She was a knockout, a beautiful brainy blond multilingual piece of work. She was four years older than I, twenty-six to my twenty-two when we met, which put her in the fascinating category of older woman. Also, she was European and bright and opinionated, and spoke with an accent that was exotic to my Bronx ear.

It was June 1964, the first of the two years of the New York World’s Fair. The Motown Supremes’ “Baby Love” emanated from every radio, along with those sensational British imports who were named, in a clever double entendre, after an insect group, singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” My relationship with Georgia had become distant and platonic. Americans were beginning to heal, coming out of the shock and depression from the murder of John F. Kennedy the previous November. The Mets, those darling New York losers, had a spanking-new modern stadium adjacent to the World’s Fair grounds and the brand-new gleaming screaming jets at La Guardia. The Grand Central Parkway had even been widened, and had acquired snazzy space-age lamps and signs to accommodate the multitudes flocking to the area. Things were definitely looking up for New York and me that warming season.

I had a small studio apartment on 153rd Street, near Riverside Drive, shared only with members of the old, even prehistoric, family Blattidae, who thrived marvelously inside the walls and my garbage. But it was mine, my first New York apartment. After the liberties of five years away at college, graduate school, and summer stock, habits and sensibilities had changed; and for me, jobless and no longer a student for the first time since I was five, that previous fall of 1963, at home in the Bronx, had been a particularly excruciating time to feel like a failure. I had grown unused to my parents and being in such close quarters with them: independent, one might say. Independent though I may have been, I had hardly been hopping freight trains during my years away, having been a student and not financially self-sufficient. However, I had lived free of parental supervision for so long that the difficulty of the adjustment added fuel to my already dismal circumstances. Though I had just spent a year at the Yale School of Drama, I was down on myself, feeling lost, having no connections nor a clue as to how to break into the theater and show business. The look of disappointment in my father’s eyes told it all. Worse than that, pity, as my theatrical résumé after graduate school was pitifully brief.

After Six Characters, Nikos Psacharopoulos gave me a two-week spear-carrying role as one of Herod’s soldiers in a lavish, expensive New York Pro Musica production of The Play of Herod, an eleventh-century liturgical church musical underwritten by the Ford Foundation. I got two hundred dollars a week as one of Herod’s soldiers whose job it was to slaughter innocents at The Cloisters museum in New York and the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. I had a great incentive in the acting job, such as it was. The nasty little prank-pulling choirboys who portrayed the innocents deserved to be slaughtered, or at the very least remain in the castrati section of the choir for the rest of their lives. Beware of child performers, and do not be fooled by words like “choirboy.” My chain mail costume made of heavy wool was like a sauna.

To pass the time between my brief appearances as a slaughterer, I had marvelous chats with Patty Robbins, who played the Virgin Mary, interrupted only occasionally by her obligatory appearances in which curtains would part revealing her in an ark holding the infant Jesus. She was also an avid reader during her rather lengthy waits in a rather lengthy presentation. Upon hearing her cue, four struck chimes, she would put down Freud’s The Psychotherapy of Everyday Life and pick up the wrapped doll who portrayed Jesus while the Pro Musica singers broke into her theme song, a lovely Gregorian chant. She would assume a silent, adoring pose until the curtains of the ark closed again, and then put down the doll or throw it, depending on her mood. Not a word was spoken in the play. Well, it was sort of show business, as it might have been in the eleventh century, and I got to see Chicago for the first time.

Since I had left graduate school, my father was concerned about me being able to fall back on teaching, the catchall safety-net phrase that had reassured him and had been the palliative, the very lubricant for his acquiescence in my pursuit of this career as an actor. I of course had no intention of teaching. I cannot help but notice that the patronizing phrase “you can always fall back on teaching,” something heard frequently in those days, was and is an accurate barometer of American priorities, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Too little homage and money paid to the teaching profession and too many unqualified people falling back on it. Lenny Bruce’s nineteen-sixties observation that Vegas blackjack dealers are paid more than teachers is unfortunately still largely valid.

So there I was in the Bronx, sitting on my ass in the middle of a November day, no school, no work, feeling like a piece of shit, and my father called to tell me that the president had been shot. This event characterized that whole period for me, with the general American pall seeming to feed my personal melancholy and deepen my rut. There had also been the humiliating and scary events with Georgia.

As the theater world wasn’t happening, I had to find some steadier and more lucrative employment, with the aim of moving out of the family apartment and getting a few bucks in my pocket. My myopic father reasoned that “you have a perfect place to sleep and eat right here at no charge.” I realized in subsequent years that his argument was a screen, that he wanted me to stay at home because he would miss me and had difficulty with those rites of passage. When I was thirteen, I was developing a good deal of hair on my upper lip that I desperately wanted to shave. My father had warned me sternly not to shave yet, because “It’ll grow back twice as fast. Leave it alone.” One day I shaved it off, and when he noticed it at the dinner table, he went into one of his tantrums, screaming, unforgiving. In retrospect, I can see that his reasoning was the angst of a father who couldn’t bear to see his baby zooming through puberty. Unfortunately, Benny was unable to communicate any of that. My mother, though not eager to see me go, understood my need to fly the coop and, as ever, gave me her blessing.

There was an available job that required a college degree and nothing more, so I fell back on teaching, though I saw the job as a “great leap forward” (I rather admired Mao then) in terms of self-esteem and respect. As a substitute teacher, I worked on average three days a week for twenty-six dollars a day through the winter and spring, which afforded me just enough money for rent and food and a modicum of everything else. I had a wonderful circle of friends, mostly City College graduates whom I’d known since junior high school. They were a smart, eclectic group of five, with some ancillary guys thrown in, who read good books and loved good music from blues to baroque. The politics were decidedly left-wing, with a couple taking such matters seriously and contributing time and effort to the cause of socialism. There were thoughtful, mind-opening discussions of politics, books, and music, with the political exchanges sometimes reaching screaming crescendos. There was much laughter, intellectual vigor, and sarcasm, with a minimum of sentimentality. Through them I acquired a lifelong devotion to W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the great Lenny Bruce. We read everything by Herman Hesse, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and on and on. Comedy and music were the most important connective tissue in our gatherings, which included guitar and harmonica folksy-blues musicales, in which those who could not play an instrument simply banged on furniture or blew across the mouth of a jug. We detested alcohol, preferring cannabis sativa, which we were certain would be legal any day. We thought of our parents as completely out of the loop, beings from another planet.

My association with these friends changed the course of my life, especially in my appreciation for music. I had been raised on Broadway show tunes and fallen in love with doo-wop at fourteen. An early rebellion? My parents respected the light classics (my mother played piano beautifully by ear), but it was the so-called heavy stuff, which my friends introduced me to, which I had never heard at home, that took flight in me. While I couldn’t afford to buy records, I could borrow anything I wanted from the Fordham library to play on my primitive, scratchy Webcor record player. What I wanted then was all the Johann Sebastian Bach I could get my hands on—the wonderful, esoteric, expensive performances on the best European labels, like Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, and Odeon—and the library had them all. I was especially captivated by the vocal music: the cantatas, The Magnificat, and The Mass in B Minor. My father referred to them as “that German crap,” but the sound of them brought me goose bumps and sometimes tears of exhilaration. The Jewish boy from the Bronx had definitely fallen for German Christian liturgical music, though by no means in the religious sense. I largely ignored the text, except in those instances where Bach matched his music deliberately and splendidly to the words in the libretto. For example, when an angel or Christ ascended to heaven, the musical notes would go up accordingly and quite subtly.

I was hardly religious; my piety at the time was largely confined to asking occasional favors of God, like for me not to fail algebra, or to get this stuck elevator moving again. Perhaps I was an agnostic, but I was grateful for Bach’s spiritual fervor. His music seemed to prove the presence of godliness presumed by many to be in each of us, Christian or otherwise. Listening, I would often think that only God could compose this, or create the genius that could.

