The Letter Killers Club (5 page)

STERN: No. You won't do. I imagine my Hamlet differently. Forgive me, but you are wan and faded. That's not what I want.

ROLE (
phlegmatically
): Nevertheless, you will play me exactly as I am.

STERN (
taking painful stock of his double
): But don't you understand? I don't want to be like you.

ROLE: Perhaps I don't want—to be like you. Indeed, I am only being polite: when called, I come. On my way here, I wondered: why?

Rar's fingers patted the air, as though an acting cue were whirling about unseen; they clutched at something then suddenly let go; Rar watched the word flutter away.

“Now this is where, dear conceivers, I will try to close the recorder's first vent. Stern needs to bang into that
why
. As an actor, a professional speaker of other people's words, he may not be able to find his own words to explain himself—his reflected self—to his reflection.

“I think this is all fairly simple: every three-dimensional being doubles himself twice—reflecting himself outwardly and inwardly. Both reflections are untrue: the cold, flat likeness returned by the looking glass is untrue because it is less than three-dimensional; the face's other reflection, cast inward, flowing along nerves to the brain and composed of a complex set of sensations, is also untrue because it is more than three-dimensional.

“Poor Stern wants to objectify that inner likeness of himself, to raise it from the bottom of his soul, to lure it out with his acting and press it on the role; but the other reflection responds to his call—the dead, glassy one hidden under surfaces and reflected outwardly. He doesn't want it; he rejects the presumptuous phantom, and so creates for it an objective existence outside itself. This also happens outside plays; it has before and will again. Take, for instance, Ernesto Rossi
*
: in his memoirs he describes a visit to the ruins of Elsinore. Roughly thus: at some distance from the castle Rossi stopped the carriage and proceeded on foot. In the deepening dusk he walked on with steady step. The eternal story of the Danish prince now took hold of him. Striding toward the black silhouette of the bridge, he began reciting (at first to himself, then more and more loudly) Hamlet's appeal to his father's ghost. And when, gradually drawn into the familiar role, he reached the Ghost's cue and raised his head in the familiar way, he saw it: the Ghost emerging from the gates and gliding noiselessly toward the bridge across the moat: right on cue. Rossi tells us only that he hared back to the carriage, found the coachman, and ordered him to drive the horses with all his might. So the actor fled—in this case from the role come to him. But he might have stayed put, by the bridge leading from one world to the other. Indeed Stern will have to stay put—this takes no talent: will is enough. But let's go back to the play. Our character has been waiting for us: I have made his pause too long. So then …”

STERN: You mean people will see me like that? Like you?

ROLE: Yes.

STERN (
abstracted
): Now. Another question: where are you from? Actually: no matter where you're from, you'll have to go. I'm refusing the role.

ROLE (
rising
): As you like.

STERN (
makes to follow after
): Stop. I'm afraid someone will see you. I wouldn't want anyone but me— You understand.

ROLE: Don't be too quick to include me in space. Seeing me is, so to speak, a matter of choice. We exist, but provisionally. Whoever wants to see me will, whoever doesn't … Indeed, it is a violence and in bad taste to be forcibly real. If with you people, on earth, that is still going on, then—

STERN: Wait, wait. I wanted to see another …

ROLE: I don't know. Perhaps the orders for post-horses got mixed up. That happens when passing from one world to the other. There is a huge demand just now for Hamlets. Hamletburg is practically deserted.

STERN: I don't understand.

ROLE: It's very simple. You requested a Hamlet from the Archives, but they sent you one from the Workshop.

STERN: But then how can we … straighten this out?

ROLE: Again, very simply. I'll take you to Hamletburg, and you can look for the one you want.

STERN (
confused
): But where is that? And how do you get there?

ROLE: Where? In the Land of Roles. There is such a place. As for how you get there, that can be neither told, nor shown. I think the audience will forgive us if we … ring down the curtain.

