In America (31 page)

Each word was like a small, oddly shaped parcel in her mouth. Theatre, thespian, therefore, throughout, thorough, Thursday, think, thought, thorny, threadbare, thicket, throb, throng, throw, thrash, thrive … That, that, that. This, this, this. There, there, there.

Besides Miss Collingridge the only person Maryna had seen gladly in the first weeks in San Francisco was Ryszard. But in the end she had to send him away.

Ryszard had left Anaheim before she went north. He had been waiting for her when she arrived. On the Fourth of July, they listened to vehement oratory and music and watched the parading and the fireworks and the firemen rushing by in their red wagons to put out the many fires. Another day they hired a four-wheeled stanhope for an afternoon's drive along the ocean shore. She felt drawn to him. They held hands. Their hands were damp. She felt happy, and surely that was part of being in love. She was no longer the head of a clan, temporarily neither a wife nor even a mother—not responsible for others; free to act solely for herself. (Had she ever done that?) But having for a time forgone both husband and child, did she want to assume the obligations of a lover?

All she wanted was to think about the roles she was preparing.

Ryszard suggested they go to the theatre. “Not yet,” she said. “I don't want to be influenced by anything I see here and think, Oh, this is what an American actor does, or what an American audience applauds. To find what is deepest in my own talent I have to look for everything within myself.”

Ryszard was enchanted to see her molting back into the imperious artist. “It has never occurred to me,” he said humbly, admiringly, “to suppose I should do without the inspiration to be found in the books of other writers.”

“Oh, dear Ryszard, don't apply what I say to yourself,” she said grandly, tenderly. “I must be concentrated. It's the only way I know how to be.”

“It is your genius,” he said.

“Or my handicap.” She smiled. “I'll admit that I miss going to the theatre.”

The next evening Ryszard took a box at the China Theatre, on Jackson Street, a bluntly colored two-story building with a tiled roof upturned at the corners. After the first clang of gongs and cymbals from the shirtsleeved orchestra at the rear of the stage, as one, two, three, eventually some twenty brightly encumbered actors surged into view through a flap of cloth on the left and began shouting in falsetto voices at one another, Maryna tugged at Ryszard's jacket like a child. Then something transpired, some lurch of story, for suddenly six of the actors dashed away through the opening, similarly draped, on the right.

“Brilliant, isn't it?” said Ryszard. “No entrances and exits to decide—actors always come on at a trot from the left and go off at the same velocity on the right. No character to construct out of one's inner resources—
that
one is a man of valor because he has painted a white mask on his face and
that
one a cruel man because he has painted his face red. No concealment of the mechanics of spectacle—when a property is needed, someone brings it on the stage and hands it to the actor; when a costume needs adjusting, the actor stands a little apart from the others and the dresser arrives to fix the costume. No—” Why am I chattering like this, Ryszard admonished himself, when she can see everything I'm seeing, and more?

At the tumblers and the pasteboard lions and dragons Maryna clapped her hands gleefully. “I could sit here all night!” she exclaimed, she exaggerated. “I want it to go on forever.” Ah, said Ryszard to himself, it's still all right.

The next morning Miss Collingridge was taking her pig, stricken with a stomach ailment, to a veterinarian; she'd told Maryna she might not arrive for their work together until the late afternoon. Seizing on the time freed by this happy misfortune to propose, exceptionally, a daytime excursion, Ryszard came to fetch Maryna for a ferry ride around the Bay with a stop in Golden Gate Park. She was still thinking, she told him, about the glorious artifice of last night's entertainment.

“There is another Chinese theatre here I wish I could show you,” said Ryszard. “But it has only a pit with benches and standing places, there are no boxes for ladies, and the night I went it was packed and the stuffiness and heat were unbearable, the audience numbering, besides Chinese men, quite a few louts and, as I can testify, pickpockets. The interest of the experience (no, I lost only two dollars and my handkerchief) is that they do neither opera nor circus. The stage is much smaller than where we were last night, so I was prepared to see a simpler pageant. You know, one of those plays in which the sun emerges, followed by a dragon, the dragon tries to swallow the sun, the sun resists, the dragon flees, and then the sun performs a dance of victory, which is rapturously acclaimed by the audience. Not at all!
Loin de cela!
To my surprise, everything was quite compatible with reality.”

