Backstage on the evening of the first performance felt like a different theater from the one I had seen during the day.
Twice as many lamps hung along the narrow passage behind the curtain, and people in costume moved beneath them, shifting aside to avoid one another’s shoulders. Someone was looking for something to put in their hair, someone was retieing their shoelaces, and someone else was simply pacing around doing nothing.
I remembered what Danika had said when I left the company housing that morning.
"You’ll be late today, won’t you? I won’t set out dinner separately. I’ll just make sure the stove doesn’t go out."
I had never told her I would be late. I came down the back street without asking how Danika knew that today was the day the old man had said we would do the thing we had put off once the performance was over.
I slipped a hand into my inner pocket and checked the bag. It was exactly as it had been when I bought it at the market two days ago, even folded twice at the opening.
During the day, I had taken out one more candlestick and polished it. As the old man instructed, I marked the twelfth position in chalk, and since there would be twice as many guests, I counted the twenty glasses again before the performance.
Odette was in one corner of the corridor, tying the ribbons of her pointe shoes without lifting her head. Beneath her tying hands, the end of a white cloth strip poked out by the length of a hand before disappearing inside her shoe.
It was the cloth I had wrapped around her that night. After hearing on the rehearsal day that it had not come undone, neither of us had said anything about it. But she was the sort of person who showed you things like that without saying a word.
Vodianitsa stood before the mirror at the end of the corridor.
Her stage costume was something I had never seen before, with longer sleeves than what she wore in the front row and a line of gold thread around the waist. Yet even in that outfit, she was doing the same thing as always: rummaging through her coat in front of the mirror and pulling out a tin.
When she shook the tin, it barely made a sound. She shook it, pouted, then spotted me and raised her brows while continuing to shake it.
"Look. I ate them all."
"I figured you would."
I took out the bag and unfolded its opening. Vodianitsa opened the lid and held out the tin, and I tipped the bag, pouring the amber-colored candies into it.
The candies struck the metal and filled the tin from the bottom up. Vodianitsa listened to the sound without speaking until the bag was empty.
Two candies were missing from the bag. Even I had not known how many it contained when I bought it, so Vodianitsa could not have known either. Even without those two pieces, the tin was full enough that its lid only barely closed.
"When did you buy these?"
"Two days ago. Briefly, at lunch."
"What about Danika? She isn’t coming today?"
"She’s at home. She said she’d watch the stove since I would be late."
"How does she know you’ll be late?"
"Exactly."
"You told the candy man you were giving them to someone who sings, didn’t you?"
"...How do you know that?"
"I passed through the market yesterday, and that man stopped me. He asked if it was you who bought a bag for a singer—the person with the cane."
Vodianitsa laughed. When she shook the tin this time, it gave a satisfyingly heavy rattle. She laughed at that sound too, opened the lid, and popped one into her mouth.
The candy shifted to one cheek, puffing it out roundly. I remembered the cheek I had seen beneath the back-door steps two days ago, but I did not mention it.
"You have one too."
"I’ll have one after the performance."
"You’ll eat something else afterward. Grandfather said so."
From farther down the corridor, someone at the piano clapped twice and called Vodianitsa’s name. Keeping the tin in her coat pocket, she took off her coat and hung it on a hook.
The tin remained in the coat. Her stage costume had no pocket that could hold it.
"Then I’m off."
"Do well. I’ll be in the chair."
"Mm."
That answer was shorter than usual. Vodianitsa turned with that brief reply still hanging in the air and disappeared among the others. I folded up the empty bag and put it back into my inner pocket before heading to the side of the stage.
The chair was still where we had placed it two days ago.
It was just inside the curtain, so the lower part of the stage was obscured, but I could see the singer’s face. The old man had already dragged an empty crate beside it and sat down.
"Did you fill it?"
"Yes."
"Then sit. There’ll be no boxes to collect today."
It meant he had already finished everything he needed to collect. Once I sat down, there was nowhere suitable to prop my cane, so I wedged it between my knees. The old man glanced at it but said nothing.
The first bell rang.
It was the bell for opening the front doors. Beyond the curtain, the sound of people pouring in was twice as loud as usual, so the hands taking coats and tickets must have been busy without pause.
