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

a fairy scene of twinkling lights and delicious darkness—each couple had their own gondola to sup in, and their own side-canal to slip down. Eh? Ha! Ha! Ha!

DAVID

And the same night, women and children died of hunger in New York!

QUINCY [Startled, drops eyeglass.]

Eh?

DAVID [Furiously]

And this is the sort of people you would invite to hear my symphony—these gondola-guzzlers!

VERA

Mr. Quixano!

MENDEL

David!

DAVID

These magnificent animals who went into the gondolas two by two, to feed and flirt!

QUINCY [Dazed]

Sir!

DAVID

I should be a new freak for you for a new freak evening—I and my dreams and my music!

QUINCY

You low-down, ungrateful——

DAVID

Not for you and such as you have I sat here writing and dreaming; not for you who are killing my America!

QUINCY

Your America, forsooth, you Jew-immigrant!

VERA

Mr. Davenport!

DAVID

Yes—Jew-immigrant! But a Jew who knows that your Pilgrim Fathers came straight out of his Old Testament, and that our Jew-immigrants are a greater factor in the glory of this great commonwealth than some of you sons of the soil. It is you, freak-fashionables, who are undoing the work of Washington and Lincoln, vulgarising your high heritage, and turning the last and noblest hope of humanity into a caricature.

QUINCY [Rocking with laughter]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Ho!

[To Vera.]

You never told me your Jew-scribbler was a socialist!

DAVID

I am nothing but a simple artist, but I come from Europe, one of her victims, and I know that she is a failure; that her palaces and peerages are outworn toys of the human spirit, and that the only hope of mankind lies in a new world. And here—in the land of to-morrow—you are trying to bring back Europe——

QUINCY [Interjecting]

I wish we could!——

DAVID

Europe with her comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a morass of crime and misery——

QUINCY [With sneering laugh]

Morass!

DAVID [With prophetic passion]

But you shall not kill my dream! There shall come a fire round the Crucible that will melt you and your breed like wax in a blowpipe——

QUINCY [Furiously, with clenched fist]

You——

DAVID

America shall make good...!

PAPPELMEISTER [Who has sat down and remained imperturbably seated throughout all this scene, springs up and waves his umbrella hysterically]

Hoch Quixano! Hoch! Hoch! Es lebe Quixano! Hoch!

QUINCY

Poppy! You're dismissed!

PAPPELMEISTER [Goes to David with outstretched hand]

Danke.

[They grip hands. Pappelmeister turns to Quincy Davenport.]

Comic Opera! Ouf!

QUINCY [Goes to street-door, at white heat.]

Are you coming, Miss Revendal?

[He opens the door.]

VERA [To Quincy, but not moving]

Pray, pray, accept my apologies—believe me, if I had known——

QUINCY [Furiously]

Then stop with your Jew!

[Exit.]

MENDEL [Frantically]

But, Mr. Davenport—don't go! He is only a boy.

[Exit after Quincy Davenport.]

You must consider——

DAVID

Oh, Herr Pappelmeister, you have lost your place!

PAPPELMEISTER

And saved my soul. Dollars are de devil. Now I must to an appointment. Auf baldiges Wiedersehen.

[He shakes David's hand.]

Fräulein Revendal!

[He takes her hand and kisses it. Exit. David and Vera stand gazing at each other.]

VERA

What have you done? What have you done?

DAVID

What else could I do?

VERA

I hate the smart set as much as you—but as your ladder and your trumpet——

DAVID

I would not stand indebted to them. I know you meant it for my good, but what would these Europe-apers have understood of my America—the America of my music? They look back on Europe as a pleasure ground, a palace of art—but I know

[Getting hysterical]

it is sodden with blood, red with bestial massacres——

VERA [Alarmed, anxious]

Let us talk no more about it.

[She holds out her hand.]

Good-bye.

DAVID [Frozen, taking it, holding it]

Ah, you are offended by my ingratitude—I shall never see you again.

VERA

No, I am not offended. But I have failed to help you. We have nothing else to meet for.

[She disengages her hand.]

DAVID

Why will you punish me so? I have only hurt myself.

VERA

It is not a punishment.

DAVID

What else? When you are with me, all the air seems to tremble with fairy music played by some unseen fairy orchestra.

VERA [Tremulous]

And yet you wouldn't come in just now when I——

DAVID

I was too frightened of the others....

VERA [Smiling]

Frightened indeed!

DAVID

Yes, I know I became overbold—but to take all that magic sweetness out of my life for ever—you don't call that a punishment?

VERA [Blushing]

How could I wish to punish you? I was proud of you!

[Drops her eyes, murmurs]

Besides it would be punishing myself.

DAVID [In passionate amaze]

Miss Revendal!... But no, it cannot be. It is too impossible.

VERA [Frightened]

Yes, too impossible. Good-bye.

[She turns.]

DAVID

But not for always?

[Vera hangs her head. He comes nearer. Passionately]

Promise me that you—that I——

[He takes her hand again.]

VERA [Melting at his touch, breathes]

Yes, yes, David.

DAVID

Miss Revendal!

[She falls into his arms.]

VERA

My dear! my dear!

DAVID

It is a dream. You cannot care for me—you so far above me.

VERA

Above you, you simple boy? Your genius lifts you to the stars.

DAVID

No, no; it is you who lift me there——

VERA [Smoothing his hair]

Oh, David. And to think that I was brought up to despise your race.

DAVID [Sadly]

Yes, all Russians are.

VERA

But we of the nobility in particular.

DAVID [Amazed, half-releasing her]

You are noble?

