Four days had passed since the day off.
Beginning the day after the theater director had been absent for a day, I saw the two rope handlers twice through the crack of the props room door, looking up at the stage ceiling and counting something on their fingers. Both of them shook their heads once they finished.
They had said they were only inspecting it, but their counting hands looked busy. I wondered what was happening, though the ceiling could not be seen from the props room.
When I left the blue door that morning, there was no snow in the back alley. Since the late snow stopped, only powder had settled anew each day, and the black earth beneath the wall had dried enough that stepping on it no longer wet my shoes.
Two pieces of bread were in my inner pocket. The paper that had wrapped the cookies was still underneath them, but I had no reason to take it out.
While climbing the three steps to the back door, I heard noise inside. There were many footsteps for morning, and the voices among them came not from the rehearsal room but from just inside the back door.
I pushed the door open.
More than ten people stood in the corridor. Faces from the chorus and ballet were mixed together, along with people carrying instruments, and all of them were looking at one spot on the wall inside the back door.
A sheet of paper was posted there.
There had been nothing in that spot before. It was the wall immediately to the left when one opened the back door, a place every troupe member passed at least twice a day.
A sheet the size of two palms had been nailed there with two nails.
It was the theater director’s handwriting. The neat lettering I had seen on payroll documents ran down several lines, and a long blank space remained at the bottom.
Since joining the troupe, I had never seen the theater director put a paper on the wall. His words always came to the props room through the old man.
Since words like these had gone straight to the wall without passing through the old man, it meant they were words everyone in the troupe had to hear at once.
At the sound of my cane, people gradually made room. It took me a while to read the lettering in the space they gave me, and in that time those behind me read it first and spoke first.
The notice said they would select the lead performers again.
One singer, one dancer.
The next line said, “By skill alone,” and beneath it were the word “demonstration” and a date. The blank space at the bottom was for those wishing to compete to write their names.
The date was about half a month away. I could guess what would happen before this paper during that time without waiting for the date to arrive.
I read “by skill alone” twice. It was brief for words written by someone who only ever looked at numbers atop piles of documents, and a props room worker could not judge which way those short words would roll through the troupe.
"They’re cutting five down to two."
"What happens to the other three?"
"They compete in the demonstration. Win, and you stay. Lose, and you step down."
"Even that household’s nephew?"
"That’s what the paper says. By skill alone."
There was a trace of laughter in the speaker’s voice. Those laughing and those not laughing seemed split evenly in the corridor. I joined neither side and stepped away from the wall.
I briefly wondered what the two who had supposedly thrown sheet music in the corridor would throw in front of this notice. I could not tell from the faces left in the corridor which of the five leads had already seen it.
But at the far end of the corridor, a door slammed harder than usual, and no one turned their head at the sound.
It was none of a props room worker’s business. Whether there were five leads or two, there would still be eleven candlesticks and twenty cups.
Then, as I stepped back, I saw someone standing farther down the corridor.
It was Vodianitsa.
She stood a little apart from the crowd. The cloth around her head was as it always was, but though her eyes seemed to be looking at the sheet music in her hands, they were fixed on the paper on the wall.
Even as people moved aside before the notice, Vodianitsa did not come forward. The way she looked at it from three or four steps away was somehow familiar.
It was like the way she had leaned against the wall beside the rehearsal room door and listened to the singing inside about three months ago.
Then, she had pressed her shoulder to the wall and crossed one foot over the other. Today she stood on both feet rather than leaning against it, but the distance between herself, the wall, and the people was much the same.
I did not stop there.
What would I say if I stopped? A props room worker had nothing to say to a chorus member before a notice selecting leads, and I did not know whether telling her I had recognized her standing there would be good or bad for her.
Still, I worried. I did not know whether the words “by skill alone” would be a door for her or a wall.
All I knew was the old man’s one statement that her voice did not belong in the back row. But neither he nor I was among those who made decisions for the troupe.
I passed by, softening the sound of my cane. As I did, our eyes met.
Vodianitsa lifted her head, and her usual face smiled.
I had once seen in that corridor a time when a smiling face was not smiling.
"Did you eat?"
