CHAPTER VI
"Will you find it comfortable here?"
"I think so. It is quiet and light. . . . Who lived here before me?"
"Miss Nicolette. She is now at the Warsaw Theater . . . That's a good omen."
"No, not entirely. They are likely not to engage her. . . ."
"Oh, they'll engage her all right. . . . Miss Zarnecka is clever," said Mme. Anna, the daughter of Sowinska into whose home Janina had just moved.
She was twenty-four years old, neither homely nor pretty with an indefinite color of hair and eyes, but with a very definite slenderness and bad temper.
She conducted a dressmaking establishment under the name of Mme. Anna and although she made her living on actresses and very often received free tickets to the theater, she never went there and hated artists. There were often scenes over this with her mother, but old Sowinska, would not so much as listen to any suggestion that she should abandon the theater. She had become so deeply rooted there that she could not tear herself away, although Mme. Anna would turn almost yellow from shame over the fact that her mother was a theatrical seamstress. She was disgustingly stingy, ignorant, pitiless, and jealous.
Mme. Anna examined Janina's wardrobe with ill-concealed malice.
"All that will have to be made over, for it smells of the country," she decreed.
Janina began to protest a little, maintaining that the same styles could often be seen in the streets.
"Yes, but who wears them, please take notice of that: shop women or shoemakers' wives; a self-respecting woman will not wear such rags!" Mme. Anna scornfully persisted.
"Well then, have them made over. I can pay you immediately for the work and also a full month's rent in advance."
"Oh, there's no hurry. You'll need to buy a few costumes."
"I'll have enough left for that."
Janina paid thirty rubles for her room.
"I am already settled for good," she later said to the old woman who dropped in to see her.
"Bosh, it won't be for long! In two months you'll be moving again. An actor's life is a gypsy life, from wagon to wagon, from town to town. . . ."
"Perhaps at some time I'll be able to settle down permanently," said
Janina.
Sowinska smiled gloomily. "That is the way one thinks in the beginning, but afterwards . . . afterwards it ends in eternal wandering. . . . You become worn-out like a rag and die on a hotel bed."
"Not all end in that way," answered Janina gaily, paying little attention.
"What are you laughing at? . . . It's not at all funny!" cried
Sowinska.
"Am I laughing? . . . I merely said that not all end in that way."
"All ought to end in that way, every one of them!" Sowinska shouted angrily and left.
Janina could not understand either her violent anger, or her last words.
The days sped on. Janina absorbed the theater into herself ever more deeply. She attended the rehearsals regularly, afterwards went to give lessons for two hours to Cabinska's daughter, and later would go home for dinner, prepare her wardrobe for the performance, and at about eight in the evening start off again for the theater.
On the days when no operettas were played and the choruses were free, she went to the Summer Theater and there, squeezed high up in the gallery, spent entire evenings dreaming. She devoured with her eyes the actresses, their gestures, costumes, mimicry, and voices. She followed the action of the plays so closely that later she could re-create them in her mind with detailed accuracy and often, after returning from the theater, she would light the candles, stand before the large mirror, and repeat the acting which she had seen, observing intently every quiver of her facial expression and trying out every conceivable pose. But she was seldom satisfied with herself.
The plays which she saw left her cold and bored. She was not stirred by the bourgeois dramas with their eternal conventional conflicts and flirtations. She repeated the banal lines of these plays apathetically and in the midst of some scene would stop and go to bed.
She asked Cabinski to give her a role in the cast of a new play, but he put her off with nothing.
"I am keeping you in mind, but first you must familiarize yourself with the stage. . . . When we present some melodrama or folk play you will get a bigger role . . ." was all he said.
In the meanwhile they were playing only operettas, for they filled the theater.
Janina smiled in reply to Cabinski's vague promises, although torn by impatience. But she had already learned to control her feelings and to wear a mask of smiling indifference. She consoled herself with the thought that sooner or later she would have done with the chorus and that the moment must at last arrive when she would appear in a real role.
