mained Tsyganek until the morning—the same words, intonations, gestures.
He became Count Lorenzo when he was writing his Black Masks; a sailor when he was writing The Ocean.
It is for this reason that opinions about him differed so much. Some said that he was a boaster, others that he was a wild, ungovernable spirit. One person visiting him found him in the part of Savva, another would encounter a student from The Days of Our Life, another the pirate Khorre. And each one thought that this was Andreyev. They forgot that they were confronted with an artist who contained within himself hundreds of parts and who sincerely and with complete conviction thought that each part was a real individual.
There were very many Andreyevs and all of them were genuine.
Many of these Andreyevs I disliked, but the one which was a Moscow student I was very fond of. He would suddenly become childishly mischievous and playful, scatter round him jeux d'esprit, frequently poor, but homely and affectionate in tone, and string together nonsensical verses. Once, in a malicious moment, wishing to make fun of the Moscow writer T———, who was extraordinarly polite, he rang him up at dawn on the telephone.
"Who's speaking?" asks the polite writer, half asleep
"Boborykin,"[1] answers Andreyev.
"Is that you, Peter Dmitrievitch?"
"Yes," says Andreyev, in Boborykin's senile voice.
"How can I oblige you?" asks the polite writer.
"I've a favour to ask of you; the fact is that this Sunday going to be married . . . and I hope that you will do me the honour of being my best man."
"Delighted," exclaims the polite writer, not daring, out of good manners, to express any surprise at the marriage of an old man of eighty, already, incidentally, possessed of one wife.
Others of his jokes were more happy. Thus he christened his country villa Villa Advance, as it was erected with funds loaned to him by a publisher.
But often his good spirits were—as with everything concerning Andreyev—excessive and had the character of an attack: they made one uncomfortable and one was glad when they were over.
- ↑ A well-known Russian writer.
