The Comedienne Part 55

Her thoughts and feelings were breaking and snapping under the tremendous strain and tears of hopeless abandonment flooded her eyes. She went to the dressing-room and sat down in the darkest corner.

Her dreams were crumbling to pieces: those wonderful realms were vanis.h.i.+ng and sinking away in the misty distance, those enchanting visions were waving like torn rags in her brain and soul.

The dull grayness of the dirty walls and decorations about her and the throng of shabby, jeering beggars seemed to saturate and oppress her whole being. She felt so utterly weary, broken, sick, and helpless that she went out into the hall to look for Wladek to take her home, but she could not find him. He had cautiously disappeared, so Janina went back to the dressing-room and sat there in a daze.

"Beware of dreams! Beware of water!" she repeated to herself, remembering with difficulty who had told her that. And suddenly, Janina became pale and reeled back for such a chaos began to whirl in her brain that she thought she would go mad . . . .

For a long time she sat in a senseless torpor and wept without being able to restrain herself, for after partly regaining her consciousness the memory of all her sufferings and disappointments came back to her again. At last utterly worn out, and, lulled by the silence that enveloped the theater after the rehearsal, she fell asleep.

She was awakened by Rosinska who on that day had come earlier to the dressing-room, for she was to begin the play. When she saw the sleeping girl, the older actress was moved to pity. The remaining shreds of her womanhood covered by the artificiality of theatrical life, awoke in her at the sight of that pale face, worn by poverty and dejection.

"Miss Janina--" whispered Rosinska tenderly.

Janina arose and began nervously to wipe away the traces of tears from her face.

"Have you not seen Mr. Niedzielski?" she asked Rosinska.

"No. My poor child, so that is what they have done to you! But you must not take it so much to heart. If you want to be an artist you must bear a great deal, suffer a great deal. My dear, if you only knew what I had to go through and still have to. If you wanted to grieve over all the afflictions that come to you, become irritated over all the gossip they spread about you or weep over every intrigue in which they try to entangle you, you would have neither any tears, nor eyes, nor strength left! There's no use crying over it, for things can't be any different in the theater! Moreover, you haven't lost anything by it! That one disappointment makes you richer by one more experience."

"Perhaps they are right, after all. I must have no talent whatever, if Cabinski took away the role from me . . . ."

"It is just because you have a talent that they played this trick on you. I heard what the cousin of that amateur said at the first rehearsal."

"What good will all that do me, when I can't play and have nothing to live on."

"That is all the doing of Majkowska. She forced Cabinski to take the role away from you."

"I know she bears me a grudge, but I can't conceive why she should revenge herself in such an inhuman way!"

"You don't know her yet. . . . I don't know what you two quarreled about, but I do know that when she saw you on the stage at the first rehearsal she became so greatly afraid that you might eclipse her that she immediately began to lay plans for your undoing. I saw how she hung about that amateur, how she fawned upon his cousin and Cabinski, how she kissed the hands of the directress! I saw with my own eyes! Did you ever hear of anyone degrading one's self in that manner? But she attained her end. She has already done away with many another in the same way. You probably do not know what I, an actress of long standing and with so large a repertory, have to suffer on her account. You could not notice what was being schemed, for it was all done so quickly that besides myself, probably no one else knew about it. Such a creature as she always has luck! But wait I will fix her to-day! I'll pay her back for the both of us!"

The dressing-room slowly began to fill with actresses, their noisy chatter and the smell of powder and pigments that were being warmed over the candles. They were beginning to dress.

At last Majkowska came in, stately and triumphant, with a bouquet in her hands and roses in her corsage. Seeing Janina sitting alongside of Rosinska she frowned and cried angrily: "If I am not mistaken, this is not the dressing-room of the chorus girls."

"You are mistaken, you pantomime artist!" retorted Rosinska.

"I am not speaking to you."

"But I am answering you. Please stay here," she said, turning to Janina who wanted to leave.

"Don't you begin with me! Do you think I'm going to dress together with novices, eh?"

"Wait, you'll get a separate cell with a strait-jacket of your own.

You can't miss it."

"Shut your mouth! You forty-year-old simp."

"My age is none of your business, you ruined heroine!"

"She looks like a drenched hen on the stage and yet dares to raise her voice here."

Everybody in the dressing-room was shaking with laughter, while Rosinska and Majkowska began to quarrel ever more vulgarly, without however interrupting for a moment their make-up and hasty dressing.

