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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/23162-h.zip b/23162-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..26a6c8f --- /dev/null +++ b/23162-h.zip diff --git a/23162-h/23162-h.htm b/23162-h/23162-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec80d20 --- /dev/null +++ b/23162-h/23162-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2667 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of No Great Magic, by Fritz Leiber. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .5em; + text-indent: 1em; + } + h1 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 350%; /* all headings centered */ + } + h5,h6 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + h2 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* centered and coloured */ + } + h3 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* centered and coloured */ + } + h4 { + text-align: center; font-family: garamond, serif; /* all headings centered */ + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + a {text-decoration: none} /* no lines under links */ + div.centered {text-align: center;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 1 */ + div.centered table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;} /* work around for IE centering with CSS problem part 2 */ + + .cen {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;} /* centering paragraphs */ + .noin {text-indent: 0em;} /* no indenting */ + .block {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} /* block indent */ + .block2 {margin-left: 35%; margin-right: 35%;} /* block indent */ + .right {text-align: right; padding-right: 2em;} /* right aligning paragraphs */ + .img {text-align: center; padding: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} /* centering images */ + .imgbk {background-image: url('images/frontis.png'); background-position: top center; background-repeat: no-repeat;} /* image block */ + + .tr {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 1em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} /* transcriber's notes */ + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; right: 2%; + font-size: 75%; + color: silver; + background-color: inherit; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0em; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal;} /* page numbers */ + + .poem {margin-left: 35%; margin-right: 15%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.pn { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; right: 2%; + font-size: 75%; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0em; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + color: silver; background-color: inherit; + font-variant: normal;} /* page numbers in poems */ + .poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10%; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i15 {display: block; margin-left: 15em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i16 {display: block; margin-left: 16em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i17 {display: block; margin-left: 17em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i18 {display: block; margin-left: 18em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i19 {display: block; margin-left: 19em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i23 {display: block; margin-left: 23em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Great Magic, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: No Great Magic + +Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber + +Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23162] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO GREAT MAGIC *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jeannie Howse and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p> +<br /> +<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.</p> +<p class="noin">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. +For a complete list, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p> +<p class="noin">This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, +December 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<div class="imgbk"> + + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +<h1 style="padding-top: 5em;"> +NO<br /> +GREAT MAGIC</h1> + +<br /> + +<h3>by FRITZ LEIBER</h3> + +<br /> + +<h4>ILLUSTRATED<br /> +BY NODEL</h4> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><b>The troupers of the Big Time</b><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><b>lack no art to sway a crowd—</b><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><b>or to change all history!</b><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<br /> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To bring the dead to life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is no great magic.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Few are wholly dead:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blow on a dead man's embers<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a live flame will start.<br /></span> +<span class="i10">—Graves<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<br /> + +<p>I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressing +room and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in his +threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but +staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +experimentally working his features a little, as actors will, and +kneading the stubble on his fat chin.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell +Anderson's <i>Elizabeth the Queen</i> or Shakespeare's <i>Macbeth</i>? It says +<i>Macbeth</i> on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready for +Elizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig."</p> + +<p>He tried out a few eyebrow rears—right, left, both together—then +turned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when +a gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling, +what sayest thou?"</p> + +</div> + +<p>Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes +wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred +and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen +hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat +part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and +inspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody +else in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham, +please.)</p> + +<p>I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question.</p> + +<p>He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot, +certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that +always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At +first that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me—a +sort of peeping-tom schoolteacher—but I've grown used to it over the +months and even palsy-feeling.</p> + +<p>He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybody +in the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time getting +into character, never parting her lips except for that purpose—or to +bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation.</p> + +<p>"Aye, 'tiz <i>Macbeth</i> tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to his +frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest. +"And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis."</p> + +<p>I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss +Nefer? She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of +her nose for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautiful +job, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead +of putty. But it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of +Glamis."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would—I thought, +<i>his timing's off tonight</i>—and then he harrumphed and said, "Why, +Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to +the play—a prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owled +his eyes. "'Tis an experiment in the new theater."</p> + +<p>I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had them +on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use Queen +Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up <i>Macbeth</i>, which is +all about witchcraft and directed at King James."</p> + +<p>He growled a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it your +peewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?"</p> + +<p>I said softly, "Siddy, you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing room +for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without +learning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & A +existing on your sweet charity, and don't think I don't appreciate it, +but—"</p> + +<p>"A-<i>and</i>-A, thou sayest?" he frowned. "Methinks the gladsome new +forswearers of sack and ale call themselves AA."</p> + +<p>"Agoraphobe and Amnesiac," I told him. "But look, Siddy, I was going +to sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak a +prologue to <i>Macbeth</i> is as much an anachronism as if you put her on +the gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne over +its schnozzle."</p> + +<p>"Ha!" he cried as if he'd caught me out. "And saying there's a new +Elizabeth, wouldn't that be the bravest advertisement ever for the +Empire?—perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogator +Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship <i>The Golden Hind</i>? Tilly +fally, lady!"</p> + +<p>He went on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will +never mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful +rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of +anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the +hour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him and +gave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go to, doll."</p> + +<p>"Czechoslovakia, Siddy?"</p> + +<p>"Bohemia, then, what skills it? Leave me now, sweet poppet. Go thy +ways. I have matters of import to ponder. There's more to running a +repertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in his +solemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underage +refugee from Skid Row than Sid's newest recruit, assistant stage +manager and hardest-worked juvenile—though for once he'd remembered +to shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack if +Miss Nefer wasn't, or, if she were going to double the roles, +shouldn't I help her with the change? She's a slow dresser and the +Elizabeth costumes are pretty realistically stayed. And she would have +trouble getting off that nose, I was sure. But then I saw that Siddy +was already slapping on the alboline to keep the grease paint from +getting into his pores.</p> + +<p><i>Greta, you ask too many questions</i>, I told myself. <i>You get everybody +riled up and you rack your own poor ricketty little mind</i>; and I hied +myself off to the costumery to settle my nerves.</p> + +<p>The costumery, which occupies the back end of the dressing room, is +exactly the right place to settle the nerves and warm the fancies of +any child, including an unraveled adult who's saving what's left of +her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the +regular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangled +and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the +borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your +cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other +plays we favor; Ibsen's <i>Peer Gynt</i>, Shaw's <i>Back to Methuselah</i> and +Hilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's <i>Children of Methuselah</i>, the +Capek brothers' <i>Insect People</i>, O'Neill's <i>The Fountain</i>, Flecker's +<i>Hassan</i>, <i>Camino Real</i>, <i>Children of the Moon</i>, <i>The Beggar's Opera</i>, +<i>Mary of Scotland</i>, <i>Berkeley Square</i>, <i>The Road to Rome</i>.</p> + +<p>There are also the costumes for all the special and variety +performances we give of the plays: <i>Hamlet</i> in modern dress, <i>Julius +Caesar</i> set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> +in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a +dinosaur, <i>The Tempest</i> set on another planet with a spaceship wreck +to start it off <i>Karrumph!</i>—which means a half dozen spacesuits, +featherweight but looking ever so practical, and the weirdest sort of +extraterrestrial-beast outfits for Ariel and Caliban and the other +monsters.</p> + +<p>Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep of +space and time that you sometimes get frightened <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>you'll be whirled up +and spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at something +very real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you +<i>really</i> are—as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chain +around my neck (Siddy's first gift to me that I can remember) and +chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my +eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: "Columbus Circle, Times +Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street...."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>But you don't ever get <i>really</i> frightened in the costumery. Not +exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled +and your tummy chilled from time to time—because you know it's all +make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It +gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as <i>pleasant</i> places and +not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you +forever. It's always safe, always <i>just in the theatre, just on the +stage</i>, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam ... and the best +sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts +and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one single +thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can't ever +push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except +to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the +fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at <i>the +audience</i> gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the two +times I <i>did</i> peek, and I have to come scuttling back.</p> + +<p>The costumery's good occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked +and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or +darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are +so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the +racks extend into the fourth dimension—not to mention the boxes of +props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books, +including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of +Furness's <i>Variorum Shakespeare</i>, which as Sid had guessed I'd been +boning up on. Oh, and I've sponged and pressed enough costumes, too, +and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up and +resewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials.</p> + +<p>In a less sloppily organized company I'd be called wardrobe mistress, +I guess. Except that to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>anyone in show business that suggests a +crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around +her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm not +that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody +outranks me, even Martin.</p> + +<p>Of course to somebody <i>outside</i> show business, wardrobe mistress might +suggest a yummy gal who spends her time dressing up as Nell Gwyn or +Anitra or Mrs. Pinchwife or Cleopatra or even Eve (we got a legal +costume for it) and inspiring the boys. I've tried that once or twice. +But Siddy frowns on it, and if Miss Nefer ever caught me at it I think +she'd whang me.</p> + +<p>And in a normaller company it would be the wardrobe room, too, but +costumery is my infantile name for it and the actors go along with my +little whims.</p> + +<p>I don't mean to suggest our company is completely crackers. To get as +close to Broadway even as Central Park you got to have something. But +in spite of Sid's whip-cracking there is a comforting looseness about +its efficiency—people trade around the parts they play without fuss, +the bill may be changed a half hour before curtain without anybody +getting hysterics, nobody gets fired for eating garlic and breathing +it in the leading lady's face. In short, we're a team. Which is funny +when you come to think of it, as Sid and Miss Nefer and Bruce and +Maudie are British (Miss Nefer with a touch of Eurasian blood, I +romance); Martin and Beau and me are American (at least I <i>think</i> I +am) while the rest come from just everywhere.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Besides my costumery work, I fetch things and run inside errands and +help the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room's very +coeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a while +Martin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about with +dustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop with +such silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to get +through and duck back into the costumery to collect myself.</p> + +<p>Yes, the costumery's a great place to quiet your nerves or improve +your mind or even dream your life away. But this time I couldn't have +been there eight minutes when Miss Nefer's Elizabeth-angry voice came +skirling, "Girl! Girl! Greta, where is my ruff with silver trim?" I +laid my hands on it in a flash and loped it to her, because Old Queen +Liz was known to slap even her Maids <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>of Honor around a bit now and +then and Miss Nefer is a bear on getting into character—a real Paul +Muni.</p> + +<p>She was all made up now, I was happy to note, at least as far as her +face went—I hate to see that spooky eight-spoked faint tattoo on her +forehead (I've sometimes wondered if she got it acting in India or +Egypt maybe).</p> + +<p>Yes, she was already all made up. This time she'd been going extra +heavy on the burrowing-into-character bit, I could tell right away, +even if it was only for a hacked-out anachronistic prologue. She +signed to me to help her dress without even looking at me, but as I +got busy I looked at <i>her</i> eyes. They were so cold and sad and lonely +(maybe because they were so far away from her eyebrows and temples and +small tight mouth, and so shut away from each other by that ridge of +nose) that I got the creeps. Then she began to murmur and sigh, very +softly at first, then loudly enough so I got the sense of it.</p> + +<p>"Cold, so cold," she said, still seeing things far away though her +hands were working smoothly with mine. "Even a gallop hardly fires my +blood. Never was such a Januarius, though there's no snow. Snow will +not come, or tears. Yet my brain burns with the thought of Mary's +death-warrant unsigned. There's my particular hell!—to doom, +perchance, all future queens, or leave a hole for the Spaniard and the +Pope to creep like old worms back into the sweet apple of England. +Philip's tall black crooked ships massing like sea-going fortresses +south-away—cragged castles set to march into the waves. Parma in the +Lowlands! And all the while my bright young idiot gentlemen spurting +out my treasure as if it were so much water, as if gold pieces were a +glut of summer posies. Oh, alackanight!"</p> + +<p>And I thought, <i>Cry Iced!—that's sure going to be one tyrannosaur of +a prologue. And how you'll ever shift back to being Lady Mack beats +me. Greta, if this is what it takes to do just a bit part, you'd +better give up your secret ambition of playing walk-ons some day when +your nerves heal.</i></p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>She was really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. It +was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the +park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the +chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with +its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>here we were, two +females undignifiedly twisted together, at the moment getting her into +that crazy crouch-deep bodice that's like a big icecream cone, and yet +here at the same time was Queen Elizabeth the First of England, three +hundred and umpty-ump years dead, coming back to life in a Central +Park dressing room. It shook me.</p> + +<p>She looked so much the part, you see—even without the red wig yet, +just powdered pale makeup going back to a quarter of an inch from her +own short dark bang combed and netted back tight. The age too. Miss +Nefer can't be a day over forty—well, forty-two at most—but now she +looked and talked and felt to my hands dressing her, well, at least a +dozen years older. I guess when Miss Nefer gets into character she +does it with each molecule.</p> + +<p>That age point fascinated me so much that I risked asking her a +question. Probably I was figuring that she couldn't do me much damage +because of the positions we happened to be in at the moment. You see, +I'd started to lace her up and to do it right I had my knee against +the tail of her spine.</p> + +<p>"How old, I mean how young might your majesty be?" I asked her, +innocently wonderingly like some dumb serving wench.</p> + +<p>For a wonder she didn't somehow swing around and clout me, but only +settled into character a little more deeply.</p> + +<p>"Fifty-four winters," she replied dismally. "'Tiz Januarius of Our +Lord's year One Thousand and Five Hundred and Eighty and Seven. I sit +cold in Greenwich, staring at the table where Mary's death warrant +waits only my sign manual. If I send her to the block, I open the +doors to future, less official regicides. But if I doom her not, +Philip's armada will come inching up the Channel in a season, puffing +smoke and shot, and my English Catholics, thinking only of Mary +Regina, will rise and i' the end the Spaniard will have all. All +history would alter. That must not be, even if I'm damned for it! And +yet ... and yet...."</p> + +<p>A bright blue fly came buzzing along (the dressing room has <i>some</i> +insect life) and slowly circled her head rather close, but she didn't +even flicker her eyelids.</p> + +<p>"I sit cold in Greenwich, going mad. Each afternoon I ride, praying +for some mischance, some prodigy, to wash from my mind away the bloody +question for some little space. It skills not what: a fire, a tree +a-failing, Davison or e'en Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, an +assassin's ball clipping the cold twigs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>by my ear, a maid crying +rape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard at +Thames' mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors setting +forth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of +tragedy to tear the heart—though that were somewhat much to hope for +at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so +much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of +Ireland or something—though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in +silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver +tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked +most like a winter riding costume—and her face was such a pale frozen +mask of Elizabeth's inward tortures, that I told myself, <i>Oh, I got to +talk to Siddy again, he's made some big mistake, the lardy old +lackwit. Miss Nefer just can't be figuring on playing in Macbeth +tonight.</i></p> + +<p>As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask <i>her</i> all about it +direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be +risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of +that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen +Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind +off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.</p> + +<p>His levied bottom half still looked like <i>The Lower Depths</i>. Martin is +Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But +above that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he was +stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest +hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his +shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just +the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and +habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian +that I thought, <i>Hey Zeus!—he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'd +just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas.</i> And I +quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only +come up with <i>The Fountain</i>.</p> + +<p>I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy +fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed +through the curtain. I thought, <i>nobody can explain this but Siddy</i>, +and I followed Martin.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">History does not move in one current,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">like the wind across bare seas,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">but in a thousand streams and eddies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">like the wind over a broken landscape.