Deadlines are set. Deadlines are missed.
Then, on the eye of Passover, the Metropolitan Opera is
blown sky-high. Leib Goldkorn: Auf Wiedersehen!

LATE. LATE IN the night. Impossible to sleep. Doctors. Nurses. Tests. And many tears. A normal reaction, everyone tells me, to the events that began that Sunday. And now the reign of terror begins.

WITHIN AN HOUR of taking command, the dark-skinned terrorists had established a degree of order. The first thing they did was block all the exits with armed guards. Then the man who had impersonated Reb Teitelbaum announced that women and children were free to leave. There was not a mad dash. There was not an exodus. In fact a score of women elected to remain—some with their loved ones, some from orneriness perhaps, and a few, like myself, for professional reasons.

There were only a handful of children at the premiere; they all departed quietly. Jaime, after a hug, left too—though to my dismay he soon returned, pointing to his half-eaten biscuit. “Yo quiero terminar la galleta.” Nor, for all my urging, would he budge.

Across the auditorium, in box 3, I saw that Condoleezza Rice had remained as well. Had she refused to abandon her President? Or had our captors restrained her since she was—what? My mind for brief seconds froze: third in line for Commander-in-Chief? No, fifth. But the first two were now hostages. That meant that the country was now being run by another woman, the Honorable Ms. Pelosi. Indeed, the same monitors on which Mr. Levine—

[Non-rhyming with Ochsenschwanz; non-rhyming with Plotkin]

—had been conducting were in time wheeled before us, so that we regularly saw the face of the Speaker of the House.

Not long after the women and children had left and all the men had been herded down to the orchestra level, the false paraplegic climbed with alacrity to the stage and raised a megaphone to his lips.

“You. American men. Listen. We are going to separate the Jews. All Jews raise hands.”

The woman with the gun, the Bombshell as Mr. Goldkorn had called her, had a megaphone as well. “You heard!” she shouted. “Jews to the center section. All others move left and move right.”

At this the conductor cried out. “Ha! Ha! Reb Teitelbaum. My senhorita. Why such favoritism? There is no need to reserve for those of Hebraic persuasion these excellent seats.”

“Calar a boca!” the woman shouted in her unknown tongue.

I turned to Jaime, who shrugged. “Portugués.”

“But are you not my Grossnichte? Is this not rudeness? To speak in such a manner to a member of the family?” Mr. Goldkorn then turned to the man he had called Reb Yitzhak. “Cousin, are you not family too? The grandson of Uncle Rufus?”

“Ablah! How easy you were to fool.”

“Wait. One moment. Do you mean you, all of you, my cousins: you are not Satmarians?”

Here the gunmen broke into high-pitched laughter and the women into ululations. In their merriment they slapped each other on the back.

“Not even Jews?”

“Yahùd! Ha! Ha! Ha! Yahudi!”

“You are not alone, Leib Goldkorner. They tricked us too.”

The conductor and translator shielded his eyes and peered up toward box number 2. “Is that you, Your Serenity? The State Secretary? Mit freckles?”

Ms. Rice started to reply, “You must be—” when almost instantly someone seized her from behind and drew her into the shadows at the back of the box, where all the other dignitaries were standing with their hands tied behind them and white rags in their mouths.

Now from the stage came a sharp rapping, a kind of Knock! Knock!

Mr. Goldkorn, with his key chain clanking at his hip, whirled about:

“Who’s there?”

No one answered. Our captors had lined up on the front of the stage facing Broadway, that is, to the east, and from their kneeling positions were touching their heads to the floor:

Ash-hadu an la illaha

illa Allah

“Is it possible,” asked Mr. Goldkorn, “that I have made an error?”

Just then an aged man, perhaps as old as ninety, came tottering down the left-hand aisle. Everything stopped, even the Arabic prayers. The hall was so silent that for all its soundproofing, its insulation, we could hear the faint wail of a hundred sirens drawing near. On came the gentleman, a half step at a time. He was hairless and his skin was ruddy. He seemed to take forever to reach the first row of the auditorium.

“Is there need,” the nonagenarian asked, “for a doctor in the house?”

“Goloshes! M.D.!” exclaimed Mr. Goldkorn.

As if in response, one of the wounded agents sent up a pitiable groan.

The conductor turned toward the terrorists. “First name Milton. Family physician.”

Dr. Goloshes bent over the wounded man. “He has been shot in the lung. He must go to the hospital.”

In the blink of an eye Abdoul struck the side of the doctor’s head with the butt of his rifle—and did so with such force that he tumbled into the orchestra pit in a spray of his own blood.

The middle-aged woman—Mr. Goldkorn had called her the rebbetzin—gestured down toward the dumbstruck musicians. “Take the Jew to the ghetto.” Here she pointed toward the center section of seats. “That’s where he belongs.”

No one moved. Sobs sprang up from everywhere, sounding, in the wonderfully engineered acoustics of the auditorium, like hot springs, or geysers.

Mr. Goldkorn was the first to speak. “Was this Goloshes not offering his assistance? Yet you struck him on the head. The head! Is this not where musical notes are first formed?”

