The Melting-Pot by Israel Zangwill (read me a book TXT) 📕

had I stayed. But I escaped from my gaolers.

MENDEL

You were a Revolutionist!

VERA

Who can live in Russia and not be? So you see trouble and I are not such strangers.

MENDEL

Who would have thought it to look at you? Siberia, gaolers, revolutions!

[Rising]

What terrible things life holds!

VERA

Yes, even in free America.

[Frau Quixano's sobbing grows slightly louder.]

MENDEL

That Settlement work must be full of tragedies.

VERA

Sometimes one sees nothing but the tragedy of things.

[Looking toward the window]

The snow is getting thicker. How pitilessly it falls—like fate.

MENDEL [Following her gaze]

Yes, icy and inexorable.

[The faint sobbing of Frau Quixano over her book, which has been heard throughout the scene as a sort of musical accompaniment, has combined to work it up to a mood of intense sadness, intensified by the growing dusk, so that as the two now gaze at the falling snow, the atmosphere seems overbrooded with melancholy. There is a moment or two without dialogue, given over to the sobbing of Frau Quixano, the roar of the wind shaking the windows, the quick falling of the snow. Suddenly a happy voice singing "My Country 'tis of Thee" is heard from without.]

FRAU QUIXANO [Pricking up her ears, joyously]

Do ist Dovidel!

MENDEL

That's David!

[He springs up.]

VERA [Murmurs in relief]

Ah!

[The whole atmosphere is changed to one of joyous expectation, David is seen and heard passing the left window, still singing the national hymn, but it breaks off abruptly as he throws open the door and appears on the threshold, a buoyant snow-covered figure in a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat, carrying a violin case. He is a sunny, handsome youth of the finest Russo-Jewish type. He speaks with a slight German accent.]

DAVID

Isn't it a beautiful world, uncle?

[He closes the inner door.]

Snow, the divine white snow——

[Perceiving the visitor with amaze]

Miss Revendal here!

[He removes his hat and looks at her with boyish reverence and wonder.]

VERA [Smiling]

Don't look so surprised—I haven't fallen from heaven like the snow. Take off your wet things.

DAVID

Oh, it's nothing; it's dry snow.

[He lays down his violin case and brushes off the snow from his cloak, which Mendel takes from him and hangs on the rack, all without interrupting the dialogue.]

If I had only known you were waiting——

VERA

I am glad you didn't—I wouldn't have had those poor little cripples cheated out of a moment of your music.

DAVID

Uncle has told you? Ah, it was bully! You should have seen the cripples waltzing with their crutches!

[He has moved toward the old woman, and while he holds one hand to the blaze now pats her cheek with the other in greeting, to which she responds with a loving smile ere she settles contentedly to slumber over her book.]

Es war grossartig, Granny. Even the paralysed danced.

MENDEL

Don't exaggerate, David.

DAVID

Exaggerate, uncle! Why, if they hadn't the use of their legs, their arms danced on the counterpane; if their arms couldn't dance, their hands danced from the wrist; and if their hands couldn't dance, they danced with their fingers; and if their fingers couldn't dance, their heads danced; and if their heads were paralysed, why, their eyes danced—God never curses so utterly but you've something left to dance with!

[He moves toward his desk.]

VERA [Infected with his gaiety]

You'll tell us next the beds danced.

DAVID

So they did—they shook their legs like mad!

VERA

Oh, why wasn't I there?

[His eyes meet hers at the thought of her presence.]

DAVID

Dear little cripples, I felt as if I could play them all straight again with the love and joy jumping out of this old fiddle.

[He lays his hand caressingly on the violin.]

MENDEL [Gloomily]

But in reality you left them as crooked as ever.

DAVID

No, I didn't.

[He caresses the back of his uncle's head in affectionate rebuke.]

I couldn't play their bones straight, but I played their brains straight. And hunch-brains are worse than hunch-backs....

[Suddenly perceiving his letter on the desk]

A letter for me!

[He takes it with boyish eagerness, then hesitates to open it.]

VERA [Smiling]

Oh, you may open it!

DAVID [Wistfully]

May I?

VERA [Smiling]

Yes, and quick—or it'll be Shabbos!

[David looks up at her in wonder.]

MENDEL [Smiling]

You read your letter!

DAVID [Opens it eagerly, then smiles broadly with pleasure.]

Oh, Miss Revendal! Isn't that great! To play again at your Settlement. I am getting famous.

VERA

But we can't offer you a fee.

MENDEL [Quickly sotto voce to Vera]

Thank you!

DAVID

A fee! I'd pay a fee to see all those happy immigrants you gather together—Dutchmen and Greeks, Poles and Norwegians, Welsh and Armenians. If you only had Jews, it would be as good as going to Ellis Island.

VERA [Smiling]

What a strange taste! Who on earth wants to go to Ellis Island?

DAVID

Oh, I love going to Ellis Island to watch the ships coming in from Europe, and to think that all those weary, sea-tossed wanderers are feeling what I felt when America first stretched out her great mother-hand to me!

VERA [Softly]

Were you very happy?

