Synopsis

Act I. Reb Yitskhok, alone in his room, complains about his 29 year-old daughter Khanele’s stubbornness and feels she’ll never marry, since she insists that her husband be a German speaker named Franz who is skilled at courtship and has a black mustache—an idea she got from reading modern books. He is therefore excited when Shloyme, a prosperous young cousin of Khanele’s, tells Yitskhok he wants to marry her. Yitskhok tells Shloyme to play along with Khanele’s demands. In the story she’s reading, Carolina runs away with Franz; Khanele longs for a similar happy ending for herself. Yitskhok returns and tells her about Shloyme, asks her to be nice to him. When Shloyme enters, she refuses answer to the name Khanele, but rather insists on being called Carolina. She tries to get him to act out a scene from her novel, but he keeps turning German expressions into Hebrew and Yiddish ones. Finally he tells her off, refuses to play along any further, chides Yitskhok for bringing her up badly, and predicts they will live to regret it.

Act II. A street before dawn. Kaptsnzon and Hungerman try begging from each other, but both are penniless. Kaptsnzon then sees a rich old man and proposes a plan: he will borrow a skirt and dress as a girl, come back and soften up the old man until he pulls out his wallet, and then Hungerman will jump out of the bushes and berate the old man for molesting his wife. They carry out the plan, which works beautifully. Now that Kaptsnzon has money, he will buy new clothes so he can become Franz, the hero of Khanele’s novels, and marry her for her money.

Act III. Just after Yitskhok finishes scolding his daughter for letting Shloyme get away, the servant announces the arrival of one “Franz Franzensohn”—none other than Kaptsnzon in disguise. To make sure he is for real, Khanele starts reading the novel aloud again, and sure enough, he responds just as the hero Franz ought to. When she presents him to her father, Yitskhok cries—for joy, so he claims—blesses, them, and goes. She asks “Franz” to tell her how the second part of the novel turns out; he says he’ll tell her later.

Act IV. In Khanele’s meager room, where the main set piece is an old, broken table. Khanele, Shloyme tells us, has sold virtually everything to support Franz, who is off traveling. Shloyme looks at a piece of paper lying on the table--in fact it is a letter from Franz to Khanele, but written on playing cards rather than on paper. Shloyme tells Khanele he has come to save her; she sends him away because she expects her husband soon. Privately, she acknowledges that Shloyme is right. Kaptsnzon arrives, but immediately says he has to go out to meet some friends, and asks her for money. After he leaves, Shloyme returns, having heard everything. He implores Khanele to leave with him before Franz becomes her “Angel of Death,” but she says nothing. Right after he goes, though, she starts to run after him, but instead runs into Kaptsnzon and Hungerman as they enter with two washer women. Kaptsnzon tells her he doesn’t want to know her any more, adding, “You wanted a black mustache? (He tears off the mustache and gives it to her.) Here’s a black mustache.” He and Hungerman throw the crying Khanele out, then dance a quadrille with the washer women.

Scene change: a mountain cemetery with a river below. The gravedigger, a hearty drinker, toasts his charges. Khanele arrives, and having no other way to pay him for pointing the way to her father’s grave, gives him her wedding ring. She talks to her father’s grave, apologizing for having driven him to an early death. Distraught, she jumps in the river. Shloyme enters with a lantern as she cries, “Adieu, Solomon!” He and others search for her. They find her, and the play ends with him on a boat, crying as he holds her corpse.