She had already become saturated with the atmosphere in which she lived. And that public, so strange and capricious, which some accused of ignorance, of a total lack of taste and higher desires, and others of indifference, but to which all paid homage and before which they all cringed and trembled, begging its favors that public even filled Janina with anger. There was something strange in her attitude. She would dress very fastidiously for the stage, merely for the purpose of attracting attention to herself; she would adopt the most graceful poses, but whenever she felt the gaze of the multitude it would send a depressing shudder through her.
"Shoemakers!" she would whisper scornfully, thereafter remaining in the shadow.
In the dressing-room chorus girls passively submitted to Janina, for they feared her, knowing that she had intimate and continual relations with the management. They were likewise impressed by the fact that Wladek followed her continually and that Kotlicki, who formerly used to come behind the scenes only occasionally, now sat there daily throughout the whole performance and conversed with Janina with his hat off. She was surrounded by a sort of invisible aura of unconscious respect, for although many surmises were made about her on account of Kotlicki, no one ever dared insinuate anything to her face.
At first, Janina inclined toward the leading actresses of the company and wanted to enter upon a more intimate acquaintance with them, but they discouraged her, for whenever she began to speak to them about the theater or about art, they would become silent, or else commence to tell her about their own triumphs.
Stanislawski and the stage-director were Janina's sincere friends. Many times during the rehearsals they would go upstairs to the deserted dressing-rooms or to the storeroom under the stage, and there tell stories of the theater and the actors of their day an epoch that was already dead. They would conjure up before her eyes great figures, great souls, and great passions almost like those she had dreamed of.
How much advice they gave her concerning enunciations, classical pose, and the best manner of reciting her lines! She listened with interest, but when she tried to play the fragment of some role according to their instructions, she found she could not do it, and they would then appear so stiff, pathetic and unnatural that she began to treat them with an indulgent pity.
With Mme. Anna, Janina lived on a footing of cool politeness. With Sowinska she was a little more intimate, for the old woman fawned upon her as a tenant who regularly paid her rent in advance. Sowinska was coarse and violent. There were certain days that she would eat nothing, nor even go to the theater, but would sit locked in her room, crying, or at moments swearing extraordinarily.
After such days she seemed even more energetic and would indulge with greater zest in behind-the-stage intrigues. She would walk among the audience and speak quietly with the young men who hung about the theater. She would bring the actresses invitations to suppers, bouquets, candy, and letters and would seek with a genuine zeal to induce the stubborn ones to yield to the advances made to them. She accompanied the girls as a chaperon to carousals and knew just when to find an important reason for leaving. At such times there would gleam under her mask of kindhearted and wrinkled old age an expression of cruel glee.
Janina overheard once how the old woman spoke to Shepska, who had joined the theater after being seduced by a member of the chorus.
"Listen to me, madame! . . . What does your lover give you? A home on Brewery Street and sardines with tea for breakfast, dinner and supper. . . . It's a shame to waste yourself on such a poor fool! Don't you know that you could live as comfortably as you wish and laugh at Cabinski! Why should you have scruples! . . . A person profits by life only as he enjoys it! . . . A young and pretty girl ought not waste herself on a penniless nobody. . . . Perhaps you think you will the sooner get a role by remaining where you are? . . . Oho! when pears grow on a pine tree! Only those are given roles who have someone backing them."
Usually she accomplished her purpose, and though often offered costly presents, seldom accepted anything.
"I don't want them. If I advise anyone, it's because I wish them well," she would answer briefly.
Janina who had learned enough of the more intimate phases of life behind the scenes, regarded Sowinska with a certain awe. She knew that it was not for gain that the old woman shoved the younger ones into the mire of degradation, but for some hidden reason. At times, she feared her, unable to endure the enigmatic look with which Sowinska scrutinized her face. She felt instinctively that Sowinska seemed to be waiting for something or watching for some opportunity.
On one of those lachrymose days of Sowinska's Janina, who was just starting for the theater, dropped in to see her.
Entering the room she stood amazed. Sowinska was kneeling beside an open trunk, while on the bed, the table and the chairs were spread the parts of some theatrical costume and on the floor were lying stacks of faded copies of roles. Sowinska was holding in her hand the photograph of a young man with a strange face, long and so thin that all the cheek bones could be seen distinctly protruding through the skin. He had an abnormally high forehead with wide temples and a huge head. Large eyes gazed out of the pale face like the sunken hollows in a dead man's skull.
