by Daria Wilke
“It’s the money. There is none, my dear man. You’re expensive, my dear Sam! Where am I supposed to get money for two wages?” Kolokolchikov’s voice becomes affectionate, as if he’s talking to a wayward child.
“He’s lying,” Sashok whispers to me. “He’s definitely lying. Lying eyes!”
“Isn’t it time for you to get changed and made up, my friends?” Kolokolchikov glances at the clock. “Time waits for no man.”
And he comes out from behind his desk to close the door after his visitors.
“Well, at least we tried,” Papa says, sighing, when they find themselves in the lobby.
One-two-three, one-two-three: The lights are being switched on onstage and in the theater, the lights are being switched on on the Christmas tree, and snow is starting to fall. Snow to the rhythm of the “Waltz of the Snowflakes.” It’s tossed up and seems to sweep across the stage; it falls and falls on the heads of the quiet audience; and somewhere an invisible chorus is singing delicately. And even if it is just light, even if it is Maika somewhere in the balcony doing her magic to make it look like real snow onstage and in the audience, still this snowstorm is just like real life. Even if the person in the black cape and top hat on the proscenium is Papa, even if somewhere back there Sam is getting ready for his entrance. Still, this snow is the real thing — and the fairy tale is the real thing too. Even if there, outside, it’s still fall and we still have to wait for snow.
In the theater, nothing’s like real life. If you want something badly enough, it has to happen.
While the show is going on, I help Lyolik pack his suitcases. I asked to help; after all, when you’re doing something, it’s not as sad.
For the time being you don’t have to think about what it’ll be like to come to the workshops and find only Filipp and Mama Carlo, and no Lyolik. About whether the Candy Puppet Show will open again if Lyolik doesn’t come to the theater anymore. Will Lyolik make his own puppets at home? What is he going to do there?
When you think about how people get decommissioned — because it really is being decommissioned — it’s like a puppet getting decommissioned from an old show. They decommission you if you’re old, like Lyolik, or if you’re not like everyone else, if you’re someone like Sam.
We pack the last drawings and old notebooks, which look like they’re a hundred years old, into the suitcase. We pack old photographs of bearded marionettes with strange, enormous eyes and seams on their jaws.
“Puppets from Brno,” Lyolik says. “Made from nineteenth-century drawings. At one time they put on shows in the terrible dungeons where emperors once held criminals. The audience sat right on the floor, and the lighting was like in olden times — just candles.”
Lyolik isn’t saying good-bye to anyone. “I can’t stand good-byes,” he says. “It’s all such foolishness.” We leave by the actors’ entrance. Sam carries Lyolik’s frayed suitcases, and Sashok lugs a small box with pieces of wood. Lyolik puts on a good face and pretends all this is nothing — leaving the theater he only wanted to leave carried out feet first.
“Good luck, Leonid Arkadievich,” Albert Ilich, the janitor, says, tearing himself away from the television for a second. “Good luck” — Lyolik nods, as if he were just going out for half an hour, to the store.
We go out, and it feels as if we’ve landed in another world and another time.
In the light of the streetlamp, the sky and the black street flash, spin, and waltz to invisible music.
The Elokhovskaya Church is a somber painting with a ripple running across it, a snow ripple.
And an invisible chorus seems to be singing somewhere, like in the show.
“It’s a little early.” Sam sighs.
“Not at all,” Lyolik says.
It’s just the first snow falling. Without a sound, and thick.
It’s snowing.
It covers the grass, which isn’t completely dried out yet or really frozen, and the roofs of cars, and Sashok’s nose — where it melts because Sashok is so hot. The black paths turn white, as if someone has decided to paint them in one fell swoop, and the fine sleet turns to fluffy flakes and falls and falls, covering everything with a thick milky fog, crunching like lemon wafers, and smelling of ice.
The first snow.
It’s come early — on purpose, to see Lyolik off.
I’m the king’s favorite jester,
Though I’m often called a fool.
My specialty is laughter,
But I’m smarter than a jewel.