At the second bell, the ticket-window shutter came down. The noise beyond the curtain grew louder with the sounds of people who had failed to buy tickets turning away from the door, then abruptly died down.
Before the curtain rose, I peered through a gap and saw people standing all the way down the corridor toward the front entrance. The theater manager moved among them, counting slips of paper. Even from here, I could see his lips moving as he counted.
The third bell rang, and the curtain rose.
Beyond the lamps, the audience was darkness. From the chair, I could see only the shapes of people, and those shapes packed the room without a gap all the way to the back wall. The old man’s claim of twice the usual crowd was visible with my own eyes.
The singing came first.
The chorus stood in front and back rows, and Vodianitsa was in the center of the front row. Not in the third spot from the left, nor at the end of the back row, she looked out at the audience, then toward the side of the stage.
Our eyes met.
I nodded. When I nodded as I had while holding sheet music in the prop room, Vodianitsa drew in a breath.
Even amid the chorus, her voice was not concealed. The sound coming from the center of the front row stood out from among the many voices, and I did not realize my head was slowly lifting as I followed it.
When the chorus ended, Vodianitsa remained alone.
It was the principal’s solo. The person who had first stood third from the left in the front row now stood alone at center stage, gathering her breath. While she did, a single cough from the audience sounded unusually loud.
The song she sang alone was the one I had heard six times in the prop room. The passage that had made the lamp glass tremble now shook not a single glass ornament, but the entire ceiling over the audience. Sitting in the chair, I gripped the cane between my knees.
Beside me, the old man held his breath. It was the same breath he had stopped on rehearsal day, and only once the song came down did he turn his head toward me.
"Did you see?"
"I saw."
It was the same exchange we had had on the first day Vodianitsa stood third from the left in the front row. Then, he had asked about her standing in the front row. Today, he was asking about her standing alone at the center. But my answer was the same.
When the song ended, applause broke out.
It had been absent on rehearsal day. This was a performance with guests, so there was applause, and Vodianitsa stood at the center of the stage looking into the darkness until it struck the back wall of the audience and returned.
The dancing came afterward.
The ballet dancers filled the stage first, turning in circles, and Odette came out later by herself. When Odette appeared, I found myself watching her feet again.
Each time her toes struck the floor, a dull vibration reached all the way to my chair, but Odette’s expression did not change until the end.
There was no red visible at the tips of her pointe shoes. I had flinched every time she landed, but today, from the third landing onward, I no longer flinched. I did not know whether Odette had become lighter or whether I had simply grown accustomed to it.
As her final turn came to a stop, Odette’s eyes briefly swept over the darkness at the side of the stage. I could not tell whether she had looked at my chair or at the old man. Then she bowed toward the audience.
Applause came for the second time.
At the end, everyone came onto the stage and bowed. When Vodianitsa and Odette stood side by side at the center, the audience resounded once more.
As I applauded from my chair, the old man beside me merely straightened his back atop the empty crate instead of clapping.
Once the curtain came down, the sound of coats being collected rose all at once from the audience side. While the guests filed out, the twelve candlesticks onstage continued to burn. The old man watched them for a long while before standing.
"We’ll put the candlesticks away tomorrow. Leave them tonight."
It was the first time I had ever heard the old man say to leave the candlesticks. We put out only the flames and left the wax for tomorrow.
"Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"To the place we put off."
With that, the old man walked ahead. Backstage was even noisier than before, and amid that noise, the theater manager shouted while holding slips of paper.
"Everyone, we’re going to the tavern at the end of the street by the front entrance! Get your coats and follow!"
I had never seen the theater manager shout since coming to this theater. His face behind his glasses was slightly red.
The town tavern stood at the end of the street by the front entrance.
It was a low, broad building beyond the teahouse and several more stone houses. As the theater troupe surged ahead, I fell behind because of my cane.
The old man was beside me when I did.
"I’m not matching your pace. My back is just like this."
He said that without my asking and walked beside me. His bent back and my cane moved along together, and although the gap between us and those ahead steadily widened, he did not hurry.
When we opened the tavern door, two long tables stood side by side inside, and the troupe members were already seated with their coats off. A metal stove burned in the back, and my face grew warm the instant we entered.
The old man went straight to the owner. The white-bearded proprietor merely exchanged a glance of greeting with him, then brought out bottles without even asking about payment, moving like someone welcoming guests who returned every year.
