ONE HOT NIGHT

TWO LONG MUDDY TRACKS trailed out of the cloakroom and pointed the way through the empty foyer, past Mitya’s office, and down a hallway to the small smoke-filled theatre. It was packed. The house lights had been dimmed and on the stage, at the far end of the room, Kolia and a handful of other actors.

Pavel squeezed into a chair between a rather unattractive girl with long legs and a guy wearing a singlet with the word Mir printed on it in red, who smelled vaguely of rotting apples. Everyone was already in their seats, and the room felt as hot as a Turkish bathhouse. Girls were quietly fanning themselves with whatever was at hand, while the young men mopped their brows, necks, and underarms with handkerchiefs. Pavel’s arrival had gone unnoticed, and he quickly removed his shoes and sat cross-legged on the straight-backed chair.

Most of the actors overplayed their roles, which Pavel found unbearable. The absence of subtlety and nuance showed an ignorance of the text that was almost criminal. They were ripping the play apart limb from limb — something any professional artist, circus clowns included, would find painful. Exerting as much self-control as he could, Pavel followed the performance attentively, closing his eyes or staring at the floor during the worst moments. Kolia had very few lines and hence little opportunity to overact. Alongside the characters of Oliver Twist and Fagin’s pickpockets, who were all adolescents in this production, he had been given the role of the Artful Dodger. But the face that had intrigued Pavel when they first met in the tavern — an ageless face that was marked with a personal history that could be understood without him saying a word — was completely transformed. Kolia fully inhabited the character, he became someone other than himself. At least, he made the audience believe that. On stage, he moved with a fluid precision which his few lines in no way diminished, and it gave Pavel an idea.

The troupe took its final bow. After the audience’s applause for their friends had been dispensed, and their cigarettes disposed of on the muddy floor, Pavel remained seated. He didn’t want to be noticed. “Quite a performance for a kid from Kamchatka,” the man in the singlet said to the tall girl beside Pavel. “Mitya likes him a lot,” replied the girl, shrugging. Their conversation was drowned out by the noise of chairs and tables being moved and stacked.

Pavel stood up and headed directly backstage. He passed Mitya in the corridor, who gave him a discreet salute.

The narrow dressing room was already awash in the smell of alcohol. When Kolia spotted Pavel, he immediately excused himself from the celebration and walked up to him, placing his hand on Pavel’s shoulder. He hadn’t worn a speck of makeup for the performance.

“I gave it my best shot,” Kolia said, offering Pavel a drink.

“I always give it my best shot. You’ll see.”

Kolia liked that about Pavel. His concise remarks were unambiguous and to the point. He invited him to join the others in a celebratory toast.

Kolia’s new friendship with a bona fide star of the circus made quite an impression on his fellow actors. Pavel was suddenly bombarded with questions and invitations to dinner — he was even asked if he would be the surprise present at Vyacheslav and Oksana’s wedding. He politely declined, using the pretext of a previous engagement to save himself from the pointless expenditure of energy such outings entailed. Spending time in the company of ordinary people exhausted him.

Word of Kolia’s association with Pavel spread back to the mole at the hostel. The following evening, Alexei invited Kolia to join him in the reading room to sample some red wine from Spain. Other than partaking of the occasional toast, Kolia drank very little, and if he did drink, he would always cut himself off before reaching the limit imposed by the pain in his stomach. He detested losing control of his body and, even more so, his mouth — talking too much and saying nothing intelligible. But that night, both fatigued and still pleased with his performance the previous evening, he allowed himself to get drunk. Just this once. But Alexei was unable to pry anything out of Kolia that the others hadn’t already mentioned regarding his association with Pavel. Even when drunk, Kolia could hold his tongue. Alexei changed the subject.

But something Kolia said in a moment of relaxed candour, somewhere between the wine and the vodka when time seemed to stand still, stayed with him. “You know, Alexei, it feels like I’ve just turned the page on the last chapter of a very long book.”