Leib discovers more survivors on the
Krupnick side of the family.

IN THE SAGA of my favorites, the Finns, the hero Kullervo experiences an eructation with his own sister. Such infatuations are common throughout all the folk of the world. Among my own people, Rebekah, “a virgin, neither had any man known her”—note how scripture oft says the same thing twice—married Isaac, her cousin. Ditto, as Rabbi Goldiamond taught us, with Jacob and Rachel and also Jacob and Leah, who was not a looker like her sister.

Need I mention the fun-loving Greeks? The Coreligionist has brought much attention to Oedipus and his dam, though one must admit that cohabitation did not end well. On the other hand—and here we rely on the lessons of Professor Pergam at the Akademie für Musik, Philosophie, und darstellende Kunst—we have the example of the joyous marriage of Zeus and his sister Hera, who so quickly pulled her breast from the nursing Hercules that she created—ha, ha, ha, how my still-living classmate, Willi Wimpfeling, laughed at this tale—the Milky Way.

Oh, you playful gods! But is it not on earth as it is in heaven? What of Cleopatra and her multiple brothers? Caligula and all three of his sisters? Olden times, you say? Close to my heart we have Franz Joseph I, bestower of the Rudall & Rose, and Elisabeth of Bavaria, a union of first cousins all too likely to lead, as with the whole Hapsburg line, to such inbreeding, with larger and larger lips, that Charles II of Spain could not chew his own food. A sudden thought: perhaps this is why our own Bonnie Prince Charles turned from a Number 10 like Princess Di and in a fit of hereditary madness wished himself to be a Tampax-brand inside the privies of, let’s face it, a plain Jane.

What are we to make of such shenanigans? Many readers will in disgust turn away. That is because of the teachings of the muftis and monks and mother superiors. I do not exempt my own religion: “None of you,” writes the hapless (see Isaac, see Jacob) Reb Leviticus, “shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.” All these thoughts, pro and con, race through my mind in the few seconds it takes my relative from Rio to perform on my body what is either a Brazilian rhumba or what my own half Finn would call a Laplandic dance.

What a dilemma for Leib Goldkorn! On the one hand is his epicurian nature. On the other are the deeply ingrained teachings of the mother superiors, along with the Goldiamond doctrine. In such a situation what is a man, and one with hair on his shoulders, to do?

“Oh! Oooo! Ohhh! You the pai! Meu papai. Big poppa!”

Answer, friends, to the enigma! My papei was not the père. That is, Gustav was not Gaston. Ergo, Minchke, the grandmother of this busty Bombshell, was only my half-sister. That means we have the green light! Gracious: it seems that Senhor Johnson has gotten the message too.

“Oooo. Muito grande! Imenso!”

“Sim, senhorita. Ha! Ha! Ha! Quatro Americano inches. Almost.”

“Volumoso! Oitenta milímetros! Enorme!”

“Let’s see, that’s, hmmm, twenty-five to the inch, divide the—”

But before I can complete the exercise in arithmetics, I begin to experience, believe it or not, Mr. Ripley, an indisputable peppercorn sensation.

“Meu herói. Meu namorado—”

What a busy bee, this Brazilian. Down go the Stutchkoff gabardines. Away with the S. Klein drawers. Now she opens the gates of Hades above me and begins to lower herself, bit by bit, as a cloud might descend upon the steeple that rises above a Christian town.

“Ha, ha, miss. I see London. I see France—”

What’s this? A pause? A hesitation? Fear, no doubt, for the maidenhead.

“Tío Leibie, you do what I ask? Um pequeno favor?”

“Anything!”

“Sign esto documento.”

What was that in her hand? The parchment! Yes, the map of Iglau. With the fields of Hopfen. A bit irregular, this: to introduce, during the throes of romance, a moment of mercantilism. What say, Watson: time for caution, eh?

“Yes! Ja! I will! Sim! Where? There? Show me die gestrichelte Linie. That means, auf Englisch, the dotted line.”