"I did. Are you rehearsing?"
"I am. Later."
At that, she held up the sheet music and looked toward the wall again. I headed toward the props room.
I restrained the urge to stand there and keep watching.
One more person passed through.
Golden heels clicked. Odette entered from the back door in her coat and passed before the notice without slowing her pace. Her eyes went to the wall once, then returned.
It took less than half the time it had taken me to read it. Once her brief glance left the paper, it went once toward Vodianitsa.
Vodianitsa did not see it, and Odette vanished toward the rehearsal room.
They were the steps of someone already a lead. No one in the troupe could doubt that those feet would remain even if five became two.
But I could not read from her steps why she had sent that one glance toward Vodianitsa.
When I opened the props room door, the old man was not there.
The chair and the five rows along the wall were in their places, but not a single box had been brought down before the shelves. It seemed the person who normally brought them down each morning had left without doing so today.
As I stood there briefly, sound came from the stage.
Wood being dragged. Something long and heavy crossed the floor twice, followed by the noise of several people exerting themselves at once, with the old man’s voice mixed in once between them.
It sounded as though they were being told to remove the candlesticks.
I made my way with my cane to the side of the stage. The stool in the darkness remained where it was, but the stage seen from there looked unlike either a performance day or a rehearsal day.
A ladder stood at the center of the stage.
It was long enough to reach the theater ceiling, and one rope handler was on it. The four people below raising long wooden supports were unfamiliar faces, and from their clothes alone they did not seem to be troupe members.
The old man stood at the edge of the stage. The eleven candlesticks had been removed from their chalk marks and were being put into boxes, and he followed every box with his eyes.
"Grandfather."
"You’re here? Don’t stay there today. Stay in the props room."
"What’s happening?"
"They’re taking down the ropes. All of them, then hanging new ones."
The old man pointed at the ceiling with his chin. When the person on the ladder untied one rope, it stretched down long and struck the floor.
"You said they were only inspecting them."
"I did. The theater director came the day before yesterday and changed his mind. He says they’re replacing everything—ropes and mechanisms alike."
"That will cost money."
"They say money for roof repairs has come through. He says they’ll use it for this. It’s not a props room worker’s concern."
After saying that, the old man turned back toward the boxes. Though he said it was none of my concern, he had told me even where the money came from. For him, that was saying a great deal.
Before I could ask more, a second rope hit the floor.
I looked at that rope.
What I had wanted to see ever since I heard that one broken rope had been replaced hung there. Whether it was new or old could not be told from where it lay on the floor, and all I learned again was that, visible or not, it was not the concern of a props room worker.
"They’ll do that all day. Dust will fly, so keep the props room door shut."
"Yes."
"I’ll watch the candlesticks. You finish writing what you were writing yesterday."
I returned to the props room and shut the door.
Even with it closed, I could hear the ropes coming down. The sound of heavy things striking the floor and people working traveled through the walls, while among it, the rehearsal room piano began to sound later than usual.
I sat down and took out the paper I had left unfinished yesterday. It listed what had been returned to each box after the performance, and today was the day I was meant to finish it.
My writing hand stopped several times.
Whenever it stopped, I remembered the notice in the corridor: the notice whose long blank at the bottom still held no name, and the face of the person who had stood three or four steps away from it.
Remembering that face did nothing for the hand writing numbers.
All morning, ropes struck the stage floor one by one.
At lunchtime, the props room door opened.
It was not the old man. The opening door came faster than his usual sound, and before its owner entered, I heard the small clink of angular metal striking something.
"Are you eating?"
It was Vodianitsa. She wore a coat over her rehearsal clothes, and the dented lid of the tin in her hand rattled once.
"I was just about to. What about rehearsal?"
"It’s over. The front row goes first. We couldn’t use the stage, so we only rehearsed in the practice room."
As she spoke, Vodianitsa sat on the stool by the door. It was the stool I had sat on for three days when I first came to the theater.
She opened the tin, took one out, and held it toward me.
"Eat."
"I’ll eat my meal first."
"Then eat it after your meal. I’ll leave it here."
