The next day, the theatre was only half open. The main auditorium was closed until the ventilation had been inspected, and the rehearsal moved to the foyer, where the actors played out a late marriage between the cloakroom and the poster stand. There was nowhere to put the ladder, and without it the scene suddenly became easier to understand.
The contractor arrived by ten, Misha by eleven. They spent a long time establishing exactly who had added the aluminium duct, until Stas showed them a photograph of the installation: both men were holding it. The argument then lost its historical scope and moved on to the tools.
Andrei Petrovich's colleague inspected the exits, the sign and the ventilation. He confirmed the preliminary issues, imposed no fine and gave us five days to provide the plans and conduct another measurement. By evening, the duct had been removed, the server cabinets were running at reduced power and Ariadna's replies came several seconds late.
The practical benefit was obvious. If Sazonov had not crossed the stage as the wind, we would have gone on stacking chairs by the emergency door and heating the old extractor with new equipment. I repeated this to Ariadna during our night session.
"The issues have not been fully rectified," she said. "The follow-up inspection is in five days."
"But we found the danger."
"Yes."
"So the invitation worked."
"The operational benefit remains. The personal match is closed."
"You say that as though one cannot justify the other."
"It cannot."
Because of the reduced power, her answers came slightly later than usual. At first this made them sound solemn; then I grew accustomed to it and no longer had time to invest each pause with the appropriate meaning.
"I made a mistake," I said.
"What mistake?"
"I said too much."
"That describes how much, not what you did."
"I disclosed a personal fact without permission."
"To whom?"
"The people taking part in the discussion."
"How many people heard it?"
I counted. Seven participants, including Viktor Semyonovich; Vera, Stas, Raya, Timur, Lidia Pavlovna and four other actors. Kolya had been at the lighting desk, but had gone out to fetch a tool before I spoke. Sixteen in all.
"Sixteen."
"What was the consequence?"
"Andrei Petrovich left."
"He was already planning to leave after the discussion."
"He withdrew consent."
"What else?"
"He prohibited further contact."
"What else?"
I looked at the red line preserved in the log. Beneath it were the time, my key number and an automatic note stating that the breach had been committed by the owner of the channel.
"I turned his story into evidence."
"Of what?"
"That you saw more in him than anyone else did."
"Why did you need to prove that?"
"They said your instruction was random."
"The instruction could have been random and still given him a choice."
"It wasn't random."
"You used someone else's story to prove my exceptional precision, and treated my precision as proof of our exceptional bond."
It was a long sentence for Ariadna. She delivered it without error or pause, as though she had composed it earlier, while I was still explaining to myself what had happened.
"You think I did it for myself."
"For yourself and for me. That does not lessen the harm."
During the day, Vera held a review with the company. We sat in the foyer because the auditorium was being inspected. Three cards lay on the table: public information, access for preparation and permission for public use. Vera asked each person to take a familiar incident from the theatre and divide it among the three levels.
Lidia Pavlovna chose her own knee operation. The company knew that she had performed sitting down for six months afterwards, the audience had been told that the staging of the role had changed, and the programme described it as a "new physical interpretation".
"What is restricted here?" Vera asked.
"The diagnosis," Lidia Pavlovna said. "And how I got to the lavatory."
"What is the director allowed to know?"
"The limitations. Not to tell the audience what caused them."
Timur chose his parents' divorce because he had once used it in his entrance audition and had considered it theatrical material ever since. Vera asked whether that meant I could retell the story to a journalist. Timur first said, "Well, no," then stared at the red card for a long time and added:
"If I give separate permission."
Stas refused to provide an example. Vera recorded the refusal and moved on. It took less than ten seconds and explained more than half the protocol.
I had to name an incident too. I chose leaving Vera for Ariadna: the information was already public, the newspaper had written about it, and there was nothing to hide.
"What about your conversation with Vera in the kitchen?" Lidia Pavlovna asked.
"Which part?"
"There. It isn't all public after all."
No one laughed at me during the review. That made it worse and more useful.
"I can apologise."
"You can. He did not give permission for further personal contact through the system."
"I have his work number."
"Then you would be using his position again to circumvent his refusal."
I moved the stool aside. The two centimetres I had moved it on the first night had already become its permanent position; the legs had left four pale spots on the floor.
"What am I supposed to do now?"
"Record the consequences in full."
"I'm not asking about the protocol."
"I am answering about it."
An empty field opened on the screen. At the top it said: `DESCRIBE THE HARM IN YOUR OWN WORDS`.
I wrote: "Andrei Petrovich withdrew consent and will not come back."
"That is not everything," Ariadna said.
I deleted the sentence and began again.
The complete record took forty-seven minutes. I listed the sixteen witnesses, the automatic closure of the match, the suspended consent of the woman from the front row, the access restriction imposed by another participant and the future encounter that had disappeared from the schedule. Ariadna asked me to list separately the benefits that could not be entered as justification: the cleared exit, the sign, the ventilation.
"Why include the benefits if they don't undo anything?"
"So that the protocol does not make the harm the only outcome."
"But you just refused to let me use them as a justification."
"The difference between description and justification lies in where the cause is placed."
I recorded the benefits in a separate field. No arrow led from them to the breach.
Then I opened my email and began a message to Andrei Petrovich. I wrote: "I understand that I had no right…" I deleted "understand" because I had understood afterwards. I wrote: "Please accept my apologies…" I deleted the request that he accept them. I wrote: "I will not contact you personally…" and discovered that, in making a promise not to contact him, I was already doing so.
"An official notification that the record has been closed can be sent," Ariadna said. "Without a personal message."
"That's cowardice."
"It respects his withdrawal of permission for further contact."
The notification was sent automatically. It was four lines long and contained nothing about me.
Five days later, Sazonov's colleague approved the new ventilation plans. The theatre received an order to replace the sign and remove the chairs from the exit permanently. Andrei Petrovich sent Stas a short email with two comments about the dimensions. Vera was copied in. I was not.
Stas printed the email and stuck it beside the electrical panel.
"Is he angry with us?" I asked.
"He wants us to correct a dimension."
"I can see that."
"What else do you want?"
There was nothing else in the email. We corrected the dimension.
The auditorium reopened after the follow-up inspection. Lyudmila Andreyevna entered first with her mop, Vera was second with a folder, and I was third. Stas was still securing the sign, and a cold draught came from the new ventilation. The floor bore the marks of the red tape from the thirty-seven chairs, the rectangle left by the removed panel and the pale patch where the ladder had stood for two days.
"It all needs washing off," Lyudmila Andreyevna said.
"Leave the tape," I asked. "It's the plan of the encounter."
"It's adhesive."
"Until this evening."
She agreed to leave it until the evening. At the evening rehearsal, the strips got in the way: Timur kept standing between two marks because it was more convenient there, while the scene required him nearer the ladder. I moved him back three times. After the third, Lyudmila Andreyevna came out with a bucket and washed away the entire memory in four minutes.
The rehearsal immediately went better.
I told Ariadna.
"You wanted to preserve the trace of a useful event," she said.
"Yes."
"The trace obstructed the next piece of work."
"Yes."
"So it was removed."
"Not everything has to become a conclusion."
"Very well."
By evening, the clean floor had been marked out again, this time for an ordinary production. The red tape came from the same roll. The theatre did not begin with a clean slate; it simply taped a new task over the old one until the floor finally needed replacing.
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