Surrounded, harassed, and starving,
Leib gets two birthday gifts.

WELL, MY DEARS, here I am: alive. I have not yet played on my Rudall & Rose the song of the swan. I lie on this Biedermeier, with the taffeta-type nubbins pulled to my chin. Hymena huddled, as always, beside me. The door, following custom, is open a suggestive three inches, lest the Bombshell or even—here we think of butternuts—the rebbetzin wish to make inquiries. From far off come the pleasant sounds of Hebrew prayers, punctuated by the devout knocking of heads upon the floorboards. And what is that? From the zone of the master bedroom? These are the connubial cries—the grunt of the male, the ululations of the female, as the married couple labor in the vineyard to produce a fourth male heir.

Why, simple son, is this night different from all others? One week has passed since, on the first day of November, we took part in the Holocaust Memorial Festivities. Add seven to one and we get, hmmm, hmmm—alas, I am too weak of mind, too weak of body, to make this lightning calculation. Let us simply say that at the stroke of midnight, the pages of all the calendars in the former Czechoslovakia shall turn to 11/9, or, in the continental manner, 9/11. November ninth! That’s right, folks: Leib Goldkorn is about to become, hmmm—older than Lester Lanin!

The question of questions: Will I survive these brief minutes to the witching hour? I feel the pulse beat drop. A coldness rises from the toes. Each breath, departing the nose, makes the wheeze of an oboe. And why? Because from the moment I discovered my kinfolk in the attic to where you now see me prostrate on the non-Sealy, I have had nothing save an occasional carp ball to eat. Starvation, friends! They are starving us! Even if one of my inamoratas should slip through the door—What’s this, darling? You wish to blow out the candles?—I fear that all would remain shiftless in South America.

To see how things have come to such a pass, let us return to the moment at which our enemies, ringing the house, clinging to the linden tree, threatened the inhabitants of Number 5 with catapults and fire. At what might have been the climactic moment we Jews in the attic heard the sound of approaching sirens.

“My dear cousins, dear relations,” declared L. Goldkorn. “I am a naturalized citizen. Since the year 1943. Solomon Gitlitz presiding. Now comes the American ambassador. To protect its people, our government sends in the Marines.”

But it was not the ambassador. Nor was it the commandant of the army or navy. It was the Policejní Prezident, in his black and red policejní automobil. This was soon followed by a policejní vagon, out of which jumped twenty troopers, with helmets and sticks. The crowd, at this show of force, fell back. Pan Broz stepped forward and raised a megafon to his lips.

“Leib Goldkorns. I cannot with such few polices make protection guarantees. You must sign dokument.”

The mild-mannered mesomorph lifted the feather duster, that is, truly yours, to the dormer window. Through which I then raised a shout:

“And then, Pan Broz? What next?”

“Then you come out. With safe passages to America.”

“You have to sign,” said Anat.

“Yes, surrender,” said Arik. You remember, he was the ectomorph, a nervous type.

The rebbetzin: “Then we will go to the Williamsburg section.”

But I replied as follows: “Policejní Prezident Broz. Examine, please, the map of Jihlava, former center of Teutonic culture. Notice the new policejní stanice. It seems to have been built on our family shire. Yes, on the hops hectares. Ergo, you and your excellent policisté are at work in Goldkornopolis and are employed in a manner of speaking by me. Fall back, sirrah! Back, I say! I shall not sign.”

The threat that night was over. When we woke the next morning we saw that the crowds had withdrawn to the far side of the road, and that the police had erected a series of barricades between those who wished to practice Hooliganismus and ourselves.

Now began, between the besiegers and besieged, the game of Katz und Maus.

Mee-mau?

“No, no, my gummy bear. I am speaking as might a poet. I do not mean a mouse to eat.”

First, our foes shut off the pipes of water. We thought in advance to outsmart them, drawing a supply into that same lion’s-claw tub in which Minchke and I used to bathe at opposite ends—until on one occasion she reached for the non-Ivory brand of ein Stück Seife, only to grasp instead what was an undeniable stiffy. From this reservoir we had plenty to drink.

Next, the members of the Lední Medved Klub—Polar Bear Club, L. Goldkorn translation—turned off the electricity. With this we also coped, and even provided ourselves with musical merrymaking, for instance with a Deutsche Grammaphon disc of the Ungarische Zigeuner-Kapelle in their celebrated “Dorflump Potpourri.” But you said there was no electricity: that is undoubtedly what you are thinking. Ha! Ha! Forgetful reader. The Monarch model possessed a Kurbelgriff! We spun the tunes by hand.