All the while I am in desperation patting the pockets of my lumberman-type jacket, and patting them again, until I find the Waterman pen.

“Here it is!” I cry, and with my teeth tear off the cap.

“Prenome” she says leaning forward so that our infernals actually came into contact. “E sobrenome.”

Action in the Netherlands; simultaneously the implement for penmenship and that for propagation run out of ink.

“Tolo! Bobo! Idiota! Velho impotente!”

The maiden, it seems, is concerned about the status of her Jungfernhäutchen. “Calm yourself, my dear. In spite of emanations, all is intact in the zone of the hymen.”

At the mention of her name, my feline companion awakens. She rubs herself in affection against the Bombshell, who is engaged in repacking her mams into her bustier.

Mee-owwww!

With a kick of her high-heeled shoe she sends Hymena flying. I see in her eyes a coldness, in the line of her lips a hardness, which in the whirlwind of passion I have not noticed before. Sharp incisors too.

“Senhorita Josefina, do not think I was yesterday geboren. No wonder you wished me to sign the document. If I had, you would be the sole heir to the hops. The Queen of Jihlava. I am on to your game, missy.”

“Not sole heir.”

“What? You have in Brazil einen Bruder? Eine Schwester? Is she”—once a charmer, always a charmer—“as nubile as you?”

“Nao. There is no one. I am uma filha único.”

“Then I am the master here. Lord of all the manors. Ha! Ha! Not one of them rent-stabilized!”

At that moment I hear, from outside my old bedroom, a sound—a knocking, a murmur of voices. I cover my nakedness, as the author of Leviticus might say, and make my way to the window. Hymena is already there, standing on her single hind leg. We both note that a crowd has gathered in the dark of night. Some have electrical torches, and by their light I can see the familiar round heads and verdant faces. I can even make out—there, and there—the features of the Polar fraternity.

“Siga-me, velho,” commands the ravisher from Rio. “Old man, follow me.”

Together we mount the back staircase to the attic, a vacant space around which, in winter months, Yakhne used to run laps and perform physical jerks, and where once I remember opening the door to see Eliska on all fours and the putative père on his knees behind her: “Ha! Ha!” laughed Herr Gaston Goldkorn. “We believe we heard eine Hausmaus!”

A sudden thought: The Rübezahl, sole opera of the great Gustav Mahler. Who succeeded in taking it? The putative père? Or the youth in the salt-and-pepper suit? If the former, would he not have wished to safeguard it, dedicated as it was to his supposed son, for posterity? And where else secret it but in this very attic? In some old trunk. Tucked in a rafter. Under a floorboard. And was this, a world treasure, not my true inheritance, more valuable far than all the thousands of hectares that surrounded the town of Jihlava, once Iglau?

Eagerly I follow my grandniece, or Halb-Grossnichte, up the stairs. She raps three times smartly on the portal and then throws it wide. What do I see but a group of men, and one woman, all wrapped in rags, all bearded—no, not the female—and all chanting in a foreign tongue and banging their heads on the floor.

“Zigeuner!” I cry. “Gypsies! Hausbesetzerinnen! Squatters in my house.”

The Bombshell: “Nao é sua casa.”

“What, madam? Not my house? Am I not the last of the Goldkorns?”

“Sim. But not last of Krupnicks. Krupnicks of Kopitshinets.”

With that the entire clan leaps from the floorboards—were they, too, seeking the elusive mouse?—and rushes toward the Graduate. Some kissing my hands. Some clutching my ankles and kissing the uppers of my Thom McAns. “Cousin! Cousin!” is their accented cry. “Our American cousin!”

Can it be? Is this the family of Falma? My mind races back a full one hundred years. Was there not oft a visitor at this very house, a bachelor with his hair combed to the side? Yes! I remember how he used to put his face against the cage of the budgerigars and attempt to teach them a few simple words: Flanschdichtung, for example, or Rohgewindeschneidemaschinen. What was the fellow’s name? Falco? Fieke? No, no: those were the names of the parakeets. Come, Uncle Al: release thine horny hand. Rufus! Rufus Krupnick! Brother of Falma. Potato farm owner. Onkel Ruffie.

