History does not move in one current,
like the wind across bare seas,
but in a thousand streams and eddies,
like the wind over a broken landscape.
--Cary
The boys' half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling.
There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men.
Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing
Bloody-something because he'd just burnt his fingers unwinding from
the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he'd wound there to
dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to
straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater
late and trying shortcuts.
But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they
bugged again. _Greta_, I told myself, _you're going to have to send
Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder._ "_For the
roaches, boy?_" "_No, for the eyes._"
Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig
on--and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked
in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded
sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy
shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest--and which
really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in
straight from battle--but instead of that he was wearing, so help me,
red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a
green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to
fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked
just dandy maybe on one of the Pope's Swiss Guards.
I thought, _Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there
and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt
desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most
atmospheric play._
Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, "There thou art, slothy
minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle."
"Siddy, what _is_ all this?" I demanded as my hands automatically
obeyed. "Are you going to play _Macbeth_ for laughs, except maybe
leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you're Red Skelton?"
[Illustration]
"What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?" he retorted, grunting
as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it
home.
"The clown costumes on all you men," I told him, for now I'd noticed
that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in
yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and
clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin
gleaming brown with spirit gum. "I haven't seen any eight-inch
polka-dots yet but I'm sure I will."
Suddenly a big grin split Siddy's face and he laughed out loud at me,
though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three
notches too tight. When we'd got that adjusted he said, "I' faith thou
slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an
experiment, a novelty? We shall but show _Macbeth_ as it might have
been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day,
but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat
for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped
finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the
Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new
Kennedy dimes.
* * * * *
As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer
and happier and friendlier for them though I didn't at the moment want
to, I thought, _Well, Siddy's right about that, at least I've read
they used to costume the plays that way, though I don't see how
Shakespeare stood it. But it was dirty of them all not to tell me
beforehand._
But that's the way it is. Sometimes I'm the butt as well as the pet of
the dressing room, and considering all the breaks I get I shouldn't
mind. I smiled at Sid and went on tiptoes and necked out my head and
kissed him on a powdery cheek just above an aromatic mustache. Then I
wiped the smile off my face and said, "Okay, Siddy, play Macbeth as
Little Lord Fauntleroy or Baby Snooks if you want to. I'll never
squeak again. But the Elizabeth prologue's still an anachronism.
And--this is the thing I came to tell you, Siddy--Miss Nefer's not
getting ready for any measly prologue. She's set to play Queen
Elizabeth all night and tomorrow morning too. Whatever you think, she
doesn't know we're doing _Macbeth_. But who'll do Lady Mack if she
doesn't? And Martin's not dressing for Malcolm, but for the Son of
the Last of the Mohicans, I'd say. What's more--"
You know, something I said must have annoyed Sid, for he changed his
mood again in a flash. "Shut your jaw, you crook brained cat, and
begone!" he snarled at me. "Here's curtain time close upon us, and you
come like a wittol scattering your mad questions like the crazed
Ophelia her flowers. Begone, I say!"
"Yessir," I whipped out softly. I skittered off toward the door to the
stage, because that was the easiest direction. I figured I could do
with a breath of less grease-painty air. Then, "Oh, Greta," I heard
Martin call nicely.
He'd changed his levis for black tights, and was stepping into and
pulling up around him a very familiar dress, dark green and
embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He'd safety-pinned a folded
towel around his chest--to make a bosom of sorts, I realized.
He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. "Hook me up,
would you?" he entreated.
Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare's day, they used
boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because--
"Martin," I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast--Miss Nefer's
costume fitted him fine. "You're going to play--?"
"Lady Macbeth, yes," he finished for me. "Wish me courage, will you
Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it."
* * * * *
I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last
hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by
side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female
edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think,
looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve,
very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and
characterless child ghost about to scatter into air--and the edges of
my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors,
didn't dispel that last illusion.
"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of _The Village
Times_ for you. There's a thumbnail review of our _Measure for
Measure_, though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here
somewhere...."
But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have
Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's
own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and
it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink
herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant
that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me,
in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most
in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside
the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody,
"_Macbeth_ tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that
I could have missed--though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help
on the costumes.
But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the
part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines.
And there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals
to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and
Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage
minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st _that's_
a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time
he scrubbed and mopped....
_Greta, they're hiding things from you_, I told myself.
Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did
all the things they didn't tell me about.
Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my
top-storey weakness.
I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to
the stage.
I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it
can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all
capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look
out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an
open-air place for the audience--a large upward-sloping glade walled
by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On
that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to
look part of it by a green groundcloth.
To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of
seats.
The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances
in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's.
The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience
outdoors, but if it rains or there's a cold snap, or if you want to
play all winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you
can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big
accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind
from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the
auditorium's in use.
Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft
felt mighty chilly.
I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage--though it wasn't
the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the
wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out
the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change
while I'm out there and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be
New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta,
Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I'll never be able to get back to
that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the
costumes smelling like autumn leaves.
Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that
_I'll_ change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or
shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I
am--
--or, it occurred to me for the first time now, _remember_ who I am.
Which might be even worse.
Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.
I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a
high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those
of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet?
Harpsichord?
"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me.
I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself--also for the first time,
_you know that some day you're really going to have to face this
thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in
some practice._