Smarter than the prince I am,
Smarter than the King of Siam!
His cap has no bell to ring in your ear,
Not a single jingle your heart to cheer!
— from The Glass Slipper, by Tamara Gabbe
THE music is playing softly and the Jester is walking across the stage. Sam — you’d never recognize him in his body stocking and pointy-toed shoes and his jester’s cap, and his eyes seem huge in makeup — speaks as if he were singing.
Scraps of cloth flash by — cornflower blue, gooseberry purple, apple red.
Sam hasn’t been Sam for a long time; his face has melded into the Jester’s — and there are two jesters onstage and not a single Sam. His face isn’t still for a minute, and his nose and eyebrows have a life of their own as they form a moving mask — and the way Sam raises his eyebrows, everyone in the very last row can see every movement of his face, the Jester’s face.
First he walks across the stage, practically dancing, then he flies lightly up, as if he weighs less than a gram, and he points his toe as if this were the most natural thing in life — to fly over the earth and point your toe. He lands on one knee, playfully, and you believe it really is that easy, then he flies across the stage like a pinwheel, and then gives a hop and does handsprings backward, weightless and flexible.
When he picks up a puppet, you forget right away that there was just a person there.
Sam’s hands become one with the crossbar; they grow into it; they extend the marionette’s string-sinews; they turn into a pendulum as the Jester comes to life. As if Sam has lent him his whole self for the performance.
The Jester winks and looks around with clever eyes, is amazed and laughs and becomes so grand, you’d think there were no other roles or puppets in the show.
The light cannons fire incredible colors, and the spotlights are aimed at the stage. The light symphony is insane: Light splashes as if the stage itself has turned into a colorful jester’s costume.
I’m sitting in the balcony near Maika’s light booth and holding my breath as I watch the stage — trying not to miss a single one of Sam’s movements.
I don’t think Sam has ever acted this well.
I think, The Glass Slipper is going away and taking everyone with it: the Jester puppet; Sam, who plays him best of all; and Lyolik, who made all the puppets for the show.
I’ve already found an old gym bag in the closet and brought it to the theater. When they give me the Jester, I’ll hide him there, so Sashok won’t notice. And then I’ll give him to her for her birthday.
If you could put people in a bag, I’d have hidden Sam there, to keep him from leaving. To keep him close always.
Before the show, I hung around his dressing room like a homeless mutt.
I used to hang around him all the time when he was getting ready for a show. I just couldn’t leave for a minute. But then he started sending me out when he was changing.
After I suddenly froze, looking at him once.
It seems like only yesterday that Sam would stay with me when my parents did a show out of town, instead of the grandmother I didn’t have. Dear Sam, who patiently taught me spelling tricks at the makeup table.
Suddenly I saw him in a completely different light.
Sam caught my look — as if we were fencing in a show and he’d nimbly deflected my sword upward.
He caught my look and his eyes turned dark; his eyes looked at me with surprise and suspicion. As if som
e stranger had suddenly caught him undressed.
“On your way, Grisha. Go play,” he said, and he lightly turned me toward the door and gave me a little push, as if he were afraid I wouldn’t go.
“Why? You always let me be here when you’re changing!”
“And now I’m not. No reason. Go on, then, go on. Step lively!”
Since then, I’ve always waited for him by his dressing room.
I’ve been lonely. Sashok is never here, after all. She’s made herself scarce.
Sashok declared war on Filipp. Right after Lyolik left.
“No mercy,” is how she puts it.
“Filka,” she taunts whenever she sees him, and turning away, she twists her bluish lips.
She drips paint on his chair, sprinkles nails in his glue, and hides the artists’ drawings and sketches where Filipp won’t find them. But the worst thing — cutting the puppets’ straps somewhere on top, at the crossbar — that, she would not do.
Sometimes Filipp finds her in the workshop, and then she bolts.
“Stupid kid!” he hollers after her, and runs out of the workshop.
“Pimple! Butthead! Master-who’s-not!” Sashok’s voice breaks as she runs out of his reach.