I stood by the door.
Having arrived late, I did not know where I was meant to sit. The chorus members sat with the chorus, the ballet dancers with the ballet, and the theater manager sat at the end of the table. I had no idea whether the prop-room worker had an assigned place.
"What are you doing standing there?"
Vodianitsa waved from inside. She had changed out of her stage costume and back into her usual coat, and one chair beside her waving hand was empty.
"Sit here. Next to me."
I made my way between the tables on my cane and sat in that chair. As I stood my cane up and laid it down, unsure where to put it, Vodianitsa took it and leaned it against the back of her chair.
"We’ll leave the other side open. Someone will come, probably."
"Who?"
"I don’t know. Anyone."
My eyes met the theater manager’s from across the table. He adjusted his glasses, rose from his seat, and walked around the table. Stopping before me, he hesitated a little.
"The count was right today too."
"Pardon?"
"All twenty glasses came back. And all twelve candlesticks are still there."
He was the man who had asked five times whether the count would be right. Today, rather than ask, he had come to tell me it was right. Once he had finished speaking, he seemed to have nothing else to say, so he only nodded and returned to his place.
At the end of the table, the theater manager rose with a glass in hand.
"The first round is on me. It was both of their first days standing there, after all."
Someone laughed, and someone clapped. The theater manager stood there accepting all of it before sitting down, and his face reddened again as he did.
From the chorus side came calls to have the two principals stand up. Vodianitsa pushed her chair back and rose at once, but Odette had not arrived yet, so there was only one person to stand.
"Where’s Odette?"
"She said she’s changing shoes and coming."
Vodianitsa stood alone, holding her glass. Not knowing what to say, she remained like that for a moment. Then she said only, "Thank you," and sat down, making both tables laugh.
The person from the nephew’s side, seated close to the end of the table, drained the first drink with everyone else, took up his coat, and was the first to leave. No one stopped him, and no one added a word.
The glasses went around.
It was clear liquor in a small glass, and it stung when I brought it to my nose. I could tell from the smell that it was strong.
The owner carried over dishes with the drinks. There was dried fish, black bread, and something pickled in salt. Vodianitsa tore off a piece of bread and put it in front of me.
"You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. You didn’t have dinner."
"Neither did you."
"I ate candy."
"That isn’t a meal."
"If a principal eats it, it’s a meal."
Vodianitsa took an enormous bite of bread. Apparently, since becoming a principal, she had developed a habit of attaching those words to anything.
At the ballet table, two younger dancers whispered while looking our way. They seemed to be talking about a prop-room worker sitting beside the principal, but the moment Vodianitsa looked at them, both turned their heads away.
The tavern owner walked around carrying a large bottle and filled every glass. While mine filled, I held it with both hands, only realizing afterward that there had been no need to receive it with both hands.
"Hey, prop-room man. Move over a little."
One of the chorus members passed behind me. As I shifted aside, the chair legs scraped against the floor. A few people looked over, then went back to their conversations.
As the man passed back again, he tossed out one more question.
"Can you see everything from that chair? At the side of the stage?"
"The lower part is a little blocked. But I can see their faces."
"Faces are enough. Up onstage, all we can see is the light. Nothing else."
He laughed and returned to his seat. Vodianitsa had said the lights stood before their eyes onstage, so the audience looked like nothing but human shapes. Now I heard the same words from a chorus member.
Someone from the chorus sang a line from today’s song. The person beside them tapped a glass against the table to keep time, while the proprietor stood with his bottle wearing the expression of a man who saw this every time the troupe came.
It was the first time since coming to this theater that I had sat among the troupe members.
Vodianitsa had once said that the back row remained the back row even at gatherings. The person who had said she had spent the last gathering doing nothing but pouring drinks now sat in the principal’s seat and poured for no one.
Someone sat in the empty chair.
When I turned, it was Odette. She came and sat without a word, took off her coat, and draped it over the chair back. Even after sitting, she did not look at me.
She was not wearing her pointe shoes. Her usual gold-heeled shoes rested neatly together beneath her chair.
"...You came?"
"Mm. I’m late."
In the hospital room, she had stood by the door until someone told her to sit. Today, she had come and sat down first without being invited, and did not even say that she had taken a seat.
Vodianitsa leaned toward my ear.