A candy was placed on the shelf beside the paper I had been writing. Vodianitsa put one in her own mouth and looked toward the stage-side wall, where the ropes were still being lowered.
"They’re taking all of those down. Did you hear?"
"The old man told me this morning. They’re replacing them."
"Where does the theater have money for that?"
"They said it was money for roof repairs."
"But the roof’s still the same."
Vodianitsa rolled the candy inside her cheek. It seemed strange to her too that the roof remained untouched while every rope was coming down.
Still, she only called it strange and did not dig further.
If every rope became new, even which rope had snapped that day would be erased from the ceiling with them. I could not tell from the sound of her rolling candy whether I alone was thinking that, or whether there were two of us.
Neither of us spoke of the notice.
Neither of us mentioned meeting in the corridor that morning. Since both of us avoided it, the props room was filled only with the sound of ropes coming down, and that sound covered some of the awkwardness.
I tore one piece of bread in half. The half normally reserved for the old man was offered to Vodianitsa today, since he was at the stage.
"No. I ate."
Vodianitsa waved a hand away, then her eyes paused briefly on the cloth wrapping the bread.
"Does that girl wrap it for you?"
"Yes, every morning."
"She does well."
Vodianitsa said she did well while looking at the tin lid. Since it came from the person whose eyes had stopped on that line in the employment office list, it seemed to contain something else, but the words were too short to grasp.
"Then I’ll leave it for Grandfather."
"Fine. That old man is the kind to skip lunch if he keeps staring at ropes like that."
Vodianitsa shook the tin. She seemed to count by sound how many were left inside, and after counting, the hand closing the lid clenched hard once, then relaxed.
It was a hand I had seen before. It was the hand from the day she said the front row’s order never got pushed back. As then, I could not tell what she was trying and failing to say today.
Then there was a sound at the back door.
Three knocks on wood. All three came at the same interval and with the same force, and no fourth followed.
Vodianitsa turned her head from the stool.
"Someone’s knocking?"
"It’s the back door."
"If it were someone from the troupe, they’d just open it and come in."
She was right. Troupe members did not knock, and since coming here I had never heard knocking in this corridor. As I listened to those three knocks, the hand holding the bread stopped.
I was the one who had told her to knock.
Three knocks were enough time to remember the person who had asked whether she should knock, and what she would bring.
"I’ll go."
I reached for my cane. While I did, Vodianitsa had already risen.
It took her two steps to get from the stool to the door, and less than ten of her steps from the door to the back door at the end of the corridor.
"It’s fine. I’ll open it."
"Vodianitsa, I said I’ll go."
"Sit still. It takes you forever to get up."
Leaving those words behind, Vodianitsa went out. Her quick, light footsteps crossed the corridor, and I rose with my cane as I listened. It truly did take me forever.
Of all times.
If the old man had opened it, she would merely have been a guest. If I had opened it, it would merely have been a return gift. But the person who had gone to open it was the exact person I had pointed out by the stage, and she did not know that she had been pointed out.
By the time I stepped into the corridor, the back door was already open.
Noonday sunlight entered through it and lay diagonally across the corridor floor. A gray coat stood one step over the threshold in that light.
Before the notice on the wall.
Lyuba was looking at the left wall. As her eyes between fur hat and scarf traveled down the notice from top to bottom, Vodianitsa stood beside her, gripping the doorknob.
Vodianitsa looked dumbfounded at the guest who ignored the person who had opened the door for her and read the wall first. Her hand on the doorknob tightened slightly.
I let it pass, thinking that since she was someone who handled documents, she must read any writing she saw. It was not strange for someone who supposedly handled documents near the palace to be unable to pass a notice by.
Her eyes reached the blank at the bottom and stopped.
Lyuba turned her head. Vodianitsa stood where she turned, and Lyuba’s gaze lingered once on the cloth around Vodianitsa’s head before dropping to her face.
"Are you third from the left in the front row?"
The corridor fell silent.
The ropes were still coming down beyond the wall, but they sounded distant. Without releasing the doorknob, Vodianitsa looked at Lyuba, then at the bundle in Lyuba’s hand.
It was wrapped in paper. The paper was the same as last time, though its folds were a little less clumsy.
