The laboratory's second event was due to begin at seven. At twenty to seven, Ariadna informed me that I was not permitted to enter the auditorium for the first twelve minutes.
"Why twelve?"
"One participant consented to the meeting on condition that the first conversation take place without the artistic director. A safe beginning requires between eight and twelve minutes. At twelve minutes past seven, the condition will have been met."
"We'll begin at twelve minutes past seven."
"We cannot. The publicised time is seven until half past eight, the security officer is employed until nine, and one participant must catch a bus at twenty to nine."
"So I'll be late for my own event."
"You will enter later."
The difference lay only in the verb, but in ten minutes I had constructed an entrance from it. Kolya would set a light in the aisle. The door would open at the twelfth minute. The company would not interrupt the action; I would enter a scene already in progress and change its temperature by my presence alone.
"There will be no light in the aisle," Vera said when I presented my plan. "The security officer sits there, and you'll blind him."
"Dimmed, then."
"None. Wait in the corridor."
"I need to understand what's happening in the auditorium."
"You'll hear it through the door."
Ariadna confirmed this: the key holder's video feed remained available, but the screen could not be switched on in the corridor because the participant had forbidden Leonid to see the first conversation. That left sound through the closed door, and only the general sound at that, without a directional microphone.
"Is the man afraid of me?" I asked.
"He did not consent to explain the condition."
"That is an answer in itself."
"No."
At two minutes to seven, Vera, Timur and Lidia Pavlovna entered the auditorium. I remained in the staff corridor beside a fire extinguisher and a poster for one of my own productions from three years earlier. My face on the poster was larger than the title. The designer had explained at the time that the composition required it; I had not argued.
Raya brought me a stool. I refused it: to wait sitting down would mean admitting that this was not an entrance, but simply waiting. A minute later I accepted it, because there were still fourteen minutes until twelve past seven, and dignity is poorly designed for a concrete floor.
"If someone arrives late," I asked, "who will let them in?"
"Nina Ivanovna."
"And if there's a question about the stage?"
"Vera."
"The lighting?"
"Kolya is inside."
"Then what am I here for?"
Raya considered this.
"You're fulfilling the condition."
She carried away an empty box. The phrasing lacked elegance, but it was accurate enough.
At three minutes past seven, a late audience member arrived. She saw me by the door, brightened and held out her ticket.
"A familiar face at last. Is it through here?"
I already had my hand on the door handle. Then I noticed Nina Ivanovna hurrying across the foyer with a tablet and the expression of someone whose familiar faces were once again doing jobs that were not theirs.
"Go through the box office," I said.
"But the door's here."
"The entrance is here too. The procedure begins over there."
Nina Ivanovna checked the ticket, issued a card and led the woman in through another door. I remained beside mine. It was the first time in my life that someone had come to the theatre, recognised me and still got inside without my help.
The door was closed. An ordinary door upholstered in brown, with a sign hanging on the inside that read "Do not enter during the performance". I had ordered the sign myself after an audience member once went out for water and returned in the middle of a monologue about death. Then the prohibition had protected me from someone else's entrance. Now it protected someone else's beginning from mine.
I walked to the end of the corridor and back. Photographs of productions hung on the walls: in seven I stood at the centre, in two I sat at the edge, and in one I did not appear because it showed the children's studio. I lingered longest before the last and decided at first that I was taking an interest in the young performers. Then I noticed my reflection in the glass and stopped getting in my own way.
Vera's voice came from the auditorium:
"Leonid Lvovich will not be here for the first twelve minutes. That is one participant's condition, and we are observing it."
Someone asked whether Leonid Lvovich knew. Vera replied:
"He's standing behind the door, suffering expressively."
The laughter was brief but audible.
I adjusted my collar. There were eleven minutes until my entrance.
To avoid looking at my watch, I rehearsed my entrance. Open the door calmly, do not pause on the threshold, choose a place at the side. Not a single line. On the third attempt, I noticed that each time I reached the threshold, I turned my head towards the applause I expected. I removed the turn. On the fifth, I restored it: if there was applause after all, ignoring it would also become a pose.
At six minutes past seven, Vera said inside, "We'll begin without him." There was no tragedy in the sentence. That was precisely what made it unpleasant.
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