Vera brought in the calculation and a draft agreement. Anna Mikhailovna read every page, corrected the station's address in the archival note and struck out the clause concerning a possible new production.
"We could return the text to the theatre under your name," I said. "Not necessarily now. Whenever you want."
"I won't want to."
"The manuscript is yours. So is the decision."
"And I've made it."
She agreed to accept payment and have her authorship restored in the archive. She refused a public article. She refused to meet the company. She refused to take part in the laboratory. Each time, Vera asked the question once and ticked the box.
I held out until the final item.
"Anna Mikhailovna, may we telephone you after the archive has been corrected? Only to tell you that everything has been done."
"Let Vera Mikhailovna send me an ordinary letter. On paper. You are not to telephone me again."
"Me personally?"
"You personally."
"Why?"
She looked at me closely, without anger.
"You speak well. I have already given a text to a man who spoke well once before."
There was no answer to that. I could not even accept the compliment separately from the refusal.
Anna Mikhailovna signed the agreement, took her copy and left. Raya helped her into her coat, Vera called a taxi, and no one asked her to stay for a photograph.
The terminal displayed: `FURTHER CONTACT NOT PERMITTED. MATCH DELETED`.
"She accepted the apology," I said.
"She accepted the facts, the payment and the correction to the archive."
"That is a complex form of gratitude."
"No."
"You can't know what she feels."
"I cannot. But her refusal is recorded explicitly."
I asked her to open the card again. The card was gone. Only the theatre's obligations remained: transfer the money, correct the archive, send written confirmation on paper in Vera's name.
"What if she changes her mind?"
"Then she will make contact herself."
"And that's all?"
"Yes."
Thursday was now free in the laboratory's calendar. We did not replace Anna Mikhailovna with another "similar case" or arrange an evening about restoring stolen voices. Vera scheduled an ordinary rehearsal instead. Timur was late, Lidia Pavlovna brought a pie, and the staircase was moved back against the wall.
Anna Mikhailovna received the money nine days later. Vera sent the paper letter.
I watched her prepare it. An ordinary envelope, the address handwritten, with a copy of the corrected archive card, the payment order and a single sentence inside: "The obligations have been fulfilled." No thanks for the meeting, no invitation to return, no wishes for inspiration.
"A little dry," I said.
"She asked to be told what had been done."
"We could at least say 'Yours sincerely'."
"It's in the signature."
Vera sealed the envelope. My name was not on it. That too was part of honouring the refusal.
There was no reply.
Correcting the archive took longer than making the payment. Kruglov's name appeared in the database, on seventeen programmes, in the anniversary album, on the recording of the production and on a display in the foyer. Vera corrected the electronic records in a day. On the paper copies, it proved impossible to paste a strip over the surname: it looked as though the theatre was once again trying to conceal one author beneath another.
Raya printed new inserts. The old programmes were not destroyed, but placed in the archive with an explanation of the error. The caption beneath the photograph on the display was replaced. My regional certificate remained on the office wall: no one had revoked the award, but a note explaining where the text came from now hung beside it.
I walked past it twice, and each time I saw the certificate first, then the note. I could not alter the order of my gaze.
"Perhaps I should take the certificate down?" I asked Vera.
"Why?"
"So it doesn't look as though we're clinging to past glory."
"You are clinging to it. Taking down the certificate won't change that."
We left both in place. Correcting the past did not make it clean. It merely forbade us from continuing to present it in a single line.
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