"...Third from the left in the front row?"
Vodianitsa repeated it. Her voice was its usual bright voice.
Even from the other end of the corridor, I thought I could tell what lay beneath that bright voice.
They were my words.
Words I had written while pointing out the person who first stood in the front row from the darkness beside the stage. No one in this theater but me could have used those words.
As she repeated them, Vodianitsa seemed to realize where they had come from, and looked at me.
The bundle was in that gaze too.
It contained, all at once, the fact that I knew Lyuba well enough for her to bake cookies for me, and what I had told her in that acquaintance. Vodianitsa did not say either aloud.
"Is Kim Sang-hyeon inside?"
"...He is. He’s right there."
Vodianitsa indicated me with her chin. Lyuba’s eyes came to me, and they were not surprised in the least to see me standing across the corridor with my cane.
"I knocked. Because you told me to."
"Yes, I heard you."
"You said it could be heard inside."
"Yes, I heard it. Three times."
Only after saying that did I let out a breath. The person I had told to knock had knocked, and the person who said he could hear had heard. Nothing between those things was wrong. There was simply one extra person who had opened the door.
"Would you like to come in? The corridor is dusty."
"I would."
Lyuba walked down the corridor. The tip of her umbrella touched the floor evenly, and her stride was the same on snow, stone, and wooden floor.
Vodianitsa released the doorknob and followed behind her. Her footsteps, following roughly two steps back, were a little heavier than usual.
The props room became cramped with three people inside.
There was a stool by the door and a chair before the shelves. Rather than go to the chair, I stood with the hand holding my cane braced on the corner of the shelf. I did not want to spend the time needed to sit and rise twice today.
"Please sit. I’m afraid there’s only the stool."
"No need."
Though Lyuba looked at the stool, she did not sit. She stood two steps inside the door, set her umbrella upright on the floor, and Vodianitsa shut the door and pressed her back against it.
She took the same posture of leaning against a wall: shoulder against the door, one foot crossed over the other. In that position, Vodianitsa watched the back of Lyuba’s head.
A rope crashed loudly down beyond the wall.
Once it faded, no sound remained in the props room. The three of us stood without speaking, leaving only the wick of the lamp burning audibly. In places like that, I was always the one to say the same thing first.
An apology rose in my throat. It was an apology that rose to fill the silence without my knowing what I was sorry for. Before it reached my mouth, something else came out first.
"This is Lyuba."
It was my voice.
"She was unable to buy a ticket on the last performance day, so I gave her a cup of tea. And this is Vodianitsa—the third from the left in the front row I told you about."
My face grew hot once I had spoken. Only after the words “I told you about the front row” left my mouth did I realize what I had revealed, but I did not take them back.
I had never praised someone else before that person themselves. Since I had never done it, I did not know where it ended, and so I said everything through to the end.
Lyuba dipped her head very slightly as she accepted the introduction. That gesture went not toward Vodianitsa, but only toward me.
Vodianitsa lifted her back from the door.
"You told her about me?"
She was smiling. It was her usual face and her usual quick speech, but the end of her words tilted slightly upward.
"What did you tell her?"
"Just... that you were someone who stood in the front row for the first time today."
"He asked whether she heard that sound rise and fall."
It was Lyuba. She said it while looking at me rather than Vodianitsa, in the same tone I had heard on the stairs four days ago.
"I heard they once told her to suppress that sound. That she was therefore at the end of the back row."
Vodianitsa’s eyes stopped smiling.
The corners of her mouth still smiled, but her unsmiling eyes went to Lyuba.
"Where did you hear that?"
"From the stool beside the stage. You did not look that way."
"You watched from the stool?"
"He pointed with his finger at you and the feet turning in the center."
"Odette too?"
"He said those feet belonged to a lead. He said you were there for the first time."
As Odette’s name was spoken, Vodianitsa’s eyes glanced elsewhere for the briefest moment before returning. When they came back, they were fixed on Lyuba again.
Only then did Lyuba turn her head.
I saw her turned face from beside the shelf. In those pale blue eyes between fur hat and scarf, turned toward Vodianitsa, there was none of what had been there while reading the notice, nor of what had been there four days ago while counting disappearing cookies.