Then came the third attack. Those on the other side of the barricades turned off the heat—a serious threat in the month of November. Gathered under our eiderdowns before the crackling fire, we managed to pass the time in what were, for Jews, high spirits—for instance, in Ukrainian pinochle, in which aces are low and the contestants are required to wrestle with thumbs; or in philosophical discussions, as in, Who was the greatest composer of the modern era, Offenbach or Meyerbeer? At times the Krupnicks sang the Gypsy songs of their homeland, superficially lively but with that undercurrent of melancholia so familiar to me from the recorded works of the estimable Ink Spots. I offered to play, on my silver flute, the peppy “Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy,” or “Ukraine Is Not Yet Dead.” But for some unexplainable reason this was not encouraged.

Thus, all in all, and if only for a few brief days, it might be said that this old pantaloon was, with his new family, and the prospect of vast wealth too, living the life of Riley. Until the next McAn dropped.

It came on a particularly cold night, a night when “Jack” Frost was truly a-nipping. We threw extra chairs and a leaf of the dining room table into the flaming hearth. Then, huddled beneath our Daunendecken, like lads in the Baden-Powell movement who watch the rising sparks and hear the snap of the saplings, we began to tell stories of goblins and ghosts.

First the three sons told their hair-raising—or, in my case, scalp-tingling—tales: the mysterious Ukrainian potato thief; the headless Chinaman; and the casket maker of Medzhybizh, who dug up his grave sites in order to use the same coffin again and again—until one night he pried open the lid only to have the corpse sit upright and with his bony hand haul him into a crypt that then closed forever.

Then came the turn of Reb Yitzhak ben Kaspar, who began to tell what experts agree is the greatest ghost story of them all: that of Rabbi Loew and how he wished to save the Jewish people by creating the Golem of Prague. I need not repeat to you, sophisticates in such matters, all details. Even though I knew them myself, I could not suppress a shiver at the description of how the great mound of clay began to glow when a Mr. Levi walked around it right to left and a Mr. Cohen walked the other way, left to right.

So chilling was this tale that I felt Hymena crawl to me beneath the eiderdown and snuggle for warmth against my gabardines. But then, just as the magical words from the Zirufim caused the monster to—mein Gott!—grow hair on his head and, on his fingertips, nails, I happened to notice the tortoiseshell tabby stretched out before the hearth. But if not Hymena, who thus sought comfort by cuddling against my trousers? The answer so shook me that I paid no attention to the homunculus as, with a terrible groan, he drew into his nostrils his first breath of air. For, lying just to my left, and groping with a hidden hand ever upward toward unmentionable zones, was the rebbetzin! I kid you not.

On spoke the heedless husband, poor chap. Little did he know that as he spun his legendary tale the fingers of the Jezebel were approaching the sirloins and—what was this? Zipporah was manipulating the zipper! The great creature, made from the clay of the Moldau, was stirring. He was starting to rise. But so was Leib Goldkorn. Inch by American inch. Peppercorns, friends? On the skittle.

At that moment, just as the Golem heaved himself upward, Arik, the ectomorph, and Anat, the endo, began to clear their throats. Then the rabbi, hacking and hawking, stopped his tale. Now all the Krupnicks were coughing. The Bombshell pointed to the fireplace.

“Fumaça! Fumaça vindo do fogo!”

True: smoke, thick, black, laden with ashes, was pouring from the hearth. It filled the room.

Rabbi Yitzhak: “It’s the goyim!”

Anat: “They have stopped up the chimney!”

Arik: “They want to smoke us out!”

Both lads jumped up, sending goose feathers flying. Imagine my shock upon discovering that the eager palm, and all five fingers, belonged not to the person on my left but to the one on my right: Abdi, the muscular mesomorph! He smiled at me, in truth rather sweetly, and batted the lengthy lashes of his eyes.

The rebbetzin fell to her knees before me and began to plead. “Surrender! The paper! Sign! Help us go to America!”

Anat: “Otherwise they will kill us!”

Yitzhak ben Kaspar: “It’s worse than the pogrom of Kopitshinets!”

I got to my feet, crying out a message of reassurance.

