In the town of his birth, Leib meets a lovely lady
and makes, about his paternity, an
astonishing discovery.

LEIB AT THIRTY THOUSAND FEET. And what do I see, outside the window of my Stratoliner? Fleecy clouds. The whitecapped Atlantic. Behi nd me, a toddler oft thrusts his McAns into the back of my seat. Insufficient respect for his elders. I have one anxious moment: How am I to make the trek down the heaving corridor to the far-off W.C.? What of the battle with the buttons of my gabardines, not to mention the search for the reclusive Herr Johnson? Not to worry: I am accompanied on this journey by Miss Milada, Checkist attendant, who stands guard for the one-half hour it takes me, with repeated jets, to find the bull’s-eye of the target below. Through the closed accordion door, I make out the scent—Is it sandalwood? Is it heather?—of her Tommy Girl perfume. To my fellow centurians I can without reservation recommend this form of travel. It comes with cheese dip. And complimentary knife.

A smooth landing, at which fellow passengers burst into applause. My brand-new Samsonite valise, mit Kunstoffräder, plasticized wheels, goes round and round on the carousel, just out of reach. Three passes. Four. Suddenly the deus ex machina: a gentleman, somewhat froglike in appearance—that is to say, with a broad face and surprisingly protuberant eyes—appears, as if dropped from the sky. Wearing a visored cap. Holding a placard inscribed thus:

L. GOLDKORNS

“Hola, sir! Do you mean Leib Goldkorn?” I cry.

“You are Pan Goldkorns? You?”

“Ja. Ohne den ‘s.’”

“Pardon?”

“You do not Deutsch sprechen?”

“Ne! No speak Nemcina! Nikdy! Drive Mercedes.”

The brachycephalic face of this chauffeur is not unique. Those gathered at the carousel, the hundreds passing through the lobby, the folk in the fields and streets outside: all have the brown hair, the elfin ears, the high, bone-filled cheekbones of a race long since classified by the famed Carleton Coon. Nose: boxer type. Knees: knocked.

It is not, however, the presence of so many froglike folk—Heavens! Even their eyes are green!—that gives me pause, so much as the absence of the handsome, blond-headed, and pale-eyed Nordics among whom I whiled away the carefree years of my youth. Where, I ask myself, are the good-hearted Teutons? In truth, it was they who, with their wit, wursts, and Schnappsbottiche, made of Iglau an isle of Kultur in a sea of Slavs.

Not only have the Nemci disappeared, so has their language. Iglau, a word that trips from the tongue, has now become the Arabian Jihlava. From the rear seat of the Mercedes, my curious kitten and I peer through the window glass: Leopoldgasse, Steingasse, Veilchengässchen, Kaiser Wilhelm Gasse—all these streets have vanished; in their place, Husova Street, Palackého, Skretova, and Komenského.

Gracious! The old Pirnitzergasse, the street on which die Familie Mahler made its home, is now—hmmm, hmmm—Znojemská. And there, at Number 4—slow down, my young amphibian—is their actual abode. “What,” I inquire of the Mercedes man, “has happened to the affable Aryans?” But I already know the answer. We sent them packing. The words of Miss Crumsovatna, Deputy for Sports.

Speak of der Teufel: no sooner does the chauffeur turn from Bmenska Boulevard onto Masaryko Námestí, and thus into the great square I always called the Stadtplatz, than I see, standing in front of the municipal hall, a woman without hips, but with a dimpled, pointed chin. Pointed nose too and a head with hive-type hair. More a pole, ha, ha, ha, than a Czech. A Pole! Touché, Uncle Al! Could this be the Crumsovatna herself?

What I did not suspect is that my pen pal would turn out on inspection to be such a beauty. Such long legs! Shoulder pads! An endless neck! Mams, true, nothing about which to write a letter home. She smiles, this colleen, and waves a spidery arm. I step from the rear of the sedan.

“Miss Crumsovatna, I presume?”

“Ano. And you are our Honorary Jew? Pan Goldkorns?”

“Non-practicing,” I reply.

“Welcome home,” says my interlocutress, stepping forward, so that her non-convex chest is touching my lumberman’s plaid. She makes a smack at my left cheek, one, my right cheek, two, and, three, at my left cheek again. In certain lands, beyond the Urals, this would signify an engagement. I glance at her hands: each of the fingernails, at the end of her ringless fingers, is painted. Wet n Wild–brand, if I am not mistaken. “Burgundy Frost.”