They were eyes containing nothing. They were simply looking, without asking or measuring, and it was the first time I saw Lyuba look at Vodianitsa with those eyes.
Her voice was different too. The calm, stone-like sound she used with me became not stone but ice when directed at Vodianitsa. Ice was smoother and colder than stone.
The props room grew cold. Vodianitsa did not raise her collar in that cold, and I had no time to do so.
"The side of the stage is for troupe members."
Vodianitsa spoke. Her smiling face had returned, and her words were quick.
"Guests buy tickets and sit in the audience."
"Someone seated me there."
"Sang-hyeon seated you?"
"Yes."
"There are only four seats there."
Vodianitsa said this to me. She knew that the stool beside the stage was my place, and this was the first time I heard through her words that she knew.
"There was a guest that day, so I sat on a box."
"You sat on a box?"
Vodianitsa looked at me. Her gaze resembled, a little, the gaze in the infirmary that had asked why I had done such a thing. I adjusted my grip on my cane.
"You came to the theater even on your day off?"
"The props room had work even on the day off."
"That’s when she came."
"Yes. She brought cookies as thanks for the tea."
"Cookies for one cup of tea?"
After asking that, Vodianitsa did not wait for an answer. The cheek that had been rolling candy was empty now, but she did not say what she swallowed with that empty cheek.
"The last ones were hard."
Lyuba raised the bundle.
"These are less hard. I baked them twice."
"Twice?"
I asked. Lyuba looked at me and nodded very slightly.
"The first batch became stones, so I threw them away."
Lyuba said the first batch had become stones and been discarded in the same tone she had used when saying she did not know how to live. Hearing it in that tone, I briefly pictured what kitchen in what house those stone cookies had been thrown out in.
"But listen."
It was Vodianitsa. Her voice was brighter than before, and as it brightened, it sharpened.
"You’re inside. Aren’t you taking off your hat? There’s no stove here, but it’s better than outside."
Lyuba’s hand did not go to her hat.
"I prefer it this way."
"Isn’t it stuffy covering your ears too?"
"It is not stuffy."
Vodianitsa’s hand went to her own head.
She touched the end of the cloth around her head once. It was a gesture she always made, but the face of the person making it stopped for a moment. Only the one who stopped knew what caused that pause.
Her hand lowered. Vodianitsa pressed it against the inner pocket of her coat, and the angular tin sounded.
"I picked Sang-hyeon up from a field of snow."
Vodianitsa stepped away from the door and one step inside. Her words were quick, and she was smiling.
"I saw something black lying facedown and thought it was an animal. I carried him up the slope and thought I would die from how heavy he was. His fever didn’t go down for three days, so I stayed awake making soup. So he wouldn’t lose even one toe."
Lyuba said nothing.
"After that, we walked the forest road together for two hours every day. I taught him letters too. I’m the one who brought him into this theater."
The snowfield, three days, and the forest road came out one after another. All three were things I had not told Lyuba on the stairs four days ago.
I had not told them because they were my story rather than the two women’s singing and feet. And Vodianitsa was now telling that story of mine as her own.
Lyuba’s eyes came to me.
"She says she picked you up in a field of snow?"
"Yes, that’s right."
Lyuba repeated, “A field of snow,” once more. Nothing clung to that voice.
Then she breathed out once, and her breath floated white and long through the props room before scattering.
My breath was not that long. Although the snowmelt season had come, the weather had not fully warmed, and a body that had walked from outside would not quickly thaw within stone walls.
"I heard the roof was stripped by the weight of winter snow."
Lyuba spoke to Vodianitsa. It was an icy voice.
"I heard that when snowmelt leaks in, they place buckets at the end of the corridor. That there is someone who counts even the buckets."
"...You even told her that?"
Vodianitsa’s eyes came to me.
"She asked about the roof."
"You told someone who isn’t even in the troupe all about the theater?"
"If someone asks, I should answer."
"Do you answer everything people ask?"
Vodianitsa’s words quickened slightly there. Her face showed that she knew they had quickened, but she did not take them back.
