The Darfsteller

by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  "Thorny—!" A frightened whisper.

  "Mela!" Despite the play, he shouted it, opening his arms to her. "Mela, how wonderful!"

  And then, he noticed she winced away from his sodden coveralls. And she wasn't glad to see him at all.

  "Thorny, how nice," she managed to murmur, extending her hand gingerly. The hand flashed with jewelry.

  He took it for an empty second, stared at her, then walked hurriedly away, knots twisting up inside him. Now he could play it through. Now he could go on with it, and even enjoy executing his plan against all of them.

  Mela had come to watch opening night for her doll in "The Anarch," as if its performance were her own. I'll arrange, he thought, for it not to be a dull show.

  "No, no, fool" came the monotone protest of the dud Andreyev, in the next-to-the-last scene. The bark of Marka's gun, and the Peltier mannequin crumpled to the stage; and except for a brief triumphant denouement, the play was over.

  At the sound of the gunshot, Thornier paused to smile tightly over his shoulder, eyes burning from his hawklike face. Then he vanished into the wings.

  She got away from them as soon as she could, and she wandered around backstage until she found him in the storage room of the costuming section. Alone, he was sorting through the contents of an old locker and muttering nostalgically to himself. She smiled and closed the door with a thud. Startled, he dropped an old collapsible top-hat and a box of blank cartridges back into the trunk. His hand dived into his pocket as he straightened.

  "Jade! I didn't expect—"

  "Me to come?" She flopped on a dusty old chaise lounge with a weary sigh and fanned herself with a program, closing her eyes. She kicked off her shoes and muttered: "Infuriating bunch. I hate 'em!"—made a retching face, and relaxed into little-girlhood. A little girl who had trouped with Thornier and the rest of them—the actress Jade Ferne, who had begged for bit parts and haunted the agencies and won the roles through endless rehearsals and shuddered with fright before opening curtain like the rest of them. Now she was a pert little woman with shrewd eyes, streaks of gray at the temples, and hard lines around her mouth. As she let the executive cloak slip away, the shrewdness and the hard lines melted into weariness.

  "Fifteen minutes to get my sanity back, Thorny," she muttered, glancing at her watch as if to time it.

  He sat on the trunk and tried to relax. She hadn't seemed to notice his uneasiness, or else she was just too tired to attach any significance to it. If she found him out, she'd have him flayed and pitched out of the building on his ear, and maybe call the police. She came in a small package, but so did an incendiary grenade. It won't hurt you, Jade, what I'm doing, he told himself. It'll cause a big splash, and you won't like it, but it won't hurt you, nor even wreck the show.

  He was doing it for show business, the old kind, the kind they'd both known and loved. And in that sense, he told himself further, he was doing it as much for her as he was for himself.

  "How was the run-through, Jade?" he asked casually.

  "Except for Andreyev, I mean."

  "Superb, simply superb," she said mechanically.

  "I mean really."

  She opened her eyes, made a sick mouth. "Like always, Thorny, like always. Nauseating, overplayed, perfectly directed for a gum-chewing bag-rattling crowd. A crowd that wants it overplayed so that it won't have to think about what's going on. A crowd that doesn't want to reach out for a feeling or a meaning. It wants to be clubbed on the head with the meaning, so it doesn't have to reach. I'm sick of it."

  He looked briefly surprised. "That figures," he grunted wryly.

  She hooked her bare heels on the edge of the lounge, hugged her shins, rested her chin on her knees, and blinked at him. "Hate me for producing the stuff, Thorny?"

  He thought about it for a moment, shook his head. "I get sore at the setup sometimes, but I don't blame you for it."

  "That's good. Sometimes I'd trade places with you. Sometimes I'd rather be a charwoman and scrub D'Uccia's floors instead."

  "Not a chance," he said sourly. "The Maestro's relatives are taking that over, too."

  "I know. I heard. You're out of a job, thank God. Now you can get somewhere."

  He shook his head. "I don't know where. I can't do anything but act."

  "Nonsense. I can get you a job tomorrow."

  "Where?"

  "With Smithfield. Sales promotion. They're hiring a number of old actors in the department."

