on the very verge of passover, pinchas, lying in bed at noon with a cigarette in his mouth, was reading his morning paper by candle-light; for he tenanted one of those innumerable dark rooms which should make new york the photographer's paradise. the yellow glow illumined his prophetic and unshaven countenance, agitated by grimaces and sniffs, as he critically perused the paragraphs whose hebrew letters served as the channel for the mongrel yiddish and american dialect, in which 'congressman,' 'sweater,' and such-like crudities of to-day had all the outer oriental robing of the old testament. suddenly a strange gurgle spluttered through the cigarette smoke. he read the announcement again.
the yiddish 'hamlet' was to be the passover production at goldwater's theatre. the author was the world-renowned poet melchitsedek pinchas, and the music was by ignatz levitsky, the world-famous composer.
[281]'world-famous composer, indeed!' cried pinchas to his garret walls. 'who ever heard of ignatz levitsky? and who wants his music? the tragedy of a thinker needs no caterwauling of violins. does goldwater imagine i have written a melodrama? at most will i permit an overture—or the cymbals shall clash as i take my call.'
he leaped out of bed. even greater than his irritation at this intrusion of levitsky was his joyful indignation at the imminence of his play. the dogs! the liars! the first night was almost at hand, and no sign had been vouchsafed to him. he had been true to his promise; he had kept away from the theatre. but goldwater! but kloot! ah, the godless gambler with his parents' lives! with such ghouls hovering around the hebrew 'hamlet,' who could say how the masterpiece had been mangled? line upon line had probably been cut; nay, who knew that a whole scene had not been shorn away, perhaps to give more time for that miserable music!
he flung himself into his clothes and, taking his cane, hurried off to the theatre, breathless and breakfastless. orchestral music vibrated through the lobby and almost killed his pleasure in the placards of the yiddish 'hamlet.' he gave but a moment to absorbing the great capital letters of his name; a dash at a swinging-door, and he faced a glowing, crowded stage at the end of a gloomy hall. goldwater, limelit, occupied the centre of the boards. hamlet trod the battlements of the tower of david, and gazed on the cupolas and minarets of jerusalem.
with a raucous cry, half anger, half ecstasy, pinchas galloped toward the fiddling and banging orchestra. [282]a harmless sweeper in his path was herself swept aside. but her fallen broom tripped up the runner. he fell with an echoing clamour, to which his clattering cane contributed, and clouds of dust arose and gathered where erst had stood a poet.
goldwater stopped dead. 'can't you sweep quietly?' he thundered terribly through the music.
ignatz levitsky tapped his baton, and the orchestra paused.
'it is i, the author!' said pinchas, struggling up through clouds like some pagan deity.
hamlet's face grew as inky as his cloak. 'and what do you want?'
'what do i want?' repeated pinchas, in sheer amaze.
kloot, in his peaked cap, emerged from the wings munching a sandwich.
'sure, there's shakespeare!' he said. 'i've just been round to the café to find you. got this sandwich there.'
'but this—this isn't the first rehearsal,' stammered pinchas, a jot appeased.
'the first dress-rehearsal,' kloot replied reassuringly. 'we don't trouble authors with the rough work. they stroll in and put on the polish. won't you come on the stage?'
unable to repress a grin of happiness, pinchas stumbled through the dim parterre, barking his shins at almost every step. arrived at the orchestra, he found himself confronted by a chasm. he wheeled to the left, to where the stage-box, shrouded in brown holland, loomed ghostly.
'no,' said kloot, 'that door's got stuck. you must come round by the stage-door.'
[283]pinchas retraced his footsteps, barking the smooth remainder of his shins. he allowed himself a palpitating pause before the lobby posters. his blood chilled. not only was ignatz levitsky starred in equal type, but another name stood out larger than either:
ophelia .. .. .. fanny goldwater.
his wrath reflaming, he hurried round to the stage-door. he pushed it open, but a gruff voice inquired his business, and a burly figure blocked his way.
'i am the author,' he said with quiet dignity.
'authors ain't admitted,' was the simple reply.
'but goldwater awaits me,' the poet protested.
'i guess not. mr. kloot's orders. can't have authors monkeying around here.' as he spoke goldwater's voice rose from the neighbouring stage in an operatic melody, and reduced pinchas's brain to chaos. a despairing sense of strange plots and treasons swept over him. he ran back to the lobby. the doors had been bolted. he beat against them with his cane and his fists and his toes till a tall policeman persuaded him that home was better than a martyr's cell.
life remained an unintelligible nightmare for poor pinchas till the first night—and the third act—of the yiddish 'hamlet.' he had reconciled himself to his extrusion from rehearsals. 'they fear i fire ophelia,' he told the café.
but a final blow awaited him. no ticket reached him for the première; the boxes he had promised the café did not materialize, and the necessity of avoiding that haunt of the invited cost him several meals. but that he himself should be refused when he tried to pass [284]in 'on his face'—that authors should be admitted neither at the stage door nor at the public door—this had not occurred to him as within the possibilities of even theatrical humanity.