“Muthical noths!” Abdi, one of the gunmen, had a lisp, a surprise in such a muscular type. “Here. Look. Now you know what we think of your muthical noths.”

A gasp rose from the hostages as he opened his trousers and, onto the scattering musicians in the pit, began an act of micturation.

One of his companions, thin as a blade of grass, barked out a laugh and walked to the lip of the stage. He likewise micturated onto the abandoned bass viols and instruments of percussion.

[Micturation. Micturated. An example of New York Times straitlaces. We are speaking, friends, of number one.]

Nor was that the end of this horror. The others lined up and performed with glee the same act. Poor Dr. Goloshes remained alone in the steaming pit until they were done. Only then was his limp, soaked body—luckily with life still within it—taken out to what soon became a makeshift hospital in the carpeted aisle. I must now report that over the course of our ordeal the orchestra pit served the same function for us all, whether infidel or Mohammedan; amazing how quickly our notions of modesty were cast to the winds.

THIS ARTICLE IS growing both long and late. My editors would like it by noon tomorrow. Is this possible? Certainly I can shorten my task by honoring the request of the White House not to discuss, for what they call national security reasons, the actions of the President or the Vice President. I will respect their concerns and say only this: the behavior of George W. Bush was in my opinion exemplary. The Secret Service, though disarmed, continued to keep him isolated and in a sense untouchable in their midst. But we could hear him. He instructed his wife and the wives and children of any government officials, as well as all female government employees themselves, to leave the building. Only Ms. Rice refused.

[Because of infatuations? With the President? Such are the rumors. Or was there another chap—we need not mention appelations—who had caught her eye?]

He also made it clear from within his phalanx of bodyguards that there were to be no negotiations of any sort with the terrorists—and that this directive applied to all those in the opera house as well as to his cabinet and to anyone else who could hear his words in Washington, D.C.

Alas, quite soon, no one, whether in the Metropolitan Opera or in the nation’s capital, could hear him at all. That was because in the course of that night his protectors were beaten down and the President led away. As for the Vice President, he was found after a lengthy search hiding beneath a row of seats. While shouting out to all who could hear that he was wearing a pacemaker, he too was led out of our hearing and out of our sight.

No need to dwell here on the despair we felt the next morning when our captors announced that both men had been shot. That was, as it happened, the first message that went out over our primitive system of communication. Ms. Pelosi’s image was almost constantly on the screen of our monitors. Mr. Goldkorn, perhaps because he was the director of the premiere, or because he was the only one whom the terrorists were familiar with, would talk to her over the cell phone that had been confiscated from the ambassador to the Czech Republic. Imagine our horror when we heard him speak the terrible words, “The excellent President Busch and the Vice President are dead.”

The face of the representative from California was instantly drained of all color. Her jaw went slack. “I don’t understand. Are you telling me that both of them have been killed?”

Mr. Goldkorn looked toward the young woman with the Portuguese accent. She nodded.

The conductor shouted into the instrument he held at arm’s length. “That’s right. It’s a shame. I always vote a straight Republican ticket.”

Every reader of this paper already knows what the terrorists demanded in return for our freedom. We fell into despair as Mr. Goldkorn read the list to the world. First, the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Second, even more impossible, the transfer to neutral countries of all those being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. Then the most difficult of all: the suspension of diplomatic ties between the United States and Israel. Last—and this by comparison seemed a mere afterthought—the delivery of two million dollars in ransom and a guarantee for the terrorists of safe conduct to a land of their choosing.

What else could we think but that we were doomed? Our captors declared that they had traveled thousands of miles and trained for many years to arrive at this moment—a moment that for them was a paradise on earth. With their deaths, and the deaths of the infidels, they would achieve the other paradise that awaited them in heaven. If the American government did not meet each of these demands before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the Metropolitan Opera and all those within it would be blown to smithereens.

This was no idle threat. At the start of the siege the terrorists had admitted perhaps a score of their confederates through the arched doors, which these same men then blockaded with trip lines, booby traps, and mines. Then they worked ceaselessly to attach their wires and fuses to the support structures in the hall. At one point they even lowered the chandeliers, only to raise them again with enough plastic explosives aboard to crack the great ornate roof and bring it down upon us.

From the outside world we entertained no hope. Indeed we dreaded any attempt at rescue. On our monitors we could see troops deployed on the plaza, along with the tanks and personnel carriers that choked the avenues. Helicopters hovered overhead, while below, in the sewers, the subway tunnels, the communication tubes, sappers and Special Forces were undoubtedly at work. But we knew that at the first movement to save us, all the explosives that had been so painstakingly planted around the auditorium would detonate together, creating a greater Götterdämmerung than had been staged at this or any other opera house in the world.

The deadline Ms. Pelosi had been given was forty-eight hours. Mr. Goldkorn read the ultimatum at ten o’clock on the morning of April 10th. By the next dawn, nearly half the time allotted to us, we had received no response. The rest of that day went by in silence and so did the better part of the night. No one had had anything to eat. There was little to drink. The stench from the orchestra pit, at which there was a constant queue, was overwhelming. Yet there was no resistance. No one cried out in anger or pain. The hours went speeding by. The hostages resigned themselves to the certainty that on the following morning they were going to die.

