For her Dostoyevsky scene, the school provides a mentor whose name makes Sasha breathless, the legend of Russian theater Elena Aleksandrovna Polevitskaya. They all know about her from classes on the history of Theater, where their professor lauded her famous interpretations of classical roles on Russian and European stages. How someone could have performed both in Russia and Europe, Sasha cannot fathom. True, Polevitskaya began her acting career in tsarist Russia, leaving the country shortly after the Revolution, but then she chose to return to her motherland, which was by then Soviet, and to spend the rest of her life acting and later teaching at the Vakhtangov Theatre. They only hear about people leaving for the West; they never hear about anyone coming back.

But there is no time to ponder such nonacting questions. Sasha can’t believe she is going to work with the actress who played Dostoyevsky’s Grushenka for Russian and European audiences, to critical acclaim. She can’t believe her own impudence and gall, her foolish insistence on a role that the renowned actress will immediately know isn’t Sasha’s. “You’re chopping off the branch you’re sitting on,” said Vera coldly after she informed her of the rehearsal arrangements, a phrase Sasha pretended not to hear so she didn’t have to fumble for a response.

Her partners are her classmates. She casts reedy Slava, whose name means fame and who was born in a small town on the Caspian Sea, to play Alyosha, her beloved Dmitri’s younger brother; she casts Lara, her closest friend and roommate at the dorm, to be the noble Katerina, her rival in the fight for Dmitri’s heart. Their mentor is in her eighties, so the rehearsals, Vera says, will take place in her apartment. When the door to Polevitskaya’s apartment opens, they see a fragile woman with the depthless blue eyes of a silent-film star, her silvery hair pulled back in a bun, her skin like crumpled silk. She bows her head slightly and invites them in.

They all sit down in a tiny living room, mortified yet ready to start reading, notebooks with their lines on their laps. But Elena Aleksandrovna is in no hurry.

“Sasha,” she says, “tell me about yourself.”

The words baffle her. “What do you want me to tell you?” Sasha asks, wondering what her story has to do with Dostoyevsky and how this storytelling detour will prevent the looming disaster of her failure.

“Everything. From the very beginning.”

She talks about growing up in Ivanovo, about leaving, about her years in Moscow. About Grandpa and her mother. She even tells her about Andrei, just a couple of things. For a moment, she considers mentioning Kolya’s journal, but she doesn’t. With her story ends the first rehearsal. Their notebooks never get opened.