“Stop it!” Olezhek gets mad from time to time. “I’m sick of it. If you keep this up, kid” — he’s talking to Sashok — “I’ll ban you from the theater. Understand, kid?”
Sashok stubbornly purses her lips, and her eyes become just like a wolf’s, and she glowers at Olezhek.
The next evening it happens all over again. Because everyone knows Olezhek can’t ban Sashok or fire the shouting Filipp.
“I’m going to make his life a misery,” Sashok says vengefully. “He’ll be the one wanting to leave. You’ll see — and soon!
“Filka’s a jerk!” she shouts at him from the doorway. Provided Mama Carlo isn’t in the workshop — because once she heard Sashok say, “Filka’s a jerk,” and she chewed her out: “Now, you may be able to take that tone at home. But not around me!”
Sashok wages her war, but Filka still isn’t quitting. She sits down on the black painted stairs leading from the workshops to the stage and the dressing rooms and stubbornly bows her head, as if she wants to butt through all the walls on earth.
“Are you going to help me, or what?” she asks, and she seems close to tears. But she only seems like that — Sashok isn’t likely to cry.
“Fool.” She gets mad when I bring her glue instead of paint. “I can’t trust you to do anything.”
I understand that all this is wrong somehow, but I can’t explain why even to myself. Sometimes I feel sorry for Filipp, but then I remember that it’s his fault they made Lyolik retire, and anger wells up inside me.
I also think I’m a coward and a wimp and can’t make up my mind to do anything.
It’s Sashok who just knows that she has to get back at Filipp, and she’ll stop at nothing, like a small bulldozer.
The theater isn’t the old theater anymore.
It’s like a tour bus for out-of-town shows.
I stop by the workshops, see Filipp, and realize I stopped by to see Lyolik, who isn’t sitting in his usual spot anymore — the high chair where he could see the people out the window and the actors in the hallway.
Only Filipp is sitting at the master’s table and chiseling something out of wood — his skinny shoulder blades bobbing up and down under his T-shirt, and the colorful dragon tattoo on his chicken wing wiggling its mustache. Filipp glances briefly at me, lifts a corner of his mouth as if uncertain, and tugs his goatee. His earring sparkles in the lamplight.
It feels colder than usual in the workshops.
It’s as if some strange intermission has started and just can’t end.
And it’s dragging on and on — indefinitely.
It should be over already — so that Lyolik will return, and Sam will rehearse a new part, and the awful feeling that everything is changing will go away.
Sam and I have gone to see Lyolik at home a few times. He opens the door for us, nods briefly, as if he isn’t happy to see us, and wanders deep inside the inexplicably dark apartment where he lives with Mama Carlo.
“When she comes home from work, she’ll wash them” — he gestures in the direction of the dirty cups and saucers on the table and turns toward the window, where you can see the river, the streams of cars, and the illuminated sharp-winged eagles on the tower of the Kiev Train Station.
They’re giving him a place at the Home for Veterans of the Stage soon, Lyolik says. “Very, very soon. I’ll be hearing soon.”
“Why the Home? Why the Home?” I feel like shouting. But instead I watch how Sam talks with Lyolik, as if he’s a wayward child.
Unembarrassed, he takes Lyolik’s wrinkled hand and strokes it. He nearly gets down on his knees, pleading.
“Listen, why do you need that? Your sister’s here. Your home’s here.”
“I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. If I’m not needed in the theater, it’s better that I be in the Home. My sister is at work day in and day out — at least there are people there.”
I feel like shouting to Lyolik, “Think about what your Efimovich said! You’re decommissioning yourself!” But I hold my tongue.
Once, I asked him to help me to make a puppet. I thought that would cheer him up. But he just shook his head. “No. I won’t. I’ve already made all my puppets. That’s enough.”
Today we are accompanying Lyolik to the Home for Veterans of the Stage.
On our way to his house, I sit in the front seat next to Sam and am selfishly happy that there is a lot of traffic and I can be with Sam like this for a long time.
