Selected Stories by Fritz Leiber (21 page)

The Monarch was a cavernous old place, very grimy backstage, but with a great warren of dirty little dressing rooms and even a property room shaped like an L stage left. Its empty shelves were thick with dust.

There hadn’t been a show in the Monarch for over a year, I saw from the yellowing sheets thumbtacked to the callboard as I tore them off and replaced them with a simple black-crayoned HAMLET: TONIGHT AT 8:30.

Then I noticed, by the cold inadequate working lights, a couple of tiny dark shapes dropping down from the flies and gliding around in wide swift circles—out into the house too, since the curtain was up. Bats, I realized with a little start—the Monarch was really halfway through the lich gate. The bats would fit very nicely with
Macbeth,
I told myself, but not so well with
The Merchant of Venice,
while with
Hamlet
they should neither help nor hinder, provided they didn’t descend in nightfighter squadrons; it would be nice if they stuck to the Ghost scenes.

I’m sure the Governor had decided we’d open at Wolverton with
Hamlet
so that Guthrie would have the best chance of being a hit in his children’s home city.

Billy Simpson, shoving his properties table into place just in front of the dismal L of the prop room, observed cheerfully,“It’s a proper haunted house. The girls’ll find some rare ghosts here, I’ll wager, if they work their board.”

Which turned out to be far truer than he realized at the time—I think.

