PINCHAS
But I must know weeks ahead. I may go lecturing. The great continent calls for me. In Chicago, in Cincinnati . . .
GOLDWATER
Don't trouble yourself. Make your own plans and go. We know how to put on a play. We can do without you.
PINCHAS
Do without me? A nice mess you will make of it! I must instruct you how to say every line.
GOLDWATER
(astonished)
You, instruct me?
PINCHAS
(realizing that Goldwater is not be trifled with on this point)
I, I don't mean you personally. I mean the company. I will show them the accent, the gesture. I'm a great stage manager as well as a great poet. The 'M' in my name makes manager. There shall be no more prompter.
GOLDWATER
Indeed. And how are you going to get on without a prompter?
PINCHAS
Very simple. A month's rehearsal.
GOLDWATER
(drily)
We usually get by with a week's rehearsal.
KLOOT
(ironically)
It is very good of you to give us a month of your valuable time.
GOLDWATER
(irate)
A month! I could put on six melodramas in a month.
PINCHAS
(shocked)
But Hamlet is not a melodrama.
GOLDWATER
(imperturbably)
Quite so. That's why it's so easy. There is not half the scenery. It's the scenery that takes time rehearsing, not the dialogue.
PINCHAS
(enraged)
You would profane my divine work by gabbling through it with your pack of geese parroting the prompter!
KLOOT
You just come down a peg or two. You do the writing, we do the rest.
PINCHAS
(imperiously)
Silence, impudent face! You are not talking to Ostrovsky. I am a poet and I demand my rights.
(Kloot and Goldwater are astounded by his impudence.)
GOLDWATER
(recovering)
What rights? I paid you twenty dollars and that was too much.
PINCHAS
Twenty dollars? For the masterpiece of the 20th century?
KLOOT
In the twenty-first century you shall have twenty-five dollars.
PINCHAS
(superbly)
Make mock as you please. I shall be living in the fifty-first century even. Poets never die although, alas, they have to live. Twenty dollars too much indeed! It is not a dollar a century for the run of the play.
GOLDWATER
(pacing a bit, then grimly)
Very well. Give those twenty dollars back. We return your play.
PINCHAS
(confused)
No, no, Goldwater . . . I must not disappoint my printer. I have promised him twenty dollars to print my Hebrew 'Selections from Nietzsche.'
GOLDWATER
(implacably)
You take your manuscript and give me my money.
PINCHAS
(desperately)
Exchange would be a robbing. I will not rob you. Keep your bargain. See. Here's the printer's letter.
(Pinchas rummages excitedly in his pockets and drags forth letters and manuscripts from his overcoat. Goldwater waives a repudiating hand.)
PINCHAS
Be not a fool, man. Goldwater, I and you are the only two people in New York who serve the poetic drama. I, by writing, you by producing.
(Goldwater still shakes his head, but less vigorously. The flattery is appeasing him.)
KLOOT
Your manuscript will be returned to you by the next garbage truck.
PINCHAS
(disregarding Kloot)
I have faith in you, Goldwater. I am willing you shall have only a fortnight's rehearsals.
(trying harder)
I have always said the only genius of the Yiddish stage is Goldwater. Klosterman-bah! He's not a bad producer, but act? My grandmother's hen has a better stage presence. And there is Davidoff-a voice like a frog and a walk like a spider. And these charlatans I only heard of when I came to New York. But you, Goldwater-your fame has blown across the Atlantic. I journeyed from Poland expressly to collaborate with you.
GOLDWATER
(mollified)
Then why do you spoil it all?
PINCHAS
It is my anxiety that Europe shall not be disappointed in you. Let us talk of the cast.
GOLDWATER
It's too early yet.
PINCHAS
The early bird catches the worm.
KLOOT
But all our worms are caught. We keep them penned up on the premises.