“I should like to know what you mean, dear Ryszard, by reality.”

“First of all,” said Ryszard, “the plot of the drama I saw. Of course I didn't understand a word of what was said, but the story seemed clear. It concerned a writer who was hopelessly in love, well perhaps not altogether hopelessly, with a beautiful lady much wealthier than himself.”

“And married, no doubt.”

“Happily, not. No, the lady was quite free, except for the impediment of their difference of fortune, to return the writer's love.”

“Ryszard”—Maryna laughed—“you are making this up.”

“No, I swear I'm not.”

“And did she give herself to the impecunious writer?”

“Ah, that's what made the drama I saw that evening so much like life. The actors walked back and forth, arguing with one another, some even jumped up and down, but in the end there was neither a marriage nor a funeral. Apparently, to the logical Chinese mind, it makes no sense for a story that unfolds over several months—even years—of its protagonists' lives to be represented in one evening. No, a play ought to last as many months or years as the story it tells. Whoever wishes to follow, let him come again.”

“And how do you—I'm asking the writer—how do you think the play ends, when it does end?”

“I think that, since in China events occur which according to our conceptions are exceedingly improbable, the lady will bestow her love on the penniless writer.”

“
Do
you?”

“However,” he continued, “the laws of dramatic suspense require that the courtship take a very long time.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps you're being pessimistic.”

“It's a month since I saw my episode. I presume that the enamored writer has not yet succeeded in winning the hand of the comely ‘Flower of Tea'—”

“Ryszard—”

“But he may have already won over several influential relatives who have promised to plead his suit.” He smiled gravely. “You see how patient I am.”

“Ryszard, I want you to go somewhere else while I prepare for the audition.”

“You are sending me away,” he groaned.

“I am.”

“For how long? Is it like the Chinese play? Weeks? Months?”

“Until I summon you. If I'm successful, I shall welcome you back.”

“And then what happens?”

“Ah, you want to know the end,” she cried. “You cannot be both a character in the play and its author. No, you must wait in suspense. As I do.”

“What suspense? How can
you
fail?”

“I can fail,” she said solemnly.

“If Barton turns you down, he's an idiot and doesn't deserve to live. I shall come back and kill him.”

She repeated this to Miss Collingridge, expecting to make the young woman laugh.

“Idiot,” said Miss Collingridge. “Not
eediot.
And kill, not
keel.
”

“Miss Collingridge predicts,” she told Ryszard, “that it is my destiny to be loved by the fair sex.” Ignoring Ryszard's grimace, Maryna went on: “And you should be happy about that. For so far, I must tell you, no Yankee has yet looked me over, none has paid me a compliment. But since, if one is to believe the saying here, a woman's will is God's will, I am content.”

A few days later Ryszard left the city, choosing to stay away from Maryna in the company of a pair of elderly Polish émigrés, veterans of the 1830 Uprising against Russia, who lived in Sebastopol, a village about forty miles north of San Francisco. It is perfect here for writing, he told her in his first letter, for I have absolutely nothing else to do; the two old soldiers will not let me meddle with the household chores. I am writing many things, he told her in his next letter, among them a play for you, which, as you needn't remind me, I once promised, oh it seems long ago, I would never attempt. On some mornings, rereading it at my table, I think it quite splendid. Will you think so, too? Maryna, my Maryna, comely Flower of My Heart, I count on your covering the poverty of my play with your royal cloak.

She wrote him, asking his advice about what she should propose to Barton for her opening vehicle. She would much rather do Shakespeare (Juliet or Ophelia) but thought it wiser to start with a play whose original language was not English: her accent would grate less.
Camille,
perhaps. Better still,
Adrienne Lecouvreur;
playing an actress, at the worst she would appear to be … an actress. The play was popular on American stages and a favorite with visiting European stars, starting with Rachel herself, who had opened her only American tour with it in New York twenty years ago.