Old Missus marry Will-de-weaber

The ringtone on the ambassador’s telephone!

Willium was a gay deceaber.

The Speaker of the House was back on the line. Imagine our joy, and our astonishment, when we heard that our captors’ demands were about to be met. She told us that the proof of the government’s compliance would presently appear on our monitors. Never before had so many people stared so intently at such a small screen. Through my opera glasses I could just make out the words that soon appeared at the bottom: Butner Federal Correctional Complex. Then a cheer went up from our foes. They cried out what must have been an Arabic blessing—Da’awatak, ya sheikh!—at the sight of a blind, bearded man ducking his head to get into the back of an armored limousine. I must report that many of my fellow hostages, including a good portion of the central section, gave a cheer too. For this was Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheikh, on his way out of prison. One hour later we saw the same man depart from the limousine and fly off in an unmarked Gulfstream jet.

An hour after that the monitors lit up again, this time with the familiar sight of the wire enclosures at Guantánamo Bay. The prisoners were in a long line; clearly they were being processed for either transfer or departure. The underground kingdom of the monstrous Rübezahl had been filled with trees, arbors, and fantastical flowers. The terrorists stooped to gather the petals; they threw handfuls at the screens, which within a few seconds faded away and became blank.

This time the pause was lengthier. The mood of jubilation gradually receded, leaving us stranded once more on the hard stones of reality. How dared we dream that the most difficult demand—the betrayal of Israel by its oldest ally—could ever be met? What fools we had been!

The mood among the jailers had changed as well. The ululations ceased. Grimly they set about stringing the last of their wires. Now when they prayed toward the east it was with a note of resignation and lament. The sun, we knew, was well up in the sky. The midmorning deadline would soon be upon us. At one corner of the stage was an almost comical device: a black box with a silvery aluminum plunger. It looked like something out of the silent movies or the sort of cartoon in which the infernal machine would be marked with the letters TNT. But no one laughed when the cold-blooded Portuguese woman looked at her watch—my own read nine thirty-two—and sat down beside it.

[Correction to The New York Times: Brazilian, not Portuguese. The granddaughter of my sister Minchke, for whom in my present abode I have diligently searched. Sans success. Ditto sister Yakhne. Ditto Falma, my mother, and the putative père. Over and over I have called out their names. Pas de response. Is it possible that all those who were on the barge Kaliope, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, are sequestered together? No sign of Herr Mahler, my non-putative père. Nor, by the by, of Professor Pergam.]

The real power, I believe, resided in the false rabbi, Yitzhak, who had long since strapped a vest of explosives to his torso and now walked one by one to each of his accomplices, embracing them and saying unintelligible words. Those men shed as many tears as we did in our velour-covered seats. Perhaps I should describe the events of the next half hour as they might have appeared in one of those nickelodeon serials:

9:40

9:50

9:52

9:55

A crescendo of groans rose from the orchestra. There was shouting and cursing. In the left-hand section I noted a ripple, a small movement, and then a group of some twenty to twenty-five men rushed toward the stage. But the moment the terrorists lowered the muzzles of their weapons, the wave broke and soon dispersed.

9:57

9:58

I drew Jaime to me and shut my eyes. But not my ears:

Dar’s buck-what cakes and Ingen batter.

Makes you fat or a little fatter.

Again the ringtone! Was it a reprieve? Literally at the last moment? What we saw on the screen was the image of a stylish man with a part in his hair. He too was being moved to a black limousine.

“It’s Richard! Ambassador Richard Henry Jones!”

That cry came from across the Parterre, where Mr. Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador, had managed to slip his gag.

Now Representative Pelosi appeared on the monitor to interpret what we had seen. The American ambassador to Israel had been called home. The Israeli ambassador to America was in the control of the terrorists. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were thus at an end.

We were saved! All the demands had been met. Well, not quite all. But the last two—the payment of two million dollars, the arrangements for the escape of the terrorists: What could be easier? Not only that, every one of the hostages had been buoyed by the fact that their captors had asked for such things in the first place. They were not fanatics. They did not seek suicide or any other form of death. To demand money, to think of flying off in an airplane so they could spend it—that meant they wanted to live. And so would we.

“Hurrah!” we shouted.

“¡Hurra!”

Meee-yay!

“Hello? Operator? Hello?”

Mr. Goldkorn shouted repeatedly into the mouthpiece of the cell phone. The face of the Speaker of the House had once more disappeared from the screen. Still, no one was unduly alarmed. The amount required was, relatively speaking, so small. And the terrorists—how strange it was that we all applauded their reasonableness—extended the deadline for its delivery another six hours, to four o’clock that afternoon.

That time sped quickly by. I should say that a certain portion of the Metropolitan audience no longer cared whether the ransom would be paid or not. Scores had fainted or had collapsed from dehydration. The bottled drinks brought in from the snack bars soon ran out. The doctors declared that some under their care were in diabetic hypoglycemia and others in cardiogenic shock.

“Hello? Hello?” cried the conductor into the cell telephone. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

Still no one replied. Inconceivable that the United States government, having given so much, could not or would not raise such a paltry sum. Was there some law, some code, that forbade ransom in cash? To deny us our lives now was madness, though admittedly no more insane than the actions of the terrorists, who, upon completing their midday prayers, once more took up their positions at the detonators. This time, however, we did not go down to—oh, I` do not mean this cruel pun—the wire.