<br /></span> +<span class="i10">—Cary<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The boys' half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. +There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. +Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing +Bloody-something because he'd just burnt his fingers unwinding from +the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he'd wound there to +dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to +straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater +late and trying shortcuts.</p> + +<p>But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they +bugged again. <i>Greta</i>, I told myself, <i>you're going to have to send +Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder. "For the +roaches, boy?" "No, for the eyes."</i></p> + +<p>Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig +on—and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked +in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded +sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy +shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest—and which +really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in +straight from battle—but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, +red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a +green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to +fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked +just dandy maybe on one of the Pope's Swiss Guards.</p> + +<p>I thought, <i>Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there +and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt +desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most +atmospheric play.</i></p> + +<p>Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, "There thou art, slothy +minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle."</p> + +<p>"Siddy, what <i>is</i> all this?" I demanded as my hands automatically +obeyed. "Are you going to play <i>Macbeth</i> for laughs, except maybe +leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you're Red Skelton?"</p> + +<div class="img"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +<img border="0" src="images/imagep161.png" width="55%" alt="Elizabeth" /> +</div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>"What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?" he retorted, grunting +as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it +home.</p> + +<p>"The clown costumes on all you men," I told him, for now I'd noticed +that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in +yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and +clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin +gleaming brown with spirit gum. "I haven't seen any eight-inch +polka-dots yet but I'm sure I will."</p> + +<p>Suddenly a big grin split Siddy's face and he laughed out loud at me, +though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three +notches too tight. When we'd got that adjusted he said, "I' faith thou +slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an +experiment, a novelty? We shall but show <i>Macbeth</i> as it might have +been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, +but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat +for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped +finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the +Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new +Kennedy dimes.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer +and happier and friendlier for them though I didn't at the moment want +to, I thought, <i>Well, Siddy's right about that, at least I've read +they used to costume the plays that way, though I don't see how +Shakespeare stood it. But it was dirty of them all not to tell me +beforehand.</i></p> + +<p>But that's the way it is. Sometimes I'm the butt as well as the pet of +the dressing room, and considering all the breaks I get I shouldn't +mind. I smiled at Sid and went on tiptoes and necked out my head and +kissed him on a powdery cheek just above an aromatic mustache. Then I +wiped the smile off my face and said, "Okay, Siddy, play Macbeth as +Little Lord Fauntleroy or Baby Snooks if you want to. I'll never +squeak again. But the Elizabeth prologue's still an anachronism. +And—this is the thing I came to tell you, Siddy—Miss Nefer's not +getting ready for any measly prologue. She's set to play Queen +Elizabeth all night and tomorrow morning too. Whatever you think, she +doesn't know we're doing <i>Macbeth</i>. But who'll do Lady Mack if she +doesn't? And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>Martin's not dressing for Malcolm, but for the Son of +the Last of the Mohicans, I'd say. What's more—"</p> + +<p>You know, something I said must have annoyed Sid, for he changed his +mood again in a flash. "Shut your jaw, you crook brained cat, and +begone!" he snarled at me. "Here's curtain time close upon us, and you +come like a wittol scattering your mad questions like the crazed +Ophelia her flowers. Begone, I say!"</p> + +<p>"Yessir," I whipped out softly. I skittered off toward the door to the +stage, because that was the easiest direction. I figured I could do +with a breath of less grease-painty air. Then, "Oh, Greta," I heard +Martin call nicely.</p> + +<p>He'd changed his levis for black tights, and was stepping into and +pulling up around him a very familiar dress, dark green and +embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He'd safety-pinned a folded +towel around his chest—to make a bosom of sorts, I realized.</p> + +<p>He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. "Hook me up, +would you?" he entreated.</p> + +<p>Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare's day, they used +boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because—</p> + +<p>"Martin," I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast—Miss Nefer's +costume fitted him fine. "You're going to play—?"</p> + +<p>"Lady Macbeth, yes," he finished for me. "Wish me courage, will you +Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last +hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by +side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female +edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think, +looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve, +very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and +characterless child ghost about to scatter into air—and the edges of +my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, +didn't dispel that last illusion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of <i>The Village +Times</i> for you. There's a thumbnail review of our <i>Measure for +Measure</i>, though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here +somewhere...."</p> + +<p>But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have +Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's +own times <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>(though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and +it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink +herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant +that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me, +in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most +in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside +the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody, +"<i>Macbeth</i> tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that +I could have missed—though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help +on the costumes.</p> + +<p>But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the +part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines. +And there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals +to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and +Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage +minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st <i>that's</i> +a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time +he scrubbed and mopped....</p> + +<p><i>Greta, they're hiding things from you</i>, I told myself.</p> + +<p>Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did +all the things they didn't tell me about.</p> + +<p>Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my +top-storey weakness.</p> + +<p>I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to +the stage.</p> + +<p>I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it +can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all +capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look +out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an +open-air place for the audience—a large upward-sloping glade walled +by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On +that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to +look part of it by a green groundcloth.</p> + +<p>To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of +seats.</p> + +<p>The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances +in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's.</p> + +<p>The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience +outdoors, but if it rains <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>or there's a cold snap, or if you want to +play all winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you +can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big +accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind +from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the +auditorium's in use.</p> + +<p>Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft +felt mighty chilly.</p> + +<p>I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage—though it wasn't +the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the +wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out +the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change +while I'm out there and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be +New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta, +Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I'll never be able to get back to +that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the +costumes smelling like autumn leaves.</p> + +<p>Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that +<i>I'll</i> change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or +shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I +am—</p> + +<p>—or, it occurred to me for the first time now, <i>remember</i> who I am. +Which might be even worse.</p> + +<p>Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.</p> + +<p>I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a +high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those +of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet? +Harpsichord?</p> + +<p>"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me.</p> + +<p>I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself—also for the first time, +<i>you know that some day you're really going to have to face this +thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in +some practice.</i></p> + +<p>I stepped through the door.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross +and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the +gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be +gathering, at any rate—sometimes the movies and girlie shows and +brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes were +the same kooky colorful ones as the others'. Doc had a mock-ermine +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>robe and a huge gilt papier-mache crown. Beau was carrying a ragged +black robe and hood over his left arm—he doubles the First Witch.</p> + +<p>As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I +heard Beau say, "I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I +was hoping we wouldn't get any of those. How should they scent us +out?"</p> + +<p><i>Brother</i>, I thought, <i>where do you expect them to come from if not +the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island +and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx +boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting +the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis? +Be grateful for any audience you get, boy.</i></p> + +<p>But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of Vicksburg +a "rude fellow" and is always waiting for the day when the entire +audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons.</p> + +<p>Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel +Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage +except when "Vot does it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't +convinze nobody. <i>Nichevo.</i>"</p> + +<p><i>Maybe</i>, I thought, <i>Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth +plausible in rainbow pants.</i></p> + +<p>Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the +first of my shocks.</p> + +<p>It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon, +admittedly. But afternoon all the same.</p> + +<p>Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night, +living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances +mixed is something else again.</p> + +<p>It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't +see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees +closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That +was Shock Two.</p> + +<p>Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding +up the Queen?"</p> + +<p>Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I +managed to think. <i>So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth +prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the +dark. If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always +the last person on stage, even when she opens the play.</i></p> + +<p>And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>drumming +of horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear +auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And +there aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard +gave out with that sweet yet imperious <i>ta-ta-ta-TA</i>.</p> + +<p>I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned around +quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half anxious.</p> + +<p>I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my +mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me +that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and +bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground +cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. <i>Shock Three and +you're out, Greta</i>, my umpire was calling.</p> + +<p>I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was +wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his +back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress, +the prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his +left hand long black tatters swinging—telling me he'd still be +doubling Second Witch. And he was hissing, "Places, please, everybody. +On stage!"</p> + +<p>With a sweep of silver and ash-colored plush, Miss Nefer came past +him, for once leading the last-minute hurry to the stage. She had on +the dark red wig now. For me that crowned her characterization. It +made me remember her saying, "My brain burns." I ducked aside as if +she were majesty incarnate.</p> + +<p>And then she didn't break her own precedent. She stopped at the new +thing beside the door and poised her long white skinny fingers over +the yellowed keys, and suddenly I remembered what it was called: a +virginals.</p> + +<p>She stared down at it fiercely, evilly, like a witch planning an +enchantment. Her face got the secret fiendish look that, I told +myself, the real Elizabeth would have had ordering the deaths of +Ballard and Babington, or plotting with Drake (for all they say she +didn't) one of his raids, that long long forefinger tracing crooked +courses through a crabbedly drawn map of the Indies and she smiling at +the dots of cities that would burn.</p> + +<p>Then all her eight fingers came flickering down and the strings inside +the virginals began to twang and hum with a high-pitched rendering of +Grieg's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>"In the Hall of the Mountain King."</p> + +<p>Then as Sid and Bruce and Martin rushed past me, along with a black +swooping that was Maud already robed and hooded for Third Witch, I +beat it for my sleeping closet like Peer Gynt himself dashing across +the mountainside away from the cave of the Troll King, who only wanted +to make tiny slits in his eyeballs so that forever afterwards he'd see +reality just a little differently. And as I ran, the master-anachronism +of that menacing mad march music was shrilling in my ears.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<div class="block2"> +<p class="noin">Sound a dumbe shew. Enter +the three fatall sisters, +with a rocke, a threed, +and a pair of sheeres.</p> +<p class="right">—Old Play</p> +</div> + +<br /> + +<p>My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls' third +of the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private.</p> + +<p>When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pasted +and thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives me +security: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the +<i>Times</i> and the <i>Mirror</i>, a torn-out picture of the United Nations +building with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, and +hanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by Willie +Mays. Things like that.</p> + +<p>Right now I was jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep me +located and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with my +knees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines from +the play wouldn't be able to come nosing back around the trunks and +tables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listen +to them, even if they're sort of sepulchral and drained of overtones +by their crooked trip. But they're always tense-making. And tonight (I +mean this afternoon)—no!</p> + +<p>It's funny I should find security in mementos of a city I daren't go +out into—no, not even for a stroll through Central Park, though I +know it from the Pond to Harlem Meer—the Met Museum, the Menagerie, +the Ramble, the Great Lawn, Cleopatra's Needle and all the rest. But +that's the way it is. Maybe I'm like Jonah in the whale, reluctant to +go outside because the whale's a terrible monster that's awful scary +to look in the face and might really damage you gulping you a second +time, yet reassured to know you're living <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>in the stomach of that +particular monster and not a seventeen tentacled one from the fifth +planet of Aldebaran.</p> + +<p>It's really true, you see, about me actually living in the dressing +room. The boys bring me meals: coffee in cardboard cylinders and +doughnuts in little brown grease-spotted paper sacks and malts and +hamburgers and apples and little pizzas, and Maud brings me raw +vegetables—carrots and parsnips and little onions and such, and +watches to make sure I exercise my molars grinding them and get my +vitamins. I take spit-baths in the little john. Architects don't seem +to think actors ever take baths, even when they've browned themselves +all over playing Pindarus the Parthian in <i>Julius Caesar</i>. And all my +shut-eye is caught on this little cot in the twilight of my NYC +screen.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>You'd think I'd be terrified being alone in the dressing room during +the wee and morning hours, let alone trying to sleep then, but that +isn't the way it works out. For one thing, there's apt to be someone +sleeping in too. Maudie especially. And it's my favorite time too for +costume-mending and reading the <i>Variorum</i> and other books, and for +just plain way-out dreaming. You see, the dressing room is the one +place I really do feel safe. Whatever is out there in New York that +terrorizes me, I'm pretty confident that it can never get in here.</p> + +<p>Besides that, there's a great big bolt on the inside of the dressing +room door that I throw whenever I'm all alone after the show. Next day +they buzz for me to open it.</p> + +<p>It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, "But what if I'm so +deep asleep I don't hear and you have to get in fast?" and he had +replied, "Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiter +is the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and Jimmy +Dale. I'll not ask where he learned his trade, but 'tis sober truth, +upon my honor."</p> + +<p>And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, "At your +service, Miss Greta."</p> + +<p>"How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fits +like Maudie's tights?" I wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools," Sid +had explained for him.</p> + +<p>I don't know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or park +official doesn't find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid just +throws a little more of the temperament he uses to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>keep most +outsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don't get any janitors or +scrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squares +someone. I do get the impression all the company's gone a little way +out on a limb letting me stay here—that the directors of our theater +wouldn't like it if they found out about me.</p> + +<p>In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up +with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I +sometimes think I must be related to one of them—a distant cousin or +sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side +by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking +family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. +The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in +<i>Caesar</i> and Bianca in <i>Othello</i> and one of the little princes in +<i>Dick the Three Eyes</i> and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in <i>Macbeth</i>, +though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh.</p> + +<p>But whatever I am in that direction—if I'm anything—not one of the +actors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not even +when I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumably +because it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesia +in the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or at +least smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I've made for +myself.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me over +and decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along half +happily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home +(funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then they +must have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry and +interested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with a +program almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at.</p> + +<p>I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they might +be running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid, +"Siddy, shouldn't I see a doctor?"</p> + +<p>He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, "Sure, +why not? Go talk to Doc right now," tipping a thumb toward Doc +Pyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup box +what looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did, +incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>classification of the +psychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in a +year or two he'd be a good illustration of Korsakov's Syndrome.</p> + +<p>They've all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, the +actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my +situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a +button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one +of the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And when +my crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by getting +polite—something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau, +who treated me like a real Southern gentleman.</p> + +<p>All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang of +sentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a second +thought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my most +plausible theory of me is that I'm a stage-struck girl from Iowa who +saw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dash +to Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing her +first performance in Central Park that she kept going back there night +after night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus +Circle—see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy but +open-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her.</p> + +<p>And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at the +Village or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that it +blew the top of her head right off. And she ran to the only people and +place where she felt she could ever again feel safe. And she showed +them the top of her head with its singed hair and its jagged ring of +skull and they took pity.</p> + +<p>My least plausible theory of me, but the one I like the most, is that +I was born in the dressing room, cradled in the top of a flat +theatrical trunk with my ears full of Shakespeare's lines before I +ever said "Mama," let alone lamped a TV; hush-walked when I cried by +whoever was off stage, old props my first toys, trying to eat crepe +hair my first indiscretion, sticks of grease-paint my first crayons. +You know, I really wouldn't be bothered by crazy fears about New York +changing and the dressing room shifting around in space and time, if I +could be sure I'd always be able to stay in it and that the same sweet +guys and gals would always be with me and that the shows would always +go on.