Karen leaned into him. “Can you hear okay? Is this okay? I know it’s a surprise.”
Vinod sighed into her ear and Karen shouted, “We’re good!”
“I have lived with Vinod and his memorable friends for most of the quarantine period,” the Actor said. “As some of you on social media may know, I’ve even fallen in love with one of them.” There was laughter from the audience. “That…did not work out so great. But I’m okay now. We’re good, as Karen just said. Oh, I should mention that Vinod is one of the finest people I’ve ever met. Decades ago, without asking for the rewards of authorship, he wrote an incredible novel about growing up as an Indian immigrant in America. I’m sure it’ll be appearing soon at an independent bookstore near you.”
“It’s not about an Indian immigrant in America,” Vinod whispered.
“With the exception of myself, tonight’s presentation of Vinod’s favorite play will be performed by amateur actors, my housemates, some local townspeople, and college students. The role of Alexander Serebrakoff, a retired professor, will be played by Ed Kim. The role of Helena, his twenty-seven-year-old wife, will be played by Dee Cameron…”
“This can’t be happening,” Vinod whispered as Karen adjusted the cannula in his nose. “Am I intubated? Am I dead?”
“They’ve been rehearsing for two weeks,” she said. “It was his idea. He’s so sorry he got you sick. If you feel tired, we can go home. They’re making a movie out of it. Sasha says it’ll help with the sale of your novel. You have to sign a release.”
“The role of Ilya ‘Waffles’ Telegin, an impoverished landowner, will be played by Sasha Senderovsky. The role of Marina, an old nurse, will be played by Masha Levin-Senderovsky. Since we don’t have a dedicated set, the stage directions will be read by Natasha Levin-Senderovsky. Finally, the role of Ivan Voitsky, better known as Uncle Vanya, will be played by myself. I have also directed this play. Now before we begin, let me quickly read out the names of the recent victims of police violence.”
After he had read a dozen names separated by dramatic pauses, Nat walked onto the stage in a sack-like kaftan Masha had sewed for her. Like all the actors, she did not face the cameras, but looked directly at Uncle Vinod. He smiled, absentmindedly, but with feeling, at the little child reading from the page the very words he had read in his meadow on his area rug not so long ago: “A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a Samovar…It is three o’clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day.”
The clouds would not cooperate with the stage directions. The sun blasted them with a merciless razgar leta. Despite their professionally applied makeup, the actors would soon sweat through their blowsy Cossack duds.
A stooped Masha walked on the stage in a gray wig. She sat down on a chair and began knitting an imaginary sweater. She began to speak in what sounded to Vinod like a fake Russian accent. Why would she do that if she spoke the actual language with near perfection? Vinod closed his eyes, and by the time they were open the Actor had materialized onstage in the form of Uncle Vanya; he had disheveled his hair and made a frump out of his shirt. This was supposed to be in line with the turmoil in Vanya’s soul, but now Vinod felt bad for the Actor. He would always look too good for the parts he really wanted （no wonder he had played the actual cherry orchard in the Berlin version of the play）， and the reviewers would punish him for his beauty. How desperately he wanted to transform into a huffing, clumsy thing like the car he drove, and how strikingly the visuals of his face played against him.
And now Senderovsky himself appeared in the role of Telegin, or Waffles, the impoverished landowner, his face covered with the pockmarks that gave him his name.
TELEGIN （Senderovsky）
My wife ran away with a love on the day of our wedding, because my exterior was so unprepossessing.
It was the line Senderovsky was born to deliver, and yet it sounded rankly overdone, comedic, incapable of conveying the tragedy of Waffles as interposed through the nontragedy of the modern failed landowner with his devoted wife and curious child and still-lingering reputation. The one thing that gave credence to his character was Senderovsky’s persistent, unsilenced cough, the ill anxious child taking over the adult’s nurtured body.
The play was fine. The Actor had worn the director’s cap with aplomb and had coaxed a decent performance out of everyone. But Vinod grew drowsy and tried to tether his waning attention to the conversations between lovers and those who hoped for love. He was particularly drawn to Ed as the self-absorbed professor Serebrakoff and Dee as Helena, his young wife. Ed spoke with the formality he had bred in himself since birth, and she slipped, without caricature, into her innermost drawl. It was as if they were speaking two differing, warring, tongues.