But when he put his arm aound’er

He smiled as fierce as a forty pounder.

Breathlessly the conductor picked up the phone.

“Hello? Here is Leib Goldkorn, Graduate of the Akad—”

Yitzhak ripped the phone from his hands. “We are at the deadline. Where is—”

He too stopped in midsentence and turned in a kind of wonderment to his accomplices. “She cannot give the money. Only the President can make that decision.”

“The President? What is the matter with you?” cried Mr. Goldkorn, leaning toward the mouthpiece. “Do you not understand plain English? Er ist tot!”

Then the erstwhile rabbi nodded toward his confederate with the lisp, who walked at once from our sight.

Three precious moments went by. Then a fourth. Imagine our astonishment when George W. Bush was led past the drooping props and onto the stage. He had been beaten, it seemed, and his hands were tied behind him. But he was very much alive.

“Greetings, Majesty. I—”

Two of the younger terrorists stepped between the conductor and the President. They held the cell phone to the latter’s swollen lips.

“I gave my orders,” the President said. “No ransom. No deals. No negotiations.”

Those words were our death sentence. The young Portuguese—

[Brazilian!]

—woman rushed back to the plunger. Yitzhak and the others took out their electronic detonators. The strapping young Abdi began to count.

“One-two-three—”

Again I shut my eyes.

“Four. Five. Thixth—”

“Wait! Is stopping, gentlemens. Mister! For a moment you wait!”

I opened my eyes. Down the aisle, indeed taking up the greater part of it, was a woman built roughly on the proportions of Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park. Down she came, and down, ineluctably, forcing herself ahead until she had reached the edge of what was now our latrine.

On the other side of that barrier, the conductor squinted, the better to see.

“Heavens! Hildegard! Madam Stutchkoff! You have put on some avoirdupois.”

The monument of a woman looked upward. “Is who? From Steinway Restaurant?”

“Ja! Musical type. Do you remember? Our moment on the Sealy? When we—”

Here Mr. Goldkorn made a certain vulgar gesture—

[To wit, a finger of one hand thrusts through the circle made by the other hand’s pointer and thumb. Oh, she bit me with rows of her little teeth. As folks do on All Saints’ Day. I bobbed at her apples. In short, folks, we made merry.]

—that I am not certain the woman even noticed. She continued to stare upward.

“Mister? Mister . . . ? Mister . . . ?”

“Goldkorn. Graduate.”

At the sound of the name, Madam Stutchkoff reached upward and removed both of her earrings.

[Oh, ho! Did she wish once more to retreat to the Sealy?]

This jewelry she handed to Abdoul, who stood armed beside her.

“Here. Is gold. Karat twenty-two.”

Next she fumbled at the brooch on her breast. She removed that as well.

[In Hades, a rum toddy sensation.]

“Is also gold. And more . . .”

Next she thrust out a plump wrist and unstrapped what even from my distant location I recognized to be a man’s gold wristwatch.

“I am giving. Not plate. Not filled. Is from husband, Vivian Stutchkoff.”

Abdoul took these treasures into his cupped hands. I believe he actually licked his lips.

“This is the solution!” That cry came from Dr. Kissinger, who was leaning over the edge of the box adjoining mine. “Take meine watch. Take mein bracelet. Both solid gold!”

He threw the objects down to where Abdoul was standing—no, stooping, because others had begun to toss their rings and watches and cuff links about him.

“Of course!”

“We can do it ourselves!”

“We’ll pay our own ransom!”

Could our possessions save us? I only knew that everyone became swept up in that hopeful tide. From the two side sections the Christians were tossing their crucifixes and chains, while the Jews in the middle seats were passing forward their six-pointed stars. Jaime started to pull off his Bulova, but I stopped him and threw down my gold ring instead. Now people came pushing forward, clutching handfuls of bills. Others were waving their checkbooks.

“I’ll give a thousand!”

“Fifty thousand!”

“Six figures! Whatever you want.”

At these offers the terrorists shook their heads. They would not take checks. They would not even take cash. After conferring, they announced they would accept only contributions of gold—and those must come exclusively from the central section or from what other Jews might wish to contribute from the outside world.

Would that be necessary? Already a glittering pyramid of metal had risen on the stage. From somewhere, perhaps from one of the dressing rooms, our foes had dragged out a scale. They heaped the treasure upon it. Yitzhak, peering at the dial, shook his head. The total was not enough.

“How much is enough?” someone cried.

The rebbetzin, so-called, replied. “The value of gold is now six hundred dollars an ounce. There are in a pound sixteen such ounces. Each pound of gold, then, is worth almost ten thousand dollars. To reach two million dollars we will require . . .” Here the woman paused for an instant, casting up her eyes.

“May I be of assistance?” It was Mr. Goldkorn. “Lightning calculation. One pound is ten thousand. Ergo, ten pounds equals—ha, ha! Moment! Hmmm. Hmmm. Carry the one—”

To my amazement it was I who shouted out the final sum. “Two hundred pounds. You are asking for two hundred pounds of gold.”