Ringless. Note you that?

“Are you mighty fatigued, Pan Goldkorns? Soon your chamber at Gustav Mahler Hotel will be ready. He was as you know our prominent Jew.”

Here I throw the dice, risking all: “Miss Crumsovatna. I request that you call me Leib.”

“A pleasure! But you must address me as Iveta.”

At such forwardness I experience loss of breath and an unavoidable blush. Gracious! Am I in a chariot rushing headlong toward hedonism? Let us “hold the horse” for a moment and examine this phenomenon. In doing so I shall rely on the analysis of the Coreligionist, who lived in the capital just 120 kilometers to our south:

A maiden sits at the dinner table among company that is mixed. One of the males makes a risqué remark: “I saw Madam X this morning. She has developed große Brustdrüsen.” At once the face of the maiden turns red. And why? Because the reference to the mammary of Madam X provides a definite titillation. But because this is a well-brought-up Fräulein, she cannot allow the blood to engorge the cheeks and lips below the table, you know, in the infernal region. Instead she permits it to fill the cheeks and lips above, thus permitting herself both to feel the erotics of the moment and to protect, nay, even to enhance, her reputation as a Jungfrau—that is, as a virginal lass.

“Are you chilled?” asks the Crumsovatna, seeing the rouge spots on my visage.

“No, no, no. Nein.”

“Would you enjoy to see our beautiful city and environments? Come, I will be your eager guide.”

Now for the first time I lift my gaze from the willowy woman who stands before me to the Stadtplatz I had crossed and crisscrossed innumerable times as a boy. What a transformation! The hustle! The bustle! The motorized vehicles and the stench of their pipes for exhaust. When I was a weenling there was not in the streets of Iglau a single automobile. Mingled with the smell from the tobacco monopoly that hung over our rooftops was that which rose from the cobblestones—I speak of the ejectamentas of good dobbin. The odor of ordure. Ha! Ha! Excellent pun. More wordplay comes to mind: Who was the inventor of the combustible engine? Not Eli Whitney, as mouthed by American schoolboys. No: Nikolas Otto. Hence: Ottomobile. Clever. Witty. Antidote to Uncle Al.

This reverie is interrupted by the Crumsovatna. “As you know, here is our main square, named Masaryk, after the founder of our nation. His son, also Masaryk, was thrown by Soviet mad dogs out of window. See big ugly building: this is Tesco Super Store, built by same Soviets. And here, sculpted in 1786, is world-famous Neptune fountain. Notice how the sea god struggles to strike with his trident the dolphin fish. All waters are regurgitated and . . .”

As my guide drones on, the bells of the nearby Jakobskirche begin to strike the morning hour. Had I not heard these identical tones every hour of every day through the carefree years of youth? For an instant I believe I can smell, wafting toward me o’er the vast plaza, the Bratkartoffeln from the dobbin-drawn Schnellimbiss that rolled into the square of a Sunday morn. For a mad moment I can taste the crisps, “mit Salz und Pfeffer!,” on my tongue.

“And here,” continues the flat-fronted Fräulein, who has linked her sinewy arm in mine, “we have the Vysociny Museum, and beyond, the Plague Column.”

Thus we stroll, she, Hymena, and I, to the city walls, through the Mary’s Gate, and into the darkness of the catacombs. At last we arrive at Znojemská Number 4, the home of G. Mahler and now a museum, with non-smoking café, of his work and life.

“An espresso, Pan Gold—my pardon, I mean, friend Leib? Or a teacup?”

At a table intime we share a smažený sýr, Czechist cuisine of fried cheese, and a Lipton mit Zitronenscheiben. Yet even as my companion and I engage in this dalliance—pretend not to notice that she has removed from her weary feet her pumps—my mind grows distracted. What is this soft music about me? Of course! Mahler, muted: the Symphony Number Five, composed, by uncanny coincidence, in the year truly yours was geboren. I sit transfixed through the movements: the Funeral March of the first, and, in the second, the braying brass of the storm.

“More cheese, Pan Leib?”

