A week later, Ariadna instructed me to apologise for a production I had not directed.
"To whom?"
"Her name will be disclosed after she consents to the meeting."
"What exactly am I apologising for?"
"For using a manuscript without a contract, without crediting the author and without paying remuneration."
"I have not used anyone else's manuscript."
"The theatre used it. You benefited."
The production was called *The Last Train*. Boris Semyonovich Kruglov, the previous artistic director, had directed it fifteen years earlier, and I had played the leading role. The production won a regional award; afterwards I was given an honorary title, and two years later I was appointed chief director. The theatre's official history listed the play as Kruglov's original adaptation based on local people's recollections.
In the archive, Ariadna found a typescript entitled *The Station Without Clocks*, an unsigned registration sheet and a memo: "Author requests return after reading." The text was not returned. Its plot, five scenes and final line went into the production, and the final line was later printed on the poster as Kruglov's words.
I asked for the recording of the old production. I appeared on screen as I had been fifteen years earlier: dark hair, a long coat, a habit of turning to the auditorium before my scene partner did. I delivered the final line at the edge of a platform built from the very folding platform Viktor Semyonovich now wanted to restore. The audience applauded until the blackout.
The credits named Kruglov, the designer, the composer, me and eleven others. Anna Lebedeva was not among them.
I remembered the award, the tour and the interview after the curtain call. I could not remember ever asking where Kruglov had obtained the text. In his early twenties, an actor thinks of a play as weather: it is already happening, and his task is to stay dry and look good in the light. Fifteen years later, that innocence is called benefit.
"I didn't know about this."
"You should say that after the facts, if she asks."
"What if she doesn't ask?"
"Do not say it."
"But then I will be admitting someone else's guilt."
"You will acknowledge the theatre's benefit and your own. Kruglov can no longer acknowledge his guilt. He died seven years ago."
Vera checked the archive and found the accounts for that season. There was no author's contract. Nor was there any remuneration. Without a word, she calculated a possible sum adjusted for inflation, then added a share of the surviving video screenings.
We spent the whole day in the archive. Kruglov's files were arranged by year, but within them the years followed a principle of his own: anything that might prove useful lay on top; anything that might prove damaging had no date. The registration sheet turned up in a box of programmes from someone else's festival. The typescript had been sewn together with coarse thread, and on the first page someone had written in pencil, "return after reading".
"Is that his handwriting?" I asked.
"It's staff handwriting," Vera said. "Svetlana Petrovna's, from the literary department."
Svetlana Petrovna had died before Kruglov. Her neat cards remained in the archive, but there was no one left to whom we could put the convenient question of why the text had not been returned.
I leafed through the manuscript. Kruglov had transferred some scenes almost word for word, cut others and rewritten the ending. My old notes on the role stood in the margins: "quieter", "don't look", "coat on second". I held the evidence of someone else's authorship, complete with my own instructions for how best to perform the appropriated text.
"You might not have known," Vera said.
"I might not have."
"And you didn't."
"Are you defending me?"
"I'm refusing to let you turn someone else's manuscript into a tragedy about your own guilt. We have work to do: find the author, calculate the money, correct the archive."
She took the sheet from me and resumed comparing the scenes. Vera could return even my repentance to its rightful owner.
"We'll pay her, if she agrees," she said.
"With what money?"
"The same money that paid for your award."
The award money had long since been spent. The theatre's money remained.
The invitation went out without her name: the theatre had found the author of an old manuscript and requested a single meeting to acknowledge the facts. Consent arrived two days later. The woman's name was Anna Mikhailovna Lebedeva. Seventy-one years old, a former station controller, resident in our city, further contact only by separate permission.
She came on Wednesday afternoon. Small and upright, in a brown coat and a knitted hat that she did not remove in the foyer. She declined coffee. She would not go onto the stage either, but sat in the front row and asked me to speak from where I stood.
I stood beside the staircase. It had been returned to the rehearsal, but after the open evening no one could convincingly explain what it was for.
"Anna Mikhailovna," I began, "fifteen years ago, the theatre received your manuscript, *The Station Without Clocks*. No contract was made with you. The text was not returned. Five scenes, the basis of the plot and the final line were used in the production *The Last Train* without your name and without payment."
She listened without interrupting.
"The theatre gained a production, an award and later performances. I gained the leading role, a regional award and, in part, my current position. I did not know where the text came from, but I benefited from the result. I am sorry this happened. We are prepared to pay you and to restore your authorship in writing across all our records."
Anna Mikhailovna asked:
"Is Kruglov dead?"
"Yes."
"Did he know whose text it was?"
"According to the registration sheet, he must have done."
"And you?"
"No."
She removed her gloves, folded them in her lap and looked at the staircase.
"Do you remember the final line?"
I did. For fifteen years, I had repeated it at events, in interviews and twice at the station's anniversary celebrations.
"'Trains do not leave us. They leave for places we have yet to visit.'"
"Mine was: 'The train has left, and I am still here.' Kruglov improved it."
I could think of no reply. Ariadna was silent.
Anna Mikhailovna put her gloves back on.
"Calculate the money. Correct the name in the archive. Do not stage the play."
"Yours or his?"
"Neither."
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