Free In America by Susan Sontag

control, and the result was a disaster though I was not made to pay for it. The play was Adrienne Lecouvreur, a favorite of mine. An actress is a plum role, and Lecouvreur was the greatest of her era. Well, the call-boy had come, I had left my dressing room, I was standing in the wings, it was time for me to go on and, although it was hardly my first time in the role, I realized I had stage fright. That often used to happen to me. If it was just enough to make my heart pound and my palms sweat, it didn’t bother me. On the contrary, I considered it a sign of professionalism. If I didn’t have some flutter and fever before I went on, I was probably going to give a bad performance. However, it was a little worse than usual that night—not the kind of fear that paralyzes (I’ve had that, too!) but the kind that makes you lose your head. I entered the stage, and the whole house started clapping, and went on applauding for several minutes. In acknowledgment I sank into a deep stage curtsy, my crossed hands just touching my right knee and my head bent, and as the homage subsided and I raised my head I said to myself, You’ll see, you’ll see what I can do. Rachel had created this role, her voice was stronger, deeper than mine, and people still remember when she brought the play to Warsaw many years ago, but everyone thinks my Adrienne is superb, and that night I thought I was about to give the best performance of my life. And in this clenched state of mind, I started my scene—and took my first lines too high. I was lost. It was impossible to lower the pitch once I had begun. Adrienne is backstage at the Comédie-Française studying a new part, but she can’t concentrate, her pulse is racing, for she’s expecting to meet again the man with whom she’s just fallen in love. And when she tells her confidant, the prompter, who is in love with her, though he dares not avow it, of her new, secret passion, I shouted, shouted like the most untalented of actresses. Having started on that note, imagine what I became when the prince, this man whose true identity is unknown to Adrienne, enters the greenroom. As any experienced actor will tell you, I had no choice, I had to keep it up. I could only rise higher as the sentiment I had to express became stronger and more pathetic. I sighed, I writhed, and all was genuine. By the fifth act, after Adrienne has kissed a bouquet of poisoned flowers sent by her rival for the prince’s affections, my physical suffering was atrocious, and the arms that stretched out to my leading man as I lay dying were contorted with real desire. When the curtain fell, he carried me senseless to my dressing room.”
    *   *   *
    â€œ I LOVE YOUR STORIES ,” said Ryszard. Meaning, of course: I love you. “And because I love your stories,” he continued (but this didn’t make any sense at all), “I shall make the greatest sacrifice a writer can make.”
    â€œAnd what might that be?”
    â€œEven if I write a hundred novels—”
    â€œA hundred novels!” she exclaimed. “Vast program. And to think”—she smiled—“you’ve only written two.”
    â€œWait,” he said, “this is a solemn moment. I am taking a vow.”
    â€œActor!”
    â€œMy vow, Maryna.” He raised his hand. “Even if I write a hundred novels, there will never be one whose main character is a great actress.”
    *   *   *
    THEY WERE in her dressing room. Ryszard was on a low stool, sketching her. She was pacing back and forth, offering him her astonishing silhouette.
    â€œSomething about makeup,” she mused. “I have a foolish picture in my mind that I don’t put all of this”—she pointed at the tray of jars and vials—“on my face, this old face”—she laughed—“that I don’t transform myself to look different from the way I