Sowinska turned to the girl with the photograph in her hands and in a voice trembling with anguish, whispered: "Look, this is my son . . . and these are my sacred relics!"
"Was he an artist?"
"An artist? . . . I should say so, but not like those monkeys of Cabinski's. How he played! The papers wrote about him. He was in Plock and I went to see him. When he appeared in The Robbers the whole theater shook with applause and cries of admiration. I sat behind the scenes and when I heard his voice and saw him I was so overcome with emotion that I thought I would die for very joy!
"I loved him so dearly that I would have let myself be torn to shreds for him! . . . He was an artist, an artist! He never owned a penny and poverty often devoured him like a dog, but I tried to help him as much as I could. I slaved for him and lived on nothing but tea and bread to save something for him."
She ceased speaking while tears flowed softly down her faded, pale face.
Janina, after a long silence, asked quietly: "Where is your son now?"
"Where?" she answered, rising from the floor. "Where? . . . He is dead! He shot himself."
She began to breathe heavily.
"My whole life has been like that!" she began again. "His father was a tailor and I kept a shop. In the beginning all went well for we had plenty of money and a decent home. My husband worked for a circus and shortly a performer caught his eye and he followed her into the world when the circus moved on."
She sighed heavily.
"I merely set my teeth tightly together. I toiled like a galley slave to gain a mere living for myself and daughter, but I was stricken by an epidemic. When I came out of it, everything went to the dogs, for my shop was sold to cover my debts. I was practically turned out into the street without a penny. An unspeakable rage seized me. I borrowed money wherever I could and together with my child went to seek my husband. I found him living with a shopkeeper in such comfort that he had forgotten all about us. I took him by the neck and brought him back with us to Warsaw. . . . He staid with me a whole year, bestowed another child upon me, and ran away again. My daughter grew up, we took home sewing, and managed to make a living somehow.
"Then after some years they brought back my husband stone-blind. I gave him a nook in my home, for my children desired it. God was at least merciful enough to take him away.
"Later, I married off my daughter to a peasant. One day about two years ago, I was present at my daughter's name day party to which a few relatives and friends had been invited. In the midst of it they brought me a telegram from Suwalki asking me to come immediately, for my son was very ill."
She paused for a moment, gazed blankly about the room and in a low voice, filled with despair whispered on, lifting her pale face to Janina's:
"He was already dead. . . . They were waiting for me to bury him. . . ."
"Later they told me that he had fallen in love with a chorus girl and killed himself for her! They showed her to me. She was the vilest sort. And that was why he killed himself . . . .
"When I caught her in the street, I would have killed her, killed her like a mad dog to avenge my wrong and anguish! . . ." Sowinska shouted aloud, clenching her fists.
"Such is my life, such! I curse it every day, but cannot forget . . . all that still burns here in my bosom . . . I am in the theater, for it always seems to me that he will return, that he is already dressing and will immediately appear on the stage . . ."
"My God, God! . . . Ah, it was not he that was to blame, but she . . . you girls tear to pieces a mother's heart . . . I would trample you all underfoot like so many worms, into the mud, into poverty, so that you might agonize as I do . . . so that you might suffer, suffer, suffer. . . ."
She ceased, breathing heavily. Her yellow waxen face glared with wild hatred. Her wrinkles twitched and her pale bitten lips seethed.
Janina had been standing all the while eagerly absorbing her every word and gesture. The overwhelming reality of Sowinska's grief, so simple and strong, had called forth a responsive chord in her own heart.
She was standing in the street, wondering where she should go, when a voice behind her said: "Good morning, Miss Orlowska!"
She turned about quickly. Mrs. Niedzielska, Wladek's mother, was standing before her with a smile on her aged, simple face.
Janina greeted her hastily.
"I was about to take a walk," she said.
"Perhaps you will drop into my house for a minute? . . ." begged Niedzielska quietly. "I am so much alone that often for whole days I don't see anyone except Anna and the janitor."
She hobbled slowly along.
"Certainly, I still have a little time before the performance," answered Janina.
"You're not in the theater very long, are you?"
"Only three weeks."
"I could tell that right away!"
"How?"