Rar calmly surveyed us. “The Role, in essence, is right. If you'll allow me, I'll say:
Curtain
. Now on to the second position: try to picture a receding perspective inside close-set converging walls crowned with Gothic arches. The interior of this fantastic tunnel is plastered with squares of colored paper all emblazoned, in different typefaces and in different languages, with the same word:
HAMLET-HAMLET-HAMLET
. Under the polyglot playbills streaming away into the depths are two rows of armchairs vanishing in the distance. Sitting in the armchairs, wrapped in black cloaks, is a succession of Hamlets. Each holds a book in his hands. Each is bent over its pages, his pale face intent, his eyes fixed on the lines. Now here, now there, a turning page rustles and one hears the soft, but incessant:

“‘Words, words, words.'

“‘Words … words.'

“‘Words.'

“Once again I invite you, conceivers, to take a good look at the file of phantoms. Under the black berets of those aggrieved princes you will see the ones who introduced you to Hamlet's problem, to that long, narrow corridor winding its windowless way through the world. I, for instance, can now clearly make out—third armchair on the left—the sharp profile of Salvini's
*
Hamlet frowning over a text only he can see. To the right and farther on, the fragile outline beneath folds of heavy black material resembles Sarah Bernhardt
*
: the heavy folio with bronze clasps strains her fine weak fingers, but her eyes catch tenaciously at the symbols and meanings hidden within. Downstage, beneath the red smudge of a playbill, is Rossi's face in anxious folds, a withered cheek in the cup of one hand, an elbow on the arm of the carved chair; the muscles in his knees are tensed, at his temple an artery pulses. Upstage, in the depths of the perspective, I see the softly delineated face of the feminine Kemble,
*
Kean's
*
sharp cheekbones and clenched jaw, and finally, at the vanishing point, head thrown back, an arrogant smile on his lips, eyes half closed, the ironic mask—now flashing, now fading in a shimmer of glints and shadows—of Richard Burbage.
*
It's hard to tell from this distance, but he seems to have closed his book: read from cover to cover, it lies immobile on his knees. I shift my gaze back: some faces are in shadow, others are looking away. Yes, and I shift back, incidentally, to the play.”

The door in the depths, rising like a curtain, emits a harsh light and two figures: the
ROLE
sweeps in with the air of a cicerone, followed by
STERN
looking shyly about. He wears black hose (undone shoelaces straggling) and a short-skirted doublet donned in haste. Slowly—step by step—they pass down the rows of Hamlets buried in their books.

ROLE: You're in luck. This is exactly the scene you want. Take your pick: from Shakespeare to the present.

STERN (
pointing to several empty seats
): Why are they empty?

ROLE: They, you see, are for future Hamlets. Play me, and I too will be sitting pretty, if not here then on a stool off to the side. Instead, here we've come all this way—from world to world—and have to stand. You know what, let's forget this land of achievements and go to the land of conceptions: there's plenty of room there.

STERN: No. I must look here. What's that? (
Over the tops of the arches—high up—rush sounds of applause, then silence.
)

ROLE: That was a flock of clappings. They fly in here too sometimes: like birds of passage—from world to world. But I can't stay any longer: I'll be missed in conceiverdom. Come with me. Do.

STERN
shakes his head, his guide leaves; he is alone—among words, in words. Like a beggar staring through a shop window, he gazes hungrily at the rows of roles. He takes one step, then another. He hesitates. His eyes, working their way through the semidarkness, now descry, motionless in the depths, the magnificent figure of Richard Burbage
.

STERN: That's the one.

But then another Hamlet, who has long put his book aside the better to observe the newcomer, rises from his seat and bars the way.
STERN
steps back in alarm, but the
ROLE
too is embarrassed and almost frightened: stepping out of the semidarkness into the light, it reveals the holes and patches on its borrowed and badly made cloak; its stubbly face wears an ingratiating smile.

