Leib falls into despair, meets a new friend,
and sets off on a journey.

LOVERS OF MUSIC, friends of Leib Goldkorn: Hail! Also farewell. You are in the year 2005. Being addressed by a man born in 1901—momentous not only for the completion of the Mombasa–Lake Victoria railway, but also for the composition by G. Mahler of his Fifth Symphony, with, in the key of C-minor, the celebrated dirge of the dead. Leib Goldkorn: ask not for whom the musicians parade. It’s your funeral.

How old is this gentleman with one foot, sporting a Thom McAn, in the grave? For this we make a lightning calculation: 2005, the present year, minus 1901. Hmmm. Hmmm. One from five. Done! Zero from zero. Done! But a nine from a naught? This is the higher mathematics. See how, like a schoolboy’s, my tongue protrudes from my mouth. The two, hoopla!, becomes a one; the deficit attaches itself to the nil. Eureka! Leib is in years one hundred and four. Not exactly young.

Slight correction: we have not reached, on this brisk fall morning, the ninth of November, the precise day on which my head, as bald then as it is now, emerged from between the—you will pardon the expression—loins of my mother. Goldkorn, Falma. Née Krupnick. Ergo, the present speaker is but, hmmm, one hundred and three. Sculptor! Carve, please, on the tombstone, L. GOLDKORN, GRADUATE: 11/9/01–10/10/05. Erect it on the family plot at the cemetery of Hachilah Hill.

Surely the reader now exclaims: “Is not today, this Monday, October tenth, 2005?” It is. Proof: the date of my current National Enquirer is October 9. Headline: TOP MOB MISTRESS IN SPANISH HARLEM SHOOT-OUT. SON LEFT UNHARMED. Story, p. 4.” Do you now understand? Has the incandescent bulb ignited above your head? Your interlocutor will not reach the day that is not only the anniversary of his hatching but also that of the famed Kristallnacht, 11/9/38, when the streets of Berlin were as strewn with broken glass then as are these of New York with fallen leaves now.

Why such haste to hear the Funeral March, key of C? Let us speak of the ills of the body. Primo, the coldness of extremities—a sensation reminiscent of those childhood days when the family Goldkorn would bathe on the banks of the Iglawa, emerging from the chill spring waters with ejaculations of pleasure—Gott! Gott! Ist das kalt!—on our blue-toned lips, much as in America the daring associates of the Polar Bear Club sport in the surf at Coney Island. It is their belief, shared by Goldkorn père, that such a frosty dip is a boon to virility. Virility, ha! ha! ha! Try to find Mr. Johnson now! Once, in excitement, three and one-half American inches!

The difference between past and present: the Polar Bears, both shiny-scalped males and broad-shouldered females, wear bathing costumes of one and two pieces. But in the Iglawa we younglings, and oldsters too, sported au naturel. On occasion one had to avert one’s eyes from the nativities of let us say Fräulein Minchke—Ja! One’s own sister!—lest a fellow experience a stiffy.

But we were speaking of the frailty of the flesh. Bicuspid pain. Ringing, key of B-flat, in the inner ear. On the tongue, fur and tastelessness. Response to blows from Dr. Goloshes’s rubber hammer: nil. Missiles, like half notes, hover in my squinting eyes. Abdominals: distended, obscuring the organs of procreation. From this pouch rise gurglings and faint cries, as if from a drowning man. The excrementas? Do not inquire. Luckily, little comes out since little comes in. No Williams Bar-B-Que Chicken, with side order of half-soured tomatoes. From B. Greengrass, the Sturgeon King, no saltwater treats. Instead of such dainties: Meals on Wheels.

Sleep? On this Posturepedic? Home to silverfish. A congress of fleas. Bite, bite, little ladies! And suck! Not to mention the encounter with a snout beetle. At my age, called by the Bard that of the pantaloon, one does not require forty winks. Instead I sit in my Windsor-type chair and read, a-squinting, page 4 of the excellent Enquirer: “The young upper-Manhattan trophy-gal of famed mobster Tony-the-Anchovy-Crappenzo fell early yesterday in a hail of bullets. Karima Castillo, 24, who neighbors described as both fun-loving and a woman who de—”

Here the flame of my candle, like the flicker of life within Señorita Castillo, goes out. What? Candlelight? Like the friar in his cell? What happened to the Sylvania-brand bulb? Intact still, my trusty tungsten. It is the Edison electricity, the running water, and the steam for heat that have been extinguished. Radiators cold, grim, and mute. And my lumberman-style jacket has no longer elbows, my gabardines no longer knees. And look who comes: Old Man Winter, friends.

