I had undressed and laid myself on the bed (thinking to bring this journal up to date in the morning) and had even fallen into the first doze of sleep when there was a knock at the door. I slipped into my robe and pressed the release.
It was the only time in my life that for even an instant I thought I might be dreaming—actually asleep—when in truth I was up and awake.
How feeble it is to write that she is more beautiful in person than she appears on the stage. It is true, and yet it is a supreme irrelevance. I have seen more beautiful women—indeed Yasmin is, I suppose, by the formal standards of art, more lovely. It is not Ardis’s beauty that draws me to her—the hair like gold, the translucent skin that then still showed traces of the bluish makeup she had worn as a ghost, the flashing eyes like the clear, clean skies of America. It is something deeper than that, something that would remain if all that were somehow taken away. No doubt she has habits that would disgust me in someone else, and the vanity that is said to be so common in her profession, and yet I would do anything to possess her.
Enough of this. What is it but empty boasting, now that I am on the point of winning her?
She stood in my doorway. I have been trying to think how I can express what I felt then. It was as though some tall flower, a lily perhaps, had left the garden and come to tap at my door, a thing that had never happened before in all the history of the world, and would never happen again.
“You are Nadan Jaffarzadeh?”
I admitted that I was, and shamefacedly, twenty seconds too late, moved out of her way.
She entered, but instead of taking the chair I indicated, turned to face me; her blue eyes seemed as large as the colored eggs on the dresser, and they were filled with a melting hope. “You are the man, then, that Bobby O’Keene tried to rob tonight.”
I nodded.
“I know you—I mean, I know your face. This is insane. You came to Visit on the last night and brought your father, and then to Mary Rose on the first night, and sat in the third or fourth row. I thought you were an American, and when the police told me your name I imagined some greasy fat man with gestures. Why on earth would Bobby want to steal from you?”
“Perhaps he needed the money.”
She threw back her head and laughed. I had heard her laugh in Mary Rose when Simon was asking her father for her hand, but that had held a note of childishness that (however well suited to the part) detracted from its beauty. This laugh was the merriment of houris sliding down a rainbow. “I’m sure he did. He always needs money. You’re sure, though, that he meant to rob you? You couldn’t have . . .”
She saw my expression and let the question trail away. The truth is that I was disappointed that I could not oblige her, and at last I said, “If you want me to be mistaken, Ardis, then I was mistaken. He only bumped against me on the steps, perhaps, and tried to catch my sketchbook when it fell.”
She smiled, and her face was the sun smiling upon roses. “You would say that for me? And you know my name?”
“From the program. I came to the theater to see you—and that was not my father, who it grieves me to say is long dead, but only an old man, an American, whom I had met that day.”
“You brought him sandwiches at the first intermission—I was watching you through the peephole in the curtain. You must be a very thoughtful person.”
“Do you watch everyone in the audience so carefully?”
She blushed at that, and for a moment could not meet my eyes.
“But you will forgive Bobby, and tell the police that you want them to let him go? You must love the theater, Mr. Jef—Jaff—”
“You’ve forgotten my name already. It is Jaffarzadeh, a very commonplace name in my country.”
“I hadn’t forgotten it—only how to pronounce it. You see, when I came here I had learned it without knowing who you were, and so I had no trouble with it. Now you’re a real person to me and I can’t say it as an actress should.” She seemed to notice the chair behind her for the first time, and sat down.
I sat opposite her. “I’m afraid I know very little about the theater.”
“We are trying to keep it alive here, Mr. Jaffar, and—”
“Jaffarzadeh. Call me Nadan—then you won’t have so many syllables to trip over.”
She took my hand in hers, and I knew quite well that the gesture was as studied as a salaam and that she felt she was playing me like a fish, but I was beside myself with delight. To be played by her! To have her eager to cultivate my affection! And the fish will pull her in yet—wait and see!
“I will,” she said, “Nadan. And though you may know little of the theater, you feel as I do—as we do—or you would not come. It has been such a long struggle; all the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive. We have been doing well here in Washington, Nadan.”
“Very well indeed,” I said. “Both the productions I have seen have been excellent.”
“But only for the past two seasons. When I joined the company it had nearly fallen apart. We revived it—Bobby and Paul and I. We could do it because we cared, and because we were able to find a few naturally talented people who can take direction. Bobby is the best of us—he can walk away with any part that calls for a touch of the sinister. . . .”
She seemed to run out of breath. I said, “I don’t think there will be any trouble about getting him free.”
“Thank God. We’re getting the theater on its feet again now. We’re attracting new people, and we’ve built up a following—people who come to see every production. There’s even some money ahead at last. But Mary Rose is supposed to run another two weeks, and after that we’re doing Faust, with Bobby as Mephistopheles. We’ve simply no one who can take his place, no one who can come close to him.”
“I’m sure the police will release him if I ask them to.”
“They must. We have to have him tomorrow night. Bill—someone you don’t know—tried to go on for him in the third act tonight. It was just ghastly. In Iran you’re very polite; that’s what I’ve heard.”
“We enjoy thinking so.”
“We’re not. We never were, and as . . .”
Her voice trailed away, but a wave of one slender arm evoked everything—the cracked plaster walls became as air, and the decayed city, the ruined continent, entered the room with us. “I understand,” I said.
“They—we—were betrayed. In our souls we have never been sure by whom. When we feel cheated we are ready to kill, and maybe we feel cheated all the time.”
She slumped in her chair, and I realized, as I should have long before, how exhausted she was. She had given a performance that had ended in disaster, then had been forced to plead with the police for my name and address, and at last had come here from the station house, very probably on foot. I asked when I could obtain O’Keene’s release.
“We can go tomorrow morning, if you’ll do it.”
“You wish to come too?”
She nodded, smoothed her skirt, and stood. “I’ll have to know. I’ll come for you about nine, if that’s all right.”
“If you’ll wait outside for me to dress, I’ll take you home.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It will only take a moment,” I said.
The blue eyes held something pleading again. “You’re going to come in with me—that’s what you’re thinking, I know. You have two beds here—bigger, cleaner beds than the one I have in my little apartment—if I were to ask you to push them together, would you still take me home afterward?”