In Search of Love and Beauty by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page B

he had absorbed into himself through his own experiences. Leo would call on someone, anyone, at random—and how their hearts beat, for who would it be today?—to relate some personal experience in illustration of the Passion which was the topic of the day. One day it might be Jealousy, or Wrath, or merely Irritability, another Love. It was discussed, expounded on, at Louise’s, and then at Regi’s it was acted out. With all her tubular furniture pushed out of the way, and only her white wolf rugs scattered over the parquet floor, the students gave strenuous physical expression to the chosen Passion; not only in their own characters but assuming those of others as different from themselves as might be—shoe clerk, masseuse, streetcar conductor; and further, not only as human beings but as animals too, so that, for instance, on the Day of Wrath there would be such roaring as of lions, such bellowings of bulls, chatterings of monkeys, shrieks of hyenas that nervous old ladies in the rest of the building would call through the intercom to complain to the doorman who came up to ring Regi’s bell.
    Leo’s classes became popular, so that soon Louise’s apartment was too small for his lectures, and Regi’s for his physical workshops. He took a large open rehearsal space in a building converted into an experimental theater. Around this time, he began to prepare his students for public demonstrations. These were not to be regarded as a contribution to theater—he was moving farther and farther away from that—but as a demonstration of his work in the field of existential experiment. He discouraged students with an interest in or talent for acting in favor of those whom he called “blankpages”: that is, those who were willing to give themselves over to his exercises for their own sake—to lend themselves, body and soul, to his experiments.
    This Louise and Regi were fervently willing to do. On the other hand, they were by no means blank pages but had very highly developed temperaments of their own. The same could be said of all Leo’s students—both at that time and, indeed, at all times. Maybe that was why they were attracted to him in the first place, because they had proliferated into such complicated personalities that they could no longer manage themselves and felt the need to hand themselves over to someone else, someone stronger. It was part of the challenge of his work; but it was also part of its difficulties, and from this time on he began to have what he called his “escape hatch” to which he could retreat from the demands of his emotionally charged students.
    His first escape hatch was a small room at the top of the experimental theater building. He allowed his students to furnish it with the sort of things he liked and needed—a leather couch, framed etchings of Gothic edifices, a comfortable armchair, many reading lamps, and a phonograph on which to play his favorite Wagner and Beethoven records. It was a cozy, masculine den, and his students took an eager pride in getting it ready: but when it was, they found themselves excluded with a big LEAVE ME ALONE sign which he had scrawled on a piece of brown paper and tacked to the door. They could do nothing but stare at it.
    Although Leo moved some of his personal possessions to the escape hatch, he still kept most of them in his room in Louise and Bruno’s apartment. This suited him—especially as they did not charge him any rent—and it also suited Louise, for that way she could still think of him as living with her. She lay awake at night, waiting for him to come in. For the rest of her life she remembered those nights of waiting, with Bruno asleep next to her. Often she couldn’t stand it anymorebut got up and moved from room to room and looked out the windows into the deserted lamplit street below. She always ended up in Leo’s room, moving around it, touching his things,