George Nathan - The Collected Works of H. L. Mencken

“But what troubles I have had! Believe me, there has been nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble from the start. I set aside the engineering difficulties. They were hard for the engineers, but easy for me, once I put my mind on them. But the way these niggers have carried on has been something terrible. At the beginning I had only a thousand or two, and they all came from one tribe; so they got along fairly well. During the whole first year I doubt that more than twenty or thirty were killed in fights. But then I began to get fresh batches from up the river, and after that it was nothing but one fight after another. For two weeks running not a stroke of work was done. I really thought, at one time, that I’d have to give up. But finally the army put down the row, and after a couple of hundred of the ringleaders had been thrown into the river peace was restored. But it cost me, first and last, fully three thousand niggers, and set me back at least six months.

“Then came the so-called labor unions, and the strikes, and more trouble. These labor unions were started by a couple of smart, yellow niggers from Chaldea, one of them a sort of lay preacher, a fellow with a lot of gab. Before I got wind of them, they had gone so far it was almost impossible to squelch them. First I tried conciliation, but it didn’t work a bit. They made the craziest demands you ever heard of—a holiday every six days, meat every day, no night work and regular houses to live in. Some of them even had the effrontery to ask for money! Think of it! Niggers asking for money! Finally, I had to order out the army again and let some blood. But every time one was knocked over, I had to get another one to take his place, and that meant sending the army up the river, and more expense, and more devilish worry and nuisance.

“In my grandfather’s time niggers were honest and faithful workmen. You could take one fresh from the bush, teach him to handle a shovel or pull a rope in a year or so, and after that he was worth almost as much as he could eat. But the nigger of to-day isn’t worth a damn. He never does an honest day’s work if he can help it, and he is forever wanting something. Take these fellows I have now—mainly young bucks from around the First Cataract. Here are niggers who never saw baker’s bread or butcher’s meat until my men grabbed them. They lived there in the bush like so many hyenas. They were ten days’ march from a lemon. Well, now they get first-class beef twice a week, good bread and all the fish they can catch. They don’t have to begin work until broad daylight, and they lay off at dark. There is hardly one of them that hasn’t got a psaltery, or a harp, or some other musical instrument. If they want to dress up and make believe they are Egyptians, I give them clothes. If one of them is killed on the work, or by a stray lion, or in a fight, I have him embalmed by my own embalmers and plant him like a man. If one of them breaks a leg or loses an arm or gets too old to work, I turn him loose without complaining, and he is free to go home if he wants to.

“But are they contented? Do they show any gratitude? Not at all. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t hear of some fresh soldiering. And, what is worse, they have stirred up some of my own people—the carpenters, stone-cutters, gang bosses and so on. Every now and then my inspectors find some rotten libel cut on a stone—something to the effect that I am overworking them, and knocking them about, and holding them against their will, and generally mistreating them. I haven’t the slightest doubt that some of these inscriptions have actually gone into the pyramid: it’s impossible to watch every stone. Well, in the years to come, they will be dug out and read by strangers, and I will get a black eye. People will think of Cheops as a heartless old rapscallion— me , mind you! Can you beat it?”

Table of Contents

Characters:

A Great Pianist

A Janitor

Six Musical Critics

A Married Woman

A Virgin

Sixteen Hundred and Forty-three Other Women

Six Other Men

Place— A City of the United States.

Time— A December afternoon.

( During the action of the play not a word is uttered aloud. All of the speeches of the characters are supposed to be unspoken meditations only. )

A large, gloomy hall, with many rows of uncushioned, uncomfortable seats, designed, it would seem, by some one misinformed as to the average width of the normal human pelvis. A number of busts of celebrated composers, once white, but now a dirty gray, stand in niches along the walls. At one end of the hall there is a bare, uncarpeted stage, with nothing on it save a grand piano and a chair. It is raining outside, and, as hundreds of people come crowding in, the air is laden with the mingled scents of umbrellas, raincoats, goloshes, cosmetics, perfumery and wet hair.

At eight minutes past four, The Janitor, after smoothing his hair with his hands and putting on a pair of detachable cuffs, emerges from the wings and crosses the stage, his shoes squeaking hideously at each step. Arriving at the piano, he opens it with solemn slowness. The job seems so absurdly trivial, even to so mean an understanding, that he can’t refrain from glorifying it with a bit of hocus-pocus. This takes the form of a careful adjustment of a mysterious something within the instrument. He reaches in, pauses a moment as if in doubt, reaches in again, and then permits a faint smile of conscious sapience and efficiency to illuminate his face. All of this accomplished, he tiptoes back to the wings, his shoes again squeaking.

The Janitor

Now all of them people think I’m the professor’s tuner. ( The thought gives him such delight that, for the moment, his brain is numbed. Then he proceeds. ) I guess them tuners make pretty good money. I wish I could get the hang of the trick. It looks easy. ( By this time he has disappeared in the wings and the stage is again a desert. Two or three women, far back in the hall, start a halfhearted handclapping. It dies out at once. The noise of rustling programs and shuffling feet succeeds it. )

Four Hundred of the Women

Oh, I do certainly hope he plays that lovely Valse Poupée as an encore! They say he does it better than Bloomfield-Zeisler.

One of the Critics

I hope the animal doesn’t pull any encore numbers that I don’t recognize. All of these people will buy the paper to-morrow morning just to find out what they have heard. It’s infernally embarrassing to have to ask the manager. The public expects a musical critic to be a sort of walking thematic catalogue. The public is an ass.

The Six Other Men

Oh, Lord! What a way to spend an afternoon!

A Hundred of the Women

I wonder if he’s as handsome as Paderewski.

Another Hundred of the Women

I wonder if he’s as gentlemanly as Josef Hofmann.

Still Another Hundred Women

I wonder if he’s as fascinating as De Pachmann.

Yet Other Hundreds

I wonder if he has dark eyes. You never can tell by those awful photographs in the newspapers.

Half a Dozen Women

I wonder if he can really play the piano.

The Critic Aforesaid

What a hell of a wait! These rotten piano-thumping immigrants deserve a hard call-down. But what’s the use? The piano manufacturers bring them over here to wallop their pianos—and the piano manufacturers are not afraid to advertise. If you knock them too hard you have a nasty business-office row on your hands.

One of the Men

If they allowed smoking, it wouldn’t be so bad.

Another Man

I wonder if that woman across the aisle——

(The Great Pianist bounces upon the stage so suddenly that he is bowing in the center before any one thinks to applaud. He makes three stiff bows. At the second the applause begins, swelling at once to a roar. He steps up to the piano, bows three times more, and then sits down. He hunches his shoulders, reaches for the pedals with his feet, spreads out his hands and waits for the clapper-clawing to cease. He is an undersized, paunchy East German, with hair the color of wet hay, and an extremely pallid complexion. Talcum powder hides the fact that his nose is shiny and somewhat pink. His eyebrows are carefully penciled and there are artificial shadows under his eyes. His face is absolutely expressionless. )