I pay no heed to this double entendre, or to the toes in their stockings. The hidden orchestra has moved from the yodel motif of the scherzo, to the adagietto, and at last to the ironical rondo-finale, with its celebrated contest between ass and cuckoo bird. What is happening to my intestinals? The sound of this music has sent them a-churning. My heart is pounding and my shoulder hairs rise and fall, as if enlivened by an Edison current. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! I feel myself drawn to my feet, looking left, looking right.

“W.,” asks my companion, “C.?”

I barely hear her words. The symphony is ending, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!; but I sense that hidden in that music, and in these rooms dedicated to its composer’s life, lies a mystery, the key to which is about to change my own. Could I, like the great Shylock Holmes, find the solution? In a trance I excuse myself from the table and, leaving the Crumsovatna with tea and tabby, begin my investigation of the Mahler Museum.

THE FIRST THING that catches my eye is a glass cabinet, in which I discover a notice of a Red Cross concert of February 24, 1901. This charity event by the already famed conductor was held at the Rathaus, the same municipal hall before which I first set eyes on the Deputy Mayor for Sports.

I say, Holmes. Why is that important?

Alimentary, my dear Watson: 1901. That is the Wunderjahr of my birth.

I turn next to the adjoining cabinet. In it, pinned under the glass like the wings of a Schmetterling, is a yellow-tinged photograph. Even before the image fully registers on my retina, I feel a tingling sensation on my scalp, as if non-existent hairs, like those on the back of my feline friend, were standing erect. For here is a Foto-fragment of G.M. himself, with white flannels, a sailor’s striped shirt, and unwired spectacles on his Semitic-style nose. No hat. A bandage over one ear. In the background, an island-studded sea. All unbidden, my lips form a word: Abbazia. I repeat it, as a conjuror will his magic syllables: Abbazia! Something about that coastline is familiar to me. With my congenital squint I lean down to read the text:

GUSTAV MAHLER ON VACATION IN ABBAZIA (now Opatja)

Date: March 1901

[Torn half missing]

Did the heart of Shylock Holmes beat with the same force as mine when he closed in on one of his suspects? Would that I had, between my teeth, to calm my nerves, a stout meerschaum. I know these islands and the mountains that rise in a haze at the rear. This is where meine Mutter, Falma, née Krupnick, used to retire each spring for the digestives. Spring? In truth the month of March. I close one eye and peer through the glass case covering the evidence, as if it were the magnifying instrument of the great detective. The “snapshot” is indeed torn, jaggedly, as if in a passion. Still, it is possible to see that the left hand of the composer is grasping the arm flesh of a vanished companion. Look closer: yes, a woman’s arm, slightly plumpish. A visible scrap of her clothing. Summer-style attire. On a dark background, white double dots.

Good Lord, Watson! Have I not seen, in a closet, just such an out-of-mode garment? Oh, the double dots dance now before my eyes. Is this a memory of an actual dress on an actual hanger, or something that hangs in the cloakroom of the mind? The other half of the Foto. Who was in it? Who the companion of the composer? The wearer of the polka dress?

Head a-spin, heart a-beating—double dot, double dot—I stagger back from the table, directly into the crucial clue: a pianoforte, top open, with grinning keys.

Bit rum, eh, Holmes, how we could have missed it. After all, the instrument is sitting in the middle of the room.

My dear chap, ofttimes the most perfect deception is the one hidden in plain sight.

I turn to make a closer inspection. This is not merely a piano, but a grand one, concert-style. And more: written above the keyboard, in gold leaf, is the word VOPATERNY. Yes, Vopaterny! The same make of instrument that had sat in our drawing room and upon which little Leib Goldkorn had taken his lessons as a child.

I drop, as if in worship, to my knees. Thus no taller than that lad of five or six or seven, I shuffle forward until my nose is opposite the row of gleaming keys. What next? It is not always possible for the resident of 221b Baker Street to rely on the deductive method. On occasion one must act. Ergo, I raise my hands to what Harlemites call the ivories. Ladies and gentlemen, number 265-300e in the Köchel Catalog of W. A. Mozart’s works:

Baa, baa black sheep,

Have you any wool?

Non-rheumatically my hands, mit Fingerknöcheln, fly over the keys:

Yes sir, yes sir,

Three bags full.