  "No." He said it flat and cold.

  "Not so fast. This is something new. The company's expanding."

  "Ha."

  "Autodrama for the home. A four-foot stage in every living room. Miniature mannequins, six inches high. Centralized Maestro service. Great Plays piped to your home by concentric cable. Just dial Smithfield, make your request. Sound good?"

  He stared at her icily. "Greatest thing in show business since Sarah Bernhardt," he offered tonelessly. "Thorny! Don't get nasty with me!"

  "Sorry. But what's so new about having it in the home? Autodrama took over TV years ago."

  "I know, but this is different. Real miniature theater. Kids go wild for it. But it'll take good promotion to make it catch on."

  "Sorry, but you know me better than that."

  She shrugged, sighed wearily, closed her eyes again. "Yes, I do. You've got portrayer's integrity. You're a darfsteller. A director's ulcer. You can't play a role without living it, and you won't live it unless you believe it. So go ahead and starve." She spoke crossly, but he knew there was grudging admiration behind it.

  "I'll be O.K.," he grunted, adding to himself: after tonight's performance.

  "Nothing I can do for you?"

  "Sure. Cast me. I'll stand in for dud mannequins." She gave him a sharp glance, hesitated. "You know, I believe you would!"

  He shrugged. "Why not?"

  She stared thoughtfully at a row of packing cases, waggled her dark head. "Hmmp! What a spectacle that'd be—a human actor, incognito, playing in an autodrama."

  "It's been done—in the sticks."

  "Yes, but the audience knew it was being done, and that always spoils the show. It creates contrasts that don't exist or wouldn't be noticed otherwise. Makes the dolls seem snaky, birdlike, too rubbery quick. With no humans on stage for contrast, the dolls just seem wistfully graceful, ethereal."

  "But if the audience didn't know—"

  Jade was smiling faintly. "I wonder," she mused. "I wonder if they'd guess. They'd notice a difference, of course—in one mannequin."

  "But they'd think it was just the Maestro's interpretation of the part."

  "Maybe—if the human actor were careful."

  He chuckled sourly. "If it fooled the critics—"

  "Some ass would call it 'an abysmally unrealistic interpretation' or 'too obviously mechanical'." She glanced at her watch, shook herself, stretched wearily, and slipped into her shoes again. "Anyway," she added, "there's no reason to do it, since the Maestro's really capable of rendering a better-than-human performance anyhow."

  The statement brought an agonized gasp from the janitor. She looked at him and giggled. "Don't be shocked, Thorny. I said 'capable of'—not 'in the habit of.' Auto-drama entertains audiences on the level they want to be entertained on."

  "But—"

  "Just," she added firmly, "as show business has always done."

  "But—"

  "Oh, retract your eyeballs, Thorny. I didn't mean to blaspheme." She preened, began slipping back into her producer's mold as she prepared to return to her crowd. "The only thing wrong with autodrama is that it's scaled down to the moron-level—but show business always has been, and probably should be. Even if it gives us kids a pain." She smiled and patted his cheek. "Sorry I shocked you. Au 'voir, Thorny. And luck."

  When she was gone, he sat fingering the cartridges in his pocket and staring at nothing. Didn't any of them have any sensibilities? Jade too, a seller of principle. And he had always thought of her as having merely compromised with ne
cessity, against her real wishes. The idea that she could really believe autodrama capable of rendering a better-than-human performance—

  But she didn't. Of course she needed to rationalize, to excuse what she was doing—

  He sighed and went to lock the door, then to recover the old "March" script from the trunk. His hands were trembling slightly. Had he planted enough of an idea in Jade's mind; would she remember it later? Or perhaps remember it too clearly, and suspect it?

  He shook himself sternly. No apprehensions allowed. When Rick rang the bell for the second run-through, it would be his entrance-cue, and he must be in-character by then. Too bad he was no schauspieler, too bad he couldn't switch himself on-and-off the way Jade could do, but the necessity for much inward preparation was the burden of the darfsteller. He could not change into role without first changing himself, and letting the revision seep surfaceward as it might, reflecting the inner state of the man.

