236
PARTISAN REVIEW
it the
Odessa News
informed the few people who had been at the
theater that they had seen the most remarkable actor of the century.
On this visit Di Grasso played
King Lear, Othello, Civil Death,
Turgenev's
The Parasite,
confirming with every word and every ges–
ture that there is more justice in outbursts of noble passion than in
all the joyless rules that run the world.
Tickets for these shows were snapped up at five time face value.
Scouting round for ticket-brokers, would-be purchasers found them
at the inn, yelling their heads off, purple, vomiting a harmless
sacrilege.
A pink and dusty sultriness was injected into Theater Lane.
Shopkeepers in felt slippers bore green bottles of wine and barrels of
olives out onto the pavement. In tubs outside the shops macaroni
seethed in foaming water, and the steam from it melted in the distant
skies. Old women in men's boots dealt in seashells and souvenirs, pur–
suing hesitant purchasers with loud cries. Moneyed Jews with beards
parted down the middle and combed to either side would drive up
to the Northern Hotel and tap discreetly on the doors of fat women
with raven hair and little mustaches, Di Grasso's actresses. All were
happy in Theater Lane; all, that is, save for one person. I was that
person. In those days catastrophe was approaching me; at any mo–
ment my father might miss the watch I had taken without his per–
mission and pawned to Nick Schwarz. Having had the gold turnip
long enough to get used to it, and being a man who replaced tea
as his morning drink by Bessarabian wine, Nick Schwarz, even with
his money back, could still not bring himself to return the watch to
me. Such was his character. And my father's character differed in
no wise from his. Hemmed in by these two characters, I sorrowfully
watched other people enjoying themselves. Nothing remained for me
but to run away to Constantinople. I had made all the arrangements
with the second engineer of the S.S.
Duke of Kent;
but before em–
barking on the deep I decided to say good-by to Di Grasso. For the
last time he was playing the shepherd who is swung aloft by an in–
comprehensible power. In the audience were
all
the Italian colony,
with the bald but shapely consul at their head; there were fidgety
Greeks and bearded students with their gaze fastened fanatically
upon some point invisible to
all
other mortals; there was the long–
.armed Utochkin. Nick Schwarz had even brought his Mrs., in a
