IV
On my way to the town gardens, I thought to myself: There’s no misfortune without some good in it. I shall be taken at once for an old and experienced sparrow. In these little summer theatres, every useless man is useful. I shall be modest at the beginning … about fifty roubles … say forty a month. The future will show. … I’ll ask for an advance of about twenty roubles … no, that’s too much … say, ten roubles. The first thing I’ll do with it will be to send a hair-raising telegram … five times five—twenty-five and a nought—two roubles fifty kopeks, and fifteen extra charge—that’s two roubles and sixty-five kopeks. On the remainder I’ll get through somehow or other until Ilia arrives. If they want to test me … well, what about it? I shall recite something—why not the monologue of Pimen in Boris Goudounov?
And I began aloud, in a deep, pompous, strangled tone:
“And yet ano—other fa—arewell word.”
A passerby jumped away from me quite frightened. I felt ashamed and cleared my throat. But I was already getting near the town gardens. A military band was playing; slim young ladies of the district, dressed in pink and sky blue, were walking about without their hats and behind them stalked, laughing aloud, their hands thrust in their jackets, their white caps rakishly on one side, the local scribes, the telegraph and excise clerks.
The doors were wide open. I went in. Someone asked me to take a ticket from the cash desk, but I said carelessly: “Where is the manager, M. Valerianov?” Two clean-shaven young men, sitting on a bench not far from the entrance, were at once pointed out to me. I approached them and halted two steps away.
They were engrossed in their conversation and took no notice of me, so I had time to examine them. One of them, in a light Panama hat and a light flannel suit with little blue stripes, had an air of sham nobility and the haughty profile of a principal lover. He was playing negligently with his walking-stick. The other, in a greyish suit, was extraordinarily long-legged and long-armed; his legs seemed to begin at the middle of his chest and his arms probably extended below his knees. Owing to this, when sitting he had the appearance of an odd, broken line, which, however, one had better describe as a folding measure. His head was very small, his face was freckled, and he had animated dark eyes.
I coughed modestly. They both turned towards me.
“Can I see M. Valerianov?” I asked amiably.
“I am he,” the freckled one answered. “What do you want?”
“You see, I wanted …”—something tickled my throat—“I wanted to offer you my services, as … as … well, as a second comic, or … well … third clown. Also character parts.”
The principal lover rose and went off whistling and brandishing his stick.
“What previous experience have you had?” Valerianov asked.
I had only been once on the stage, when I took the part of Makarka at some amateur theatricals, but I drew convulsively on my imagination and replied:
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t taken part in any important enterprise, like yours, for example, up till now. But I have occasionally acted in small troupes in the Southwest. They came to grief as quickly as they were organised … for instance Marinitch … Sokolovsky … and there were others too.”
“Look here, you don’t drink, do you?” Valerianov asked disconcertingly.
“No,” I replied without hesitation. “Sometimes at dinner, or with my friends, but quite moderately.”
M. Valerianov looked down at the sand, blinking with his dark eyes, thought for a few seconds, and then said:
“Well, all right, I’ll take you on. Twenty-five roubles a month to begin with and then we’ll see. You might be wanted even today. Go to the stage and ask for the manager’s assistant, Doukhovskoi. He will introduce you to the stage-manager.”
On my way I thought to myself: Why didn’t he ask for my stage name? Probably he forgot. Perhaps he guessed that I had none. And in case of an emergency I then and there invented a name—not particularly sonorous, a nice simple name—Ossinine.