What happened next? That’s what everybody wants to know. Who pulled the trigger? And what of the young lady’s fate? These items have had to wait until the light of dawn fell upon the printed page. Only then do I discover that the fun-loving Karima lay dead. Worse. Worse, still. She was “a single mother” who “devoted her life” to her eight-year old son, Jaime, who was “abandoned when the Anchovy sped away in a blue BMW sedan.” BMW. This is Bayerische Motoren Werke.

Can you blame Leib Goldkorn—once fun-loving himself—for wishing to leave such a world? Eight years old! Poor Jaime! An orphan! Abandoned! And the evildoers still at large. In four more minutes, or perhaps three—my Bulova has long since been deposited at the Glickman Brothers shop of prawns—I shall no longer be forced to think of such cataclysms. Pantaloon? Who am I kidding? I approach the age of childishness. Sans teeth, melancholy Jacques: sans eyes, sans taste. Sans everything.

Yet it is not the cold, the hunger, or the ache of bones that will kill me. Nor am I cast into despair by the iniquities of the world. Leib Goldkorn has already encountered the worst that men can do. Was he not thrown in ridicule out the doors of the Wiener Staatsoper? Did he not watch with his own eyes as his entire family—sisters Yakhne and Minchke; Mother Falma, née Krupnick; putative père—sailed off on the barge Kaliope not downstream to Budapest and freedom but up the Danube to Dachau and death? Did he not suffer the scorn, in sunny California, of D. F. Zanuck? I do not need the callow Kennedy, President “Jack,” to tell me that life is not fair.

Then why does Leib Goldkorn look with longing at the Magic Chef oven? Into which he will soon thrust his head. Could it be the absence of Liebe und Arbeit, the words that my Coreligionist, S. Freud, employed in order to describe what a chap needs to find meaning in life?

Love:

Of that I have had my share. We begin, in youth, at the teats of Madam Goldkorn. An only son, never did I doubt I was her hero, a Hannibal. Next: the young man who pressed against me, a mere Jüngling, during a performance of Tristan und Isolde. Let us speak last of the mammalia of Minchke. All here was innocent, all here was pure. Without effusion.

Far different was lusty manhood. Women! Oh, women! For them I have had the roving eye. If you have read, O connoisseur, my first volume of memoirs, Goldkorn Tales, you will remember, foremost, my wife: the Litwack. Clara! Meine Frau! Your fingernail polish! Your garter trolleys! With her, in November of 1942, I achieved a definite penetration. Also unforgettable: Hildegard, proprietor of the Steinway Restaurant. Oh, you Stutchkoff! The acrobatics on your feather mattress. With what force did my Jewish-style member burst through the aperture of my S. Klein drawers. Near penetration.

It was in the second volume of my memorials, Ice Fire Water, that I described the manner in which I have known, as Abraham knew Sarah, three of the world’s most prominent beauties. Miss Sonja Henie, whose ice boot I held in my lap. Miss C. Miranda, whose warming whisper entered my ear:

I yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, I like you very much.

I yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, I think you’re grand.

Not least, Miss Esther Williams, who chafed my vegetative organ and breathed with no less heat: Oh, Leibie, your magic takes my breath away. Jiggling. A-jiggling. Four fingers and thumb.

I do not claim to be an amorist. Leib is no Lothario. Still, five such mistresses in a mere century, and each of them a knockout: that means I have experienced on average a paroxysm once every, hmmm, hmmm, twenty years. Not bad.

Note that I have not yet mentioned my half-Finn, with whom, since our celebrated “date” at the Hotel Plaza, Court of Palms, I have maintained a relationship that Professor Pergam, of the Akademie für Musik, Philosophie, und darstellende Kunst, would call strictly platonisch. Oh, her pomegranate eyes! The black bun of her hair! What a neck! No, no! Stop! Desist! All such reveries are now streng verboten: strictly forbidden.