There was a contradiction for me in that the great Bach was German. I had, as a matter of culture and upbringing, developed in my life a healthy repugnance for all things Teutonic. I was inundated, like many Americans of that era, with stereotypes. The language had a guttural, displeasing sound reminiscent of gestapo officers in Hollywood depictions of the recent war, not to mention the newsreel speeches of the little prick who had started it all. Charlie Chaplin’s linguistic imitation in The Great Dictator was right on the money. Yet the composer had died in 1750, well before Nazism was conceived. I remembered that Dante, in The Inferno, had sort of excused Plato and Aristotle from the worst damnation, even though they weren’t Christians, their having lived well before Jesus Christ. Mercy with an asterisk. Certainly old Bach deserved no less an acquittal. As I grew to love the music, the sound of the German words did not intrude on the beauty of the compositions. They seemed less guttural and more soothing the more I listened to them, especially when sung legato or in a long note. Through Bach, they began to sound like a fuzzier, friendlier German; at times I imagined I was hearing Yiddish.

I even loved to play this music during sex, on those rare wonderful occasions when the roaches and I had a female visitor. The feelings about this were never mutual; alas, there was not a Bachophile among them. These young women were invariably baffled by my choice of music to make love by, despite my best efforts to enthuse and infuse them with its glory. As I rapturously conducted and hummed the exquisite trumpet and choral sections of The Magnificat, they looked at me like I was deranged. Couldn’t they hear the beauty and brilliance and yes . . . sensuality of it? For far too many American girls, classical music apparently reminded them of church and boring music-appreciation classes. I must have been an annoying proselytizer at times, especially during sex. I got reactions ranging from “Can’t you put on some more appropriate music?” to “Turn off that classical shit.” At twenty-two and no fool, with an eager legal-age naked woman in my bed, musical principles took on a more trivial aspect, and compromise, or even outright deference, seemed like an excellent trade-off. I was quite content to have sex accompanied by Little Richard or Dylan, or garbage trucks clanging on 153rd Street for that matter. There was a new concept in my life since my Bronx exodus: privacy. I meant to make up for lost time. I had always lived in a small, crowded apartment or a dormitory with hundreds of people around. I had never had a room of my own, having spent much of my childhood on the Castro convertible ottoman in the living room, not even love-seat-sized, which folded out into a single, narrow bed. Bear in mind that an ottoman is supposed to go with a chair. It is a footrest. My room was a footrest. How one recovers from such a stigma I do not know, but it was an extraordinary feeling to now be in my own room and not on my own room: free to entertain as I chose, and to feed my infatuation with music composed over two centuries earlier.

Listening to it exhilarated me and gave me hope, and I felt richer hearing it. Eventually, my veneration of this work opened the way to my understanding that German did not equal Nazism (in fact, Bach was much less frequently performed in the Third Reich). A whole generation of young Germans had grown up in democracy, and they were our grateful allies. I had even been profoundly touched by John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. But there was no forgiveness for Nazis or their sympathizers, and any German over forty was suspect.

So here I was in June 1964 with an apartment of my own, several passions and high hopes, but no job until the fall school year and no prospects in my chosen field. Then something turned up, as David Copperfield’s Mr. Micawber would say. My buddy from Yale Jim Burrows called and asked if I might be interested in a job on an NBC television project he was involved with at the World’s Fair. The show was called Ford Presents the New Christy Minstrels, who were a popular folk-pop singing group. He asked if I might go to the various foreign pavilions at the fair and have them send their representatives in uniform or native dress to appear in the audience of the eight weekly summer tapings. The fair had been garnering all kinds of media attention, and I jumped at the chance to participate in the excitement. Besides, though there was no pay, it was at least in a tangential way show business, and almost a thousand years more current than my previous gig.

I put on my best suit and made the rounds of the many pavilions, identifying myself as Robert Klein from NBC, complete with an official badge-credential. This introduction seemed to impress, and before long I got many commitments of attendance, each pavilion wanting to be included in what seemed an excellent opportunity to publicize themselves. The job was delightful, and afforded a perfect way to see the fair as an insider. Best of all, the people actually thought I was important, something I needed desperately in my comeback spring.

Along the way I met dozens of charming people, many of them attractive young women from all over the world, wearing uniforms and other exotic clothing, with whom I would dawdle and shoot the breeze. There was Samina from Pakistan, who was an authentic princess bedecked in the traditional sari, though she had gone to high school in Kansas on an exchange program and spoke perfect colloquial American English. There was Angelique from France, a beautiful, gregarious flirty six-footer who wore a size-twelve shoe. There was Myoshi, the gorgeous and friendly staff member from the Japanese pavilion. These unwitting admirers did not look at me as an overeducated nonsuccess who had a gofer job with no salary. On the contrary, they considered me a distinguished visitor representing the big-time American entertainment industry, which was surely one of the most powerful cultural influences in the world. I, Robert Klein, associated with and represented the power and influence of American show business.

One day on my rounds, it was time to approach the Berlin pavilion, and I felt some uneasiness. Perhaps it was a bit immature of me, but I couldn’t shake the notion that despite nineteen years since victory, here was the enemy personified. As I entered the ultramodern structure, I fortified myself with Johann Sebastian in my head, along with the comforting thought that we had won the fucking war. The building was a sort of futuristic tent, reminiscent of Eero Saarinen’s imaginative TWA terminal at JFK Airport. I heard the strains of Bach’s Musical Offering, one of my favorite instrumental pieces, playing over the loudspeakers. How bad can these people be? I thought.

The inside of the pavilion was full of huge photos of the rebuilding, dynamic city of West Berlin, with tons of John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, and Willy Brandt, and not a Hitler in sight. There were photographs of the ruins of the city after the war, to contrast its smart new rebuilt look, as well as scenes of a moribund East Berlin, with lots of jackbooted Communist guards. Everywhere was a veritable plethora of economic charts. I went to the information desk and was met by a petite, fair-haired woman in a smartly tailored pink suit, which was the uniform of the pavilion. Her name was Inge, and she spoke in a shy accented English, eager to please. A real authentic German, I thought, though this sweetly smiling young woman did not seem the genocidal type. In fact, she was kind of cute.

I explained the purpose of my visit, which she took to be of consummate importance, and she immediately summoned Herr Haufner, her superior. He was a portly, neatly dressed man of fifty, with wire spectacles, the kind favored by Himmler, and a heavy German accent right out of a Sid Caesar professor sketch. He was polite though not particularly cordial, a real bureaucrat, and I had an overwhelming desire, which I thwarted, to ask what he had done during the war. It was a strange feeling to be exchanging conversation with someone who had definitely fought against us. What if he knew I was Jewish? The bastard. I flashed for a second on blurting out “Revenge!” in a kind of uncontrolled Tourette’s episode, and then strangling him.

He said the proposal sounded good. “Sank you. Vee vill get beck to you, Meesta Klein,” declared Herr Haufner. We were joined by a striking blond woman with her name, Elizabeth, written on a badge on her pink uniform. My mind flashed for a second on having sex with her, and disregarded historical-political differences for the time being. She took over the desk as Inge and Herr Haufner retreated to an office behind it. She asked if she could be of any service, and while she could not, I contrived some reason or other to stay and chat with her. She was lovely and shapely, with wonderful imperfections in her features; she had a rather prominent, aquiline nose, large feet, and gorgeous blue eyes. She spoke perfect grammatical English, though with a pronounced accent, and she projected a palpable warmth, with a glint of mischief in her eyes: eyes that looked right into mine as she spoke and listened.