DAVID

It was heaven. You must remember that all my life I had heard of America—everybody in our town had friends there or was going there or got money orders from there. The earliest game I played at was selling off my toy furniture and setting up in America. All my life America was waiting, beckoning, shining—the place where God would wipe away tears from off all faces.

[He ends in a half-sob.]

MENDEL [Rises, as in terror]

Now, now, David, don't get excited.

[Approaches him.]

DAVID

To think that the same great torch of liberty which threw its light across all the broad seas and lands into my little garret in Russia, is shining also for all those other weeping millions of Europe, shining wherever men hunger and are oppressed——

MENDEL [Soothingly]

Yes, yes, David.

[Laying hand on his shoulder]

Now sit down and——

DAVID [Unheeding]

Shining over the starving villages of Italy and Ireland, over the swarming stony cities of Poland and Galicia, over the ruined farms of Roumania, over the shambles of Russia——

MENDEL [Pleadingly]

David!

DAVID

Oh, Miss Revendal, when I look at our Statue of Liberty, I just seem to hear the voice of America crying: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest—rest——"

[He is now almost sobbing.]

MENDEL

Don't talk any more—you know it is bad for you.

DAVID

But Miss Revendal asked—and I want to explain to her what America means to me.

MENDEL

You can explain it in your American symphony.

VERA [Eagerly—to David]

You compose?

DAVID [Embarrassed]

Oh, uncle, why did you talk of—? Uncle always—my music is so thin and tinkling. When I am writing my American symphony, it seems like thunder crashing through a forest full of bird songs. But next day—oh, next day!

[He laughs dolefully and turns away.]

VERA

So your music finds inspiration in America?

DAVID

Yes—in the seething of the Crucible.

VERA

The Crucible? I don't understand!

DAVID

Not understand! You, the Spirit of the Settlement!

[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing her.]

Not understand that America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand

[Graphically illustrating it on the table]

in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to—these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

MENDEL

I should have thought the American was made already—eighty millions of him.

DAVID

Eighty millions!

[He smiles toward Vera in good-humoured derision.]

Eighty millions! Over a continent! Why, that cockleshell of a Britain has forty millions! No, uncle, the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman. Ah, what a glorious Finale for my symphony—if I can only write it.

VERA

But you have written some of it already! May I not see it?

DAVID [Relapsing into boyish shyness]

No, if you please, don't ask——

[He moves over to his desk and nervously shuts it down and turns the keys of drawers as though protecting his MS.]

VERA

Won't you give a bit of it at our Concert?

DAVID

Oh, it needs an orchestra.

VERA

But you at the violin and I at the piano——

MENDEL

You didn't tell me you played, Miss Revendal!

VERA

I told you less commonplace things.

DAVID

Miss Revendal plays quite like a professional.

VERA [Smiling]

I don't feel so complimented as you expect. You see I did have a professional training.

MENDEL [Smiling]

And I thought you came to me for lessons!

[David laughs.]

VERA [Smiling]

No, I went to Petersburg——

DAVID [Dazed]

To Petersburg——?

VERA [Smiling]

Naturally. To the Conservatoire. There wasn't much music to be had at Kishineff, a town where——

DAVID

Kishineff!

[He begins to tremble.]

VERA [Still smiling]

My birthplace.

MENDEL [Coming toward him, protectingly]

Calm yourself, David.

DAVID

Yes, yes—so you are a Russian!

[He shudders violently, staggers.]

VERA [Alarmed]

You are ill!

DAVID

It is nothing, I—not much music at Kishineff! No, only the Death-March!... Mother! Father! Ah—cowards, murderers! And you!

[He shakes his fist at the air.]

You, looking on with your cold butcher's face! O God! O God!

[He bursts into hysterical sobs and runs, shamefacedly, through the door to his room.]

VERA [Wildly]

What have I said? What have I done?

MENDEL

Oh, I was afraid of this, I was afraid of this.

FRAU QUIXANO [Who has fallen asleep over her book, wakes as if with a sense of the horror and gazes dazedly around, adding to the thrillingness of the moment]

Dovidel! Wu is' Dovidel! Mir dacht sach——

MENDEL [Pressing her back to her slumbers]

Du träumst, Mutter! Schlaf!

[She sinks back to sleep.]

VERA [In hoarse whisper]

His father and mother were massacred?

MENDEL [In same tense tone]

Before his eyes—father, mother, sisters, down to the youngest babe, whose skull was battered in by a hooligan's heel.

VERA

How did he escape?

MENDEL

He was shot in the shoulder, and fell unconscious. As he wasn't a girl, the hooligans left him for dead and hurried to fresh sport.

VERA

Terrible! Terrible!

[Almost in tears.]

MENDEL [Shrugging shoulders, hopelessly]

It is only Jewish history!... David belongs to the species of pogrom orphan—they arrive in the States by almost every ship.

VERA

Poor boy! Poor boy! And he looked so happy!

[She half sobs.]

MENDEL

So he is, most of the time—a sunbeam took human shape when he was born. But naturally that dreadful scene left a scar on his brain, as the bullet left a scar on his shoulder, and he is always liable to see red when Kishineff is mentioned.

VERA

I will never mention my miserable birthplace to him again.

MENDEL

But you see every few months the newspapers tell us of another pogrom, and then he screams out against what he calls that butcher's face, so