He was also stimulated by the fact that in the mornings, he felt like he was in another dimension. A hangover frequently brought with it a new and totally surprising view of ordinary things, and sometimes a scene that just wasn’t working for his actors at an evening rehearsal would suddenly reveal to him, come morning, a surprising, vivid facet, and by the next rehearsal the actors would be shrugging in amazement, giving each other the thumbs-up, and from time to time even applauding their own brilliant lord and master. All this couldn’t help but facilitate new experiments. The only thing Filippov didn’t touch was liqueurs. He could splash a drop of cassis into a goblet of white wine, but all the rest he disdained.

  Actually, even this cloudless period in his romance with alcohol ended pretty quickly. Basically, everything connected with spirits passed quickly in his life. Filippov could open bottles faster than anyone, poured fast and precisely, got drunk fast, and got sober exactly as fast—by changing the proof. This was his trade secret. He knew that after a few glasses of wine, which would always knock him for a loop, a decent swallow of Scotch or bourbon would immediately restore him to his former quick reactions. However, soon even the hangover itself became so familiar that the morning’s illuminations abandoned him, doubtless preferring other, more exalted drunks. New and strange thoughts on directing stopped coming to Filippov.

  This silence from the higher spheres worried him, and he seriously began thinking about living sober, but right then an amazingly fresh, and in a certain sense even poetic, doctrine of alcoholism came to his rescue, as pure and beautiful as a child arising from sleep, and Filippov readily fell at its feet, folding up the unfurled banners of common sense and social responsibility. To his own surprise, he suddenly told her that drunkenness was simply another form of sincerity. And who more than anyone else, one might ask, should be sincere if not an artist?

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Zinaida shrugged. “I think more than anything else an artist should be alive. At this rate you’ll be digging your own grave very soon.”

  “As to being alive—that’s not a fact,” Filippov objected, pointing out his empty glass to the bartender. “Are you up on how well the dead sell? If Michael Jackson were to die now all of a sudden, you know how much he’d rake in? But alive, no one’s cared about him for a long time.”

  “Michael Jackson I get. He’s got records and songs. But what have you got to sell after you die? The scenographies for your shows?”

  “Ooh, the words we know. Scenography.” Filippov nodded to the slow-moving bartender. “Come on, come on—pour. Don’t be shy.”

  “You can make all the fun of me you want,” Zinaida said, “only the problem’s right in front of you. You passed out in the car. And before that—you were the one who told me you’d passed out on the plane. Two blackouts in one day.”

  “In the car? I did?”

  “Who else? Me?”

  Filippov tore his gaze away from the newly filled glass and gave Zinaida a wary look.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Now it’s ‘Don’t lie.’ You were stretched out on the backseat for twenty minutes totally passed out, and now you’re trying to deny it.”

  “When was it I was stretched out?”

  “Almost the whole way after the crossing.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Enough already. I’m tired of it.”

  “Zina, don’t be rude to me. Who raised you?”

  “Who raised you?”

  “Wait one little second.”

  Filippov turned toward the bartender.

  “Have you heard of Mannerheim?”

  “Yeah, it’s some Finnish vodka.”

  “It’s not about being Finnish; it’s about how you drink it. Marshal Mannerheim demanded the glasses be filled to the very brim. Can you pour a full one? So it’s got a bit of a hump? True, the Finns freeze the glass and the vodka especially for this. That makes the surface tension stronger. Almost like oil.”

  “Why freeze it?” the bartender said. “It’s plenty cold here as is.” He shrugged and carefully topped off the glass.

  Filippov leaned over it, assessed it, and then nodded. “Not bad. You have to make sure the vodka comes a little over the edges. A mound like this. Now watch, Auntie Zina.”

  He neatly picked up the glass off the counter and smoothly bore it to his already open mouth. At one point the vodka swayed ominously over the edges of the glass. Filippov froze, waiting out this disturbance. Then he decisively brought his chin to the glass and swallowed its contents in one go.

