PAPPELMEISTER [_Alarmed_] You are sailing avay?
VERA [_Laughing_] No, no--that's only his way of describing his two-dollar-a-month garret.
DAVID Yes--my state-room on the top deck!
DAVID But three other passengers aren't squeezed in, and it never pitches and tosses. It's heavenly.
PAPPELMEISTER [_Smiling_] And from heaven you flew down to blay in dat beer-hall. _Was?_ [_DAVID looks surprised._] _I_ heard you.
DAVID You! What on earth did you go _there_ for?
PAPPELMEISTER Vat on earth does one go to a beer-hall for? Ha! Ha! Ha! For vawter! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ven I hear you blay, I dink mit myself--if my blans succeed and I get Carnegie Hall for Saturday Symphony Concerts, dat boy shall be one of my first violins. _Was?_ [_He slaps DAVID on the left shoulder._]
DAVID [_Overwhelmed, ecstatic, yet wincing a little at the slap on his wound._] Be one of your first---- [_Remembering_] Oh, but it is impossible.
VERA [_Alarmed_] Mr. Quixano! You must not refuse.
DAVID But does Herr Pappelmeister know about the wound in my shoulder?
PAPPELMEISTER [_Agitated_] You haf been vounded?
DAVID Only a legacy from Russia--but it twinges in some weathers.
PAPPELMEISTER And de pain ubsets your blaying?
DAVID Not so much the pain--it's all the dreadful memories--
DAVID I _must_ explain to Herr Pappelmeister--it wouldn't be fair. Even now [_Shuddering_] there comes up before me the bleeding body of my mother, the cold, fiendish face of the Russian officer, supervising the slaughter----
DAVID [_Hysterically_] Oh, that butcher's face--there it is--hovering in the air, that narrow, fanatical forehead, that----
PAPPELMEISTER [_Brings down his umbrella with a bang_] _Schluss!_ No man ever dared break down under me. My baton will beat avay all dese faces and fancies. Out with your violin! [_He taps his umbrella imperiously on the table._] _Keinen Mut verlieren!_ [_DAVID takes out his violin from its case and puts it to his shoulder, PAPPELMEISTER keeping up a hypnotic torrent of encouraging German cries._] _Also! Fertig! Anfangen!_ [_He raises and waves his umbrella like a baton._] Von, dwo, dree, four----
DAVID [_With a great sigh of relief_] Thanks, thanks--they are gone already.
PAPPELMEISTER Ha! Ha! Ha! You see. And ven ve blay your American symphony----