Just One Year

“I observed,” I tell her. “I paid attention.”

“Excellent. That’s just what you needed to do.” And there’s that smile again. Only now do I begin to doubt it reflects any pleasure. “I spoke to Jeroen today,” she continues.

I don’t say anything but my gut twists. All this, and now Jeroen is going to lumber back with his cast.

“He’s terribly embarrassed by what happened, but most of all he’s disappointed to have let down his company.”

“There’s no one to blame. He was in an accident,” I say.

“Yes. Of course. An accident. And he very much wants to be back for the last two weeks of the season and we will do our best to adapt to meet his needs, because that is what you do when you are part of a cast. Do you understand?”

I nod, even though I don’t really understand what she’s on about.

“I understand what you were trying to do up there with your Orlando.”

Your Orlando. Something about the way she says that makes me feel like it won’t be mine for much longer.

“But the role of the understudy is not to bring his own interpretation to the part,” she continues. “It is to play the part as the actor you’re replacing played it. So in effect, you aren’t playing Orlando. You are playing Jeroen Gosslers playing Orlando.”

But Jeroen’s Orlando is all wrong, I want to say. It’s all machismo and prancing and no revealing; and without vulnerability, Rosalind wouldn’t love him, and if Rosalind doesn’t love him, why should the audience care? I want to say: Let me do this. Let me do it right this time.

But I don’t say any of that. And Petra just stares at me. Then, finally she asks: “Do you think you can manage that?”

Petra smiles again. How foolish of me—of all people—not to recognize her smile for what it was. “We can still cancel for this weekend,” she says, her voice soft, the threat clear. “Our star has had an accident. No one would fault us.”

Something given, something taken away. Does it always have to work like that?

The cast starts to drift back into the theater, the ten-minute break over, ready to get back to work, to make this happen. When they see me and Petra talking, they go quiet.

“Are we understood?” she asks, her voice so friendly it’s almost singsong.

I look at the cast again. I look at Petra. I nod. We’re understood.

Forty-five

When Linus releases us for the afternoon, I bolt for the door. “Willem,” Max calls.

“Willem,” Marina calls behind her.

I wave them off. I have to be fitted for my costume and then I have only a couple hours until Linus will meet me to go through my marks on the amphitheater stage. As for what Marina and Max have to say: if it’s compliments of my performance, so Jeroen-like even Petra was impressed, I don’t want to hear it. If it’s questions about why I’m playing it like this, when I played it so differently before, then I really don’t want to hear it.

“I have to go,” I tell them. “I’ll see you tonight.”

They look wounded, each in their own way. But I just walk away from them.

Back at the flat, I find W, Henk, and Broodje busy at work, pages of yellow pad on the coffee table. “That’s Femke in,” Broodje is saying. “Hey, it’s the star.”

Henk and W start to congratulate me. I just shake my head. “What’s all this?” I gesture to the project on the table.

“Your party,” W says.

“My party?”

“The one we’re throwing tonight,” Broodje says.

I sigh. I forgot all about that. “I don’t want a party.”

“What do you mean you don’t want a party?” Broodje asks. “You said it was okay.”

“Now it’s not. Cancel it.”

“Why? Aren’t you going on?”

“I’m going on.” I go into my room. “No party,” I call.

“Willy,” Broodje yells after me.

I slam the door, lie down on the bed. I close my eyes and try to sleep, but that’s not happening. I sit up and flip through one of Broodje’s copies of Voetbal International but that’s not happening either. I toss it back on my bookshelf. It lands next to a large manila envelope. The package of photos I unearthed from the attic last month.

I open the envelope, thumb through the pictures. I linger on the one of me and Yael and Bram from my eighteenth birthday. It’s like an ache, how much I miss them. How much I miss her. I’m so tired of missing things I don’t have.

I pick up the phone, not even calculating the time difference.

She answers straight away. And just like that time before, I’m at a loss for words. But not Yael. Not this time.

“What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“Did you get my email?”

“I haven’t checked it. Is something wrong?”

She sounds panicked. I should know better. Out-of-the-blue phone calls. They require reassurance. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Nothing like what?”

“Like before. I mean, nobody is sick, though someone did break an ankle.” I tell her about Jeroen, about my taking on his part.

“But shouldn’t this make you happy?” she asks.

I thought it would make me happy. It did make me so happy this morning. Hearing about Lulu’s letter made me happy this morning. But now that’s worn off and all I feel is her recrimination. How far the pendulum can swing in one day. You’d think I’d know that by now. “It appears not.”

She sighs. “But Daniel said you seemed so energized.”

“You spoke to Daniel? About me?”

“Several times. I asked his advice.”

“You asked Daniel for advice?” Somehow this is even more shocking than her asking him about me.

“I wondered if he thought I should ask you to come back here.” She pauses. “To live with me.”

“You want me to come back to India?”

“If you want to. You might act here. It seemed to go well for you. And we could find a bigger flat. Something big enough for both of us. But Daniel thought I should hold off. He thought you seemed to have found something.”

“I haven’t found anything. And you might’ve asked me.” It comes out so bitter.

She must hear it, too. But her voice stays soft. “I am asking you, Willem.”

And I realize she is. After all this time. Tears well up in my eyes. I’m grateful, in that small moment, for the thousands of kilometers that separate us.

“How soon could I come?” I ask.

There’s a pause. Then she gives the answer I need: “As soon as you want.”

The play. I’ll have to do it this weekend, and then Jeroen will come back or I can quit. “Monday?”

“Monday?” She sounds only a little bit surprised. “I’ll have to ask Mukesh what he can do.”