Very well, Work:

I have always been employed as a musician, with emphasis on the flute. I think with special fondness of the Rudall & Rose model bestowed on me by His Kaiserlichen und Königlichen Apostolischen Majestät at our graduation concert, 1916—only a short time before he, our cherished Franz Joseph, expired in the arms of, of all people, my man-killing Minchke. In truth I have performed on as many varieties of instrument as I have known—to use once more the Hebraic euphemism—different women. Aside from the woodwind family, I have mastered both the Glockenspiel and the Dudelsack at the Wiener Staatsoper and, amidst Manhattanites, the crystalphonicon, also known as the filjam saz. Crowds gathered along 125th Street as upon these musical glasses I played that favorite of the Harlemites:

I’m coming, I’m coming, for my head is bending low.

I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe.

Do you recall, my dear bibliomane, how in my first volume I described my quarter century at the Steinway Restaurant? Upon the piano stool of the Bechstein grand? On this instrument I played with my fellow musicians the following repertoire: Offenbach, Meyerbeer, Romberg, Zemlinksy and Bloch; Dunayevsky, who wrote the inspired “Song of Stalin,” and his compatriot, M. Blanter, author of “Katyushka,” the hymn to rockets; Henri Hertz, fellow Viennese, composer of the Mexican National Anthem. In short, all the greats. Hélas, the Steinway Restaurant exists no more.

And what of the Steinway Quintet? Salpeter, first violin; Dr. J. Dick, double bass; Tartakower, flautist (poor breath control); Young Murmelstein, second violin: all these artists moved on to the Gumbiner Brothers Bar-Mitzvah Band. And when that band also went up the belly? When its trade was seized by the Litvak, Lester Lanin? Who knows? With the approach of the dread Uncle Al it becomes difficult to remember who is living and who is not. Lenin, not. Lanin? Likely. And Murmelstein? And Dr. Dick? What of the excellent Veronica Lake? Fellow centurians! We live in a world of shadows. Of ghosts.

Let us, on this question of employment, face the terrible truth. Even if I had in my possession the Rudall & Rose, I have not the stoutness of lip to play either “I Loves You, Porgy” or “I Can’t Get Started with You.” These same lips are too dry even to—TWAT! TWAT!—whistle. No Liebe! Dear God, no Arbeit! Time, therefore, to become a ghost myself.

HAIL, MAGIC CHEF! I see thine grinning mouth. Thine broad white brow. Soon, dear friend. Soon. No more waiting for long-winded Leib. Open, jaws; open wide. Wilt thou not do for me what Brutus did for Caesar? F-f-f-f: the hiss of your breath. We who are about to die salute you. F-f-f-f-: What, would’st thou speak, venerable Roman range? F-f-f: Frank Fingerhut, fils? The Freeholder? Fiend and foe. What? What? Ah. I understand. Why not kill that fraud, the fickle fellow, instead of truly yours, the flautist? That requires a moment’s thought.

Why does Leib Goldkorn huddle alone and friendless in flat number 5-D? Why must he read the National Enquirer that is on occasion left by the Spaniard from Meals on Wheels, instead of purchasing that lively gazette in our busy, buzzing streets? Who has cut off the Edison current, the pressure for steam, the hot and the cold running water? Frank Fingerhut, fils! One by one he has driven out all rent-stabilized clients in order to make of their simple dwellings the Casa Blanca: luxury units mit marble Toiletten! Self-flushing! Mit Müllhäckslern, which makes all the dreck disappear down the sink. Mit Jen-Air. “Insider” price: Zwei Millionen. Yes, two million dollars. A difficult sum to raise. Of all the tenants, only I remain.

Now the fils, that fathead, has offered me five thousand American dollars to vacate the premises. Should I accept this princely sum? Depart from my lair? But where will I go? All worldly goods—not just the Bulova-brand, but the Admiral “TV” and the tubeless Philco and the non-popping toaster—are in the possession of those Glickman boys, portly Ernest, sinewed Randy. To repeat: Where will Leib Goldkorn go? There are only two choices: Will it be Himmel? Or will it be Hölle? Enquiring minds want to know. Well, dear friends, we are about to find out.