"It’s my first time seeing her come sit down first."
I had never seen it either. Instead of saying that, I raised my glass. Vodianitsa straightened and leaned toward Odette.
"Your foot?"
"It’s fine."
"I couldn’t see anything red today."
"I made sure you couldn’t."
"You eat this too. You’re on an empty stomach."
Vodianitsa tore off bread and set some before Odette too. Odette tore off only a tiny piece and put it in her mouth.
The two of them traded words across me. Sitting in the middle, I did not know which way to look, so I stared only at my glass, where the lamp’s reflection trembled.
Vodianitsa took out the tin and placed it on the table.
"You nodded earlier, didn’t you? When I sang alone."
"You saw that?"
"I told you, even if it’s dark by the chair, I can see your face. I could even see you nodding."
After saying that, Vodianitsa moved her candy to one cheek.
"Did you see the audience today? It was completely full."
"From the chair, I can only see people-shaped silhouettes."
"Me too. But when the song rose, just once, something around the middle flashed in the shape of a moon."
At the word moon, the hand holding my glass stopped.
I remembered the chest of the person standing before the candy stall two days ago. I remembered the candy clenched beside a moon-shaped jewel, and even the slow words, "I’ll come listen to that song." But I did not say any of it aloud.
"Maybe it was some guest’s jewelry."
"Perhaps. There were lots of guests, so there must have been lots of things glittering."
Without asking further, Vodianitsa opened the tin. She took out a candy and placed it in her mouth, then took out another while she was at it and set it before Odette.
Odette picked up the candy and held it in her hand. Not wanting to watch that hand holding it without eating it for long, I raised my glass.
The old man stood from across the table.
He held two glasses. He came around the table with his bent back, and when Vodianitsa shifted aside a little, he stood in that gap and placed one glass before me.
"Yours isn’t empty yet."
"No. It’s stronger than I expected."
"Then leave that one. We’ll use this."
The old man held out the new glass. When I picked it up, I saw it held the same amount as his.
"The liquor hasn’t run away, has it?"
"No. It hasn’t run away."
We clinked glasses.
They were glass rather than metal, so the sound was quiet, but it resembled the sound of the prop-room glasses supposedly used by principals. I had always polished those glasses with both hands, afraid of breaking them. Now I clinked one with a single hand.
The old man drained his first.
I drained mine too. My throat grew hot, and that heat descended to my chest, spreading there.
"That’s enough. That will do."
The old man said only that and returned to his place. His back was still bent as he went, but his steps were lighter than usual.
By the time the second bottle came out, the far side of the table had gone quiet.
Looking over, I saw the old man holding a glass and talking about the stage. It seemed one of the chorus members had asked what he had done when he was young. Rather than answer at once, the old man slowly turned his glass.
"I stood onstage."
Someone started to laugh, thinking it was a joke, then stopped. The old man did not have the face of someone joking.
"Were you a singer?"
"A singer. When I was younger than any of you, I started in the back row and made it to the front."
The whole table became quiet. Vodianitsa lowered the hand that had rested on the tin lid, while Odette lowered the hand holding the candy beneath the table.
The old man spoke to his glass instead of to the people.
"Not long after I made the front row, there was a large performance. That day, my voice cracked. It cracked once on the ascent, and that was the end of it."
"What about the audience?"
"It was full, like today. It was worse because every seat was full and everyone heard it."
"Did you damage your voice?"
"My voice came back the next day. My voice was the only thing that returned. Nothing else ever did."
The old man drained his glass and set it down. The small sound of the empty glass bottom touching the table seemed unusually loud.
"What song was it?"
Vodianitsa asked. The old man lifted his head and looked at her.
"The one you sang alone today."
The table became even quieter. Vodianitsa’s hand froze atop the tin lid, and I lifted my eyes from her hand to look at the old man.
"My voice cracked on that song’s ascent. Today, at exactly that spot, the glass rang."
The old man paused to draw a breath before continuing.
"That evening, in the corridor, I heard people say that it had been strange for someone with a voice like mine to stand in the front row. It was not one person’s words, nor something I heard once. I heard it the next day, and the day after that too."
"So you stepped down?"
"No one dragged me down. Words dragged me down. Whenever I stood at the ascent, I heard those words first, and no sound would come out."
