In America (6 page)

After the performance, when she accompanied her mother backstage and Stefan emerged, beaming, his bony face with its strong jaw and high forehead cleansed of makeup, she could hardly ask him which part he had played (
could
he have been Posa?) and just told him that he was wonderful, wonderful.

Then it occurred to her—it seemed a very ingenious, grown-up calculation—that there was one way to ensure that she would be allowed again into a theatre. That was to become an actor herself. Who could bar an actor from the theatre? Indeed, so welcome were actors that apparently they didn't have to use the regular entrance (though she supposed they were still required to buy tickets) but went in by a back door.

“That night”—she was telling the story, laughing at herself, to a friend—“I swore a vow standing with my mouth pressed to the icy pane of the little window of the room I shared with five of my sisters and brothers … no, not in the flat where I was born but the new one (it was a year after the Fire) … that I would live only for the theatre. Of course I didn't know if I could be an actress. And for a long time Stefan, and even Adam, did all they could to discourage me with fearful pictures of the actor's life: the hard work and the tedium, the bad wages, the dishonest theatre managers, the ungrateful ignorant audiences, the malicious reviewers. Not to mention the unheated filthy hotel rooms and their creaking floorboards, the greasy food and the cold tea, the interminable journeys over unreliable roads in badly sprung carriages, but”—she broke off, to explain—“that was what I liked.”

“The discomforts?”

“Yes, the traveling! Being a vagrant. You go somewhere, you please people, and then you never have to see them again.”

“But it must be more comfortable now, since you can travel by train.”

“You're not listening to me. You don't see,” she cried. “It felt right not having a home!”

*   *   *

“
I CAN STILL SEE
that fire”—she was telling this to Ryszard—“and smell it. I'll always be terrified of fire. I was ten. From across the square, sheltering at first with so many others in the door of the Dominican church, we watched our windows melt, the windows from which my brothers used to take aim with their wooden guns at Austrian soldiers—how that had frightened our mother. She said we were lucky to escape with our lives, which was all we escaped with, for everything burned, even the church, and the flat we moved to after the fire was even smaller. Still, small as it was, my mother took in another boarder—we'd always had boarders in the flat on Grodzka Street—and that was Mr. Załężowski, Heinrich Załężowski, who was very kind and gave me German lessons. Of course, Latin had come easily to me; our father had drilled us in Latin; but I didn't know that I had a talent for learning languages. Though he was a foreigner, from Königsberg, his real name was Siebelmeyer, Mr. Załężowski had become one of us and taken a Polish surname. Mr. Załężowski was a patriot. At seventeen, he'd fought in the Uprising of 1830. My brothers worshipped him. And my mother seemed very fond of him as well, and for a while my brothers and I thought my bearded, gruff German tutor would soon become the stepfather of us all. But it turned out that he had become quite fond of me, young as I was, and though the gulf of twenty-seven years lay between us, I didn't find it in my heart to refuse the affections of so fine a man, who could teach me so much. It was he who believed in my future in the theatre when Stefan was still discouraging me, and after I'd had a catastrophic audition with a celebrated actress in Warsaw (no, I won't tell you who it was) who told me I had no talent at all, none. None! And he offered to launch me on the stage. For some years earlier, while hiding from the police, Mr. Załężowski had managed a traveling theatre company, and he proposed that we go to Bochnia for a time and revive that troupe with some actors he knew there who were seeking work. Thereby he would have an instrument to undertake the direction of my career.

“And so, when I was sixteen, with my mother's tearful blessing, for I wouldn't have done it without that, Mr. Załężowski and I were married and left Kraków for that town where he still had his connections, and there I made my debut at seventeen, in
A Window on the First Floor
by Korzeniowski, in the part of the wife who, as you'll remember, on the point of being unfaithful to her husband is saved by the cry of her sick baby. Audiences were not sophisticated then. They loved healthy sentiments and a moral. But Mr. Załężowski wanted me to do great plays, German plays and Shakespeare, and within a few months I had learned the roles of Gretchen and Juliet and Desdemona and—

“Why am I telling you all this?” she said fretfully. “I'm making it sound easy!”

*   *   *

“
OF COURSE
it wasn't easy,” said the friend soothingly.