But for a moment: hold. Let us speak, with our last breath, the truth. It it not because of the fils, that falscher Freund, that I am about to place my head in the porcelain noose of the hooded hangman. Nor is it ills of the flesh, the unsold volumes of my memorials, the tiptoes of Uncle Al, or even the loss of Liebe, the absence of Arbeit, that have driven me to despair. No. No. And once again, no.

Here is the straw upon the camel’s hump: an Order of Protection from the constabulary of the City of New York. Would you like me to read it? Word for terrible word? First, sit yourself down. Then draw in a deep breath. Ready? Thus, from the depths of my lumberman’s jacket, the missive. Voilà!

I write on behalf of my client, Ms.—

Wait! I cannot allow you to hear her name. Or speak it myself. Let us begin anew:

I write on behalf of my client Ms. NOH [Name Obliterated Here], on whose behalf I have obtained an Order of Protection from the New York City Criminal Court—

Criminal! Mark you that?

—that you must obey in all respects on pain of criminal—

That word again!

—or civil penalties, including arrest and a possible prison sentence. I have sought this injunction for Ms. She-Who [She Who Must Not Be Named] because of your constant attentions and trespasses, including but not limited to your uninterrupted flow of letters—

Guilty, Your Honor! But how else, since I no longer possess a Bell Telephone, could I communicate with my inamorata? Is it possible that for such a simple billet-doux—par exemple, “I dream, my hellion from Helsinki, of the day you will give me, athwart hot rocks, a good twigging. Truly yours, L. Goldkorn, Graduate”—one can be imprisoned in the bastille?

Uninterrupted flow? Might the accused have a word with the court? Postage-poor, it was my habit to fold each of those chitties in the orgasmic style of her countrymen (my inamorata is, as the whole world knows, half a Finn, and half-Nipponese) and then launch such airships out the window to the heavens. Alas! Whether addressed to her news desk in Times Square or to the embassies of her native nations, these feuilletons drew no more response than those of the shipwrecked mariner who places all of his hopes within the bottle that is cast into the indifferent currents of the sea.

But what of the camel? What of the hump?

—of letters, fantasies, and obsessions in published works of fiction—

Fiction? Undoubtedly a reference to my double opus. The second of these, the aforementioned Ice Fire Water, described my life in Hollywood and in particular my conjugals with the Misses Henie, Miranda, and Williams, and was no fantasy, no fiction—I yi-yi-yi-yi-yi, I like you very much. The first, the Goldkorn Tales, a non-bestseller, was praised in print by that same She-Who for its “artistry and ambition,” end quote, a remark that created, within its modest author, a definite peppercorn sensation.

—fiction, all of which have created mental distress and fear of bodily harm; taken together, they are an invasion of her personal space, and in the opinion of the court constitute stalking, harassment, and even sexual assault.

Hee, hee, hee. At age one hundred and three? Possibly.

Under the terms of the injunction, and pending a hearing, you are ordered to cease all contact with Ms. YHWA [You Have Withheld Appellation], either at home or in the workplace or in public or private spaces. You may not invoke her name or use it in any written form. Nor are you allowed to communicate with her either by telephone, notes, mail, fax, email, speech, or the delivery of flowers or gifts.

Fax? Is this a gallantry?

Further, you are required without fail to attend a Sex and Love Addiction Seminar and to conclude to the court’s satisfaction all Twelve Steps of the program, pursuant to the penalties, both civil and criminal, described above.

Sincerely,

S. A. Lubowitz, attorney at law

S. A. Lubowitz? S. No! S.S.! Sex Staatspolizei!

An Addiction Seminar? For Sex? Mein Gott! Are they going to cover Mr. Johnson with leeches? Or worse? I am a grown man. I know how to tame hot-bloodedness. Let us recall, for example, New Year’s Day of 1991, when I was a zestful, hmmm, eighty-nine. How better to quench lustful fires than a bracing dip amid frozen seas? Imagine my disappointment upon arriving at Coney Island to learn that the privileges of the Polar Bear Club were for Members Only. Not only that: No Guests Allowed. “What?” exclaimed the still-lithesome Leib. “A permit is required to swim in the Atlantic Ocean? Non-Bears verboten?”

