Ghetto Comedies Part 40

'Silence, impudent-face! You are not talking to Radsikoff. I am a Poet, and I demand my rights.'

Kloot was silent from sheer surprise.

Goldwater was similarly impressed. 'What rights?' he observed more mildly. 'You've had your twenty dollars. And that was too much.'

'Too much! Twenty dollars for the masterpiece of the twentieth century!'

'In the twenty-first century you shall have twenty-one dollars,' said Kloot, recovering.

'Make mock as you please,' replied the poet superbly. 'I shall be living in the fifty-first century even. Poets never die--though, alas!

they have to live. Twenty dollars too much, indeed! It is not a dollar a century for the run of the play.'

'Very well,' said Goldwater grimly. 'Give them back. We return your play.'

This time it was the poet that was disconcerted. 'No, no, Goldwater--I must not disappoint my printer. I have promised him the twenty dollars to print my Hebrew "Selections from Nietzsche."'

'You take your ma.n.u.script and give me my money,' said Goldwater implacably.

'Exchange would be a robbery. I will not rob you. Keep your bargain.

See, here is the printer's letter.' He dragged from a tail-pocket a ma.s.s of motley ma.n.u.scripts and yellow letters, and laid them beside the telephone as if to search among them.

Goldwater waved a repudiating hand.

'Be not a fool-man, Goldwater.' The poet's carneying forefinger was laid on his nose. 'I and you are the only two people in New York who serve the poetic drama--I by writing, you by producing.'

Goldwater still shook his head, albeit a whit appeased by the flattery.

Kloot replied for him: 'Your ma.n.u.script shall be returned to you by the first dustcart.'

Pinchas disregarded the youth. 'But I am willing you shall have only a fortnight's rehearsals. I believe in you, Goldwater. I have always said, "The only genius on the Yiddish stage is Goldwater."

Klostermann--bah! He produces not so badly, but act? My grandmother's hen has a better stage presence. And there is Davidoff--a voice like a frog and a walk like a spider. And these charlatans I only heard of when I came to New York. But you, Goldwater--your fame has blown across the Atlantic, over the Carpathians. I journeyed from Cracow expressly to collaborate with you.'

'Then why do you spoil it all?' asked the mollified manager.

'It is my anxiety that Europe shall not be disappointed in you. Let us talk of the cast.'

'It is so early yet.'

'"The early bird catches the worm."'

'But all our worms are caught,' grinned Kloot. 'We keep our talent pinned on the premises.'

'I know, I know,' said Pinchas, paling. He saw Mrs. Goldwater tripping on saucily as Ophelia.

'But we don't give all our talent to one play,' the manager reminded him.

'No, of course not,' said Pinchas, with a breath of hope.

'We have to use all our people by turns. We divide our forces. With myself as Hamlet you will have a cast that should satisfy any author.'

'Do I not know it?' cried Pinchas. 'Were you but to say your lines, leaving all the others to be read by the prompter, the house would be spellbound, like Moses when he saw the burning bush.'

'That being so,' said Goldwater, 'you couldn't expect to have my wife in the same cast.'

'No, indeed,' said Pinchas enthusiastically. 'Two such tragic geniuses would confuse and distract, like the sun and the moon shining together.'

Goldwater coughed. 'But Ophelia is really a small part,' he murmured.

'It is,' Pinchas acquiesced. 'Your wife's tragic powers could only be displayed in "Hamlet" if, like another equally celebrated actress, she appeared as the Prince of Palestine himself.'

'Heaven forbid my wife should so lower herself!' said Goldwater. 'A decent Jewish housewife cannot appear in breeches.'

'That is what makes it impossible,' a.s.sented Pinchas. 'And there is no other part worthy of Mrs. Goldwater.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You compare my wife to a Kangaroo!"]

'It may be she would sacrifice herself,' said the manager musingly.

'And who am I that I should ask her to sacrifice herself?' replied the poet modestly.

'f.a.n.n.y won't sacrifice Ophelia,' Kloot observed drily to his chief.

'You hear?' said Goldwater, as quick as lightning. 'My wife will not sacrifice Ophelia by leaving her to a minor player. She thinks only of the play. It is very n.o.ble of her.'

'But she has worked so hard,' pleaded the poet desperately, 'she needs a rest.'

'My wife never spares herself.'

Pinchas lost his head. 'But she might spare Ophelia,' he groaned.

'What do you mean?' cried Goldwater gruffly. 'My wife will honour you by playing Ophelia. That is ended.' He waved the make-up brush in his hand.

'No, it is not ended,' said Pinchas desperately. 'Your wife is a comic actress----'

'You just admitted she was tragic----'

'It is heartbreaking to see her in tragedy,' said Pinchas, burning his boats. 'She skips and jumps. Rather would I give Ophelia to one of your kangaroos!'

'You low-down monkey!' Goldwater almost flung his brush into the poet's face. 'You compare my wife to a kangaroo! Take your filthy ma.n.u.script and begone where the pepper grows.'

'Well, f.a.n.n.y _would_ be rather funny as Ophelia,' put in Kloot pacifyingly.

'And to make your wife ridiculous as Ophelia,' added Pinchas eagerly, 'you would rob the world of your Hamlet!'

'I can get plenty of Hamlets. Any scribbler can translate Shakespeare.'

'Perhaps, but who can surpa.s.s Shakespeare? Who can make him intelligible to the modern soul?'