  “See? And you’re making me out to be feeble. I didn’t spill a single drop. By the way, that’s how Marshal Mannerheim chose his officers. Sure you don’t want any? You’re chilled through. Have a go. Look, you’ve got goose bumps on your neck already.”

  He reached out to touch her before Zinaida could pull back. That is, she did pull back, but with a delay. An awkward moment.

  “No,” she said. “I’m going. They’re expecting me at home.”

  “Who? Your son’s girlfriend?”

  These words made Zinaida freeze like a hamster in a cage when you tap the top of the bars unexpectedly.

  “You’re looking at me as if I were the one who killed Kenny.”

  “Who?”

  “If you don’t know, there’s no point trying to explain. I was trying to make a joke. By the way, if you knew that, it would be easier for you to find a common language with your son.”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “Me?” Filippov shrugged, carved out a wolf’s grin from a kiddie show, and shook his head. “None. It was just by the way. You really don’t know who Kenny is?”

  “I already said so.”

  “All right, don’t be angry. By the way, you insulted me, too, with your lies about me passing out. I was just playing possum. Iron self-restraint. Long years of training.”

  “I wasn’t lying to you.”

  “Listen, don’t start. It’s gotten boring. I remember the whole way from the airport to the hotel.”

  “You do? Good. Then tell me what happened on the road.”

  “And will you snort for me?”

  Zinaida once again was taken aback.

  “In what sense?”

  “The literal. The way you snorted when you laughed. I just loved it. Please snort. I have to remember it. I’ll show my actress later. She can laugh like that, too. In one show, she has a laugh at the beginning of the second act, and it’s not working. But if she snorted like you, it would. I kept telling her at rehearsals, ‘Imagine I’m sitting on a streetlamp bare-assed.’ She did laugh well for a couple of performances, and then she stopped. My bare ass didn’t strike her as funny anymore. Please snort. Come on—is it so hard? I have an important scene hanging on this.”

  Zinaida looked at Filippov for a second, then doughtily wrinkled her nose and snorted.

  “No, that’s not fair,” he drawled disappointedly. “You’ve lost the whole organic nature of it. Any fool can do that. On the plane you did it very differently. It was enchanting. Such a good little cartoon piggy.”

  “You want me to snort?” the bartender offered.

  “No, thanks. I need the female sound.”

  “I can do it like a female.”

  “That’s something I definitely don’t need. Anyway, it’s not interesting anymore.”

  Filippov was truly bored and once again pointed out his empty glass to the bartender.

  “A Mannerheim?”

  “No need. Pour the usual.”

  “I’m waiting,” Zinaida said. “I held up my end of the bargain.”

  “Do we have a business going here or something?” Filippov cast a sidelong look at her.

  “You have to keep your word.”

  “Fine, then.” He sighed. “Just let me have a drink.”

  He downed his third glass, frowned, sniffed his fist, and blinked to clear away the oncoming tears.

  “Basically, listen,” he said. “After the crossing on the port road, some moron drove straight at us. We were run off the road. I hit my head. Then that asshole jumped out of his car. No, wait. He didn’t. There was another car there. And a few people sitting in it. They dragged that asshole out of his jeep and started . . . Yeah . . . And your Pavlik tried to stop them.” Filippov paused. “Because it was a young woman.”

  “Well?” Zinaida said after waiting a few seconds. “What happened after that?”

  “After that . . . For some reason I don’t remember . . . By the way, where’s Pavlik gone to? Why did you bring me to the hotel alone?”

  “There, you see? You don’t even remember anything about Pavlik. And you passed out much later.”

  “Lay off this passing out thing. Who was the girl? And why were they chasing her? No, hang on—I’ll remember. I just have to re-create the staging. Come here.”

  He jumped off his barstool and dragged Zinaida over to one of the tables. “Sit.”

  Filippov sat her down on a pretentious chair with a polished back. Then he himself, scraping another chair’s heavy legs over the tile, sat behind her.