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>This show was sure going on, it suddenly hit me, for I'd let my +fingers slip off my ears as I sentimentalized and wish-dreamed and I +heard, muted by the length and stuff of the dressing room, the slow +beat of a drum and then a drum note in Maudie's voice taking up that +beat as she warned the other two witches, "A drum, a drum! Macbeth +doth come."</p> + +<p>Why, I'd not only missed Sid's history-making-and-breaking Queen +Elizabeth prologue (kicking myself that I had, now it was over), I'd +also missed the short witch scene with its famous "Fair is foul and +foul is fair," the Bloody Sergeant scene where Duncan hears about +Macbeth's victory, and we were well into the second witch scene, the +one on the blasted heath where Macbeth gets it predicted to him he'll +be king after Duncan and is tempted to speculate about hurrying up the +process.</p> + +<p>I sat up. I did hesitate a minute then, my fingers going back toward +my ears, because <i>Macbeth</i> is specially tense-making and when I've had +one of my mind-wavery fits I feel weak for a while and things are +blurry and uncertain. Maybe I'd better take a couple of the +barbiturate sleeping pills Maudie manages to get for me and—but <i>No, +Greta</i>, I told myself, <i>you want to watch this show, you want to see +how they do in those crazy costumes. You especially want to see how +Martin makes out. He'd never forgive you if you didn't.</i></p> + +<p>So I walked to the other end of the empty dressing room, moving quite +slowly and touching the edges here and there, the words of the play +getting louder all the time. By the time I got to the door +Bruce-Banquo was saying to the witches, "If you can look into the +seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will +not,"—those lines that stir anyone's imagination with their veiled +vision of the universe.</p> + +<p>The overall lighting was a little dim (afternoon fading already?—a +<i>late</i> matinee?) and the stage lights flickery and the scenery still a +little spectral-flimsy. Oh, my mind-wavery fits can be lulus! But I +concentrated on the actors, watching them through the entrance-gaps in +the wings. They were solid enough.</p> + +<p>Giving a solid performance, too, as I decided after watching that +scene through and the one after it where Duncan congratulates Macbeth, +with never a pause between the two scenes in true Elizabethan style. +Nobody was laughing at the colorful costumes. After a while I began to +accept them myself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>Oh, it was a different <i>Macbeth</i> than our company usually does. Louder +and faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse at +times approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybody +was just throwing themselves into it, Sid especially.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>The first Lady Macbeth scene came. Without exactly realizing it I +moved forward to where I'd been when I got my three shocks. Martin is +so intent on his career and making good that he has me the same way +about it.</p> + +<p>The Thaness started off, as she always does, toward the opposite side +of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step +and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began +to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart +sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almost +said out loud) <i>Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last +minute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out +of the ice cream cone in time?</i></p> + +<p>Then she swung around and I saw that no, my God, it <i>was</i> Martin, no +mistaking. He'd been using her voice. When a person first does a part, +especially getting up in it without much rehearsing, he's bound to +copy the actor he's been hearing doing it. And as I listened on, I +realized it was fundamentally Martin's own voice pitched a trifle +high, only some of the intonations and rhythms were Miss Nefer's. He +was showing a lot of feeling and intensity too and real Martin-type +poise. <i>You're off to a great start, kid</i>, I cheered inwardly. <i>Keep +it up!</i></p> + +<p>Just then I looked toward the audience. Once again I almost squeaked +out loud. For out there, close to the stage, in the very middle of the +reserve section, was a carpet spread out. And sitting in the middle of +it on some sort of little chair, with what looked like two charcoal +braziers smoking to either side of her, was Miss Nefer with a string +of extras in Elizabethan hats with cloaks pulled around them.</p> + +<p>For a second it really threw me because it reminded me of the things +I'd seen or thought I'd seen the couple of times I'd sneaked a peek +through the curtain-hole at the audience in the indoor auditorium.</p> + +<p>It hardly threw me for more than a second, though, because I +remembered that the characters who speak Shakespeare's prologues often +stay on stage and sometimes kind of join the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>audience and even +comment on the play from time to time—Christopher Sly and attendant +lords in <i>The Shrew</i>, for one. Sid had just copied and in his usual +style laid it on thick.</p> + +<p><i>Well, bully for you, Siddy</i>, I thought, <i>I'm sure the witless New +York groundlings will be thrilled to their cold little toes knowing +they're sitting in the same audience as Good Queen Liz and attendant +courtiers. And as for you, Miss Nefer</i>, I added a shade invidiously, +<i>you just keep on sitting cold in Central Park, warmed by dry-ice +smoke from braziers, and keep your mouth shut and everything'll be +fine. I'm sincerely glad you'll be able to be Queen Elizabeth all +night long. Just so long as you don't try to steal the scene from +Martin and the rest of the cast, and the real play.</i></p> + +<p><i>I suppose that camp chair will get a little uncomfortable by the time +the Fifth Act comes tramping along to that drumbeat, but I'm sure +you're so much in character you'll never feel it.</i></p> + +<p><i>One thing though: just don't scare me again pretending to work +witchcraft—with a virginals or any other way.</i></p> + +<p><i>Okay?</i></p> + +<p><i>Swell.</i></p> + +<p><i>Me, now, I'm going to watch the play.</i></p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... to dream of new dimensions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cheating checkmate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">by painting the king's robe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So that he slides like a queen;<br /></span> +<span class="i10">—Graves<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<br /> + +<p>I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, +"Come to my woman's breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering +ministers." Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was +touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his +green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys +can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a +little more often, and girls play boys too.</p> + +<p>Then Sid-Macbeth came back to his wife from the wars, looking +triumphant but scared because the murder-idea's started to smoulder in +him, and she got busy fanning the blaze like any other good little +<i>hausfrau</i> intent on her husband rising in the company and knowing +that she's the power behind him and that when there are promotions +someone's always got to get the axe. Sid and Martin made this charming +little domestic scene so natural yet gutsy too that I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>wanted to shout +hooray. Even Sid clutching Martin to that ridiculous pot-chested +cuirass didn't have one note of horseplay in it. Their bodies spoke. +It was the McCoy.</p> + +<p>After that, the play began to get real good, the fast tempo and +exaggerated facial expressions actually helping it. By the time the +Dagger Scene came along I was digging my fingernails into my sweaty +palms. Which was a good thing—my eating up the play, I mean—because +it kept me from looking at the audience again, even taking a fast +peek. As you've gathered, audiences bug me. All those people out there +in the shadows, watching the actors in the light, all those silent +voyeurs as Bruce calls them. Why, they might be anything. And +sometimes (to my mind-wavery sorrow) I think they are. Maybe crouching +in the dark out there, hiding among the others, is the one who did the +nasty thing to me that tore off the top of my head.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, if I so much as glance at the audience, I begin to get ideas +about it—and sometimes even if I don't, as just at this moment I +thought I heard horses restlessly pawing hard ground and one whinny, +though that was shut off fast. <i>Krishna kressed us!</i> I thought, +<i>Skiddy can't have hired horses for Nefer-Elizabeth much as he's a +circus man at heart. We don't have that kind of money. Besides</i>—</p> + +<p>But just then Sid-Macbeth gasped as if he were sucking in a bucket of +air. He'd shed the cuirass, fortunately. He said, "Is this a dagger +which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" and the play hooked +me again, and I had no time to think about or listen for anything +else. Most of the offstage actors were on the other side of the stage, +as that's where they make their exits and entrances at this point in +the Second Act. I stood alone in the wings, watching the play like a +bug, frightened only of the horrors Shakespeare had in mind when he +wrote it.</p> + +<p>Yes, the play was going great. The Dagger Scene was terrific where +Duncan gets murdered offstage, and so was the part afterwards where +hysteria mounts as the crime's discovered.</p> + +<p>But just at this point I began to catch notes I didn't like. Twice +someone was late on entrance and came on as if shot from a cannon. And +three times at least Sid had to throw someone a line when they blew +up—in the clutches Sid's better than any prompt book. It began to +look as if the play were getting out of control, maybe because the new +tempo was so hot.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>But they got through the Murder Scene okay. As they came trooping off, +yelling "Well contented," most of them on my side for a change, I went +for Sid with a towel. He always sweats like a pig in the Murder Scene. +I mopped his neck and shoved the towel up under his doublet to catch +the dripping armpits.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he was fumbling around on a narrow table where they lay +props and costumes for quick changes. Suddenly he dug his fingers into +my shoulder, enough to catch my attention at this point, meaning I'd +show bruises tomorrow, and yelled at me under his breath, "And you +love me, our crows and robes. Presto!"</p> + +<p>I was off like a flash to the costumery. There were Mr. and Mrs. +Mack's king-and-queen robes and stuff hanging and sitting just where I +knew they'd have to be.</p> + +<p>I snatched them up, thinking, <i>Boy, they made a mistake when they +didn't tell about this special performance</i>, and I started back like +Flash Two.</p> + +<p>As I shot out the dressing room door the theater was very quiet. +There's a short low-pitched scene on stage then, to give the audience +a breather. I heard Miss Nefer say loudly (it had to be loud to get to +me from even the front of the audience): "'Tis a good bloody play, +Eyes," and some voice I didn't recognize reply a bit grudgingly, +"There's meat in it and some poetry too, though rough-wrought." She +went on, still as loudly as if she owned the theater, "'Twill make +Master Kyd bite his nails with jealousy—ha, ha!"</p> + +<p><i>Ha-ha yourself, you scene-stealing witch</i>, I thought, as I helped Sid +and then Martin on with their royal outer duds. But at the same time I +knew Sid must have written those lines himself to go along with his +prologue. They had the unmistakable rough-wrought Lessingham touch. +Did he really expect the audience to make anything of that reference +to Shakespeare's predecessor Thomas Kyd of <i>The Spanish Tragedy</i> and +the lost <i>Hamlet</i>? And if they knew enough to spot that, wouldn't they +be bound to realize the whole Elizabeth-Macbeth tie-up was +anachronistic? But when Sid gets an inspiration he can be very +bull-headed.</p> + +<p>Just then, while Bruce-Banquo was speaking his broody low soliloquy on +stage, Miss Nefer cut in again loudly with, "Aye, Eyes, a good bloody +play. Yet somehow, methinks—I know not how—I've heard it before." +Whereupon Sid grabbed Martin by the wrist and hissed, "Did'st <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>hear? +Oh, I like not that," and I thought, <i>Oh-ho, so now she's beginning to +ad-lib.</i></p> + +<p>Well, right away they all went on stage with a flourish, Sid and +Martin crowned and hand in hand. The play got going strong again. But +there were still those edge-of-control undercurrents and I began to be +more uneasy than caught up, and I had to stare consciously at the +actors to keep off a wavery-fit.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Other things began to bother me too, such as all the doubling.</p> + +<p><i>Macbeth</i>'s a great play for doubling. For instance, anyone except +Macbeth or Banquo can double one of the Three Witches—or one of the +Three Murderers for that matter. Normally we double at least one or two +of the Witches and Murderers, but this performance there'd been more +multiple-parting than I'd ever seen. Doc had whipped off his Duncan +beard and thrown on a brown smock and hood to play the Porter with his +normal bottle-roughened accents. Well, a drunk impersonating a drunk, +pretty appropriate. But Bruce was doing the next-door-to-impossible +double of Banquo and Macduff, using a ringing tenor voice for the +latter and wearing in the murder scene a helmet with dropped visor to +hide his Banquo beard. He'd be able to tear it off, of course, after +the Murderers got Banquo and he'd made his brief appearance as a +bloodied-up ghost in the Banquet Scene. I asked myself, <i>My God, has +Siddy got all the other actors out in front playing courtiers to +Elizabeth-Nefer? Wasting them that way? The whoreson rogue's gone +nuts!</i></p> + +<p>But really it was plain frightening, all that frantic doubling and +tripling with its suggestion that the play (and the company too, Freya +forfend) was becoming a ricketty patchwork illusion with everybody +racing around faster and faster to hide the holes. And the +scenery-wavery stuff and the warped Park-sounds were scary too. I was +actually shivering by the time Sid got to: "Light thickens; and the +crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop +and drowse; Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse." +Those graveyard lines didn't help my nerves any, of course. Nor did +thinking I heard Nefer-Elizabeth say from the audience, rather softly +for her this time, "Eyes, I have heard that speech, I know not where. +Think you 'tiz stolen?"</p> + +<p><i>Greta</i>, I told myself, <i>you need a miltown before the crow makes wing +through your kooky head.</i></p> + +<p>I turned to go and fetch me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>one from my closet. And stopped dead.</p> + +<p>Just behind me, pacing back and forth like an ash-colored tiger in the +gloomy wings, looking daggers at the audience every time she turned at +that end of her invisible cage, but ignoring me completely, was Miss +Nefer in the Elizabeth wig and rig.</p> + +<p>Well, I suppose I should have said to myself, <i>Greta, you imagined +that last loud whisper from the audience. Miss Nefer's simply unkinked +herself, waved a hand to the real audience and come back stage. Maybe +Sid just had her out there for the first half of the play. Or maybe +she just couldn't stand watching Martin give such a bang-up +performance in her part of Lady Mack.</i></p> + +<p>Yes, maybe I should have told myself something like that, but somehow +all I could think then—and I thought it with a steady mounting +shiver—was, <i>We got two Elizabeths. This one is our witch Nefer. I +know. I dressed her. And I know that devil-look from the virginals. +But if this is our Elizabeth, the company Elizabeth, the stage +Elizabeth ... who's the other?</i></p> + +<p>And because I didn't dare to let myself think of the answer to that +question, I dodged around the invisible cage that the ash-colored +skirt seemed to ripple against as the Tiger Queen turned and I ran +into the dressing room, my only thought to get behind my New York City +Screen.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<div class="block2"> +<p class="noin">Even little things are turning +out to be great things and becoming +intensely interesting.</p> +<p class="noin">Have you ever thought +about the properties of +numbers?</p> +<p class="right">—The Maiden</p> +</div> + +<br /> + +<p>Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from a +pink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tiny +doll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yellow thread. +Really they weren't covering up much of anything. A ghostly hole an +inch and a half across seemed to char itself in the program. As if my +eye were right up against it, I saw in vivid memory what I'd seen the +two times I'd dared a peek through the hole in the curtain: a bevy of +ladies in masks and Nell Gwyn dresses and men in King Charles +knee-breeches and long curled hair, and the second time a bunch of +people and creatures just wild: all sorts and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>colors of clothes, +humans with hoofs for feet and antennae springing from their +foreheads, furry and feathery things that had more arms than two and +in one case that many heads—as if they were dressed up in our +<i>Tempest</i>, <i>Peer Gynt</i> and <i>Insect People</i> costumes and some more +besides.</p> + +<p>Naturally I'd had mind-wavery fits both times. Afterwards Sid had +wagged a finger at me and explained that on those two nights we'd been +giving performances for people who'd arranged a costume theater-party +and been going to attend a masquerade ball, and 'zounds, when would I +learn to guard my half-patched pate?</p> + +<p><i>I don't know, I guess never</i>, I answered now, quick looking at a +Giants pennant, a Korvette ad, a map of Central Park, my Willie Mays +baseball and a Radio City tour ticket. That was eight items I'd looked +at this trip without feeling any inward improvement. They weren't +reassuring me at all.</p> + +<p>The blue fly came slowly buzzing down over my screen and I asked it, +"What are you looking for? A spider?" when what should I hear coming +back through the dressing room straight toward my sleeping closet but +Miss Nefer's footsteps. No one else walks that way.</p> + +<p><i>She's going to do something to you, Greta</i>, I thought. <i>She's the +maniac in the company. She's the one who terrorized you with the +boning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you at +the dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and the +others are covering up for. She's going to smile the devil-smile and +weave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And Birnam +Wood'll come to Dunsinane and you'll be burnt at the stake by men in +armor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or torn +apart by wild centaurs or whirled through the roof to the moon without +being dressed for it or sent burrowing into the past to stifle in Iowa +1948 or Egypt 4,008 B.C. The screen won't keep her out.</i></p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Then a head of hair pushed over the screen. But it was +black-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martin +was giving me one of his rare smiles.</p> + +<p>I said, "Marty, do something for me. Don't ever use Miss Nefer's +footsteps again. Her voice, okay, if you have to. But not the +footsteps. Don't ask me why, just don't."</p> + +<p>Martin came around and sat on the foot of my cot. My legs were already +doubled up. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>straightened out his blue-and-gold skirt and rested a +hand on my black sneakers.</p> + +<div class="img"> +<img border="0" src="images/imagep180.png" width="100%" alt="troop" /> +</div> + +<p>"Feeling a little wonky, Greta?" he asked. "Don't worry about me. +Banquo's dead and so's his ghost. We've finished the Banquet Scene. +I've got lots of time."</p> + +<p>I just looked at him, queerly I guess. Then without lifting my head I +asked him, "Martin, tell me the truth. Does the dressing room move +around?"</p> + +<p>I was talking so low that he hitched a little closer, not touching me +anywhere else though.</p> + +<p>"The Earth's whipping around the sun at 20 miles a second," he +replied, "and the dressing room goes with it."</p> + +<p>I shook my head, my cheek scrubbing the pillow, "I mean ... shifting," +I said. "By itself."</p> + +<p>"How?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," I told him, "I've had this idea—it's just a sort of fancy, +remember—that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you +could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing room and +sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actors +can fit in anywhere. They're used to learning new parts and wearing +strange costumes. Heck, they're even used to traveling a lot. And if +an actor's a bit strange nobody thinks anything of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>it—he's almost +expected to be foreign, it's an asset to him."</p> + +<p>"And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere and +nobody ask questions, except the zoning authorities and such and they +can always be squared. Theaters come and go. It happens all the time. +They're transitory. Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meeting +places, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go. +And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you might +want to do something to. Caesar was stabbed in a theater. Lincoln was +shot in one. And...."</p> + +<p>My voice trailed off. "A cute idea," he commented.</p> + +<p>I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middle +finger as a baby might.</p> + +<p>"Yeah," I said, "But Martin, is it true?"</p> + +<p>He asked me gravely, "What do you think?"</p> + +<p>I didn't say anything.</p> + +<p>"How would you like to work in a company like that?" he asked +speculatively.</p> + +<p>"I don't really know," I said.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk. "Well, all fantasy +aside, how'd you like to work in this company?" He asked, lightly +slapping my ankle. "On the stage, I mean. Sid thinks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>you're ready for +some of the smaller parts. In fact, he asked me to put it to you. He +thinks you never take him seriously."</p> + +<p>"Pardon me while I gasp and glow," I said. Then, "Oh Marty, I can't +really imagine myself doing the tiniest part."</p> + +<p>"Me neither, eight months ago," he said. "Now, look. Lady Macbeth."</p> + +<p>"But Marty," I said, reaching for his finger again, "you haven't +answered my question. About whether it's true."</p> + +<p>"Oh that!" he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side. +"Ask me something else."</p> + +<p>"Okay," I said, "why am I bugged on the number eight? Because I'm +permanently behind a private 8-ball?"</p> + +<p>"Eight's a number with many properties," he said, suddenly as intently +serious as he usually is. "The corners of a cube."</p> + +<p>"You mean I'm a square?" I said. "Or just a brick? You know, 'She's a +brick.'"</p> + +<p>"But eight's most curious property," he continued with a frown, "is +that lying on its side it signifies infinity. So eight erect is +really—" and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a great +glow of inspiration and devotion—"Infinity Arisen!"</p> + +<p>Well, I don't know. You meet quite a few people in the theater who +are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd never +have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the skeptical, +cynical type.</p> + +<p>"I had another idea about eight," I said hesitatingly. "Spiders. That +8-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer's forehead—" I suppressed a shudder.</p> + +<p>"You don't like her, do you?" he stated.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of her," I said.</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't be. She's a very great woman and tonight she's playing +an infinitely more difficult part than I am. No, Greta," he went on as +I started to protest, "believe me, you don't understand anything about +it at this moment. Just as you don't understand about spiders, fearing +them. They're the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too. +They're the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva and +Kali united in love. They're the double mandala, the beginning and the +end, infinity mustered and on the march—"</p> + +<p>"They're also on my New York screen!" I squeaked, shrinking back +across the cot a little and pointing at a tiny glinting +silver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball.</p> + +<p>Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>close +to his face. "Eight eyes too," he told me. Then, "Poor little god," he +said and put it back.</p> + +<p>"Marty? Marty?" Sid's desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of the +dressing room.</p> + +<p>Martin stood up. "Yes, Sid?"</p> + +<p>Sid's voice stayed a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious. +"You villainous elf-skin! Know you not the Cauldron Scene's been +playing a hundred heartbeats? 'Tis 'most my entrance and we still +mustering only two witches out of three! Oh, you nott-pated +starveling!"</p> + +<p>Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slipped +around the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I'd +heard a lusty thwack as he went out the door. I couldn't help +grinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over his +first time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping his +mind that he was still doubling Second Witch.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I will vault credit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">and affect high pleasures<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beyond death.<br /></span> +<span class="i10">—Ferdinand<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<br /> + +<p>I sat down where Martin had been, first pushing the screen far enough +to the side for me to see the length of the dressing room and notice +anyone coming through the door and any blurs moving behind the thin +white curtain shutting off the boys' two-thirds.</p> + +<p>I'd been going to think. But instead I just sat there, experiencing my +body and the room around it, steadying myself or maybe readying +myself. I couldn't tell which, but it was nothing to think about, only +to feel. My heartbeat became a very faint, slow, solid throb. My spine +straightened.</p> + +<p>No one came in or went out. Distantly I heard Macbeth and the witches +and the apparitions talk.</p> + +<p>Once I looked at the New York Screen, but all the stuff there had +grown stale. No protection, no nothing.</p> + +<p>I reached down to my suitcase and from where I'd been going to get a +miltown I took a dexedrine and popped it in my mouth. Then I started +out, beginning to shake.</p> + +<p>When I got to the end of the curtain I went around it to Sid's +dressing table and asked Shakespeare, "Am I doing the right thing, +Pop?" But he didn't answer me out of his portrait. He just looked +sneaky-innocent, like he knew a lot but wouldn't tell, and I found +myself think of a little silver-framed photo Sid <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>had used to keep +there too of a cocky German-looking young actor with "Erich" +autographed across it in white ink. At least I supposed he was an +actor. He looked a little like Erich von Stroheim, but nicer yet +somehow nastier too. The photo had used to upset me, I don't know why. +Sid must have noticed it, for one day it was gone.</p> + +<p>I thought of the tiny black-and-silver spider crawling across the +remembered silver frame, and for some reason it gave me the cold +creeps.</p> + +<p>Well, this wasn't doing me any good, just making me feel dismal again, +so I quickly went out. In the door I had to slip around the actors +coming back from the Cauldron Scene and the big bolt nicked my hip.</p> + +<p>Outside Maud was peeling off her Third Witch stuff to reveal Lady +Macduff beneath. She twitched me a grin.</p> + +<p>"How's it going?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Okay, I guess," she shrugged. "What an audience! Noisy as highschool +kids."</p> + +<p>"How come Sid didn't have a boy do your part?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"He goofed, I guess. But I've battened down my bosoms and playing Mrs. +Macduff as a boy."</p> + +<p>"How does a girl do that in a dress?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"She sits stiff and thinks pants," she said, handing me her witch +robe. "'Scuse me now. I got to find my children and go get murdered."</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>I'd moved a few steps nearer the stage when I felt the gentlest tug at +my hip. I looked down and saw that a taut black thread from the bottom +of my sweater connected me with the dressing room. It must have +snagged on the big bolt and unraveled. I moved my body an inch or so, +tugging it delicately to see what it felt like and I got the answers: +Theseus's clew, a spider's line, an umbilicus.</p> + +<p>I reached down close to my side and snapped it with my fingernails. +The black thread leaped away. But the dressing room door didn't +vanish, or the wings change, or the world end, and I didn't fall down.</p> + +<p>After that I just stood there for quite a while, feeling my new +freedom and steadiness, letting my body get used to it. I didn't do +any thinking. I hardly bothered to study anything around me, though I +did notice that there were more bushes and trees than set pieces, and +that the flickery lightning was simply torches and that Queen +Elizabeth was in (or back in) the audience. Sometimes letting your +body get used to something is all you should do, or maybe can do.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>And I did smell horse dung.</p> + +<p>When the Lady Macduff Scene was over and the Chicken Scene well begun, +I went back to the dressing room. Actors call it the Chicken Scene +because Macduff weeps in it about "all my pretty chickens and their +dam," meaning his kids and wife, being murdered "at one fell swoop" on +orders of that chickenyard-raiding "hell-kite" Macbeth.</p> + +<p>Inside the dressing room I steered down the boys' side. Doc was +putting on an improbable-looking dark makeup for Macbeth's last +faithful servant Seyton. He didn't seem as boozy-woozy as usual for +Fourth Act, but just the same I stopped to help him get into a +chain-mail shirt made of thick cord woven and silvered.</p> + +<p>In the third chair beyond, Sid was sitting back with his corset +loosened and critically surveying Martin, who'd now changed to a white +wool nightgown that clung and draped beautifully, but not particularly +enticingly, on him and his folded towel, which had slipped a bit.</p> + +<p>From beside Sid's mirror, Shakespeare smiled out of his portrait at +them like an intelligent big-headed bug.</p> + +<p>Martin stood tall, spread his arms rather like a high priest, and +intoned, "<i>Amici! Romani! Populares!</i>"</p> + +<p>I nudged Doc. "What goes on now?" I whispered.</p> + +<p>He turned a bleary eye on them. "I think they are rehearsing <i>Julius +Caesar</i> in Latin." He shrugged. "It begins the oration of Antony."</p> + +<p>"But why?" I asked. Sid does like to put every moment to use when the +performance-fire is in people, but this project seemed pretty far +afield—hyper-pedantic. Yet at the same time I felt my scalp shivering +as if my mind were jumping with speculations just below the surface.</p> + +<p>Doc shook his head and shrugged again.</p> + +<p>Sid shoved a palm at Martin and roared softly, "'Sdeath, boy, thou'rt +not playing a Roman statua but a Roman! Loosen your knees and try +again."</p> + +<p>Then he saw me. Signing Martin to stop, he called, "Come hither, +sweetling." I obeyed quickly. He gave me a fiendish grin and said, +"Thou'st heard our proposal from Martin. What sayest thou, wench?"</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>This time the shiver was in my back. It felt good. I realized I was +grinning back at him, and I knew what I'd been getting ready for the +last twenty minutes.</p> + +<p>"I'm on," I said. "Count me in the company."</p> + +<p>Sid jumped up and grabbed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>me by the shoulders and hair and bussed me +on both cheeks. It was a little like being bombed.</p> + +<p>"Prodigious!" he cried. "Thou'lt play the Gentlewoman in the +Sleepwalking Scene tonight. Martin, her costume! Now sweet wench, mark +me well." His voice grew grave and old. "When was it she last walked?"</p> + +<p>The new courage went out of me like water down a chute. "But Siddy, I +can't start <i>tonight</i>," I protested, half pleading, half outraged.</p> + +<p>"Tonight or never! 'Tis an emergency—we're short-handed." Again his +voice changed. "When was it she last walked?"</p> + +<p>"But Siddy, I don't <i>know</i> the part."</p> + +<p>"You must. You've heard the play twenty times this year past. When was +it she last walked?"</p> + +<p>Martin was back and yanking down a blonde wig on my head and shoving +my arms into a light gray robe.</p> + +<p>"I've never studied <i>the lines</i>," I squeaked at Sidney.</p> + +<p>"Liar! I've watched your lips move a dozen nights when you watched the +scene from the wings. Close your eyes, girl! Martin, unhand her. Close +your eyes, girl, empty your mind, and listen, listen only. When was it +she last walked?"</p> + +<p>In the blackness I heard myself replying to that cue, first in a +whisper, then more loudly, then full-throated but grave, "Since his +majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw +her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth—"</p> + +<p>"Bravissimo!" Siddy cried and bombed me again. Martin hugged his arm +around my shoulders too, then quickly stooped to start hooking up my +robe from the bottom.</p> + +<p>"But that's only the first lines, Siddy," I protested.</p> + +<p>"They're enough!"</p> + +<p>"But Siddy, what if I blow up?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Keep your mind empty. You won't. Further, I'll be at your side, +doubling the Doctor, to prompt you if you pause."</p> + +<p><i>That ought to take care of two of me</i>, I thought. Then something else +struck me. "But Siddy," I quavered, "how do I play the Gentlewoman as +a boy?"</p> + +<p>"Boy?" he demanded wonderingly. "Play her without falling down flat on +your face and I'll be past measure happy!" And he smacked me hard on +the fanny.</p> + +<p>Martin's fingers were darting at the next to the last hook. I stopped +him and shoved my hand down the neck of my sweater and got hold of the +subway token and the chain it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>on and yanked. It burned my neck +but the gold links parted. I started to throw it across the room, but +instead I smiled at Siddy and dropped it in his palm.</p> + +<p>"The Sleepwalking Scene!" Maud hissed insistently to us from the door.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I know death hath ten thousand several doors<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For men to take their exits, and 'tis found<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They go on such strange geometrical hinges,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You may open them both ways.<br /></span> +<span class="i10">—The Duchess<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<br /> + +<p>There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but he +can't <i>look</i> at them, unless he's a narrator or some sort of comic. I +wasn't the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of becoming +the second as Siddy walked me out of the wings onto the stage, over +the groundcloth that felt so much like ground, with a sort of +interweaving policeman-grip on my left arm.</p> + +<p>Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, his +head so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn't see his face at all.</p> + +<p>My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart was +pounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung, +yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants.</p> + +<p>I heard as if from two million miles, "When was it she last walked?" +and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply—I guess it had to +be my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: "Since his +majesty went into the field—" and so on, until Martin had come on +stage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his long +black wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his right +hand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack's +sleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan and +Banquo and Lady Macduff.</p> + +<p>So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene that +floats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against a +background of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think, +or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid's hand hard on my +wrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearan language out of some +lightless storehouse of memory I'd never known was there to belong to +me.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-naked +black branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, early +evening.</p> + +<p>The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side and +going off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them, +almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled.</p> + +<p>Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumped +two dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves. +They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks. +Somehow I assumed that these men must be the "rude fellows from the +City" I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. Although +I couldn't see them very well, and didn't spend much time on them, +there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed way +back, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the conscious +impression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar.</p> + +<p>In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozen +horses, with grooms holding tight every two of them, but throwing +their heads back now and then as they strained against the reins, and +stamping their front hooves restlessly. Oh, they frightened me, I +tell you, that line of two-foot-long glossy-haired faces, writhing +back their upper lips from teeth wide as piano keys, every horse of +them looking as wild-eyed and evil as Fuseli's steed sticking its head +through the drapes in his picture "The Nightmare."</p> + +<p>To the center the trees came close to the stage. Just in front of them +was Queen Elizabeth sitting on the chair on the spread carpet, just as +I'd seen her out there before; only now I could see that the braziers +were glowing and redly high-lighting her pale cheeks and dark red hair +and the silver in her dress and cloak. She was looking at Martin—Lady +Mack—most intently, her mouth grimaced tight, twisting her fingers +together.</p> + +<p>Standing rather close around her were a half dozen men with fancier +hats and ruffs and wide-flaring riding gauntlets.</p> + +<p>Then, through the trees and tall leafless bushes just behind +Elizabeth, I saw an identical Elizabeth-face floating, only this one +was smiling a demonic smile. The eyes were open very wide. Now and +then the pupils darted rapid glances from side to side.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>There was a sharp pain in my left wrist and Sid whisper-snarling at +me, "Accustomed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>action!" out of the corner of his shadowed mouth.</p> + +<p>I tolled on obediently, "It is an accustomed action with her, to seem +thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of +an hour."</p> + +<p>Martin had set down the candle, which still flared and guttered, on a +little high table so firm its thin legs must have been stabbed into +the ground. And he was rubbing his hands together slowly, continually, +tormentedly, trying to get rid of Duncan's blood which Mrs. Mack knows +in her sleep is still there. And all the while as he did it, the +agitation of the seated Elizabeth grew, the eyes flicking from side to +side, hands writhing.</p> + +<p>He got to the lines, "Here's the smell of blood still: all the +perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!"</p> + +<p>As he wrung out those soft, tortured sighs, Elizabeth stood up from +her chair and took a step forward. The courtiers moved toward her +quickly, but not touching her, and she said loudly, "Tis the blood of +Mary Stuart whereof she speaks—the pails of blood that will gush from +her chopped neck. Oh, I cannot endure it!" And as she said that last, +she suddenly turned about and strode back toward the trees, kicking +out her ash-colored skirt. One of the courtiers turned with her and +stooped toward her closely, whispering something. But although she +paused a moment, all she said was, "Nay, Eyes, stop not the play, but +follow me not! Nay, I say leave me, Leicester!" And she walked into +the trees, he looking after her.</p> + +<p>Then Sid was kicking my ankle and I was reciting something and Martin +was taking up his candle again without looking at it saying with a +drugged agitation, "To bed; to bed; there's knocking at the gate."</p> + +<p>Elizabeth came walking out of the trees again, her head bowed. She +couldn't have been in them ten seconds. Leicester hurried toward her, +hand anxiously outstretched.</p> + +<p>Martin moved offstage, torturedly yet softly wailing, "What's done +cannot be undone."</p> + +<p>Just then Elizabeth flicked aside Leicester's hand with playful +contempt and looked up and she was smiling the devil-smile. A horse +whinnied like a trumpeted snicker.</p> + +<p>As Sid and I started our last few lines together I intoned +mechanically, letting words free-fall from my mind to my tongue. All +this time I had been answering Lady Mack in my thoughts, <i>That's what +you think, sister.</i></p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<div class="block2"> +<p class="noin">God cannot effect that +anything which is past +should not have been.</p> +<p class="noin">It is more impossible than +rising the dead.</p> +<p class="right">—Summa Theologica</p> +</div> + +<br /> + +<p>The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sid +and ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw, +my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed out. It +wasn't a mind-wavery fit. Just normal faint.</p> + +<p>I couldn't have been there long—well, not very long, though the +battle-rattle and alarums of the last scene were echoing tinnily from +the stage—when Bruce and Beau and Mark (who was playing Malcolm, +Martin's usual main part) came in wearing their last-act stage-armor +and carrying between them Queen Elizabeth flaccid as a sack. Martin +came after them, stripping off his white wool nightgown so fast that +buttons flew. I thought automatically, <i>I'll have to sew those.</i></p> + +<p>They laid her down on three chairs set side by side and hurried out. +Unpinning the folded towel, which had fallen around his waist, Martin +walked over and looked down at her. He yanked off his wig by a braid +and tossed it at me.</p> + +<p>I let it hit me and fall on the floor. I was looking at that white +queenly face, eyes open and staring sightless at the ceiling, mouth +open a little too with a thread of foam trailing from the corner, and +at that ice-cream-cone bodice that never stirred. The blue fly came +buzzing over my head and circled down toward her face.</p> + +<p>"Martin," I said with difficulty, "I don't think I'm going to like +what we're doing."</p> + +<p>He turned on me, his short hair elfed, his fists planted high on his +hips at the edge of his black tights, which now were all his clothes.</p> + +<p>"You knew!" he said impatiently. "You knew you were signing up for +more than acting when you said, 'Count me in the company.'"</p> + +<p>Like a legged sapphire the blue fly walked across her upper lip and +stopped by the thread of foam.</p> + +<p>"But Martin ... changing the past ... dipping back and killing the +real queen ... replacing her with a double—"</p> + +<p>His dark brows shot up. "The real—You think this is the real Queen +Elizabeth?" He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nearest +table, gushed some on a towel stained with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>grease-paint and, holding +the dead head by its red hair (no, wig—the real one wore a wig too) +scrubbed the forehead.</p> + +<p>The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint +tattoo in the form of an "S" styled like a yin-yang symbol left a +little open.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>"Snake!" he hissed. "Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent! +God knows how many times people like Queen Elizabeth have been dug out +of the past, first by Snakes, then by Spiders, and kidnapped or killed +and replaced in the course of our war. This is the first big operation +I've been on, Greta. But I know that much."</p> + +<p>My head began to ache. I asked, "If she's an enemy double, why didn't +she know a performance of Macbeth in her lifetime was an anachronism?"</p> + +<p>"Foxholed in the past, only trying to hold a position, they get +dulled. They turn half zombie. Even the Snakes. Even our people. +Besides, she almost did catch on, twice when she spoke to Leicester."</p> + +<p>"Martin," I said dully, "if there've been all these replacements, +first by them, then by us, what's happened to the <i>real</i> Elizabeth?"</p> + +<p>He shrugged. "God knows."</p> + +<p>I asked softly, "But does He, Martin? Can He?"</p> + +<p>He hugged his shoulders in, as if to contain a shudder. "Look, Greta," +he said, "it's the Snakes who are the warpers and destroyers. We're +restoring the past. The Spiders are trying to keep things as first +created. We only kill when we must."</p> + +<p><i>I</i> shuddered then, for bursting out of my memory came the glittering, +knife-flashing, night-shrouded, bloody image of my lover, the Spider +soldier-of-change Erich von Hohenwald, dying in the grip of a giant +silver spider, or spider-shaped entity large as he, as they rolled in +a tangled ball down a flight of rocks in Central Park.</p> + +<p>But the memory-burst didn't blow up my mind, as it had done a year +ago, no more than snapping the black thread from my sweater had ended +the world. I asked Martin, "Is that what the Snakes say?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, +you have to <i>trust</i>." He put out the middle finger of his hand.</p> + +<p>I didn't take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against his +thumb.</p> + +<p>"You're still grieving for that carrion there!" he accused me. He +jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>over the +stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, +imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in +the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing +one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only +to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all +the other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live +... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to the +Great Lakes and New Scandinavia."</p> + +<p>Once more he put out his middle finger.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>"All right, all right," I said, barely touching it. "You've convinced +me."</p> + +<p>"Great!" he said. "'By for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set."</p> + +<p>"That's good," I said. He loped out.</p> + +<p>I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to the +death of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in the +empty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snow +tiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed for +insubordination that <i>I</i> had reported ... but really grieving for a +girl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with a +whole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more than +subway bogies and Park and Village monsters.</p> + +<p>As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fell +across my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young man +in worn dark clothes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-three. He +was a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyes +that saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemed +familiar to me in the knot of City fellows.</p> + +<p>He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on the +reserve makeup box by Siddy's mirror. And I began to tremble.</p> + +<p>He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began to +tremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine.</p> + +<p>The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witches +faintly wailing, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair—" Sid has them echo +that line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled.</p> + +<p>Then Sid came pounding up. He's the first finished, since the fight +ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache head +of him and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.</p> + +<p>Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. +He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the +same time in breathy little rushes.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up +behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none +of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.</p> + +<p>And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Can +such things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by some +hell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak! +You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have +you disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts? +Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you +not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King's Lynn ... singed by +time's fiery wand ... sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? +Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth +... aye, and perchance hell too ... Speak, I charge you!"