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 another three times on the mouth in token of peace and goodwill, and even the Jew-boy felt the spirit of love brooding over the earth, though he did not then know that this Christ, whom holy chants proclaimed re-risen, was born in the form of a brother Jew. And what added to the peace and holy joy was that our own Passover was shining before us. My mother had already made the raisin wine, and my greedy little brother Solomon had sipped it on the sly that very morning. We were all at home-all except my father-he was away in the little Synagogue at which he was cantor. Ah, such a voice he had-a voice of tears and thunder-when he prayed it was like a wounded soul beating at the gates of Heaven-but he sang even more beautifully in the ritual of home, and how we were looking forward to his hymns at the Passover table--
[He breaks down. The BARON has gradually turned round under the
spell of DAVID'S story and now listens hypnotised.] I was playing my cracked little fiddle. Little Miriam was making her doll dance to it. Ah, that decrepit old china doll-the only one the poor child had ever had-I can see it now-one eye, no nose, half an arm. We were all laughing to see it caper to my music.... My father flies in through the door, desperately clasping to his breast the Holy Scroll. We cry out to him to explain, and then we see that in that beloved mouth of song there is no longer a tongue-only blood. He tries to bar the door-a mob breaks in-we dash out through the back into the street. There are the soldiers-and the Face--
[VERA'S eyes involuntarily seek the face of her father, who
shrinks away as their eyes meet.]
VERA [In a low sob]
O God!
DAVID
When I came to myself, with a curious aching in my left shoulder, I saw lying beside me a strange shapeless Something....
[DAVID points weirdly to the floor, and VERA, hunched forwards,
gazes stonily at it, as if seeing the horror.] By the crimson doll in what seemed a hand I knew it must be little Miriam. The doll was a dream of beauty and perfection beside the mutilated mass which was all that remained of my sister, of my mother, of greedy little Solomon-Oh! You Christians can only see that rosy splendour on the horizon of happiness. And the Jew didn't see rosily enough for you, ha! ha! ha! the Jew who gropes in one great crimson mist.
[He breaks down in spasmodic, ironic, long-drawn, terrible
laughter.]
VERA [Trying vainly to tranquillise him]
Hush, David! Your laughter hurts more than tears. Let Vera comfort you.
[She kneels by his chair, tries to put her arms round him. ]
DAVID [Shuddering]
Take them away! Don't you feel the cold dead pushing between us?
VERA [Unfaltering, moving his face toward her lips]