Yitzhak pointed at the scale. “Here is only eighty-five.”

A convulsive movement of anguish moved through the crowd; they had already stripped themselves bare.

Now, during these renewed moanings and wailings, another woman moved down the right-hand aisle, though this one was in a wheelchair.

“Madam Schnabel!” exclaimed our conductor. “Contralto!”

The woman forced her shaking head upward. “I don’t need you, Leib Goldkorns. I need a dentist. I have a gold molar, two gold molars. Take them. Take them from all the Jews.”

“Yes, yes!”

“A dentist!”

“Take my teeth!”

“Take mine!”

Alas, even if a dentist had been in the room, the deadline was upon us. Four p.m. Doomed, with our teeth intact, to die. Then, just as our jailers were resuming their places at the bombs and the detonators, a scuffle broke out at the rear of the hall. Somebody was shouting in Arabic. Somebody else shouted back.

“Let us in, for Pete’s sake. We’ve got the gold.”

Two men, one plump, one thin, were admitted to the back of the auditorium. There they were searched so thoroughly that each was required to remove his trousers. Bare-legged, they trudged down the aisle, pulling a rubber-wheeled wagon heaped with bowls, bracelets, bagatelles, and bric-a-brac—all made from the glittering metal. As they approached the front of the hall, Mr. Goldkorn called out to them: “Greetings, Ernie! Greetings, Randy! Here are the brothers Glickman.”

Up in box number 1 Jaime extended the arm to which his wristwatch was attached. “Shop of prawns!”

Like stevedores, the brothers were handing their treasure to Abdoul, who in turn tossed the loot to his confederates onstage.

“Boy, oh, boy! You never saw so many Jews. As soon as the word got out they lined up around the block.” That was the thin brother.

“And nobody asked for a ticket. Can you believe it? These are gifts from our people.”

Looking through my opera glasses, I calculated that this haul must weigh over a hundred pounds. Indeed, the so-called rebbetzin soon announced the total: “One hundred forty-seven.”

A cheer went up. With the eighty-five pounds already collected, the ransom had been paid.

“Hurrah!” That was the cry. “Hurrah for the brothers Glickman!”

Ernie, the plump one, held up his hands. “It was nothing. Glad to help. Now, if you will just return my seersucker pants, we’ll take our leave.”

Abdi laughed. “Leave? You cannot leave. Not yet.”

Madam Schnabel called out from her wheelchair: “They still are waiting. They want an airplane.”

Abdoul pointed to the cell phone in the conductor’s hand. “No one leaves until we get the call. Either we fly away or everyone dies with us on the ground.”

Randy said, “Did you say die?”

Ernie said, “But we are only messengers. The deliverymen. Never mind the trousers. We’ll go just the way we are.”

“Sit down,” said the impersonator of Reb Teitelbaum. “In the middle. With the Jews.”

“Say,” said Randy. “How much do you want for that hat?”

“We offer a thousand cash for real beaver.”

The Bombshell lowered the tip of her assault rifle. “You heard what he said. Judeus! Assentem-se!”

The brothers stepped back, raising their hands. Randy said, “How long will we be here?”

The man named Yitzhak gave a cruel laugh. “For eternity!”

His supposed son said, “Or until eight o’clock. We’ll make that the latht deadline.”

“Eight o’clock!” Randy exclaimed. “That’s past sundown!”

“Tho what?”

“But it’s Passover! The Seder starts at seven!”

Just then a moan went from the first seat to the last of the central section. It was unlike the sounds of suffering we had heard before. Half the men were beating their breasts. The other half were clutching their stomachs. It dawned on me that in all the terror of the last days every single one of them had forgotten two things: that this was the first night of their holy day and that they were hungry to the point of starvation. You could hear both concerns in the chant that rose from them now:

“Seder! Seder! Give us our Seder!”

The Jews were standing. They raised their fists in the air. This was the first serious sign of defiance. The terrorists lifted their weapons; they pointed them at the crowd. But the chant of Seder! Seder! only grew louder. The men at the front began to push forward. Those behind pressed against them. Out of this mass of people a tall, thin man seemed to be extruded. As the crowd recognized him their shouts abated, and when he had gained the edge of the stage and held up his hands, they entirely faded away. Here was the Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. This was how he addressed us:

“No one here knows what is going to happen. Perhaps in the next hours our government will relent. I do not understand their position—or that of my friend President Bush.”

[Poor fellow! I only wish there would be a miracle and the Constitution, John Hancock author, could be changed to permit him to run again. In my opinion, he’d win in a landslide.]

Mr. Wiesel continued: “The first principle, the only principle, should be the saving of human life. The lives of the Jewish people and also the lives of our tormentors in this beautiful opera house—heaven forbid it should be destroyed.”

Here the laureate paused, pushing a shock of falling hair from his forehead. “So let us pray that in the hours that remain before eight o’clock, God will whisper to our leaders: Be merciful and spare these many lives. But if that should not happen—should that telephone not ring—then we must prepare to die. But not before enjoying our last Seder here, among our new friends, our new family. And when these few shall say, Next year in Jerusalem, it will be with the voice of all.”

