They rang Vera.
She listened, wrote three surnames on the back of an old poster and said she would reply after lunch. Then she came to me with a printout of the article.
"Congratulations," she said. "You've opened a municipal laboratory."
"We have."
"You, for now. You gave it a name, announced that the programme was up and running and said it had proved its public benefit."
"Which it has."
"Then we need an application by four."
The Ministry was not demanding that the unauthorised laboratory be closed. On the contrary, it proposed adding it to the pilot scheme's quarterly plan, reimbursing the refunds for the open rehearsal and allocating money for a ramp. To do that, we had to set out its aims, targets, timetable, consent procedure, liability for harm and twenty-four events before the end of the season.
"Twenty-four?" I repeated.
"Two a week."
"Art does not arise on Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"Nor do wages. That's why they are given a date."
Vera spread the papers out on the stage because there was not enough table space in the office. The first page bore the name from my interview, now without quotation marks. The second asked for the name of the programme lead.
"Put me down," I said.
"No."
I decided she was angry about the article. It was only natural: her name appeared once, mine nine times, and they had chosen a photograph of me. I explained that a journalist built an article around a person capable of holding the reader's attention.
"I'm not talking about attention," said Vera. "You'll be the artistic director. I'm running the programme."
"They are one and the same."
"Then why is there only room for one surname?"
The question concerned the form, but the answer required twelve years of marriage, three derailed tours and every occasion on which Vera had prepared a decision and I had announced it. We had two hours until four.
"All right," I said. "Programme lead: Vera Granova."
"Klimova."
She had always remained Klimova in her passport and contracts. For years, the posters had printed her surname as Granova beside mine because that was easier for the public. I had never once asked whether it was easier for her.
Vera wrote: `KLIMOVA VERA MIKHAILOVNA`.
After that, it went more quickly. The aim of the programme became not the 'healing of unfinished lives', as I suggested, but the creation of safe encounters on stage with the right to say no. In place of the number of happy outcomes, Vera entered the number of active consents, repeat approaches and cases closed without a breach. She listed refusals as a separate target.
"A refusal isn't an outcome," I said.
"It is if we honour it."
Ariadna confirmed this.
By three o'clock, the application was ready. Vera sent it from her email address, with her signature and an appendix limiting Leonid Lvovich Granov's responsibility to artistic decisions and actions taken as holder of the key.
"You've limited me," I said.
"I've described you."
At four, the Ministry accepted the application for consideration. At six, a request for a calendar arrived. By eight, Vera had laid out twenty-four blank entries on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
They remained blank for about seven minutes. Then the first was filled with a review of the ladder, the second with a meeting about photographs of the square, the third with a private conversation between the dance teacher and Raya, and the fourth with Viktor Semyonovich's inspection of the folding platform. I suggested beginning with an artistic manifesto for the laboratory.
"For whom?" asked Vera.
"For the city. People need to understand the idea."
"People have already signed up for four different cases. Each has an idea of its own."
"Which is precisely why we need an overarching one."
"The report needs an overarching one. I'll write it for the report."
She continued filling it in. It emerged that the programme could not consist entirely of successful discoveries. We needed days without the stage: consent reviews, company training, technical inspections, harm reviews. I objected that the audience would not see half the laboratory. Vera said half of a theatre had always existed so the audience would not see it: the accounts, the cleaning, the duty rota, repairing a costume zip one minute before an entrance.
In the ninth entry, she wrote "Contingency". I suggested the title "Window for the Unforeseen". She left "Contingency". A month later, it accommodated a meeting for which there would otherwise have been no room. It was still called contingency in the report, and worked just as well.
The calendar was printed in three copies. One was hung in the foyer, the second given to Irina Sergeyevna, and the third kept by Vera. There was no copy on my desk.
"What about mine?"
"It's available to everyone."
"I'm used to working on paper."
"Print it."
I printed it. The calendar emerged on the back of an old poster, so my profile showed through above the dates. I kept that copy.
I watched her season come into being. At first, I took it for a form of revenge. Then I saw her smile at a table in which my name scarcely appeared and understood that matters were worse. She enjoyed it.
Vera scheduled the programme's first planning meeting for ten on Tuesday morning. She arrived at twenty to ten, set out twelve chairs, placed a calendar on each and wrote three questions on the board: what are we doing, who is responsible, what tells us to stop? My usual item, "why does art need this?", was absent.
I arrived at two minutes past ten. I was not late; I had allowed people to gather without having to look at me immediately. Vera was already speaking.
"The photographs of the square are on Tuesday. Raya is responsible for the objects, Stas for the screen, and I am responsible for consent. Leonid leads the conversation."
"The artistic side," I clarified, taking off my coat.
"The conversation."
"And if it becomes a scene?"
"Then the artistic side."
I sat on the empty chair by the board. Vera occupied the programme lead's place, but the second chair stood so close that, from the outside, the distinction was barely perceptible. I moved it five centimetres nearer. Vera continued.
After the photographs came the wardrobe department, followed by a technical day and a meeting with no general assembly. Every entry had a person responsible, a substitute and a limit. I suggested drawing the events into a single arc: the city remembers itself, tries on its past, examines the workings of memory and meets without an intermediary.
"Those are four different cases," said Vera.
"Which makes the arc all the stronger."
"People didn't consent to take part in an arc."
"The arc exists for the audience."
"Two of the events have no audience at all."
Timur raised his hand and asked whether the actors needed an arc. I replied that an actor always needed a sense of the whole. Vera said that Timur was carrying the screen on Tuesday, was not needed on Thursday, could attend the technical day if he wished and was performing on Saturday. It was a sense of the whole that could be entered in a calendar.
Before the meeting ended, I tried three times to generalise. Each time, Vera brought us back to the next entry. At first, it seemed to me that she was deliberately stripping the programme of meaning. Then I noticed that Raya had written down which objects to prepare, Stas when the screen was needed, Timur when to attend, and Nina Ivanovna had understood which events required tickets. After my former planning meetings, people generally left inspired and gathered in the corridor to find out what time they were expected.
"Questions?" asked Vera.
I raised my hand. She nodded.
"Who announces the final decision if we change the format on the spot?"
"The person responsible for the procedure. On Tuesday, that's me. You announce artistic decisions. A participant announces their own refusal, or the person they have chosen does it for them."
"And Ariadna?"
"Speaks for herself and states the system's limitations."
For the first time, there was room for everyone on the board. Not because the roles were equal, but because they were no longer channelled through a single person.
After the meeting, Vera collected the calendars. She left mine.
"You haven't entered your availability for the technical day."
"I didn't promise to come."
"Then enter that: not participating."
I entered it. I came on Thursday anyway, but now as a man who had changed his mind, not as the centre without whom nothing could begin.
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