Free Snowleg by Nicholas Shakespeare Page B

silver-framed hand-mirror. He was wondering, Which one is she sleeping with? when Teo nodded at the shower-shaped cubicle. “That’s where you’ll be.”
    The scene over, Teo introduced him to Sepp who was the director and principal actor. It was an extreme face that Peter looked into. Harelip. Beak of a nose. And above the sparse beard cheeks clear and pink as if hand-coloured.
    Sepp leaned from his stool, extending his hand far out over the floor. “Thanks for helping out at short notice.”
    Peter began to apologise, “Anything to do with theatre, I’m an idiot,” but Sepp held up his hand. There was one rule only Peter had to remember. It applied to tragedy and to comedy as it did to mime and to life. “True drama is when there are no more chances. This is it and how it will be.”
    The statement flummoxed Peter and his apprehensions of the night before came tumbling back. Was the man serious?
    Before Peter could find his footing, Sepp turned to his companion, a severe-faced man in tortoiseshell glasses, and raised an invisible glass. “Marcus. To our fourth member.”
    Marcus responded with a series of hard, brief noises hammered out on a wooden gong.
    Sepp next lifted his imaginary glass to Teo, who had taken up a position behind the counter and was crouched over an apparatus with rubber and metal tubes coming out of it and resembling an oxygen mask.
    The director pretended to drink Peter’s health. Instantly, the studio filled with a loud swallowing as of liquid gurgling into a vast stomach. Peter recognised the sound. All term, he had heard it coming through Teo’s floor.
    The pipes and valves were Teo’s invention, the product of a temperament that delighted to catch people by surprise. Blowing into his machine, Teo conjured sounds to announce themselves in the most unlikely places, like a coin behind the ear, so that no-one who had their eyes fixed on Sepp was likely to associate his raised glass with a stooped figure 20 feet away.
    Teo abandoned the counter and piloted Peter into the cubicle, drawing the curtain. The curtain gave them invisibility, and that made it palatable. So long as he could see out and not be seen he was fine.
    At 11.00, Teo had to go to the Konservatorium. Aided by an occasional prompt from Sepp, Peter operated various lights and pulleys until he reached the end of the script.
    â€œSee?” said Sepp. “Easy.”
    So relieved was Peter that instinctively he started to clap, but Sepp once again held up his hand. “Oh, didn’t Teo tell you? We don’t applaud.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œThat way the audience is forced to keep their energy with them. To carry it out of the theatre.”
    Something else Teo had forgotten to tell Peter, who was reminded of how little, really, he understood the Germans. At the end of the third performance the Permanent Representative of Federal Germany was hosting a reception at Leipzig’s Hotel Astoria. Peter, as part of the group, was expected to attend. “Bring a jacket and tie, would you?”
    Anita was not stoical. Not at all. “I thought you loathed the theatre. How can you do this to me?”
    â€œNot all theatre.”
    â€œI’ve never heard you say anything positive about it.”
    â€œThere are a lot of parts of me you don’t know,” said his voice rather high.
    â€œLike what? Like this desire you have to see the GDR?”
    â€œAnita, it’s where my father comes from.”
    She didn’t understand. “And what about your exams?” through her teeth. “I thought you had no spare time.”
    â€œLook,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m going.”
    â€œI can’t believe you’re doing this,” her eyes brimming. “Don’t you care about me?”
    â€œOf course I do. But it’s not your wedding.”
    She drove him to the station anyway. He hadn’t asked her to do so, but