He stood up, the audience was over. She followed him into the wings, wondering what all that talk about owning property was for. Did he think the town was full of millionaires? Or had he asked about her accommodation situation because he wanted to be kind or had no idea what else to talk to her about, now she had burst in on him as he sat meditating before the rehearsal? He walked with head bent so she only saw the famous grey curls at his neck. Suddenly he staggered and stretched out a hand as if to find something to support him. She took his hand, just as he seemed about to sink to his knees. He put his arm round her shoulder and hid his face with the other hand. Everything went black, he said and removed the hand. He looked at her and smiled faintly, pale as paper. He wasn’t getting enough sleep at present…
She stood there, still with his arm resting on her shoulder, looking into his eyes and without thinking she laid a hand over his and stroked it lightly. She recognised his gaze, it was the same as in his car that evening a few months before, the same vulnerability, but also something wondering and sad, as if he was not merely looking at her but also observing himself from outside. He let go of her shoulder and sat down on a box under the cables and control panels on the wall. Just go ahead, he said, closing his eyes. I’ll sit here for a bit…
During the curtain calls after the première, as she stood among the other actors, each with their bouquet wrapped in cellophane, he finally allowed himself to be persuaded by the deafening applause to come up on the stage. He kissed all of them, even the male actors, on the cheek and when it was her turn he took her hand and walked forward on the proscenium with her in front of the others. The diva and the captain also started to clap, as well as they could with their huge bouquets, and soon all her fellow actors were clapping. Harry Wiener bowed one single time to the audience, still with her hand in his. She curtsied as she had seen the diva do, one foot behind the other, and when she straightened up the thunderous sound from the auditorium seemed stilled as he bent his face to hers. Thank you, he whispered and pressed her hand. When the curtain fell for the last time he had gone. The captain had been informed, the others crowded around him. Things were going badly with Wiener’s wife, her condition was critical. Lucca stayed at the party only as long as she felt necessary.
It had been a huge success, but there was nothing very strange about that. The Gypsy King was condemned to eternal success, as Otto had once said with a sarcastic twist. The special thing about it for Lucca was that overnight she was transformed from a promising fringe talent into one of her generation’s most shining dramatic lights, a new star in the theatrical sky, a brilliant cornucopia of emotional intensity, according to one critic. The newspapers were still fragrant with printer’s ink the following night when she leaned against her bicycle in the town hall square and feverishly leafed through the culture sections, greedy for more. She was almost run down by a bus on the way home. She woke Else. They sat in the kitchen reading the reviews aloud to each other. Her mother put her glasses down on the pile of papers and said: There, you see! There is more to life than love! Lucca did not know how to reply.
December passed, and the days were almost uniform. Even the weather was the same, murky, wet and raw. She slept all morning and spent the afternoons watching television before she set off for the theatre. The garlands of light and Christmas hearts seemed alien and irrelevant. Miriam went to visit her parents in Jutland with her jazz boyfriend, and Else flew down to a Greek island. Lucca said no thank you, slightly brusque, when Else invited her to go too. What would she do there? Be with me, her mother replied, pained. But they were together all the time! Else looked at her sorrowfully. Were they? Lately she seemed only to be together with herself. It was almost impossible to get a single word out of her daughter. She would have to watch out or her work would take up her whole life.
Lucca smiled ironically but she could see Else did not understand why. She was about to say something about all the evenings she had spent alone as a child with some nanny or other, because her mother was broadcasting or out with a friend, but she held her tongue. Fortunately, she thought afterwards, glad that she hadn’t allowed herself to be drawn into a quarrel she wasn’t even anxious to win. Else threatened to call off her trip, but in the end she did fly down to the white houses and the blue, blue water, as she used to say, apparently doubting whether the word would be blue enough on its own.
Lucca felt confused when she thought about Harry Wiener. She thought of him with a mixture of gratitude and suppressed anger. She had become a success only because of his genius, she knew that, but all the same he had been the one to whisper his thanks during the curtain calls after the première, when he took her hand and presented her to the audience, his discovery. Thank you and goodbye, he should rather have whispered, for the next moment he had gone. He had got what he wanted from her. With his gaze and his voice he had surrounded her with a chrysalis of attention, he had almost hypnotised her and then woken her with a snap of the fingers. Now she could flutter around up in the light. When she was on the stage she became one with her role, everything in her was pervaded with its movements, moods and colour changes, but when she went home she was no more than a listless body that collapsed in front of the television empty of all thought.
The diva had seen what was happening to her. One evening after the performance when they sat together in the dressing room, she suddenly laid a hand on Lucca’s arm. She really mustn’t look so sad, she was the best ever! Lucca turned to her. Was she? Now, stop that, said the diva, starting to spread cleansing cream over her face with deft movements. Wiener had been absolutely ecstatic over her. She just must not take it personally. She must understand that she was here to be used. Indeed, he had used her, squeezed everything out of her, and she should be glad of that. Glad and proud. The diva leaned back her head as she put cream on her chin and neck. But she knew it well. One day you had all his attention, and you wallowed in it, you gobbled it up, and the next day you stood there and had to cope on your own. That was how it was! She smiled optimistically and put her head to one side, her face all white with cream, and suddenly she looked like the white clown in Lucca’s dream.
Lucca smiled bitterly, thinking of the morning when she had met him before the rehearsal and seized his hand when he felt faint. As they faced each other in the wings there had been a moment when she believed he did look at her differently, and when he had whispered his little thank-you in her ear during the curtain calls, she had referred that to more than her performance. But what else should he have thanked her for? It was her place to thank him! How stupid she was! She felt ashamed when she thought how she had put her hand on his and stroked it as he leaned on her for support.
One morning a few days after the première Else knocked at her door. There was a telephone call for her. She said she was asleep. It was a journalist, said Else, something about an interview. On the way downstairs Lucca felt annoyed that Else had answered the phone. It must seem absurd for her to be living with her mother at the age of twenty-seven. The journalist wanted to come the next day, bringing a photographer. Her voice was irritatingly maternal. They arranged a time when Lucca was sure Else would not be in. She went through her wardrobe but couldn’t decide what to wear. The search ended with an old T-shirt stolen from Otto. He would recognise it, she thought, since she was being photographed.
The journalist was a hefty lady of Else’s age wearing a heavy amber necklace. She wanted to know what it had been like to be directed by Harry Wiener, and while Lucca was telling her, she had the feeling that it was really Harry who was being interviewed, through her. Harry Wiener was famous for never giving interviews. She was just as excited about the interview as she had been about the reviews of the performance, but everything was wrong, she felt, when she saw the picture of herself, which took up half a page, with her hands stuck out in the air like a jumping jack because she was explaining something. The printed words were not hers, but the journalist’s. She could hear the wheedling, motherly tone as she read, and how the amber necklace rattled between the lines. Everything she had said was stuck together with sugary adjectives. It almost sounded as if she was head over heels in love with the great Harry Wiener, and the description of her was even worse. The boyish, gazelle-like Lucca Montale, who opened the door in her washed-out aubergine-coloured T-shirt, casual and enchanting with her mercurial gaze, her honey glow and the sparkling black hair which revealed her Italian background… she hurled the newspaper into the waste bin.