FullReads

‘I told you I would let you know when rehearsals began.’

‘But you forgot to take my address.’

‘As if I don’t know where to find you!’

Kloot grinned. ‘Pinchas gets drinks from all the cafe,’ he put in.

‘They drink to the health of “Hamlet,”‘ said Pinchas proudly.

‘All right; Kloot’s gotten your address. Good-evening.’

‘But when will it be? I must know.’

‘We can’t fix it to a day. There’s plenty of money in this piece yet.’

‘Money–bah! But merit?’

‘You fellows are as jealous as the devil.’

‘Me jealous of kangaroos! In Central Park you see giraffes–and tortoises too. Central Park has more talent than this scribbler of yours.’

‘I doubt if there’s a bigger peacock than here,’ murmured Goldwater.

‘I’ll write you about rehearsals,’ said Kloot, winking at Goldwater.

‘But I must know weeks ahead–I may go lecturing. The great continent calls for me. In Chicago, in Cincinnati—-‘

‘Go, by all means,’ said Goldwater. ‘We can do without you.’

‘Do without me? A nice mess you will make of it! I must teach you how to say every line.’

‘Teach me?‘ Goldwater could hardly believe his ears.

Pinchas wavered. ‘I–I mean the company. I will show them the accent–the gesture. I’m a great stage-manager as well as a great poet. There shall be no more prompter.’

‘Indeed!’ Goldwater raised the eyebrow he was pencilling. ‘And how are you going to get on without a prompter?’

‘Very simple–a month’s rehearsals.’

Goldwater turned an apoplectic hue deeper than his rouge.

Kloot broke in impishly: ‘It is very good of you to give us a month of your valuable time.’

But Goldwater was too irate for irony. ‘A month!’ he gasped at last. ‘I could put on six melodramas in a month.’

‘But “Hamlet” is not a melodrama!’ said Pinchas, shocked.

‘Quite so; there is not half the scenery. It’s the scenery that takes time rehearsing, not the scenes.’

The poet was now as purple as the player. ‘You would profane my divine work by gabbling through it with your pack of parrots!’

‘Here, just you come off your perch!’ said Kloot. ‘You’ve written the piece; we do the rest.’ Kloot, though only nineteen and at a few dollars a week, had a fine, careless equality not only with the whole world, but even with his employer. He was now, to his amaze, confronted by a superior.

‘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 manuscript 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 mass of motley manuscripts 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 manuscript 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.’