  “So, we were sitting like this. Pavlik was here on the left. Let me put a chair here for him, too. Another car flew past us and stopped over there. Then the second car . . . No, wait a sec.”

  He jumped up from his chair and ran toward the big table in the opposite corner of the room. “This’ll be their car. These three goons are walking over from there.” He hunched over and displayed a might and threat nonexistent in nature.

  “And they’re running toward this SUV. In slow motion.” For some reason, Filippov started demonstrating the three men running in slow motion, heading toward the other table, which he evidently had playing the part of the third vehicle.

  “They run up . . . drag the driver out . . . and at that moment . . .” He rushed toward Zinaida, plopped down on the chair next to her, and then abruptly opened the nonexistent door. “At that moment, your Pavlik scrambles out and runs toward them.” Filippov demonstrated the same slow-motion run for Pavlik as for the attackers, looking around as he does and opening his mouth without making a sound.

  “He shouted something, but we couldn’t hear it. The door had already slammed shut. And I was right here.” Filippov rushed back to his chair and collapsed on it, throwing his head way back and pressing his palm to it.

  “But I saw it all. Those three dragged the driver out. The driver resisted. Your Pavlik ran toward them.” Filippov fell silent. “It gets fuzzy after that. There’s a fog.”

  “That’s it?” Zinaida snickered as she turned toward him. “And you said you’d remember.”

  “Know what? I’m sick of you. I told you what happened on the road. What more do you want? I even remember what she was wearing. Black jeans, high reindeer boots. Tall, narrow boots. A dark sweater—dark blue, I think. A gray scarf, long, wound around a few times. A dark mink cap with earflaps. Like a man’s. That’s why I took her for a boy at first. Get it?” Filippov gave Zinaida a triumphant look. “Little Miss Know-It-All.”

  “Fine.” She nodded. “Then what became of Pavlik after? And why was that girl running away? Who is she?”

  Filippov was silent.

  “We did discuss all that,” Zinaida said.

  “Who with?”

  “You.”

  “When?”

  “An hour ago. Right there, in the car. Only after that, you passed out, and now you don’t remember anything.”

  Filippov became sad and hung his head.

  “Do you have something to play a CD on?” he asked the bartender a minute later.

  The bartender dove under the bar and hoisted onto it a paunchy boom box.

  “Put this in,” Filippov said, walking up to him and taking a Tom Waits CD out of his coat pocket, a CD he carried around and importuned bartenders with all over the world. “Track three.”

  The CD clicked into place, something responded in the speakers over the bar, and Filippov nodded and listened to the dear raspy voice:

  You’ll be lost and never found

  You can never turn around

  Don’t go down to Fannin Street

  Feeling fucked over, Tom droned on through the speakers about how easy it is to lose yourself, all it takes is one wrong turn, and Zinaida shook her head, looking at Filippov.

  “You really don’t remember anything. Nothing at all.”

  Curtain.

  ENTR'ACTE

  THE DEMON OF THE VOID

  He started popping up in Filippov’s life gradually. He’d flit by at one party or another, at important premieres, and for quite a while, even when he recognized him, Filippov wouldn’t try to talk to him. The array of personalities at these events was always more or less the same, so you never picked out anyone in particular. Everyone recognized everyone else, and no one gave a fuck about anyone else. Filippov assumed he was someone’s friend, a common acquaintance he didn’t have to talk to.

  Later they started to nod upon meeting, exchanged snide comments once, and Filippov decided he liked the stranger. He had an appealing knack for fresh and fast remarks, with a light cynicism, without ceremony, and at the same time with a charming simplicity. But they really saw eye to eye when it came to slander. Finding themselves side by side on a crowded sofa at the embassy of a certain small but very rich European country, they dissected everyone at the reception so sweetly that Filippov, who had been about to die from boredom, roared back to life and recognized kindred blood in the stranger.

  By their next meeting at some presentation or the awarding of some prize at the President Hotel, he asked around, but none of his acquaintances knew the fellow personally. Everyone assured him he was someone’s friend, but a minute later that someone would deny knowing him and send Filippov off to the next candidate. Actually, this stopped bothering him almost immediately. He decided his witty interlocutor was the typical freeloader who insinuates himself into fashionable parties, and this largely coincided with his own views on life.

