—A dark world holds us
Strange from each other, groping with blank eyes,
With blank mouths....
Closely.
Clara:—— You are not well yet, you are not ready to leave me.
What is the matter with you?
Why are you still here?
O I am glad you are here! You are balm, you are pressing sharpness on my ache ...
I do not understand.
—You are good friends with Mark, and with Susan and Tessie.
Also they already feel how right that you are here with us.
And Mangel feels it. Statt feels nothing. Statt does not count.
Is it because you are not well, not complete, that you stay?
Is it because we must heal you, must complete you, that you stay?
Then you will go?—when you have taken from us ... what?
You give?... You give—to me how deeply, to us all how deeply!
What can we give to you? How can we heal and complete you?
—Is it our hurt that you would take from us?
Is it our broken-ness that will complete you?
Mangel:—— Tessie should be my daughter.
Then the Fear of God would keep her flesh away.
You have shown me, Luve woman, that Tessie is my daughter.
—I am made of filth. If I could stop hating myself!
I am a dirty Jew ... I hate Statt.
... He makes me feel—this....
But who is he?
His body is straighter because he has no soul.
(There are times when I would love to kiss his body.)
—My soul is beautiful. My soul says to me:
You are a dirty Jew!...
What is the use? One picks the smut from one’s nose,
But one’s nose smells on, the smut comes back,
What is the use of having a beautiful soul?
No one tells Statt that he is a dirty Dutchman.
—You, little girl, with the apple breasts and the hips hard and sweet like an apple,
You are my soul and you are far away.
You should be my daughter.
Then I should not have to hold you naked....
She is my daughter! O if I could say that, say: Father!
Not:—a whore and a dirty Jew that keeps her.
Tessie:—— Music is a dancing wall
Between me and the mad man world.
Wall danced away.
Stiff man world holds me and pierces me.
You, Abe, at least have hands soft-speaking.
—Fanny Luve ... what is the name of your kid?