‘I don’t understand how it is possible to treat one’s colleagues, and one’s art, come to that, so disrespectfully,’ Vulpinova began in a honeyed voice.
Mephistov took up the refrain.
‘Would they have been late for the real Noah’s Ark too? The man who lays claim to the position of our company’s leading actor seems to regard all of us as menials. Including the director. Everyone has to wait, while he condescends to finish his breakfast! And these eternal late arrivals of Reginina’s! You work your way into the character, prepare yourself, put yourself in the mood to act, and then instead…’
At this point red-faced Vasilisa Prokofievna came running into the hall with her usual cry of: ‘I’m not late, am I?’ Vulpinova said: ‘Ha-ha-ha’, Stern grabbed at his temples, Nonarikin shook his head reproachfully. They could have started now, but Emeraldov had still not appeared. It wasn’t like him. No matter where he spent the night and with whom, Hippolyte always showed up for rehearsals on time, even when his hangover was so bad that he could barely stagger along.
‘Someone go and take a look in the changing room. Our handsome hero’s face is probably so puffy he can’t powder over the bags under his eyes,’ Sensiblin suggested.
‘You go yourself. There aren’t any servants here,’ his former wife snapped contemptuously.
Shiftsky made a joke.
‘How’s that, no servants? What about me?’
But he didn’t get up off his seat. In the end, of course, the ever-dependable Vasya Gullibin went.
What a bore, thought Eliza, suppressing a yawn. Mephistov’s right. This way the mood for acting will evaporate completely.
She took a little mirror out of her reticule and started practising the facial expressions of her character: innocent joy, touching agitation, tender affection, slight fright. Everything girlish and gentle, in pastel tones.
Stern was scolding Nonarikin for something. Kostya Shiftsky was making Serafima laugh, Vulpinova was bickering shrilly with Reginina.
‘Ladies and gentlemen… Noah Noaevich!’
Vasya was standing by the wing of the stage. His voice trembled and broke. Everyone turned round and the noise faded away.
‘Did you find Emeraldov?’ Stern asked angrily.
‘Yes…’ Gullibin’s lips started trembling.
‘Well, where is he, then?’
‘In his dressing room… I think he’s… dead.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’
Noah Noaevich went dashing backstage, with the others following behind him. The little mirror jolted and bounced in Eliza’s hands. At that moment she wasn’t really thinking anything, she was simply stunned and followed the others.
They were all frightened, disoriented, bewildered. Although it was clear at first glance that Hippolyte was dead (he was lying on the floor, on his back, with one twisted hand thrust up into the air), someone tried to lift him up and blow into his mouth and someone else shouted ‘Doctor! Doctor!’
Eventually Noah Noaevich shouted:
‘What are you doing? Can’t you see that he’s already cold? Everybody get back! Nonarikin, telephone the police. They must have their own doctor… What’s that they’re called? A coroner.’
Eliza cried, of course. She felt terribly sorry for Emeraldov, who had been so impossibly handsome in life, lying there now on the floor with his face contorted; one of his trouser legs was hitched up, but Hippolyte didn’t care.
They stood there, huddling in the doorway, waiting for the police. Reginina recited a prayer with solemn feeling. Aphrodisina sobbed, Mephistov and Vulpinova discussed in whispers who the dead man could have spent the night with. Sensiblin sighed: ‘This is what all the womanising and drinking got him, the pitiful playboy. But I warned him.’ Unable to stand around doing nothing, Nonarikin tried to tidy things up; he righted a chair that had been knocked over and picked up a tin goblet (a stage prop from Hamlet). ‘Now where do I get a Lopakhin?’ Noah Noaevich asked, but it wasn’t clear whom he was asking.
Eventually a police officer and a doctor arrived, asked everyone to go out and closed the door. The examination of the body took a long time. With the exception of Noah Noaevich, the men went to the buffet to drink to the memory of the newly departed. The first reporter showed up – God only knew where he had sniffed out the news of the tragedy. And then another one arrived, and another. Photographers appeared too.
Eliza immediately went to her own room (her contract, like Emeraldov’s, entitled her to a private dressing room). She sat down in front of the mirror, wondering how to dress for the send-off. The funeral would be in St Petersburg, not here – Hippolyte had a wife, who hated the theatre and everything connected with it. Now her fickle husband would finally return to her and she would consign him to the ground as she saw fit.
Eliza tried out various shades of grief on her face.
Then someone started making a noise in the corridor; she heard footsteps and agitated voices and someone even shrieked. Eliza realised that the police had finished and it was time to go out to the press. She got up and threw on her feather boa from The Three Sisters – the line and colour were appropriately funereal. She set her eyebrows at a mournful angle and turned down the corners of her mouth. Her forehead and cheeks were pale, for quite natural reasons. And at the thought of poor Hippolyte her eyes immediately turned moist; in the photographs they would glisten. What terrible misfortune, how ghastly, Eliza told herself, working up her mood.
But this wasn’t the really ghastly part yet. That began when Zoya Comedina’s little freckled face was thrust in at the door.
‘Can you imagine, Eliza? The doctor says that Emeraldov killed himself. And out of unrequited love too! Now who could have expected that, from Emeraldov of all people! The reporters have gone plain crazy!’
And she went dashing on with the astounding news.
But Eliza recalled the entrepreneur Furshtatsky. And something else as well – only now, at this very moment.
When Hamlet-Emeraldov pinched Ophelia and some people in the theatre gasped and others guffawed, Eliza had noticed out of the corner of her eye that someone in a black frock coat jumped abruptly to his feet and walked towards the exit. At the time she was baffled and bewildered and she didn’t look more closely, but now that picture appeared in front of her eyes as clearly as if it were a photograph. Eliza’s glance possessed a quality that is important for an actress: it registered every detail in her memory.
The man who walked out of the auditorium had square shoulders, a twitchy stride and a gleaming bald patch. It was Genghis Khan, quite definitely – she had no doubt about that now.
Eliza suppressed her scream and grabbed hold of the table to prevent herself from falling. But she fell anyway. Her legs buckled as if they were made of limp rags.
Hippolyte Emeraldov’s send-off was managed by Noah Noaevich in person, and he treated this sad event like a theatrical production.
It made an impressive spectacle. The coffin was carried out through the entrance of the theatre with all due honours, to applause and keening from an entire choir of inconsolable female mourners – the leading man’s bereft admirers. The square was crowded with people. The procession, extending to well over half a mile in length, travelled halfway across the city to the Nikolaevsky railway station.