Lyuba did not answer that. Still holding the bundle, she took one step toward me. Her umbrella remained standing on the floor.
Then Vodianitsa moved.
It was not a step made after thought. The person at the door took two steps to reach the shelf, and on the second, Vodianitsa’s two arms wrapped around my left arm.
Wrapped around was the right phrase. It was the arm not holding my cane. Her arms wound over my coat and pulled my arm toward her.
The force pulled me half a step toward Vodianitsa, but my cane held against the floor and I did not fall.
I froze.
No one had pressed their body against me like this since I had been carried from the snowfield. Then it had been my back; now it was my arm. Then I had not been conscious; now I was.
I did not pull away.
I could have if I tried. If I did, Vodianitsa’s arms would be left hanging in the air, and I did not want to see that. As I stood without pulling away, her arms were warm.
"Vodianitsa."
"Stay still."
It was brief. I could not tell from the pressure around my arm whether she said it to me or to herself.
With my arm still held, Vodianitsa stood before Lyuba.
She stood half a step in front of me, the cloth around her head at the height of my shoulder. Lyuba had stopped one step away.
Lyuba’s eyes were on Vodianitsa’s arms.
Those eyes rose from the arms to Vodianitsa’s face, and after they rose, they contained even less than before. The props room grew a little colder, and the lamp flame shrank once, then swelled.
Lyuba extended her hand.
Not toward Vodianitsa. It went to my left hand hanging beneath Vodianitsa’s arms, and her empty gloved hand supported it from below.
The hand holding the bundle peeled back the paper and took one out. A cookie half the size of a palm was placed in the center of my palm. Then the gloved fingers curled my fingers closed over it, one by one.
Five fingers folded over the cookie.
The glove was stiff. It had the stiffness of something new, but no warmth came through that stiff leather. Only the movement folding my fingers was slow and certain.
"This one will be less hard."
"Yes."
I had nothing else to say. My left arm was in Vodianitsa’s arms, and my left hand was in Lyuba’s glove. My right hand held my cane, leaving no hand for me.
The gloved hand left mine. As it took hold of the upright umbrella again, Lyuba’s eyes went to Vodianitsa.
"What is this person to you?"
Her eyes looked at Vodianitsa, but the question came to me. The sound asking it was neither the ice she had used with Vodianitsa nor the stone she had used with me.
It was a sound I had never heard before. It was the sound of someone asking out of curiosity, but it seemed even the asker did not know what she was curious about.
I had one answer to a question asking what someone was. It was a phrase I had held for four months without speaking once, but I had not expected this to be where I would say it.
Vodianitsa’s arms tightened a little, and my answer came at once.
"My benefactor. The person who saved me from that field of snow."
After saying it, I looked at the arms around mine.
Benefactor was right. There was nothing wrong with that word. From the snowfield four months ago to this props room today, it was right wherever I traced it.
But the warmth wrapped around my arm now did not entirely fit inside that word.
It was not because the word was too small. The warmth did not have the shape of the word.
Lyuba exhaled.
The breath she released again was white and long. Being a little slower than before, it floated longer. Beyond it, something returned to her eyes, which had contained nothing, but I could not tell what it was through the hat and scarf.
"A benefactor."
Lyuba repeated my words as though accepting them.
"Is that so."
At the end of those words, Lyuba’s shoulders lowered very slightly. They were the shoulders of someone who had released a long breath completely.
When she looked at Vodianitsa once more over those shoulders, her eyes were less cold than before.
Vodianitsa’s arms remained as they were.
The arms that had tightened loosened a little. Without letting go, they simply lost force, and my arm remained warm within them.
They were the arms of someone who had heard the word benefactor. Where that word had reached came only through her arms, not her face. Vodianitsa was smiling.
"Documents are waiting."
Lyuba turned. While turning, she set the bundle on the shelf beside my papers. It was directly beside the candy, and she looked once at the candy before choosing that spot.
"You’re leaving all of this?"
"It is not something to eat all at once. I saw last time."
It seemed she had watched my jaw move the last cookies to my molars from beside me. That was why she placed just one in my hand and left the rest on the shelf.
