by Gavin McCrea
But, instead, Iris moved her aim away from the lighting rig, and — no stopping her now — put it on their mother.
Eva went cold.
Wait, she said mentally at her sister. I see you. I can see what you’re doing. Stop. Stop, I said. I won’t let you do it again. I won’t let you.
Iris took a couple of steps in their mother’s direction. The arm holding the gun was rigid, the hand steady. The other hand, however, was rubbing up and down her thigh, an old habit from childhood when her palms would sweat when she was excited. Eva remembered her doing the same thing on the opening night of The East Wind; the exact same motion with her hand, Iris had made, just before attacking Eva in the dressing room.
Rub, rub, rub, rub—
Their mother, from a crawl, rose up to a kneeling position, and raised an open palm as a shield. For a few moments they stayed in this pose — Iris poised to fire a stigmata right into her mother’s hand — until their mother’s arm tired and she lowered it. As she did so, she began to speak. And when she had finished speaking, Iris responded. Eva recognised the words they used. They were lines from Miss Julie. And suddenly she remembered: this was a happening. There was a plan. A script to follow. She had a role to play, she just could not remember which one. Who was she? Who the hell am I? Until that came back to her, she would be consigned to the sidelines, where all she would be able to do was watch.
On the opening night of The Sing-Song Tribunal, at the end of the first half when the famous applause had erupted, Eva came off stage and saw all the other actors hugging each other and expressing astonishment, and she thought, Why are they so surprised? What were they expecting? Eva did not wonder at the acclaim. Her performance had been brilliant. All she had ever needed, to bring her talent out, was the heat of the lamps and the pressure of a real crowd. Once she had stepped onto the boards and appeared in front of those people, she had become entirely herself. Strong and unafraid and generous, she had carried the whole cast on her back. The ovation — how long until everyone saw? — was for her, and it was nothing more than she deserved.
The other actors did not come over to her. Did not hug her or congratulate her. Did not say, Wow, Eva, you really nailed it. We owe you this one. The opposite, they ignored her. Looked over and past her, like she was a little child who was there only incidentally and not, as was the case, a central player, the lynchpin. The longer Eva stood there in the wings, waiting to be seen, the more invisible they made her feel, until she could take it no more and ran to the little toilet at the end of the dressing-room corridor and locked the door and sat on the bowl with the broken seat and wept.
—Mama, Mama, Mama, she said through her tears, Mama, Mama—
For her mother was the only person who would be able to make sense of these feelings.
She went down the corridor to her mother’s dressing room. Her mother appeared happy to see Eva at the door, and waved her in, even though she had ordered her daughter to stay in the shared dressing room during the intermission. It’ll be an adult thing, she had said to her. Not suitable for you. I’ll be busy talking to people and won’t have time to look after you.
—I thought I told you—
Her mother saw that her eyes were red and puffy.
—Have you been crying?
—No.
—It could be the mask, irritating you.
—I’m fine.
Eva’s presence changed the configuration of the room. The pull which her mother had exerted on the gathering shifted to Eva. It was to her — the next generation, her mother’s hope and despair in the flesh — that everyone now seemed to direct their personalities.
—Is that who I think it is?
—If it isn’t the young Thurlow, the real star of the show.
—The last time I saw you, you were—
Standing beside her mother, Eva peered around quietly, evaluating the status and power relationships in the crowd; once she knew where in the hierarchy everyone fit, she would be able move into action and enter the exchanges which she believed would bring her most benefit.
—Are you going to follow in your mother’s footsteps?
—A lot of pressure for someone so young.
—Was learning the lines hard? If only my kids had your discipline.
—And what did you think? Eva asked a man who had just congratulated her.
The man patted her shoulder, pretending not to have heard the question, and moved on.
Her mother put an arm around her waist and pulled her in.
—You don’t ask people that, she whispered.
—Why not? Eva said.
—People will tell you what they think, if they feel like it. It’s not polite to put them on the spot.
Eva flushed red.
Her mother kissed her on the side of the head:
—It’s all right. These are things you’ll learn.
Eva squirmed in her embrace. Her mother’s hold tightened. This striving to create and share an emotional state was an imposition, and though it may have been in the service of an ideal — mother and daughter as intimates — it was no less violent for that; mother and daughter as inmates.
Framed by the doorway, watching them, was Iris.
—Oh God, said Eva.
—Shh, said her mother. Be nice to your sister.
Iris made her way through the bodies:
—Hi.
Eva fixed her shirt collar and touched her hair and bared her teeth:
—Pchs! What’re you doing here? This is no place for a child, am I right, Mama?
Their mother could not answer because Edward Woddis had got her ear.
—Can’t you just piss off and stay off, for once? said Eva.
—I just came to give you these, Iris said.
To Eva, Iris gave a card that she had made herself. On the front she had drawn a picture of a leg in a cast and underneath had written, Break a leg! Iris would later claim not to remember making this card, but Eva kept the evidence and there was no arguing with that. Eva opened it suspiciously and read the message inside.
