The Melting-Pot by Israel Zangwill (great books to read TXT) 📖

rosily enough for you, ha! ha! ha! the Jew who gropes in one great crimson mist.

[He breaks down in spasmodic, ironic, long-drawn, terrible laughter.]

VERA [Trying vainly to tranquillise him]

Hush, David! Your laughter hurts more than tears. Let Vera comfort you.

[She kneels by his chair, tries to put her arms round him.]

DAVID [Shuddering]

Take them away! Don't you feel the cold dead pushing between us?

VERA [Unfaltering, moving his face toward her lips]

Kiss me!

DAVID

I should feel the blood on my lips.

VERA

My love shall wipe it out.

DAVID

Love! Christian love!

[He unwinds her clinging arms; she sinks prostrate on the floor as he rises.]

For this I gave up my people—darkened the home that sheltered me—there was always a still, small voice at my heart calling me back, but I heeded nothing—only the voice of the butcher's daughter.

[Brokenly]

Let me go home, let me go home.

[He looks lingeringly at Vera's prostrate form, but overcoming the instinct to touch and comfort her, begins tottering with uncertain pauses toward the door leading to the hall.]

BARON [Extending his arms in relief and longing]

And here is your home, Vera!

[He raises her gradually from the floor; she is dazed, but suddenly she becomes conscious of whose arms she is in, and utters a cry of repulsion.]

VERA

Those arms reeking from that crimson river!

[She falls back.]

BARON [Sullenly]

Don't echo that babble. You came to these arms often enough when they were fresh from the battlefield.

VERA

But not from the shambles! You heard what he called you. Not soldier—butcher! Oh, I dared to dream of happiness after my nightmare of Siberia, but you—you——

[She breaks down for the first time in hysterical sobs.]

BARON [Brokenly]

Vera! Little Vera! Don't cry! You stab me!

VERA

You thought you were ordering your soldiers to fire at the Jews, but it was my heart they pierced.

[She sobs on.]

BARON

... And my own.... But we will comfort each other. I will go to the Tsar myself—with my forehead to the earth—to beg for your pardon!... Come, put your wet face to little father's....

VERA [Violently pushing his face away]

I hate you! I curse the day I was born your daughter!

[She staggers toward the door leading to the interior. At the same moment David, who has reached the door leading to the hall, now feeling subconsciously that Vera is going and that his last reason for lingering on is removed, turns the door-handle. The click attracts the Baron's attention, he veers round.]

BARON [To David]

Halt!

[David turns mechanically. Vera drifts out through her door, leaving the two men face to face. The Baron beckons to David, who as if hypnotised moves nearer. The Baron whips out his pistol, slowly crosses to David, who stands as if awaiting his fate. The Baron hands the pistol to David.]

You were right!

[He steps back swiftly with a touch of stern heroism into the attitude of the culprit at a military execution, awaiting the bullet.]

Shoot me!

DAVID [Takes the pistol mechanically, looks long and pensively at it as with a sense of its irrelevance. Gradually his arm droops and lets the pistol fall on the table, and there his hand touches a string of his violin, which yields a little note. Thus reminded of it, he picks up the violin, and as his fingers draw out the broken string he murmurs]

I must get a new string.

[He resumes his dragging march toward the door, repeating maunderingly]

I must get a new string.

[The curtain falls.]

Act IV

Saturday, July 4, evening. The Roof-Garden of the Settlement House, showing a beautiful, far-stretching panorama of New York, with its irregular sky-buildings on the left, and the harbour with its Statue of Liberty on the right. Everything is wet and gleaming after rain. Parapet at the back. Elevator on the right. Entrance from the stairs on the left. In the sky hang heavy clouds through which thin, golden lines of sunset are just beginning to labour. David is discovered on a bench, hugging his violin-case to his breast, gazing moodily at the sky. A muffled sound of applause comes up from below and continues with varying intensity through the early part of the scene. Through it comes the noise of the elevator ascending. Mendel steps out and hurries forward.

MENDEL

Come down, David! Don't you hear them shouting for you?

[He passes his hand over the wet bench.]

Good heavens! You will get rheumatic fever!

DAVID

Why have you followed me?

MENDEL

Get up—everything is still damp.

DAVID [Rising, gloomily]

Yes, there's a damper over everything.

MENDEL

Nonsense—the rain hasn't damped your triumph in the least. In fact, the more delicate effects wouldn't have gone so well in the open air. Listen!

DAVID

Let them shout. Who told you I was up here?

MENDEL

Miss Revendal, of course.

DAVID [Agitated]

Miss Revendal? How should she know?

MENDEL [Sullenly]

She seems to understand your crazy ways.

DAVID [Passing his hand over his eyes]

Ah, you never understood me, uncle.... How did she look? Was she pale?

MENDEL

Never mind about Miss Revendal. Pappelmeister wants you—the people insist on seeing you. Nobody can quiet them.

DAVID

They saw me all through the symphony in my place in the orchestra.

MENDEL

They didn't know you were the composer as well as the first violin. Now Miss Revendal has told them.

[Louder applause.]

There! Eleven minutes it has gone on—like for an office-seeker. You must come and show yourself.

DAVID

I won't—I'm not an office-seeker. Leave me to my misery.

MENDEL

Your misery? With all this glory and greatness opening before you? Wait till you're my age——

[Shouts of "Quixano!"]

You hear! What is to be done with them?

DAVID

Send somebody on the platform to remind them this is the interval for refreshments!

MENDEL

Don't be cynical. You know your dearest wish was to melt these simple souls with your music. And now——

DAVID

Now I have only made my own stony.

