DAVID
But Miss Revendal asked-and I want to explain to her what America means to me.
MENDEL
You can explain it in your American symphony.
VERA [Eagerly-to DAVID]
You compose?
DAVID [Embarrassed]
Oh, uncle, why did you talk of-? Uncle always-my music is so thin and tinkling. When I am writing my American symphony, it seems like thunder crashing through a forest full of bird songs. But next day-oh, next day!
[He laughs dolefully and turns away.]
VERA
So your music finds inspiration in America?
DAVID
Yes-in the seething of the Crucible.
VERA
The Crucible? I don't understand!
DAVID
Not understand! You, the Spirit of the Settlement!
[He rises and crosses to her and leans over the table, facing
her.] Not understand that America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand
[Graphically illustrating it on the table] in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you've come to-these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians-into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.
MENDEL
I 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 music.
MENDEL
There will always be the scar on his shoulder to remind him-whenever the wound twinges, it brings up these terrible faces and visions.
VERA
Is it on his right shoulder?
MENDEL
No-on his left. For a violinist that is even worse.
VERA
Ah, of course-the weight and the fingering.
[Subconsciously placing and fingering an imaginary violin. ]
MENDEL
That is why I fear so for his future-he will never be strong enough for the feats of bravura that the public demands.
VERA
The wild beasts! I feel more ashamed of my country than ever. But there's his symphony.
MENDEL
And who will look at that amateurish stuff? He knows so little of harmony and counterpoint-he breaks all the rules. I've tried to give him a few pointers-but he ought to have gone to Germany.