“Be calm. These are Fingerhut tactics. I know what to do.”

So saying, I groped through the coils of smoke to the telefon.

“Hello? Pronto? Hello? Connect me pronto, ha, ha, with the American Embassy. American Embassy? Greetings! I want to speak to Madam Rice. Hello? Hello? Madam? I am a citizen! Since 1943! Fifty-four forty or fight!”

“Hello?”

Was it she? The Secretary of the States?

“Hello, with whom am I speaking?”

“Amerikanischer citizen! Remember the Maine! Ha, ha, ha! To Hell with Spain!”

There was nothing but the sound of breathing.

“Hello? What happened to Madam Secretary? Who is this?”

“This is Ambassador Cabaniss. Bill Cabaniss. Vanderbilt, 1960. Rotary Club. Alabama Academy of Honor.”

“Ha, ha! Capital, Montgomery. State bird, yellowhammer. Cattle, poultry, soybeans, nuts.”

“With whom, sir, am I speaking?”

“Leib Goldkorn, Graduate, Akademie für—”

“Gildenstern! Thank God you called. Things are getting out of hand. You’ve got to come out of there. The Czechs are rioting in the streets. Sign their papers. We’ll make it worth your while. People are marching in the city of Prague. The secretary is concerned. This is starting to become an international incident.”

“Motto: We Dare Defend Our Rights.”

“Listen here, son. You sign what they want you to sign. This is an order from—from the highest authority.”

“Do you mean President Busch?”

“We’ve got to get you out of there. Will you sign?”

“First, you must with your cell phone—or are you, as you said, a Rotarian? Get it? Ho-ho. This is quick wit. No sign of Uncle Al—”

“Who?”

“Call, please, His Majesty Frantisek Kunc. Make him stop the smoke attacks.”

“Will you sign if I do?”

“Maybe yes. Maybe no. Noncommittals.”

There was another pause, with more heavy breathing, followed by a definite click. Two minutes later, as if someone had thrown open all the windows, the smoke, and with it our despair, suddenly vanished. And a few moments later, the heat came back on.

Did I say our despair had vanished? And did I say we were the “Leben von Riley” living? Do not believe it! Even at the best of times we were afflicted by the embargo on foodstuffs. As the days went by, and our supply of jellied Karpfengbällen ran out, poor Anat, once so round, so roly-poly, grew hollow of cheek. And Arik, slenderous to start with, passed like a wraith among us. Hunger, my dears! The constant rubbing and rumbling from the abdominals, like the rocks that in the conical belly of a Betonmischmaschine, you know, the mixer of cement, are being unceasingly tossed about.

Observe how under such duress even the strictest dictates of religion will melt away. The Catholic, in extremis, will eat on Friday a fish. Would a Jew in similar straits consume—run, run away, Liebchen—a cat? Kosher? Hmmm. Poor Hymena! She soon came to resemble one of those wires, with bristles, that housewives use to clean bottles. Was it possible that in her hunger she had begun to eat the hind end of her tail? Who can blame her? I oft caught myself looking with appetite at the uppers of my McAns. Like Scott shivering in his tent, I would gladly dine on a penguin. We are not, fellow Americans, as distant from the Zulus as the alphabet might suggest.

HERE I AM, friends, Biedermeier-bound, just where I was when we abandoned the present tense. Hymena snores still at my side. Hungry! Hungry, my dears! I suck on the tafetta tufts as if they were toffees. Though my Bulova is in the shop for prawns, I know it is now past the hour of midnight. That means that I am one hundred and, hmmm, four years young. Happy birthday, Leib Goldkorn. Happy birthday to you. And now I might close my eyes. Fifty-fifty if they ever open again.

What is that noise? That whispering wail? Are my coreligionists once more at their daily devotions? No, this sound comes not from the attic above but from far below.

Hei-i-i. Vav-v-v.

Rise, you birthday boy, and shine. Oh, these aching bones. My feet, non-shod, suffer from Goldkorns. Do you hear that, Uncle Al? Goldkorns! Wit: one hundred percent. With candle, in nightcap, I go into the hallway and down the stairs.

Wee Willie Winkie

Runs through the town

Upstairs and downstairs

in his nightgown.

Vav-v-v. Zayin-n-n.

Yes, there is that chant, still rising from below.

Zayin-n-n. Cheit-t-t.

