At the opera Leib enounters first a youth, who
offers him sweets; and then his natural father,
who puts him and his panpipe onstage.
Whether or not it was a dream, he wakes
in the arms of his kissing cousin.

OUR SEATS THAT night were in the two-Kronen Promenade. Here we have a manner of speaking, since in this all-male section it was required to stand, as if in tribute to Franz Joseph, whose Imperial Box was directly over our heads. Yes, His Apostolischen Majestät was just three meters above me, though of course he could have no inkling that the prizewinner on whom he would come to bestow a Rudall & Rose model was but three meters below. In similar fashion, how could I have known that all the things that so dazzled the child—the crush of the crowds, the tuning of instruments, the gleam of the Kaiserstein staircases, the gold and ivory and ruby-red plush of the boxes—would become commonplace to the already-balding Graduate, once he arrived daily at the Staatsoper to perform his duties as Glockenspieler and Dudelsackpfeifer.

Ah, that triple chandelier! Its thousand lights! Would that the Americans had dropped their bombs on Dachau, on Auschwitz, thus freeing many families along with my own, instead of on the same front railing at which Gaston Golkorn had cleared enough room for me to see the ship that was carrying the Irish princess across the sea.

“Das Schiff, Papa! Das grosse Schiff!”

“Shhhhhhh!”

The Viennese about us began to hiss, even as the stout lady on the stage asked a musical question:

Sag, wo sind wir?

“On a big boat!” came the piping reply. “With a sailor!”

Again the hissing sound, as if from faulty steam pipes.

I looked at the singer—white-gowned and bejeweled—who was praying that a sea storm would wreck her ship and drown all aboard: those fair locks of hair, parted in the center; the charcoal rings around the eyes; the meat-eater’s jowls—

“Look, Papa! It’s the lady in the lift!”

The whole Promenade seemed to erupt:

“Throw him out!”

“Who let in that beknackter Jude?”

“Das ist ein Skandal!”

Even the Leutnante and Oberleutnante, who only had to pay ten hellers for admittance, began to bang their scabbards against the brass rods that separated their section from ours.

“Arrest him!”

“Wo ist der Platzanweiser?”

“Ja! Ja! der Platzanweiser!”

But the usher, an old man whose thin neck rose from a stiff collar, was already on his way. “What’s this? Speaking? Speaking ist streng verboten.”

Here a young man, still in his teens, addressed me. “What a pretty boy. Does he want sweets? Here they are.” From the pocket of his topcoat he withdrew what turned out to be a Kaiserschmarrn with raisins and powdered sugar, which he unwrapped and held out in the palms of his hands. Immediately my mouth filled with a syrup. “Now hush. Be still. Fill up your lovely little mouth.”

Like an Eichörnchen, a sort of chipmunk, I did. Lost in that sugary trance, I paid little attention to the dispute between the soprano in white and the tenor in chain mail: She wants to speak to him, he won’t speak to her; she’s going to marry his uncle, but instead she forces her maid to prepare a Todestrank; and then the princess and the knight have a big argument, all the time with violins sawing and a hullabaloo in the horns—in short, not the sort of story that would capture the imagination of a boy who had already read the tale of how Old Shatterhand killed a grizzly with a single blow of his fist.

Nun wieder nimm das Schwert

I lifted my head. What did this Tristan say? Ein Schwert? A sword!

und führ es sicher und fest

“Papa! Help! He wants her to kill him!”

Once more: the hissing Huns; the angry soldiers; and, from what seemed a continent away, down in the orchestra, the conductor turning, shading his eyes, staring up at the source of the disturbance. Then the young teen—he had a forelock that fell across half his brow, though he was too young to grow, under his nose, more than a few hairs of a moustache—invited me to dig into the jacket pocket of his salt-and-pepper suit. What a treasure: half a Salzburger Nockerl. Light as air! Not only that, but it seemed that my outburst had caused the couple onstage to change their minds, since the Isolde took the sword from the Tristan and drove its point into the planks of the ship instead of the ribs of his body.

Auf das Tau!

That was the cry from the shipboard sailors, much like that of our own naval cadets when they sing their own C. Zimmerman anthem—

Den Anker lichten!

“Anchors away!”

Now came the moment of terror. The lift lady persuades the bold knight to drink a goblet of forgiveness, which, with an interesting rhyme, he brings to his lips:

Vergessens güt’ger Trank

dich trink ich sonder Wank

“No! Herr Tristan! It’s poison! There’s poison inside!”