The Bach piece was still coming through the loudspeakers, and I instantly associated her with the beautiful music, as one might associate a woman with a certain perfume. I told her that he was my favorite composer. “Ach, me, too,” she said, smiling with genuine enthusiasm. She suggested that Bach was the greatest thing to ever come out of Germany, a premise that I heartily agreed with. Perhaps it was a bit premature for me to feel this way, but I was in love.

“You are from New York, Mr.—”

“Klein. Robert Klein. Call me Robert. Yes, born and raised in New York,” I answered. “And you?”

“I am Elizabeth Schmidt. I am from Munich.” Munich, I thought, where Hitler started his climb to power, the land of lederhosen, beer, Oktoberfest, and smacking Jews around. “Klein, this is a German name, no?” she said as I shook her lovely, soft hand.

“Yes, all four of my grandparents came from Hungary at the turn of the century. Of course, it was Austria Hungary then,” I said, pretending to be a little more German.

“Klein means little in German, but you are not little,” she laughed. Two more of her colleagues appeared behind the desk, Goetje and Helge. Goetje, who had a gorgeous face, was curious to know about the television tapings. Helge was a bit more stocky and serious, and though she was from Düsseldorf, she spoke English with no accent whatever; she could have been from Cleveland. Soon they left to perform their office duties. Elizabeth and I continued our chatter, though she kept a wary eye out for Herr Haufner, whom she referred to as “that pompous little German man.” She explained that he was always on the lookout for “goofing off.” The incongruity of this jazzy American colloquial expression and her German accent made me laugh.

But it was no laughing matter when I saw Herr Haufner exit the office, and I dashed away like a thief toward a photo montage of the old versus the new Berlin and, most difficult of all, pretended to be interested in it. Running like a thief was not the image I would have chosen to impress a woman, but I saw the positive side—it was good acting practice.

Haufner appeared to give Fräulein Schmidt some last-minute instructions with vigorous gestures and, after wiping a bit of dust off a statistical graph of the 1963 foreign investment in Berlin, he proceeded out the door.

Elizabeth looked at me and laughed. “Komm, Ro-behrt, it’s uh-kay, he won’t be beck, thank Gott.” Her smile was amused, but she didn’t mock me, which minimized my embarrassment. She rested her face between her hands, elbows on the counter, framing her pretty and fascinating countenance with a much more relaxed demeanor. She looked like she was studying me. Then she asked me to tell her the story of my life.

This is a good question to hear from a girl you’re interested in. To begin with, it’s flattering, and there is so much room for beneficial manipulation in the storytelling that one must fight the urge to bullshit too much. “My goodness, where should I begin?”

It was a more or less rhetorical question, but she took it at face value and wrinkled her forehead in contemplation. “At the beginning,” she said.

The next time I looked at the clock, an hour and a half had passed, and we had exchanged much information about relationships with parents—her father was a German officer killed in the war—aspirations, and experiences. Unfortunately, there were many interruptions: mostly annoying visitors to the pavilion, morons who made outrageous requests for such things as information about what they were looking at. Weren’t those photos and charts self-explanatory? At these moments, Elizabeth would slide away and politely engage the curious visitors in English, German, and very proficient French, giving me an opportunity to study her.

As a matter of fact, I couldn’t take my eyes and ears off her. Her sweet-voiced trilingual conversation was like music, like The Brandenburg Concerto #2, playing on the pavilion sound system. How clever, I thought, to speak so many languages. From the increasing frequency of interruptions and a look at my watch, it was apparent that both Elizabeth and I had a job to do. I still had to go to the Pakistani and British pavilions. I dared not ask for her telephone number but told her that I would surely drop by again, which she took to be a good idea. We shook hands and, somewhat smitten, I floated out into the World’s Fair sunshine wanting to dance like Gene Kelly in an MGM musical.

In the course of the next week, I visited Elizabeth daily and learned more about the new Berlin than I cared to while dodging Herr Haufner on his occasional forays around the exhibition. Here I was, hiding from a German authority. Perhaps it was genetic. What did you do between 1935 and 1945, eh, Herr Haufner? I’m sure you had no idea about the concentration camps, you swine, I thought as I peeked from behind a display at his obviously cruel, unfeeling face. This was a difficult courtship, if that was what it was to be.

After two weeks and many visits, Elizabeth’s colleagues began teasing me about my frequent appearances, and Helge dubbed me an honorary Berliner, an accolade that, for me, was a million-to-one shot at birth. Around this time, I was sure that Herr Haufner was beginning to notice me. My whistling and looking innocent while reading about the history of Checkpoint Charlie for the fourteenth time were beginning to look transparent. Though I wanted to very much, I still couldn’t find the nerve to mention going out with Elizabeth, unsure whether she would be interested in seeing me in some other environment. “Unsure” gravely understates the matter. I had experienced a tremendous loss of confidence. I suspected that she thought I was just a kid with whom she passed some time at work. She was a woman of the world, literally, having lived and worked in Hong Kong, Paris, and other exotic parts. I had been to New Jersey. I envisioned a worst-possible scenario in which I asked her out and she laughed in my face.

I have always been somewhat fearful of rejection; no doubt many people are, to some degree. Yet there are those, whom I envy in a way, who push the envelope, are often rewarded with success, and deal with rejection with a minimum of emotional capital, if any.

Elizabeth had seemed pleased with the time I spent with her, and I had allowed myself to think of, dare I say it, romance. An opportunity presented itself for me to pique her interest and test my prospects. An ad in The New York Times music section indicated that a prominent Park Avenue church was presenting a concert of Bach’s Cantata #147 and some motets. It was the kind of evening my friends and I wouldn’t miss, but I had never taken a date. With some apprehension, I entered the Berlin pavilion, did my usual search for that ubiquitous Germanic pest Herr Haufner, and was relieved to see Elizabeth at the desk conversing with some yokel from North Dakota who had a cousin in Stuttgart. “His name is Manheim, Helmut Manheim. Would you know him?”

“I am from Munich, I am sorry, but I do not know him,” she answered patiently.

“I figured since Germany was a small country, you might know him.” At the utter stupidity of his question, it occurred to me that the guy was trying to make time with my girl. It seemed an eternity while the cretin went on and on about his family in Germany. Finally, he moved on, and it was my turn at the information desk. I broached the subject of the concert, and Elizabeth replied that she had to work on the evening in question. She muttered something to herself in German that did not contain the only German words I knew, “sauerkraut” and “schweinhund,” which left me very much in the dark. Suddenly, she said: “Maybe with me Inge will make the exchange.” She darted back into the office for ten seconds and came out smiling. “Yes, Robert, I will come. It will be wonderful.”

Inge came out and said, “She will have a good time, no? A better time than she has here. You will both think of me when you have a good time, no?” Good old Inge.

On the appointed evening, I insisted on picking up Litzabet (the German pronunciation) at the Lefrak City apartment she shared with the three other women. Elizabeth suggested that I come up and see the apartment. Walking down the hall, I noticed that almost every door had a mezuzah on it, indicating to my amusement that the four fräuleins from Berlin were living in a very Jewish neighborhood.

Elizabeth greeted me with a European double-cheek kiss, leaving me with my hand extended, and led me into the living room, decorated with rented Danish modern furniture and abstract reproductions. It was a four-bedroom apartment that the Berlin Chamber of Commerce had rented for the duration of the fair.

On cue, Goetje and Helge came out of their respective rooms to say hello. It was a novelty to see three of the girls (Inge was holding the fort at Checkpoint Charlie) in something other than their uniforms. Goetje was even in a bathrobe, looking no less gorgeous for it, and Helge wore pin curlers and gaily showed me around the place. Next to each bed were picture postcards and family photos, including old German faces, and I wondered if the ancestors of these adorable and perfectly agreeable young women had been tormentors of my kinsmen.

Elizabeth looked radiant, in a bright summer dress that highlighted her dramatic blue eyes and apparently beautiful breasts.