More chanting. It’s coming from under my feet. Where could the source be?

Cheit-t-t. Teit-t-t.

Teit-t-t. Yod-d-d.

Of course! The catacombs! From the old mining shafts. Where the family Goldkorn would store its surplus hops.

Yod-d-d. Kaf-f-f.

I hasten to the stairwell that leads to the cellar. Down, down, down the creaking steps. Now the sound of chanting has grown even louder:

Kaf-f-f. Khaf.

Here is the door trap to subterrania. I open it. I continue my descent, an Orpheus who has—foolish, forgetful fellow—left behind his Rudall & Rose pipe.

What’s that? A definite smell of hops! It draws me down to the final step. Now all is as black as the darkest night save for, in the direction that I take to be north, a dim and flickering light. From that direction, too, comes the droning of human voices. Both grow in intensity as I move forward until, at a sudden bend in the rocky corridor, the tunnel expands into a large chamber lit by a hundred burning candles that are ranged along the open rim of what seems to be a stone sepulcher.

And there are my cousins, like the Nibelungen, hard at work on their mysterious tasks. Each seems to have dressed himself in a white sheet, like a Greek or a Roman or, as is the custom in my adopted homeland, a child playing ghost upon All Hallows’ Eve.

Everyone except for Yitzhak ben Kaspar is on hands and knees. They have formed a circle, and all are bent forward, kneading what looks from my vantage to be a large mound of dough. And as they do so, each chants the strange syllables I have heard from afar. Not so strange: I suddenly realize that these are combinations from the Hebrew alphabet, with the last letter of one pair becoming the first letter of the next, as in a kind of round:

Khaf-f-f. Lamed-d-d. Lamed-d-d. Mem-m-m.

The voices go on and on, rhythmically, hypnotically, so that, hidden behind a pillar of rock, I feel myself falling into a trance. Then, while the chorus of consonants continues, the rabbi kneels and with a wooden stick begins to inscribe something on the surface of the dough.

Mem-m-m. Mem-m-m. Nun-n-n.
Nun-n-n.

Suddenly my eyes fly open, and I wake from the spell of sound. Of course! I know what my family, at such an hour, and in such a place, is preparing. A surprise party! Oh, the dears! The darlings! How daring they were to smuggle into our refuge this yeast, this flour, and perhaps even an actual egg. How they must have conspired, with a wink, a nod, a finger to the lips, to keep their secret. Now I can tell how many candles are burning gaily on the ledges of the ancient oven. Not one hundred. One hundred and four! No! With one to grow on, hmmm, one hundred and five! Will I have in my lungs the power of breath to blow them out? And what would I wish for? Eh? A Finnish frottage? From You Know Who!

The recital of the alphabet has come to an end. Now Reb Yitzhak directs his children, along with the Bombshell, to walk in a clockwise circle around the unbaked cake, while he and the rebbetzin walk in the opposite, counterclockwise, direction.

This is, methinks, an unusual recipe. Not found in Fanny Farmer. But are these not unusual times? Thus the birthday boy watches in silence as all come to a halt.

“Kneel,” intones Rabbi Yitzhak.

All do so, leaning forward and sliding their hands under the doughy confection.

The rebbe: “Now, on this happy anniversary—”

Anniversary! Note you that?

“I ask you to rise.”

As one, they get to their feet, lifting their creation into the air.

In my hiding place I let out a gasp. How did they know? My favorite! Pfefferkuchen! A gingerbread man!

And what a big fellow he is, a six-footer and more, with a head the size of a Wassermelone, thick sturdy legs, and feet that would require a T. McAn number 12. Oooo: anatomical correctness, though from my angle of observation it seems the spermary contains but a single sphere. The nose: potato. The mouth: tight-lipped. The eyes: like any statue’s, wide and unblinking.

Like pallbearers now, the cooks carry their plump patisserie toward the waiting oven and with a great heave lay the Pfefferkuchen inside it.

Suddenly, and all unbidden, the candles begin to glow more brightly and more brightly still. It is as if they are trying with all their strength to provide enough heat to do the baking. A moment passes. Then another. Yes, this blinding blaze will surely raise the temperature high enough to fricassee a chicken or bring a crawdaddy to the boil.