Lyuba stopped at the door.
Her turned eyes went to Vodianitsa holding my arm, and lingered once more on the cloth around her head.
"Third from the left in the front row."
"Why are you calling me that?"
"I will remember it."
After saying that, Lyuba opened the door. Her hand was unaccustomed to turning the knob, but the door opened, and the dusty scent of the corridor entered through it. Four days ago, before the back door, she had not even put a hand on a knob.
"I’ll knock next time too."
"Yes, I’ll hear it."
Her footsteps crossed the notice on the wall. They did not stop as they passed, and this time Lyuba simply went by the place where she had stopped earlier. The back door opened once, then shut.
Vodianitsa still held my arm.
She remained that way for a long time after the door shut, then released me. My coat sleeve was a little wrinkled where she slowly let go, and Vodianitsa pressed the wrinkles flat once with her palm.
After flattening them, she said nothing.
She had the face of someone choosing words. Her cheeks were red as she chose. The cloth around her head did not reach down to cover them, and Vodianitsa did not hide her red cheeks.
"That person."
"Yes."
"She said she was a clerk near the palace."
"That’s what she said."
"A clerk bakes cookies on her day off and comes all the way to the theater’s back door?"
"...She seemed like someone who needed company."
Vodianitsa did not answer. She looked at the bundle on the shelf. The pocket of her coat tightened once and loosened, as if the hand inside had gripped the tin.
Then the door opened again.
It was the old man. He came in carrying a candlestick box in both arms, set it before the shelf, and looked around the props room once. His eyes went to the bundle, then to Vodianitsa’s cheeks.
His gaze went from the bundle to her cheeks, then from her cheeks back to the bundle twice.
"That person came again."
"Who did?"
Vodianitsa asked.
"The guest who stood at the back door on the day off. The one who brought cookies."
The old man said only that and opened the box lid. With an expression that asked nothing and said nothing more, he began taking out the eleven candlesticks one by one and placing them on the shelf. His hands were slower than usual.
Vodianitsa looked at the old man, then at me.
"You knew too?"
"Grandfather is the one who told me she was at the back door on the day off."
"I see."
Vodianitsa said, “I see.” It was her usual bright voice, but it resembled a little the voice she had used that day in the corridor when saying my turn had been pushed back.
Vodianitsa came to the shelf.
She picked up the charcoal beside my papers. It was the charcoal used to write box inventories, and she did not look at me while picking it up.
"I’ll borrow this for a moment."
"Yes."
Vodianitsa went out.
Quick, light footsteps crossed the corridor, but it was not the sound of her leaving through the back door. After they stopped before the back door, I heard no further steps.
I made my way with my cane to the door.
Holding the frame and looking into the corridor, I saw Vodianitsa standing before the wall. She was no longer three or four steps away as she had been that morning, but pressed close to it, and the charcoal in her hand was at the bottom of the notice.
She was writing.
Several letters appeared in charcoal at the bottom of the paper. I could not read them from that distance, but I knew without reading. The only thing to write at the bottom was a name, and since that morning not one name had been there.
It was the first name.
After writing, Vodianitsa took one step away and looked once at what she had written. Then she turned around. I stood where she turned, holding the doorframe.
Vodianitsa looked at me briefly, then walked over and put the charcoal back in my hand.
"I’m going to rehearse."
"Yes."
"See you tonight."
Vodianitsa went down the opposite corridor toward the rehearsal room. Her normally quick footsteps did not slow once until they disappeared around the corner.
The charcoal was warm. The warmth from the hand that had held it remained in it and moved to my hand. It was a different warmth from the warmth in my left arm.
I looked at the paper on the wall once more.
I did not know what would become of that name half a month from now. I had never seen a demonstration, nor did I know where a props room worker would sit that day. If there was somewhere to sit, it would be the stool beside the stage.
Even without knowing, I was proud that her name was there, and I knew where that pride came from. But what remained in my left arm could not be folded away as pride or gratitude.
I left it unfolded. I did not know how to leave it that way, but I did not know how to force it folded either.
When I returned to the props room, the old man was putting the eighth candlestick on the shelf.
"Your guest—what about the cookies?"
