Rafael Yglesias - Hide Fox, and All After

Raul whistled low and long. “Fields of plenty.”

Frank took out a pipe, filled it. It was lit and passed around, filled again, and then again. Raul leaned back in his chair, fatted by the feast. He snapped his fingers at Alec. “Cigarette.”

Alec took out one for himself and one for Raul. It took them ten minutes to light their cigarettes, to the glee of the others in the room.

Conversation was a low, quiet murmur; time passed in graceful flight. Richard, Raul, and Alec walked to the car in the hushed afternoon and drove away slowly. Somewhere along the way Richard stopped the car, said something wonderingly, and got out, Raul and Alec following. They swayed back and forth, watching Richard kneel down to inspect one of the tires. A passing breeze blew his jacket open. He stood up and looked at them. “Flat,” he said.

Raul and Alec laughed and laughed, stopped, only to see Richard’s face drawn in worry and break out laughing again. Quite naturally they rolled in the gutter, knees drawn up to their bellies, laughing hysterically.

The commonest activities on the day of the opening carried a new electricity. Raul was possessed by a great calm, shrouded in a mist of contemplation. Only two or three hours before curtain time did hysteria become his natural state.

Alec was off getting in as much fucking as possible before the performance; his lust was desperate today, Raul had never seen him so frantic for it. Raul lingered among the costumes and in the theater, living with the dusty ghosts that would be alive in the evening.

Alec’s parents had returned from Europe, so the two ate out for privacy. They spoke of their feelings as they wound their way to the theater, their words and voices surrounded by an aura of tenderness but marked with cynicism as they entered the theater.

“It’s like having your virginity ripped away from you,” Raul said, opening the door.

Alec smiled. “How would you know?”

They were there two hours ahead of time so the theater, except for Miller and the stage crew, was empty. They waved to Miller, who was busy with last-minute checking, and went on up to the dressing room. They dressed slowly and began to make up, languishing in the slow transformation. The stage manager came by, warning them not to make up so early since it would be easily smeared, but he drew neither a response nor their attention.

They heard the gradual awakening of the theater as the cast began to arrive. Most stayed in the auditorium, chatting with girl friends, but some came up to begin dressing. Raul and Alec said hello to no one, giving a nod at most, their faces grim.

Nearly all the cast was in the dressing room as Alec and Raul finished. Their loud chatter and noisy preparations upset Alec’s and Raul’s concentration. They were dressed in black. Alec put a boot up on a chair, resting an elbow on the elevated leg. They surveyed the hot, busy room. Raul inclined his head toward Alec: “ ‘It’s like living in a public park.’ ”

Because of their cold looks and silent manner, everyone had decided not to approach them. Raul placed his cape on his shoulders, offering Alec his.

“No, I think not. Would you care for a cigarette?”

“Yes, very much.”

Their step was sharp, Raul’s cape swayed importantly as the cast cleared a path for them. They entered Miller’s office, which was filled with people. Raul and Alec ignored them, though some were faculty. Alec asked, “Is our makeup okay?”

Miller studied them. He nodded. “Very good.” The faculty who were there wished them luck, students slapped them on the back.

They escaped quickly, going down the steps, onto the stage, through the curtain, and into the auditorium. The girls and students there showed their admiration. The surge of ego. A student usher called to them, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be in the auditorium.”

Raul laughed loudly. “Did you hear that, Alec? He depresses me by calling it an auditorium and then asks me to leave.” Those in the audience laughed.

Alec smiled wryly. “Rubin,” he called soothingly, “you let us know when the theater’s being opened up and we’ll leave.”

Raul laughed. “Alec, um, we should leave anyway, should we not?”

“Ah, quite true.”

They swung about, exiting with much force. They smoked silently in a hidden corner of the theater. They had never felt so close as now, so at one with each other that a glance expressed a thought more clearly than language could.

“You know,” Raul said, “I think we use that severity with others to hide the feelings we have for each other. In some ways. I know it has a more important function for us, but no one would guess from our manner how close we are.”

Alec nodded thoughtfully. “I was just thinking,” he said quietly, “how our relationship is like the platonic relationships between boys in ancient Greece.”

Raul laughed idly. “If it wasn’t for your promiscuity, we’d be accused of homosexuality all the time.”

Alec put his cigarette out. “Did you know that for a while I was afraid you were homosexual?”

“So was I.”

Alec laughed.

“Once,” Raul said.

“No, you’re just asexual. I don’t see how you stand it, though.”

“Are you convincing yourself, or what?”

Alec laughed and beckoned Raul to follow him as he rose to leave.

“I am not,” Raul said, “averse to masturbation.”

They entered the backstage of the theater. Davis passed by in a rage, yelling, “That idiot Bobby ruined my costume.”

“As others,” Raul said, rounding on Alec, “are not averse to emotional masturbation.”

Judy, who played Ophelia, came into their range of vision. She glared at Alec. Alec began to move toward her, saying absently to Raul, “Don’t run the thought into the ground.”

“Go to your whore, see if I care,” Raul said.

“What’s Alec doing?” John Henderson asked Raul with a wink.

“Guildenstern aspires to the bed of nobility.”

John didn’t seem to quite understand.

Raul looked at him. “It’s a round-trip ticket he’s cashing in.”

The cast was peeking through the curtain to catch a glimpse of the audience, although they had been warned it was unprofessional and undignified behavior. “Ah,” Raul said to no one, “look at the rabble beg.” He paused, then peeked himself, turning quickly on his heels. “Oh, my God. I shouldn’t have done that. I saw my parents.”

He walked rapidly, to work off his tension, to one of the wings. The clock there read eight twenty-five. Raul slumped into a chair. “Five minutes,” he gasped. Four or five people wished him luck. He saw Alec and walked rapidly toward him. Alec was as pale as Raul. The stage was cleared of people, the audience hushed as the lights dimmed. Raul and Alec clasped hands. For a moment the two black figures were ghosts — solitary and foreboding — to be called to life by the lights of the stage.

The level of mental tension that an actor on stage must maintain is phenomenal. Raul, in addition to the normal rigors, to move gracefully with his ungainly body was drugged heavily by fullness of mind. What to an audience are natural moves and speech, to an actor are ghostly echoes, fixed moments viewed peripherally, reverberating among the lights of the bare stage.

Speech, which you know is arranged in a text, becomes a natural extension of this self you have gained by denying your own. It is a time without memory or place for an actor; a birth, or death, a moment of the eternal graced by some omnipotent hand.

This fluid quality, the simple transition of personalities, gives an actor a superhuman energy and power. Raul knew that if at any time during the play this energy, this personal world dissipated, if a line was delivered badly, the momentum would be lost. Only twice did that happen, both times due to other members of the cast. Their clumsiness, their lack of a world, depressed Raul’s and Alec’s.