A pity: all too soon the tapers burn down and begin, one after the other, to go out. It is as if they are being snuffed by an invisible hand. Only a half dozen left. Three. Two. One last doughty little chap: then he too succumbs. A puff of blue smoke and the darkness is complete. Out of this blackest of nights comes a familiar voice. That of Reb Yitzhak ben Kaspar:

Ve Elohim barah et ha adam m’efar hadamah vsam—

What? What did he say? I know these words. From where? From when? Avaunt thee, Uncle Al!

Ruach chaim b’appo y’adam nasah baal chaim.

Aha! Goldiamond! Give me a honey spoon! Goldkorn gets the gold star!

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Now an amazing thing occurs. Though all the candles have been extinguished, the interior of the oven begins, faintly at first, to glow. How can this be? Had the heat within the sepulcher become so intense that the human-shaped dough had somehow caught fire? Was it possible that the stone walls themselves had started to burn?

My cousins range themselves around the glowing kiln, which shines ever more brightly, so much so that I am forced to shield my eyes. All the Krupnicks look away too.

Reader, you are at liberty to disbelieve what I tell you now. I can hardly believe it myself. From the depths of the sepulcher, a figure slowly starts to rise. Hideous sight! It is human! The skin is pale and stretched across the bones. Scraps of clothing—a black collar, a brown shirtfront—stick to the skin. The eyes, closed at first, now open. Pale they are, and staring. Alive! It is alive! And across the brow, under the hank of loose black hair, one word, , EMET. Truth!

I know what this is. And so, if you will but recall the ghost story of Rabbi Loew at the Moldau, do you. Reb Yitzhak ben Kaspar has learned the secrets of the Satmars. He has passed it on to his family. All together they have created a Golem. The one who has come to save the Jews!

The Krupnick clan steps back, forming, with their right arms in the air, a kind of arch. But the Golem is not looking at them. With his glittering eyes, he is staring directly at truly yours. Am I mistaken? Or is that, under the brief bristles of moustache, at the corners of colorless lips, the smallest twitch of a smile?

In spite of everything, I smile back. There is something about this aged face—is it the shock of hair, the Schnurrbart between nose and lip, the unblinking pale eyes?—that reminds me of someone I have known in the distant past. Of a sudden my salivaries begin to pump a sweet substance, vaguely reminiscent of a Kaiserschmarrn, into my mouth. I feel the syrup spill from my lips, onto my chin. Now I have it! This decrepit figure before me, old as Methuselah, is the Wagnerian! My friend from the k. k. Wiener Hofoperntheater! The youth in the salt-and-pepper suit! Involuntarily I take a step toward him, as if he might yet have, in the pocket of his tattered brown shirt, another such treat.

But before I can take a second step, the phalanx of Krupnicks, and Miss Mengele too, click the heels of their shoes together and, still with their arms in the air, cry out the word, Führer!

Führer? Have I heard correctly? My ears, as described in the opening pages of this memorial, are no longer A-number-one. Foyer, mayhaps? Or Femur? I look once again at the figure that has come out of the grave. Not only have I known the youth, I realize, but I recognize the man. Have I not seen a hundred portraits in the Movietone News? And in the pages of the Herald Tribune, to which I was once a loyal subscriber? Did not the cloth-covered speaker of the Philco-brand writhe in agitation as it broadcast the sound of his voice?

Hold, sir: according to the “March of Time” this man had killed himself in a bunker at Berlin. Three times dead: a bullet, a capsule of Zyanid, and the flames of a pyre. Unless that had been a trick? And the charred corpse had belonged to some other poor chap? Could such a thing be? The whole world fooled? And I, the sole American citizen, albeit naturalized, to know the secret?

About my brains: for even if the suicide in the bunker had been staged, the supposed victim had been geboren in, if I am not mistaken, 1889—by coincidence the same year that the Jew C. S. Chaplin, who was to impersonate him in the cinema, drew in his first breath. No doubt about it. He must be defunct. If not, this Furrier would be, hmmm, hmmm—a difficult calculation, the one must jump two zeroes to the five—one hundred and sixteen years old! “Gracious! A Guinness World Record!”

In my excitement I cry these last words aloud. Hearing them, all wheel about.

Yitzhak ben Kaspar: “You!”

“Ho-ho! Should I not be here, fellows? Too many cooks spoil the broth?”

As one, my cousins begin to move toward me. On their faces, not a single smile.