On the way into Manhattan in my Ford Galaxie, I pointed out every landmark like an expert tour guide. After a life of Volkswagen Beetles, Elizabeth couldn’t believe how big my car was. The skyline was glimmering, looking its absolute best in the late dusk, and I had a story for every building and point of interest. It was my city, the city of my birth, the city that I loved, and seated next to my foreign companion, I waxed rapturous and romantic. If the guys could only see me now, with a beautiful, bright German woman who loved Bach. If my parents could only see me now, going to a church with the daughter of a Nazi.

As a matter of fact, some of my friends would meet her shortly, several of them having planned to attend the concert. Twenty minutes later, there they were, in front of the entrance steps on Park Avenue: Roland Rofkin and the fraternal twins Fred and Frank Casden, the heaviest into Bach of the guys in our group. I was suddenly aware of their Beatnik, long-haired, whiskered counterculture look, to which my schoene matjen paid no attention, greeting them warmly. Roland, the bearded Marxist and linguistic dilettante, began conversing in German with her about his sojourns in her native land. As we entered the ornate Episcopal church and sat down, the twins gave me the high sign of approval behind her back from the next pew. We were psyched and ready as the small orchestra and solo trumpet opened the exquisite Cantata #147, “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben,” joined by an excellent chorus. There is something so beautiful about the first ethereal sound of music cutting through the silence that precedes it, the acoustics of the impressive church enhancing it all.

Elizabeth seemed to be excited and thoroughly involved in the spirit of the moment; taking my hand in hers, she squeezed it twice, sending an express train of nerve impulses directly to the synapses of every inch of my body, penis not excluded. This was decidedly different from the handshakes we had exchanged up to now, and after a few moments, as if on cue, we looked at each other simultaneously. Though she was smiling, I could see glistening tears in her eyes, but good tears, if you know what I mean. I could feel a lightness in my chest and shoulders and a sense of well-being and fulfillment. Forgive the cliché, but my heart was soaring. I was in exactly the place I wanted to be, with exactly the person I wanted to be there, accompanied by as magnificent a musical score as has ever been created. I felt then that this was one of the greatest moments of my life, and I still feel that today as I write this and hear the music in my mind, a gorgeous melange of trumpet and violins and rousing human voices. There were a couple of motets and a solo harpsichord piece and the performance was over all too soon.

I feared that the magical mood—more precisely, the spell—would end. After a long round of applause from the aficionados assembled, and the well-deserved bows of the singers and musicians, people from the church passed around large donation plates. My euphoric appreciation drew a twenty-dollar bill out of me—after all, singers and musicians, my fellow artists, had performed mightily and must eat. Of course, the Communists behind me sneered contemptuously at the plates. Their point of view on the matter was entirely different; they extolled the virtues of the arts and appreciated the creative talent, but they insisted that the proletariat was entitled to enjoy such talent free of charge; anyway, they wouldn’t give money to the opiate of the masses.

With the music still in our heads, Elizabeth and I made our way past the oak pews and elaborate stained-glass windows out to Park Avenue, holding hands tightly, suspended, silent.

The boys were thrilled and loquacious about the music. “Did you believe that singer? She was off the wall,” Frank said. Roland shook his head. “Beyond belief,” he said, “beyond all possible human concept of belief.” Fred, ever fidgety, rubbed his fingers together nervously, which he did when upset or ecstatic.

I was about to say goodbye and go for the car when Roland suggested that we all get something to eat. I hadn’t planned for that eventuality, and I looked to Elizabeth, who instantly acceded. We walked over to Lexington, it being an impossibility to get a cup of coffee on Park Avenue between Forty-second Street and Harlem. Elizabeth and I found ourselves swinging our joined hands in the rhythm of happy children. We found a coffee shop, and as the boys went in, Elizabeth pulled me to her on the sidewalk and looked into my eyes. “Robert, I want to thank you with my heart for this beautiful experience,” she said sweetly. Suddenly, I felt like I might bust if I didn’t kiss her right there in front of the coffee shop on Lexington Avenue and she didn’t kiss me back. I did and she did and if that wasn’t Gene Kelly and MGM I was in the middle of, then I don’t know what is. A long kiss it was.

While sipping her tea and pecking at her bread and butter (who but a European would order bread and butter?), Elizabeth squeezed my hand under the table as we all recounted our impressions of the divine concert. Then, as was inevitable with these guys, politics came up, and I became apprehensive, knowing the tenacity and depth of commitment these boys had to their fucking socialist revolution and the peaceful overthrow of the United States government. The usual suspects—fascism, imperialism, proletariat, workers, exploitation, et al, rained over the table like a cannonade of howitzers, yet a good-humored Fräulein Schmidt withstood the barrage and the test of fire. I felt a certain pride as she charmed them and parried their ideology at the same time. It so happened that she lived in a country that was divided by electronic fences and machine guns. These middle-class City College Trotskyites seemed oblivious to the pragmatic side of the issue, the fact that this woman risked death to visit relatives in the eastern sector of her own country. Yet she was gracious and cheerful in the debate. The boys talked glibly at the safe distance of student theorists and intellectuals. She countered patiently, without bitterness, with first-person accounts of the difficult experiences of the individual who must live in the actual world these theories helped create. While she showed some pride in the strides taken by West Germany, she made it a constant point that Germany’s behavior during the Nazi era was cause for shame and retribution by the Allies, and that Germany must prove it had a place again in the civilized postwar world. This was good news to the four Jews assembled, though none of us took her for a Nazi. The real beauty of her affable behavior was her forbearance in a social situation that would be considered difficult by any objective person: the first encounter with my friends.

In the next several weeks, Elizabeth and I saw a good deal of each other, with much fervent hugging and long, sensuous kisses and, fairly soon, much more. She took to calling me endearing German names like Herzilein and Robertzien, who was a lovable character from German children’s books. She enjoyed pushing my hair from my eyes to a place behind my ear, and kissing me on the nose in public. I took great pleasure in everything, including no longer having to steal furtive moments at the Berlin pavilion and hide behind displays from a possible war criminal.

I had little money to spend, which did not faze Elizabeth in the least. We went to movies; she loved the Peter Sellers British comedies, as I did, and she adored the Marx Brothers at first sight—the pseudo-political farce Duck Soup hooked her. She was crazy about Chaplin, though it was taking a little longer to break her in to Laurel and Hardy and W. C. Fields, given the splendid stupidity in the one and the wry American subtlety in the other. We both liked the Supremes and the Beatles; in fact, “Baby Love” was her favorite pop tune, and she sang it in a southern German Munich twang.

We saw the sights of Manhattan arm in arm: the Empire State Building, the Circle Line, and the banjo pickers at Gerdes Folk City. Also included was some of my favorite Gotham esoteria, like the New-York Historical Society and the fabulous Cloisters monastery, scene of my recent triumph as a spear carrier and slaughterer of innocents. My tour-guide commentary, frequently so annoying to my friends—“Did you know that Aaron Burr had a farm on what is now the Upper West Side?”—pleased her immensely. We were so happy, we must have looked like a fashion ad in the Sunday Times.

She became a regular visitor to my minuscule pad on 153rd Street, where we held endless conversations. I had been in love with Judy in college, and I had felt deeply then, more than I had ever felt before. But I was older now, and out in the world, and those same feelings were surging through me once again. I felt excited and scared, awed by the power of my emotion; alternating with a blissful confidence, optimism, and pride.

The Bach played on and on whenever we were together, which was more and more. I loved making love while looking into her eyes to the accompaniment of the music: coitus and cunnilingus to cantatas, fellatio to fugues. Beyond satisfied, yet no desire to part our bodies, and hungry for an encore in twenty minutes. We did it tenderly and lovingly slow, and we did it fast and hot, and we did it every chance we got.

