Vera spoke first in the auditorium. She explained the rules without my introductions about risk, destiny and living space. It was shorter. Then Ariadna asked Timur to sit on stage with his back to the audience and read aloud a list of things he knew how to repair.
"A kettle, if it's the button," Timur began. "A chair. A jacket zip, if the slider hasn't come off. On a phone, only the settings."
People laughed. Someone added, "Relationships?" Timur replied that they did not sell spare parts for those.
Then the man who had set the condition began to speak. His voice was quiet, and I could not make out the words. A minute later, Timur turned towards him, though the instruction had been to sit with his back to him. Ariadna did not stop him. Lidia Pavlovna brought something onto the stage, and a chair scraped.
I watched the time. At eight minutes past seven, Lyudmila Andreyevna came along the corridor with a mop and asked why I was not working. I explained the condition.
"A good man," she said. "He's given you twelve minutes of silence."
At ten minutes past seven, the auditorium fell completely silent. The man spoke at greater length now, and isolated words reached the door: workshop, brother, sold, keys. Timur did not interrupt once. I knew he could listen, but ordinarily I was there beside him and made use of it first.
At twelve minutes past seven, I was permitted to open the door.
I took hold of the handle and heard applause. The moment was even better than I had planned: no light was required. I opened the door, entered to the applause and paused for precisely long enough to accept it without obviously appropriating it.
Then I saw the man on stage. He stood beside Timur holding a ring of old keys. The applause was for him.
I sat beside the aisle.
Ariadna continued the scene without acknowledging my arrival. The man explained that his brother's workshop had been sold with everything in it, but the keys remained. He did not want the premises back and was not looking for anyone to blame; he wanted to open, just once, a door that no longer existed. Timur proposed building a doorway from two uprights. Stas brought them on from the wings. Lidia Pavlovna found an old lock that none of the keys fitted.
They made the door anyway. The man inserted one key into the empty space between the uprights, turned it with his hand and went through.
No miracle occurred. The same stage stood beyond the frame. But once he was on the other side, he lingered, looked back and said:
"The workbench used to be over there by the window."
Timur placed a chair beside the imaginary window. The man sat down.
I saw three places where the scene could have been strengthened: remove the unnecessary upright, add side lighting, hold Lidia Pavlovna back before her entrance. I did not make a single suggestion. Not out of humility. The man had consented to the first twelve minutes without me, and everything important had managed to begin during precisely that time.
After the meeting, he came over and shook my hand.
"Thank you for not coming in earlier."
"It was a condition."
"Thank you anyway."
I wanted to say that my entrance had also been part of the direction, but caught sight of Timur just in time. He was putting away the uprights and could not see us.
"Tell Timur," I replied. "He made the door."
The man told him.
At first, Timur thought he meant a real door and began explaining that the uprights belonged to Stas. The thanks had to be repeated. He understood the second time.
I waited until the man had left and asked Timur to repeat the scene for the recording. He refused.
"Why?"
"He's got the keys."
"We'll use others."
"Then it'll be a different scene."
In the past, I would have explained that the theatre existed to repeat the unrepeatable. That evening, I understood that one could repeat the door, the pause and the light, but not a person's consent to enter something that no longer existed. The general camera had recorded it. The quality was not good enough for a production. It was good enough for memory.
In the log, I named the authors of the decision: the participant, Timur, Stas, Lidia Pavlovna, Ariadna. I added my own name in the field marked 'observance of absence period'. Formally, it was true. Vera read it and left it as it was.
At the next rehearsal, I tried to reconstruct the door without the participant. Stas set up the same uprights, Lidia Pavlovna found the same lock, and Timur sat in the same place. We took keys from the props room: large, heavy ones with handsome bits. In old theatres, such keys open everything except real doors.
Timur stepped through the empty doorway and said, "The workbench used to be over there by the window." It sounded convincing, but it belonged to someone else. I changed the lighting, removed one upright and gave him a pause. It became more beautiful and even further removed from that evening.
"It doesn't work," Timur said.
"Because you know what the result is supposed to be."
"Because I never had a workshop."
Lidia Pavlovna removed the lock.
"What if it isn't his story?" she asked. "Just a scene about a man with keys."
We tried it. In that form, the scene worked: Timur came to open the door after its owner's death, found no wall and took off his hat anyway. It was our work now, not a repetition of a lost event.
I entered it in the production as a separate fragment. I credited the original occasion to an unnamed participant, as his card permitted. His personal story did not return, but it left behind a form that others could use.
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