MENDEL

You are right. You are stone all over—ever since you came back home to us. Turned into a pillar of salt, mother says—like Lot's wife.

DAVID

That was the punishment for looking backward. Ah, uncle, there's more sense in that old Bible than the Rabbis suspect. Perhaps that is the secret of our people's paralysis—we are always looking backward.

[He drops hopelessly into an iron garden-chair behind him.]

MENDEL [Stopping him before he touches the seat]

Take care—it's sopping wet. You don't look backward enough.

[He takes out his handkerchief and begins drying the chair.]

DAVID [Faintly smiling]

I thought you wanted the salt to melt.

MENDEL

It is melting a little if you can smile. Do you know, David, I haven't seen you smile since that Purim afternoon?

DAVID

You haven't worn a false nose since, uncle.

[He laughs bitterly.]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Fancy masquerading in America because twenty-five centuries ago the Jews escaped a pogrom in Persia. Two thousand five hundred years ago! Aren't we uncanny?

[He drops into the wiped chair.]

MENDEL [Angrily]

Better you should leave us altogether than mock at us. I thought it was your Jewish heart that drove you back home to us; but if you are still hankering after Miss Revendal——

DAVID [Pained]

Uncle!

MENDEL

I'd rather see you marry her than go about like this. You couldn't make the house any gloomier.

DAVID

Go back to the concert, please. They have quieted down.

MENDEL [Hesitating]

And you?

DAVID

Oh, I'm not playing in the popular after-pieces. Pappelmeister guessed I'd be broken up with the stress of my own symphony—he has violins enough.

MENDEL

Then you don't want to carry this about.

[Taking the violin from David's arms.]

DAVID [Clinging to it]

Don't rob me of my music—it's all I have.

MENDEL

You'll spoil it in the wet. I'll take it home.

DAVID

No——

[He suddenly catches sight of two figures entering from the left—Frau Quixano and Kathleen clad in their best, and wearing tiny American flags in honour of Independence Day. Kathleen escorts the old lady, with the air of a guardian angel, on her slow, tottering course toward David. Frau Quixano is puffing and panting after the many stairs. David jumps up in surprise, releases the violin-case to Mendel.]

They at my symphony!

MENDEL

Mother would come—even though, being Shabbos, she had to walk.

DAVID

But wasn't she shocked at my playing on the Sabbath?

MENDEL

No—that's the curious part of it. She said that even as a boy you played your fiddle on Shabbos, and that if the Lord has stood it all these years, He must consider you an exception.

DAVID

You see! She's more sensible than you thought. I daresay whatever I were to do she'd consider me an exception.

MENDEL [In sullen acquiescence]

I suppose geniuses are.

KATHLEEN [Reaching them; panting with admiration and breathlessness]

Oh, Mr. David! it was like midnight mass! But the misthress was ashleep.

DAVID

Asleep!

[Laughs half-merrily, half-sadly.]

Ha! Ha! Ha!

FRAU QUIXANO [Panting and laughing in response]

He! He! He! Dovidel lacht widder. He! He! He!

[She touches his arm affectionately, but feeling his wet coat, utters a cry of horror.]

Du bist nass!

DAVID

Es ist gor nicht, Granny—my clothes are thick.

[She fusses over him, wiping him down with her gloved hand.]

MENDEL

But what brought you up here, Kathleen?

KATHLEEN

Sure, not the elevator. The misthress said 'twould be breaking the Shabbos to ride up in it.

DAVID [Uneasily]

But did—-did Miss Revendal send you up?

KATHLEEN

And who else should be axin' the misthress if she wasn't proud of Mr. David? Faith, she's a sweet lady.

MENDEL [Impatiently]

Don't chatter, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN

But, Mr. Quixano——!

DAVID [Sweetly]

Please take your mistress down again—don't let her walk.

KATHLEEN

But Shabbos isn't out yet!

MENDEL

Chattering again!

DAVID [Gently]

There's no harm, Kathleen, in going down in the elevator.

KATHLEEN

Troth, I'll egshplain to her that droppin' down isn't ridin'.

DAVID [Smiling]

Yes, tell her dropping down is natural—not work, like flying up.

[Kathleen begins to move toward the stairs, explaining to Frau Quixano.]

And, Kathleen! You'll get her some refreshments.

KATHLEEN [Turns, glaring]

Refrishments, is it? Give her refrishments where they mix the mate with the butther plates! Oh, Mr. David!

[She moves off toward the stairs in reproachful sorrow.]

MENDEL [Smiling]

I'll get her some coffee.

DAVID [Smiling]

Yes, that'll keep her awake. Besides, Pappelmeister was so sure the people wouldn't understand me, he's relaxing them on Gounod and Rossini.

MENDEL

Pappelmeister's idea of relaxation! I should have given them comic opera.

[With sudden call to Kathleen, who with her mistress is at the wrong exit.]

Kathleen! The elevator's this side!

KATHLEEN [Turning]

What way can that be, when I came up this side?

MENDEL

You chatter too much.

[Frau Quixano, not understanding, exit.]

Come this way. Can't you see the elevator?

KATHLEEN [Perceives Frau Quixano has gone, calls after her in Irish-sounding Yiddish]

Wu geht Ihr, bedad?...

[Impatiently]

Houly Moses, komm' zurick!

[Exit anxiously, re-enter with Frau Quixano.]

Begorra, we Jews never know our way.

[Mendel, carrying the violin, escorts his mother and Kathleen to the elevator. When they are near it, it stops with a thud, and Pappelmeister springs out, his umbrella up, meeting them face to face. He looks happy and beaming over David's triumph.]

PAPPELMEISTER [In loud,