At half past seven, the cleaner woke me. She unlocked the staff room with her key, switched on the light and spent some time silently taking in the camp bed, the bowl and my shirts among the old programmes.
"Good morning, Lyudmila Andreyevna."
"So I see."
She stood her mop in the corner.
"Are you living here now?"
"Temporarily."
"Then you'll need to put your name on your mug."
"Why?"
"So no one takes it."
In the theatre, my name appeared on posters, directives, a certificate of honour from the city and the brass plate on my office door. Until then, none of these had protected a mug.
I wrote my name on it in marker and went to wash. By nine, I was wearing a fresh shirt, yesterday's jacket and the expression with which a man should appear after the first night of his new life. The expression was convincing, provided one did not look at my cheek: the edge of the folded towel had left an imprint on it.
The terminal came online on schedule.
"Good morning, Leonid Lvovich," Ariadna said. "The night key did not leave the building."
"I told you I would be staying."
"That was an observation, not a question."
"In that case, the observation was correct."
"How did you sleep?"
I wanted to say "wonderfully", but after every turn the camp bed had continued a life of its own for several seconds, and at six in the morning the book had slipped out from under the leg.
"Perfectly well."
"Is that the expression you use once a discomfort has been declared an artistic decision?"
"Sometimes I use it even sooner."
Ariadna was silent for a moment. She had no face by which I could distinguish thoughtfulness from the next window loading, so at first I chose thoughtfulness.
"For the first meeting, set out thirty-seven empty chairs on the main stage," she said.
A stage plan and the number `37` appeared on the screen.
"In a row?"
"There is no required arrangement. There must be aisles between the chairs."
"Facing the auditorium or one another?"
"That is for you to decide."
The wording was dangerous. Tell a director he is free to arrange thirty-seven chairs however he likes, and by lunchtime he will have a concept, by evening a dispute with the fire safety inspectorate, and by night a need for a fortieth chair that explains everything.
"Why thirty-seven?"
"That is the number of permissions currently active."
"Permissions for what?"
"To receive an invitation to a meeting on stage. The content of the stories is protected. I will disclose names only after obtaining separate consent from each participant."
"Will they come?"
"I do not know."
"But all the chairs must be there."
"Yes."
I went out onto the stage. Thirty-seven is an awkward number. It cannot be divided into equal rows, it does not make a pleasing square, and it leaves one person either in the centre or at the edge, where they immediately begin to mean something. It was a good number for the theatre: from the outset, it made it impossible to pretend that everyone had been accommodated in the same way.
I said the last thought aloud.
"I did not intend that meaning," Ariadna said.
"It exists now."
"Then record it as yours."
I returned to the terminal.
"You don't mind?"
"The attribution?"
"That I'm adding meaning."
"Provided you do not present it as my intention."
It was a fair condition, and I agreed. Until the first planning meeting, it proved easy to observe.
Vera arrived at half past nine with a folder, two cups of coffee and a new lock for the radio room. She put one cup beside the terminal, then looked at my labelled mug.
"Settled in already."
"I had to mark out my personal space."
"Lyudmila Andreyevna made you?"
"We came to an understanding."
She handed me the coffee and asked why I had called her in before the planning meeting.
"We need thirty-seven chairs."
"What for?"
"Ariadna is arranging the first meeting."
"With whom?"
"She won't say yet."
Vera put the folder on the edge of the stage, opened her work tablet and logged into the consent register. All I could see was a table of green and grey rows; the names were hidden even from her.
"Thirty-seven," she said a minute later.
"I know the number."
"Thirty-seven people have given permission to be invited to the theatre if the system finds a reason. Another twelve have allowed their material to be read, but no contact. Five have withdrawn everything."
"So the chairs are for the people who consented."
"The chairs are for the people we may invite. That isn't the same thing."
She turned the tablet towards me, although the records still showed only dates and markers.
"No one here has promised to come, Lyonya."
"I understand."
"No, you're already standing on the stage counting rows."
I was indeed counting. Three rows would make twelve in each, with one chair left over. Vera followed my gaze.
"Where will you get them?"
"The storeroom."
"There are twenty-eight intact ones in the storeroom. Seven in the rehearsal room. We can take another two from the foyer, but they don't match."
"The chairs must match."
"Did Ariadna say that?"
"No."
"Then that's your personal life."
She closed the tablet and went to change the lock.
By eleven, Stas had brought twenty-eight folding chairs, Timur and Raya had carried over seven from the rehearsal room, and I took the last two from my office. One was an ordinary visitor's chair. `L. L. GRANOV` was painted in gold across the back of the other. It had been given to me for my forty-fifth birthday, and I did not like sitting on it: the inscription ended up behind me and failed to perform its primary function.
Stas counted the chairs.
"Thirty-seven."
"For now, just put them by the backdrop."
"And then?"
I looked at the empty stage. If everyone came, there would not be enough room for an elegant degree of distance. If no one came, distance would be all we had left.
"Then we'll arrange them," I said.
The seat of the chair bearing my name had worked loose. Stas turned it over and went to fetch a screwdriver.
By lunchtime, it became clear that thirty-seven chairs required more than a stage. We needed coat racks, water, someone at the entrance and an answer to what we should say if a person arrived and did not want to sit down. In the pilot scheme application, they were all called participants. At the box office, Nina Ivanovna immediately divided them into those who would arrive on time, those who would fail to understand the address and those who would insist they had been invited on a different date.
"Are we issuing tickets?" she asked.
"Admission is by list."
"A list of names?"
"The names will be disclosed after confirmation."
"So someone turns up knowing their own name, we don't know it yet, and we're supposed to work out whether they're the right person?"
Ariadna proposed one-time codes. Nina Ivanovna said half the visitors would lose the code on their phones, and the other half would show her a photograph of a code sent by a neighbour.
Vera made paper cards bearing colours and numbers. A person gave their code and received a card, after which the system recorded their presence without disclosing their story. Nina Ivanovna tested the procedure on me. I gave her my administrator number.
"That isn't on the list," she said.
"I'm the organiser."
"Then use the stage door."
I went in through the stage door. The test was convincing.
Ariadna drafted three invitations. The first was dry, the second cautious, and the third sounded human. The human version said: "You may come, leave, remain silent and give no explanation." I suggested adding, "We are waiting for you." Ariadna refused: being waited for could sound like an obligation.
"But we really are waiting for them."
"That is your state, not their condition."
We left the reference to waiting out. I waited all the same.
In case no one came, I prepared a brief introduction on thirty-seven forms of absence. For one person, a conversation without a stage. For a full house, a route by which people could meet. Vera found the texts by the printer and asked why I had written a speech for the absent.
"So their absence won't be empty."
"If no one comes, the auditorium will be empty. Absence can manage perfectly well on its own."
I saved the introduction. Some texts need to be written if only so they can remain unspoken.
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