“Bruce!” Joe Rubens called to me. “We better buy a couple of rat traps and set them out. There’s something scuttling back of the drops.”
But when I entered the Monarch next night, well before the hour, by the creaky thick metal stage door, the place had been swept and tidied a bit. With the ground-cloth down and the
Hamlet
set up, it didn’t look too terrible, even though the curtain was still unlowered, dimly showing the house and its curves of empty seats and the two faint green exit lights with no one but myself to look at them.
There was a little pool of light around the callboard stage right, and another glow the other side of the stage beyond the wings, and lines of light showing around the edges of the door of the second dressing room, next to the star’s.
I started across the dark stage, sliding my shoes softly so as not to trip over a cable or stage-screw and brace, and right away I got the magic electric feeling I often do in an empty theater the night of a show. Only this time there was something additional, something that started a shiver crawling down my neck. It wasn’t, I think, the thought of the bats which might now be swooping around me unseen, skirling their inaudibly shrill trumpet calls, or even of the rats which
might
be watching sequin-eyed from behind trunks and flats, although not an hour ago Joe had told me that the traps he’d actually procured and set last night had been empty today.
No, it was more as if all of Shakespeare’s characters were invisibly there around me—all the infinite possibilities of the theater. I imagined Rosalind and Falstaff and Prospero standing arm-in-arm watching me with different smiles. And Caliban grinning down from where he silently swung in the flies. And side by side, but unsmiling and not arm-in-arm: Macbeth and Iago and Dick the Three Eyes—Richard III. And all the rest of Shakespeare’s myriad-minded good-evil crew.
I passed through the wings opposite and there in the second pool of light Billy Simpson sat behind his table with the properties for
Hamlet
set out on it: the skulls, the foils, the lantern, the purses, the parchmenty letters, Ophelia’s flowers, and all the rest. It was odd Props having everything ready quite so early and a bit odd too that he should be alone, for Props has the un-actorish habit of making friends with all sorts of locals, such as policemen and porters and flower women and newsboys and shopkeepers and tramps who claim they’re indigent actors, and even inviting them backstage with him—a fracture of rules which the Governor allows since Props is such a sensible chap. He has a great liking for people, especially low people, Props has, and for all the humble details of life. He’d make a good writer, I’d think, except for his utter lack of dramatic flair and story-skill—a sort of prosiness that goes with his profession.
And now he was sitting at his table, his stooped shoulders almost inside the doorless entry to the empty-shelfed prop room—no point in using it for a three-night-stand—and he was gazing at me quizzically. He has a big forehead—the light was on that—and a tapering chin—that was in shadow—and rather large eyes, which were betwixt the light and the dark. Sitting there like that, he seemed to me for a moment (mostly because of the outspread props, I guess) like the midnight Master of the Show in
The Rubaiyat
round whom all the rest of us move like shadow shapes.
Usually he has a quick greeting for anyone, but tonight he was silent, and that added to the illusion.
“Props,” I said, “this theater’s got a supernatural smell.”
His expression didn’t change at that, but he solemnly sniffed the air in several little whiffles adding up to one big inhalation, and as he did so he threw his head back, bringing his weakish chin into the light and shattering the illusion.
“Dust,” he said after a moment. “Dust and old plush and scenery waterpaint and sweat and drains and gelatin and greasepaint and powder and a breath of whisky. But the supernatural… no, I can’t smell that. Unless…” And he sniffed again, but shook his head.
I chuckled at his materialism—although that touch about whisky did seem fanciful, since I hadn’t been drinking and Props never does and Guthrie Boyd was nowhere in evidence. Props has a mind like a notebook for sensory details—and for the minutia of human habits too. It was Props, for instance, who told me about the actual notebook in which John McCarthy (who would be playing Fortinbras and the Player King in a couple of hours) jots down the exact number of hours he sleeps each night and keeps totting them up, so he knows when he’ll have to start sleeping extra hours to average the full nine he thinks he must get each night to keep from dying.
It was also Props who pointed out to me that F. F. is much more careless gumming his offstage toupees to his head than his theater wigs—a studied carelessness, like that in tying a bowtie, he assured me; it indicated, he said, a touch of contempt for the whole offstage world.
Props isn’t
only
a detail-worm, but it’s perhaps because he is one that he has sympathy for all human hopes and frailties, even the most trivial, like my selfish infatuation with Monica.
Now I said to him, “I didn’t mean an actual smell, Billy. But back there just now I got the feeling anything might happen tonight.”
He nodded slowly and solemnly. With anyone but Props I’d have wondered if he weren’t a little drunk. Then he said, “You were on a stage. You know, the science-fiction writers are missing a bet there. We’ve got time machines right now. Theaters. Theaters are time machines and spaceships too. They take people on trips through the future and the past and the elsewhere and the might-have-been—yes, and if it’s done well enough, give them glimpses of Heaven and Hell.”
I nodded back at him. Such grotesque fancies are the closest Props ever comes to escaping from prosiness.
I said, “Well, let’s hope Guthrie gets aboard the spaceship before the curtain up-jets. Tonight we’re depending on his children having the sense to deliver him here intact. Which from what Sybil says about them is not to be taken for granted.”
Props stared at me owlishly and slowly shook his head.“Guthrie got here about ten minutes ago,” he said, “and looking no drunker than usual.”
“That’s a relief,” I told him, meaning it.
“The girls are having a Ouija session,” he went on, as if he were determined to account for all of us from moment to moment. “They smelt the supernatural here, just as you did, and they’re asking the board to name the culprit.” Then he stooped so that he looked almost hunchbacked and he felt for something under the table.
I nodded. I’d guessed the Ouija part from the lines of light showing around the door of Gertrude Grainger’s dressing room.
Props straightened up and he had a pint bottle of whisky in his hand. I don’t think a loaded revolver would have dumbfounded me as much. He unscrewed the top.
“There’s the Governor coming in,” he said tranquilly, hearing the stage door creak and evidently some footsteps my own ears missed.“That’s seven of us in the theater before the hour.”
He took a big slow swallow of whisky and recapped the bottle, as naturally as if it were a nightly action. I goggled at him without comment. What he was doing was simply unheard of—for Billy Simpson.