—Why do you bother? she said, dropping it onto the dressing table.
—This is for you, Iris said to their mother, handing her the doll she had been making during rehearsals.
Now finished, the doll was dressed in bright red robes, similar to THE JUDGE’s robes their mother wore in the play, and had a yellow star stitched onto the front, its five points touchingly uneven in length. Iris would later claim that she remembered making the doll but not giving it to their mother.
—Really? You’re giving me this? You’ve spent so much time making it, are you sure you don’t want to keep it for yourself? For your room?
—No. I want you to have it. It’s you, don’t you see?
—It’s me? It doesn’t look like me. Does the star on the front mean that I’m a star?
Iris shrugged:
—If you like.
Their mother turned the doll over. On the back, the letters M and A and O had been sown.
—That’s her name, said Iris.
—I thought you said it was me.
—It is you. In costume.
Eva, feeling like she had been brought into the open against her will, scanned the nearby faces to ascertain if they were watching.
After that, their mother sent Eva away with Iris. Eva took her sister to the communal dressing room, which was where Iris did what she did. Eva would never believe that Iris did not remember it. Eva remembered everything about the incident, she could recall each of Iris’s actions — rub, rub, rub, rub — for which Iris herself appeared totally conscious. There was nothing in Iris’s behaviour to suggest she was absent or in an altered state. Iris tricked her into playing a game, then brutalised her, abused her, and everything Eva now felt about this was justified. There was no grey area. The line
s dividing right and wrong were clear-cut and visible; they could never be rubbed out. Eva was the victim, she had a right to feel aggrieved, she had grounds for it, she would never let anyone take that away from her.
Less clear were the events that took place on stage while she was tied up in the dressing room. At different times over the coming years, it would be described to her by many people — there were so many witnesses, looking from so many angles — but she would never quite succeed in wrapping her head around it. Not through any naivety on her part, but rather because the incident in itself was inexplicable. What her mother did, what Iris did, both: beyond understanding.
—What exactly happened?
Eventually she would pluck up the courage to ask her mother. And her mother, then, as if she had been waiting a long time to be asked, would tell her, from her point of view. And Eva would listen and accept the truth of what she heard and would never ask to hear it again. For Eva had already decided that her own version of events would be that which her mother chose to give her.
When the dressing room emptied out, Alissa locked the door and vomited into the bucket in the corner. Then she dressed and went to wait for Doris at the props table, as rehearsed.
Doris was late. Probably off in a room somewhere, washing Paul’s prick with her cunt. Doris came in a state — her hair falling loose of its knot, her skin blotchy, her eyes wet — which suggested she had, in fact, been off washing Paul’s prick with her cunt. Then it was not funny any more.
—Shall we?
She followed Doris through the corridors towards front of house. Doris was charged with carrying the lantern to the foyer, but she proved incapable of opening the doors at the same time. She kept knocking the lantern against the walls or dropping the pole or letting the doors slam. It was like something from Laurel and Hardy. Alissa ended up having to assist her.
In the bar, seeing Simon wink and leer at Doris was too sickening. When, at the auditorium door, Doris began to tug and drag at the back of Alissa’s robes, in a way that left Alissa feeling molested, she snapped:
—Can you just stop that?
—Sorry, Doris said too late.
—Don’t be sorry, just be a little delicate. You’re not saddling a racehorse.
Doris let the robes fall loose. Came to stand in front. Took hold of the doorknob, preparing to pull it open.
—That’s right, said Alissa. Do the door.
Alissa felt unexpectedly tense. She recognised these nerves: they were those of the marksman who had hit the target with her first shot but was afraid she would not get the bull’s eye again, now that her audience were assuming triumph.
She examined Doris’s face, trying, one final time, to see the girl through Paul’s eyes. Max had been wrong in his letter: Alissa would not let Paul go so willingly. She would not leave Paul to this girl. Doris would not be staying. She would be gone tonight. Alissa would make sure of it.
Hearing the audience quieten, Alissa made some final adjustments for her entrance.
Then, before opening the door, Doris looked Alissa straight in the eye and said:
—I ain’t afraid, you know, Alissa. With Paul or without Paul, I’m ready. Whatever comes next is welcome, even if I don’t trust it. Even if I hate it.
Making not to have heard, Alissa stepped past the girl and into the auditorium.
The lights were down. The stage was dark. Alissa heard the door close behind her, and there was a long moment, before the audience realised she was there, when nothing was happening in the world. No spectators, no spectating. No performer, no performance. Empty, abandoned time. During which Alissa made the mistake of reflecting on the appalling difficulty of being an actress. If truly practised, the hardest art of all. With Doris’s parting words swirling in her mind, she asked herself the terrible question:
Am I ready for what comes next?
The people in the back rows had begun to notice her. Their murmuring caught the attention of those seated in the middle, who turned round to look. The shiftings of these, in turn, caused the heads in the front to crane round. The connection had been made.
