The Melting-Pot

VERA [Smiling]

I understood that last word.

MENDEL

She asks how can anything possibly go well in America!

VERA

Ah, she doesn't like America.

MENDEL [Half-smiling]

Her favourite exclamation is 'A Klog zu Columbessen!'

VERA

What does that mean?

MENDEL

Cursed be Columbus!

VERA [Laughingly]

Poor Columbus! I suppose she's just come over.

MENDEL

Oh, no, it must be ten years since I sent for her.

VERA

Really! But your nephew was born here?

MENDEL

No, he's Russian too. But please sit down, you had better get his answer at once.

[VERA sits.]

VERA

I suppose you taught him music.

MENDEL

I? I can't play the violin. He is self-taught. In the Russian Pale he was a wonder-child. Poor David! He always looked forward to coming to America; he imagined I was a famous musician over here. He found me conductor in a cheap theatre-a converted beer-hall.

VERA

Was he very disappointed?

MENDEL

Disappointed? He was enchanted! He is crazy about America.

VERA [Smiling]

Ah, he doesn't curse Columbus.

MENDEL

My mother came with her life behind her: David with his life before him. Poor boy!

VERA

Why do you say poor boy?

MENDEL

What is there before him here but a terrible struggle for life? If he doesn't curse Columbus, he'll curse fate. Music-lessons and dance-halls, beer-halls and weddings-every hope and ambition will be ground out of him, and he will die obscure and unknown.

[His head sinks on his breast, FRAU QUIXANO is heard faintly

sobbing over her book. The sobbing continues throughout the

scene.]

VERA [Half rising]

You have made your mother cry.

MENDEL

Oh, no-she understood nothing. She always cries on the eve of the Sabbath.

VERA [Mystified, sinking back into her chair]

Always cries? Why?

MENDEL [Embarrassed]

Oh, well, a Christian wouldn't understand--

VERA

Yes I could-do tell me!

MENDEL

She knows that in this great grinding America, David and I must go out to earn our bread on Sabbath as on week-days. She never says a word to us, but her heart is full of tears.

VERA

Poor old woman. It was wrong of us to ask your nephew to play at the Settlement for nothing.

MENDEL [Rising fiercely]

If you offer him a fee, he shall not play. Did you think I was begging of you?

VERA

I beg your pardon--

[She smiles.] There, I am begging of you. Sit down, please.

MENDEL [Walking away to piano]

I ought not to have burdened you with our troubles-you are too young.

VERA [Pathetically]

I young? If you only knew how old I am!

MENDEL

You?

VERA

I left my youth in Russia-eternities ago.

MENDEL

You know our Russia!

[He goes over to her and sits down.]

VERA

Can't you see I'm a Russian, too?

[With a faint tremulous smile] I might even have been a Siberian 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