Leaving well enough alone has never been one of my strong points, so ever present in my mind was the anomaly of her being German and I being a Jew from the Bronx. I thought of my parents’ reaction to the relationship; there could be extremely rough sailing with my father. At the same time, I began to realize that this facet of Elizabeth, rather than a detriment, was powerfully attractive to me. In the shallower sense, it was a refreshing departure from my previous female companionship. In this difference I saw something deeper, even ennobling. It was a case of seeing the humanity of the enemy, of seeing and judging an individual on her own merits and not by ancestral baggage. But dammit, she was not the enemy. She had been an innocent baby during the war and the holocaust, and the sins of the fathers and the fatherland should not be blamed on the children, yet—those fucking Nazi bastards. How could they be close kin to a kind, considerate woman with such empathy and longing in her eyes?

We spent our nights together on my single bed, hardly big enough for one adult, and after ardent lovemaking, we would fall asleep entwined in each other’s arms and often wake up that way. I, the fitful sleeper who needed space to toss and turn, slept softly and, after the first few nights, had nary a dream of gassing and death. There was a prevalent cliché at that time, long before Betty Friedan, that European women “knew how to take care of a man.” Elizabeth, while no cliché, seemed to confirm this idea by insisting on cutting my nails, scrubbing me in the bathtub, and massaging my feet, which took a little getting used to.

She disdained only one aspect of my lifestyle—the smoking of cannabis sativa, which frightened and alarmed her. She had seen drug addicts in Hong Kong and France, she explained, and the fact that pot and heroin were at opposite ends of a wide spectrum did not dissuade her. “Robert, don’t take that poison into you,” she would say, truly concerned, even angry. It got to the point that I desisted from smoking the weed in her presence to placate her, sneaking an occasional toke in the bathroom. Still hiding from German authority? One evening she discovered me and became very upset, but she did not rebuke me. Instead, she began to weep. I thought she was mourning my downfall, but this was not the case. “Oh, my dear Robert. My dear dear man. This is your house, and I am interfering with your life and what you do, and I am so ashamed of having been discourteous,” she said through some profound weeping.

I took her in my arms. “No, not at all. Please don’t feel that way. I want you to feel at home here. You’re welcome here,” I insisted.

“No, my Herzilein, I do not have the right to intrude. It is difficult for me to feel at home . . . anywhere. I have worked so much all over that I have seldom been home. I do not even have a home; even in my mother’s house in Munich, I do not feel at home, as you say. It is not my house, and my mother reminds me of this with her behavior. She is not warm; I think sometimes she would rather not see me at all.” She stopped crying, though her eyes were glistening and red. “Remember, Robert, you told me about how when you were sick your mother would, how do you say, pamper you? Bring you chicken soup, make you comfortable? I was in Munich for three weeks before coming to New York. My mother had not seen me for nearly a year. I had caught a terrible flu in Hong Kong and was sick for a week in my mother’s house. She gave me no special treatment, no chicken soup, no hot tea. Barely a hug, a kind word, from one’s own mother. Can you imagine?”

In the course of our conversations about family and childhood, we each produced photos of our parents. I showed a wrinkled picture from my wallet of Ben and Frieda Klein, taken at my bar mitzvah. She showed a picture of her mother and sisters, who looked not a whit like her. Then she presented a snapshot of her father, Captain Schmidt, taken on the eastern front shortly before his death from Russian shrapnel. The picture shocked me once again into the realization that we were descended from disparate stock indeed. Captain Schmidt had Aryan good looks, an ornate uniform, and an arrogant, determined pose. The most disconcerting thing was that he looked like Elizabeth incarnate, though she hardly knew the man, since he died before her third birthday. Elizabeth told me that her striking resemblance to him was a huge emotional issue for her less than affectionate mother, for whom it was a painful reminder of happiness and future lost. The mother favored the other two daughters, who had more of her own temperament and looks.

It was an emotional issue for me, too, though I did not reveal immediately to what extent the picture was so disturbing. Our relationship was already groundbreaking for me, an inexperienced provincial boy, and all too captive of well-founded prejudices. It was an exercise in acrobatics without a net, and I felt that I was growing up in a hurry. “Your father was a very handsome man,” I offered, visions of documentary holocaust footage dancing in my head. “It’s hard for me to imagine him being your flesh and blood. I’m so conditioned to hating that uniform and what it stands for. Is it hurtful for you to hear that?”

“No, Robert, I don’t wonder that you have this feeling. But he also had no choice in the matter. He had to be a soldier.”

He vas obeyink awdahs, I thought. Then again, what the hell was I so shocked about, anyway? Every man the age of Elizabeth’s father in World War II Germany would have had to serve in the military. What did I expect him to be wearing, a yarmulke with sideburns? I looked from my sweet Elizabeth to the Nazi officer and back again—that darling, gorgeous, passionate Elizabeth who had not a discernible trace of prejudice. I looked again at her father. “He might have killed me if I had been alive,” I laughed, trying to break the tension I alone had created. She took my face in her hands and tenderly looked into my eyes. I looked right back, into those blue eyes, those incredible, sincere blue eyes. I was so unfamiliar with women who had blue eyes.

“Ach, my Robert, my Robertzien, my darling. What a tragedy that would have been, for you to be killed. I never would have met my Herzilein.” She kissed me, and then again, advancing in tiny, almost imperceptible footsteps, nudging me onto the small bed, whereby we proceeded to join, harmoniously, two dissonant worlds.

*  *  *

One evening I sounded out my sister on the subject of my growing connection with Elizabeth. It wasn’t yet like this was a serious consideration of marriage. I was too young and too penniless, not to mention too jobless, to think ahead more than twenty-four hours. But for all the rationalizations I could make, this woman and I had exchanged intimacies and emotions, and for better or worse, I was crazy about her. I was practically living with the woman. An older woman. A German woman. My wonderful sister, Rhoda, the teacher, four and a half years older than I, had always been my tolerant protector and confidante.

After a little teasing goose step while holding a black comb under her nose, and a quick rendition of “Deutschland Uber Alles” (Rhoda always had a good sense of humor), she suggested that our mother would not be a problem but our father was another story. In fact, she could not control her hysterical laughter at the prospect of my bringing Fräulein Schmidt home to meet Daddy. That larger-than-life daddy whom I had been aiming to please forever. That daddy who ranged from the funniest person I’d ever known to a brooding, angry, extremely stubborn man, who could remember a slight from thirty years ago and get angry all over again. That daddy who hated Germany and Germans. Who’d sooner see me bring home a Zulu maiden than one of them. “You’ve got to be kidding, pussycat,” my sister said, without missing the humor in the, to say the least, incongruous equation. “They’d never turn you and a friend down for dinner, but . . .” She began to laugh again.

“Rhoda, have a heart, for Chrissakes!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I suddenly flashed on Elizabeth’s beautiful eyes and how tightly she would embrace me and I her. She was so grateful to be hugged and held, she needed it so. Bone-crushing hugs that were reassuring and carnal at the same time, followed by deep kisses, a feast in themselves. I had forgotten how profound and exciting kissing could be. All this followed by copulation for sometimes record-breaking lengths of time. Jesus, I was twenty-two . . .

Rhoda continued: “It could be very uncomfortable, especially for Daddy. Mother will be ostentatiously kind and call her ‘dahling,’ and Daddy will pretend the whole thing is not happening.”

