The play was called *The Room Must Be Empty*.
In it, three members of a commission arrived to certify that a room was vacant, but could not draw up the official record while they themselves remained inside. They went out into the corridor, leaving no one to describe the room. They called a witness, the witness entered and disturbed the emptiness. Then a cleaner appeared, demanded that the room be cleared for the commission, and everything began again with a different set of people present.
The first scene was funny. The second repeated the first, less well. In the third, a man appeared who claimed he was not there, and the commission spent twenty minutes checking his passport. Ariadna cut the fifth herself after the rehearsal. She kept the fourth, though no one, myself included, understood why.
At the first read-through, the company decided that the text was not ready. Ariadna replied that it was a finished text which might prove to be bad. The distinction reassured no one.
"Here the chairwoman asks three times whether the room is empty," Lidia Pavlovna said.
"Yes."
"And twice they tell her it is, and once that it isn't any more."
"Yes."
"Can I ask it differently the third time?"
"No."
"Then I'll play it as though she's forgotten the first two."
"She has not forgotten."
Lidia Pavlovna looked at me. I raised both hands to show that the author was present and required no assistance. It looked like an arrest.
Timur was given the man who was not there. In the text, he was brought in as a witness, but his passport was stamped to show that he was no longer registered at his address, and the commission decided that the document was more reliable than his presence. Timur asked why the character did not leave.
"He is waiting for permission to be absent," Ariadna said.
"And then?"
"Then it emerges that leaving requires his presence in person."
Timur read the page again.
"Fine."
That was the first favourable review.
Raya brought two blue washing-up bowls from the props room. One was ours, with the white stripe; the other was green, but the theatre had long called it blue because it was harder to change a colour in the inventory than for plastic to change colour.
"Which one?"
"The first," Ariadna said.
"Why?"
"It has a white stripe."
"Does that mean something?"
"No."
Raya nodded in satisfaction. After twelve years with me, she found pleasure in props that could not be explained.
The blue bowl with the white stripe around its rim stood in the centre of the stage.
It did not catch water, represent emptiness or become proof of presence, and it was never once mentioned in the text. At the first read-through, I asked Ariadna what its function was.
"I want it to stand there," she replied.
"The audience will expect an explanation."
"They will not get one."
"That may irritate them."
"Yes."
I made a note of the objection and did not repeat it.
I repeated it in different words two days later. Ariadna recognised it. I called this a test of the resilience of the author's decision. She recorded it as the second proposal to remove the bowl.
At the third rehearsal, water began leaking through the ceiling. The bowl was already onstage, and Stas managed to position it beneath the drip. Everyone looked at Ariadna.
"That was not its function," she said.
"It is now," I objected.
"The ceiling will not leak during the performance."
Stas remained silent out of professional caution.
The leak was repaired by opening night. The bowl returned to the centre and became useless again. The absurdity was thereby resolved in the best possible way: its usefulness had been tested, officially confirmed and abolished by repairs.
There were three weeks until the performance. During the first, we argued about the cast. Ariadna wanted Lidia Pavlovna, Timur, Raya as the cleaner and a genuine council employee as the witness. The genuine employee declined because he did enough acting on commissions at work. Raya agreed, then remembered that she had to change Lidia Pavlovna's costume during the performance and chose the wardrobe department.
The cleaner was played by Nina Ivanovna from the box office. She agreed only on condition that someone covered her shift and her lines were printed in large type. At the first rehearsal, she read the scene better than the actors because she had spent her whole life explaining rules to people that she had not devised herself.
"Why didn't you tell us you could act?" I asked.
"I can't. I can repeat the same thing until the person understands or leaves."
Ariadna left her delivery unchanged. Lidia Pavlovna was offended at first, then admitted that beside Nina Ivanovna, the chairwoman of the commission became more animated out of professional fear.
In the second week, the play ran into trouble over its length. Ariadna had written it to run for an hour and forty minutes; the theatre could give it an hour and twenty without an interval. Vera proposed cutting twenty minutes. I expected Ariadna to defend every scene. She silently deleted the fifth in its entirety.