Who one year arrived on Lindenstrasse with a shy, thin woman and a baby boy, my first cousin—now memory flows through the broken levee—Kaspar. Over the years he proved himself to be a typical Krupnick: humorous and tuneful, capable of playing, with his full, blood-filled lips, arias on a blade of grass.

After my departure for Vienna and enrollment in the Akademie für Musik, Philosophie, und darstellende Kunst, I lost touch with him and all die Kinder von Kopitshinets—until one day in March of 1938. That was when this same Kaspar arrived at the orchestra pit of the Wiener Staatsoper just as I was greasing the ram’s horn with which I would that night accompany Abdul Hassan Ali Ebn Bekar, which, I don’t have to tell you, is the title role in Der Barbier von Bagdad.

“Kaspar!” I declare, staring at the man who stood before me in a cap and patched trousers, and with shoulders so thin they could support only one suspender at a time. “Is it you?”

He nods.

“And these—” here I directed my gaze toward the young boy, aged perhaps eight, and what appeared to be his three younger sisters. “These are your children?”

My cousin nodded again. Then he dropped to his bony knees. “Leib. Mein Blutsverwandter. Hilf mir!”

My blood relation wished my assistance. The potato crop had failed on the collectivized farms. The Ukrainians were stealing what they could from the Jews, and from force of habit killing and raping them too. They did both to the mother of these little tots, each of whom now began to spin and wave their arms. “I thought,” said my erstwhile playmate, “they could dance in Der Nussknacker ballet.”

Perhaps, with the Goldkorn clout, they could—except that three days later the Germans raped a quite willing Vienna. You know (not too late to read Goldkorn Tales, “a superb work,” the excellent San Francisco Chronicle) how the family Goldkorn embarked on the Kaliope, which—another lesson from the pedagogue Pergam—had been better named the Charon. As for L. Goldkorn, I fled over the frozen Bodensee to La Belle France and then to the Golden State, motto, Eureka! And Krupnick and Kinder? Back to Kopitshinets and—what else could one imagine?—oblivion. End of the line, folks.

Or so I thought. But then who is this chappie, swarthy of skin tone, with a split beard to his belly, who stands before me? “Thanks to the help of the Almighty, blessed be his name, we meet again. Greetings upon you.”

“Huh?”

“You do not remember? The little boy? With his little sisters? Who had his hands over his ears in case you started to play the ram’s horn?”

Can it be? Is this bearded man, a septuagenarian in his prime, the wee lad who had auditioned for The Nutcracker in the former century? It is:

“Rabbi Yitzhak ben Kaspar. At your service.”

“And Kaspar himself?”

“A ditch at Chortkov. May he rest in peace.”

“What of the three little Fräuleins? Your sisters?”

“They met, sad to say, the same fate. Yet, praise be to G-d, they are replaced by my three sons.”

I look at the three striplings, each, like his father, of a dusky hue, mit einem Schnurrbart on upper lip, and with chin beards of varying vigor. One after the other these youths step forward and, with palms placed together, make a small bow.

“Cousin, I am Arik,” says the one.

“Cousin, I am Anat,” says the second.

Says, lisping, the third, “Couthin, I am Abdi.”

I turn toward the woman, who has, on her lip, a slight and not-unappealing Schnurrbart of her own. “And what is the name of your sister?”

All three put their hands before their mouths. They titter together. “Not thithter,” says Abdi.

“Mother,” the two others simultaneously declare.

I look more closely: though her head is covered by a shawl, I can make out the touch of gray in her hair. In addition, beneath the folds of her cotton robes, the mams possess the heft of “butternut”-type squash. At the rear, a detectable maturity of the natatorium. In short, a Leib Goldkorn type. “Pleased t’meetcha,” I say, holding out an eager hand.