  Strains of Moussorgsky pervaded the walls. He closed his eyes to listen and feel. Music for empire. Music at once brutal and majestic. It was the time of upheaval, of vengeance, of overthrow. Two times, superimposed. It was the time of opening night, with Ryan Thornier—ten years ago—cast in the starring role.

  He fell into a kind of trance as he listened and clocked the pulse of his psyche and remembered. He scarcely noticed when the music stopped, and the first few lines of the play came through the walls.

  "Cut! Cut!" A worried shout. Feria's.

  It had begun.

  Thornier took a deep breath and seemed to come awake. When he opened his eyes and stood up, the janitor was gone. The janitor had been a nightmare role, nothing more.

  And Ryan Thornier, star of "Walkaway," favored of the critics, confident of a bright future, walked out of the storage room with a strange lightness in his step. He carried a broom, he still wore the dirty coveralls, but now as if to a masquerade.

  The Peltier mannequin lay sprawled on the stage in a grotesque heap. Ryan Thornier stared at it calmly from behind the set and listened intently to the babble of stage hands and technicians that milled about him:

  "Don't know. Can't tell yet. It came out staggering and gibbering—like it was drunk. It reached for a table, then it fell on its face—"

  "Acted like the trouble might be a mismatched tape, but Rick rechecked it. Really Peltier's tape—"

  "Can't figure it out. Miss Ferne's having kittens."

  Thornier paused to size up his audience. Jade, Ian, and their staff milled about in the orchestra section. The stage was empty, except for the sprawled mannequin. Too much frantic conversation, all around. His entrance would go unnoticed. He walked slowly onstage and stood over the fallen doll with his hands in his pockets and his face pulled down in a somber expression. After a moment, he nudged the doll with his toe, paused, nudged it again. A faint giggle came from the orchestra. The corner of his eye caught Jade's quick glance toward the stage. She paused in the middle of a sentence.

  Assured that she watched, he played to an imaginary audience-friend standing just off stage. He glanced toward the friend, lifted his brows questioningly. The friend apparently gave him the nod. He looked around warily, then knelt over the fallen doll. He took its pulse, nodded eagerly to the offstage friend. Another giggle came from orchestra. He lifted the doll's head, sniffed its breath, made a face. Then, gingerly, he rolled it.

  He reached deep into the mannequin's pocket, having palmed his own pocket watch beforehand. His hand paused there, and he smiled to his offstage accomplice and nodded eagerly. He withdrew the watch and held it up by its chain for his accomplice's approval.

  A light burst of laughter came from the production personnel. The laughter frightened the thief. He shot an apprehensive glance around the stage, hastily returned the watch to the fallen dummy, felt its pulse again. He traded a swift glance with his confederate, whispered "Aha!" and smiled mysteriously. Then he helped the doll to its feet and staggered away with it—a friend leading a drunk home to its family. In the doorway, he paused to frame his exit with a wary backward glance that said he was taking it to a dark alley where he could rob it in safety.

  Jade was gaping at him.

  Three technicians had been watching from just off the set, and they laughed heartily and clapped his shoulder as he passed, providing the offstage audience to which he had seemed to be playing.

  Good-natured applause came from Jade's people out front, and as Thorny carried the doll away to storage, he was humming softly to himself.

  At five minutes till six, Rick Thomas and a man from the Smithfield depot climbed down out of the booth, and Jade pressed forward through the crowd to question him with her eyes.

  "The tape," he said. "Defective"

  "But it's too late to get another!" she squawked.

  "Well, it's the tape, anyway."

  "How do you know?"

  "Well—trouble's bound to be in one of three places. The doll, the tape, or the analogue tank where the tape-data gets stored. We cleared the tank and tried it with another actor. Worked O.K. And the doll works O.K. on an uninterpreted run. So, by elimination, the tape."

  She groaned and slumped into a seat, covering her face with her hands.

  "No way at all to locate another tape?" Rick asked.

  "We called every depot within five hundred miles. They'd have to cut one from a master. Take too long."

  "So we call off the show!" Ian Feria called out resignedly, throwing up his hands in disgust. "Refund on tickets, open tomorrow."

