! If you could see her in the little dresses she used to make. I just came from Novi Sad. They’re walking around like they’re already dead, waiting for more bombs to drop. Yes, there are still some Jews left in Yugoslavia. Would you like a chocolate? My father didn’t hate my mother, he just, well, tired of her, and that’s a crime really, because it’s laziness. A man who played Bach like that whispering good-bye under his breath at her grave like she was going somewhere on a train. Would you like more coffee? The waiter knows I’m Serb — that’s why he ignores us. He can hear it in my accent. I really should speak English here. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for so much. Isn’t it funny to be so sorry for things? You two are quite nice. Normally, I loathe Americans. You know, my brother moved to someplace called Rockville in Washington, D.C., and I tell him over e-mail that I’ll visit him over my dead body, and let me tell you, he won’t come mutter over my grave, because I’ve left instructions — cremation within twenty-four hours of my demise. My lawyer has the papers. They’re fully executed. I’ll be taking up no more space here after I’m gone. Things are crowded enough as it is. I say, when it’s over, let the flames announce it. Bring me to the fire — don’t you fresh faces agree? No trace.”

Aslant of rain against the one small window. As there was rain those three days she was here and he had imagined her clothes strewn across this little office. Why lie? There were moments when his lust made it difficult to breathe. The thing he wanted most was her mouth. He thinks of how it scowled at him. Yet her eyes claimed the opposite. There was kindness in them, a kind of dampened kindness. As though her eyes were battling with her mouth over which face to show him. What is more advantageous, ferocity or gentleness? He remembers wondering whether this struggle stretched into other regions. Imagined her torso white, its lower half a gorgeous hellfire of blue and orange.

She worked with an international charitable organization of some sort. The UNESCO office in Prague had arranged for her visit to Brno to facilitate “cross-cultural exchange,” which was a permissible, if dubious, exercise in the eyes of the authorities. She was an American living in Geneva. He’d learned English in London during the war. Over the course of two days, they had had long talks in this office, talks she thought were illicit, and in a way they were. Any candid conversation with someone from the West carried some risks, but this was years before the Soviet invasion and Barbara Hoffman’s questions were so quaint— Reverend, is it true they’ve outlawed your God? — that they couldn’t possibly have attracted the attention of anyone but the most bored of informants. Barbara Hoffman was thrilled danger lurked and so chattered on, at times looking furtively from under her shaggy eyebrows at the window ledge, as though she expected, any moment, the ghost of Stalin’s giant head to rise above the sill.