VERA

My father is Baron Revendal, but I have long since carved out a life of my own.

DAVID

Then he will not separate us?

VERA

No.

[Re-embracing him.]

Nothing can separate us.

[A knock at the street-door. They separate. The automobile is heard clattering off.]

DAVID

It is my uncle coming back.

VERA [In low, tense tones]

Then I shall slip out. I could not bear a third. I will write.

[She goes to the door.]

DAVID

Yes, yes ... Vera.

[He follows her to the door. He opens it and she slips out.]

MENDEL [Half-seen at the door, expostulating]

You, too, Miss Revendal——?

[Re-enters.]

Oh, David, you have driven away all your friends.

DAVID [Going to window and looking after Vera]

Not all, uncle. Not all.

[He throws his arms boyishly round his uncle.]

I am so happy.

MENDEL

Happy?

DAVID

She loves me—Vera loves me.

MENDEL

Vera?

DAVID

Miss Revendal.

MENDEL

Have you lost your wits?

[He throws David off.]

DAVID

I don't wonder you're amazed. Maybe you think I wasn't. It is as if an angel should stoop down——

MENDEL [Hoarsely]

This is true? This is not some stupid Purim joke?

DAVID

True and sacred as the sunrise.

MENDEL

But you are a Jew!

DAVID

Yes, and just think! She was bred up to despise Jews—her father was a Russian baron——

MENDEL

If she was the daughter of fifty barons, you cannot marry her.

DAVID [In pained amaze]

Uncle!

[Slowly]

Then your hankering after the synagogue was serious after all.

MENDEL

It is not so much the synagogue—it is the call of our blood through immemorial generations.

DAVID

You say that! You who have come to the heart of the Crucible, where the roaring fires of God are fusing our race with all the others.

MENDEL [Passionately]

Not our race, not your race and mine.

DAVID

What immunity has our race?

[Meditatively]

The pride and the prejudice, the dreams and the sacrifices, the traditions and the superstitions, the fasts and the feasts, things noble and things sordid—they must all into the Crucible.

MENDEL [With prophetic fury]

The Jew has been tried in a thousand fires and only tempered and annealed.

DAVID

Fires of hate, not fires of love. That is what melts.

MENDEL [Sneeringly]

So I see.

DAVID

Your sneer is false. The love that melted me was not Vera's—it was the love America showed me—the day she gathered me to her breast.

MENDEL [Speaking passionately and rapidly]

Many countries have gathered us. Holland took us when we were driven from Spain—but we did not become Dutchmen. Turkey took us when Germany oppressed us, but we have not become Turks.

DAVID

These countries were not in the making. They were old civilisations stamped with the seal of creed. In such countries the Jew may be right to stand out. But here in this new secular Republic we must look forward——

MENDEL [Passionately interrupting]

We must look backwards, too.

DAVID [Hysterically]

To what? To Kishineff?

[As if seeing his vision]

To that butcher's face directing the slaughter? To those——?

MENDEL [Alarmed]

Hush! Calm yourself!

DAVID [Struggling with himself]

Yes, I will calm myself—but how else shall I calm myself save by forgetting all that nightmare of religions and races, save by holding out my hands with prayer and music toward the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God! The Past I cannot mend—its evil outlines are stamped in immortal rigidity. Take away the hope that I can mend the Future, and you make me mad.

MENDEL

You are mad already—your dreams are mad—the Jew is hated here as everywhere—you are false to your race.

DAVID

I keep faith with America. I have faith America will keep faith with us.

[He raises his hands in religious rapture toward the flag over the door.]

Flag of our great Republic, guardian of our homes, whose stars and——

MENDEL

Spare me that rigmarole. Go out and marry your Gentile and be happy.

DAVID

You turn me out?

MENDEL

Would you stay and break my mother's heart? You know she would mourn for you with the rending of garments and the seven days' sitting on the floor. Go! You have cast off the God of our fathers!

DAVID [Thundrously]

And the God of our children—does He demand no service?

[Quieter, coming toward his uncle and touching him affectionately on the shoulder.]

You are right—I do need a wider world.

[Expands his lungs.]

I must go away.

MENDEL

Go, then—I'll hide the truth—she must never suspect—lest she mourn you as dead.

FRAU QUIXANO [Outside, in the kitchen]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

[Both men turn toward the kitchen and listen.]

KATHLEEN

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

FRAU QUIXANO AND KATHLEEN

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

MENDEL [Bitterly]

A merry Purim!

[The kitchen door opens and remains ajar. Frau Quixano rushes in, carrying David's violin and bow. Kathleen looks in, grinning.]

FRAU QUIXANO [Hilariously]

Nu spiel noch! spiel!

[She holds the violin and bow appealingly toward David.]

MENDEL [Putting out a protesting hand]

No, no, David—I couldn't bear it.

DAVID

But I must! You said she mustn't suspect.

[He looks lovingly at her as he loudly utters these words, which are unintelligible to her.]

And it may be the last time I shall ever play for her.

[Changing to a mock merry smile as he takes the violin and bow from her]

Gewiss, Granny!

[He starts the same old Slavic dance.]

FRAU QUIXANO [Childishly pleased]

He! He! He!

[She claps on a false grotesque nose from her pocket.]

DAVID [Torn between laughter and tears]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

MENDEL [Shocked]

Mutter!

FRAU QUIXANO

Un' du auch!

[She claps another false nose on Mendel, laughing in childish glee at the effect. Then she starts dancing to the music, and Kathleen slips in and joyously dances beside her.]

DAVID [Joining tearfully in the laughter]

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!