My Darling,
The train was an hour late out of Penn Station; there was a fire on a platform in Newark, or so they told us, and then there was a further delay while they switched tracks; it was almost three hours to Philly. Normally this would have made me livid but I was in such a daze of euphoria and so hopeful about the future, our future, that I scarcely minded. I got to the apartment around eight and there he was, unwashed, unshaven, sitting on the couch with the remote between his legs, flipping through the stations. The volume was deafening and I had the sense that he heard me coming from the hall and turned it up just to annoy me.
‘I’m back,’ I said, standing behind him.
‘How did it go?’ he asked. I didn’t want him to see my face because I knew it was suffused with joy and it’s hard on him when good things happen to me. ‘It went really well,’ I said. ‘I got a part.’
‘What?’ he said.
I pitched my voice very low, barely audible. ‘I got a part,’ I said. He flicked off the TV and turned around to look at me, not certain himself, I thought, how he was going to react.
‘What part did you get?’
‘Elena.’
‘I think Sonya has more lines,’ he said. Not for the first time,
I was grateful we don’t have children.
‘Guy,’ I said, ‘Elena is a great role and I’m perfect for her.’
‘Why? Because she’s beautiful and useless?’
I laughed. ‘Perhaps.’
‘And because she married a man she despises.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Elena doesn’t despise Serebryakov.’
‘Was Papp there?’
‘He was.’
‘Is he a big guy?’
‘No, small.’
Then he smiled. ‘So you’re going to play Elena at the Public,’ he said.
‘I can hardly believe it.’
‘Who’s playing Vanya?’
‘Max Brokoff.’
‘That’s good. Who’s playing Astrov?’ He stood up and put the remote on top of the set, then, because I hadn’t answered, he turned a cold, suspicious eye on me and repeated the question.
‘Edward Day,’ I said.
‘Oh, really,’ he said.
‘I knew you’d be upset,’ I said. ‘But it’s not important. It just happened and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.’
He paced around in front of me, looking for something. ‘Uncle Vanya, Uncle Vanya,’ he said. ‘Ah, here they are.’ It was his cigarettes. He lit one up and blew a ring in my direction, very contemptuous and cool. ‘If I remember correctly, Astrov and Elena kiss twice,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Once very briefly; Vanya interrupts them, and then near the end, as she’s leaving.’
‘So you’ll be kissing Ed Day twice a night for what, six weeks?’
‘I won’t be me and Ed won’t be him, we’ll be Russians, for God’s sake. It’s a play. We kiss in front of two hundred people. If you want to see it, I’ll get you a ticket. I’m married now, the past is over. We’re professionals. He knows it, I know it and you know it.’
‘He knows it. How does he know it?’
‘I told him,’ I said. ‘We had coffee and I told him.’
Which is true, darling, I wasn’t lying. We did have coffee and I did tell you we would have to be professional and forget the past. But my hand was shaking so badly I couldn’t lift the cup without rattling it in the saucer, and you rested your hand on my arm and you said, ‘It’s been nearly eight years. It will be eight years next Thursday.’
‘You had coffee?’ Guy said.
‘Yes. At Dante’s.’
‘And after that?’
And here of course I did lie. I said I came straight home. He went to his desk and pushed a few pages around. ‘When do rehearsals start?’ he asked. ‘April 15.’
‘Opening?’
I couldn’t answer him. I stared at him and I felt my blood thinning in my veins. I knew exactly what he meant to do, and I knew I couldn’t stop him. He’s going to shadow me like a body double through the whole production. My darling, we’ll never be alone!
He looked up from his calendar with his chilly smile. ‘About the end of May?’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ I said. I gave myself over to loathing him. Why, I asked myself, am I bound to this wretch. I had the paradoxical wish that he hadn’t saved you that night, so long ago, when we were all so innocent – or at least you and I were innocent – I sometimes think Guy was born cruel. If he hadn’t saved you, we would have no debt to him and we could tell him to go to the devil, but of course, there would be no we because you wouldn’t be here. Because he saved your life, I can’t entirely despise him, and I know now, as I’ve never understood before, that I am not entirely myself when I’m away from you, that your life is as dear to me as my own.
As if he was reading my mind – I sometimes think he can – he said, ‘I save his life, he fucks my wife. Does that strike you as fair, Madeleine?’
‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘It was over long ago.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘Well, in that case I know how pleased you’ll be that I can go with you. As it happens, my calendar is completely clear.’
Two kisses, my love. Two kisses in front of two hundred strangers, six nights a week and twice on Saturdays. That’s what we are to have, that’s what will be allowed. My Elena will be the most ensnared, frustrated, beaten-down Elena the stage has yet seen, and those stolen kisses with Astrov so charged with burning passion and cruel restraint the audience will think that Anton Chekhov sat down at his desk a hundred years ago with Madeleine Delavergne in his mind’s eye, pleading for the right to live free of family, duty, and the indifferent tyranny of her tiresome husband, free to live only for love. How we will astound them as our lips meet and our hearts race, our senses yearning towards each other – just as we did this afternoon at the door to that marvelous hotel room – and Guy Margate will be there, in the front row, night after night, powerless to do anything but look on. It will be our secret triumph over him, and no one will know what it cost us and why we must pay and pay and pay the price.
But know this, my dearest love, the day you say we’ve paid enough, Anton Chekhov and Guy Margate be damned, this time I’ll find my courage, bid good riddance to my conscience, and be forever and
Entirely yours,
Madeleine