The Brazilian—do I detect a note of jealousy here?—intervenes. “This is Zipporah, wife to Yitzhak, um Judeu Ortodoxo.”

The holy man speaks for himself. “I see that you are surprised by our presence in your home. Surprised, even, by our existence. I shall try, G-d willing, to explain.”

What little illumination there is in the attic comes from a gas lamp in the far corner and the patch of electrical light created by the open door. The patriarch of the Krupnicks remains on his feet, while his family reclines beneath him on the worn wooden planks. Josefina squats on her heels. And I, after a difficult maneuver, sit stiff-legged, with the furry feline on my lap. The rabbi folds his arms beneath what I now understand is his caftan, and begins to address us.

“I will, dear cousin, be brief. You know that Kaspar brought us back to Kopitshinets and that from there we were transported to Chortov, from which only I escaped alive. I spent the years of the war wandering through the forests like a beast. When peace came I returned to our village, where my former playmates met me with pitchforks and brands of fire. Once again I fled for my life and wandered the earth.”

“But why,” asks L. Goldkorn, “did you not sail like so many others to Israel?”

At that word all five of the Krupnicks, parents and children, turn their heads and, like the faithful Jews of Fifth Avenue when passing St. “Pat’s,” the irische Kathedrale, spit three times over their shoulders.

Yitzhak ben Kaspar: “Cousin, I have been to the Holy Land. I arrived in the year 5707—1947 to the heathen. There I began my studies in the charitable house of the Charedim and met the great Teitelbaum, king of the Satmars, may his name be writ forever. It was from him that I learned the reason for all our sorrows—yes, why Kaspar and my sisters and all the Jews of Kopitshinets and all the other towns and cities had to die. It was because of the Zionist heresy.”

“Ha, ha! I am myself a non-believer. Though sometimes I imagine that somewhere, perhaps on the moon, or some other planet, my beloved helpmate, the former Clara Litwack, waits for—”

“Calar a boca! Listen to the narrativa, por favor.”

“There is little more to say. One year after my arrival, Palestine became Israel—” Once again the patriarch and his family pause to make an expectoration. “Then I knew I could not remain. To take the land before the coming of the Merciful One, to do so by force—that was a violation of the oaths of Solomon, may his merit protect us, who in his song adjured the daughters of Jerusalem never to arouse love until it is desired.”

“Arouse? Does he mean Johnson?”

“The mighty Rambam has taught the meaning of this text: that it is a sin to be impatient for G-d’s love. Thus the Holy Land must wait until the coming of the Anointed One. The new Jewish entity was illegitimate and the source of all our suffering. I had no choice but to flee. Once again a wanderer, searching everywhere for my fellow Satmars, in Manchester, in Antwerp, and in the ruined little towns that could not form even a minyan. It was in just such a Roumanian village that I met the rebbetzin.”

Here I turn toward the downy-lipped female, whose cheeks redden under my gaze, an indication, as previously discussed, of an inundation of the Southern Hemisphere.

“But why, Reb Yitzhak, have you come now to the Lindenstrasse?”

The patriarch makes a smile. “My dear cousin, it is because of you.”

“Moi? I am only an Honorary Jew.”

“Yes, there are on this continent few genuine Jews—few who do not recognize, indeed worship, the Zionist state. The true Jews are in America. In the borough of Brooklyn. The Williamsburg section.”

“Mas, rabino,” says my relation from Rio. “Why do you not travel to the Estados Unidos?”

“Impossible! It was easier for me to sail through the British blockade of Palestine than to enter America now. I have tried again and again, but one hurdle always remains. A living family member, a blood relation, to guarantee my employment and a place to live. Imagine my delight, then, to hear that this Goldkorn, a world-famed musician, would soon come to my great-aunt’s home in Jihlava. We traveled northward at once.”