</p> + +<p>And with that he put his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him, +I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I +ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.</p> + +<p>He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, +with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of +the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the +stranger's narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, +himself following.</p> + +<p>The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth's head to +Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark +dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she +skittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting my +temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid's +dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reserve +makeup box.</p> + +<p>"The lights, Martin!" he called.</p> + +<p>Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and +standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.</p> + +<p>I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it +could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy, +you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>care how much he +shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes—Siddy, that +was Shakespeare!"</p> + +<p>"Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "They +can't find dolls to double men like that—or such is my main hope." A +big sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with what +words do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?"</p> + +<p>I asked him, "Sid, were we <i>ever</i> in Central Park?"</p> + +<p>He answered, "Once—twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came +for Erich. You flipped."</p> + +<p>He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.</p> + +<br /><br /> + +<p>Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered +with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid's +reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, +still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he +kneeled before the thing—Major Maintainer, I remembered it was +called.</p> + +<p>"When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answered +instantly. "Rome!"</p> + +<p>Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or a +safe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.</p> + +<p>"There's a storm in that vector of the Void."</p> + +<p>"Circle it," Sid ordered.</p> + +<p>"There are dark mists every way."</p> + +<p>"Then pick the likeliest dark path!"</p> + +<p>I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, +Siddy?"</p> + +<p>"Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!"</p> + +<br /> + +<p class="right">—FRITZ LEIBER</p> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p> +<br /> +Page 155: 'and and' replaced with 'and'<br /> +Page 159: Eliabeth replaced with Elizabeth<br /> +Page 160: automotically replaced with automatically<br /> +Page 162: 'the the' replaced with 'the'<br /> +Page 166: 'performances mixed in something else again.' replaced with 'performances mixed is something else again.'<br /> +Page 167: Gerta replaced with Greta<br /> +Page 174: rythms replaced with rhythms<br /> +Page 175: 'exists and entrances' replaced with 'exits and entrances'<br /> +Page 175: terrif replaced with terrific<br /> +Page 176: grudigingly replaced with grudgingly<br /> +Page 177: 'to hid his Banquo beard.' replaced with 'to hide his Banquo beard.'<br /> +Page 184: quick replaced with quickly<br /> +Page 186: Sdiney replaced with Sidney<br /> +Page 187: 'tolling the the reply' replaced with 'tolling the reply'<br /> +Page 187: 'hight hand' replaced with 'right hand'<br /> +Page 188: swisting replaced with twisting<br /> +Page 190: saphire replaced with sapphire<br /> +Page 191: kidnaped replaced with kidnapped<br /> +</div> + + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of No Great Magic, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO GREAT MAGIC *** + +***** This file should be named 23162-h.htm or 23162-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/1/6/23162/ + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jeannie Howse and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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0000000..39871b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/23162-page-images/p193b.png diff --git a/23162-page-images/p194.png b/23162-page-images/p194.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b448b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/23162-page-images/p194.png diff --git a/23162.txt b/23162.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..805a2e5 --- /dev/null +++ b/23162.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2488 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Great Magic, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: No Great Magic + +Author: Fritz Reuter Leiber + +Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23162] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO GREAT MAGIC *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jeannie Howse and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + * * * * * + + +-----------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | + | been preserved. | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | + | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | + | | + | This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction, | + | December 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any | + | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication | + | was renewed. | + | | + +-----------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + + + + +[Illustration] + + +NO +GREAT MAGIC + +by FRITZ LEIBER + +ILLUSTRATED +BY NODEL + + The troupers of the Big Time + lack no art to sway a crowd-- + or to change all history! + + + I + + To bring the dead to life + Is no great magic. + Few are wholly dead: + Blow on a dead man's embers + And a live flame will start. + --Graves + + +I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressing +room and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in his +threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but +staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and +experimentally working his features a little, as actors will, and +kneading the stubble on his fat chin. + +I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell +Anderson's _Elizabeth the Queen_ or Shakespeare's _Macbeth_? It says +_Macbeth_ on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready for +Elizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig." + +He tried out a few eyebrow rears--right, left, both together--then +turned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when +a gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling, +what sayest thou?" + +Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes +wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred +and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen +hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat +part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and +inspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody +else in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham, +please.) + +I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question. + +He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot, +certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that +always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At +first that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me--a +sort of peeping-tom schoolteacher--but I've grown used to it over the +months and even palsy-feeling. + +He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybody +in the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time getting +into character, never parting her lips except for that purpose--or to +bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation. + +"Aye, 'tiz _Macbeth_ tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to his +frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest. +"And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis." + +I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss +Nefer? She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of +her nose for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautiful +job, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead +of putty. But it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of +Glamis." + + * * * * * + +Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would--I thought, +_his timing's off tonight_--and then he harrumphed and said, "Why, +Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to +the play--a prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owled +his eyes. "'Tis an experiment in the new theater." + +I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had them +on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use Queen +Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up _Macbeth_, which is +all about witchcraft and directed at King James." + +He growled a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it your +peewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?" + +I said softly, "Siddy, you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing room +for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without +learning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & A +existing on your sweet charity, and don't think I don't appreciate it, +but--" + +"A-_and_-A, thou sayest?" he frowned. "Methinks the gladsome new +forswearers of sack and ale call themselves AA." + +"Agoraphobe and Amnesiac," I told him. "But look, Siddy, I was going +to sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak a +prologue to _Macbeth_ is as much an anachronism as if you put her on +the gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne over +its schnozzle." + +"Ha!" he cried as if he'd caught me out. "And saying there's a new +Elizabeth, wouldn't that be the bravest advertisement ever for the +Empire?--perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogator +Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship _The Golden Hind_? Tilly +fally, lady!" + +He went on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will +never mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful +rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of +anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the +hour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him and +gave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go to, doll." + +"Czechoslovakia, Siddy?" + +"Bohemia, then, what skills it? Leave me now, sweet poppet. Go thy +ways. I have matters of import to ponder. There's more to running a +repertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness." + + * * * * * + +Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in his +solemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underage +refugee from Skid Row than Sid's newest recruit, assistant stage +manager and hardest-worked juvenile--though for once he'd remembered +to shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack if +Miss Nefer wasn't, or, if she were going to double the roles, +shouldn't I help her with the change? She's a slow dresser and the +Elizabeth costumes are pretty realistically stayed. And she would have +trouble getting off that nose, I was sure. But then I saw that Siddy +was already slapping on the alboline to keep the grease paint from +getting into his pores. + +_Greta, you ask too many questions_, I told myself. _You get everybody +riled up and you rack your own poor ricketty little mind_; and I hied +myself off to the costumery to settle my nerves. + +The costumery, which occupies the back end of the dressing room, is +exactly the right place to settle the nerves and warm the fancies of +any child, including an unraveled adult who's saving what's left of +her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the +regular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangled +and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the +borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your +cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other +plays we favor; Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_, Shaw's _Back to Methuselah_ and +Hilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's _Children of Methuselah_, the +Capek brothers' _Insect People_, O'Neill's _The Fountain_, Flecker's +_Hassan_, _Camino Real_, _Children of the Moon_, _The Beggar's Opera_, +_Mary of Scotland_, _Berkeley Square_, _The Road to Rome_. + +There are also the costumes for all the special and variety +performances we give of the plays: _Hamlet_ in modern dress, _Julius +Caesar_ set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, _The Taming of the Shrew_ +in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a +dinosaur, _The Tempest_ set on another planet with a spaceship wreck +to start it off _Karrumph!_--which means a half dozen spacesuits, +featherweight but looking ever so practical, and the weirdest sort of +extraterrestrial-beast outfits for Ariel and Caliban and the other +monsters. + +Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep of +space and time that you sometimes get frightened you'll be whirled up +and spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at something +very real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you +_really_ are--as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chain +around my neck (Siddy's first gift to me that I can remember) and +chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my +eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: "Columbus Circle, Times +Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street...." + + * * * * * + +But you don't ever get _really_ frightened in the costumery. Not +exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled +and your tummy chilled from time to time--because you know it's all +make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It +gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as _pleasant_ places and +not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you +forever. It's always safe, always _just in the theatre, just on the +stage_, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam ... and the best +sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts +and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one single +thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can't ever +push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except +to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the +fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at _the +audience_ gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the two +times I _did_ peek, and I have to come scuttling back. + +The costumery's good occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked +and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or +darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are +so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the +racks extend into the fourth dimension--not to mention the boxes of +props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books, +including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of +Furness's _Variorum Shakespeare_, which as Sid had guessed I'd been +boning up on. Oh, and I've sponged and pressed enough costumes, too, +and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up and +resewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials. + +In a less sloppily organized company I'd be called wardrobe mistress, +I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests a +crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around +her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm not +that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody +outranks me, even Martin. + +Of course to somebody _outside_ show business, wardrobe mistress might +suggest a yummy gal who spends her time dressing up as Nell Gwyn or +Anitra or Mrs. Pinchwife or Cleopatra or even Eve (we got a legal +costume for it) and inspiring the boys. I've tried that once or twice. +But Siddy frowns on it, and if Miss Nefer ever caught me at it I think +she'd whang me. + +And in a normaller company it would be the wardrobe room, too, but +costumery is my infantile name for it and the actors go along with my +little whims. + +I don't mean to suggest our company is completely crackers. To get as +close to Broadway even as Central Park you got to have something. But +in spite of Sid's whip-cracking there is a comforting looseness about +its efficiency--people trade around the parts they play without fuss, +the bill may be changed a half hour before curtain without anybody +getting hysterics, nobody gets fired for eating garlic and breathing +it in the leading lady's face. In short, we're a team. Which is funny +when you come to think of it, as Sid and Miss Nefer and Bruce and +Maudie are British (Miss Nefer with a touch of Eurasian blood, I +romance); Martin and Beau and me are American (at least I _think_ I +am) while the rest come from just everywhere. + + * * * * * + +Besides my costumery work, I fetch things and run inside errands and +help the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room's very +coeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a while +Martin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about with +dustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop with +such silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to get +through and duck back into the costumery to collect myself. + +Yes, the costumery's a great place to quiet your nerves or improve +your mind or even dream your life away. But this time I couldn't have +been there eight minutes when Miss Nefer's Elizabeth-angry voice came +skirling, "Girl! Girl! Greta, where is my ruff with silver trim?" I +laid my hands on it in a flash and loped it to her, because Old Queen +Liz was known to slap even her Maids of Honor around a bit now and +then and Miss Nefer is a bear on getting into character--a real Paul +Muni. + +She was all made up now, I was happy to note, at least as far as her +face went--I hate to see that spooky eight-spoked faint tattoo on her +forehead (I've sometimes wondered if she got it acting in India or +Egypt maybe). + +Yes, she was already all made up. This time she'd been going extra +heavy on the burrowing-into-character bit, I could tell right away, +even if it was only for a hacked-out anachronistic prologue. She +signed to me to help her dress without even looking at me, but as I +got busy I looked at _her_ eyes. They were so cold and sad and lonely +(maybe because they were so far away from her eyebrows and temples and +small tight mouth, and so shut away from each other by that ridge of +nose) that I got the creeps. Then she began to murmur and sigh, very +softly at first, then loudly enough so I got the sense of it. + +"Cold, so cold," she said, still seeing things far away though her +hands were working smoothly with mine. "Even a gallop hardly fires my +blood. Never was such a Januarius, though there's no snow. Snow will +not come, or tears. Yet my brain burns with the thought of Mary's +death-warrant unsigned. There's my particular hell!--to doom, +perchance, all future queens, or leave a hole for the Spaniard and the +Pope to creep like old worms back into the sweet apple of England. +Philip's tall black crooked ships massing like sea-going fortresses +south-away--cragged castles set to march into the waves. Parma in the +Lowlands! And all the while my bright young idiot gentlemen spurting +out my treasure as if it were so much water, as if gold pieces were a +glut of summer posies. Oh, alackanight!" + +And I thought, _Cry Iced!--that's sure going to be one tyrannosaur of +a prologue. And how you'll ever shift back to being Lady Mack beats +me. Greta, if this is what it takes to do just a bit part, you'd +better give up your secret ambition of playing walk-ons some day when +your nerves heal._ + + * * * * * + +She was really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. It +was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the +park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the +chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with +its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two +females undignifiedly twisted together, at the moment getting her into +that crazy crouch-deep bodice that's like a big icecream cone, and yet +here at the same time was Queen Elizabeth the First of England, three +hundred and umpty-ump years dead, coming back to life in a Central +Park dressing room. It shook me. + +She looked so much the part, you see--even without the red wig yet, +just powdered pale makeup going back to a quarter of an inch from her +own short dark bang combed and netted back tight. The age too. Miss +Nefer can't be a day over forty--well, forty-two at most--but now she +looked and talked and felt to my hands dressing her, well, at least a +dozen years older. I guess when Miss Nefer gets into character she +does it with each molecule. + +That age point fascinated me so much that I risked asking her a +question. Probably I was figuring that she couldn't do me much damage +because of the positions we happened to be in at the moment. You see, +I'd started to lace her up and to do it right I had my knee against +the tail of her spine. + +"How old, I mean how young might your majesty be?" I asked her, +innocently wonderingly like some dumb serving wench. + +For a wonder she didn't somehow swing around and clout me, but only +settled into character a little more deeply. + +"Fifty-four winters," she replied dismally. "'Tiz Januarius of Our +Lord's year One Thousand and Five Hundred and Eighty and Seven. I sit +cold in Greenwich, staring at the table where Mary's death warrant +waits only my sign manual. If I send her to the block, I open the +doors to future, less official regicides. But if I doom her not, +Philip's armada will come inching up the Channel in a season, puffing +smoke and shot, and my English Catholics, thinking only of Mary +Regina, will rise and i' the end the Spaniard will have all. All +history would alter. That must not be, even if I'm damned for it! And +yet ... and yet...." + +A bright blue fly came buzzing along (the dressing room has _some_ +insect life) and slowly circled her head rather close, but she didn't +even flicker her eyelids. + +"I sit cold in Greenwich, going mad. Each afternoon I ride, praying +for some mischance, some prodigy, to wash from my mind away the bloody +question for some little space. It skills not what: a fire, a tree +a-failing, Davison or e'en Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, an +assassin's ball clipping the cold twigs by my ear, a maid crying +rape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard at +Thames' mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors setting +forth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of +tragedy to tear the heart--though that were somewhat much to hope for +at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by." + + * * * * * + +The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so +much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of +Ireland or something--though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in +silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver +tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked +most like a winter riding costume--and her face was such a pale frozen +mask of Elizabeth's inward tortures, that I told myself, _Oh, I got to +talk to Siddy again, he's made some big mistake, the lardy old +lackwit. Miss Nefer just can't be figuring on playing in Macbeth +tonight._ + +As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask _her_ all about it +direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be +risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of +that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen +Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind +off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds. + +His levied bottom half still looked like _The Lower Depths_. Martin is +Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But +above that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he was +stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest +hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his +shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just +the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and +habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian +that I thought, _Hey Zeus!