Read Online Everything Happened to Susan by Barry Malzberg - Free Book Online

thinks he is doing but she is not sure when she should speak it: should there be a substantial break here for sexual activity, or should she, by delivering the line quickly, indicate that Mrs. Harding is resisting. There is no clue in the script. “What are you doing?” she asks, opening her eyes, seeing the actor above her, his tongue hanging out, gasping, his eyeballs distended as he rocks in a sexual posture, “What are you doing?” The actor says nothing. He is concentrating, really bearing down; his erection is small but it is firm and he is doing his best for the situation. “Hold it!” the director says somewhere in the distance and comes into the scene, the script dangling from his hands. He begins to swear at the actor. “You idiot,” he says, “you’re supposed to keep on talking, deliver the
lines,
this isn’t a goddamned show, you’re going to put us all out of business if you don’t concentrate.” “I’m sorry,” the actor says, shaking his head, recovering his feet, “if I only had a little time to prepare — ”
    “There is no time to prepare,” the director says angrily. “We are working here on a very quick time schedule. It is your responsibility to have studied these lines, to know the scene, to act instinctively,” and the actor mumbles something shaking his head. “Miserable,” the director says. “Absolutely miserable. If we are starting in this fashion, I ask myself, how will we possibly finish? The girl, at least, the girl is acting with a little conviction but you are being absolutely impossible. What you have to do is to play against the script; you must deliver these lines quickly,
con brio, con gioco,
as it were while performing these acts, and the contrast between the lines and the acts will lead to that certain redeeming sense of irony which is the key to our conception. Do you understand? This is comedy, but it is comedy done with substance and style.” “All right,” the actor says, “all right, I studied, I got some background. I’ll do it. If you had told me in the first place — ”
    “I don’t have to tell you anything,” the director says, “you must do this instinctively and professionally. I am very unhappy with the level of performance here, very unhappy and this is merely the first scene we are doing. Fortunately we are shooting out of sequence and doing minor scenes first but even so.” He leaves the area and drops out of their line of sight. “Wild,” the actor says into her ear. “Crazy. I never seen anything like this in my life. If I didn’t need the money — ”
    “Please,” Susan says. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just do the scene.”
    “If I didn’t need the money I wouldn’t touch this place with a ten-foot pole. I have dramatic training. I have some
background —
”
    “Listen,” Susan says, “if it’s all the same to you, it’s nothing personal, I just want to do the scene.”
    “You really believe this,” the actor says admiringly. “You really are trying to act with conviction.”
    “Against the lines. Let’s act against the lines.”
    “My name is Murray. I’m — ”
    “Against the lines.”
    “All right,” Murray says with a sigh. He lifts his head, puts his hands on her, rubs them up and down her arms and Susan feels the damp moving out from his palms to create a kind of perverse warmth. “I’m trying to comfort you, Mrs. Harding,” he says as the lights come on full again. Equipment begins to hum, the director makes a foul comment offstage, and the sound of the technicians’ laughter mixed with the murmurs of the other actors begins to fill the hall.

CHAPTER XXVI
    By the end of the day, Susan has acted in seven scenes and witnessed fourteen others while standing off to the side with her script in hand, learning lines. The scenes in which she has acted have involved roles as Mrs. Warren Gamaliel Harding, Marie Antoinette, Madame von Meck, the patroness of Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, the