Camille,
wrote Ryszard. It is a much better play. If you'll permit me, I've always thought
Adrienne Lecouvreur
rather maudlin and shrill. You must know that, Maryna, no matter how much you relish the part. I will confess that the ending leaves me quite dry-eyed, except when you do it. And that's because, etc., etc.

She asked Bogdan's opinion, too.
Adrienne Lecouvreur,
replied Bogdan. Definitely
Adrienne.
His letters from Anaheim were always laconic. They contained reassuring news about Peter, discouraging news about efforts to sell the farm, but little of Bogdan's own state of mind. She was grateful that he never made her feel uneasy about leaving him with the child. She would send for Peter and Aniela soon—as soon as she'd had the audition. She had to devote all her time to preparing. She needed to be entirely single-minded. She wanted to experience herself as completely alone. It occurred to her that she might never be alone again.

*   *   *

“
NOW, YOU
mention genius,” said Angus Barton, although Maryna hadn't mentioned it. “And genius speaks in every tongue, I'm not saying that isn't true. And I'm not saying I don't believe you weren't some kind of star in your own country, all your compatriots here in San Francisco who have been writing me letters and coming by the theatre and imploring me to see you and leaving me articles about you, which of course I can't read, they couldn't be making it all up, could they, but this is America, and you say you want to act in English even though it makes no sense for a foreign actress to come here and not act in her own language, since our public is used to that, and think they do understand as long as they know the story, though I hold to the old-fashioned idea that when it comes to a play the audience ought to understand the words. And I'm not saying that the public in America hasn't opened its arms to foreign actors, but they come from countries that Americans like the sound of, like France and Italy, and I'm afraid your country isn't one of those, and they come here on a tour, with everything nicely prepared, and everyone eager to see them, and then they go home. And I'm not saying that I won't give you an audition, if only to get your friends to stop badgering me, I'm willing to do that, but you must agree I can be honest with you, I shall criticize you frankly, I'm not going to mince my words.”

“Yes,” said Maryna.

“And I'm not saying I think it's a complete waste of my time for me to give you an hour on Wednesday morning, sorry that I can't spend any more time with you now, I have an appointment in a few minutes, but I don't want you to get your hopes up, you seem like a nice woman, very dignified, with your mind all made up, I like that, I like a woman with spark, a woman who knows how to stand up for herself, but you have to bend in this country too, everyone does. And I'm not saying that you've not heard this before, but theatre has to be good business, people here don't go so much for highfalutin ideas of theatre such as they keep on with in Europe. And I'm not saying that you don't know that, but what I see before me is a lady, and perhaps back in your country a refined woman like yourself would make a great impression, you can impress the public with that here too, but they don't want a steady diet of lady, not even our rich folk in San Francisco, and we have plenty of them now with all the Comstock bullion, like the late Mr. Ralston who built this theatre and the Palace Hotel too, he liked a lot of fancy European things. And I'm not saying that they're just a bunch of snobs living in the mansions on Nob Hill, who all take boxes at the California, because rich people want to think they have culture, that's why the city has so many theatres, and there are quite a few Jews in society here, and I guess they're the most cultivated, but you can't play only to them. So I'm not saying that San Francisco doesn't have some people who know what they're seeing, when Booth does a turn here or one of the big stars on tour from Europe comes through, all of them hoping to play at the California, since everyone knows that after Booth's Theatre in New York it's the best theatre in the whole country, and that makes our public extra hard to please, especially the newspapermen here, who are just waiting to puncture the balloon of some big foreign reputation. But I'm not saying that ordinary people don't go to the theatre too, and if you don't please them it doesn't work at all. They have to cheer and laugh and poke each other in the ribs and cry. I wonder if you could do comedy roles. No, from the look of you, probably not. Well, that settles it. You have to make them cry.”