--he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'd +just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas._ And I +quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only +come up with _The Fountain_. + +I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy +fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed +through the curtain. I thought, _nobody can explain this but Siddy_, +and I followed Martin. + + + + + II + + History does not move in one current, + like the wind across bare seas, + but in a thousand streams and eddies, + like the wind over a broken landscape. + --Cary + +The boys' half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. +There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. +Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing +Bloody-something because he'd just burnt his fingers unwinding from +the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he'd wound there to +dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to +straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater +late and trying shortcuts. + +But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they +bugged again. _Greta_, I told myself, _you're going to have to send +Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder._ "_For the +roaches, boy?_" "_No, for the eyes._" + +Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig +on--and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked +in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded +sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy +shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest--and which +really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in +straight from battle--but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, +red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a +green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to +fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked +just dandy maybe on one of the Pope's Swiss Guards. + +I thought, _Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there +and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt +desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most +atmospheric play._ + +Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, "There thou art, slothy +minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle." + +"Siddy, what _is_ all this?" I demanded as my hands automatically +obeyed. "Are you going to play _Macbeth_ for laughs, except maybe +leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you're Red Skelton?" + +[Illustration] + +"What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?" he retorted, grunting +as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it +home. + +"The clown costumes on all you men," I told him, for now I'd noticed +that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in +yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and +clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin +gleaming brown with spirit gum. "I haven't seen any eight-inch +polka-dots yet but I'm sure I will." + +Suddenly a big grin split Siddy's face and he laughed out loud at me, +though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three +notches too tight. When we'd got that adjusted he said, "I' faith thou +slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an +experiment, a novelty? We shall but show _Macbeth_ as it might have +been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, +but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat +for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped +finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the +Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new +Kennedy dimes. + + * * * * * + +As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer +and happier and friendlier for them though I didn't at the moment want +to, I thought, _Well, Siddy's right about that, at least I've read +they used to costume the plays that way, though I don't see how +Shakespeare stood it. But it was dirty of them all not to tell me +beforehand._ + +But that's the way it is. Sometimes I'm the butt as well as the pet of +the dressing room, and considering all the breaks I get I shouldn't +mind. I smiled at Sid and went on tiptoes and necked out my head and +kissed him on a powdery cheek just above an aromatic mustache. Then I +wiped the smile off my face and said, "Okay, Siddy, play Macbeth as +Little Lord Fauntleroy or Baby Snooks if you want to. I'll never +squeak again. But the Elizabeth prologue's still an anachronism. +And--this is the thing I came to tell you, Siddy--Miss Nefer's not +getting ready for any measly prologue. She's set to play Queen +Elizabeth all night and tomorrow morning too. Whatever you think, she +doesn't know we're doing _Macbeth_. But who'll do Lady Mack if she +doesn't? And Martin's not dressing for Malcolm, but for the Son of +the Last of the Mohicans, I'd say. What's more--" + +You know, something I said must have annoyed Sid, for he changed his +mood again in a flash. "Shut your jaw, you crook brained cat, and +begone!" he snarled at me. "Here's curtain time close upon us, and you +come like a wittol scattering your mad questions like the crazed +Ophelia her flowers. Begone, I say!" + +"Yessir," I whipped out softly. I skittered off toward the door to the +stage, because that was the easiest direction. I figured I could do +with a breath of less grease-painty air. Then, "Oh, Greta," I heard +Martin call nicely. + +He'd changed his levis for black tights, and was stepping into and +pulling up around him a very familiar dress, dark green and +embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He'd safety-pinned a folded +towel around his chest--to make a bosom of sorts, I realized. + +He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. "Hook me up, +would you?" he entreated. + +Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare's day, they used +boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because-- + +"Martin," I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast--Miss Nefer's +costume fitted him fine. "You're going to play--?" + +"Lady Macbeth, yes," he finished for me. "Wish me courage, will you +Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it." + + * * * * * + +I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last +hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by +side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female +edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think, +looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve, +very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and +characterless child ghost about to scatter into air--and the edges of +my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, +didn't dispel that last illusion. + +"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of _The Village +Times_ for you. There's a thumbnail review of our _Measure for +Measure_, though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here +somewhere...." + +But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have +Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's +own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and +it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink +herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant +that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me, +in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most +in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside +the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody, +"_Macbeth_ tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that +I could have missed--though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help +on the costumes. + +But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the +part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines. +And there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals +to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and +Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage +minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st _that's_ +a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time +he scrubbed and mopped.... + +_Greta, they're hiding things from you_, I told myself. + +Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did +all the things they didn't tell me about. + +Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my +top-storey weakness. + +I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to +the stage. + +I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it +can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all +capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look +out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an +open-air place for the audience--a large upward-sloping glade walled +by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On +that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to +look part of it by a green groundcloth. + +To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of +seats. + +The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances +in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's. + +The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience +outdoors, but if it rains or there's a cold snap, or if you want to +play all winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you +can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big +accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind +from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the +auditorium's in use. + +Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft +felt mighty chilly. + +I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage--though it wasn't +the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the +wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out +the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change +while I'm out there and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be +New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta, +Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I'll never be able to get back to +that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the +costumes smelling like autumn leaves. + +Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that +_I'll_ change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or +shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I +am-- + +--or, it occurred to me for the first time now, _remember_ who I am. +Which might be even worse. + +Maybe that's what I'm afraid of. + +I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a +high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those +of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet? +Harpsichord? + +"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me. + +I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself--also for the first time, +_you know that some day you're really going to have to face this +thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in +some practice._ + +I stepped through the door. + + * * * * * + +Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross +and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the +gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be +gathering, at any rate--sometimes the movies and girlie shows and +brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes were +the same kooky colorful ones as the others'. Doc had a mock-ermine +robe and a huge gilt papier-mache crown. Beau was carrying a ragged +black robe and hood over his left arm--he doubles the First Witch. + +As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I +heard Beau say, "I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I +was hoping we wouldn't get any of those. How should they scent us +out?" + +_Brother_, I thought, _where do you expect them to come from if not +the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island +and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx +boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting +the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis? +Be grateful for any audience you get, boy._ + +But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of Vicksburg +a "rude fellow" and is always waiting for the day when the entire +audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons. + +Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel +Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage +except when "Vot does it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't +convinze nobody. _Nichevo._" + +_Maybe_, I thought, _Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth +plausible in rainbow pants._ + +Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the +first of my shocks. + +It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon, +admittedly. But afternoon all the same. + +Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night, +living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances +mixed is something else again. + +It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't +see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees +closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That +was Shock Two. + +Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding +up the Queen?" + +Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I +managed to think. _So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth +prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the +dark. If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always +the last person on stage, even when she opens the play._ + +And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming +of horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn. + + * * * * * + +Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear +auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And +there aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard +gave out with that sweet yet imperious _ta-ta-ta-TA_. + +I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned around +quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half anxious. + +I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my +mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me +that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and +bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground +cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. _Shock Three and +you're out, Greta_, my umpire was calling. + +I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was +wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his +back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress, +the prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his +left hand long black tatters swinging--telling me he'd still be +doubling Second Witch. And he was hissing, "Places, please, everybody. +On stage!" + +With a sweep of silver and ash-colored plush, Miss Nefer came past +him, for once leading the last-minute hurry to the stage. She had on +the dark red wig now. For me that crowned her characterization. It +made me remember her saying, "My brain burns." I ducked aside as if +she were majesty incarnate. + +And then she didn't break her own precedent. She stopped at the new +thing beside the door and poised her long white skinny fingers over +the yellowed keys, and suddenly I remembered what it was called: a +virginals. + +She stared down at it fiercely, evilly, like a witch planning an +enchantment. Her face got the secret fiendish look that, I told +myself, the real Elizabeth would have had ordering the deaths of +Ballard and Babington, or plotting with Drake (for all they say she +didn't) one of his raids, that long long forefinger tracing crooked +courses through a crabbedly drawn map of the Indies and she smiling at +the dots of cities that would burn. + +Then all her eight fingers came flickering down and the strings inside +the virginals began to twang and hum with a high-pitched rendering of +Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King." + +Then as Sid and Bruce and Martin rushed past me, along with a black +swooping that was Maud already robed and hooded for Third Witch, I +beat it for my sleeping closet like Peer Gynt himself dashing across +the mountainside away from the cave of the Troll King, who only wanted +to make tiny slits in his eyeballs so that forever afterwards he'd see +reality just a little differently. And as I ran, the master-anachronism +of that menacing mad march music was shrilling in my ears. + + + + + III + + Sound a dumbe shew. Enter the three fatall + sisters, with a rocke, a threed, and a pair + of sheeres. + --Old Play + + +My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls' third +of the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private. + +When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pasted +and thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives me +security: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the +_Times_ and the _Mirror_, a torn-out picture of the United Nations +building with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, and +hanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by Willie +Mays. Things like that. + +Right now I was jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep me +located and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with my +knees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines from +the play wouldn't be able to come nosing back around the trunks and +tables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listen +to them, even if they're sort of sepulchral and drained of overtones +by their crooked trip. But they're always tense-making. And tonight (I +mean this afternoon)--no! + +It's funny I should find security in mementos of a city I daren't go +out into--no, not even for a stroll through Central Park, though I +know it from the Pond to Harlem Meer--the Met Museum, the Menagerie, +the Ramble, the Great Lawn, Cleopatra's Needle and all the rest. But +that's the way it is. Maybe I'm like Jonah in the whale, reluctant to +go outside because the whale's a terrible monster that's awful scary +to look in the face and might really damage you gulping you a second +time, yet reassured to know you're living in the stomach of that +particular monster and not a seventeen tentacled one from the fifth +planet of Aldebaran. + +It's really true, you see, about me actually living in the dressing +room. The boys bring me meals: coffee in cardboard cylinders and +doughnuts in little brown grease-spotted paper sacks and malts and +hamburgers and apples and little pizzas, and Maud brings me raw +vegetables--carrots and parsnips and little onions and such, and +watches to make sure I exercise my molars grinding them and get my +vitamins. I take spit-baths in the little john. Architects don't seem +to think actors ever take baths, even when they've browned themselves +all over playing Pindarus the Parthian in _Julius Caesar_. And all my +shut-eye is caught on this little cot in the twilight of my NYC +screen. + + * * * * * + +You'd think I'd be terrified being alone in the dressing room during +the wee and morning hours, let alone trying to sleep then, but that +isn't the way it works out. For one thing, there's apt to be someone +sleeping in too. Maudie especially. And it's my favorite time too for +costume-mending and reading the _Variorum_ and other books, and for +just plain way-out dreaming. You see, the dressing room is the one +place I really do feel safe. Whatever is out there in New York that +terrorizes me, I'm pretty confident that it can never get in here. + +Besides that, there's a great big bolt on the inside of the dressing +room door that I throw whenever I'm all alone after the show. Next day +they buzz for me to open it. + +It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, "But what if I'm so +deep asleep I don't hear and you have to get in fast?" and he had +replied, "Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiter +is the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and Jimmy +Dale. I'll not ask where he learned his trade, but 'tis sober truth, +upon my honor." + +And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, "At your +service, Miss Greta." + +"How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fits +like Maudie's tights?" I wanted to know. + +"He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools," Sid +had explained for him. + +I don't know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or park +official doesn't find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid just +throws a little more of the temperament he uses to keep most +outsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don't get any janitors or +scrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squares +someone. I do get the impression all the company's gone a little way +out on a limb letting me stay here--that the directors of our theater +wouldn't like it if they found out about me. + +In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up +with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I +sometimes think I must be related to one of them--a distant cousin or +sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side +by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking +family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. +The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in +_Caesar_ and Bianca in _Othello_ and one of the little princes in +_Dick the Three Eyes_ and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in _Macbeth_, +though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh. + +But whatever I am in that direction--if I'm anything--not one of the +actors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not even +when I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumably +because it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesia +in the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or at +least smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I've made for +myself. + + * * * * * + +I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me over +and decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along half +happily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home +(funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then they +must have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry and +interested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with a +program almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at. + +I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they might +be running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid, +"Siddy, shouldn't I see a doctor?" + +He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, "Sure, +why not? Go talk to Doc right now," tipping a thumb toward Doc +Pyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup box +what looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did, +incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin's classification of the +psychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in a +year or two he'd be a good illustration of Korsakov's Syndrome. + +They've all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, the +actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my +situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a +button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one +of the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And when +my crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by getting +polite--something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau, +who treated me like a real Southern gentleman. + +All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang of +sentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a second +thought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my most +plausible theory of me is that I'm a stage-struck girl from Iowa who +saw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dash +to Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing her +first performance in Central Park that she kept going back there night +after night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus +Circle--see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy but +open-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her. + +And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at the +Village or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that it +blew the top of her head right off. And she ran to the only people and +place where she felt she could ever again feel safe. And she showed +them the top of her head with its singed hair and its jagged ring of +skull and they took pity. + +My least plausible theory of me, but the one I like the most, is that +I was born in the dressing room, cradled in the top of a flat +theatrical trunk with my ears full of Shakespeare's lines before I +ever said "Mama," let alone lamped a TV; hush-walked when I cried by +whoever was off stage, old props my first toys, trying to eat crepe +hair my first indiscretion, sticks of grease-paint my first crayons. +You know, I really wouldn't be bothered by crazy fears about New York +changing and the dressing room shifting around in space and time, if I +could be sure I'd always be able to stay in it and that the same sweet +guys and gals would always be with me and that the shows would always +go on. + + * * * * * + +This show was sure going on, it suddenly hit me, for I'd let my +fingers slip off my ears as I sentimentalized and wish-dreamed and I +heard, muted by the length and stuff of the dressing room, the slow +beat of a drum and then a drum note in Maudie's voice taking up that +beat as she warned the other two witches, "A drum, a drum! Macbeth +doth come." + +Why, I'd not only missed Sid's history-making-and-breaking Queen +Elizabeth prologue (kicking myself that I had, now it was over), I'd +also missed the short witch scene with its famous "Fair is foul and +foul is fair," the Bloody Sergeant scene where Duncan hears about +Macbeth's victory, and we were well into the second witch scene, the +one on the blasted heath where Macbeth gets it predicted to him he'll +be king after Duncan and is tempted to speculate about hurrying up the +process. + +I sat up. I did hesitate a minute then, my fingers going back toward +my ears, because _Macbeth_ is specially tense-making and when I've had +one of my mind-wavery fits I feel weak for a while and things are +blurry and uncertain. Maybe I'd better take a couple of the +barbiturate sleeping pills Maudie manages to get for me and--but _No, +Greta_, I told myself, _you want to watch this show, you want to see +how they do in those crazy costumes. You especially want to see how +Martin makes out. He'd never forgive you if you didn't._ + +So I walked to the other end of the empty dressing room, moving quite +slowly and touching the edges here and there, the words of the play +getting louder all the time. By the time I got to the door +Bruce-Banquo was saying to the witches, "If you can look into the +seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will +not,"--those lines that stir anyone's imagination with their veiled +vision of the universe. + +The overall lighting was a little dim (afternoon fading already?