“World-famed? True, I have made a ‘Red-Seal’ recording with the National Biscuit Company Symphonia, A. Tosc—”

“Listen to me, Leib Goldkorn. I am now three score ten, and more. I want to die among my own people.”

“Die? Why die? You are little more than ein Jüngling.”

“I shall speak plain: take me with you to your home in New York.”

“What? This is a misunderstanding. I am no longer a New Yorker. I have the keys to the former city of Iglau. Besides, at 138 West Eightieth Street there is but a single W.C.”

“Do you see this document?” With that my distant cousin motions to the Bombshell, who hands him the piece of parchment. “I too have a claim on the lands owned by my great-uncle and great-aunt.”

“Scheisse!” I cry, struggling in centurian fashion to my feet. “Verdammt! I knew it. You want the Hopfenfelder.”

The rabbi: “Not at all. Have you a pen? I shall be happy to sign. No hops. No hectares. The Krupnick line will cede everything to the Goldkorn branch.”

“Here! Here! A Waterman-model. What a nib! Take it, bitte.”

“Gladly. But in exchange, you must agree to take us with you to America.”

“What? America? Sorry: no more ink.”

Mee-wowwww!

Hymena, spilled to the floor, now paces in an agitated manner beneath the high dormer window of the attic.

“Was ist los, mein kleines Kätzchen? Have you perhaps discovered the Hausmaus?”

Yitzhak, tall for a Krupnick, stands on tiptoe to see out of the dusty panes. When he turns back, his dark skin is perceptibly paler; even his forked sable beard seems to have grown streaks of gray.

“Kopitshinets!” he cries, in tones of despair. “The Ukrainians. Once more they want to kill us.”

“Pooh, pooh. Dies ist nur dein Fantasie. My dear fellow, we are living in the twenty-first century.”

There is a loud thud, followed by a crack. The hair on the back of the tortoiseshell tabby stands on end.

“Ay-y-y-y,” cries Josefina, in Portuguese. “Proteja-me!”

The three sons of the rabbi race to the window, crowding together to look out. Seeing them thus, I cannot but help trace the genetic ties to their progenitors. The one, Arik, is tall and willowy, like his père. An ectomorph in the W. H. Sheldon system. Nervous type. The other, Anat, takes after the rotund rebbetzin, with amplitude in the nativities. Endomorph. Phlegmatic type. The last, Abdi, is a blend of the mère et père, without a neck, as if that couple, in their conjugals, had produced a refrigerator. Mesomorph. Active type, with lantern jaw. Now he, with his confreres, turns from the window. Their faces have also been bleached of their Ukrainian tans.

Arik: “We are surrounded. We cannot escape.” This is the sort of exaggeration one might expect from such a neurasthenic.

But what of Anat, of indolent nature? “We are going to die!” That’s what he is shouting. “Die like dogs!”

Uneasy, I ask: “What is going on, gentlemen?”

Here the man of action crosses the attic, picks up the present speaker as easily as if he weighed no more than a Staubwedel, which I don’t have to tell you is a feather duster, and holds me up to the window.

What a sight meets my eyes. The crowd I had seen earlier has multiplied fourfold. They have built, in their midst, a large fire. A dozen of the Polar Bears are dancing about it, waving flaming sticks. Two more have climbed the branches of the linden, so that I am staring directly at their ribald tattoos, their glistening scalps. Yet others run toward Number 5 and hurl missiles toward the facade. Now comes another thud, with this time the sound of breaking glass.

With surprising tenderness, the mesomorph sets me down.

“Pogrom,” he whispers.

Then all the Krupnicks, as well as the far-flung Brazilian, drop to their knees and knock their heads on the floor.

“Sons of Abraham!” they cry, in an appeal to our forefathers. “Save us!”

Hymena, the darling, looks at me with despair in her red eye, hope in her blue. I kneel beside her.

“Be calm, my Gummibärchen. Did we not meet in the maw of death? Be calm. Once again we shall face our fate together.”