'pigs! pigs! pigs!' he shrieked into the box office. 'you and goldwater and kloot! pigs! pigs! pigs! i have indeed cast my pearls before swine. but i will not be beholden to them—i will buy a ticket.'
'we're sold out,' said the box-office man, adding recklessly: 'get a move on you; other people want to buy seats.'
'you can't keep me out! it's conspiracy!' he darted within, but was hustled as rapidly without. he ran back to the stage-door, and hurled himself against the burly figure. he rebounded from it into the side-walk, and the stage-door closed upon his humiliation. he was left cursing in choice hebrew. it was like the maledictions in deuteronomy, only brought up to date by dynamite explosions and automobile accidents. wearying of the waste of an extensive vocabulary upon a blank door, pinchas returned to the front. the lobby was deserted save for a few strangers; his play had begun. and he—he, the god who moved all this machinery—he, whose divine fire was warming all that great house, must pace out here in the cold and dark, not even permitted to loiter in the corridors! but for the rumblings of applause that reached him he could hardly have endured the situation.
suddenly an idea struck him. he hied to the nearest drug-store, and entering the telephone cabinet rang up goldwater.
'hello, there!' came the voice of kloot. 'who are you?'
[285]pinchas had a vivid vision of the big-nosed youth, in his peaked cap, sitting on the table by the telephone, swinging his legs; but he replied craftily, in a disguised voice: 'you, goldwater?'
'no; goldwater's on the stage.'
pinchas groaned. but at that very instant goldwater's voice returned to the bureau, ejaculating complacently: 'they're loving it, kloot; they're swallowing it like ice-cream soda.'
pinchas tingled with pleasure, but all kloot replied was: 'you're wanted on the 'phone.'
'hello!' called goldwater.
'hello!' replied pinchas in his natural voice. 'may a sudden death smite you! may the curtain fall on a gibbering epileptic!'
'can't hear!' said goldwater. 'speak plainer.'
'i will speak plainer, swine-head! never shall a work of mine defile itself in your dirty dollar-factory. i spit on you!' he spat viciously into the telephone disk. 'your father was a meshummad (apostate), and your mother——'
but goldwater had cut off the connection. pinchas finished for his own satisfaction: 'an irish fire-woman.'
'that was worth ten cents,' he muttered, as he strode out into the night. and patrolling the front of the theatre again, or leaning on his cane as on a sword, he was warmed by the thought that his venom had pierced through all the actor-manager's defences.
at last a change came over the nightmare. striding from the envied, illuminated within appeared the heathen journalist, note-book in hand. at sight of the author he shied. 'must skedaddle, pin-cuss,' he [286]said apologetically, 'if we're to get anything into to-morrow's paper. your people are so durned slow—nearly eleven, and only two acts over. you'll have to brisk 'em up a bit. good-bye.'
he shook the poet's hand and was off. with an inspiration pinchas gave chase. he caught the journalist just boarding a car.
'got your theatre ticket?' he panted.
'what for?'
'give it me.'
the journalist fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and threw him a crumpled fragment. 'what in thunder——' he began. and then, to pinchas's relief, the car removed the querist.
for the moment the poet was feeling only the indignity of the position, and the heathen journalist as trumpeter of his wrongs and avenger of the muses had not occurred to him. he smoothed out the magic scrap, and was inside the suffocating, close-packed theatre before the disconcerted janitor could meet the new situation. pinchas found the vacated journalistic chair in the stage-box; he was installed therein before the managerial minions arrived on ejection bent.
'this is my house!' screamed pinchas. 'i stay here! let me be—swine, serpents, behemoth!'
'sh!' came in a shower from every quarter. 'sit down there! turn him out!' the curtain was going up; pinchas was saved.
but only for more gruesome torture. the third act began. hamlet collogued with the queen. the poet pricked up his ears. whose language was this? certainly not shakespeare's or his superior's. angels and ministers of grace defend him! this was only the [287]illiterate jargon of the hack playwright, with its peppering of the phrases of hester street. 'you have too many dead flies on you,' hamlet's mother told him. 'you'll get left.' but the nightmare thickened. hamlet and his mother opened their mouths and sang. their songs were light and gay, and held encore verses to reward the enthusiastic. the actors, like the audience, were leisurely; here midnight and the closure were not synonymous. when there were no more encore verses, ignatz levitsky would turn to the audience and bow in acknowledgment of the compliment. pinchas's eyes were orbs straining at their sockets; froth gathered on his lips.