As an opening-night gimmick, Doris had handed out cheap paper fans to people as they arrived. Many in the audience were now using these fans to beat the air in front of their faces. In the lantern’s red-orange glow, the fans were as flames in a blaze, animated by an alternating breeze, now from the east, now from the west, gust after gust, wave upon wave, tension and relief, producing in Alissa’s ear a rhythmic pulse — wha-wha, wha-wha — to which she now began to sing in time.
In Max’s original script, THE JUDGE’s song had had lyrics, but in rehearsals, inspired by the Eastern setting, Alissa had stripped the words out and replaced them with repetitive, meaningless sounds like mantras. Chanting now in an arrangement of her own invention, she climbed onstage using the temporary steps stage right. She crossed the boards from the exterior space on that side to the central terrace. There, she fixed the lantern on a hook outside the house façade. A red overhead lamp came on, which gave the impression of a pool of light coming from the onstage lantern, illuminating only centre stage and the objects immediately adjacent to it. Crossed spots, dimly lit, bathed Alissa in what resembled moonlight. Without a mask to cover it — hers was the only character in the play not to wear one — her face shone white. Bare of any make-up, just a thin layer of baby lotion to make it gleam, her skin showed all of its creases and contours. She knew the disadvantage of this, how it made her appear uglier than she was, perhaps even a little ill, but she also knew that a clear visage was necessary to make the expressions she wanted to make, the countenances that were disappearing from the West and in search of which they had gone all the way to China: the knitted face of sadness, the lifted mouth of happiness, the tightened eyelids of anger, the wide-open mouth of surprise, the downward lips of disgust, the frozen stare of rebellion.
She came downstage, stopping close to the edge. In the haze of the stalls, she picked out the little red point of Paul’s cine-camera, and orientated herself towards this, her hips facing the wings, her torso twisted so that her chest and shoulders looked out, with the result that everyone was lured into her song.
Behold THE JUDGE. The god-figure, the all-knowing narrator, the representative of authority and tradition, the spokesman for capitalism and empire; ever-present on stage, plunging in and out of scenes, sometimes interacting directly with the other characters, other times passing judgement on them from the periphery; endowed with the finest soliloquies and the most elegant poetry; blessed with a few good gags besides: unquestionably the most important role in the play. And, lest there be any doubt about it, she was playing him.
She brought the chant to a close by pulling it down into her diaphragm until it wheezed away. A pause. A long intake of breath. Then, thrown into the deep silence:
—Be upstanding!
The audience stayed pinned to their seats, the revolution postponed for another night.
—Court rise. All persons having any business with the court, draw near and give your attendance.
So began THE JUDGE’s monologue. The lengthiest and most involved speech in the play. Without any breaks of voice, she started her ascent to the upper platform. As she went up the ladder, the lights of the Shanghai streetscape turned on, and the signs and advertisements began to flash. From the wings there was an explosion of drums: the heavenly court was in session, and the gods were angry. Reaching the top — she did not pause her speech even to catch her breath — she crossed the boards and went behind THE JUDGE’s bench. She did not sit in the throne, but stayed on her feet, her arms at forty-five degrees to her torso, her fingertips leaning on the bench surface. This stance gave her robes volume. The tresses of her full-bottom wig hung down over her breasts, concealing them. In her bearing, the dignity that came from being part of something remote and grand.
Auditorium: one.
St
age: two.
Platform: three.
This was the third phase of her entrance. Yet she felt like she was just now emerging from a sealed room and rubbing the dark from her eyes. Looking out, looking around, looking down, a boundless view, the auditorium seemed her estate. From here, she had an unobstructed panorama of all she had accomplished. Like a man she could survey, with one inclusive glance, the house she had built using the planned designs of a woman’s mind. The emotion of this made her voice crack, giving her a terrible fright. Frantically, she sought to untie the muscles in her throat. A second later, her speech returned, high-struck and powerful, bringing with it a feeling of great relief.
The audience were in the palm of her hands.
—A civilised society, she said, is one that punishes, not to harm a person, but to prevent further harm.
This was Eva’s cue to enter.
But Eva was not entering.
Until this moment, Alissa’s awareness had had no focus, but was dispersed around the house; now it zoomed in on the spot where Eva was supposed to emerge from the wings. Alissa recited a couple more lines, in case that might goad her daughter out, but, no, she was not coming. In the opposite wing, William was waiting, Eva’s entrance being his own cue to go on. He glanced up at Alissa and gave a little shake of his head, and Alissa understood then — this was the foreboding she had — that the problem was not that Eva was late; the problem was she would not be appearing at all.
And there was more. Prior to this foresight, in an even obscurer part of her mind, she foresaw that Iris was going to appear in Eva’s place. So when Iris did in fact appear — of course, here she is now, wearing Eva’s mask, of course, of course — Alissa experienced it as a déjà vu. She had seen this scene before. She had always known it was going to happen this way.