But there is no time to ponder such nonacting questions. Sasha can’t believe she is going to work with the actress who played Dostoyevsky’s Grushenka for Russian and European audiences, to critical acclaim. She can’t believe her own impudence and gall, her foolish insistence on a role that the renowned actress will immediately know isn’t Sasha’s. “You’re chopping off the branch you’re sitting on,” said Vera coldly after she informed her of the rehearsal arrangements, a phrase Sasha pretended not to hear so she didn’t have to fumble for a response.
Her partners are her classmates. She casts reedy Slava, whose name means fame and who was born in a small town on the Caspian Sea, to play Alyosha, her beloved Dmitri’s younger brother; she casts Lara, her closest friend and roommate at the dorm, to be the noble Katerina, her rival in the fight for Dmitri’s heart. Their mentor is in her eighties, so the rehearsals, Vera says, will take place in her apartment. When the door to Polevitskaya’s apartment opens, they see a fragile woman with the depthless blue eyes of a silent-film star, her silvery hair pulled back in a bun, her skin like crumpled silk. She bows her head slightly and invites them in.
They all sit down in a tiny living room, mortified yet ready to start reading, notebooks with their lines on their laps. But Elena Aleksandrovna is in no hurry.
“Sasha,” she says, “tell me about yourself.”
The words baffle her. “What do you want me to tell you?” Sasha asks, wondering what her story has to do with Dostoyevsky and how this storytelling detour will prevent the looming disaster of her failure.
“Everything. From the very beginning.”
She talks about growing up in Ivanovo, about leaving, about her years in Moscow. About Grandpa and her mother. She even tells her about Andrei, just a couple of things. For a moment, she considers mentioning Kolya’s journal, but she doesn’t. With her story ends the first rehearsal. Their notebooks never get opened.
The next rehearsal is for Lara’s story. The following is for Slava’s. At the fourth rehearsal, Elena Aleksandrovna talks about herself and her sixty years in the Theater. It is, surprisingly, a story of doubt, pain, and anguish rather than the story of success they read in their history book. Speaking about her constant struggle and a litany of losses, their mentor no longer seems an icon or a star. She sounds more like them, beginners, with her insecurity and apprehension and jokes betraying an ironic view of their craft.
“Do you want to know what acting really is?” she says as she describes her work in prerevolutionary Moscow. “Imagine you are bathing in a tub, with all your favorite oils and scrubs, and suddenly a tour group walks in.”
They giggle at the image of a tour group barging into a bathing ritual, and Sasha notes to herself that she would like to learn, although she’d never dare ask, about the un-Soviet oils and scrubs.
By the time their mentor is finished, her face darkens. She pauses and looks around, stopping her gaze at each one of them.
“Do you understand, children, where you are heading?” she asks in a grave voice. They don’t know if this is a rhetorical question, so the three of them remain silent. “Well, do you?”
Sasha thought she knew where she was heading—although lately she hasn’t been sure if she would end up on a stage in Moscow or an auditorium in Pinsk—but she senses that what Polevitskaya is about to utter is not what she wants to hear.
“Theater will rob you of everything,” she says. “Everything.” She looks at Lara and Sasha as if their faces were open books with their life stories, where she could already read the future. “You, girls, will never have a family. It will be replaced by Theater, which will always control you, like a jealous husband. Nothing else will ever matter to you but Theater. And then, in the end, when you’re old and sick, it will chew you up and spit you out. You will end up all alone, and there will be no one to so much as bring you a glass of water on your deathbed.” She gets up and walks toward the window, where her small figure is outlined by the last streaks of pale spring light. What she has just said, despite her conviction, sounds so melodramatic that Sasha has a suspicion she has just recited lines from one of her many roles.
For a few minutes, they sit in silence, and then they know their fourth rehearsal is over. The three of them get up and leave, quietly closing the door behind them because any sound would seem to devalue this bleak pronouncement of their future.
Did Polevitskaya say this about Theater to test their dedication? Or did she want to warn them, before it was too late? Was this a probe of their resilience or a desperate call for a last chance at a normal life?