The whole crowd began to shout louder than claqueurs do for their favorites. This time the conductor actually lowered his baton, while His Majesty’s Armeeoffiziere rattled the brass bars, as if they meant to leap into the two-Kronen section and throttle the miscreant in their midst. Now the teenage youth drew closer, holding open the pocket of his speckled trousers. “Here, my handsome friend. Your treat is inside.”

With eagerness I groped in the depths. Yes, something was there, warm and tubular, like a quark cheese strudel, though in consistency resembling a Thüringer Wurst.

Süsseste Maid!

This exclamation rises from Tristan, who has not been poisoned after all, unless one counts as venom the potion that forces one to fall in love.

Trautester Mann!

Thus answers Isolde, as they drop into each other’s arms.

At that instant my own arm was seized. It was the elderly usher.

Der Platzanweiser: “You. Troublemaker. Provokateur. Come with me.”

He sought to pull me away, but my right hand remained clamped on the delicacy, from which Schlagobers had begun to ooze.

Now not two, but three voices cry out in ecstatic joy:

Tristan:

Isolde:

Young Wagner fan:

Liebeslust!

The Imperial official—for that he was, if only a lowly usher—yanked me away. The putative père, who all this time had not removed his gaze from the two-chinned soprano, started to come after.

“Nein,” said the Platzanweiser. “The boy. Not you.”

Onward sails the ship, into the port. Down goes the gangplank.

Kornwall, heil!

shouts the crew.

To the sound of the trumpets and the rumble of the descending curtain, the old usher and the young boy—not yet six years of age—abandoned the Promenade.

ZWEITER AUFZUG

Or, in plain English, Act Two.

One night, while King Mark and his knights are off on a hunting party, the lovers meet beneath what appears to be a gigantic lime tree.

Tristan: Isolde! Geliebte!

Isolde: Tristan! Geliebter!

And so forth and so on, mit Küssen, mit Umarmungen, the sort of kisses and hugs that Old Shatterhand would bestow only on an Apache blood brother or, from time to time, his horse. Nor were the melodies what we might call toe-tappers, with the peppiness of a tunesmith like V. A. Bely, winner of the Stalin Prize.

Still, I was not for a single moment bored. This was because of the bespectacled conductor, who had arranged for me to sit, half hidden, at the side of the stage. From there I could see him waving what seemed a half dozen arms, demanding more power from the brass, less volume from the strings, shaking his baton at the errant tympanist, and now and then pronouncing for the two lovers the words they had forgotten: Der Liebe nur zu leben—“to live only for love.”

Strange, the laws of genetics: Were there ever a man and a boy less alike than the conductor in his armchair and the lad on his three-legged stool? Thin-lipped and thick. Elfin-eared and Dumbo-esque. A full head of wild-streaming hair and, even at that tender age, a telltale thinning of the downiness, precursor of the Laufflächenauswaschung—let us not mince words: bald spot—to come. Nose: aquiline. Nose: button. Yet here were—have you guessed it?—father, G.M., and, L.G., son. What linked them ran far deeper than appearance: a river of musicality, a heart filled with song.

Of course, I did not know of our kinship at the time, though I believe I can say, one hundred years later, that I had a premonition. Yes, I sensed a greater fellow feeling with this stranger, his passion, his hypnotic baton, the flash of light from the lenses of his pince-nez, than I had ever experienced with the putative père, even on those occasions when, at a good harvest, he played see-me, see-me-not among the noble hops, or, in the icy Iglawa, playfully held my head under the water.

Uh-oh: the dawn is coming—and with it Mark, the King, who discovers that he has been betrayed by his most faithful friend—a moment that could not but recall to me the scene in which Old Shatterhand was tricked by land-grabbers into thinking that his Apache brother had led the massacre of a family of Anglo-Saxons. Luckily, my hero soon found out the truth; but when King Mark confronts Tristan, demanding to know why he has brought on this disgrace—

Warum mir diese Schmach?

—the tenor tells the bass he cannot answer:

O, König, das

kann ich dir nicht sagen.

Suddenly the villain, Melot, challenges the knight:

Verräter! Ha!

“Watch out, Tristan!” comes a childish treble from the wings. “He’s got a sword!”

The brave youth hears the warning cry and draws his own weapon:

Wehr dich, Melot!

There is a terrific fight, which might have come from the pages of Winnetou, der rote Gentleman—except in this battle it is our hero, Tristan, who falls wounded to the ground.

The shrill voice of a child: “Help him! Get up, Tristan! Get up!”

Alas, instead of the knight rising, the curtain of the k. k. Hof-Operntheater came slowly down.

Bravo! Bravo!

For the first time in my life I fell beneath the sway of the crowd. What force it had! What magnetic power! Under its spell, I slipped from my stool and began to make my way forward, and still forward, toward the hypnotic sounds.