  "Wait!" snapped the producer, looking up suddenly. "Dooch—the house is sold out, isn't it?"

  "Yah," D'Uccia grunted irritably. "She'sa filled op. Wassa matter with you pipple, you don' getsa Maestro fix? Wassa matter? We lose the money, hah?"

  "Oh, shut up. Change curtain time to nine, offer refunds if they won't wait. Ian, keep at it. Get things set up for tonight." She spoke with weary determination, glancing around at them. "There may be a slim chance. Keep at it. I'm going to try something." She turned and started away.

  "Hey!" Feria called.

  "Explain later," she muttered over her shoulder.

  She found Thornier replacing burned-out bulbs in the wall fixtures. He smiled down at her while he reset the clamps of an amber glass panel. "Need me for something, Miss Ferne?" he called pleasantly from the stepladder.

  "I might," she said tersely. "Did you mean that offer about standing in for dud mannequins?"

  A bulb exploded at her feet after it slipped from his hand. He came down slowly, gaping at her.

  "You're not serious!"

  "Think you could try a run-through as Andreyev?" He shot a quick glance toward the stage, wet his lips, stared at her dumbly.

  "Well—can you?"

  "It's been ten years, Jade… I—"

  "You can read over the script, and you can wear an earplug radio—so Rick can prompt you from the booth."

  She made the offer crisply and matter-of-factly, and it made Thorny smile inwardly. It was theater—calmly asking the outrageously impossible, gambling on it, and getting it.

  "The customers—they're expecting Peltier."

  "Right now I'm only asking you to try a runthrough, Thorny. After that, we'll see. But remember it's our only chance of going on tonight."

  "Andreyev," he breathed. "The lead."

  "Please, Thorny, will you try?"

  He looked around the theater, nodded slowly. "I'll go study my lines," he said quietly, inclining his head with what he hoped was just the proper expression of humble bravery.

  I've got to make it good, I've got to make it great. The last chance, the last great role—

  Glaring footlights, a faint whisper in his ear, and the cold panic of the first entrance. It came and passed quickly. Then the stage was a closed room, and the audience—of technicians and production personnel—was only the fourth wall, somewhere beyond the lights. He was Andreyev, commissioner of police, party whip, loyal servant of the regime, now tottering in the revolutionary
storm of the Eighties. The last Bolshevik, no longer a rebel, no longer a radical, but now the loyalist, the conservatist, the defender of the status quo, champion of the Marxist ruling classes. No longer conscious of a self apart from that of the role, he lived the role. And the others, the people he lived it with, the people whose feet crackled faintly as they stepped across the floor, he acted and reacted with them and against them as if they, too, shared life, and while the play progressed he forgot their lifelessness for a little time.

  Caught up by the magic, enfolded in scheme of the inevitable, borne along by the tide of the drama, he felt once again the sense of belonging as a part in a whole, a known and predictable whole that moved as surely from scene i to the final curtain as man from womb to tomb, and there were no lost years, no lapse or sense of defeated purpose between the rehearsals of those many years ago and this the fulfillment of opening night. Only when at last he muffed a line, and Rick’s correction whispered in his ear did the spell that was gathered about him briefly break—and he found himself unaccountably frightened, frightened by the sudden return of realization that all about him was Machine, and frightened, too, that he had forgotten. He had been conforming to the flighty mechanical grace of the others, reflexively imitating the characteristic lightness of the mannequins' movements, the dancelike qualities of their playing. To know suddenly, having forgotten it, that the mouth he had just kissed was not a woman's, but the rubber mouth of a doll, and that dancing patterns of high frequency waves from the Maestro had controlled the solenoid currents that turned her face lovingly up toward his, had lifted the cold soft hands to touch his face. The faint rubbery smell-taste hung about his mouth.

  When his first exit came, he went off trembling. He saw Jade coming toward him, and for an instant, he felt a horrifying certainty that she would say, "Thorny, you were almost as good as a mannequin!" Instead, she said nothing, but only held out her hand to him.

  "Was it too bad, Jade?"

  "Thorny, you're in! Keep it up, and you might have more than a one-night stand. Even Ian's convinced. He squealed at the idea, but now he's sold."