The train will arrive from around a curve where the forest begins its dark expanse behind a meadow dotted with fresh haystacks on the left, and everyone stands swiveled in that direction, waiting for a whiff of smoke to appear above the trees.
Sasha throws her arms around Grandma’s neck. She smells of kitchen and soft cotton, and Sasha presses against her warmth. She knows that Grandma doesn’t believe Sasha will return in two weeks, and this knowledge fortifies her resolve and brings back her strength, at least for the last few minutes. She tells herself that she can’t fall apart in front of everyone on the platform. She can’t allow tears to overwhelm her; she can’t let her mother think that she has been right all along. She looks away, at what she is leaving: everything.
With a whistle, in a cloud of smoke, the train appears from around the curve, and her mother now hugs her as Sasha snuggles into her wet cheek. “Vsyo budet khorosho,” her mother whispers. “All will be well.” This is her usual refrain—although Sasha knows that her well is very different from Sasha’s—which drowns in the hot steam of the train sighing its way to a stop.
They have two minutes until it whistles again, until the platform begins to sail away, until Sasha gets, with every moment, farther from life in Ivanovo and closer to Moscow. As she looks over her mother’s shoulder, she sees Andrei standing at the end of the platform. He appears and then vanishes in the clouds of steam rolling from the engine, almost a vision, if she believed in visions. She blinks to see if he is real, but from the stern look on her mother’s face, from the way she resolutely swipes a finger under her eyes and frowns, she knows that he is.
ACT 2
MOSCOW
18
Sasha does not see her name on the admitted list at the Vakhtangov Drama School, and everything inside her begins to loosen and dissolve, her legs refusing to support her weight. She leans against the wall and breathes in and out, as her drama club leader has taught them, to keep upright, to keep thinking, to keep going on, but tears are already rising in her throat, choking her and drowning any protest to this hideous injustice. What does she do now? The question, like a hammer, strikes against her skull, reverberating with all the shameful and appalling answers. Will she now have to trudge back to Ivanovo, humiliated and defeated, just as her mother and grandfather hoped, the word talentless tattooed onto her forehead?
Sasha takes a deep breath and turns back to the two pages with twenty-five typed names clipped to the board. Her vision is blurry, but she stiffens her back and focuses on the middle part of the list, between the Ls and the Ns, where her name should be, willing with every fiber inside her to coax it out of nothingness and force it onto the page of the admitted. Then she closes her eyes and exhales. When she looks again, her name is on the list, between the Ls and the Ns. She screws her eyes shut again and presses her palms over her face in an effort to test the reality she seems to have warped, but every time she looks back, her name is still there, among the twenty-four others. Why didn’t she see it right away? A temporary blindness, most likely, the product of anxiety, a few nauseating minutes of stomach-churning dread.
She runs to the post office and sends a telegram to Ivanovo. At ten kopecks a word, she must be brief: “Accepted,” she writes. “Kisses. Sasha.” She imagines her mother’s face when she receives it. At first, her mother may feel angry to read the judgment that instantly shatters her plans for Sasha and legitimizes such an unworthy profession as acting. But at the same time, Sasha knows, her mother won’t be able to deny feeling something that resembles pride. For a minute, as her mother stares at the words of the telegram, Sasha imagines the anger and the pride bumping against each other, with pride, at least in her mind, unexpectedly taking the upper hand.
She knows that Grandma will smile and Grandpa will glare. She knows that Grandma will busy herself in the kitchen, smiling furtively as she rolls the dough for pirozhki, while Grandpa will storm out into the yard and furiously start pulling dandelions out of a bed full of blooming strawberries. Sasha sees her telegram spreading the word to their street, to their neighbors in the other half of the house, as they munch on the news that the girl who used to run barefoot around the yard chasing chickens is now in the country’s capital, just steps from Red Square, learning to become an actress.
She sees Andrei, or maybe she doesn’t see Andrei. He is elusive: what he says does not always match what is reflected in his eyes or what may be brewing in his heart. She knows how badly she has hurt him, but instead of brooding, she also knows she must focus on the enormity of the task before her. It is only by an act of sheer will that she can push aside, albeit temporarily, the guilt that presses on her heart.