But first I bumped into Isolde. She alone had remained behind the curtain, though the audience was now shouting her name: Lilli! Lilli!

She paid no heed until a single voice, arising from the wings, made her turn. “Lilli! Meine Liebe!”

I turned too. It was the putative père! I started to run to him, as did the lady in Isolde’s gown. A hand, however, gripped my shoulder. It was the teenager, the youth in the salt-and-pepper—and now sugary—suit.

“Time for more treats,” he said, while brushing the forelock from his rightward eye.

Then another hand knocked his away. “Who allowed this fellow to enter? Wächter, take this gentleman out.”

The speaker, I saw, was the conductor of the opera. Now he put both hands on my suspendered shoulders.

“Guten Abend, my little friend. What is your name? Wait. Let me guess. Leib, is it not? My geliebter Leib.” He smiled down on me, his glasses winking in the light. “I cannot tell you what a joy it is for me to meet you at last. Goodness, you have a head exactly like an egg! And a musical prodigy too! No, no: do not deny it. The Mozart of Iglau. I see you have your panpipe. It will give me much pride to hear you play it tonight.”

“I want my Vater. Papa! Gaston!”

But the grip of the conductor remained firm.

“Nein, mein Kind. Everything is arranged. Your, ah, Vater will remain with our Sopran until the morning. You and I will spend those hours getting to know each other. Lilli . . . !”

Here he called out, over the sounds of the shifting scenery, to the woman I had first seen in the lift.

Then he turned once more to me. “Leib, I want you to meet our wonderful Isolde—”

“Ja!” shouted my new friend, the pastry provider, as he continued to struggle with the attendants. “Eine Jüdin! A Jewess!”

The blond-headed soprano, with a half goiter, came forward.

“Lilli, I have told you about our famous prodigy. You will perform together tonight. My child, this is the famed Lilli Lehmann. You will be the Shepherd who summons her from afar with the notes from your flute.”

Here the maestro hummed a rustic melody, a C-sharp, a B-flat, a D. A simple tune to charm wayward sheep. “Have you committed it to memory?” he asked, and started to hum once again.

I put up my hand to stop him. “Alles ist hier,” I answered, pointing to my oval dome.

“Such a genius!” cried the singer, bending to give me a hug.

Lost in her arms, half overcome by the oak-moss smell from her “Jicky”-brand perfume, I glanced offstage to where the père was watching the two of us with strangely glittering eyes.

The next thing I knew, a stagehand had thrown a shepherd’s cloak over my back, and a second such Bühnenarbeiter plucked me from the boards and deposited me on a huge rock that, I could not help but notice, overlooked the distant horizon and the sea. I gazed about me in the dimming light; everyone had disappeared. I was alone with the wounded Tristan. From the far side of the curtain I could hear the string instruments beginning the prelude to—

DRITTER AUFZUG

—that is to say, Act Three.

The curtain went up to reveal a second sea—of faces, thousands of Viennese, some with moustaches beneath their noses, some with pearls around their necks. Just below me the Direktor of the kaiserlichen und königlichen Hof-Operntheater slowly beat his baton, with one finger, to emphasize the pianissimo, at his lips. That baton slowed further, and further still. It stopped.

Still in his armchair, the conductor was staring at me. A pause. My instrument was in my hand, but it felt as if the entire weight of the Bösendorfer Grand that had accompanied me only hours earlier was pressing down upon it. What was that first note? My mind had gone blank. The pause grew longer. As all of those men and women ranged below and above me, tier upon tier, with impatience cleared their throats, it was as though the flock were calling the Shepherd, Umäh, ummäh-h, mäh-h-h, rather than the Shepherd, C-sharp, B-flat, D, calling the sheep.

The Direktor lifted his face toward the boy on the rock and, just as he had prompted the forgetful singers, he now, by soundlessly moving his lips, prompted me:

Du spielst schöne Musik, mein herrliches Kind.

I raised the panpipe to my lips.

TWA—

“Pssst. Pssst.”

What was that? It sounded like eine Schlange among the sheep.

“Pssst!” Once more that hissing. I glanced down. There, hidden by my plaster promontory, a figure was slithering toward me on its belly. Was this the reptile from Das Rheinegold? Or one of the snakes from Die Zauberflöte? I looked again. It was the professor of piano! Epstein! Julius J.!

“Nicht! he hissed. “Don’t play! Not a note! There will be a Katastrophe!”

My breath, as you can imagine, caught in my throat.

“Mein Sohn.” That was the conductor, who rose from his armchair and aimed the point of his baton at the shepherd boy. “Spiel Musik.”

Again I brought my instrument to my lips.