Janina listened to the quarrel in silence. She hardly felt any grievance toward Majkowska for depriving her of the role, but only a physical aversion to her person. Majkowska now appeared to her so filthy, brazen, and base that even her voice sounded disgusting.

Only when they began to play Doctor Robin, Janina stood behind the scenes to see what would be done with her role. It is impossible to describe that subtle, excruciating pain that rent her soul when she saw Majkowska as "Mary" on the stage. She felt that that other woman was tearing out piecemeal from her brain and heart every word, every gesture, every pose and accent.

"They are mine, mine!" she breathed, unable to help herself. "Mine!"

And she devoured Mela with her eyes and then closed them so that she might not behold any more of it, nor torment herself with remembering the role as she had conceived it. "The thief!" she finally whispered so loudly that Majkowska trembled on the stage.

Rosinska sat behind the scenes on the other side of the stage. As soon as Majkowska entered there began a scene upon the stage for she repeated each word after Mela in an undertone and in a false intonation, laughed aloud at her acting, ridiculed and mimicked her gestures.

At first Majkowska paid no attention to this, but finally she could no longer refrain from looking behind the scenes and could not help hearing that raillery and mimicry of herself. She could not catch the prompter's words and stopped short in the middle of a sentence, while Rosinska continued to crowd her ever more mercilessly.

Majkowska grew furious with impotent rage, but her playing was becoming worse all the time and she felt it, and began to throw herself about the stage as though she were obsessed. Behind every scene she saw faces laughing at her; even Dobek in his box stopped his mouth with his hand so heartily amused was he by what was going on. That deprived Majkowksa of the rest of her self-control.

As soon as she left the stage she threw herself at Rosinska with her fists. There arose such a rumpus that the men had to part the two actresses, for they had begun pulling the hair out of each other's wigs. Majkowska was forcibly led to the dressing-room. She raged like a mad woman and got an attack of hysteria. She smashed mirrors, tore up costumes, and tossed about so violently that they had to call a doctor and tie her hands and feet.

Cabinska pulled out the rest of his hair in despair, but the actors laughed in their dressing-rooms and enjoyed themselves immensely.

The curtain had to be lowered in the middle of the play, and Topolski, almost pale with anger announced to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen! Because of the sudden and serious indisposition of Miss Majkowska, Doctor Robin cannot be concluded. The following play on the program will immediately begin."

Janina despite the satisfaction that she felt at the fiasco of her enemy, began to feel sorry for Majkowska when she saw her senseless and suffering. She was not yet enough of an actress to feel indifferent to it, so she went to her, but seeing in the room the doctor, and Cabinski, who was quarreling with Rosinska she hastily retreated.

Rosinska, Wolska, and Mirowska declared outright to Cabinski that if Majkowska remained in the company they would leave it the very next day.

Cabinski fled, but he next ran into Stanislawski and Krzykiewicz who told him the same with the addition that they would not remain a day longer with him for they were ashamed to be in a company where such public scandals occurred.

The director almost went crazy, for he was not prepared for such a thing. He tried to squirm out of it as best as he could, made promises, gave orders on the treasurer to all who wanted them and, spying Janina called aloud to her with the object of mollifying somewhat his previous conduct: "If you want something from the treasurer, I will give you an order, for I must leave right away."

Janina asked for five rubles. He did not even so much as make a wry face but gave it to her and immediately ran off to Pepa, but on the way he was again tackled by that amateur and his cousin and things began to grow so noisy behind the scenes that the public listened uneasily, wondering what was the matter.

The performance was concluded amid the silence of the audience; not one handclap sounded.

Janina, on leaving the box office with the money, met Niedzielska hobbling slowly along.

She stopped and wanted to greet her, but Niedzielska looked at her threateningly and barked: "What do you want, you! you!" She coughed violently, threatened Janina with her cane with which she supported herself, and dragged herself on.

Janina unconsciously looked about her, to see if she could spy Wladek anywhere, but he had already vanished. She had not seen him since that morning.

Wladek purposely avoided her, for he had reached the decisive conclusion that it was better to have intercourse only with ordinary women, for with them it was not necessary to restrain one's self, to pretend, and to be continually forced to take everything into account. Moreover, Janina had made a fiasco as an actress and continued to be nothing but a chorus girl, and his mother had threatened to disinherit him because of her.

Janina gazed for a long time after the old woman, who, no doubt, was going to seek her son, and then she went slowly home.

CHAPTER X