At that moment there was a sharp scream and a clatter of thin wood and something twangy and metallic falling and a scurry of footsteps. Our previous words must have cocked a trigger in me, for I was at Gertrude Grainger’s dressing-room door as fast as I could sprint—no worry this time about tripping over cables or braces in the dark.
I yanked the door open and there by the bright light of the bulbs framing the mirror were Gertrude and Sybil sitting close together with the Ouija board face down on the floor in front of them along with a flimsy wirebacked chair, overturned. While pressing back into Gertrude’s costumes hanging on the rack across the little room, almost as if she wanted to hide behind them like bedclothes, was Monica pale and staring-eyed. She didn’t seem to recognize me. The dark-green heavily brocaded costume Gertrude wears as the Queen in
Hamlet,
into which Monica was chiefly pressing herself, accentuated her pallor. All three of them were in their street clothes.
I went to Monica and put an arm around her and gripped her hand. It was cold as ice. She was standing rigidly.
While I was doing that Gertrude stood up and explained in rather haughty tones what I told you earlier: about them asking the board who the ghost was haunting the Monarch tonight and the planchette spelling out S-HA-K-E-S-P-E-A-R-E…
“I don’t know why it startled you so, dear,” she ended crossly, speaking to Monica. “It’s very natural his spirit should attend performances of his plays.”
I felt the slim body I clasped relax a little. That relieved me. I was selfishly pleased at having got an arm around it, even under such public and unamorous circumstances, while at the same time my silly mind was thinking that if Props had been lying to me about Guthrie Boyd having come in no more drunken than usual (this new Props who drank straight whisky in the theater could lie too, I supposed), why then we could certainly use William Shakespeare tonight, since the Ghost in
Hamlet
is the one part in all his plays Shakespeare himself is supposed to have acted on the stage.
“I don’t know why myself now,” Monica suddenly answered from beside me, shaking her head as if to clear it. She became aware of me at last, started to pull away, then let my arm stay around her.
The next voice that spoke was the Governor’s. He was standing in the doorway, smiling faintly, with Props peering around his shoulder. Props would be as tall as the Governor if he ever straightened up, but his stoop takes almost a foot off his height.
The Governor said softly, a comic light in his eyes, “I think we should be content to bring Shakespeare’s plays to life, without trying for their author. It’s hard enough on the nerves just to
act
Shakespeare.”
He stepped forward with one of his swift, naturally graceful movements and kneeling on one knee he picked up the fallen board and planchette. “At all events I’ll take these in charge for tonight. Feeling better now, Miss Singleton?” he asked as he straightened and stepped back.
“Yes, quite all right,” she answered flusteredly, disengaging my arm and pulling away from me rather too quickly.
He nodded. Gertrude Grainger was staring at him coldly, as if about to say something scathing, but she didn’t. Sybil Jameson was looking at the floor. She seemed embarrassed, yet puzzled too.
I followed the Governor out of the dressing room and told him, in case Props hadn’t, about Guthrie Boyd coming to the theater early. My momentary doubt of Props’s honesty seemed plain silly to me now, although his taking that drink remained an astonishing riddle.
Props confirmed me about Guthrie coming in, though his manner was a touch abstracted.
The Governor nodded his thanks for the news, then twitched a nostril and frowned. I was sure he’d caught a whiff of alcohol and didn’t know to which of us two to attribute it—or perhaps even to one of the ladies, or to an earlier passage of Guthrie this way.
He said to me, “Would you come into my dressing room for a bit, Bruce?”
I followed him, thinking he’d picked me for the drinker and wondering how to answer—best perhaps simply silently accept the fatherly lecture— but when he’d turned on the lights and I’d shut the door, his first question was, “You’re attracted to Miss Singleton, aren’t you, Bruce?”
When I nodded abruptly, swallowing my morsel of surprise, he went on softly but emphatically, “Then why don’t you quit hovering and playing Galahad and really go after her? Ordinarily I must appear to frown on affairs in the company, but in this case it would be the best way I know of to break up those Ouija sessions, which are obviously harming the girl.”
I managed to grin and tell him I’d be happy to obey his instructions—and do it entirely on my own initiative too.
He grinned back and started to toss the Ouija board on his couch, but instead put it and the planchette carefully down on the end of his long dressing table and put a second question to me.
“What do you think of some of this stuff they’re getting over the board, Bruce?”
I said,“Well, that last one gave me a shiver, all right—I suppose because…” and I told him about sensing the presence of Shakespeare’s characters in the dark. I finished, “But of course the whole idea is nonsense,” and I grinned.
He didn’t grin back.
I continued impulsively, “There was one idea they had a few weeks back that impressed me, though it didn’t seem to impress you. I hope you won’t think I’m trying to butter you up, Mr. Usher. I mean the idea of you being a reincarnation of William Shakespeare.”
He laughed delightedly and said, “Clearly you don’t yet know the difference between a player and a playwright, Bruce. Shakespeare striding about romantically with head thrown back?—and twirling a sword and shaping his body and voice to every feeling handed him? Oh no! I’ll grant he might have played the Ghost—it’s a part within the scope of an average writer’s talents, requiring nothing more than that he stand still and sound off sepulchrally.”
He paused and smiled and went on. “No, there’s only one person in this company who might be Shakespeare come again, and that’s Billy Simpson. Yes, I mean Props. He’s a great listener and he knows how to put himself in touch with everyone and then he’s got that rat-trap mind for every hue and scent and sound of life, inside or out the mind. And he’s very analytic. Oh, I know he’s got no poetic talent, but surely Shakespeare wouldn’t have that in
every
reincarnation. I’d think he’d need about a dozen lives in which to gather material for every one in which he gave it dramatic form. Don’t you find something very poignant in the idea of a mute inglorious Shakespeare spending whole humble lifetimes collecting the necessary stuff for one great dramatic burst? Think about it some day.”
I was doing that already and finding it a fascinating fantasy. It crystallized so perfectly the feeling I’d got seeing Billy Simpson behind his property table. And then Props did have a high-foreheaded poet-schoolmaster’s face like that given Shakespeare in the posthumous engravings and woodcuts and portraits. Why, even their initials were the same. It made
me
feel strange.
Then the Governor put his third question to me.
“He’s drinking tonight, isn’t he? I mean Props, not Guthrie.”