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Sofia Andrukhovych
further or demand their
money back for the ticket.
But
suddenly
all
this
agitated foam parts, as if
absorbed by sand. “Aaah,”
exhales the audience, for
a moment turning into the
lungs of a fairytale giant.
Those who missed it ask
agitatedly, “What? What
is it? What happened?”—
and then immediately fall
silent, realizing what they
had missed. They somehow
figure out what exactly had
happened on stage.
There, in front of the blue-
and-red Chinese pagoda,
Chevalier Ernest Thorn in
person just wove himself out
of thin air.
He did not come out from the
wings, did not crawl out from
inside the pagoda, did not
slip out from the darkness
on stage. No movement had
happened; nothing stirred the
stuffy air. Everyone present in
this hall can swear: Chevalier
Thorn all this time was there,
in the center of the stage,
from the very moment when
the curtains had opened, he
stood there motionless and
watched the audience.
Then why didn’t we see him?
Now he is frozen like a bug
that pretends to be a little
tree branch or a dry leaf. I can
clearly see: he is not blinking,
and his chest does not rise
with breathing. The face is
calm, focused, relaxed. He
looks straight ahead in front
of himself—but it creates an
impression that he sees the
entire hall simultaneously,
the boxes, the back rows of
the orchestra, the ushers
hidden in corners. His left
eye is squinting slightly and
seems smaller than the
right one, the left eyebrow
lower than the right one.