Behind them, with creaks and cracks in his bones, the Golem leans forward. All stop and turn. He is digging within the marble walls of his tomb. Then he sits up, holding a ragged sheaf of papers in his arms. Hard, in the dim, green-tinged light, to see. Everyone screws up his eyes. The cover of the manuscript is stained, dusty, torn. Still, I manage to make out the letter R. And then, with umlaut, the letter ü. Heavens to Betsy! It is the score of Rübezahl! Snatched from my arms. And that means—

“Ladies! Gentlemen! This is the Furor!”

The creaking and cracking resume. The limbs of the Wagnerite are moving. His hands grip the side of the sarcophagus. He pushes upward, so that the entire zone of the torso appears. After that, a foot and a shin, and then a length of leg drapes itself over the marble edge. The Fowler is getting out of his tomb! Look! There is shank number two! Still holding the Rübezahl score, the centurian-plus stands on his own two feet upon the ground. He takes a step forward. The others fall back. He takes another and yet another. Gott im Himmel! He is coming to me!

I put one arm up and another arm out, like a policeman ordering the traffic to stop. But he comes on nonetheless. There is another creaking sound. The hinges of his jaw are dropping open. Oh! Oh! My skin is covered with gooseberries. Now mouth gapes wide. Not a sound, however, comes out.

“Ha! Ha!” I manage a doltish laugh. “Have you more rum balls?”

I see the teeth. I see the tongue, blood-red in the black cavern of the mouth. So close has he come that I can smell, like sulfur and patchouli, the stink of his breath.

Suddenly there is a shriek—Futtttz! Frittttz!—and a ball of spit and fur and sharp shining claws flies through the air.

Hymena! Honey!

Under attack, the Fueler throws an arm before his eyes. Feets, I tell myself, do your stuff! In my halting gait I attempt to run. At that instant, all hell, if you will allow this mild explication, breaks out. I move with raised knees first left, then right, now this way, now that. My cousins dash helter-skelter in the attempt to head me off. Here is the corridor to safety. I no sooner achieve it than who but the mesomorph should appear.

“Thith way,” he hisses. “Come with me.”

I whirl about and lope in the opposite direction, holding my ears against the echoing din.

“Get him!”

“He’s over here!”

“No, over here!”

“Impeça meu tio!”

“What a runner!”

Futz! Fwatz! Fwwwitz!

Everyone is shouting and groping his and her way through the dim light. I look back over my shoulder in time to see the Golem moving off along the northward corridor, toward the heart of the town. To think that he of all people might save the Jews! No sooner does that ironical thought flit through my mind than my left foot trips on the edge of the stone slab and I hurtle Hals über Kopf into the stone sarcophagus. How deep the tomb! Will it be the grave of Leib Goldkorn, Graduate?

And, in fact, as my cranium, with its many thoughts and memories, strikes the bottom of the sepulcher, darkness descends, and all lights on earth go out.

WHERE AM I, FRIENDS? Alive or dead? In heaven? Or is it hell? Let’s look on the bright side. See, see there: it is Winnetou and his noble steed, Iltschi. There is no doubt that redskins are welcome in paradise. And even Afrikaners of good repute. Hmmm. But a horse? Which can barely think or speak? And if a horse, why not a guppy? And if a guppy, why not a radish? Ha! Ha! Or even a stone?

Wait: Is that Indianer not part of the Shatterhand poster? And Iltschi too? Could it be that I am, after all, in my upstairs room? And just where you left me, athwart my boyhood bed? Taffeta tufts to my chin? Was it all a dream? No birthday party? No Golem? No gingerbread cake? But then why do I suffer from such a Kopfschemrz? Why is there a bump—goodness, just feel it—on the side of my head? Did I trip into the sepulcher? Or did I in my dreaming thrust my head against this beam of the Biedermeier?

All I know is that, in the depths of this special night—one hundred and four! Older than Xavier Cugat!—all is still, all is quiet. Wait. I hear a sound of rustling, just outside my door—a door that, as you know, I always leave open a crack. Just in case. Now, pushing through, comes a slippered foot, plump, and the five plump fingers of a hand. Zipporah! The rebbetzin! Back for more! But I do not allow myself to anticipate the joy of nuptials. When the full figure of the rabbi’s wife enters my chamber, I calmly address her:

“Begone, madam. You are nothing more than a fig of a dream.”

