Did Polevitskaya say this about Theater to test their dedication? Or did she want to warn them, before it was too late? Was this a probe of their resilience or a desperate call for a last chance at a normal life?

The three of them run down the stairs, the sound of their boots springing off the walls like dry peas. Out in the street, life boils in the steam of early frost, and Sasha is twenty, and dying is so nebulous and far away that she expects Polevitskaya’s words to evaporate from her head like little clouds of winter breath. But they don’t. Instead, they lodge in her brain like splinters of doubt: about her stupid choice of role, about her acting gift, about choosing Theater as her life. A question scratches in the back of her mind like an ungrateful cat: What will she tell her mother and Grandpa when she fails? What if they were right all along? What if Grandma, the only one who ever believed in her, turns out to be wrong?

26

26

As Sasha reads her first line at their next meeting, Elena Aleksandrovna looks out the window, as if she hadn’t heard a word she said. “What do you think Grushenka was doing before her meeting with Katerina and Alyosha?” she asks. “What was she doing from the time she got up that morning?”

Sasha didn’t expect to be stopped so soon, and she certainly didn’t anticipate this question, so for a few moments, she sits there in a silent stupor.

“What time did she get up?”

“Not too early, probably.” Sasha has no idea what this is about. “She got up, and she ate breakfast.”

“What did she eat?”

She feels at a loss, not knowing what to say.

“Well,” Polevitskaya says as she rises to her feet. “For our next rehearsal, you will come alone. Read the novel again. Read it very carefully. You’ll find everything you need to know.”