“But it was!” she exclaimed. “For I, who was all ambition, was myself as unsophisticated as the audiences of those days. I remember the effect on me of a little book called
The Hygiene of the Soul,
in which the author, someone named Feuchtersleben, tries to prove that everything we wish can be obtained if we wish it strongly enough. Obedient to the spirit of this utopian, I rose from my bed—it was late at night—and, stamping the floor, I shouted, ‘Well then, I must and I will!' This woke up the nurse, and my baby began to cry, so I crept back to bed, dreaming of future laurels.”

“You were very young then.”

“I was already twenty. No, not so young. And my daughter, my baby—you know what happened. Diphtheria. While I was away on tour.”

“Yes.”

“I couldn't go to her. Mr. Załężowski, my husband, pointed out that the plays could not be performed without me and we would never be engaged again at the theatre should we fail to fulfill our contract.”

“It must have been dreadful for you.”

“It still is. I mourn her every day of my life. I love Piotr, but I hadn't pictured myself with a son. I always imagined a daughter.”

“But the laurels—you were right about the laurels.”

“Yes, I admit that from the beginning I never played anything but principal roles. But it doesn't help. It's astonishing how one becomes accustomed to applause.”

*   *   *

AS STEFAN
and others had discouraged her, Maryna felt it her duty to discourage young aspirants to the stage who sought her support. “You can't imagine the slights you'll have to endure,” she had warned Krystyna. “Even if you become successful”—she shook her head—“and then, one day,
because
you are successful.”

But even though Maryna did not mean to encourage, she did, simply because she liked to instruct, and to tell stories about her life.

“Mr. Załężowski, Heinrich Załężowski, used to say, ‘It won't help you to grind away day and night at your roles. It will ruin your health and give you too many ideas. Believe me, actors don't need to think!'” She laughed. “Of course I thought this was preposterous. I
like
ideas.”

“Yes,” interjected one of her protégés, “ideas are—”

“But I knew there was no point in arguing with him. So I replied humbly, I was still very young and he was much older, and my husband: ‘Then what should I do?' ‘Diligence, day-to-day diligence!' he shouted (why do theatre people shout so much?). As if I'd not been diligent!”

She pressed her fingers to her temples. Another headache in the wings.

“And diligence isn't enough. I can study a part for a long time and still not be ready to play the role. I learn the lines, say them walking up and down, imagining how I'll turn my head and move my hands, feeling
everything
my character feels. But that isn't enough. I have to
see
it.
See
myself as her. And sometimes, who knows why, I can't. The picture isn't sharp or it won't stay in my mind. Because it's the future—which nobody can know.”

This was the moment when the young actor listening to Maryna became a little apprehensive.

“Yes, that's what preparing a role is, it's like looking into the future. Or expecting to know how a journey will turn out.”

*   *   *

MUSING
, she said: “I am not brave, you see. I know myself very well. And I am not quick, either. I should describe myself as … slow.”

“But—”

“Not quick. Not clever. Just a little above mediocre. Really. But I've always understood”—she smiled implacably—“that I can triumph by sheer stubbornness, by applying myself harder than anyone else.”

*   *   *

“
PERHAPS
you should rest.”

“No,” she said. “I don't want to rest. I want to work.”

“Who works harder than you?”

“I want peace.”

“Peace?”

“I want to breathe pure air. I want to wash my clothes in a sparkling stream.”

“You? You wash your own clothes? When? When would you have the time? And where?”

“Oh, it's not the clothes!” she cried. “Does no one understand me?”

*   *   *

“
PARIS
,” someone suggested. “Despite the presence there of so many of our melancholy, noble-spirited compatriots, Paris is full of gaiety and opportunity. And you would never be an exile
comme les autres.
You would like—”

“No, not Paris.”

*   *   *

“
IT'S TRUE
I'm not satisfied. Most of all,” she added, “with myself.”

“You mustn't—”

“It's good to be happy, but it's vulgar to
want
to be happy. And if you
are
happy, it's vulgar to know it. It makes you complacent. What's important is self-respect, which will be yours only as long as you stay true to your ideals. It's so easy to compromise, once you've known a modicum of success.”

*   *   *

“
OF COURSE
I am not fanatical,” she said, “but perhaps I am too fastidious. For instance, I can't help thinking a person who sneezes in an absurd way is also lacking in self-respect. Why else consent to something so unattractive? It ought to be a matter of concentration and resolve to sneeze gracefully, candidly. Like a handshake. I remember a conversation with someone I've known for years, a subtle man, a doctor, whose friendship I cherish, when, in the middle of a sentence, we were talking about Fourier's theory of the twelve radical passions, he seemed suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. He made a sharp shrieking sound and then said ‘Kissh'—said it twice and closed his eyes. What did he say, I wondered, staring at his mottled face. I understood when I saw him groping for his handkerchief. But it was difficult to continue with Ideal Harmony and the Calculus of Attraction after that!”