Thus frustrated by swimming anti-Semites, filled still with lubrications, I remained haunted by visions of a Laplandic lass running all ruddy from the simmer of the sauna into the embrace of the floating ice. Only a vigorous hour of Skee ball sufficed to calm the furies. Non-winner of doll. Ha! The last laugh: the earth is warming. All Polar Bears shall soon be extinct.

But not as soon as Leib Goldkorn. Let the municipal court send its Sex Staatspolizei into apartment number 5-D. Too late! But one hour ago I defied the Order of Protection by sending one last airmail—ha, ha, even now I have retained my Hassidic humor—airmail!—letter to my favorite Finn. How cleverly I disguised her name! “Dear Miss Okihcim Inatukak . . .” Ha! Ha! Ha! Anyone seeing this would think I was addressing the Queen of the Esquimaux.

In it I did nothing more than utter a fond farewell. Yes, and make one last request: that my paramour not fret upon discovering that her beloved had committed, in her own native nomenclature, hara-kiri.

Twelve Steps? I shall not need that many to complete my task.

STEP ONE: Close all windows. Check.

STEP TWO: Turn once more the spigots for gas. Also the knob for roasting. Check. F-f-f-f. Again the soft sibilation sounds in my ears.

STEP THREE: A note. Not necessary. What you read now is my farewell. Auf Wiedersehen!

STEP FOUR: Open the Magic Chef maw. Check. Darkness. A cave, like that of Professor Pergam’s Plato. I drop, like a devotee, to my knees. For in that cavern of shadow and shade one finds the other world, where the ancient Greek maintained all is true, all is good, all is beautiful.

F-f-f-f. Lay down, Leib Goldkorn, your weary head. A fitting end. For did not your own family—sisters, Mutter, putative père—expire from the inhalation of a similar vapor? And your larger family, the Jewish people—were they not killed in just such a kiln? Who am I, a simple panpiper, to avoid a matching fate? Now I understand: all my life, my dears, has been a journey to join you. Sh’ma Yisroel. Adonai Elohenu. Hmmm, hmmm. Adonai Echad!

STEP FIVE: I should have brought knee pads. No matter. I begin to feel a dropsy. A welcome slumber. F-f-f-f. Could I really kill Frank Fingerhut instead? Perhaps with a knife? No. No. Away with such thoughts. Fils! I forgive you. F-f-f-f: It comes. Yes, it comes. The world beyond darkness. Oh, Pergam! Oh, Plato! You spoke true. There, there: deep in the cave of shadows, a single blue light. Steady. Unblinking. The ray of a distant star. What peace! What joy! For in this beam are gathered all the human souls—Miss Litwack, Madam Miranda, the heavenly Henie—who wish to welcome me to their celestial abode. Mama! Mamele! Your teats! I come! Ja! I come!

But tarry. This flame: Is it not the pilot light of the Magic Chef oven? F-f-f-f! Pilot light? But will it not, upon encountering the gas company product, create a detonation? Help! Help! Feuer! Wait. Be calm. Did not the Keystone Corporation shut off the “natural” gas? For flat 5-D and all of 138 West? F-F-F-F-F! Then what is this sibilation? The fizzle and fizz? F! F! F! F! Look! Adjoining this blue light I see a red one! Also unblinking! A ruby. Ruddy. Rubicund. Save me, Jesus! It is the eye of the devil! F! F! F! FUT! FUTT! Ouch! Ouch! The claws of the devil too! Ah: it is the end of Leib Goldkorn! Watch out! Satan! The hellhound! F!F!F!F! FUTTTTT!

Hellhound? A hellcat. With a single bound—FA-FITTZ!—this feline has leaped onto my head, then onto the tiles of linoleum, and now with a final bound hurls herself onto my window’s sill.