Our father, as was the case with many of his generation, was still transfixed by the war and, more specifically, the slaughter of the Jews in Europe. The newsreel image of millions of Germans seig-heiling at Hitler with adoration etched on their faces did not fade easily and, for him, was proof that the German people were “one hundred percent behind Hitler” and the atrocities he carried out. He saw no nuances, here, of new, innocent generations and recent allies. While stopped at red lights, he still cursed quietly at the drivers of Mercedeses and Volkswagens, and continued his enmity toward any and all who had opposed America’s entry into the war. Though they had met many survivors of the holocaust, and had friends who fought in its battles, it is safe to say that Ben and Frieda Klein had never exchanged a word with a postwar German and might feel awkward doing so. They were nonreligious—one could say secular—Jews, who probably envisioned having a Jewish daughter-in-law someday but had never made a big deal about the religion of anyone I dated. So how about a nice, homey tête-à-tête with the totally Teutonic blond, blue-eyed daughter of Captain Schmidt? I reckoned there was a first time for everything.

It occurred to me that I might be forcing this whole issue in a kind of “yank my parents’ chain, tell it like it is” truthfulness campaign. Needling my father, who could needle with the best of them, had a kind of appeal; but I had in mind to show him, up close and personal, that the sins of the fathers should not be visited upon the sons or daughters. That Elizabeth, despite her forebears, was an ethical, even wonderful, human being. On the other hand, who was I to moralize, lecture, and correct him? Sweet Papa, who had lived those trying, horrific days of war, which were full of uncertainty: What if America had lost the war; would we have been slaughtered like the European Jews? He did his turn as an air-raid warden in the Bronx, since he was thirty-four, with a child, at the war’s commencement and therefore too old to be drafted.

I decided to bring up the subject of the dinner guest during one of my weekly phone calls to my parents. “You wanna bring a girl home for dinner?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“This Joiman girl?” He pronounced German as “Joiman” in the manner of New Yorkers like Groucho Marx and people from Georgia like Oliver Hardy.

“You wanna bring a Joiman girl home? Here? For dinner?”

“Yes, she’s a friend of mine, and I think you and Mother would enjoy meeting her. Besides, she’s a long way from home and her family, and I really think she’d like to meet you.”

“Is she a Jewish girl?”

“Hardly,” I replied.

“What’s the matter with you, Benny?” my mother chimed in with that exasperated tone she had perfected during thirty-two years of marriage. “Robert told us about this young lady, she’s a German girl from Germany, right, darling?”

“That’s right, Ma,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that a German girl might well be expected to come from Germany.

“Very nice,” my father said in a slow, disgusted, sarcastic way that I knew well. “Very nice.”

“Oh, Benny stop. She’s just a friend, right, darling?”

“Right, Ma.”

“Maybe I’ll make sauerbraten,” my mother said thoughtfully, without a trace of humor.

“Ma, that’ll make her feel right at home, I’m sure.”

“You want me to make her feel right at home?” my father said. “I’ll make her feel right at home. I’ll show her pictures of Auschwitz, then she’ll feel right at home.”

“Oh, Benny, ma elleg vote,” she said in Hungarian (enough already).

“Would she like a goulash or maybe a nice knockwurst?”

“I’ll get on that with her right away, Ma.”

*  *  *

On the appointed evening, Elizabeth and I transited the Henry Hudson Parkway north to the Bronx in my Ford Galaxie. I was uncharacteristically quiet, trying to be nonchalant, hiding my apprehension, having purposefully underplayed my anxiety about the meeting so as not to upset Elizabeth. I had, to be sure, made some weak jokes in the previous few days about Elizabeth meeting my parents, but I dared not let on as to my true feelings in the matter. But the reality never left my mind for a second that I was bringing home Captain Schmidt’s daughter to my parents’ apartment in the Bronx for dinner. Elizabeth was, don’t you know, genuinely looking forward to the parental encounter. Was she a totally mature, worldly woman, unfazed by such events? Or was she obtuse and not thinking this through?

She cradled a bouquet of flowers in her arms for my mother and a set of mini screwdrivers, purchased from an African street vendor, for my father. I smiled: The screwdrivers seemed to me a stereotypic German gift, and my father enjoyed such gadgets yet had not the slightest idea how to use them.

I got a beautiful parking space right in front of my parents’ building, which I took to be a good omen: Perfect parking spots always are.

We were about to be buzzed in when Nanette Newman from Apartment 2F came into the outer lobby and let us in with her key. We entered the art deco inner lobby with its silver stripes on steel doors and elegant black lines and circles made of marble on the floor. “So, Robert, long time no see, where you been hiding?” Nanette had been my den mother when I was a Cub Scout, and I had known her all my life, but I would have preferred to enter the building anonymously. I felt like I had something to hide—like sneaking a Nazi officer’s daughter into 3525 Decatur Avenue.

“Hi, Nanette, I’ve been busy working in television for the summer.”

“Television, what channel are you on? We’ll tune in,” she said, sneaking more than casual glances at Elizabeth.

“I’m not on camera, it’s more of a production job,” I said. Her eyes met Elizabeth’s, and they smiled, making an introduction unavoidable. “Nanette Newman, this is Elizabeth Schmidt,” I said, covering my mouth on her last name.

“Smith?” Mrs. Newman said.

“Oh, did I say Smith? No, it’s Schmidt,” I said, almost inaudibly.

“How do you do, young lady,” she said. They did not shake hands, as Elizabeth’s were full, but Fräulein Schmidt bowed slightly and said; “My pleasure.” I suddenly had one of those Teutonic flashes. That was exactly the way the gestapo officers had behaved in Rick’s club in the movie Casablanca, except they clicked their heels as they bowed.

We watched the lighted progress of the original-equipment, groaning elevator. It had passed us and gone to the basement. Of all the times to have a yearlong elevator wait. Finally, the elevator doors parted to reveal an assortment of women with their laundry baskets, all of whom were high on my list of people I’d least like to deal with at the moment, much less in a slow, crowded elevator. We joined Selma Abramowitz from 6H, Lil Weinberg from 4C, and Barbara Goldstein from the fifth floor. “Robbie boy, what are you doin’ slummin’ on Decatur Avenue,” said Barbara Goldstein, whose ample breasts and curvaceous hips had been the object of my strongest childhood sexual fantasies. “You never visit, your mother and father won’t recognize you.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. She was still beautiful but much the worse for wear and weight.

“Elizabeth, these are some of my neighbors, Barbara and Lilian and Selma.”

“Oh, a friend from college?” asked Selma.

“No, vee deed nut go to college togezzah, vee are friends from aftah college,” Elizabeth volunteered cheerfully.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” said Nanette. The doors opened on the second floor, the den mother got off, and the doors closed again.

“I bet you’re from Israel. Huh? Am I right?” Selma said.

“Nah, she’s not from Israel,” said Lil, “you’re from Sweden, right?”

“No, I am from Germany. Munich, in fact.”

“That’s nice,” said Lil. The enthusiastic geography quiz ended abruptly, and except for a few stolen glances at Elizabeth, the women’s heads were down for the rest of the ride. Selma had never in her life been quiet for that length of time.

The door to Apartment 6F opened, and there was Benny, sporting a slight smile, which I read as strained and apprehensive. “Come in, come in,” he said in a forced tone. So far, so good. He could have been flashing photos of Himmler at Bergen-Belsen. Frieda ambled in from the kitchen drying a dish, untroubled, and looking more beautiful than usual. She had clearly spent extra time on hair and makeup.

“Hello, Ma, Dad, this is Elizabeth,” I said. There was a good deal more mirth and energy in my voice than was called for, but let’s face it, this visit was taking its toll on me, too.

“How do you do?” my father said with all the detached grace of a prince of Hapsburg, while my mother simultaneously said, “Hello, dear,” and shook her hand.

Elizabeth charged right into the spirit of the evening. “Oh, I am very heppy to meet you, Meesta and Meeses Klein.” I made a quick check of Benny’s face to see if the German accent had freaked him, but I could not tell. He had the countenance of a boxer about to encounter an adversary he believes he can handle. “These are for you,” Elizabeth said, handing the flowers to Frieda and the gaily wrapped screwdrivers to my father.

