Ghetto Comedies Part 38

'No, I changed his name to Eselmann, the Donkey-man. For I had hardly read him ten lines before he brayed out, "Where is the Ghost?" "The Ghost?" I said. "I have laid him. He cannot walk on the modern stage."

Eselmann tore his hair. "But it is for the Ghost I had him translated.

Our Yiddish audiences love a ghost." "They love your acting, too," I replied witheringly. "But I am not here to consider the tastes of the mob." Oh, I gave the Donkey-man a piece of my mind.'

'But he didn't take the piece!' jested Grunbitz, who in Poland had been a _Badchan_ (marriage-jester), and was now a Zionist editor.

'Bah! These managers are all men-of-the-earth! Once, in my days of obscurity, I was made to put a besom into the piece, and it swept all my genius off the boards. Ah, the donkey-men! But I am glad Eselmann gave me my "Hamlet" back, for before giving it to Goldwater I made it even more subtle. No vulgar nonsense of fencing and poison at the end--a pure mental tragedy, for in life the soul alone counts.

No--this cream is just as sour as the other--my play will be the internal tragedy of the thinker.'

'The internal tragedy of the thinker is indigestion,' laughed the ex-_Badchan_; 'you'd better be more careful with the cream-tarts.'

The Heathen Journalist broke through the laughter. 'Strikes me, Pin-cuss, you're giving us Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.'

'Better than the Prince of Denmark without Hamlet,' retorted the poet, cramming cream-tart down his throat in great ugly mouthfuls; 'that is how he is usually played. In my version the Prince of Denmark indeed vanishes, for Hamlet is a Hebrew and the Prince of Palestine.'

'You have made him a Hebrew?' cried Mieses, a pimply young poet.

'If he is to be the ideal thinker, let him belong to the nation of thinkers,' said Pinchas. 'In fact, the play is virtually an autobiography.'

'And do you call it "Hamlet" still?' asked the Heathen Journalist, producing his notebook, for he began to see his way to a Sunday scoop.

'Why not? True, it is virtually a new work. But Shakespeare borrowed his story from an old play called "Hamlet," and treated it to suit himself; why, therefore, should I not treat Shakespeare as it suits _me_. The cat eats the rat, and the dog bites the cat.' He laughed his sn.i.g.g.e.ring laugh. 'If I were to call it by another name, some learned fool would point out it was stolen from Shakespeare, whereas at present it challenges comparison.'

'But you discovered Shakespeare cannot sustain the comparison,' said Benjamin Tuch, winking at the company.

'Only as the mediaeval astrologer is inferior to the astronomer of to-day,' the poet explained with placid modesty. 'The muddle-headedness of Shakespeare's ideas--which, incidentally, is the cause of the muddle of Hamlet's character--has given way to the clear vision of the modern.

How could Shakespeare really describe the thinker? The Elizabethans could not think. They were like our rabbis.'

The unexpected digression into contemporary satire made the whole cafe laugh. Gradually other atoms had drifted toward the new magnet. From the remotest corners eyes strayed and ears were p.r.i.c.ked up. Pinchas was indeed a figure of mark, with somebody else's frock-coat on his meagre person, his hair flowing like a dark cascade under a broad-brimmed dusky hat, and his sombre face aglow with genius and c.o.c.ksureness.

'Why should you expect thought from a rabbi?' said Grunbitz. 'You don't expect truth from a tradesman. Besides, only youth thinks.'

'That is well said,' approved Pinchas. 'He who is ever thinking never grows old. I shall die young, like all whom the G.o.ds love. Waiter, give Mr. Grunbitz a cup of chocolate.'

'Thank you--but I don't care for any.'

'You cannot refuse--you will pain Witberg,' said the poet simply.

In the great city around them men jumped on and off electric cars, whizzed up and down lifts, hustled through lobbies, hulloed through telephones, tore open telegrams, dictated to clacking typists, filled life with sound and flurry, with the bustle of the markets and the c.h.i.n.k of the eternal dollar; while here, serenely smoking and sipping, ruffled only by the breezes of argument, leisurely as the philosophers in the colonnades of Athens, the talkers of the Ghetto, earnest as their forefathers before the great folios of the Talmud, made an Oriental oasis amid the simoom whirl of the Occident. And the Heathen Journalist who had discovered it felt, as so often before, that here alone in this arid, mushroom New York was antiquity, was restfulness, was romanticism; here was the Latin Quarter of the city of the Goths.

