The Comedienne Part 37

"Oh the deuce take it, that won't do at all! If I attended on you for only once a week, it would give rise to so much gossip, twaddle, surmises."

"Oh I don't care what people say about me!" Janina laughed with an easy air.

"Ho! ho! I see you are of the fighting variety . . . a regular gamec.o.c.k! I like a person who treats with scant ceremony that old rag called public opinion."

"I think that as long as I have nothing to reproach myself with, I can listen calmly to what they say about me."

"Pride, a capital pride!"

"Why don't you bring out your play in the Warsaw Theater?"

"Because they did not want to produce it. That, you see, is a very elegant and highly perfumed establishment and only for a very delicate and subtly feeling public, while my play does not smell a bit of the salon; at the most, it smells of the fields, a little of the woods and a trifle of the peasant's hut. There they want, not truth, but flirtation, conventionality bluffing, etc., count up to twenty. Moreover, I had no backing, and they already have their patented play manufacturers."

"I thought it was only necessary to write something good and they would immediately produce it."

"Great Scott! No! . . . quite the reverse is true. Just look how much I must bear before even such as Cabinski presents my play! . . . Now raise that to the fourth power and only then will you have some conception of the joys of a beginning comedy writer, who, in addition, does not know how to secure patronage for his plays."

They became silent. The rain fell incessantly and was already forming big puddles of water along the road. Glogowski gazed gloomily at the city whose towers appeared outlined upon the misty horizon.

"A base city!" he grumbled angrily. "For three years I have vainly been trying to conquer it. I am struggling and killing myself, and yet, not even a dog knows me."

"If you keep on telling them that they are base knaves and fools you will never conquer them."

"I will. They will not love me, to be sure, but they will have to reckon with me, they must! However, such citadels are most easily stormed by actors, singers, and dancers. They make a clean sweep of everything with only one appearance."

"But their triumph is only for a day. After they have left the stage all trace of them is lost like that of a stone cast into the water!"

said Janina with a certain bitterness, gazing fixedly at the ever nearer appearing, crowded walls of Warsaw. Only at that moment did she realize that the fame of which she dreamed was merely the fame of a day.

"It seems to me that you have an appet.i.te for the same thing that I have," remarked Glogowski.

"I have!" she answered with emphasis and her voice resounded with the explosive force of something that had been long pent up.

"I have!" she repeated, but this time in a much quieter tone and without enthusiasm. The light died away in Janina's eyes and they strayed aimlessly over those heights of the city in the distance, without understanding anything, for she was perturbed by the thought of that ephemeral fame, for she remembered the faded wreaths of Cabinska and the bygone fame of Stanislawski, for she was thinking with growing bitterness of those thousands of famous actors who were dead and whose names even were forgotten. Janina felt a distressing conflict of feelings in her breast. She leaned more heavily on Glogowski's arm and walked on without saying another word.

At Zakroczymska Street they took a hack; Kotlicki jumped in and went along with them, forming a party of three. Janina eyed him angrily, but he pretended he did not notice it and gazed at her with his everlasting smile. Glogowski and Kotlicki accompanied her to her home. She had only enough time left to rush into the house, change her dress, take the things she needed and immediately start off again for the theater.

Because of the rain a few of the other chorus girls were also late.

Cabinski, expecting an empty house on account of the weather, was irritated and rushed up and down the stage, shouting to all those who were entering: "I see you girls are getting lazy. It is already past eight o'clock and not one of you is yet dressed."

"We have been attending vespers at the Church of St. Charles of Borromeus," explained Zielinska.

"Don't try to fool me with vespers! The deuce with vespers! Tend to that which gives you your bread!"

"You provide us so generously with it, Mr. Director!" angrily retorted Louise.

"What, I don't pay you? What else do you live on?"

"What do we live on? . . . Certainly not your absurd and merely promised salaries!"

"Oh, and you are also late?" he cried to Janina who was just entering.

"I appear only in the third act, so I still have plenty of time."

"Wicek! go run and get Miss Rosinska. Where is Sophie? Hurry up and begin! May the devil take you all!" shouted Cabinski growing exasperated.

He peered through the slit in the curtain.

"The theater is already filled, by G.o.d, and not a soul is, as yet, in the dressing-rooms! Afterwards they complain that I don't pay them! Gentlemen! for G.o.d's sake, hurry and get dressed and begin!"

"Right away, as soon as we finish this game."

A few undressed actors with their make-up half-completed were playing a game of poker. Stanislawski alone sat in a corner of the dressing-room before his mirror and was making up his face. Already for the third time he was rubbing off the paint with a towel and making up anew. He gymnasticated his mouth, contracted his brows in anger, puckered his forehead and cast all sorts of glances. He was rehearsing a character and with each change of his physiognomy, he mumbled beneath his breath the corresponding parts of his role, only now and then tossing in the direction of the card players a ten-copeck piece and two words: "A four . . . ten coppers!"

"The public is starting a rumpus! It's time to ring and begin!"

pleaded Cabinski.

"Don't disturb us, Director. Let them wait. . . . A trump! . . .

Sh.e.l.l out the coin!"

"A jack . . . you pay!"

"A queen of hearts . . . hand over five shekles!"

"All's ready! Stake something on Desdemona, Director," cried one of the players, shuffling and stacking the cards.

"She will betray me!" hissed Cabinski.

"Doesn't she betray you anyway?"

"Ring!" shouted Cabinski to the stage-director, hearing a stamping of feet in the hall.

For a few minutes nothing was heard but the rustling of cards, falling with lightning-like rapidity upon the table.

"Four aces . . . you're done for!"

"Sh.e.l.l out!"

"A jack!"

"A five . . . that's good. I'll at least make something."

"A queen of hearts."

"Have some consideration for the ladies!" persisted Cabinski.

"A queen of spades. Sh.e.l.l out!"

"Enough of that! Hurry and dress yourselves! The audience is already beginning to howl."