--a +_late_ matinee?) and the stage lights flickery and the scenery still a +little spectral-flimsy. Oh, my mind-wavery fits can be lulus! But I +concentrated on the actors, watching them through the entrance-gaps in +the wings. They were solid enough. + +Giving a solid performance, too, as I decided after watching that +scene through and the one after it where Duncan congratulates Macbeth, +with never a pause between the two scenes in true Elizabethan style. +Nobody was laughing at the colorful costumes. After a while I began to +accept them myself. + +Oh, it was a different _Macbeth_ than our company usually does. Louder +and faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse at +times approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybody +was just throwing themselves into it, Sid especially. + + * * * * * + +The first Lady Macbeth scene came. Without exactly realizing it I +moved forward to where I'd been when I got my three shocks. Martin is +so intent on his career and making good that he has me the same way +about it. + +The Thaness started off, as she always does, toward the opposite side +of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step +and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began +to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart +sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almost +said out loud) _Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last +minute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out +of the ice cream cone in time?_ + +Then she swung around and I saw that no, my God, it _was_ Martin, no +mistaking. He'd been using her voice. When a person first does a part, +especially getting up in it without much rehearsing, he's bound to +copy the actor he's been hearing doing it. And as I listened on, I +realized it was fundamentally Martin's own voice pitched a trifle +high, only some of the intonations and rhythms were Miss Nefer's. He +was showing a lot of feeling and intensity too and real Martin-type +poise. _You're off to a great start, kid_, I cheered inwardly. _Keep +it up!_ + +Just then I looked toward the audience. Once again I almost squeaked +out loud. For out there, close to the stage, in the very middle of the +reserve section, was a carpet spread out. And sitting in the middle of +it on some sort of little chair, with what looked like two charcoal +braziers smoking to either side of her, was Miss Nefer with a string +of extras in Elizabethan hats with cloaks pulled around them. + +For a second it really threw me because it reminded me of the things +I'd seen or thought I'd seen the couple of times I'd sneaked a peek +through the curtain-hole at the audience in the indoor auditorium. + +It hardly threw me for more than a second, though, because I +remembered that the characters who speak Shakespeare's prologues often +stay on stage and sometimes kind of join the audience and even +comment on the play from time to time--Christopher Sly and attendant +lords in _The Shrew_, for one. Sid had just copied and in his usual +style laid it on thick. + +_Well, bully for you, Siddy_, I thought, _I'm sure the witless New +York groundlings will be thrilled to their cold little toes knowing +they're sitting in the same audience as Good Queen Liz and attendant +courtiers. And as for you, Miss Nefer_, I added a shade invidiously, +_you just keep on sitting cold in Central Park, warmed by dry-ice +smoke from braziers, and keep your mouth shut and everything'll be +fine. I'm sincerely glad you'll be able to be Queen Elizabeth all +night long. Just so long as you don't try to steal the scene from +Martin and the rest of the cast, and the real play._ + +_I suppose that camp chair will get a little uncomfortable by the time +the Fifth Act comes tramping along to that drumbeat, but I'm sure +you're so much in character you'll never feel it._ + +_One thing though: just don't scare me again pretending to work +witchcraft--with a virginals or any other way._ + +_Okay?_ + +_Swell._ + +_Me, now, I'm going to watch the play._ + + + + + IV + + ... to dream of new dimensions, + Cheating checkmate + by painting the king's robe + So that he slides like a queen; + --Graves + + +I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, +"Come to my woman's breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering +ministers." Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was +touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his +green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys +can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a +little more often, and girls play boys too. + +Then Sid-Macbeth came back to his wife from the wars, looking +triumphant but scared because the murder-idea's started to smoulder in +him, and she got busy fanning the blaze like any other good little +_hausfrau_ intent on her husband rising in the company and knowing +that she's the power behind him and that when there are promotions +someone's always got to get the axe. Sid and Martin made this charming +little domestic scene so natural yet gutsy too that I wanted to shout +hooray. Even Sid clutching Martin to that ridiculous pot-chested +cuirass didn't have one note of horseplay in it. Their bodies spoke. +It was the McCoy. + +After that, the play began to get real good, the fast tempo and +exaggerated facial expressions actually helping it. By the time the +Dagger Scene came along I was digging my fingernails into my sweaty +palms. Which was a good thing--my eating up the play, I mean--because +it kept me from looking at the audience again, even taking a fast +peek. As you've gathered, audiences bug me. All those people out there +in the shadows, watching the actors in the light, all those silent +voyeurs as Bruce calls them. Why, they might be anything. And +sometimes (to my mind-wavery sorrow) I think they are. Maybe crouching +in the dark out there, hiding among the others, is the one who did the +nasty thing to me that tore off the top of my head. + +Anyhow, if I so much as glance at the audience, I begin to get ideas +about it--and sometimes even if I don't, as just at this moment I +thought I heard horses restlessly pawing hard ground and one whinny, +though that was shut off fast. _Krishna kressed us!_ I thought, +_Skiddy can't have hired horses for Nefer-Elizabeth much as he's a +circus man at heart. We don't have that kind of money. Besides_-- + +But just then Sid-Macbeth gasped as if he were sucking in a bucket of +air. He'd shed the cuirass, fortunately. He said, "Is this a dagger +which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" and the play hooked +me again, and I had no time to think about or listen for anything +else. Most of the offstage actors were on the other side of the stage, +as that's where they make their exits and entrances at this point in +the Second Act. I stood alone in the wings, watching the play like a +bug, frightened only of the horrors Shakespeare had in mind when he +wrote it. + +Yes, the play was going great. The Dagger Scene was terrific where +Duncan gets murdered offstage, and so was the part afterwards where +hysteria mounts as the crime's discovered. + +But just at this point I began to catch notes I didn't like. Twice +someone was late on entrance and came on as if shot from a cannon. And +three times at least Sid had to throw someone a line when they blew +up--in the clutches Sid's better than any prompt book. It began to +look as if the play were getting out of control, maybe because the new +tempo was so hot. + + * * * * * + +But they got through the Murder Scene okay. As they came trooping off, +yelling "Well contented," most of them on my side for a change, I went +for Sid with a towel. He always sweats like a pig in the Murder Scene. +I mopped his neck and shoved the towel up under his doublet to catch +the dripping armpits. + +Meanwhile he was fumbling around on a narrow table where they lay +props and costumes for quick changes. Suddenly he dug his fingers into +my shoulder, enough to catch my attention at this point, meaning I'd +show bruises tomorrow, and yelled at me under his breath, "And you +love me, our crows and robes. Presto!" + +I was off like a flash to the costumery. There were Mr. and Mrs. +Mack's king-and-queen robes and stuff hanging and sitting just where I +knew they'd have to be. + +I snatched them up, thinking, _Boy, they made a mistake when they +didn't tell about this special performance_, and I started back like +Flash Two. + +As I shot out the dressing room door the theater was very quiet. +There's a short low-pitched scene on stage then, to give the audience +a breather. I heard Miss Nefer say loudly (it had to be loud to get to +me from even the front of the audience): "'Tis a good bloody play, +Eyes," and some voice I didn't recognize reply a bit grudgingly, +"There's meat in it and some poetry too, though rough-wrought." She +went on, still as loudly as if she owned the theater, "'Twill make +Master Kyd bite his nails with jealousy--ha, ha!" + +_Ha-ha yourself, you scene-stealing witch_, I thought, as I helped Sid +and then Martin on with their royal outer duds. But at the same time I +knew Sid must have written those lines himself to go along with his +prologue. They had the unmistakable rough-wrought Lessingham touch. +Did he really expect the audience to make anything of that reference +to Shakespeare's predecessor Thomas Kyd of _The Spanish Tragedy_ and +the lost _Hamlet_? And if they knew enough to spot that, wouldn't they +be bound to realize the whole Elizabeth-Macbeth tie-up was +anachronistic? But when Sid gets an inspiration he can be very +bull-headed. + +Just then, while Bruce-Banquo was speaking his broody low soliloquy on +stage, Miss Nefer cut in again loudly with, "Aye, Eyes, a good bloody +play. Yet somehow, methinks--I know not how--I've heard it before." +Whereupon Sid grabbed Martin by the wrist and hissed, "Did'st hear? +Oh, I like not that," and I thought, _Oh-ho, so now she's beginning to +ad-lib._ + +Well, right away they all went on stage with a flourish, Sid and +Martin crowned and hand in hand. The play got going strong again. But +there were still those edge-of-control undercurrents and I began to be +more uneasy than caught up, and I had to stare consciously at the +actors to keep off a wavery-fit. + + * * * * * + +Other things began to bother me too, such as all the doubling. + +_Macbeth_'s a great play for doubling. For instance, anyone except +Macbeth or Banquo can double one of the Three Witches--or one of the +Three Murderers for that matter. Normally we double at least one or two +of the Witches and Murderers, but this performance there'd been more +multiple-parting than I'd ever seen. Doc had whipped off his Duncan +beard and thrown on a brown smock and hood to play the Porter with his +normal bottle-roughened accents. Well, a drunk impersonating a drunk, +pretty appropriate. But Bruce was doing the next-door-to-impossible +double of Banquo and Macduff, using a ringing tenor voice for the +latter and wearing in the murder scene a helmet with dropped visor to +hide his Banquo beard. He'd be able to tear it off, of course, after +the Murderers got Banquo and he'd made his brief appearance as a +bloodied-up ghost in the Banquet Scene. I asked myself, _My God, has +Siddy got all the other actors out in front playing courtiers to +Elizabeth-Nefer? Wasting them that way? The whoreson rogue's gone +nuts!_ + +But really it was plain frightening, all that frantic doubling and +tripling with its suggestion that the play (and the company too, Freya +forfend) was becoming a ricketty patchwork illusion with everybody +racing around faster and faster to hide the holes. And the +scenery-wavery stuff and the warped Park-sounds were scary too. I was +actually shivering by the time Sid got to: "Light thickens; and the +crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop +and drowse; Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse." +Those graveyard lines didn't help my nerves any, of course. Nor did +thinking I heard Nefer-Elizabeth say from the audience, rather softly +for her this time, "Eyes, I have heard that speech, I know not where. +Think you 'tiz stolen?" + +_Greta_, I told myself, _you need a miltown before the crow makes wing +through your kooky head._ + +I turned to go and fetch me one from my closet. And stopped dead. + +Just behind me, pacing back and forth like an ash-colored tiger in the +gloomy wings, looking daggers at the audience every time she turned at +that end of her invisible cage, but ignoring me completely, was Miss +Nefer in the Elizabeth wig and rig. + +Well, I suppose I should have said to myself, _Greta, you imagined +that last loud whisper from the audience. Miss Nefer's simply unkinked +herself, waved a hand to the real audience and come back stage. Maybe +Sid just had her out there for the first half of the play. Or maybe +she just couldn't stand watching Martin give such a bang-up +performance in her part of Lady Mack._ + +Yes, maybe I should have told myself something like that, but somehow +all I could think then--and I thought it with a steady mounting +shiver--was, _We got two Elizabeths. This one is our witch Nefer. I +know. I dressed her. And I know that devil-look from the virginals. +But if this is our Elizabeth, the company Elizabeth, the stage +Elizabeth ... who's the other?_ + +And because I didn't dare to let myself think of the answer to that +question, I dodged around the invisible cage that the ash-colored +skirt seemed to ripple against as the Tiger Queen turned and I ran +into the dressing room, my only thought to get behind my New York City +Screen. + + + + + V + + Even little things are turning out to be great + things and becoming intensely interesting. + Have you ever thought about the properties + of numbers? + --The Maiden + + +Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from a +pink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tiny +doll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yellow thread. +Really they weren't covering up much of anything. A ghostly hole an +inch and a half across seemed to char itself in the program. As if my +eye were right up against it, I saw in vivid memory what I'd seen the +two times I'd dared a peek through the hole in the curtain: a bevy of +ladies in masks and Nell Gwyn dresses and men in King Charles +knee-breeches and long curled hair, and the second time a bunch of +people and creatures just wild: all sorts and colors of clothes, +humans with hoofs for feet and antennae springing from their +foreheads, furry and feathery things that had more arms than two and +in one case that many heads--as if they were dressed up in our +_Tempest_, _Peer Gynt_ and _Insect People_ costumes and some more +besides. + +Naturally I'd had mind-wavery fits both times. Afterwards Sid had +wagged a finger at me and explained that on those two nights we'd been +giving performances for people who'd arranged a costume theater-party +and been going to attend a masquerade ball, and 'zounds, when would I +learn to guard my half-patched pate? + +_I don't know, I guess never_, I answered now, quick looking at a +Giants pennant, a Korvette ad, a map of Central Park, my Willie Mays +baseball and a Radio City tour ticket. That was eight items I'd looked +at this trip without feeling any inward improvement. They weren't +reassuring me at all. + +The blue fly came slowly buzzing down over my screen and I asked it, +"What are you looking for? A spider?" when what should I hear coming +back through the dressing room straight toward my sleeping closet but +Miss Nefer's footsteps. No one else walks that way. + +_She's going to do something to you, Greta_, I thought. _She's the +maniac in the company. She's the one who terrorized you with the +boning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you at +the dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and the +others are covering up for. She's going to smile the devil-smile and +weave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And Birnam +Wood'll come to Dunsinane and you'll be burnt at the stake by men in +armor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or torn +apart by wild centaurs or whirled through the roof to the moon without +being dressed for it or sent burrowing into the past to stifle in Iowa +1948 or Egypt 4,008 B.C. The screen won't keep her out._ + + * * * * * + +Then a head of hair pushed over the screen. But it was +black-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martin +was giving me one of his rare smiles. + +I said, "Marty, do something for me. Don't ever use Miss Nefer's +footsteps again. Her voice, okay, if you have to. But not the +footsteps. Don't ask me why, just don't." + +Martin came around and sat on the foot of my cot. My legs were already +doubled up. He straightened out his blue-and-gold skirt and rested a +hand on my black sneakers. + +[Illustration] + +"Feeling a little wonky, Greta?" he asked. "Don't worry about me. +Banquo's dead and so's his ghost. We've finished the Banquet Scene. +I've got lots of time." + +I just looked at him, queerly I guess. Then without lifting my head I +asked him, "Martin, tell me the truth. Does the dressing room move +around?" + +I was talking so low that he hitched a little closer, not touching me +anywhere else though. + +"The Earth's whipping around the sun at 20 miles a second," he +replied, "and the dressing room goes with it." + +I shook my head, my cheek scrubbing the pillow, "I mean ... shifting," +I said. "By itself." + +"How?" he asked. + +"Well," I told him, "I've had this idea--it's just a sort of fancy, +remember--that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you +could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing room and +sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actors +can fit in anywhere. They're used to learning new parts and wearing +strange costumes. Heck, they're even used to traveling a lot. And if +an actor's a bit strange nobody thinks anything of it--he's almost +expected to be foreign, it's an asset to him." + +"And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere and +nobody ask questions, except the zoning authorities and such and they +can always be squared. Theaters come and go. It happens all the time. +They're transitory. Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meeting +places, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go. +And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you might +want to do something to. Caesar was stabbed in a theater. Lincoln was +shot in one. And...." + +My voice trailed off. "A cute idea," he commented. + +I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middle +finger as a baby might. + +"Yeah," I said, "But Martin, is it true?" + +He asked me gravely, "What do you think?" + +I didn't say anything. + +"How would you like to work in a company like that?" he asked +speculatively. + +"I don't really know," I said. + + * * * * * + +He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk. "Well, all fantasy +aside, how'd you like to work in this company?" He asked, lightly +slapping my ankle. "On the stage, I mean. Sid thinks you're ready for +some of the smaller parts. In fact, he asked me to put it to you. He +thinks you never take him seriously." + +"Pardon me while I gasp and glow," I said. Then, "Oh Marty, I can't +really imagine myself doing the tiniest part." + +"Me neither, eight months ago," he said. "Now, look. Lady Macbeth." + +"But Marty," I said, reaching for his finger again, "you haven't +answered my question. About whether it's true." + +"Oh that!" he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side. +"Ask me something else." + +"Okay," I said, "why am I bugged on the number eight? Because I'm +permanently behind a private 8-ball?" + +"Eight's a number with many properties," he said, suddenly as intently +serious as he usually is. "The corners of a cube." + +"You mean I'm a square?" I said. "Or just a brick? You know, 'She's a +brick.'" + +"But eight's most curious property," he continued with a frown, "is +that lying on its side it signifies infinity. So eight erect is +really--" and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a great +glow of inspiration and devotion--"Infinity Arisen!" + +Well, I don't know. You meet quite a few people in the theater who +are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd never +have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the skeptical, +cynical type. + +"I had another idea about eight," I said hesitatingly. "Spiders. That +8-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer's forehead--" I suppressed a shudder. + +"You don't like her, do you?" he stated. + +"I'm afraid of her," I said. + +"You shouldn't be. She's a very great woman and tonight she's playing +an infinitely more difficult part than I am. No, Greta," he went on as +I started to protest, "believe me, you don't understand anything about +it at this moment. Just as you don't understand about spiders, fearing +them. They're the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too. +They're the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva and +Kali united in love. They're the double mandala, the beginning and the +end, infinity mustered and on the march--" + +"They're also on my New York screen!" I squeaked, shrinking back +across the cot a little and pointing at a tiny glinting +silver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball. + +Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very close +to his face. "Eight eyes too," he told me. Then, "Poor little god," he +said and put it back. + +"Marty? Marty?" Sid's desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of the +dressing room. + +Martin stood up. "Yes, Sid?" + +Sid's voice stayed a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious. +"You villainous elf-skin! Know you not the Cauldron Scene's been +playing a hundred heartbeats? 