The Melting-Pot. Israel Zangwill

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 that I tremble for his reason. I tremble even when I see him writing that crazy music about America, for it only means he is brooding over the difference between America and Russia.

      VERA

      But perhaps—perhaps—all the terrible memory will pass peacefully away in his СКАЧАТЬ