"Why not the second?" I asked. "It repeats the first, less well."
"I do not need the fifth."
"And you need the second?"
"Yes."
"What for?"
"It repeats the first, less well."
The logic was self-contained and had no need of me. I shortened the transitions and found seven minutes. The actors removed another three when they stopped waiting for the commission actually to fill in the form. Vera approved the remaining ten minutes as an accepted risk, provided the audience was warned of the running time in advance.
In the third week, I saw the play from the auditorium for the first time. Without the terminal, the log or the right to make the final decision. Ariadna stopped the run-through after the fourth scene and asked for my notes.
I gave her four. She accepted two: Timur turned towards the door too soon, and Nina Ivanovna took a new form after the refusal before the audience had noticed the old one. She rejected two: the second scene and the bowl.
"Is that enough?" she asked.
"For today."
"Did you expect more of your notes to be accepted?"
"I always expect more of my notes to be accepted."
"Now I can take that into account without complying."
That was how we established our first professional arrangement which could not be mistaken for worship, however hard one tried.
Forty-seven people came to the opening night. The city did not count the play towards the laboratory's targets: it was not an encounter, did not address a social need and included no satisfaction survey. The theatre paid for the production out of its ordinary box-office revenue; the set consisted of a table, four chairs and the bowl. The most expensive item was a new lock for the imaginary door.
Before the start, Vera received a letter from the Ministry. The distributed model had been approved on a six-month trial basis. They were providing less money than requested, and later than promised. It was enough for salaries, ventilation and half the ramp. The theatre was invited to provide match funding for the other half.
"Good news?" I asked.
"News," Vera said. "It'll become good when the payment arrives."
She put the letter in a folder and went to check the tickets. The opening night did not pause to reward me for what I had done. The Ministry did not even know that tonight was the opening night of my inner life.
Lidia Pavlovna played the chairwoman of the commission. Timur played the man who was not there. In the second scene, he tried so hard to be inconspicuous that he drew all the attention. I told him once. He removed half his movements and kept only the habit of adjusting the empty breast pocket where his character was supposed to carry his passport.
The gesture was noticed during the performance. First by one person, then by the whole audience. Timur adjusted the pocket for the third time, and people laughed before the line, not because they were expecting a joke, but because they already knew his small lie.
In the third scene, the commission went out into the corridor so that the room would be empty. Only the bowl remained onstage. Nothing happened for five seconds. Then Lidia Pavlovna called from behind the door:
"Is it empty now?"
"I am not authorised to answer from inside," Timur called back from another corridor.
"Are you inside?"
"Not according to the documents."
The audience laughed. The bowl stood there. It had no need to win the scene, and that was precisely why it looked calmer than any of us.
In the fourth scene, the cleaner discovered that the commission had occupied the room she was supposed to clear for the commission. She wrote a complaint against herself, handed it to the chairwoman and refused to accept it because she was currently performing the duties of another post. The section went on too long. Three people coughed, and one opened the programme and began reading the cast list. I felt every second and knew where to cut.
Ariadna did not cut it. The audience survived. At the end, the cleaner placed the complaint in the blue bowl because there were no free surfaces left. This did not explain the bowl, merely used it. The distinction was important and almost no one needed it.
I stood to one side beside the terminal. The spotlight was trained on Timur and Lidia Pavlovna. If the equipment rack were turned back through its former twenty degrees, my profile would enter the light along with the screen. Kolya looked at me from the control room, waiting for the instruction.
I signalled to leave it as it was.
The play ended with the commission signing the official record from the corridor, leaving the papers inside and finding themselves unable to return for them because the room would then be considered occupied again. The light went out. Then it came up for the curtain call.
The applause was good. Not the applause for a great play. The applause for an evening that had been funny several times, had gone on too long once and had, in the end, come to an end.