She does not vanish. She comes toward me, speaking thus: “Oh, dear man, look at you! Such a nightcap! With a ball at the end.”

Still I resist. “Madam, Leib Goldkorn can be fooled once, but not, in one night, twice. Be off! To horse!”

But she does not go off. Instead, in her tentlike caftan, she draws closer. “Permission, if you please, to sit?” She points to a corner of my feather-filled mattress. I nod. “Cousin Goldkorn, I have for you certain feelings. Look, I will show them to you.” And with that she pulls both halves of her robe aside.

Like many a youth, I took much interest in the operations of the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG, particularly the LZ 4, which I once saw sailing over the Bohemian-Moravian Heights, and the LZ 11, the Viktoria Luise, named for the Duchess of Brunswick, who with her hair in a bun was for the lads of Iglau a hot ticket. What the spouse of Yitzhak ben Kaspar did when offering to show me her feelings was release from the hanger of her opened caftan two such Zeppelins, which, in this windless atmosphere, now hang motionless before my gaping eyes.

It was on this very bed and on that very spot that Falma, an original Krupnick, had perched when reading to her only male child a Silesian fairy tale; or rocking him in times of illness; or, on more than one occasion, shedding with him a tear as she complained of the attentions shown to Eliska by the putative père. The Coreligionist might say that was the reason that I in the grip of primitive instinct now throw off my nightshirt and lurch forward on all fours, taking the leftward mam in my mouth and suckling there a full moment before changing objects and beginning to nurse at the mam on the right. And in the dark continent? Stirrings.

Suddenly, a crash, a bang, and the door flies wide. The Bombshell!

“Meu Leib! With another amante!”

“Ho, Ho. It is not what you think. Nourishment only. A drop of milk for a starving man.”

“Não!”

Uttering that cry, Josefina dashes to the non-Sealy and begins to climb aboard. “Not her. Me! I know what Leibie like. Eh? He like the sapatos. Sapatos com salto. With heels.”

By this she means not any old McAn but her own five-inchers, red with black shiny stilettos. But my grandniece does not allow me the pleasure of examining the buckles, the straps, or the ankle knobs trapped inside them; instead, in an athletic maneuver, she leaps to my back, upon whose spine she begins to trod.

“Ha, ha. I have hirsute shoulders. This has been from childhood an embarrassment.”

Olha que caisa mais linda—The Bombshell is singing the lyrics to “The Girl from Ipanema,” while doing a samba across the short ribs.

Now occurs a moment that is even harder to believe. Through the open door strides the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Entertainments, and Sports.

“Leibie, milˉacek, it is I, your Iveta.”

Not only that, she is barefoot. Barefoot, comrades! And through the loosened top of her waistcoat the pink eye of each non-convex mam comes a-winking and a-peeking. Is it at that sight, or the smell of gardenia, that my Jewish-style member decides to explore the world outside its S. Klein drawers?

What happens next is the sort of event one finds in the rearmost pages of R. F. von Krafft-Ebing. There one might read of the man who drank his own urine, or of another man, of the upper classes, who achieved transports with a rope. Prepare yourselves, friends: The Crumsovatna joins the jamboree. Without hesitation she begins to slide on her back to where I remain on my hands and knees; with skill she maneuvers downward and still farther downward, until she lies with her head beneath my sirloins. Then, opening her mouth, she takes all eighty centimeters of Pan Johnson inside it. Never in my lifetime, and probably not in yours, has such a thing occurred.

My feelings are mixed. On the one hand, there are in proximity teeth, molars, and bicuspids, which causes a certain alarm; on the other there is a feeling of warmth, and a hominess, such as a snail might experience in the safety of its shell. Glücksgefühl, that is what we call this sentiment in German.

Fala que não vai

Sente o que interessa

Thus sings the Brazilian beauty, while continuing to trod with heel points up and down my backside. March on! March on, missy! Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Ma-ma-ma-ma—

That is the Crumsovatna, who with tongue and glottis is creating a sensation by humming the Act Two aria from The Bartered Bride.

Picture in your minds Leib Goldkorn, centurian: a damsel in front, a damsel on top, and a damsel below. Might it not be said that, suckling and being suckled, while the armies of Napoleon cross and recross the dorsal plain, I have accomplished what many men dream of but few achieve: the ménage à quatre?