mrs. goldwater bounded on, fantastically mad, her songs set to comic airs. the great house received her in the same comic spirit. instead of rue and rosemary she carried a rustling green lulov—the palm-branch of the feast of tabernacles—and shook it piously toward every corner of the compass. at each shake the audience rolled about in spasms of merriment. a moment later a white gliding figure, moving to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. it was the ghost appearing to frighten ophelia. his sepulchral bass notes mingled with her terror-stricken soprano.
this was the last straw. the ghost—the ghost that he had laid forever, the ghost that made melodrama of this tragedy of the thinker—was risen again, and cake-walking!
unperceived in the general convulsion and cachinnation, pinchas leaped to his feet, and, seeing scarlet, bounded through the iron door and made for the stage. but a hand was extended in the nick of [288]time—the hand he had kissed—and pinchas was drawn back by the collar.
'you don't take your call yet,' said the unruffled kloot.
'let me go! i must speak to the people. they must learn the truth. they think me, melchitsedek pinchas, guilty of this tohu-bohu! my sun will set. i shall be laughed at from the hudson to the jordan.'
'hush! hush! you are interrupting the poesy.'
'who has drawn and quartered my play? speak!'
'i've only arranged it for the stage,' said kloot, unabashed.
'you!' gasped the poet.
'you said i and you are the only two men who understand how to treat poesy.'
'you understand push-carts, not poesy!' hissed the poet. 'you conspire to keep me out of the theatre—i will summons you!'
'we had to keep all authors out. suppose shakespeare had turned up and complained of you.'
'shakespeare would have been only too grateful.'
'hush! the boss is going on.'
from the opposite wing hamlet was indeed advancing. pinchas made a wild plunge forward, but kloot's grasp on his collar was still carefully firm.
'who's mutilating the poesy now?' kloot frowned angrily from under his peaked cap. 'you'll spoil the scene.'
'peace, liar! you promised me your wife for ophelia!'
kloot's frown relaxed into a smile. 'sure! the first wife i get you shall have.'
pinchas gnashed his teeth. goldwater's voice rose in a joyous roulade.
[289]'i think you owe me a car-fare,' said kloot soothingly.
pinchas waved the rejoinder aside with his cane. 'why does hamlet sing?' he demanded fiercely.
'because it's passover,' said kloot. 'you are a "greener" in new york, otherwise you would know that it is a tradition to have musical plays on passover. our audiences wouldn't stand for any other. you're such an unreasonable cuss! why else did we take your "hamlet" for a passover play?'
'but "hamlet" isn't a musical play.'
'yes, it is! how about ophelia's songs? that was what decided us. of course they needed eking out.'
'but "hamlet" is a tragedy!' gasped pinchas.
'sure!' said kloot cheerfully. 'they all die at the end. our audiences would go away miserable if they didn't. you wait till they're dead, then you shall take your call.'
'take my call, for your play!'
'there's quite a lot of your lines left, if you listen carefully. only you don't understand stage technique. oh, i'm not grumbling; we're quite satisfied. the idea of adapting "hamlet" for the yiddish stage is yours, and it's worth every cent we paid.'
a storm of applause gave point to the speaker's words, and removed the last partition between the poet's great mind and momentary madness. what! here was that ape of a goldwater positively wallowing in admiration, while he, the mighty poet, had been cast into outer darkness and his work mocked and crucified! he put forth all his might, like samson amid the philistines, and leaving his coat-collar in kloot's hand, he plunged into the circle of light. goldwater's amazed face turned to meet him.
[290]'cutter of lines!' the poet's cane slashed across hamlet's right cheek near the right eye. 'perverter of poesy!' it slashed across the left cheek near the left eye.
the prince of palestine received each swish with a yell of pain and fear, and the ever-ready kloot dropped the curtain on the tragic scene.
such hubbub and hullabaloo as rose on both sides of the curtain! yet in the end the poet escaped scot-free. goldwater was a coward, kloot a sage. the same prudence that had led kloot to exclude authors, saved him from magnifying their importance by police squabbles. besides, a clever lawyer might prove the exclusion illegal. what was done was done. the dignity of the hero of a hundred dramas was best served by private beefsteaks and a rumoured version, irrefutable save in a court of law. it was bad enough that the heathen journalist should supply so graphic a picture of the midnight melodrama, coloured even more highly than goldwater's eyes. kloot had been glad that the journalist had left before the episode; but when he saw the account he wished the scribe had stayed.
'he won't play hamlet with that pair of shiners,' pinchas prophesied early the next morning to the supping café.
radsikoff beamed and refilled pinchas's glass with champagne. he had carried out his promise of assisting at the première, and was now paying for the poet's supper.
'you're the first playwright goldwater hasn't managed to dodge,' he chuckled.
'ah!' said the poet meditatively. 'action is greater than thought. action is the greatest thing in the world.'