Encouraged by the Master's good humour, young Mieses timidly exhibited his new verses. Pinchas read the ma.n.u.script aloud to the confusion of the blushing boy.

'But it is full of genius!' he cried in genuine astonishment. 'I might have written it myself, except that it is so unequal--a mixture of diamonds and paste, like all Hebrew literature.' He indicated with flawless taste the good lines, not knowing they were one and all unconscious reproductions from the English masterpieces Mieses had borrowed from the library in the Educational Alliance. The acolytes listened respectfully, and the beardless, blotchy-faced Mieses began to take importance in their eyes and to betray the importance he held in his own.

'Perhaps I, too, shall write a play one day,' he said. 'My "M," too, makes "Master."'

'It may be that you are destined to wear my mantle,' said Pinchas graciously.

Mieses looked involuntarily at the ill-fitting frock-coat.

Pinchas rose. 'And now, Mieses, you must give me a car-fare. I have to go and talk to the manager about rehearsals. One must superintend the actors one's self--these pumpkin-heads are capable of any crime, even of altering one's best phrases.'

Radsikoff smiled. He had sat still in his corner, this most prolific of Ghetto dramatists, his big, furrowed forehead supported on his fist, a huge, odorous cigar in his mouth.

'I suppose Goldwater plays "Hamlet,"' he said.

'We have not discussed it yet,' said Pinchas airily.

Radsikoff smiled again. 'Oh, he'll pull through--so long as Mrs.

Goldwater doesn't play "Ophelia."'

'She play "Ophelia"! She would not dream of such a thing. She is a saucy soubrette; she belongs to vaudeville.'

'All right. I have warned you.'

'You don't think there is really a danger!' Pinchas was pale and shaking.

'The Yiddish stage is so moral. Husbands and wives, unfortunately, live and play together,' said the old dramatist drily.

'I'll drown her truly before I let her play my "Ophelia,"' said the poet venomously.

Radsikoff shrugged his shoulders and dropped into American. 'Well, it's up to you.'

'The minx!' Pinchas shook his fist at the air. 'But I'll manage her.

If the worst comes to the worst, I'll make love to her.'

The poet's sublime confidence in his charms was too much even for his admirers. The mental juxtaposition of the seedy poet and the piquant actress in her frills and furbelows set the whole cafe rocking with laughter. Pinchas took it as a tribute to his ingenious method of drawing the soubrette-serpent's fangs. He grinned placidly.

'And when is your play coming on?' asked Radsikoff.

'After Pa.s.sover,' replied Pinchas, beginning to b.u.t.ton his frock-coat against the outer cold. If only to oust this 'Ophelia,' he must be at the theatre instanter.

'Has Goldwater given you a contract?'

'I am a poet, not a lawyer,' said Pinchas proudly. 'Parchments are for Philistines; honest men build on the word.'

'After all, it comes to the same thing--with Goldwater,' said Radsikoff drily. 'But he's no worse than the others; I've never yet found the contract any manager couldn't slip out of. I've never yet met the playwright that the manager couldn't dodge.' Radsikoff, indeed, divided his time between devising plays and devising contracts. Every experience but suggested fresh clauses. He regarded Pinchas with commiseration rather than jealousy. 'I shall come to your first night,' he added.

'It will be a tribute which the audience will appreciate,' said Pinchas. 'I am thinking that if I had one of these aromatic cigars I too might offer a burnt-offering unto the Lord.'

There was general laughter at the blasphemy, for the Sabbath, with its privation of fire, had long since begun.

'Try taking instead of thinking,' laughed the playwright, pushing forward his case. 'Action is greater than Thought.'

'No, no, no!' Pinchas protested, as he fumbled for the finest cigar.

'Wait till you see my play--you must all come--I will send you all boxes. Then you will learn that Thought is greater than Action--that Thought is the greatest thing in the world.'

II