Amazingly enough, this Seder occurred. The hours went by. The cell phone remained mute, the screens of our monitors blank. Outside, the sun was setting. We deduced this not by our watches but because the terrorists performed, with their heads knocking the floorboards, the same prayer they did each day as the last light disappeared from the sky.

Then all those onstage, the chorus and crew, the King and his court, Princess and Prince, stepped toward the wings as a small group of Jews set up a long table and chairs. From the prop department they had no trouble finding tablecloths, cutlery, soup bowls, dinner plates, and goblets for wine. Even a candelabrum. One by one the celebrants took their places at the table. Mr. Wiesel sat at one end, the Glickmans took seats in the middle. Madam Schnabel and Stutchkoff were there as well. Mr. Goldkorn squinted up toward the Parterre. “May I invite my former inamorata to join us?”

Did he mean me? I rose a bit from my seat. Then, overcome by a fit of shyness, I sat again.

“You won’t come?” called the conductor. “A pity. At such a time a man wishes to have about him all the women in his life.”

“What about me, maestro? Am I not your Buttercup? Do I not count?”

The speaker was Emma, the Princess. She had plucked up one of the plants from Rübezahl’s grotto and, holding it aloft, approached Mr. Goldkorn.

“The Fleming!” the latter declared. “What’s that in your hand? Maror?”

“Mistletoe.” The soprano raised the greenery above the conductor. Then she bent low toward him, and lower still. “It is our last chance.”

“You mean für einen Kuss? But think about the bowels.”

The soprano’s face was inches away. But just before her lips met his, someone in the audience started to sing:

I’d love to get you on a slow boat to China

All to myself alone—

The conductor turned from Miss Fleming and peered into the orchestra, where a woman stood, isolated and alone. “What? Could it be? Is this Neptune’s Daughter?” Then he broke into song himself:

Out on the briny with the moon big and shiny

Melting your heart of stone—

Futz! Fitz howled Hymena.

The humans, including the Arabians, put their hands to their ears.

The woman said, “I rarely travel. I do not attend the opera. But, dear Leibie, how could I miss your world premiere?”

With the aid of a cane she began to make her way to the stage.

Mr. Goldkorn introduced her to us. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Million-Dollar Mermaid. Miss E. Williams!”

[I experienced then what I had back in December of 1941, when this very woman had awakened me with her magical prestidigits. In short, a bubbling in the depths and a gathering warmth, which is what it must feel like to be a fondue.]

I looked down. Yes, beneath what are so often called the ravages of time, I saw the indelible spirit of the swimmer, the actress, the beauty queen.

“Look, Jaime,” I said. “Do you see? That is a famous—”

But the boy’s seat was empty. He was not in the box. Before I could call out his name I saw him running onto the stage. He went directly to Mr. Goldkorn, who put his hand on his pomaded head.

“I am now the proud papa of this handsome Junge. Reminiscent of myself as a lad. Ha, ha. Without the ears.”

Slowly the table filled. One type of doctor, Goloshes, with his wounded head wrapped up like a Sikh’s, leaned against the shoulder of another, Kissinger. A man with a freckled face climbed onto the stage.

“It’s all a mistake,” he announced. “I thought this was supposed to be La Bohème.”

Mr. Goldkorn beckoned him to one of the few remaining chairs. “May I introduce my landlord and King of the Casa Blanca, Mr. Frank Fingerhut, fils.”

“We have less than an hour,” Madam Schnabel declared. “We should begin.”

The Jews, together with Miss Williams and Miss Fleming, looked dispiritedly at their unfilled glasses, their empty plates.

“Is not even matzoh?” asked Hildegard Stutchkoff.

“Attention, gentlemen. And ladies.” Mr. Wiesel held his wineglass aloft.

Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the

universe, who created the fruit of the vine.

Mr. Goldkorn held up his glass as well. “Ha! Ha! There’s nothing in it.” Then he put it to his lips.

“Wait! Wait! Don’t drink! It’s too soon.”

The speaker was an aged man, though he seemed spry enough as he hurried down the aisle. It was difficult to make out the meaning of his words, perhaps because his nose was buried in a thick moustache. “You have to wait until the end of the Kiddush. Greetings, Leib Goldkorn. How is your lovely bride?”

Mr. Goldkorn stood stunned.

[Yes, stunned. For without a doubt, though his hair tufts were now entirely gray, this was the man who had performed the spousals between myself and Miss Litwack in the year of our Lord, so to speak, 1942.]

“Rabbi Rymer!” he eventually exclaimed. “Clara? Kaputt.”

Instead of replying, the short, stout clergyman took up a glass of his own and began to chant words in Hebrew that I knew from the Seders I had attended were in praise of the Lord for having chosen the Jews from among all the peoples of the earth, and for having—and here Mr. Wiesel and several others joined him in English:

granted us life, sustained us, and enabled

us to reach this occasion.

Madam Stutchkoff looked down to where her husband’s watch had once been. “Is what time?”

“Seven-thirty,” answered Mr. Fingerhut.

Said Dr. Kissinger, in his rumbling voice, “We have to hurry.”

Even Goloshes murmured, “Only a half hour left.”