"What happened to the people who said it?"
"They all went elsewhere. People change in a theater, but the stage stays the same. Those people are gone, but their words are still there."
The old man gestured with his chin toward the tavern wall. Everyone knew the theater lay beyond it.
There, he fell silent for a moment. When he filled his glass again, his hand did not shake.
"So I went to the prop room. I polished the glasses of those who stood onstage, and doing that work became thirty years."
No one could respond.
Everyone knew the old man had spent thirty years in the prop room. It seemed none of them knew where those thirty years had begun. The chorus members looked at one another, and the theater manager removed his glasses to clean them.
Someone from the ballet side asked carefully.
"Did you never think of standing onstage again?"
"I did. Every day, while polishing glasses in the prop room. But thoughts you have every day end as nothing but everyday thoughts."
Only then did the old man smile. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, but his eyes did not smile.
"After that, I stopped asking other people questions too. To someone who has stood at the ascent, every question sounds like criticism. So in the prop room, I did not ask anyone anything."
I knew the old man was someone who did not ask. I had thought it was merely his habit not to ask where anyone was going or why they did things. Only today did I hear where that habit came from.
The theater manager put his glasses back on.
"That was when I started looking at the paperwork too. Thirty years ago."
"That was when your glasses started getting thick."
"And that was when you stopped asking me questions as well."
The two raised their glasses and drained them facing each other. At the theater, every word had always passed through the old man between them. In the tavern, they spoke directly, and the unfamiliar sight made the chorus members exchange looks.
The old man filled his glass and turned it again.
"But I listened well. I listened from the side of the stage for thirty years, so I know who will crack where before a sound even comes out."
"Is that why you looked at my voice like that?"
It was Vodianitsa. The old man stopped turning his glass at her question about the look in his eyes when she had stood at the end of the back row.
"I regretted it because your voice was different from mine. Mine cracked, but you were in the back row without ever cracking."
"Then why are you telling us this today?"
The old man looked at Vodianitsa.
"Because there are people standing in the front row today. Two people have gone as far as I never could. It would be a shame if the prop-room man stayed silent."
Vodianitsa started to smile, then closed her mouth. I could see her tighten her grip on the tin.
"Neither of you cracked today."
"I dance, though."
Odette had spoken. It was the first voice she had made since arriving at the tavern, and the old man turned to her.
"Dancers do not crack. They fall instead. You did not fall today, so that makes two of you."
Instead of answering, Odette lifted her glass a little and set it back down.
"When you stood onstage, was there someone at the side?"
It was Vodianitsa’s question. The old man looked toward the wall for a moment.
"No. The side of the stage was empty. The prop-room worker collected boxes in the darkness on the other side, and no one sat in this darkness."
The old man said that, raised his own glass, and drained it alone. He said nothing more.
Vodianitsa looked at me. Without a word, she tapped only the lid with the hand resting over the tin.
The hand holding my glass was hot.
Not because of the liquor. During the old man’s story, I had been gripping the glass tightly, and the tension had not eased.
The words—when he stood at the ascent, he heard those words first, and no sound would come out—caught somewhere in my chest and would not go down. I had a place like that too.
A barbecue restaurant near my company.
There had been a night when I accepted the soju my department manager poured with both hands while calculating the cost of that gathering in my head. When he asked what my hobbies were, I said I watched YouTube. It was not a lie, but it was not all of it either.
The rest was not something to bring up at that table.
That night, after returning home, I deleted the rest.
Someone had written a long comment. It was so long that I counted the characters twice, and I still remembered the number.
It was a comment that pointed out everything wrong one by one. It hurt more because it was not entirely wrong. The rest of it, mixed among the valid points, folded the person I became every night into a single line.
One person had written it once. That one comment seemed to have come and stood in the same place as the words the old man had heard in the corridor. It was the thing I heard first whenever I stood at the ascent.
The old man had stepped down but remained at the theater. I deleted everything and went to sleep.
Vodianitsa was watching my face.
"What’s wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"Don’t give me that. If you grip your glass like that, you’ll break it."
I loosened my hand. When I did, the shape of the glass was imprinted on my palm, and while the mark faded, the old man’s words returned to me.
Across from me, the old man looked at me. He said nothing, but he was someone who had always seemed to ask something through what he did not say. His gaze looked like a question.
"Me too."
It was my voice. It came out smaller than I expected, nearly swallowed by the noise at the tables, but Vodianitsa and Odette sat at either side of me, so they heard.
"What?"
"I had a place like that too. Far away."
Vodianitsa turned fully toward me. Odette did not turn her head, but the hand holding the candy came up onto the table.
I opened my mouth. Even then, I did not know where to begin, so I stared at my glass. The glass at that barbecue restaurant seemed to overlap with it, and I lifted my eyes.
"When I was far away, I wrote stories."
"What kind of stories?"
"Stories that made no sense. I wrote them because I liked them."
Vodianitsa tilted her head at the part about them making no sense, but she did not pry further.
After speaking, my throat was dry. I took a small drink. The strong liquor scratched down my throat, and that scratch somehow pushed out my next words.
"They were not stories many people read. There were only a few readers, but while I wrote them, I could not hear the things I heard during the day. So I wrote every night."
"And then?"
"One day, someone wrote something very long and cruel under my story."
The other side of the table had moved on to another conversation, but our side was quiet. The old man had stopped with his glass in hand, and Vodianitsa did not open her mouth.
"Where was far away? Which direction?"
One of the chorus members cut in. Without even looking his way, Vodianitsa waved a hand.
"Don’t ask. I haven’t asked that either."
He shrugged and turned back to his drink. The person who had spent so long teaching me letters on the forest path without ever once asking where I came from was even stopping someone else from asking.
Only after her hand lowered did I continue.
"One person wrote it once... but after I read it, all my writing looked exactly like that person said it was. So that night, I deleted it all."
"How long was it?"
"I counted. It was 5,700 characters."
At the words I counted, Vodianitsa’s face twisted briefly. It was the expression of someone wondering why anyone would count such a thing, but also of someone who knew I was the type to count.
That was the end of what I said.
Once I finished, my hands began to shake. They had been fine while I spoke, but shook only after I was done, so I lowered them beneath the table.
It was the first time I had told anyone this story.
When I looked around afterward, the far side of the table was still bustling. The story I had erased in a single night was so small in this tavern that it could not be heard even across one table, and that smallness strangely let me breathe.
I could not say it at the barbecue restaurant, and after coming to this land, I had never even considered saying it. Not because there was nowhere to say it, but because I thought those words would return if I did.
Today, the old man’s corridor story came first, leaving a place for my story to stand behind it.
The old man set down his glass.
"You deleted it?"
"Yes."
"But you wrote it."
That was all he said. He put weight on the fact that I had written it and said nothing more about the part where I had deleted it.
"You were the one who deleted it, but you were not writing with that person’s hands. You wrote it with your own hands too."
The old man’s hand, which had been lifting his glass, stopped at the end of those words. I could not tell whether he was speaking of his own corridor story or mine, and he did not distinguish between them.
Vodianitsa set the tin down hard on the table.
"What was that person’s problem?"
"I don’t know. They were a stranger."
"You deleted it because of something a stranger wrote once?"
"Yes."
Vodianitsa looked at me for a long time, then closed the tin lid. She slid the closed tin in front of me.
"Write it again in the letters here."
"What?"
"Write it again in the letters I taught you here. Then I’ll be the first one to read it."
The first word I had read in this land was salt. The person who had taught me that word first after I broke the bottle was now saying she would be the first to read a story written in those letters.
Vodianitsa was not smiling. She wore the same expression she had worn when teaching me letters on the forest path, the same expression that had no intention of backing down.
"Someone you know reads it first, not some stranger. Then whatever someone else writes afterward comes second."
"Can that work?"
"It can. When I heard people clicking their tongues at the end of the back row, I thought that was everything. But after you nodded from that chair, it wasn’t. If you hear something first, what comes later is second."
Vodianitsa said it as casually as if she were talking about the weather. Once I knew that the day I nodded with sheet music in the prop room had been such a day for her, I could not answer any further.
The noise from the far side of the table rose again in the meantime. Someone sang a line, and someone else laughed and told them to stop. Though that sound reached us, our side remained quiet.
I could not answer.
Not because I had nothing to say, but because words were blocked in my throat. The hands that had shaken when I said I deleted it did not shake this time. Instead, my throat closed up.
Then Odette put the candy in her mouth.
She placed it in silently and rolled it around without a sound. She did not say anything, but if eating the thing she had held onto was an answer, then it was one. Only after seeing that answer could I finally breathe.
"...I’ll think about it."
"Don’t think. Write."
"I’m still clumsy with the letters. Even my checklist writing is crooked."
"If you’re clumsy, I’ll read it for you. Pointing out the wrong parts as I go."
"Then there will be even more wrong parts."
"Then I’ll read it longer."
At that, Odette looked this way for the first time. She looked as though she wanted to add something, but instead she used her fingertips to slide my glass across the table, setting it neatly closer to my hand.
It was the same hand that had moved the water cup to where I could reach it in the hospital room. I did not know what it meant, but I left the glass where she had put it and rested my hand on it.
Only then did Vodianitsa smile. The hand with which she drew the tin back before herself was slower than the hand that had snapped the lid shut earlier.
At the end of the table, the theater manager lifted his glass. He had the expression of someone who had not heard every word of our conversation, but who understood that our side was quiet. Without saying anything, he simply raised it toward us.
The old man answered by raising his own glass. So did I.
It was my third glass. The theater manager had paid for the first, and the old man had brought the second, but the third was the first I had raised of my own accord.
When I drank, it did not burn as much as before. The liquor had not grown less strong. I had changed.
While the warmth of the liquor spread through my chest, the two people at either side of me said nothing.
Vodianitsa watched my glass empty, then drained hers. Odette only touched her lips to hers before setting it down, and the hand that set it down lingered beside mine for a moment before leaving.
It was quite late at night when we left the tavern.
Outside, it was still cold enough for our breath to show, as befitted a night in the season of melting snow. The single lamp above the tavern door cast a round pool of light over the stone ground, and people raised their coat collars and scattered from its edge.
After exchanging a word with the old man, the theater manager walked ahead toward the front entrance.
Odette fastened her coat and looked at me.
"The cloth."
"Yes?"
"It still hasn’t come undone."
Having said only that, she entered another alley. The sound of her heels receded over the stone until it stopped at the corner.
Only after it stopped did I remember Odette had merely put her lips to the glass earlier. Beside the glass of someone who would go to the rehearsal room again tomorrow morning, I had emptied three.
The old man was headed toward the theater.
"The candle wax is your share tomorrow. Don’t come in early in the morning."
"Yes. All twelve of them."
"All twelve."
After saying that, the old man looked at me for a moment.
"You said something that would not come out of your mouth."
"Yes."
"Good. It came out. That is enough."
He looked as though he was about to say more, but instead raised his coat collar.
"How long does it take you to reach the back street at your pace?"
"About thirty minutes."
"Then in thirty minutes, you’ll be in front of the stove. I have somewhere to stop by, so take the back street."
"At this hour?"
"There’s one glass I left without polishing."
With that, the old man turned away. I watched his bent back recede along the street by the front entrance, then looked beside me to find Vodianitsa still standing there.
"You’re not going?"
"I am. What about you?"
"The forest road, of course."
We walked together to the end of the street. The way to the forest road and the back street ran in the same direction until the corner, so we went side by side. All the while, Vodianitsa talked about how the audience had been full to the back wall, how there had been a cough, and how she too had heard the glass ring on the ascent.
"What will you write first?"
"...I don’t know. I haven’t even said I’ll write yet."
"You answered. You said you’d think about it."
"That means I’ll think about it."
"Write my story. The person who went from the end of the back row to the center of the front row. Then it won’t matter what a stranger writes, because I read it first."
It sounded like a joke, but it did not feel like one. We reached the corner, and Vodianitsa stopped.
There were a few stars in the sky. The night sky in the thawing season was clearer than in winter, and Vodianitsa looked up at those stars before taking the tin out from inside her coat.
"The performance is over. Have one."
She seemed to remember that I had said backstage I would eat one once it was over. I took one from the open tin and put it in my mouth. First came the scent of honey, followed by sweetness.
"These candies smell like honey first."
"You only noticed now? And you’re the one who bought me an entire tin of them."
I moved the candy to one cheek and looked toward the back street. Beyond the blue door at its end, there would be a stove left burning so it would not go out.
It was the forest road at night. Though I knew it took two hours, Vodianitsa always traveled it alone, and tonight was no different.
"Will you be all right alone? It’s very dark."
"I’m fine. I don’t get cold."
It was the answer she always gave. As she drew her coat closed while saying it, her hand paused briefly over her inner pocket.
"Write again."
"...Okay."
"You answered, right? See you later. The back street is dark, so keep a hand on the wall as you go."
Before turning away, Vodianitsa grabbed my sleeve once and let go. It was the hand that had pulled me along before masked people at the market. Today, it did not pull. It only held on.
The forest road was a dark path turning off at the end of the street. In time with Vodianitsa’s steps as she entered that path without a single lamp, the tin inside her coat rattled.
It was a heavy sound.
Until two days ago, it had barely made a sound even when shaken. Now it rang heavily with every step. After her white headcloth and coat had vanished into the darkness, that sound lingered for a long time before receding beyond the corner and finally stopping.
======
The old man walked slowly alone along the street by the front entrance.
He had drunk three glasses, but each had been clinked against someone else’s. There had not been a single drink he took alone. His steps were as usual, but his back was a little less bent than usual.
The street was empty. The troupe members had all scattered down their own paths, and only a few houses with lamps remained.
The theater’s front entrance was tightly closed, and the shutter over the ticket window remained down.
The old man went around along the wall to the back door. He always kept the key on him, and though the lock tended not to turn well in the cold, tonight it turned on the first try.
The prop room was dark.
He did not light a lamp. He had entered and left that room for thirty years, so even in darkness, he knew the position of every shelf and box. He knew the twenty glasses used in tonight’s performance had all been returned to their box merely by placing a hand on the lid.
His claim that he had left one glass unpolished was a lie. He had polished them all before the performance.
The smell of candle wax drifted over from the stage. Because the twelve candlesticks had been left out overnight, the person with the cane would scrape away that wax tomorrow morning.
The old man felt around with his foot for the empty crate he had dragged beside the chair and pushed it back into its place.
He went to the wall beside the shelves.
A sheet of paper hung from a nail. The paper, covered in five lines, was the one the person with the cane had handed over on the day he came to the prop room with a clumsily written list of the things he could do. The old man had put it in his pocket, then hung it from that nail.
For two months afterward, dust from the line work had settled on it, and rehearsal day had passed, but the sheet had remained in the same place. It was still there this evening.
In the darkness, the old man reached up and felt for the paper.
He could not see the letters, but he knew what was written. It was a paper where each line began with a box: counting while seated, writing the checklist, polishing candlesticks, polishing glasses, marking chalk positions. The places where words had been erased were black.
He remembered what he had heard at the tavern.
The person had said he used to write at night in a faraway place, but someone wrote a long, cruel comment, and he deleted everything in one night. Across the table, the old man had seen his hand tightening around the glass as he told the story.
The writing of someone who claimed to have deleted everything was these five lines, handed over after he came here and wrote down the work he could do. On that day, the old man had said from the beginning that it was exactly his work, but those had been words he decided on before reading the five lines.
The old man remembered the person standing before the back door with that paper, its erased places black from writing and erasing again and again. It had taken him a long time to read it, not because the handwriting was clumsy.
Those five lines had not been erased. The writing of someone who had erased his work once, then came here and wrote again, had remained hanging on the wall all this time. The man himself likely did not know it.
Vodianitsa had asked who stood at the side of the stage when he performed. The chair that had been empty then held someone today, and the song had turned toward the person sitting there.
Tonight, one voice had not cracked, and one foot had not fallen. On one of the few nights worth counting among the nights he had listened at the side of the stage, one prop-room worker had spoken for the first time about what he had deleted.
The old man traced the erased places on the paper with his fingertips. There were three places thickened by smudged charcoal, and he knew which letter in which line each one was.
The old man took the paper from the nail.
He did not fold it. It was paper that would crease if folded, so he kept it flat and slipped it inside his coat, placing a hand over it.
Tomorrow, the man would see the empty nail and ask nothing, and the old man would say nothing either. They both had that habit, and he intended to leave things according to that habit.
When he shut the prop-room door, the lock caught on the first try. He did not head toward the back street. That direction was the other man’s road.
As he descended the three back-door steps, the old man pressed the place of that paper through his coat once more. The paper rustled beneath his palm, and without removing his hand, he stepped into the night.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register