  Catching sight of his new friend, Filippov delightedly took him by the arm, dragged him to the nearest secluded corner, twirled the button on his expensive jacket, and whispered hilarious vulgarities about everyone who passed or stopped for a sociable clinking of glasses. He was blissfully happy not to know his companion well. Filippov would definitely have been wary about telling someone from his own circle all these things about his colleagues, partners, friends, and former lovers.

  The stranger was invariably ecstatic and, as a reciprocal move, told him piquant details about those same people, details even Filippov didn’t know and that livened him up no less than a thin white line on a dark mirror. It was from this character no one knew that he learned the interesting way one of his former actresses had set her sights on a well-known “factory, newspaper, and shipping magnate” who had rashly set eyes on her. Attempting to deprive the poor sod of any choice and tie him securely to her, the inventive priestess of Melpomene had used cocaine vaginally every time before sex, which brought not only her trusting fiancé but the beautiful aspirant herself to bewitching orgasms.

  “Look how easy it is to be perfection,” his remarkable new friend said, smiling at Filippov. “And you keep going on about talent, talent, talent.”

  Once he told a marvelous tale about original sin.

  “The kind god who created the world had the idea of populating it with sensible mortal creatures and, for starters, sculpted life-size models of them. The god placed these statues in a large stone house and posted a guard outside and ordered him not to let the evil spirit into the building. The evil spirit was known for his dirty tricks and, naturally, would never pass up a chance to participate in the production of the first men. As usual, the evil spirit didn’t wait long and bribed the guard, promising him a warm fur coat, because the action took place in our native lands, and the guard was on his last legs, literally freezing at his post. The evil spirit penetrated the building, defecated everywhere, and out of mischief or, perhaps, disrespect for the sculptor’s talent, defiled the unfortunate giants from head to foot with his filth. After all this outrage, the good god turned the luckless guard into a dog and turned the sculptures inside out, so you couldn’t see the shit. Ever since, people have been filled with you-know-what.”

  Filippov was sincerely glad to learn the stranger was from the same part of the world as he was. That brought them even closer together. A couple of times they ended up in the same car returning to Moscow after fancy parties outside of town, and he managed to initiate Filippov into his secret concept of “the void.”

  “Understand me, my friend,” he said quietly. “There’s nothing neater, tidier, or handsomer than this doctrine. I’ve been working on it for years. You have to agree that each person is trying his hardest for mastery. Everyone wants to master something, to fill himself and his life with something pleasant, important, and precious. But that’s a mistake. It’s one of the saddest errors in the world. No matter how much a person acquires, it still isn’t enough. He’s always tormented by the thirst for something more. Or at least the suspicion that there’s something more. Only the void is capable of ideally filling the human soul. It alone doesn’t leave a single unoccupied spot in the soul. Pure physics, brother. You can’t argue with that.”

  Enchanted by this logic, Filippov got chummier and chummier with the stranger until the moment, one day, he woke up and found him in his apartment. At first, he decided they’d gotten smashed the night before and the stranger had simply spent the night, but by the next day his new friend hadn’t gone anywhere. Soon after, the stranger revealed to Filippov his true identity.

  ACT TWO

  FREEZING POINT

  Filya was awakened in the most utter darkness by an unpleasant clicking, as if people were playing wooden spoons in the next room. At the same time, the perky spoon players were also whining ever so slightly. He tried to distract himself from this hotel amateur hour, trying to fall asleep using a trick he’d come up with for occasions such as these, but it didn’t work. Filya mentally drew the reason for the sound; however, instead of the usual lulling scenes, he got glimpses of tin rabbits devoting themselves to enthusiastic, bone-rattling love. He was ready to leap out of bed and tear the entire hotel to shreds, but catching his trembling lower jaw with his wet hand, he instantly stopped the detested clicking and whining.