All about the room, and indeed throughout the museum, people pause. They look up, their round heads cocked the better to hear the tune. And Leib Goldkorn? Torn. On the one hand, I am transported, as if within the time machine of
H. George Wells, one hundred years into the past. On the other hand, I apprehend, half with dread, half in anticipation, what is about to come:

One for the master,

One for the—

Here, fatefully, I reached up one octave, to the all-too-familiar key of F.

—dame . . .

F-F-F-F!

In the adjoining café, on the lap of Iveta Crumsovatna, my piebald pussy has begun to accompany the repeated note:

Dame. Dame. Dame.

F-F-Futt! F-F-F-Futt! F-F-FUTTZ!

Aha! Mystery solved! The broken string. The aberrant key. Not once tuned since I had last struck it an entire century in the past! The more I strike it now, the louder the response from the howling Hymena: Dame: FUTZ! Dame: FITZ! Dame: FRITZ!

Now, from every direction, music lovers—both tourists and natives—come running. Attendants too. Some have their hands over their ears. Some have their fists in their mouths. What else can Leib Goldkorn, the virtuoso of the Vopaterny, do? The show must go on:

One for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

Hymena hurls forward, followed by the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Entertainments, and Sports.

“What is it?” she cries. “Are you in pain? That horrible noise!”

Too late. Rough hands seize me. They lift me high into the air. With a march step they carry me to the door of Znojemská Number 4 and thrust me rudely through it to the ground. My kitten and my companion run forward to comfort me. Calmly, I smile, secure in the knowledge that I possess the key to the puzzle: This Vopaterny, the very instrument once owned by Gustav Mahler, had for many years occupied the parlor of none other than the family Goldkorn.

TOOT! TOOTA! TOOT!

Could this be the sound, ever dulcet, of my Rudall & Rose–model flute? No, it is only the moon-faced chauffeur, who sits at the wheel of his Mercedes automobile. The Crumsovatna and I enter the rear and ride through twilit Jihlava back toward the Masarykove Námestí, where our journey began. But we turn off at Krížová Street and glide the short distance to the entrance of the Gustav Mahler Hotel. Here the sharp-chinned Deputy Mayor explains to me that the Holocaust Memorial Festivity will take place on the morrow. It is here, too, that, taking my hand in her own, she remarks that she has felt much joy during our excursion and, quotation marks are now appropriate, “I hope to see you soon.”

QUIET IS THE NIGHT. In all the world nothing is stirring. I lie in my nightcap upon the queen-sized bed of room 68. I am not alone. On the duplicate queen lies my travel companion: on her back, three limbs outspread, the light of the moon falling across her upturned chin, her lip withdrawn, the single fang in her half-open mouth. Slight sound of a snore. Adorable! Sleep on, you sweetheart! Pleasant dreams.

Alas, her master lies awake, tossing, turning. And waiting.

Soon! Hope to see you soon! Such forwardness! But there is as yet no sign of my inamorata—though, thin as a furled umbrella, she is surely capable of squeezing through the crack I have left in the hotel door. More saltiness: Did she not, as we parted, place her hand in mine and leave it there, limp, in surrender, for, hmmm, a full six seconds? For a man of the world this is an international signal of assent.

But what is this? There. In the moonlight. A feminine figure. Scant of clothes. Not my evanescent Iveta. Here we have a type more rotunda. With dependable mams. She leans forward. Straining. Sighing. More moonlight magic: a flash of light. Gott im Himmel! A trolley of a garter. It is Miss Litwack! Clara, honey! Are you doing your nails? Look: I have your favorite. CoverGirl. “Plum Perfection.” Allow me. Ah. Oh. Ah. Allow me.

Meeow!

What is this? Have I fallen asleep? Dreaming of what was once domestic bliss?

Meee-wow!

It seems that my mouser is no longer in Morpheus. She stands on all-threes, her tailpiece straight back, like that of a pointing Hund. Both eyes stare wide, and the mouth opens either in anguish or in awe.

Futt! Futt! Futtz!

I follow the gaze of the fearful feline down, toward the subterranean realm, where—Mr. Ripley, Believe It or Not!—Leib Goldkorn is in a state of epicureanism! Call the Guinness Records! Lazarus, laugh! Send forth the word to the astonished world.