*   *   *

“
I THINK
,” she started off grandly.

And then she stopped.

What nonsense it all is!

“Go on,” said Bogdan.

Yes, nonsense to feel what she was feeling. Or perhaps not. How awful to impose this unhappiness, if that's what it was, on Bogdan, who took whatever she said so literally. Why did she always feel like saying something that would crease his brow and tighten his jaw? “I'm thinking how good you are to me,” she said, pressing her face against his throat, seeking the comfort and forgiveness of his body.

*   *   *

SHE FROWNED.
“Yes, I hate to complain, but…”

“But?” It was Ryszard speaking.

“I do love to show off.” She clapped her hand to her forehead, moaned “Oh, oh, oh!” then smiled slyly.

The young man looked stricken. (Yes she'd been ill. All her friends said it.)

“Am I showing off?” she said, her eyes glittering. “You tell me, faithful cavalier.”

Ryszard didn't answer.

“And if I am,” she continued relentlessly, “why?”

He shook his head.

“Don't be alarmed. Aren't you going to say, Because you're an actress.”

“Yes, a great actress,” he answered.

“Thank you.”

“I've said something stupid. Forgive me.”

“No,” she said. “Maybe it's not showing off. Even if I can't control it.”

*   *   *

“
I DO TRY
to master my feelings, believe me!”

“Master your feelings?” cried the critic, a very friendly critic. “Whatever for, dear lady? It's the profusion of your feelings that delights the public.”

“I've always needed to identify myself with each of the tragic heroines I play. I suffer with them, I weep real tears, which often I can't stop after the curtain goes down, and have to lie motionless in my dressing room until my strength returns. Throughout my whole career I've never succeeded in giving a performance without feeling my character's agonies.” She grimaced. “I consider this a weakness.”

“No!”

“What would my public say if I decided to play comic roles? Comedy”—she laughed—“isn't thought to be my strong point.”

“What comic roles?” said the critic cautiously.

*   *   *

START TOO HIGH
, and you have nowhere to go.

“I remember”—she was confiding this to Ryszard—“I remember once when I lost control, and the result was a disaster though I was not made to pay for it. The play was
Adrienne Lecouvreur,
a favorite of mine. An actress is a plum role, and Lecouvreur was the greatest of her era. Well, the call-boy had come, I had left my dressing room, I was standing in the wings, it was time for me to go on and, although it was hardly my first time in the role, I realized I had stage fright. That often used to happen to me. If it was just enough to make my heart pound and my palms sweat, it didn't bother me. On the contrary, I considered it a sign of professionalism. If I didn't have some flutter and fever before I went on, I was probably going to give a bad performance. However, it was a little worse than usual that night—not the kind of fear that paralyzes (I've had that, too!) but the kind that makes you lose your head. I entered the stage, and the whole house started clapping, and went on applauding for several minutes. In acknowledgment I sank into a deep stage curtsy, my crossed hands just touching my right knee and my head bent, and as the homage subsided and I raised my head I said to myself, You'll see, you'll see what I can do. Rachel had created this role, her voice was stronger, deeper than mine, and people still remember when she brought the play to Warsaw many years ago, but everyone thinks my Adrienne is superb, and that night I thought I was about to give the best performance of my life. And in this clenched state of mind, I started my scene—and took my first lines too high. I was lost. It was impossible to lower the pitch once I had begun. Adrienne is backstage at the Comédie-Française studying a new part, but she can't concentrate, her pulse is racing, for she's expecting to meet again the man with whom she's just fallen in love. And when she tells her confidant, the prompter, who is in love with her, though he dares not avow it, of her new, secret passion, I shouted, shouted like the most untalented of actresses. Having started on that note, imagine what I became when the prince, this man whose true identity is unknown to Adrienne, enters the greenroom. As any experienced actor will tell you, I had no choice, I had to keep it up. I could only rise higher as the sentiment I had to express became stronger and more pathetic. I sighed, I writhed, and all was genuine. By the fifth act, after Adrienne has kissed a bouquet of poisoned flowers sent by her rival for the prince's affections, my physical suffering was atrocious, and the arms that stretched out to my leading man as I lay dying were contorted with real desire. When the curtain fell, he carried me senseless to my dressing room.”