All too true. Over their shoulders those at the table could not help but see how their modern oppressors were moving once more toward their deadly machines. There would be no miracle here: the sea would not part. Instead the sky, that is, the ceiling above us with its gold-plated clouds, would crack and fall, burying Israel and Egypt alike.

“Mah nishtanah?” piped little Jaime, prompted by the Nobel Laureate at his ear:

What makes this night different from all other nights?

Then, at breakneck speed, came the answer, along with the questions of the other children, simple, wicked, and wise. Rabbi Rymer never stopped chanting and swaying, holding up glasses filled with nothing and uncovering plates that were bare. Yet no matter how quick his words, how swift his gestures, the hands of a thousand different clocks moved ever faster: twelve minutes to the hour, ten minutes to the hour. Eight, seven, six.

Now those at the table dipped their fingertips into the optical illusion of the wine and shook the drops onto empty dishes:

Blood

Lice

Wild beasts

Pestilence

Boils

Hail

Locusts

Darkness

The slaying of the firstborn

[You have forgotten, my half-Finn, frogs.]

Four minutes. Three. The terrorists unbuttoned their jackets, revealing once more the dynamite strapped to their chests. The young, curly-haired woman gripped the metal plunger with both hands.

Rabbi Rymer was chanting faster than a tobacco auctioneer. But all the minute hands now trembled at the top. The rabbi stopped. He looked about. Then, with the stiff cloth of a napkin, he covered the immaterial matzoh and began slowly, and in English, to say the following words:

Thus it is our duty to thank, to laud, to praise, to glorify, to exalt, to adore, to bless, to elevate, and to honor the One who did all these miracles for our fathers and for us. He took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, and from mourning to festivity, and from deep darkness to great light, and from bondage to redemption. Let us therefore recite before him, Halleluya, praise God!

God did not answer. The cell phone remained mute. No one appeared on the screens of the monitors. Instead, the woman who had posed as the wife of a rabbi announced, “It is eight o’clock. The government of America has chosen not to reply. We shall now carry out our task.”

“Allahu akbar!” Thus cried out the Mohammedans.

“Sh’ma!” answered the Jews. “Sh’ma Yisroel!”

There was a loud noise. Not an explosion. A knock. A knocking. As if someone were at the door.

“Heavens!” cried Elie Wiesel. “It is Elijah!”

Everyone strained to see what was happening at the rear of the auditorium. Two of the guards stood aside, and into the open space stepped an old and stooped gentleman. Both his feet were splayed outward and so were his arms, on which were balanced plate after plate of steaming delicatessen.

“Barney Greengrass!” he announced. “Home delivery!”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Leib Goldkorn. “212-724-9927. Weep, Uncle Al! I remember the number!”

Forward came the waiter, skillfully balancing his burden, until he reached the ramp to the stage. Nor did he hesitate then, but without spilling a morsel walked directly up to the table.

“Okay,” he said. “Who gets the scrambled with horseradish cheddar?”

Deftly he set down the platters of food.

“Excuse me, Mr. Mosk,” Mr. Goldkorn said. “I’m partial to the sable and whitefish.”

Mr. Mosk took out a pad. “That’ll be nine hundred and fifty-seven dollars. Not counting the tip.”

All around him people were grabbing for knives and forks. One or two had started to shovel the food off the platters with their hands.

“Wait, gentlemen. Be patient, ladies.” That was Rabbi Rymer. “We have to assume a reclining position.”

The man called Yitzhak strode forward. “Fools! Do you think the condemned man receives a last meal?”

So saying, he swept all the plates and dishes off the table to the floor of the stage.

Mr. Mosk: “Visa, MasterCard, American Express. No Diners Club.”

“Jews! The time is up! It is we, not you, who shall dwell in Jerusalem. Look: I raise my arm.”

The terrorist did indeed lift his arm, like the blade of a guillotine, into the air.

“Allahu akbar!”

“Allahu akbar!”

“Tawakalt ala Allah!”

Down came the arm. Simultaneously, there came a faint, muffled sound:

Den hoe it down an scratch your grabble

It was the cell phone! It was Speaker Pelosi! Everyone gasped. But where was the song coming from? You could barely hear the ringtone:

To Dixie land I’m bound to trabble.

Then the head of Mr. Goldkorn appeared above the tabletop. He had the ringing instrument in his hand.

“Sorry. I was unter der Tafel. Ha. Ha. I found a schmaltz herring.”

“Give me that!” Dr. Kissinger swiped the cell phone from the conductor’s hand and put it to his ear.

“Hello? Nancy? Hello. What? What? Now? Gott sei Dank!”

He addressed the assemblage. “The government has relented. It has made all the arrangements.”

Then he turned to the terrorists. “You will be able to fly away.”

No sooner had these last words left the diplomat’s mouth than from out of the false blue of the sky a great winged horse descended. For an instant everyone, including the oppressors, stood in awe at the beauty of the animal and the enormity of its endowment. Down and down it came, until it stood quivering and hovering a few inches from the floor of the stage.

Suddenly Ms. Fleming, in her famous clear tones, sang the notes from the Mahler score:

Come, noble steed. O’er field, forest, and huts.

My goodness! My gracious! Just look at that putz!

