“Great. We should have the party plans well under way by then.”

“Party plans?”

“Willy, this is big.” He pauses to look at me. “After the year you’ve had—the years you’ve had—we should celebrate this.”

“Okay, fine,” I say, still half dazed.

I go back into my room to pack up a change of clothes for under the costume, shoes to wear. I’m about to leave when I see Lulu’s watch sitting on my shelf. I hold it in my hand. After all this time, it’s still ticking. I hold it in my hand a moment longer. Then I slip it into my pocket.

Forty-four

At the theater, the rest of the cast has assembled. Max comes up behind me. “I’ve got your back,” she whispers.

I’m about to ask her what she means, and then I see what she means. For the better part of three months, I have been mostly invisible to many of these people, a shadow-cast member. And now, the spotlight is glaring and there’s no safety in the shadows anymore. People are looking at me with a particular mix of suspicion and condescension, a familiar feeling from when I was traveling and walked through certain neighborhoods where my kind didn’t tend to wander. As I did when I was traveling, I just act like I don’t notice and carry on. Soon enough Petra is clapping her hands, gathering us together.

“We have no time to lose,” Linus says. “We will do a modified run-through, skipping over scenes that Orlando is not in.”

“So why did you call all of us in?” mutters Geert, who plays the swing roles of one of Frederick’s men and Silvius; he has almost no scenes with Orlando.

“I know. Sitting around watching other people act is such a bloody waste of time,” Max says, her voice so sincere that it takes Geert a few seconds to have the good sense to look chastened.

Max gives me a crooked smile. I’m glad she’s here.

“I called everyone in,” Petra says, with an exaggerated patience that lets you know she’s reaching the end of her supply, “so you could all accustom yourself to the different rhythms of a new actor, and so we could all of us help Willem ensure that the transition between him and Jeroen is as seamless as possible. Ideally, you won’t even be able to tell the difference.”

Max rolls her eyes at this and once again I’m glad she’s here.

“Now from the top, please,” Linus says, tapping his clipboard. “There’s no set and no marks so just do your best.”

As soon as I step onto the stage, I feel relieved. This is where I’m meant to be. In Orlando’s head. As we move through the play, I discover more things about Orlando. I discover how key that first scene when he and Rosalind meet is. It’s just for a few moments, but they see something in each other, recognize something. And that the spark sustains the passion, for both of them, for the rest of the play. They don’t see each other—knowingly see each other—again until the very end.

Such a dance that Shakespeare wrote into a handful of pages of text. Orlando’s about to fight a man far stronger than he is, but he peacocks in front of Rosalind and Celia to impress them. He’s scared, he must be, but instead of showing it, he bluffs. He flirts. “Let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial,” he says.

The world pivots on moments. And in this play, it’s the moment when Rosalind says, “The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.”

That one line. It cracks open his facade. It reveals what’s underneath. Rosalind sees Orlando. He sees her. That’s the whole play, right there.

I feel the lines like I haven’t before, like I’m truly understanding Shakespeare’s intentions. I feel as if there really was a Rosalind and an Orlando and I’m here to represent them. It isn’t acting in a play. It goes back further than that. It’s much bigger than me.

“Ten-minute break,” Linus calls at the end of Act One. Everyone heads out for a smoke or a coffee. But I am reluctant to leave the stage.

“Willem,” Petra calls to me. “A word.”

She’s smiling, which she rarely does, and at first I read it for pleasure, because isn’t that what a smile communicates?

The theater empties out. It’s just the two of us now. Not even Linus. “I want to tell you how impressed I am,” she begins.

Inside I’m a little boy grinning on a birthday morning, about to get the presents. But I try to keep my face professional.

“With so little experience, to know the language so well. We were taken with your ease with the language at your audition, but this . . .” She smiles again, only now I notice that it looks a bit like a dog baring its fangs. “And the blocking, you have it cold. Linus tells me that you even learned some of the fight choreography.”

“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.”