Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Yes, I would have,” Gillian said. “The words in a play are everything.”

“Ahhhh?” Igor said, and he opened his eyes wide and moved closer to her. “In a book, perhaps, yes. But not in a play. In a play, the words must be brought to life. It is the actor who brings these words to life, Miss Burke.”

“His own words, or the author’s?” Gillian asked.

“You would allow no leeway to the actor, is that correct?” Igor asked. He was circling closer to her now, his shaggy head bent, one bony hand looped into the lapel of his brown sweater, his bright-blue eyes fastened to her face. He spoke English that had been learned in Russia and refined in a dozen foreign countries, but which was scrupulously and miraculously accent-free. “You would prescribe specific limits for the actor, is that right?”

“Yes. Where it concerns the language of a play, the meaning of a play.”

“Does an actor convey meaning by memorizing words? ”

“He starts that way.”

“But I hope we may supplement words with actions! May we not?”

“Of course we may. I’m talking about the language of a play.”

“The language and the action are one and the same. They are only tools to express ideas.”

“Exactly,” Gillian said. “The playwright’s ideas. Not the actor’s.”

“Miss Burke, I hope you are not telling me that an actor is only a harmonica.”

“No. I’m simply saying that an actor’s job is to play a part the way the playwright heard it in his head when he was writing it.”

“I see. Then if we could wire this playwright’s head for sound, we would have no need of actors, isn’t that correct? An actor is a harmonica, after all.”

“No, he’s not. But if he won’t follow the speeches as written, why do we need the play at all? Why don’t we all get up and read from the telephone book?”

The class laughed, and Gillian felt she had scored a point. Igor stopped beside her, smiled, touched the top of her head with his hand, and gently said, “We need plays, of course, Miss Burke, and it is important to learn the words correctly. I would be a foolish old man if I tried to convince you that actors are playwrights. We are not. Although I must admit that some of us are better playwrights than those men who lay claim to the title.”

The class laughed again. Gillian, delighted, laughed with them.

“But, Miss Burke, will you grant me a single point? Will you grant me, perhaps, that a good actor, a great actor, can bring to the words something which the playwright never heard inside his head? A nuance of meaning, a subtlety of expression, an invented gesture which will suddenly present an idea in shimmering clarity? And that by doing this, by bringing this to the very lines the playwright has written, he will add to the creation, bring to the idea a greater significance? Will you, Miss Burke, grant to an old man this one small and totally prejudiced opinion? May we have the next scene, please?”

She recognized his technique, of course. She had recognized it from the very first. He would question her belligerently, often taking a stand in which he did not believe, simply to draw her out, to force a reasoning process that led to a seemingly self-formed conclusion. She knew this, but she entered each new argument with vigor and spirit, loving the old man for what he gave her: a secure knowledge of her craft, and a soaring pride in the profession she had chosen.

“Gillian?” the voice said.

She looked up from the open script in her lap. Tad Parker, one of the boys in the class, was standing with his arm on the shoulder of another boy. Her eyes touched Tad’s face, the tentative smile, the habitual dirty sweat shirt he wore to class, the army dog tags rattling under the shirt. And then she looked at the other boy.

“Got it down yet?” Tad asked.

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “I was only making sure.”

The other boy had not turned his eyes from her. She could feel them on her, ice-blue eyes that seemed emotionless, a face that held something of menace in it, the short-cropped graying hair, he could not be that old, he could not be older than twenty-five or so, the scar nesting in the short bristles, the way he stood stiffly erect beside Tad, his eyes never leaving her, something of menace, and yet something terribly yearning.

“I brought a friend to watch us go through our paces,” Tad said. “From my home town.”

Gillian nodded, and then smiled.

“David, this is Gillian.”

“How do you do?” the boy said.

“Hello,” Gillian answered.

“Look, if you’ve got work to do, we won’t bother you,” Tad said. He clapped David on the shoulder and led him to the row of chairs behind Gillian. They sat together, and Gillian went back to her script. When Igor entered the loft a few moments later, she did not look up. He walked around the room, nodding at his pupils, exchanging a few words with each of them, and then finally coming to where she sat.

“Miss Burke?” he said.

Gillian smiled. “Good evening, Mr. Vodorin.”

Intently, he said, “The reading? How did it go?”

Gillian shrugged.

“No theatrical shorthand, please,” Igor said. “Did they like you?”

She was suddenly aware that Tad and his friend, the boy he had called David, were sitting behind her and probably listening to every word of the conversation. “I thought they liked me,” she said, somehow embarrassed. “But they didn’t call.”

“Perhaps tomorrow then.”

“Perhaps.”

“Patience,” Igor said gently, and he put his hand on her shoulder. He took a gold watch from his pocket then, cocked his head to look at it, and said, “Well, we must begin the class now.”

She sat at the back of the loft in the folding chair, huddled in her own arms as if suffering a chill, watching the other students as they presented their scenes. Igor had insisted that they work alone for this particular project, and she’d had a truly difficult time finding a monologue in anything but Shakespeare. She had spent three afternoons at the drama library on East Fifty-eighth before coming up with a section from Dream Girl , and even that hadn’t pleased her entirely, but time was running out, and the project was almost due. She watched her fellow students now, bored by the monologues, and wondering why Igor had assigned anything so elementary. She contributed nothing to the criticisms following each performance. When Igor finally called upon her to do her scene, she rose from her chair, walked swiftly to the platform at the front of the loft, climbed onto it, faced the class, and said, “This is from Dream Girl by Elmer Rice. I’m Georgina. My mother has just called me from off right to tell me to stop daydreaming. Her last words are, ‘It’s almost nine!’” Gillian nodded and walked to the center of the platform. She took a deep breath and began the scene.

( Leaping up. )

All right, Mother. I’m practically dressed.

( The lights fade on the scene and come up, at left, on GEORGINA’ s bathroom, which she enters, talking all the while. )

Maybe your mother is right, Georgina. Maybe it’s time you cut out the daydreaming — time you stopped mooning around and imagining yourself to be this extraordinary creature with a strange and fascinating psychological life.

( She has removed her negligee and donned a bathing cap; and now she goes around behind the bathroom, invisible but still audible. The sound of a shower is heard. )

Oh, damn it! Cold as ice. There, that’s better.

( She sings “Night and Day” lustily. Then the shower is turned off and she reappears wrapped in a large bath towel and stands, her back to the audience, rubbing herself vigorously. )