A hundred questions bloom. How did this animal enter the Magic Chef? And how long did it make this appliance its home? Do I have, in unit 5-D, a mouse? Is this the pet, perhaps, of Manuel, from Meals on Wheels, who oft leaves behind his copy of the stimulating Enquirer? Could he be related to poor Karima? Is he thus caring for the poor orphaned Jaime? And this kitten? Licking with indifference his or her paws? Could I not adopt this outcast as he has adopted the eight-year-old boy? Jaime? My very own Hyman!

Into my hairless head springs the memory of Professor Pergam’s lectures on the ancient Egyptians: Were not, to these Nile-ists, all cats sacred? Were they not preserved after death, so that they might accompany their masters on the journey to the afterlife?

Meow!

Dost call, my mummy? Mummy? Egyptians? Why so far afield? If I had but time I could relate the customs of our very own redskins, about which I learned when studying for my naturalization exam, Judge Solomon Gitlitz presiding. Would you like, my kitten, to be washed with yucca suds? Should I sacrifice to you, ha-ha-ha, my favorite pony? Come. Come. Together we shall journey to the Happy Hunting Ground.

PLAN B:

STEP ONE: Open window. Check.

STEP TWO: Take into my arms the piebald puss. What a creature! A red eye. A blue one. Tail ringed in black, like that of a raccoon. Whiskers on one side only. What’s this? A missing leg? A half-chewed ear? You too have been caught up on the wheel of sorrow, darling. Here, pussy, puss. Come, kitty. So, clinging with claws, my companion attaches herself—I see no organ of generation, no sign of spermary—to my lumberman’s coat. Oh! With a rough tongue she laps my chin. Such a sweetheart. Together we shall greet the Dawn Mother.

STEPS THREE, FOUR, FIVE: Lift with difficulty—and at age one hundred and, hmmm, three—first one leg, then the other, over the sill. Then duck one’s head under the glass. Voilà! No, no: do not tremble, Hymena, honey. Have you not eight additional lives? Example of Hebrew humor: laughing on gallows. Now a last peek at the Jews and non-Jews of the Upper West Side. Their derbies and bowlers. Their neck scarves stretched on the wind. Look out below! See? How they stop? How they gaze upward? Look at their pale faces. How white they are. Like milk.

Me-cow!

Ah, Milch. Art hungry? Thirsty too? I have in the Frigidaire nothing but tickets for prawns. Fear not: in Paradies there will be milk, honey, Lindt-brand chocolates. All, mein Liebling, all. Shall we make the jump? Let us count together.

Eins. Yes, yes. Well done.

Zwei. That means two, my tabby.

Und-und: DREI! So, in honor of the tribe of Man-a-hattans, let us cry:

Geronimo!

“Goldkorns! Goldkorns! Pan Leib Goldkorns!”

What? Who calls? Teetering on the precipice, I stare down, trying from among the ambulating pedestrians to pick out the speaker.

“Goldkorns! Says here Pan Leib Goldkorns!”

My eyes have in them crystals, like those in a shaker for salt. Non-twenty-twenty. But Hymena, with her multicolored corneas, has sharper vision than I. She stretches a paw down to where, on the sidewalk by our stoop, stands a large female with a sack over her shoulder and skin as black as what gamblers call the spade of aces.

Mee-who?

“I know not, my feline Freundin. Let us once again attempt to enter eternity together. Eins. Zwei. Dr—”

“Goldkorns! Goldkorns at 138 West! Ain’t that this building? Got a special-delivery letter for Pan Leib Goldkorns.”

What? A letter for Goldkorns? Pan? For panpiper, perhaps? That could only mean that one of my “air” mails was delivered. And now, from the demi-Finn, comes the response. Special delivery too! “Yoo hoo! Madam Postmistress! Here I am! Goldkorn, Leib! Graduate of the Akademie für Musik, Philosophie, und darstellende Kunst!”

A miracle: amidst all the hub-bub and hullabaloo, the Herlemite hears my salutation. “You Goldkorns? Apartment 5-D?”

“Speaking. Have you a love letter from—from—the She-Who?”

“Can’t say yes, can’t say no. Got a bunch of foreign stamps.”

“Aha! Is it from Finland? Or the Land of the Rising Sun?”