“Don’t you mind that you’re leaving and your parents are staying here?” I’ve wanted to ask Sam about that for a long time. I know they barely see one another.
Once I happened to hear Sam talking to Lyolik: “When my father found out, he shouted at first. I remember his face to this day. Then he said, ‘Don’t sit at the same table with us.’ Then he told me to take my plate, cup, fork, and knife and wash them myself, ‘so I wouldn’t infect everyone.’ Then he completely pretended I didn’t exist. And then I left home.
“My mama? She doesn’t want to upset my father. She probably has no use for me. The way I am.”
At the time I thought I’d overheard — not that I’d been trying to — something completely forbidden, something I shouldn’t know. I’ve never brought it up, and Sam’s never told me anything about his parents.
Sam is silent for a long, long time. He looks straight ahead, tensely, though we’re stopped at a light and not moving. His olive-skinned hands are perfectly still, resting on the steering wheel as if they’re made of stone, and only his pointer finger taps a rhythm, audible to Sam alone, very, very lightly on the dark blue matte cover.
“They don’t have a son. That’s how they talk,” he says suddenly. “But Lyolik, he’s different. I don’t know how I can leave him here now.”
In the early November twilight, Lyolik’s building looks like a big shark’s tooth, but in fact it’s shaped like a horseshoe. Cars rush by, purple-tinged windows are reflected in the Moscow River, and the snow in Lyolik’s courtyard is dark and boring. We wait in the car by the front door, and I don’t recognize Lyolik right away. He seems very small now, dried out, sort of. “Well, shall we go?” he asks in a lackluster voice. He isn’t joking the way he used to or smiling at Sam.
Going to the Home is completely different this time.
The streets seem darker, except that in the lot near the Home where Sam parks his car, the newly fallen snow makes it lighter. The snow crunches and creaks underfoot, as if we are stepping over candy wrappers, and like the last time, the twilight smells sweet and sharp from wood smoke, and the violet paths run off into the woods.
The Home looks dark and empty. Efimovich isn’t even there. “He’s in the hospital,” Lyolik says drily, and he disappears behind the door marked ADMINISTRATION.
“I
’ve got another month to wait,” he says with a sigh later, as he gets into the car.
“Listen, Lyolik,” Sam says.
“Don’t start,” Lyolik says sullenly, so that Sam can only be quiet.
We walk Lyolik to his apartment, and as we’re going back downstairs to the courtyard, I suddenly see Sam’s eyes flashing.
“What’s wrong, Sam?”
Onstage, Sam can cry at will. With a wave of a magic wand. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve watched his eyes suddenly fill with tears, his face instantly turn to stone, and a tear trace a line through his makeup. And it’s always a miracle, inexplicable and a little frightening.
“How do you do that, Sam?” I used to ask.
“I don’t.” He shrugged. “It just seems to happen.”
But only once have I ever seen Sam cry offstage.
That was a long time ago. He and a friend were attacked on the street, not far from the theater.
“He was just holding my hand.”
Covered in bruises and scratches, Sam went to the workshop to see Mama Carlo and Lyolik.
I was proud of him, because there were three of them and he was alone. And they ran away first. Someone with muscles like Sam’s — of course he’d win, I believed. Sashok clicked her tongue in admiration.
But Sam suddenly dropped his head in his hands — so no one would see his eyes — and started weeping. I only guessed he was weeping because his shoulders were quaking.
Mama Carlo calmly dipped a cotton swab in a vial of iodine and drew a comic book strongman on Sam’s shoulders.
Sashok ran around him and could only ask, “So what happened, Sam? What’s the matter? You beat them — you beat them, didn’t you? What’s the matter, Sam?”
“I’m a pig and a coward,” he suddenly said angrily. “Just a pig.”
But now he looks at me as if I am his age, as if I can understand absolutely everything.
“I decommissioned myself when I decided to leave. Understand? They see you off way before you actually leave. Everyone gets used to the idea of you not being there, and they act as if you’re not you anymore. You can’t keep pretending — it doesn’t work.