'Tis 'most my entrance and we still +mustering only two witches out of three! Oh, you nott-pated +starveling!" + +Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slipped +around the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I'd +heard a lusty thwack as he went out the door. I couldn't help +grinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over his +first time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping his +mind that he was still doubling Second Witch. + + + + + VI + + I will vault credit + and affect high pleasures + Beyond death. + --Ferdinand + + +I sat down where Martin had been, first pushing the screen far enough +to the side for me to see the length of the dressing room and notice +anyone coming through the door and any blurs moving behind the thin +white curtain shutting off the boys' two-thirds. + +I'd been going to think. But instead I just sat there, experiencing my +body and the room around it, steadying myself or maybe readying +myself. I couldn't tell which, but it was nothing to think about, only +to feel. My heartbeat became a very faint, slow, solid throb. My spine +straightened. + +No one came in or went out. Distantly I heard Macbeth and the witches +and the apparitions talk. + +Once I looked at the New York Screen, but all the stuff there had +grown stale. No protection, no nothing. + +I reached down to my suitcase and from where I'd been going to get a +miltown I took a dexedrine and popped it in my mouth. Then I started +out, beginning to shake. + +When I got to the end of the curtain I went around it to Sid's +dressing table and asked Shakespeare, "Am I doing the right thing, +Pop?" But he didn't answer me out of his portrait. He just looked +sneaky-innocent, like he knew a lot but wouldn't tell, and I found +myself think of a little silver-framed photo Sid had used to keep +there too of a cocky German-looking young actor with "Erich" +autographed across it in white ink. At least I supposed he was an +actor. He looked a little like Erich von Stroheim, but nicer yet +somehow nastier too. The photo had used to upset me, I don't know why. +Sid must have noticed it, for one day it was gone. + +I thought of the tiny black-and-silver spider crawling across the +remembered silver frame, and for some reason it gave me the cold +creeps. + +Well, this wasn't doing me any good, just making me feel dismal again, +so I quickly went out. In the door I had to slip around the actors +coming back from the Cauldron Scene and the big bolt nicked my hip. + +Outside Maud was peeling off her Third Witch stuff to reveal Lady +Macduff beneath. She twitched me a grin. + +"How's it going?" I asked. + +"Okay, I guess," she shrugged. "What an audience! Noisy as highschool +kids." + +"How come Sid didn't have a boy do your part?" I asked. + +"He goofed, I guess. But I've battened down my bosoms and playing Mrs. +Macduff as a boy." + +"How does a girl do that in a dress?" I asked. + +"She sits stiff and thinks pants," she said, handing me her witch +robe. "'Scuse me now. I got to find my children and go get murdered." + + * * * * * + +I'd moved a few steps nearer the stage when I felt the gentlest tug at +my hip. I looked down and saw that a taut black thread from the bottom +of my sweater connected me with the dressing room. It must have +snagged on the big bolt and unraveled. I moved my body an inch or so, +tugging it delicately to see what it felt like and I got the answers: +Theseus's clew, a spider's line, an umbilicus. + +I reached down close to my side and snapped it with my fingernails. +The black thread leaped away. But the dressing room door didn't +vanish, or the wings change, or the world end, and I didn't fall down. + +After that I just stood there for quite a while, feeling my new +freedom and steadiness, letting my body get used to it. I didn't do +any thinking. I hardly bothered to study anything around me, though I +did notice that there were more bushes and trees than set pieces, and +that the flickery lightning was simply torches and that Queen +Elizabeth was in (or back in) the audience. Sometimes letting your +body get used to something is all you should do, or maybe can do. + +And I did smell horse dung. + +When the Lady Macduff Scene was over and the Chicken Scene well begun, +I went back to the dressing room. Actors call it the Chicken Scene +because Macduff weeps in it about "all my pretty chickens and their +dam," meaning his kids and wife, being murdered "at one fell swoop" on +orders of that chickenyard-raiding "hell-kite" Macbeth. + +Inside the dressing room I steered down the boys' side. Doc was +putting on an improbable-looking dark makeup for Macbeth's last +faithful servant Seyton. He didn't seem as boozy-woozy as usual for +Fourth Act, but just the same I stopped to help him get into a +chain-mail shirt made of thick cord woven and silvered. + +In the third chair beyond, Sid was sitting back with his corset +loosened and critically surveying Martin, who'd now changed to a white +wool nightgown that clung and draped beautifully, but not particularly +enticingly, on him and his folded towel, which had slipped a bit. + +From beside Sid's mirror, Shakespeare smiled out of his portrait at +them like an intelligent big-headed bug. + +Martin stood tall, spread his arms rather like a high priest, and +intoned, "_Amici! Romani! Populares!_" + +I nudged Doc. "What goes on now?" I whispered. + +He turned a bleary eye on them. "I think they are rehearsing _Julius +Caesar_ in Latin." He shrugged. "It begins the oration of Antony." + +"But why?" I asked. Sid does like to put every moment to use when the +performance-fire is in people, but this project seemed pretty far +afield--hyper-pedantic. Yet at the same time I felt my scalp shivering +as if my mind were jumping with speculations just below the surface. + +Doc shook his head and shrugged again. + +Sid shoved a palm at Martin and roared softly, "'Sdeath, boy, thou'rt +not playing a Roman statua but a Roman! Loosen your knees and try +again." + +Then he saw me. Signing Martin to stop, he called, "Come hither, +sweetling." I obeyed quickly. He gave me a fiendish grin and said, +"Thou'st heard our proposal from Martin. What sayest thou, wench?" + + * * * * * + +This time the shiver was in my back. It felt good. I realized I was +grinning back at him, and I knew what I'd been getting ready for the +last twenty minutes. + +"I'm on," I said. "Count me in the company." + +Sid jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders and hair and bussed me +on both cheeks. It was a little like being bombed. + +"Prodigious!" he cried. "Thou'lt play the Gentlewoman in the +Sleepwalking Scene tonight. Martin, her costume! Now sweet wench, mark +me well." His voice grew grave and old. "When was it she last walked?" + +The new courage went out of me like water down a chute. "But Siddy, I +can't start _tonight_," I protested, half pleading, half outraged. + +"Tonight or never! 'Tis an emergency--we're short-handed." Again his +voice changed. "When was it she last walked?" + +"But Siddy, I don't _know_ the part." + +"You must. You've heard the play twenty times this year past. When was +it she last walked?" + +Martin was back and yanking down a blonde wig on my head and shoving +my arms into a light gray robe. + +"I've never studied _the lines_," I squeaked at Sidney. + +"Liar! I've watched your lips move a dozen nights when you watched the +scene from the wings. Close your eyes, girl! Martin, unhand her. Close +your eyes, girl, empty your mind, and listen, listen only. When was it +she last walked?" + +In the blackness I heard myself replying to that cue, first in a +whisper, then more loudly, then full-throated but grave, "Since his +majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw +her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth--" + +"Bravissimo!" Siddy cried and bombed me again. Martin hugged his arm +around my shoulders too, then quickly stooped to start hooking up my +robe from the bottom. + +"But that's only the first lines, Siddy," I protested. + +"They're enough!" + +"But Siddy, what if I blow up?" I asked. + +"Keep your mind empty. You won't. Further, I'll be at your side, +doubling the Doctor, to prompt you if you pause." + +_That ought to take care of two of me_, I thought. Then something else +struck me. "But Siddy," I quavered, "how do I play the Gentlewoman as +a boy?" + +"Boy?" he demanded wonderingly. "Play her without falling down flat on +your face and I'll be past measure happy!" And he smacked me hard on +the fanny. + +Martin's fingers were darting at the next to the last hook. I stopped +him and shoved my hand down the neck of my sweater and got hold of the +subway token and the chain it was on and yanked. It burned my neck +but the gold links parted. I started to throw it across the room, but +instead I smiled at Siddy and dropped it in his palm. + +"The Sleepwalking Scene!" Maud hissed insistently to us from the door. + + + + + VII + + I know death hath ten thousand several doors + For men to take their exits, and 'tis found + They go on such strange geometrical hinges, + You may open them both ways. + --The Duchess + + +There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but he +can't _look_ at them, unless he's a narrator or some sort of comic. I +wasn't the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of becoming +the second as Siddy walked me out of the wings onto the stage, over +the groundcloth that felt so much like ground, with a sort of +interweaving policeman-grip on my left arm. + +Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, his +head so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn't see his face at all. + +My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart was +pounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung, +yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants. + +I heard as if from two million miles, "When was it she last walked?" +and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply--I guess it had to +be my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: "Since his +majesty went into the field--" and so on, until Martin had come on +stage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his long +black wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his right +hand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack's +sleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan and +Banquo and Lady Macduff. + +So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene that +floats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against a +background of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think, +or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid's hand hard on my +wrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearan language out of some +lightless storehouse of memory I'd never known was there to belong to +me. + + * * * * * + +There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-naked +black branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, early +evening. + +The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side and +going off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them, +almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled. + +Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumped +two dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves. +They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks. +Somehow I assumed that these men must be the "rude fellows from the +City" I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. Although +I couldn't see them very well, and didn't spend much time on them, +there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed way +back, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the conscious +impression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar. + +In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozen +horses, with grooms holding tight every two of them, but throwing +their heads back now and then as they strained against the reins, and +stamping their front hooves restlessly. Oh, they frightened me, I +tell you, that line of two-foot-long glossy-haired faces, writhing +back their upper lips from teeth wide as piano keys, every horse of +them looking as wild-eyed and evil as Fuseli's steed sticking its head +through the drapes in his picture "The Nightmare." + +To the center the trees came close to the stage. Just in front of them +was Queen Elizabeth sitting on the chair on the spread carpet, just as +I'd seen her out there before; only now I could see that the braziers +were glowing and redly high-lighting her pale cheeks and dark red hair +and the silver in her dress and cloak. She was looking at Martin--Lady +Mack--most intently, her mouth grimaced tight, twisting her fingers +together. + +Standing rather close around her were a half dozen men with fancier +hats and ruffs and wide-flaring riding gauntlets. + +Then, through the trees and tall leafless bushes just behind +Elizabeth, I saw an identical Elizabeth-face floating, only this one +was smiling a demonic smile. The eyes were open very wide. Now and +then the pupils darted rapid glances from side to side. + + * * * * * + +There was a sharp pain in my left wrist and Sid whisper-snarling at +me, "Accustomed action!" out of the corner of his shadowed mouth. + +I tolled on obediently, "It is an accustomed action with her, to seem +thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of +an hour." + +Martin had set down the candle, which still flared and guttered, on a +little high table so firm its thin legs must have been stabbed into +the ground. And he was rubbing his hands together slowly, continually, +tormentedly, trying to get rid of Duncan's blood which Mrs. Mack knows +in her sleep is still there. And all the while as he did it, the +agitation of the seated Elizabeth grew, the eyes flicking from side to +side, hands writhing. + +He got to the lines, "Here's the smell of blood still: all the +perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!" + +As he wrung out those soft, tortured sighs, Elizabeth stood up from +her chair and took a step forward. The courtiers moved toward her +quickly, but not touching her, and she said loudly, "Tis the blood of +Mary Stuart whereof she speaks--the pails of blood that will gush from +her chopped neck. Oh, I cannot endure it!" And as she said that last, +she suddenly turned about and strode back toward the trees, kicking +out her ash-colored skirt. One of the courtiers turned with her and +stooped toward her closely, whispering something. But although she +paused a moment, all she said was, "Nay, Eyes, stop not the play, but +follow me not! Nay, I say leave me, Leicester!" And she walked into +the trees, he looking after her. + +Then Sid was kicking my ankle and I was reciting something and Martin +was taking up his candle again without looking at it saying with a +drugged agitation, "To bed; to bed; there's knocking at the gate." + +Elizabeth came walking out of the trees again, her head bowed. She +couldn't have been in them ten seconds. Leicester hurried toward her, +hand anxiously outstretched. + +Martin moved offstage, torturedly yet softly wailing, "What's done +cannot be undone." + +Just then Elizabeth flicked aside Leicester's hand with playful +contempt and looked up and she was smiling the devil-smile. A horse +whinnied like a trumpeted snicker. + +As Sid and I started our last few lines together I intoned +mechanically, letting words free-fall from my mind to my tongue. All +this time I had been answering Lady Mack in my thoughts, _That's what +you think, sister._ + + + + + VIII + + God cannot effect that anything which is + past should not have been. + It is more impossible than rising the dead. + --Summa Theologica + + +The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sid +and ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw, +my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed out. It +wasn't a mind-wavery fit. Just normal faint. + +I couldn't have been there long--well, not very long, though the +battle-rattle and alarums of the last scene were echoing tinnily from +the stage--when Bruce and Beau and Mark (who was playing Malcolm, +Martin's usual main part) came in wearing their last-act stage-armor +and carrying between them Queen Elizabeth flaccid as a sack. Martin +came after them, stripping off his white wool nightgown so fast that +buttons flew. I thought automatically, _I'll have to sew those._ + +They laid her down on three chairs set side by side and hurried out. +Unpinning the folded towel, which had fallen around his waist, Martin +walked over and looked down at her. He yanked off his wig by a braid +and tossed it at me. + +I let it hit me and fall on the floor. I was looking at that white +queenly face, eyes open and staring sightless at the ceiling, mouth +open a little too with a thread of foam trailing from the corner, and +at that ice-cream-cone bodice that never stirred. The blue fly came +buzzing over my head and circled down toward her face. + +"Martin," I said with difficulty, "I don't think I'm going to like +what we're doing." + +He turned on me, his short hair elfed, his fists planted high on his +hips at the edge of his black tights, which now were all his clothes. + +"You knew!" he said impatiently. "You knew you were signing up for +more than acting when you said, 'Count me in the company.'" + +Like a legged sapphire the blue fly walked across her upper lip and +stopped by the thread of foam. + +"But Martin ... changing the past ... dipping back and killing the +real queen ... replacing her with a double--" + +His dark brows shot up. "The real--You think this is the real Queen +Elizabeth?" He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nearest +table, gushed some on a towel stained with grease-paint and, holding +the dead head by its red hair (no, wig--the real one wore a wig too) +scrubbed the forehead. + +The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint +tattoo in the form of an "S" styled like a yin-yang symbol left a +little open. + + * * * * * + +"Snake!" he hissed. "Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent! +God knows how many times people like Queen Elizabeth have been dug out +of the past, first by Snakes, then by Spiders, and kidnapped or killed +and replaced in the course of our war. This is the first big operation +I've been on, Greta. But I know that much." + +My head began to ache. I asked, "If she's an enemy double, why didn't +she know a performance of Macbeth in her lifetime was an anachronism?" + +"Foxholed in the past, only trying to hold a position, they get +dulled. They turn half zombie. Even the Snakes. Even our people. +Besides, she almost did catch on, twice when she spoke to Leicester." + +"Martin," I said dully, "if there've been all these replacements, +first by them, then by us, what's happened to the _real_ Elizabeth?" + +He shrugged. "God knows." + +I asked softly, "But does He, Martin? Can He?" + +He hugged his shoulders in, as if to contain a shudder. "Look, Greta," +he said, "it's the Snakes who are the warpers and destroyers. We're +restoring the past. The Spiders are trying to keep things as first +created. We only kill when we must." + +_I_ shuddered then, for bursting out of my memory came the glittering, +knife-flashing, night-shrouded, bloody image of my lover, the Spider +soldier-of-change Erich von Hohenwald, dying in the grip of a giant +silver spider, or spider-shaped entity large as he, as they rolled in +a tangled ball down a flight of rocks in Central Park. + +But the memory-burst didn't blow up my mind, as it had done a year +ago, no more than snapping the black thread from my sweater had ended +the world. I asked Martin, "Is that what the Snakes say?" + +"Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, +you have to _trust_." He put out the middle finger of his hand. + +I didn't take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against his +thumb. + +"You're still grieving for that carrion there!" he accused me. He +jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the +stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, +imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in +the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing +one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only +to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all +the other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live +... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to the +Great Lakes and New Scandinavia." + +Once more he put out his middle finger. + + * * * * * + +"All right, all right," I said, barely touching it. "You've convinced +me." + +"Great!" he said. "'By for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set." + +"That's good," I said. He loped out. + +I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to the +death of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in the +empty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snow +tiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed for +insubordination that _I_ had reported ... but really grieving for a +girl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with a +whole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more than +subway bogies and Park and Village monsters. + +As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fell +across my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young man +in worn dark clothes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-three. He +was a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyes +that saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemed +familiar to me in the knot of City fellows. + +He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on the +reserve makeup box by Siddy's mirror. And I began to tremble. + +He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began to +tremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine. + +The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witches +faintly wailing, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair--" Sid has them echo +that line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled. + +Then Sid came pounding up. He's the first finished, since the fight +ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache head +of him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door. + +Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. +He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the +same time in breathy little rushes. + + * * * * * + +Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up +behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none +of them could get past. Their faces peered around him. + +And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Can +such things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by some +hell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak! +You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have +you disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts? +Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you +not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King's Lynn ... singed by +time's fiery wand ... sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? +Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth +... aye, and perchance hell too ... Speak, I charge you!" + +And with that he put his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him, +I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I +ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say. + +He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, +with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of +the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the +stranger's narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, +himself following. + +The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth's head to +Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark +dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she +skittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting my +temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid's +dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reserve +makeup box. + +"The lights, Martin!" he called. + +Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and +standing for a moment with his back against it, panting. + +I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it +could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy, +you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't care how much he +shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes--Siddy, that +was Shakespeare!" + +"Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "They +can't find dolls to double men like that--or such is my main hope." A +big sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with what +words do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?" + +I asked him, "Sid, were we _ever_ in Central Park?" + +He answered, "Once--twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came +for Erich. You flipped." + +He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out. + + * * * * * + +Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered +with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid's +reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, +still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he +kneeled before the thing--Major Maintainer, I remembered it was +called. + +"When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder. + +"The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answered +instantly. "Rome!" + +Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or a +safe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly. + +"There's a storm in that vector of the Void." + +"Circle it," Sid ordered. + +"There are dark mists every way." + +"Then pick the likeliest dark path!" + +I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, +Siddy?" + +"Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!" + + + --FRITZ LEIBER + + + * * * * * + + + +-----------------------------------------------------------+ + | Typographical errors corrected in text: | + | | + | Page 155: 'and and' replaced with 'and' | + | Page 159: Eliabeth replaced with Elizabeth | + | Page 160: automotically replaced with automatically | + | Page 162: 'the the' replaced with 'the' | + | Page 166: 'performances mixed in something else again.' | + | replaced with | + | 'performances mixed is something else again.' | + | Page 167: Gerta replaced with Greta | + | Page 174: rythms replaced with rhythms | + | Page 175: 'exists and entrances' replaced with | + | 'exits and entrances' | + | Page 175: terrif replaced with terrific | + | Page 176: grudigingly replaced with grudgingly | + | Page 177: 'to hid his Banquo beard.' replaced with | + | 'to hide his Banquo beard.' | + | Page 184: quick replaced with quickly | + | Page 186: Sdiney replaced with Sidney | + | Page 187: 'tolling the the reply' replaced with | + | 'tolling the reply' | + | Page 187: 'hight hand' replaced with 'right hand' | + | Page 188: swisting replaced with twisting | + | Page 190: saphire replaced with sapphire | + | Page 191: kidnaped replaced with kidnapped | + | | + +-----------------------------------------------------------+ + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of No Great Magic, by Fritz Reuter Leiber + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO GREAT MAGIC *** + +***** This file should be named 23162.txt or 23162.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/1/6/23162/ + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Jeannie Howse and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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