[What? Ribaldry? In this Familienzeitung?]

Then, gripping the animal’s mane, she attempted to pull herself onto the broad expanse of its back. Before she could do so, two overweight men came running from the wings. One was the musical director of the Metropolitan Opera, James Levine.

[J. Levine, huh? Rhymes with H. Heine.]

He pushed Ms. Fleming aside and tried to climb onto the beast himself.

The second man was our Prince, the tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He dashed ahead, waving a white handkerchief.

“I’m-a surrender! I’m-a give up! I got-a una indisposizione!”

He barreled straight into Mr. Levine, knocking him backward, then tried to haul himself aboard. For the next seconds all three figures hopped up and down in the vain attempt to mount the colossal stallion.

Then, in unison, they stopped. They stepped back in wonder. Those three saw what we thousands did too: From the great flaring nostrils of the beast came a kind of spray, a cloud, a coil of fumes.

“Khatar!” shouted Abdoul.

“We have been tricked!”

“Hazir! It is a gas!”

“Haziru!”

Immediately the terrorists rushed for their weapons. All at once there was a loud sound, a crack!, and the entire flank of the horse sprang open and at least a score of armed men, all with black hoods, sprang out.

“Ein Trojanisches Pferd!”

There was a fusillade. Everyone, on the stage, in the Orchestra seats, flung himself down. A crossfire of bullets was clanging, zipping, thudding. Two of the terrorists fell. Then a third. In the thick roiling cloud I could see flashes and hear cries of pain and shouts of exultation. The smokescreen spread, filling the whole of the auditorium. People were coughing, choking, gasping. Was this a poison? A narcotic? Would it kill us? Or just put us to sleep?

I strained to see through the bank of vapor. Amidst all the sounds of warfare I could make out the voice of Rabbi Rymer, who had not budged from his spot at the table, and who was still chanting over an empty glass of wine. Sprawled about him on the floor, Mr. Fingerhut, the Glickman brothers, and the others were simultaneously covering their heads and reaching for crumbs of spilled food. My heart leaped to my mouth when I saw Jaime rushing through the fumes and the bullets and the puddles of gore.

“Dónde está el Afikomen?” he was shouting. “¿Dónde está el Afikomen?”

The battle was already drawing to a close. Through the back door, through all the exits, more troops were pouring. They wore packs on their backs and their faces were covered with rubber masks. The remaining terrorists turned their fire on the invaders, but they were quickly overwhelmed—either by firepower or the anesthetic that was now affecting us all. I saw Yitzhak fall. And Abdi. And both of the females. Abdoul clutched at his chest and dropped to his knees. So did the false Reb Teitelbaum. By now there were only scattered shots. Rabbi Rymer had stopped praying. He lay slumped at the table. Dead? Or merely asleep? His congregation lay on the floor. Their meal was done. There was a last salvo. Then a single shot. Then silence.

Was the siege over? I fought to keep my eyelids open, though they seemed to weigh as much as the iron shutters on a merchant’s shop. On the stage I could see only shadows, some moving, some still. The great horse was entirely obscured, yet the fumes of steam or smoke or gas kept pouring from its nostrils. Not only had they blanketed the whole auditorium but they now billowed upward, hovering over the stage in a thick, dark, menacing cloud.

One person stood standing below it. It was Mr. Goldkorn. I could tell by the chain that glittered and gleamed as it dangled to his knees. He was pointing at the towering mound of vapor, which had gathered its coils into the shape of a gigantic figure, brown as blown dust, with a black cap like a thunderhead at its top. There was even a kind of rumble within it, like thunder itself.

Was I asleep? Was I dreaming? I watched as the aged musician pointed to the apparition that hovered above him.

“I know him! The Golem! The Furor!”

I leaned over the side of box number 1. I tried to see what he saw in the cloud. A human figure. Blurred. Overcast. But with a black shock of hair. A smudge of a black moustache.

“No, no!” I cried. “It is only a dream. A figure of imagination.”

Mr. Goldkorn was groping this way and that, stumbling about the stage. “I know what to do. I know what I need. Where is my Rudall & Rose?”

Then he stopped in his tracks. He leaned forward, squinting. Something was shining in the dark. A line, a bar, of silver light. He staggered toward it, reaching out.

“My flute!” he cried. “A gift from the Emperor! Meine Zauberflöte!”

He took three steps toward where his shining instrument floated horizontally amidst the vapors. Then he paused. Behind him, above him, a flash of light shot through the cloud. Thunder rumbled within it.

“Stop!” I cried. “Oh, my dear Leib! Do not move!”

I had suddenly realized that this was no flute, no instrument, no Rudall & Rose. It was the plunger of the infernal machine.

“Musik! Ah, Musik!”

These, as it happened, were, on this earth, Mr. Goldkorn’s last words.

I leaned out even farther, as if I could stop him. I slipped. I lost my balance. Reaching back, I caught only the cage of the cat.

Footz? Flutz? Fwist?

Down we tumbled together. We were in midair as Mr. Goldkorn, in his ultimate act, reached for the shining, silvery bar.

I heard the explosion. It was not a large one. Not much more than a firecracker’s pop. But it was enough to bring all the world’s curtains down.