"They’re on the shelf. She put one in my hand before leaving."
"Put one in your hand?"
At that, the old man stopped the hand lifting a candlestick. Still stopped, he looked at me, then at the bundle, then put up the candlestick again. His face seemed about to add something, but did not.
Only then did I look at the cookie in my hand.
It was half the size of my palm, neither round nor long, but its shape was more even than the last ones. Its edges were not burnt, and sugar had been sprinkled evenly over it.
My front teeth sank in.
It broke apart in one bite, and at that sound the old man glanced over once. It was sweet. No bitter taste followed, and my jaw did not hurt.
"It’s less hard."
"She said she baked them twice."
The old man said that. The words “baked them twice” had been spoken inside the props room. The old man, who had been by the stage then, could not have heard them, yet he said them as he put up the ninth candlestick.
"I came with the box, then went back. There was no place for me to enter."
"You did?"
"I didn’t see her put it in your hand."
The old man stopped there. After placing another candlestick up, he asked,
"Has Vodianitsa gone?"
"She wrote her name on the corridor notice and went to rehearse."
"She wrote it."
The old man said only that. It was brief for a man who had called her voice a waste, hearing that its owner had written her name, but the hand placing candlesticks paused once, then moved.
He said no more and placed up the last candlestick. His hands had returned to their usual pace.
All afternoon, ropes came down.
Judging only by the sounds striking the floor, there were more than six. The old man went back and forth between the stage and props room through the afternoon, watching the rope removal. Near sunset, someone shouted from the stage that they were done.
Whether it meant they had taken them all down or merely finished the day’s portion did not reach the props room.
After the noise stopped, I went to the side of the stage.
The stool and ladder were still there, but there was not a single rope on the ceiling. Every strand that had hung down in the darkness was gone, leaving only the dark ceiling in its place.
The ropes were piled at one side of the stage floor.
It was one heap. The new rope I had been unable to distinguish in the darkness four days ago and all the old ones were now mixed in one heap upon the floor. Mixed together, there was nothing left to distinguish.
I looked at the heap briefly and turned away. What could not be distinguished had become something that needed no distinguishing in that heap, and the old man had said everything hung from that ceiling tomorrow would be new.
On the way back, I passed the wall notice. Two more names had appeared beneath the one written in charcoal, and both were neater than Vodianitsa’s handwriting.
If one of those two was some household’s nephew, then perhaps the door that had slammed hard at the corridor’s end that morning was that person’s door.
I ate two more cookies. Both taken from the bundle on the shelf yielded to my front teeth, and I wrapped the rest in paper again.
She had been right that they were not for eating all at once. My jaw did not ache once while eating three.
Vodianitsa came that evening.
Rehearsal was over, and she wore her coat. She only looked into the props room door and did not enter.
"Go."
"What?"
"Go home. I’m leaving too. The forest road takes two hours."
"Yes. Get home safely."
"You too."
Vodianitsa paused once at the threshold.
"Is that person coming again?"
"She said she would knock next time too."
"I see."
Vodianitsa only said, “I see.” Then she pressed her inner coat pocket once, making the tin sound, and disappeared from the doorway with that sound.
Normally she said those things after stepping one foot inside the threshold. Today she said them from outside it, and I could not tell from her receding footsteps what that difference of one step meant.
The old man hung up a rag.
"More ropes tomorrow. Dust will fly, so keep the door shut."
"Yes."
"Go safely."
I descended the three back-door steps holding the rail.
Powder covered the back alley. It was the powder that settled anew every day upon the stone road long after the snow had melted, and evening sunlight lay slantwise over it. Though the sunlight shone, the wind was still cold.
I came down with my cane in my right hand. I passed the pitted stones, the wall’s shadow, and the gaps between corner stones in turn. The powder was thick in all three places, so there was nowhere for the cane tip to slip.
As I descended, my left arm was warm.
It was where two arms had wrapped around it over my coat sleeve. Half a day had passed since they let go. In that time, I had held charcoal, eaten cookies, and watched all eleven candlesticks return to the shelf.
Only that place had not cooled.
The wind was cold, but only that place was warm.
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