The colored looks down at the envelope. “Dunno. Bunch of volleyball players, looks like to me. You comin’ down here to pick this up?”

“I fear to make such a declination. What of the Sex Staatspolizei? What if the fils should make a lightning strike, so that on my ascent I find a sign reading EXMITTIERT, which as you know means ‘Evicted’? Madam Mercury, would it be possible with your winged feet to bring the valentine to me?”

“Huh? I ain’t goin’ in there. Ain’t got to climb no stairs. I’m a member of the APWU.”

“You wish, I see, to play the coquette. What if L. Goldkorn said, Bitte? In English, if you please. What if he said, Du bist sehr hübsch? You are a comely thing.”

“Don’t you sweet-talk me. Don’t have to go where there are dogs nor cats.”

“Look, Liebchen. I am making with my mouth a moue.”

Mee-mou?

“Nein, nein, my Miezekätzchen. Not mouse. Moue.”

“No way, Charlie, am I going in that building.”

“See here: Neither snow nor rain nor, hmmm, hmmm, gloom of night— You know the rest of this motto, my dear lady.”

“I’m takin’ this back to the dead-letter box.”

“Wait! For such dereliction I can make to your superior a report.”

“Is that a threat I am hearing?”

“No, no! Pas du tout! Look. Do you see? I am blowing a kiss. I like very much the Reubenesques.”

“So long, Pan Goldkorns.”

“Wait! An idea! Please leave this letter for the gentleman Señor Manuel, from Meals on Wheels. He can bring it to the fifth floor, along with a copy of the thoughtful Enquirer.”

“Unh-unh. Can’t give no special delivery to nobody but you.”

“Heavens! I have not heard from this beloved for many a moon. Ha, ha! Tribal jargons. What if she wishes an assignation? Have pity on the heart-smitten.”

“I guess maybe I could read it out loud. How’s that?”

“Prima!”

“Okay. Let me see. Goodness! A money order. Five hundred dollars. A airplane ticket too!”

“I knew it! We are going to have a honeymoon in Helsinki! Good postmistress, continue.”

And here, friends of Leib Goldkorn, are the exact contents of the letter that, in the accents of her native Togoland, this female Hermes now calls up to me:

PAN LEIB GOLDKORNS

138 WEST 80TH STREET APT. 5-D

NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10024

Esteemed Pan Goldkorns:

On behalf of our Lord Mayor, Frantisek Kunc, our municipal council, and the Holocaust Festivities Committee, and all citizens of Jihlava, I send you heart-felt greetings and also congratulations on your long and happy life. Excuse please my school girl English language.

I write you with knowledge of the sufferings of your people in Jihlava, former Iglau. In year 1425 after birth of our Savior, Jews expelled. In 1940, Synagogue burnt down by Teuton invaders. Not yet rebuilt. I make to you assurances that you will not find in our municipality hardly a German person. After the war, we sent them packing! As says Mayor Kunc, “One hundred percent Czech.”

Now there are no more Jewish. Except, according to researches, you! Last home-born alive. That is why our Mayor, F. Kunc, requests of me to make invitations. Municipality of Jihlava wishes to honor Israel heritage. Is having Holocaust Memorial Festivity. Noted speakers. Many musics with polkas. Also encouragement of tourism. Is the honor to have last living Hebrew of Jihlava/Iglau for honored guest. All entertainments on first day November.

For you, dear Pan Goldkorns, we have key to Number 5 Valkova, former Lindenstrasse. All citizens of Jihlava have desire for you to live out last years—on a personal note may I say Many More!—comfortable in nice boyhood home.

I have in this packet for you one-way airplane ticket, Czech Airline, Flight 0051, New York–Praha, where a Mercedes automobile will be waiting, with skillful driver too, to “whisk” you safely Municipality of Jihlava. Also enclosed: money order for five hundred American dollars for all necessary expenses.

Honored Pan Goldkorns, I send you greetings of my own person and of Lord Mayor Kunc and all tolerant citizens of Jihlava. Welcome home!

With cordialities,

“Miss” Iveta Crumsovatna

Deputy Mayor for Culture, Entertainments, and Sports.

Secretary, 2005 Jihlava Holocaust Festivities Committee.