“No, no, why did you do that? I can’t accept this,” my father complained. He had always been incapable of receiving gifts or the largesse of others graciously, perhaps because he imagined he would be in their debt. Though this was a gift from a stranger, he would have reacted the same way had the giver been his sister. It reflected insensitivity on his part, it never having occurred to him that the giver of the gift is deriving pleasure from the act as he himself did on occasion.

“Oh, thank you, dear, these are beautiful,” my mother said, quite unaccustomed to receiving flowers. She smelled them, obviously pleased.

Elizabeth hesitated in the foyer, and Benny grabbed her arm and led her past the formally set dinner table and into the living room, past my ottoman-room combo to the couch located next to Frieda’s baby grand.

“Oh, a piano. Do you play, Mr. Klein?”

“No, he plays the violin. I play the piano,” my mother said as, in one sweeping motion, she handed me the bouquet, sat down at the baby grand, and played an arpeggio with a flourish of her hands. One could never tell what tune Frieda would choose, but the leading candidates were usually “Small Hotel,” “Falling in Love with Love,” or “Every Little Breeze Seems to Whisper Louise.” She broke into “Liebestraum,” a piece she had never before played, thus displaying a by-ear virtuosity and a musical Freudian slip at the same time. I was grateful that at least “Ach, Du Lieber Augustine” had not occurred to her, and I hoped that sauerkraut was not on the evening’s menu, as much as I loved sauerkraut.

Elizabeth, who was enthralled by Frieda’s piano playing, wouldn’t have cared in the least. She seemed to be quite moved by my warm, gregarious, talented mother, which might have triggered thoughts of the less than ideal relationship she had with hers.

Benny could not take his eyes off Elizabeth. I could sense him noting her Aryan blondeness, but couldn’t he see the tears in her eyes as Frieda, feeling like Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall, gave it her smashing, shmaltzy best? Benny’s concentration permitted me strategic peeks at his reactions. He still looked like someone who had decidedly not melted, who was planning his debating strategy.

Frieda ended her piece with a dramatic two-hand, two-foot-high flourish that elicited a handsome ovation from the two of us. My father ignored Frieda’s triumph, and when the applause ended, he said to Elizabeth, “So, let me ask you something, honey. Do you think all those people in the street cheering him, you think someone was twisting their arms?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Klein?”

“All those people I saw in the streets, with their hands up cheering him, were they forced to do it?”

“All what people cheering whom?” Elizabeth smiled, not having a clue.

“Hitler,” my father said.

“Hitler?” Elizabeth said.

“I’m not talking about Frank Sinatra,” Benny said.

“Dad, please, this is not the time for that stuff. Come on.”

“What’s wrong? I’m just asking a question. She doesn’t mind, do you?”

“Well I—No, I don’t mind, Mr. Klein.”

“But I do,” I said.

“Bela . . . meckholuk . . . bulonvudge,” my mother said in Hungarian, which, roughly translated, means: Benny . . . I’m going to drop dead . . . you’re crazy.

“She says she doesn’t mind. I just want her opinion on a few things, that’s all. What are you making such a big megillah about?” my father said with an innocent-mischievous look.

“What is a megillah?” Elizabeth asked.

“It’s nothing. It’s a big deal about nothing. Ma, play another song,” I said, visions of patricide dancing in my head.

Frieda instantly launched into her opening arpeggio and a spirited version of “Falling in Love with Love.” To my relief, Elizabeth appeared entirely unfazed by the exchange and once again fascinated by Frieda and her music, smiling and swaying with the waltz.

“Look, I’m not meaning to insult you, miss, you don’t have to talk about the Nazis or the holocaust,” my father said to Elizabeth. Frieda was playing the piano, but hardly pianissimo, and Elizabeth could not understand what Benny was saying. He replied slightly more fortissimo, and I immediately broke into “Falling in Love with Love” quite loudly, in my best phony operatic baritone. As I’d hoped, Elizabeth loved it, and Frieda was always thrilled to have her baby boy sing along. Most importantly, Benny gave up, at least temporarily, on his inquisition.

In certain ways, his behavior at this dinner was typical. Both my mother and father were talented extroverts who needed an audience while entertaining company at home. This was usually manifested in her piano playing and his clowning with violin. There was at times a palpable competition between them for attention, particularly on his part.

Frieda wrapped up with yet another grand gesture and immediately shouted, “Let’s eat!” She led the way back the fifteen feet to the foyer—this was a small apartment. We always ate in the foyer when there was company, as opposed to the tiny kitchen, which was so intimate that from any one of the four seats one could reach stove, sink, or refrigerator. Indeed, my father often enjoyed sticking his hand up my mother’s dress and goosing her as she mashed potatoes at the stove. She would laugh and admonish at the same time. But now, at the foyer table, she was angry and asked him to come to the kitchen to help with the soup.

“Please let me help you,” Elizabeth said to my mother.

“No dear, you just relax, we don’t need any help, everything’s under control. Benny,” she said, with a withering look. When the kitchen door had closed behind them, a mere eight feet away, I could hear their angry voices. They attempted to suppress the volume of the argument, like they had as long as I could remember, considering the two children and the limited space and the fact that they had at least one argument every day of their lives. I do not recommend this as a modus operandi for couples, but there was great passion between them, and despite the fights, they engaged each other like the gears of a well-oiled machine; they seldom bored each other. These are not small attributes in a marriage.

“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. My father is so pigheaded and insensitive sometimes,” I said.

“Not at all, my darling. He is a little nervous; he is even cute. And this question about Hitler”—she began to laugh and covered her mouth—“this question was a little early in the evening, no? I know him for three minutes, and he wants me to answer questions about Hitler.” I laughed with her because it really was funny, and out of relief for the fact that my sweetheart was wise and temperate and still speaking to me.

Ben and Frieda returned with four bowls of matzo-ball soup, good and hot. Elizabeth had already nibbled on some of the delicious rye bread, and her eyes lit up at the soup. Dear Frieda. I had told her Elizabeth’s story about being sick in her mother’s house with no nurturing or chicken soup. “How divine is this soup,” Elizabeth said.

“Enjoy it, dahling,” said Frieda.

“Essen gut, du bist ein kluges matjen,” said Benny in reasonable German.

“Ah, spreckinze deutch, Herr Klein?”

“Ein bissel,” he replied in an accent that sounded suspiciously Yiddish. Between hearty slurps, he told her of his childhood in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, about the Germans and the Irish and the Jews and of swimming on hot days off a pier in the East River. My mother told her of how she and Benny had met in that neighborhood when he was eleven and she was ten, through their sisters, who were friends. “Mein Gott, such a long time you know each other and still married!” Elizabeth said and regretted it immediately. “Oh, Mrs. Klein . . . I did not mean it exactly that way, it’s just so rare that I have met people like you, together so long. You must know each other well.”

Frieda looked at Benny, rolled her eyes, and said, “Please don’t remind me, dear.”

I helped my mother clear the soup plates, giving us a chance to talk alone. When we were safely inside the kitchen, Frieda let loose: “Yoy ishtunem, I thought I would die,” she said, her right hand over her heart for emphasis. Then she began wringing her hands furiously: “The girl walks in the house, and he asks her if she likes Hitler. Did you ever? He’s crazy, I know this for years now.”

“I don’t know, Ma, she seems none the worse for wear. She actually laughed about it, even said he was cute.”

“Yeah, cute a shegedbeh,” Frieda said, which in Hungarian means “cute, my ass.”

“She’s very understanding, Ma. It’s like this European thing. I don’t know, she’s just more mature than the American girls I know. She’s been through more, taken more risks. You know what I mean? She’s a real woman.”