ROLE: Are you from there? (STERN
gives an affirmative nod.
) It shows. Perhaps I could ask you: why am I no longer acted? Have you heard? Everyone knows, of course, that Zamtutyrsky
*
the tragic actor is an arrant drunk and a scoundrel. But it's not fair. To begin with, he didn't learn me. You can imagine how pleasant it is to be not-learned: either you are, or you are not. In that benotbeness, in the third act, we got so muddled that if not for the prompter … And since then, not a single performance. Not one call: to existence. Tell me, what's become of him? All washed up is he? Or has he changed types? If you go back, give him a talking-to. It's not fair: he created me, he should play me. Otherwise—(STERN
tries to push past the parody, but it keeps talking
). For my part, if there's anything I can do …

STERN: I'm looking for the book in the third act.
*
I've come for its meaning.

ROLE: Why didn't you say so? Here. Only don't forget to return it. Zamtutyrsky, like you, built his whole performance around this book: he didn't know me at all, so he'd wander around the stage and whatever happened—he'd look in the book. “Since Hamlet can look in the book in the third act,” he'd say, “then why not in the second, or in the fifth? He doesn't take his revenge,” he'd say, “because he doesn't have time: he's a busy, bookish, erudite man, an intellectual; he reads and reads, can't tear himself away: he's too busy to kill.” So if you're curious, have a look: the Polevoi
*
translation, Pavlenkov
*
edition.

STERN
pushes past Zamtutyrsky's leech-like role and proceeds into the depths of the perspective to the proud profile of
BURBAGE.
He stands there, not daring to speak.
BURBAGE
doesn't notice at first, then his eyelids slowly rise.

BURBAGE: Why is he here, this being that casts a shadow?

STERN: That you might welcome him as a shade.

BURBAGE: What are you trying to say, newcomer?

STERN: That I am a man who has envied his shadow: it can grow smaller or larger, whereas I am always equal to myself, the same man of the same inches, days, and thoughts. I have long since ceased to need the sun's light, I prefer the footlights; all my life I have searched for the Land of Roles; but it refuses to accept me. I am only a conceiver, you see, I cannot complete anything: the letters hidden inside your book—O great image—shall remain forever unread by me.

BURBAGE: You never know. I've lived here for three hundred years, far from the extinguished footlights. Time enough to finish thinking all one's thoughts. And you know, better to be an extra there, on earth, than a leading actor here, in the world of played-out plays. Better to be a dull and rusty blade than a precious but empty scabbard; indeed, better to be somehow or other than not to be magnificently: I would not struggle with that dilemma now. If you truly want—

STERN: Oh, I do!

BURBAGE: Then let's trade places: why shouldn't a role play an actor playing roles?

They trade cloaks. Buried in their books, the Hamlets don't notice
BURBAGE
(who has already mastered
STERN
's walk and mannerisms) moving toward the exit with his beret pulled low over his face.

STERN: I'll wait for you. (
He turns around to Burbage's empty seat and sees the book, its brass clasps twinkling.
) He forgot his book. Too late: he's gone. (
He sits down on the edge of the chair and examines the closed clasps with curiosity. All about him, he again hears pages rustling and the soft: “Words-words-words.”
) I'll wait.

Third position: Backstage. Perched on a low bench by the stage door is
PHELYA
, a notebook on her knees. Rocking back and forth with her hands over her ears, she is learning her role.

PHELYA: My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet …

Enter
GUILDEN.

GUILDEN: Is Stern here?

PHELYA: No.

GUILDEN: You better warn him: if he skips rehearsal again today, the role goes to me.

BURBAGE (
appears in the doorway, behind the speakers' backs. In an aside
): The role has gone, it's true: but not from him and not to you.

GUILDEN
exits through a side door.
PHELIA
again bends over her notebook.

PHELIA: My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,

No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,

Ungartered, and down-gyvèd to his ankle,

Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,

And with a look so piteous in purport,

As if he had been loosèd out of hell

To speak of horrors—he—

BURBAGE (
finishing the line
): “He comes before me.” Isn't that how it goes? My knees are knocking each other. No wonder—after walking all that way. But it would take too long to tell you about it.

PHELIA (
staring at him in astonishment
): Darling, how well you've entered the role.

BURBAGE: Your darling has entered something else.