"I can't exactly explain. I watched you at Cabinska's party and immediately knew that you were a newcomer. I even mentioned it to Wladek . . ."
"Please make yourself at home. . . . I'll be with you in a minute." Niedzielska played hostess quite grandly, once they were arrived at her home.
Janina, left alone, observed with curiosity the old-fashioned mahogany table covered with an embroidered net doily which stood before a huge lounge upholstered with black horsehair; the chairs, upholstered with the same material, had lyre-shaped backs. A yellow polished dresser was filled with grotesque porcelain, greenish pitchers, colored bric-a-brac, wineglasses with monograms, and flower-painted teacups standing on high legs. A clock under a bell glass, old, faded steel engravings of the Empire period, a lamp with a green shade on a separate table, a few pots with miserable flowers on the window sill and two cages with canaries constituted the entire furnishings.
"Let us have a drink of coffee . . ." said Niedzielska, reentering.
She took from the dresser two showy cups and placed them on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and brought in the coffee, already poured into two chipped bowls, and a plate with a few stale cakes.
"O goodness, I forgot that I had already set the cups on the table . . . well, it doesn't matter. We can drink the coffee just as well out of these, can't we? . . ." she said, at once adding, "dear me, I forgot the sugar! Do you like your coffee sweet, mademoiselle?"
The old woman left the room and through the door Janina could hear her taking sugar out of a glass bowl. She brought in on a little saucer two lumps.
"Please have some in your coffee. . . . You see at my age I can't have anything sweet," she said, drinking audibly.
Finally, after perhaps half an hour, in which her hostess chattered interminably and Janina listened with increasing weariness, the girl got up to go, and at the very door she met Wladek.
"Visiting my mother!" he exclaimed.
"Certainly. There's nothing wrong in that," she answered, smiling at his confusion.
"Heavens! No doubt she's been telling you what a scoundrel I am. I beg your pardon for having had to listen."
"Oh, it didn't offend me in the least."
"It only made you laugh, I know. The whole theater is laughing at my expense, for all the ladies have already been here."
"Your mother loves you," Janina spoke seriously.
"That love is beginning to choke me like a bone in my throat!" he answered sourly and wanted to add something else, but Janina bowed silently and passed on.
Wladek did not have the courage to follow her and went upstairs.
"What is happening in my own home?" she thought as she walked toward the theater. "What is my father doing? . . ."
And she suddenly felt within herself a glimmer of sympathy for that tyrant. She saw now how lonely he must be among strangers who ridiculed his eccentricities.
During the whole performance, the vision of her father constantly recurred in her memory. She asked herself what it was that had made him so cruel, and why he hated her?
Kotlicki brought her a bouquet of roses. She received it coolly, without even glancing at him.
"I see that you are out of sorts to-day," he said, taking her hand.
She pulled it away.
Majkowska, who was just then passing, whispered, pointing to Rosinska: "What a scarecrow! What conventional acting! She is incapable of producing even a single accent of true feeling!"
Behind Janina some gentleman in a high hat was pressing the hands of one of the chorus girls.
"Things are turning out fine, for to-morrow, there will be no rehearsal and we can go to Bielany in the afternoon. Wait for us at your home, we will drop in and take you along with us," whispered Mimi.
"I also am going on that outing," said Kotlicki, "you are going too, aren't you?"
"Probably . . . but if I couldn't go it would be just as great a success."
"In that case I wouldn't go either."
He bent so closely over Janina that she felt his breath upon her face.
"I don't understand you," she said, moving away from him.
"I am going along only for your sake," he whispered in a still quieter tone.
"For my sake? . . ." she queried, glancing at him sharply, and stirred by a sudden aversion.
"Yes . . . surely you must have guessed by now that I love you," said Kotlicki, drawing together his lips which were trembling and looking at her pleadingly.
"There they say the same, only they play a little better!" she remarked scornfully, pointing to the stage.
Kotlicki drew himself erect, a sullen shadow passed over his equine face, his eyes gleaming threateningly.
"I will convince you! . . ."
"Very well, but to-morrow at Bielany, not now," Janina coolly extended her hand in farewell and left for the dressing-room.
Kotlicki gazed after her covetously, biting his lips.
"A comedienne!" he finally whispered, leaving the theater.