What is that I hear? Musik? Yes, music. Again the rondo-finale of the Fifth. Are such melodies also circulated through the hotel named after their composer? In the middle of the night? No, no. This concert is in my Kopf. In truth, it was not the prospect of an assignation with my spidery seductress that has kept me a-toss through the many hours of the night. No. My restlessness has been caused by the fact that the mystery of the museum has yet to be solved.

What, ho? Shall we have another go at the puzzle pieces, eh, Watson?

Mee-who?

I assemble the evidence. A Red Cross concert. A torn photograph. A dotted dirndl. And above all, the note, the note, the note—dame, dame, dame—the F-sharp that has never been repaired. How was it that the family Goldkorn came into the possession of the very same piano that had once belonged to the family Mahler? I look toward my colleague, who is, while ruminating this question, licking her paw. But it is not her queen-sized bed that comes to the eye of my imagination but the four-poster that I instantly recognize from my parents’ bedroom at Number 5 Lindenstrasse, town of Iglau.

Yes, yes, yes: there is the same double-down mattress and the same canopy of Belgian lace that floated above it. And who lies on this inner spring? With arms extended and legs spread wide? Who this bandy Juno? Frau Goldkorn! Mutter! Now, approaching her, like one of Professor Pergam’s grinning satyrs, comes not Herr G. Goldkorn but—still wearing specs, and, like the boy in the nursery rhyme, with one shoe off and one shoe on—Herr G. Mahler. About to engage in—diddle-diddle-dumpling—an act of Lustsensation.

As Holmes would oft say to Watson, “Bingo!”

Everything now falls into place. Gustav and Falma were having a flirtation, one that reached its climactic on the night just after the Red Cross concert of February 24, 1901. Suddenly a neglected detail comes into the mind of the subtle sleuth. The bandaged ear!

How did the composer receive such a wound? How else than by the hand of the hoodwinked husband, who must have entered the bedroom in time to catch the amorists in flagrante delicto, that is to say, in an act of fertilization. Did he in his rage rip off one of the bedposts and strike his rival atop the cranium? Who can doubt now that the polka-style dress belonged to the former Falma Krupnick and that she is the mystery woman in the missing half of the Foto?

Let us continue. Why did Madam Goldkorn make the rendezvous in Abbazia? Even after her carnals had been discovered? There can be only one reason: she wished to inform her lover that a penetration had been achieved, with pollinization. “Gustav,” she surely said, “I carry within me your child.”

What a predicament for this pair. How he must have begged her to flee with him to gay Vienna! How she must have been tempted! To become the consort of the world-famed conductor. To reign as Queen of the k. k. Hof-Operntheater and Empress of all the Monarchie. But no. She already had a rompish daughter, aforementioned Yakhne. She had a husband, Gaston Goldkorn, who owned fields of hops. Above all, she felt the new life growing in her womb: if she was not mistaken, this love child was to become a true Wunderkind, of the sort that is delivered to mankind only once in each generation. How could she bring it into the world under such a cloud?

For every argument there is a counterargument. It is not impossible that the composer even proposed einen Schwangerschaftsabbruch. Hideous thought! And with a coat hanger too. Back and forth the lovers battled, with tears, with oaths, until at last the defeated Mahler tore their photograph in two pieces: if he could not have Falma, he could at least possess her image. And in return, he sent her his beloved Vopaterny—note the witty pun, Wo, Where, is the patern[ity]?—perhaps in hopes that one day his offspring would play upon it the very symphony that he at once sat down to compose, the symphony whose conclusion, Cuckoo! Cuckoo!, would wreak his revenge on his rival: Cuckold! Cuckold!

The final piece of the puzzle: the date of the blessed event. To determine this the detective must know the moment of fecundation, an event oft difficult to determine. We are in luck, however. The pollution on the four-poster occurred on the twenty-fourth day of the second month of the year 1901. To this we must in the well-respected Naegele System add 266 days. Shall we put on our thinking caps?

For February of 1901, a non-leaper, we begin with five days, to which, for March, we add thirty-one more, giving us a total of, hmmm, thirty-six; to which we now add the thirty days of April, rendering a sum of, hmmm, sixty-six; and now the merry month of May, thirty-one. Ergo, ninety-seven. