The last words—when you are alone—lingered beyond the candlelight.
Alyosha said no more. When the hand braced against the doorframe fell away, the white coat vanished into the dark corridor just as it had the day before yesterday. Holding the candlestick, I turned those words over in my mind once more, then stopped.
I could not tell whether saying he would come when I was alone meant he was being considerate of me or avoiding other people, but I was hardly in a position to question the words of someone who had helped me with fifteen boxes and eleven candlesticks.
Vodianitsa peered through the prop room door while I was putting the candlesticks I had polished back into their box.
"You waited a long time, didn’t you? The back row is at the back even during meetings. All I did was pour drinks."
"It’s all right. I was polishing the candlesticks."
"You did all of them alone?"
"Alyosha came by again."
As she had the day before yesterday, Vodianitsa glanced once down the opposite corridor and shrugged. I snuffed out the candles, extinguished the lamp, and shut the door. The forest path was pitch-black, but footsteps sounded ahead of me, and my legs already knew that following those footsteps would keep me from stepping into deep snow.
The morning after the performance, the old man asked first.
"I hear Alyosha came by again."
"Yes. He came again on the night of the performance."
"First time that child’s come twice in one week. You’re lucky."
The old man added nothing more, and I counted how many times I had heard that I was lucky since coming to this country. No matter how I counted, it was all luck given to me by someone else.
From that day on, the days began to resemble one another.
I tied my bootlaces at dawn, walked two hours, entered through the back door, and lit the lamp. The old man would already be there, or arrive soon after. The day passed among candlesticks, glasses, and painted flats. In the evening, I waited for the back row’s rehearsal to end, then walked two hours back home.
At the company, they called days like these a hamster wheel, but for some reason the phrase would not settle on my tongue here.
I learned the difference in the second week. A day at the company left nothing behind after it turned, but here, every evening, another line remained on my checklist. A day that left something behind did not feel like merely going in circles.
The Teyvat-script sheet had gone past ten lines.
Each evening, Vodianitsa taught me letters, and the next day I copied them down in front of the shelves. It had grown almost as long as the Korean-script sheet. Whenever I came across a letter I did not know, I filled in that spot in Korean and corrected it after I had learned it. For now, I was the only one who could read those sheets with their two scripts mixed together. Still, every time another Korean line disappeared, the sheet came closer to becoming something others could read too.
Near the end of the second week, the old man read that sheet for the first time. Not the Korean one—the Teyvat one. He took it in front of the shelves, read aloud, "Eleven candlesticks, twenty glasses," then handed it back.
"Not garbage anymore."
"Half of it is still garbage."
"Half is enough."
It had taken two weeks for the garbage he said I would become if I quit to be cut in half. How long the remaining half would take depended on how many letters Vodianitsa taught me each day.
One night, I dozed off at the table with a piece of charcoal in my hand. When I woke, a blanket covered my shoulders, while Vodianitsa slept on the floor beside me without one.
I found out where that blanket had come from in the morning. Vodianitsa said Odette had brought it; it was the blanket that had always been folded atop the bedding. That meant she had covered me with it and slept on the bare floor herself, but I did not write that down on the sheet.
Writing it down would mean adding one more thing I had received. That morning, I did not want to do that math.
Starting in the second week, the old man stopped saying the numbers first. Every morning, I went around the shelves marking the list and reciting, "Eleven candlesticks, twenty glasses." He would only nod as if he were barely listening. It took me three days to understand that nod as confirmation that yesterday’s numbers and today’s numbers were the same.
"You like counting, don’t you?"
"It’s not that I like it. I get anxious if I don’t count."
"Same thing."
When the old man said two things were the same, they were always a little different. I developed another habit of writing down those differences in the corners of my sheet.
The theater began preparing for its next performance. It was a large production with songs and dance sharing the stage, so both rehearsal rooms were busy, and in the prop room, the painted flats became our biggest task.
The snow-covered castle flat whose windows I had cleaned last time would not be set up at the back of the stage this time. They said it would be hung from the ceiling.
"From the ceiling?"
"They’ll haul it up by ropes, then lower it when the scene changes. The castle will look distant, then come closer. The stage people handle the ropes, so you just clean the painting."
So I just cleaned the painting. The more I wiped the three-towered castle, the clearer the yellow lights in each window became. To gauge where it would hang, I climbed onto the stage and looked up. I saw iron bars crossing the dark ceiling and ropes wound around them. For a moment, I thought about how the things hanging there would rise and fall over the heads of people onstage, but the old man calling me interrupted that thought.
There were two people assigned to watch the ropes on the stage side, and both were always busy. There was no reason for me to watch what busy people were already watching.
Nothing had changed with the leads, either. The rehearsal order still put the front row first, and Vodianitsa still leaned against the corridor wall studying her sheet music. If anything had changed, it was that I had learned not to stop when I passed that wall. Instead of stopping, I tore bread in half in the prop room and waited.
"Were you held up again today?"
"Yeah. They called us earlier than yesterday, though. They have to coordinate the chorus and ballet, so they can’t just leave out the back row altogether."
Vodianitsa smiled as she took the bread. I had developed a habit of trying to distinguish whether her smile was the one I saw at the market or the one I saw at home. Today, it was closer to the one at home.
The old man spoke once about that wall. He had seen Vodianitsa leaning against it as he passed the rehearsal room, then returned to the prop room and picked up a rag. I could not tell whether he was speaking to me or to himself.
"That voice is too good to leave standing at the end of the back row. The leads know it too. That’s why they do it."
"Then why do they do it?"
"You’re a counter, aren’t you? Count them. Count how many people in this troupe have their ears covered."
I knew without counting. The old man knew that I knew, and neither of us brought it up again.
I ran into the theater director twice in the corridor. Both times he was carrying documents, and both times he nodded to me. The second time, he slowed down.
"Mr. Kim Sang-hyeon, I hear Grandpa praised you for being good with numbers."
"Thank you. I’m still learning."
"Keep it up."
I stood there until the theater director rounded the corner. As I turned away, I realized the way I spoke in front of him was exactly how I had spoken in front of my department manager. It was ingrained in me, so I had never thought to change it. The problem was that it did not only come out in front of the theater director.
"Sang-hyeon, you talk like that to Grandpa too, don’t you?"
Vodianitsa suddenly asked on the forest path home.
"Talk like what?"
"That formal way you speak. Fine with the theater director, I guess, but Grandpa just gets fussier if you talk like that. You still do it to me too."
"...Do I?"
"See? That."
Vodianitsa laughed ahead of me while I merely stepped in her footprints behind her. She could not mean I should speak casually to her. She must have meant that my endings were too stiff, but I did not know any other way to keep people at a distance than stiff speech.
Our writing lessons moved to the forest path.
That was because we both fell asleep when we sat at the table in the evening. Vodianitsa would walk ahead and call out a letter, and I would trace it in the snow behind her with a branch. That made about half of those two hours feel shorter.
When I got something wrong, Vodianitsa laughed without turning around. It took only ten days for me to learn exactly what I had gotten wrong just from the sound of that laugh.
"That one again. You read it wrong again, didn’t you?"
"How did you know?"
"The branch catches differently in the snow. When you get it right, you just swish it through. When you get it wrong, you hesitate."
There was no way to hide a wrong letter from ears that could hear even that. Since there was no way, I simply got it wrong.
Once we entered the city, signs became our textbook. Bread and fish were already old lessons. The day I managed to read the long sign over the pharmacy on the corner from beginning to end, Vodianitsa told me to try reading the writing above the theater’s front entrance too. Two letters remained. The morning I learned those two letters and spoke the troupe’s name aloud from beginning to end, I stood for a while beneath the front entrance instead of going to the back door.
Vodianitsa did not hurry me. She waited.
The market became my responsibility too. At the market we stopped by once a week before rehearsal, Vodianitsa no longer went all the way to the stalls. She stood at the mouth of the alley while I took the pouch and bought fish and potatoes. Every time I stood before that man’s stall, I was just an ordinary man wearing a hat, and he never remembered me even once.
"You bought them well. You don’t shake anymore, do you?"
"I don’t shake."
"Liar. Look at your hand."
I looked. The hand holding the fish was not shaking. After confirming that, I felt oddly unsettled and handed over the pouch without saying anything. Vodianitsa spoke in my place.
"Right. Now we just need to do something about the way you talk."
At home, firewood and water became my responsibilities. The soup was Vodianitsa’s domain, but I peeled the potatoes. Even while I did, Vodianitsa talked beside me. Her words no longer resembled a river. They were closer to the sound of the stove.
It was a sound I missed when it was gone, but did not listen to word by word when it was there. I only looked up when something she said caught on me.
The day rehearsal ran three slots late, Vodianitsa came home and opened an old pouch on the shelf. She took one out and put it in her mouth, then took out another and held it out to me. I shook my head.
"There are three left."
"You counted?"
"They were on the shelf. I noticed them."
Vodianitsa put the candy back in the pouch and tied it shut, smiling as she did. We both knew three were left, and we both knew how long those three had been three.
The bedding beneath the bed remained as it was. Looking at the folded blanket on it, I brought up switching places for the third time and was refused for the third time.
"If you sleep on the floor, I can’t sleep. So stop it."
"All right."
"There. Again."
I heard that sound several times a day now. Every time Vodianitsa heard the ending of one of my sentences, she would briefly cut in with, "Again." Each time I tried to fix it, only to slip back in my next sentence. I always slipped in the same places, and eventually Vodianitsa seemed too tired even to point it out.
It was not that I refused to change. I simply could not. It was not only because that way of speaking had stuck in my mouth; it was also nearly the only boundary I had in this house. I did not know how to live under the same roof as someone who slept on the floor because of me without any boundary at all.
But one evening in the third week, I began to wonder whether that boundary really had to be my manner of speaking.
It was a day when the back row had no rehearsal. On those days, Vodianitsa went down to the cave from morning onward and sang, while I listened from the window. It was the song I had heard in the snowfield. I knew the lyrics now, and as I followed the sound, I rolled the words in my mouth: the waves come in and go back out, and something remains where they leave.
When a high note stretched on for a long time, the frost on the window trembled almost imperceptibly.
There were people at the theater who told that voice to tone it down at the end of the back row, then said things about fairies behind her back. Even after hearing those words, I did not stop in the corridor. Yet every evening, I ate the soup this person made and slept in this person’s bed.
When Vodianitsa returned that evening, her voice was hoarse.
"I did a lot today. I let out everything I normally can’t."
"I could hear it all the way up here."
"Really? It was that loud?"
"It was. The frost trembled."
Vodianitsa laughed, then coughed. I boiled water.
While the water boiled, I set the sound I had heard today beside the sound I had heard at the theater. A voice from the same throat was told to be quiet in one place and made frost tremble in another. All I did for someone who walked two hours between those places every day was attach formal endings to my sentences.
"Hey."
The word slipped out as I handed her the cup.
"Yeah?"
"Your singing today was better than when you sing at the theater."
The hand receiving the cup stopped.
Vodianitsa looked at me with the cup in hand. A beat late, I realized what I had said. I opened my mouth to correct it, but no correction came to mind, so I closed it.
"You just said that like that."
"...Yeah."
"Talk like that from now on."
"That—"
"What about that? You just did it."
Vodianitsa drank the water, set down the cup, and asked a little louder than usual if she should heat up the soup. I answered yes. It was the same kind of yes as before, yet it somehow felt as if it had come from somewhere else.
After dinner, Vodianitsa spread the song lyrics over the table. I stopped her hand as she reached to point at a line as she always did, then read from the first line without her pointing anything out. I stumbled once where the waves came in, but not at the line about what remained after they went back.
"You read it all."
"Did I get anything wrong?"
"One thing. There, it isn’t ‘what remains.’ It’s ‘what is left behind.’"
Vodianitsa pointed to the letter with her finger. I stared at the difference for a while, then nodded. Instead of folding the sheet as usual, she left it there on the table.
That night, I started to write one line on the Korean-script sheet, then stopped. It felt as though writing it down would make something fixed, and I thought it might be better to leave it unfixed. This was the second thing I had let pass without writing it on that sheet since the blanket.
The next day, when I made a mistake tracing letters on the forest path, I said, "I got it wrong," and Vodianitsa answered, "Yeah," without looking back. Her answer lasted a little longer than usual.
Changing one sentence ending did not make the boundary disappear. It only changed shape a little, and getting used to that changed shape took less time than I expected. At the theater, formal speech still came out in front of the theater director, while on the forest path I spoke more casually. For a while, I did not find it strange that both existed in the same day.
Alyosha came four times that month.
All four times were in the evening, after the old man had already left, while I was alone in the prop room.
First came a hand against the doorframe without any footsteps. Then came the white coat. Then came the quiet voice. Starting with the third time, I had grown so accustomed to that order that I knew who it was just by the sound at the doorframe, without even lifting my head.
"You’re alone again?"
"Yes. You came?"
The second time, we cleaned painted flats together. The third time, we refolded fabric by length. The fourth time, we took down the glasses from the top shelf and dusted them. Alyosha’s hands were always twice as fast as mine, yet he never once rushed ahead and finished before me.
He finished when I did. That coordination seemed to come from the same place as the half-step distance he had kept behind me while carrying boxes.
We spoke a little more each time. He told me that Grandpa had once performed onstage when he was young, that these were the glasses the leads used and dropping one would be a disaster, and that the back-door lock did not turn well in the cold. Those were things the old man had never taught me, and on nights like that, I wrote them down on the Korean-script sheet.
Alyosha asked questions too.
"Are your feet all right now?"
"They’re fine. The numbness is almost gone too."
Alyosha nodded at that, and somehow, the nod looked relieved. I did not know why someone else would feel relieved over my feet. Without knowing, I lowered the next glass.
On the fourth evening, Alyosha mentioned Vodianitsa for the first time.
"I heard you live with Vodianitsa."
"Yes. I’m imposing on her. She teaches me letters too."
"...Letters?"
"On the way to and from work. I draw them in the snow with a branch, so I get them wrong every day, but I’ve improved a lot. She has a talent for teaching."
As I spoke, I went on too long. While polishing a glass, I rambled about her voice calling out letters along the forest path, her laughter whenever I got them wrong without looking back, and the morning I had read all the letters above the front entrance. Only after I had gone on did I realize that Alyosha’s hands had stopped.
Alyosha was looking at the shelf with a glass in hand.
The lamplight had slanted red. A reddish tint spread along the edges of the artificial flower bouquet on the shelf, and even the edge of the crown beside it looked reddish, as if rusted. Thinking the wick must be burning down and making the light look that way, I peered into the lamp.
Alyosha turned to look at me. There was only lamplight, but the center of his yellow eyes seemed split into several strands, just as it had by the candle last time. The edges of those strands looked reddish, but he lowered his eyes before I could see more.
"...That must be nice. Having someone who teaches you."
Alyosha put the glass on the shelf and lowered his hand. Then he said nothing for a long while. I never figured out where that silence had come from, and before I knew it, the lamplight had returned to normal.
That day, Alyosha left long before Vodianitsa’s footsteps could be heard. Usually, he stood when he heard her footsteps, but that day he stood first even though the corridor was quiet. I almost asked his back why he only ever came when I was alone, then decided not to.
Even without asking, the boxes, painted flats, and cloth were all in their places. Among the things he left behind, there was nothing false.
I saw Alyosha once outside the theater.
As Vodianitsa and I passed the front entrance, someone wearing a fur hat shaped like a dog’s face walked by on the other side of the street with a large black-and-white hunting dog, then bowed his head toward us. Vodianitsa waved. The dog wagged its tail, and I bowed too.
The face beneath the hat was the same one I saw in the prop room, but the coat was not white; it was blue and white. He did not say a single word.
"Alyosha’s dog is named Tugarin. He’s gentle."
"He doesn’t bring the dog inside the theater."
"Grandpa wouldn’t stand for a dog in the prop room."
I concluded that he was a person who did not talk outside, but talked a little inside. There had been people in Seoul who were shy around crowds and only opened their mouths when alone with someone else. If such a person had helped move fifteen boxes, there was nothing more for me to question.
I had my first real conversation with Odette onstage.
Once rehearsals coordinating the chorus and ballet began, half the prop room’s work moved to the stage. I followed the old man up and marked the places where the candlesticks and glasses would go in chalk. On the first day, I learned that those marks could not overlap with the paths the ballet dancers used.
On the second day, while wiping the floor, I found a loose plank on the left side of the stage. When stepped on, it sank about half a handspan before rising again. Before I could think about what might happen if someone crossing it stood on tiptoe, my hand had already drawn a chalk circle around it. On the Teyvat side of the checklist, I wrote the words for floor and left side next to each other.
When I stood up, Odette was there.
She wore practice clothes and pale beige pointe shoes. She looked back and forth between me and the chalk circle. They were the same eyes that had watched my hands at home, but they rested in a different place.
"It’s been like that since last month."
"You knew?"
"Everyone walked around it."
"I’ll tell Grandpa today. It only needs to be nailed down."
Instead of answering, Odette touched the candlestick spot I had marked beside the circle with the tip of her shoe.
"This spot is fine. It’s one step outside our path."
"Grandpa said to leave two steps, but the stage is narrow."
"One step is enough. If it’s two, the back row won’t have anywhere to stand."
When she said back row, Odette’s eyes flicked toward the rear of the stage for just a moment before returning. I knew where those eyes had gone. Once I realized she was measuring all the way to Vodianitsa’s spot, I understood that this was someone who measured every position onstage. For the first time, I was not afraid that her eyes were now on my chalk circle.
Odette then indicated stage right with her chin.
"Move the second one from the right inward by half a step. It’s where we turn, and skirts catch there."
"Half a step."
I went over, erased the chalk mark, and drew it again half a step inward. When I looked back, Odette was testing the spot with the tip of her shoe. After testing it, she gave the smallest nod.
"Thank you."
It was the same thing she had said when receiving the salt shaker. But unlike then, her eyes were looking at me. Only for a moment, but they were not measuring eyes; they were simply looking. Odette turned away afterward. Her back was as straight as always, and I stood holding the chalk until it disappeared toward stage right.
The old man nailed down the plank that afternoon. As the hammering rang across the stage, the piano from the rehearsal room briefly stopped, then resumed. I marked the checklist beside the word floor.
That evening, Vodianitsa brought it up first on the forest path.
"Odette talked about you."
"About what?"
"She said you were the one who drew that circle on the floor. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her talk about someone else."
"It was about work."
"For her, that’s everything. She doesn’t talk about anything but work."
Vodianitsa laughed as she said it. Walking behind her, I remembered those eyes again. I remembered that brief moment when they were not measuring eyes but simply looking, and thought that if it was work talk, work talk was enough.
The theater director personally gave me my wages.
It was a paper envelope full of coins. The theater director slid it over the desk with a document, and I could now read the name written on it.
"One month’s pay. It isn’t much. Grandpa gets paid the same, so don’t complain to him about it."
"I have no complaints. Thank you."
"Sign here. I hear you can write."
I wrote my name in Teyvat script. I had drawn those letters hundreds of times on the forest path, but it was my first time writing them on paper. It surprised even me that my hand did not shake. The theater director looked over my signature once and placed the document atop a stack of papers.
The envelope was lighter than I expected. For thirty-one years, wages had been numbers in a bank account, not something I held in my hand. Holding it, it seemed meager for a month’s worth of candlesticks, painted flats, and boxes. Even so, I put it in my coat’s inner pocket and pressed it once beside the Korean-script sheet.
I already knew what I would spend it on. The glass jar Vodianitsa had looked at and passed by in the market a month ago; the way her eyes had lingered on it; the number of candies left in the old pouch on the shelf—I knew all of it. I had received two candies, so repaying two would balance the account. But I had never intended to repay only two.
I went to the market alone. At noon, while Vodianitsa was in rehearsal, I told the old man I would be gone half an hour. He did not ask where I was going. On the stone road I walked alone, I read the signs only inside my mouth.
The candy stall was still in the same place. The amber-colored candies in the glass jar were unchanged from a month ago. Beside the jar were several small metal tins with floral patterns stamped onto their lids. Apparently, they filled those tins with candy and sold them that way.
"How much to fill one of those tins?"
I heard the words that came out of my mouth. I still used formal speech with unfamiliar merchants. Only then did I realize that the stiffness had eased only in front of Vodianitsa, but I had no time to think about the difference; the merchant was already telling me the price.
It was a little less than half the envelope.
By the company’s standards, it was an absurd expense. If my department manager had seen someone spend half a month’s wages on candy, I would have heard another report being dropped onto my desk.
But I counted out the coins. My hand did not shake as it had when buying fish, and the merchant piled the tin high with candy, closed the lid, and handed it to me.
All the way back to the theater, candies knocked together inside my coat. I slowed my steps to lessen the sound as I thought about when and how to give it to her, though I doubted the words I had prepared would come out as planned.
When I entered the prop room, the old man glanced once at the inside of my coat.
"Buy something?"
"Candy."
"You?"
"No. I had something to repay."
The old man said nothing more and tossed me a rag. Catching it, I learned one more thing about how far his not asking extended.
I gave it to her on the forest path.
Before we left the city, I almost took it out twice. There was no gap in Vodianitsa’s talking, and by the time I waited for one, we were in the forest. Her words continued even after we entered it, so I stopped waiting for a gap.
The moment I stopped, Vodianitsa, walking ahead of me, turned and asked what letters we should do today. I took the tin from inside my coat and held it out.
"This."
"What’s this?"
"Candy. I got paid."
Vodianitsa took the tin and opened the lid. It was full of amber-colored candies. She did not touch them; she only looked inside. For a while, no words came from her mouth.
A silent Vodianitsa always seemed as though something was wrong, but right then, I could not tell what kind of wrong it was.
"I received two. Two including the one you gave me for the salt."
"...This is two?"
"Interest. You said you charged high interest."
Vodianitsa lifted her head. Her eyes were a little wet. I wondered if I had said something wrong and searched for what to say next, but Vodianitsa laughed first. It was neither the smile I saw at the market nor the one I saw at home, so I did not know where to place it.
"You spent half your wages, didn’t you?"
"Not quite half."
"Liar."
"...A little less than half."
"You’re really strange. You spent all that on candy?"
As she said that, Vodianitsa closed the lid and tucked the tin inside her coat. Even afterward, she pressed her hand over it once. It was exactly the gesture I had made earlier over the envelope, and for a moment I could not speak.
"Want one?"
"No. They’re yours."
Vodianitsa started walking again. She spoke less than usual, and her steps were slower instead. As I followed her, for the first time I felt that today I stood on the side that gave, not the side that received. It was more comfortable standing there than I had expected, and that comfort scared me a little.
"Next month, buy something for yourself."
"If there is a next month."
"There will be. Grandpa told you not to quit, didn’t he?"
I did not answer that, but it was not unpleasant to walk beside someone for whom next month came out as such an obvious thing.
When we got home, Vodianitsa took the old pouch from the shelf. Three candies remained inside. She transferred those three into the tin, folded the empty pouch, and put it in the back of the shelf. From that day on, the tin went not on the shelf, but in her coat pocket.
"You eat one. It’s your first paycheck."
"They’re not mine."
"You bought them with your money. You have to eat one. That way I can eat them too."
That math did not work this time either, but I took one and put it in my mouth. It tasted like the candy that had sat under my pillow for two days, but the sweetness spread with less pain than before.
"I’m taking them to the theater now. I’ll eat one whenever rehearsal runs late."
"Do that."
"Your way of talking is fine now."
Vodianitsa laughed, shaking the tin. The candies rattled inside.
Three days later was the first full rehearsal.
That dawn on the forest path, Vodianitsa spoke less than half as much as usual. She did not call out letters, either. Only her footsteps went ahead. As light began filtering through the trees, she took the tin from inside her coat, put a candy in her mouth, and looked back at me.
"It’s the first time we’re going from beginning to end. The back row too, without stopping once."
"It’ll go well."
"How would you know that?"
"I don’t. But I’ve listened for a month, haven’t I? I heard the frost tremble too."
Vodianitsa looked at me for a moment, moved the candy to her other cheek, and started walking again. Her pace became a little faster than before, and some of her words returned.
Following behind her, I counted out the month. It had been about a month and a half since the snowfield. The sheet listing what I had received was inside my coat, and not one line of a bill had appeared on it yet. My habit of searching for the next page remained, but lately the hand doing the searching had grown lazy. I did not force that lazy hand to become diligent.
That morning, I did not give that laziness a name.
The old man said it was a day to see whether they could go all the way through without stopping. On a day like that, someone from the prop room had to be stationed beside the stage. I put two copies of the checklist inside my coat and stood in the darkness at stage left.
Eleven candlesticks and twenty glasses had been placed at their chalk marks. Five large painted flats stood at the back, and the snow-covered castle hung from the ceiling.
Looking up, I saw the castle suspended horizontally beneath the iron bar on two ropes. From below, the painting with its three towers was only as big as my palm. They said it would descend all the way in front of the back wall, where the back row stood.
"The stage side watches the ropes. Watch your own things."
The old man said as he passed. I lowered my eyes.
Then, as he turned away, he added,
"When it’s over, everyone’s going for a drink. You come too."
"Me too?"
"The prop room is part of the troupe too."
The old man said that and disappeared backstage. Standing in the darkness, I rolled the words part of the troupe around in my mouth.
People came onto the stage. The chorus stood first in two rows before the back wall, while the ballet dancers scattered across the front. Vodianitsa stood in her usual place, and Odette was at the center front. Half a stage lay between them.
Today there was an orchestra rather than a piano. While the orchestra tuned up, the people onstage warmed up their toes and throats in their own places.
I saw Vodianitsa take out the tin from inside her coat and put another candy in her mouth. Someone beside her seemed to ask what it was, and Vodianitsa shook the tin for them before putting it away. Watching that gesture from beside the stage made me strangely proud, so I lowered my head as though checking the list.
They only mimed raising the curtain, and the rehearsal began.
Nothing happened during the first half. There was singing, then dancing. One candlestick had shifted half a handspan from its chalk mark, so I ran in between scenes and corrected it. The old man nodded from the darkness.
The checklist gained another mark for every prop that went out and came back in. My marking hand was so busy that I had no time for other thoughts. On a day like this, I was grateful for having no time.
The theater director sat in the middle of the audience, with several troupe members beside him. Today, no one clicked their tongue about the end of the back row. Maybe there was no time to stop and do so on a day meant to run from beginning to end. Maybe everyone was simply busy. Either way, Vodianitsa was singing in that spot.
The sound at the end of the back row was buried in the whole. It was supposed to be buried. As I listened to it being where it belonged, I tried not to pick out only that sound even once. I failed twice while trying.
It was the first time I truly watched Odette dance. I watched the body that had changed out of boots one-footed at home turn at the center of the stage. I watched her never step on the chalk circle on the floor while turning. When her foot passed exactly one step away from my candlestick spot, I added another mark beside that candlestick on the checklist in the darkness.
When the scene changed, the castle descended.
The sound of rope unspooling came from the ceiling. The castle lowered slowly and stopped about one fathom above the back row’s heads. From the side of the stage, the sight of the picture—yellow lights glowing in every window—floating above the people’s heads looked fairly convincing.
Those were windows I had cleaned. That thought made me smile a little, then the old man’s words came to mind, and I lowered my eyes.
They stopped once in the middle.
Something was off with the orchestra, and the conductor raised a hand. The people onstage caught their breath where they stood.
Odette turned from the front and walked toward the back. It was not a dancer’s step, just an ordinary walking step. She went all the way to the end of the back row and stood beside Vodianitsa. I could not hear what she said, but Vodianitsa smiled, while Odette did not. Then Vodianitsa took out the tin and held one out to Odette.
Odette accepted it. She did not put it in her mouth; she held it in her hand. I watched that hand lower from beside the stage, and it looked good to see one of the candies I had bought pass between those two people.
Vodianitsa lifted the tin once toward the darkness beside the stage. She was holding it up for me to see. I nodded in the darkness, though there was no way she could have seen it.
The castle floated above their heads.
I had not deliberately looked up at the ropes. My eyes followed Odette’s lowering hand upward, and there the rope was. Of the two strands, the one on the left was trembling slightly near the iron bar. At first, I thought it was vibrating with the sound of the orchestra.
The rope kept trembling.
It trembled, then jerked once. The sound was small, and the orchestra was still tuning. No one onstage looked up, but I was looking. Because I was looking, I saw the left side of the castle tilt ever so slightly.
The checklist fell from my hand.
I do not even know whether I realized it had fallen. All I knew was that my feet were on the stage floor, that there was a chalk circle on that floor, and that I was passing it. There was not a single thing that could be called a thought.
Something snapped overhead.
When it snapped, I was already in front of the back row. My left hand grabbed Vodianitsa’s shoulder, my right hand grabbed Odette’s arm, and I shoved them both.
Rather than shoving them, it would be more accurate to say I fell toward them. The three of us lurched toward the back wall at once. Someone screamed, but I could not tell whether it was Vodianitsa or someone else.
I saw the two of them fall to the floor. Vodianitsa’s tin rolled away. The candy fell from Odette’s hand. Both of them were out of the place where the castle had been.
Only after confirming that did I think about where my own feet were.
The castle fell left side first. The three-towered painting dropped, tilting vertically, and the yellow lights that had glowed in every window swelled before my eyes. I tried to pull myself away, but my left foot was caught against the floor. Before I had time to think whether it was the spot that had been nailed down or not, the edge of the painted flat came down beneath my knee.
There was a sound.
Wood splintered, and another sound mingled within it. Before I could understand what that other sound was, the weight came down on my leg.
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