TUF—

“Look. Look what I have for you.” Those words came not from the spot where J.J.E was still squirming forward, but from the other side of the rock. “Komm zu mir.” The teen! The young Wagnerian! He was crawling toward me on his hands and knees. “Palatschinken! Krapfen! Rum balls! Nut kisses!”

The pianist grasped one of my legs. The youth clutched the other. Both pulled in opposite directions.

“Hilfe!” I cried, for fear of being torn in two.

The dying Tristan, on the far side of the rock, raised his head. “Was ist hier los?”

Then the familiar rumble of the descending curtain drowned out every word.

Difficult to describe the chaos that ensued. A stagehand ripped the cloak from my shoulders. Another stagehand pulled me from my perch. Epstein, a Brahmsian, and the Wagnerite were swinging their fists at each other. A bass player ran across the boards, dragging his viol behind him. From out of the wings the prow of the ship nudged forward, then drew back again. Suddenly Herr Mahler, the conductor of the orchestra, strode forward and threw up his hands, as if demanding a diminuendo from all.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have endured my last insult. I announce for all to hear that this will be my final season in Vienna. I have decided to accept a position with the Metropolitan Opera of New York.”

“Gut! Exzellent!” So cried the fellow in the salt-and-pepper suit. “Let the Yid go to the Yids. We shall create a Vienna that is judenrein!”

G.M.: “It is true, I shall not miss such Antisemitismus. What I shall miss is not seeing this lad”—and here the Direktor pointed to none other than the five-year-old version of myself—“grow up to be hailed as the musician he was born to become. Yes, I would have liked to hear such a great artist. But my solace is that he, and he alone, shall bring to the world the only opera I have ever attempted. Yes, he alone!”

With that, the composer moved directly before me, holding a thick leather-bound book in his arms. “Here is my life. Here is your life. Here is the life of our people. Take it, my prince. Guard it. It is the only copy that exists in all the world.” So saying, he thrust the weighty volume into my hands and moved back to the pit, where, only a moment later, the violins and violas, and then the violincellos, took up the notes of the prelude once more. I barely had time to glance at what was written on the cover—Rübezahl, or The Turnip Counter—when Herr Salz-und-Pfeffer wrenched himself free of his captors’ grasp, ran forward, and snatched the manuscript score from my hands.

“Stop him!” everyone cried.

“Don’t let him get away!”

I saw the père dash forward and begin to wrestle with the youth for the prize of the book.

“Give it to me!” I cried. “Give it to me! It’s mine!”

In my short pants and peasant shoes, I struggled to join the fray; but before I could do so the Isolde, L. Lehmann, enfolded me once more in her full-fleshed arms.

“Great artist,” she said. “Did you hear the words of our maestro?”

“I heard: great artist.”

“Leibie,” she said. “Acordar. Wake up.”

“Accordion? No, panpipe. A born musician. That’s what he said.”

The great soprano’s golden hair fell over my face; the fair ringlets tickled my nose.

“Ah-h-h,” I sighed, even as I noticed that some other musician had begun playing the Shepherd’s tune. “Chooo!”

“Bom! At last you wake. You have been having em sonho.”

What? A dream? How could that be? I felt Isolde’s hair on my cheek, my brow. I smelled her “Jicky” perfume. But hold: this hair was not blond but black. I sat upright. I was not at the Royal and Imperial Opera House of Vienna. I was on Lindenstrasse 5. Beside me Hymena lay on her back, eyes rolled upward, three limbs extended, with a pink tongue hanging from her mouth. Cat nap.

“A dream?” I echoed. “Ein Traum?”

“Sim! You say, many times, artista excelente, artista excelente. And Músico nato. Born musician. Músico nato.”

“A dream?” I said once more. No, no: it could not be a dream. All these things actually occurred: Gustav Mahler departed the k. k. Hof-Operntheater that same year. Indeed, anyone can check the date of the famed L. Lehmann Tristan, an event still talked about in the coffeehouses of Vienna: the twenty-seventh of May, 1907. There are almost certainly fellow centurians, like myself not under the spell of Uncle Al, who to this day recall the little Shepherd Boy too frightened to play his pipes.

But then who is this woman of Latin mien? Is she seeking, with the Graduate, an expurgation? And why the patois in Portuguese? Could it be the Bombshell?

Why, why, why, why, why when I feel your touch

Madam Miranda?

My heart starts to beat, to beat the band?

No! A similar Senhorita. Madam Mengele! Minchke’s blood in her veins. The grandniece of truly yours. Ah, ah, ah: these Goldkorn family lips! Ooooh: these distinguishable mams. No doubt. No dream. It is my kissing cousin!