The Melting-Pot

DAVID

For crimes beyond human penalty, for obscenities beyond human utterance, for--

VERA

You are raving.

DAVID

Would to heaven I were!

VERA

But this is my father.

DAVID

Your father!... God!

[He staggers.]

BARON [Drawing her to him]

Come, Vera, I told you--

VERA [Frantically, shrinking back]

Don't touch me!

BARON [Starting back in amaze]

Vera!

VERA [Hoarsely]

Say it's not true.

BARON

What is not true?

VERA

What David said. It was the mob that massacred-you had no hand in it.

BARON [Sullenly]

I was there with my soldiers.

DAVID [Leaning, pale, against a chair, hisses]

And you looked on with that cold face of hate-while my mother-my sister--

BARON [Sullenly]

I could not see everything.

DAVID

Now and again you ordered your soldiers to fire--

VERA [In joyous relief]

Ah, he did check the mob-he did tell his soldiers to fire.

DAVID

At any Jew who tried to defend himself.

VERA

Great God!

[She falls on the sofa and buries her head on the cushion,

moaning] Is there no pity in heaven?

DAVID

There was no pity on earth.

BARON

It was the People avenging itself, Vera. The People rose like a flood. It had centuries of spoliation to wipe out. The voice of the People is the voice of God.

VERA [Moaning]

But you could have stopped them.

BARON

I had no orders to defend the foes of Christ and

[Crossing himself] the Tsar. The People--

VERA

But you could have stopped them.

BARON

Who can stop a flood? I did my duty. A soldier's duty is not so pretty as a musician's.

VERA

But you could have stopped them.

BARON [Losing all patience]

Silence! You talk like an ignorant girl, blinded by passion. The pogrom is a holy crusade. Are we Russians the first people to crush down the Jew? No-from the dawn of history the nations have had to stamp upon him-the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans--

DAVID

Yes, it is true. Even Christianity did not invent hatred. But not till Holy Church arose were we burnt at the stake, and not till Holy Russia arose were our babes torn limb from limb. Oh, it is too much! Delivered from Egypt four thousand years ago, to be slaves to the Russian Pharaoh to-day.

[He falls as if kneeling on a chair, and, leans his head on the

rail.] O God, shall we always be broken on the wheel of history? How long, O Lord, how long?

BARON [Savagely]

Till you are all stamped out, ground into your dirt.

[Tenderly] Look up, little Vera! You saw how papasha loves you-how he was ready to hold out his hand-and how this cur tried to bite it. Be calm-tell him a daughter of Russia cannot mate with dirt.

VERA

Father, I will be calm. I will speak without passion or blindness. I will tell David the truth. I was never absolutely sure of my love for him-perhaps that was why I doubted his love for me-often after our enchanted moments there would come a nameless uneasiness, some vague instinct, relic of the long centuries of Jew-loathing, some strange shrinking from his Christless creed--

BARON [With an exultant cry]

Ah! She is a Revendal.

VERA

But now--

[She rises and walks firmly toward DAVID] now, David, I come to you, and I say in the words of Ruth, thy people shall be my people and thy God my God!

[She stretches out her hands to DAVID.]

BARON

You shameless--!

[He stops as he perceives DAVID remains impassive.]

VERA [With agonised cry]

David!

DAVID [In low, icy tones]

You cannot come to me. There is a river of blood between us.

VERA

Were it seven seas, our love must cross them.

DAVID

Easy words to you. You never saw that red flood bearing the mangled breasts of women and the spattered brains of babes and sucklings. Oh!

[He covers his eyes with his hands. The BARON turns away in

gloomy impotence. At last DAVID begins to speak quietly, almost

dreamily.] It was your Easter, and the air was full of holy bells and the streets of holy processions-priests in black and girls in white and waving palms and crucifixes, and everybody exchanging Easter eggs and kissing one