“My mother was right when she tried to force me to stay in Ivanovo,” she says. She is not sure she really believes this, but she knows she needs to dress the idea in words. “I should’ve listened to her and gone to study at the medical institute.” There she would never fail or get dismissed for professional inadequacy. And then she would become a doctor, just like Chekhov. Noble and safe, with no doubts and no guilt. Her mother saw the truth: following in her steps was the only thing Sasha was good for. “But did I listen to her? And now I’m going to fail abysmally, to fall on my face in front of the whole Moscow drama school, in front of the entire city.” This is what she deserves, failure and torment. She shouldn’t be studying acting in the capital; she doesn’t deserve to stand on a Moscow stage. She doesn’t deserve to approach any classic, let alone Dostoyevsky. “What possessed me to choose a scene from Brothers Karamazov? Didn’t Vera warn me more than once? Didn’t everyone warn me? Was I overpowered by the demons of temporary insanity, and now it is too late, and now the only possible ending for me is disgrace and shame?”

She works herself into sniffling and wailing, rubbing the tears around her cheeks. “Everything I’ve ever dreamed of, everything I’ve worked for is hinging on this scene,” she whimpers. “And it’s the wrong scene. And I am in the wrong role.”

Lara has already presented her archetype-appropriate scene and received an A, so Sasha is not sure her friend can understand her turmoil. She is now a professional actor, just as is Slava, and they are both going to star on the Moscow stage because they both have talent. They deserve to be here. What she deserves is nothing. She is nothing. Why did she think she had a gift? Why did she think she had enough strength for this?

27

27

Ten days before the acting exam, the three of them first recite the lines of their scene. They do their best; they try to be persuasive and organic. They try to please their teacher who has invested months of time in their nineteenth-century immersion.

Polevitskaya is quiet throughout the scene. She is quiet after the scene ends. “Well,” she finally says and rises from her chair, ending the rehearsal.

On Sasha’s way back, she tries to decipher her well. The optimistic possibility that her mentor feels she could make something out of the scene swims to the surface of Sasha’s mind, sparkles like a small fish, and promptly goes under. She is hardly an optimist. She has to presume that her mentor’s well is the verdict of Sasha’s total hopelessness.