“Let’s take these plates in, because he’s probably chewing her ear off,” she said. We returned to the foyer with plates of chopped chicken livers and eggs on a bed of lettuce and tomato. Since she was entertaining, Frieda had even used an ice-cream scoop to give the chopped liver an even, well-rounded appearance, and had placed a garnish of parsley on each. Parsley was not an everyday thing in the Klein household.

Benny was in the middle of his “how worried I am about my son wanting to be an actor” routine, which included the “fall back on teaching” theory. His nonstop conversation at least afforded the famished girl a chance to eat. “Oh, Mrs. Klein, this pâté is delicious,” she said. “Oh, ‘pâté,’ ” Benny said, as his pinky went up in a crude, faggy high-society shtick. “Fancy-shmancy name for chopped liver.”

“Which kind of liver, pork liver, or from a cow?” said our guest in earnest.

“Pork liver? Ecch, fuy. Nah, this is chicken livers with chopped egg,” said Benny, eating voraciously, and leaving a nice dollop of liver on his upper lip. “Delicious, oyon feenum,” he said to Frieda. She loved it so when people enjoyed her cooking, most particularly because she did not like to cook. Of course, we knew that praise from Benny was infrequent at best; and for him to acknowledge her culinary accomplishment, or any accomplishment, was one of her little victories in the saga of their marriage. “My wife makes the best chopped liver I ever tasted. It’s not too livery, you know what I mean? You go and have other people’s liver—or in a restaurant—it’s too, I don’t know . . . livery. She puts in just enough egg.”

“Couldn’t that make it too eggy?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s never too eggy.”

“But Pop, if you don’t like the taste of liver, why eat it?” I said.

“Who said I don’t like the taste of liver?”

“You did. You complimented Mother’s liver by saying it’s not too livery. And you only eat filet of sole burned to a crisp because it’s not too fishy. Elizabeth, listen to this, the only fresh vegetable he eats is tomatoes. Can you believe it? He’s never eaten a salad in his life, he thinks lettuce is for cows.” Elizabeth laughed, but it was true. Benny ate only meat and potatoes, disdained any and all greens, and couldn’t figure out why he moved his bowels once every two weeks. Perhaps it was because he had the diet of the average adult puma.

Frieda removed the appetizer plates, including the one lonely lettuce leaf, and I assisted by getting a pitcher of water to refill the glasses. “Please let me help,” Elizabeth said, and again Frieda demurred: “No, darling, you just sit and eat, we’re fine.” Once in the kitchen, Frieda placed a huge amount of her stuffed cabbage on a platter and a good-size pot roast on another, then mashed the fried onions with paprika into the potatoes, which made a lovely orange color punctuated with black polka dots of charred onion. The old standby canned peas, having been poured from the can into a pot, were now poured from the pot into a decorative (for company only) bowl. Some sour pickles and, yes, sauerkraut were placed on a relish dish. The whole thing smelled wonderful.

We returned with the main course unnoticed, due to Benny’s intense and persistent verbal barrage, which, to my horror, had turned once again to World War II. “I say to you they had to know people were being murdered. I say to you: What did they think was happening to all those families who were being loaded onto trucks and taken away? Where were they going, a Ping-Pong match?” My father would often preface an opinionated statement with “I say to you,” to give it more gravitas. True, he could also be found using it in less important contexts, in a kind of pompous pretense of knowledge. For example: “I say to you, that the Birds Eye canned peaches are superior to the Del Monte and got them beat a mile.” But on this occasion Benny was really rolling, and he wasn’t talking about canned fruit. He was engaged in a crusade to win the ethical debate of World War II. Unfortunately, he was debating himself, his would-be opponent being reticent to argue, and entirely sympathetic to his point of view.

“I say to you, the German people were one hundred percent behind him.”

Elizabeth did not immediately respond, but she let out a quiet sigh. “Dad, cut it out. She doesn’t have to answer for Germany, for Chrissakes, she was three years old.”

“No, Robert, don’t be angry. I cannot speak for Germany, but I can speak for myself. Your father has asked honest questions . . . emotional questions.” Elizabeth took Benny’s hands in hers and looked into his eyes, much to his discomfort. “What the Nazis did to millions of people can never be forgiven. It can never be forgotten, though some Germans would like to, I know. Believe me when I say that there are many Germans, particularly the young, who believe this, as I do, Mr. Klein. We Germans—we must do everything to prove we are worthy of redemption in the future. In my heart, there is so much sadness and guilt for what happened . . . never mind that I was a child. There is a collective feeling of guilt, even among the innocent, because one is German. Do you believe me?”

Benny would not relent—he was a man who had something to get off his chest. He had always made these points to an audience of the convinced: relatives and friends 99 percent of whom were Jews. Here he was being given the never-to-be-imagined opportunity to tell it to a German. “It’s not you, it’s not your fault. It’s them,” he said. “There’s plenty of them walking around in Germany—criminals, murderers—they claim they never knew anything about what was going on.”

“This may be true, but please believe me that there are more Germans who are not that way.”

“Eh, what’s the use of talkin’,” my father said with disgust. I had heard this expression all my life, in my father’s disagreements with his wife and children. It was what he said when futile anger and a kind of fatigue came over him and defeated him, and the argument was over.

There was a long silence in the room. A very long silence. Finally, I could hear my mother inhale, about to speak. I put my finger to my lips and silenced her. Then something happened that I still can’t figure out to this day. Benny put his head down and began to sob. I could see a tear under Elizabeth’s eye as well. My mother and I looked at each other, decided not to be embarrassed, put down the platters of food we had been holding all this time, which were heavy in more ways than one, and proceeded to put a comforting hand on the shoulder of our respective mates. Both recovered quickly in the spirit of moving on and not wanting to make a big deal out of it.

My father spoke first to Elizabeth: “I’m sorry, honey, I felt so sad for a minute there. I’m sorry. Let’s eat.”

“I also felt emotional, I can tell you. So do not apologize, Mr. Klein.”

“Call me Benny.”

“You do not need to be sorry, Benny.”

“All right,” I said. “Let the world war be over and let the eating war begin.”

The tears had put a temporary crimp in some appetites, but soon enough, the stuffed cabbage and pot roast were heavily dented, and Elizabeth couldn’t stop raving about the Hungarian potatoes. After a dessert of pastries and coffee, Elizabeth asked my mother to play some more piano. Benny’s spirits were sufficiently improved that he took out his violin and did an assortment of shticks and funny faces that had the patina of many years of performance, though some were improvised. His horrible violin playing by itself was hilarious, and he was a big living room hit, as usual. He directed most of his comedy toward our guest. One could almost say he was flirting with her, and who could blame him? “You know something, honey? You’re a real mensch,” Benny said to Elizabeth. It was one of his highest compliments.

“That is a good thing, no?” she said.

“Are you kiddin’? Of course it’s a good thing.”

Frieda played her last song—“Small Hotel”—followed by the procession to the front door. Elizabeth said, “Thank you so much for your kindness and hospitality, and Benny, thank you for the vigorous conversation. Ach, you are such a talented family. God bless you.”

In the elevator on the way down, we caught it lucky and were alone, a situation I took full advantage of. I could not wait to put my hands on her, to kiss her, this wonderful girl: a first for me, by the way, kissing in the elevator I had spent so much of my life in.

Later, in the narrow bed, squished delightfully together, we spoke less than usual but were communicating more. The day’s events had made us more thoughtful, more confident, as if something important had been accomplished, a hurdle overcome. It was not the conventional idea of seeking parental approval or bringing home one’s intended to meet the folks. It was more the feeling of a huge object—a glacier comes to mind—being moved a short distance when no one believed it could be done. This was really good stuff. “Good night, Robertzien,” she said. “Good night, my darling mensch,” I said. There was a giggle and a squeeze, and the harpsichord played The Well-Tempered Clavier, and that’s all I remember.