Pashas amidst their harems, Musselmen with their virgins, Mormons and their many wives: none can match in their fantasias what I have grasped in the flesh. Is this the pinnacle? Can man aspire, in the sphere of the carnals, any higher? Nein! Or so I think until I hear the door to my bedroom slam open again.

Who is the eager visitor? A pleasant thought: Miss Williams, star of Pagan Love Song, has changed her mind! Better late, madam, then never!

Come with me where moonbeams

Light Tahitian skies

And the starlit waters

Linger in your eyes.

Or—do I dare dream?—is it the She-Who? Heavens! Do they have such origamies in Japan? I try to call her name, not yet forbidden, but my mouth, as described above, is full. I try to search out her Finnish form in the dim-lit room: but the lighter-than-air ships block my view. I feel the goose feathers of the non-Sealy sink by the foot of the bed. Welcome aboard, stranger! I can sense the mystery woman approach from behind. Something brushes against the crupper. There is a fumbling at the rectals. Oho, so that’s your game, is it? Tomfoolery? Bring it on! Now I hear a voice, one that is not unfamiliar, declare, “Hold thtil. Pleathe. Hold thtil!” Abdi! The mesomorph!

On the horizon, ladies and gentlemen, the storm of a expostulation is gathering. In the atmosphere there rises a mist of perspirations, oak moss, gardenia, and, from the gentleman at my rear, Shocking, by Schiaparelli. Within my own body elasticized cords, growing tighter and tighter, pull at each joint and limb. The peppercorns are hopping on the griddle. And a spicy sauce, like a mole poblano, pours over my skin. Yet one thing is missing before the storm can break. Above, below, fore and aft, every inch of my body is receiving pleasure except—yes, you have guessed it, the bottoms of my feet. And no sooner does this vacuum become apparent than, with warm, soft motions against my insoles, and the sandpaper swipes of a tongue, it is filled. Hymena! She has joined the hymenals.

Ekstase. From the currents in the Straits of Magellan it is clear that Pan Johnson has grown to what I believe is a personal best. The elastics are at the breaking point. The spermary at the boil. Now the top of my head, with its hair-horseshoe, is about to fly off. Oh, Moses! SH’MA YISROEL! Suddenly, among all these stridencies, the slappings and shouts and mewings, the cascade of the songfest, one cry rings out above all the others:

Pozor!

Everything stops, as if a bevy of beavers have felled a mighty oak across flowing waters. All the forest animals raise their heads, alert, aware.

Pozor!

This time the word—beware—is accompanied by a tremendous thump. Fists upon the Lindenstrasse door!

“What wath that noithe?”

“He will wake the husband!”

“We must to hurry!”

“Oh, Deus! Cristo!”

Frist! Fssst! Futst!

Disengagement. Withdrawal. Silence and shame.

Once more the thuds; once more the anguished cry:

Pozor!

As one, we rush into the hallway. Reb Yitzhak, head of the family, and his two other sleepy sons, meet us on the stairs. We all tramp down together, trailing nightwear and undergarments behind us. Thud-thud-thud. Thus the sound of desperate fists. Rabbi Yitzhak ben Kaspar flings open the door. Before us is the Mercedes man, his chauffeur’s cap askew on his bulbous head. He takes one step forward, toward where I sagging stand.

“Pozor, Goldkorns! Pozor! Is not what you think. Warning! They are podvodníci. Podvodníci!”

Behind him, and behind the barricades, the crowd of Czechists has swollen in size. They are shouting and swearing. They wave their flaming torches in the air. The Krupnick clan moves protectively around him, but the chauffer pushes through and holds out his arms toward “L. Goldkorns,” the man he met—it seems a lifetime ago—at the airport. What’s this? What has he in his hands? A book. A manuscript. Bound in leather.

Leaning forward, I take a closer look. Rübezahl! My father’s only opera! The greatest of all birthday gifts! In amazement I address him: “Where, my good man, did you find this treasure?”

Suddenly his green, exophthalmos eyes bulge even farther, so that I fear the balls will fly from their sockets, and he wheels round. There is a knife in his back! Bubbles, blood-filled bubbles, form at his lips. He opens his mouth. I strain forward to hear his words:

“Židovský hrbitov. Jewish cemetery. Pogrom. At Mahler family tomb. This. Underneath tombstone. Pozor!”

Then those same eyes turn entirely white, and without another word, either with vowels or without, the poor man drops lifeless to the ground.