A Train to Moscow(47)
On the night before the exam, Lara and Sasha use their student IDs to see a performance at the Vakhtangov Theatre. Ironically, it is Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Sasha is certain this is another sign that she should stay away from material she is not ready to handle, but she knows it is much too late to change anything. For three hours, they stand in one of the loges (as always, there are no empty seats) and then walk back to the dorm under a cold drizzle without uttering a word. More than ever, she is resigned to never playing Dostoyevsky, or any other classic, on a Moscow stage.
The next morning, she takes Grandma’s ring with the green actor’s stone out of the small box where she keeps her most important things and puts it on her finger, the way she did for the three admission rounds of auditions. What is she hoping for? That a miracle will happen and it will protect her now as it did three years ago? That it will conjure up Grushenka, in all her flesh and blood, and plunge her down into Sasha’s heart?
On the way to the exam, she thinks of the scene, and images begin to roll before her eyes. She sees the dusty streets of Ivanovo where she grew up, bird-cherry and lilac bushes with the white and purple froth of flowers, a window with lace curtains looking out into a small garden, a horse harnessed to a carriage by the gate into a courtyard. She is Grushenka, restless and willful; her movements are tender and her steps are soft; she blooms with the kind of beauty that will lose harmony by the time she is thirty: the beauty of the moment, a flighty beauty. She walks noiselessly, like a cat, and she speaks slowly, stretching the vowels to bring significance to every word. Her right hand is small and plump, the hand that Katerina, with all her nobility and wealth, will hold and kiss three times with strange ecstatic adoration, an act of reverence and revenge Sasha is about to stage for the kindhearted Alyosha, the brother of her beloved Dmitri. The passionate and proud Dmitri, who she knows will choose her over the noble, beautiful, and rich Katerina. The Dmitri she has always loved, her soul mate Dmitri, who now in her mind has Andrei’s face. She loves him maddeningly, madly—him alone and only him, Dmitri-Andrei, engraved on her heart for as long as she lives.
She doesn’t remember the exam itself. She remembers only the silence in the room after the curtain falls. She remembers only the complete emptiness inside her.
There are two scenes left on the schedule, other students’ scenes, but Lara and Sasha are finished, spent. Silently, they creep downstairs and sit on the porch steps at the entrance to their school. Tears roll down Lara’s face as they sit there quietly, with no need to say a word. A trolleybus rolls by, its wires like the antennae of a gigantic insect. A knot of girls in uniforms and red pioneer scarves bustles past on their way from school. Sasha registers it all automatically, as if watching everything from behind glass because nothing matters anymore. A strange calm binds her like a bandage. She fears that she has failed on an unprecedented and profound level, that this school has never seen such a colossal flop, that her entire future has just tumbled into the abyss of professional unfitness.
When they are called, they slink inside to hear and accept the verdict. Sasha knows she is the only one to blame for this abominable journey, from the cursed moment when the name Grushenka floated into her brain warped by egoism and grandeur, to this disgraceful finale open to the eyes and ears of everyone she knows. The curtain is down, the committee is in the first row, and they quietly slide into the two seats next to the door. From here, it will be easier to escape the shame.
“Brothers Karamazov,” Vera announces. The title, with Sasha’s name attached to it, scrapes her ears, emphasizing the incongruity between the two, exposing her impudence to the entire school. Vera pauses and looks up. Sasha’s heart stops.
“The opinion of this committee is that in your scene, you have persuaded the audience by masterfully portraying the atmosphere of Dostoyevsky. Aleksandra Maltseva will receive the highest grade and credit with distinction. The scene is judged outstanding and will serve as proof of high professionalism in her acting diploma.”
This is when Sasha feels that something has cinched her throat, and she knows she is crying. She heaves with sobs as if a dam has broken, releasing all that has been stored inside since she first read the Grushenka scene. A few friends jump up from their seats, but Vera stops them. “Let her cry,” she says, waving her hand. “She needs to let it out.”
Sasha is grateful to Vera for allowing her to cry in public. She sits there rubbing the tears around her face and weeps as spasms keep rising from her chest. The more she cries, the more she needs to, as if these tears are cleansing some grime inside her, as if they could deliver some kind of understanding of what has just happened. Or maybe she simply feels sorry for herself because she has just given away the most valuable part of her, something visceral and deep without which her life will no longer be the same. For six months she has kept it all inside, these fragile, intertwined images of Grushenka’s and her own life, and now they are gone, released into the wings of the theater, into the hearts of the audience. And now she is completely empty. Empty of everything she has learned, everything she has stored inside her, everything she has created. Yet she knows that this emptiness is fertile; it is the blank canvas to draw her future roles, the soil from which her characters will grow. One thing is obvious: something significant has just come to an end, and she is standing at a threshold. From this moment on, she will have to start everything anew.
She cries because her former life is over. She cries because what lies before her is daunting and unknown. Or maybe she cries because her drama school ordeal has ended, and she has prevailed. She, not Grandpa and her mother, who have been waiting for her to crawl back, humiliated by her lack of an acting gift. She cries to sear into memory the moment she heard Three Sisters on the radio, the moment she realized that Theater would be her destiny. She now knows she was right. She and Grandma, and no one else.