In the foyer, a woman in a green coat told her friend that the fourth scene should be cut. Her friend replied that it was the only point at which she had had time to think. They argued by the cloakroom until their turn came, at which point both of them forgot their cloakroom tickets. The theatre continued the play by the means at its disposal.
After the opening night, Ariadna did not ask whether the audience had liked it. She asked where they had laughed before the text, where they had fallen silent unintentionally and how many had left. Four had left: one came back, two collected their coats, and one woman remained in the foyer listening through the door. The second scene sagged, the fourth divided the audience, and the bowl was photographed seven times, though it did not appear in the programme.
"Is the play bad?" Ariadna asked.
"In places."
"Which places?"
I listed them. She saved the notes but did not open the text.
"Will you revise it?"
"Not today."
"And later?"
"Possibly. Not to prove that the play was good. For the next performance."
It was a sensible answer from an author. I was even a little sorry that the bad play would not remain bad for ever, for the purity of the conception. Then I remembered: the purity was my conception too.
After the curtain call, I went over to Timur.
"Keep the pocket. The second scene doesn't sag because of you. In the fourth, you turn towards the door too soon."
"And overall?"
"Overall, there's something to work with."
He smiled and went to help Stas dismantle the imaginary doorway.
"Leonid Lvovich," Ariadna said. "What about the bowl?"
"It stands there convincingly. It hasn't acquired any meaning."
"Is that good?"
"For this play, yes."
"Thank you."
Vera came over with the letter from the Ministry. The payment had indeed arrived, but was short by the cost of the second half of the ramp. The appendix required a report after six events and a separate evaluation of the distributed framework.
"Congratulations," I said. "Your season has been funded."
"Our season," she replied, and immediately added, "Not in the marital sense."
"I understood."
"Just checking."
She went away to do the sums. The money did not restore the marriage, prove Ariadna's love or make the transfer of privileges infallible. It paid for salaries, ventilation and half the ramp. For the theatre, that was enough and even a great deal.
We still had to find the money for the other half of the ramp. I proposed a charity performance with an appeal to the city. Vera said that after the business with the laboratory, it would be better for a while if we used the word 'appeal' only in accounting.
Viktor Semyonovich brought in a different estimate. It did not cut costs at the expense of safety; it shortened the ramp. The previous design went around a flower bed because the flower bed was listed as a landscaping feature. If three shrubs were moved two metres, the ramp would run straight and cost a third less. Moving them required permission from the Parks Department.
"How long will it take?" Vera asked.
"Thirty days under the regulations."
"And outside the regulations?"
"Still thirty, only with more telephone calls."
The woman from the chemist's who had met the dance teacher at the first encounter worked in the building that housed the same department. She could not speed up the decision, but she told us exactly who should receive the plans so that they would not spend two weeks sitting in the general inbox. We submitted them correctly. Permission arrived on the twelfth day: the flower bed was not in a protected area; no one had removed it from the plan since 1996.
The shrubs were moved by Stas, Timur, Viktor Semyonovich and two older pupils of the same literature teacher who had wanted to bring eighteen people to the cancelled opening night. Six turned up: the rest decided that helping the theatre was not part of the course. The six worked for forty minutes, then it began to rain. Three shrubs survived the move; one failed to take in the spring. Raya planted a lilac from her dacha in its place.
The shortfall was not covered by a miracle. Part came from the hire company after the corrected invoice for the chairs, part from the ordinary box-office revenue for Ariadna's play, and part was added by the city after the new estimate. I paid for the sign by the entrance. It did not bear my name, only the gradient, the load capacity and the telephone number of the person responsible.
There was no ceremony to open the ramp. On the first day, it was used by the woman in the wheelchair, the same woman for whom we had moved islands of chairs with the wardrobe rail. She looked at the new entrance and asked:
"Does the next door open automatically?"
It did not. That same evening, Stas fitted a door closer that required less force. A good ending had once again presented us with the next job.
Raya carried the bowl away with the rest of the props. Kolya turned off the light, Stas asked whom to expect the following morning, and Ariadna named four people.
Mine was third.
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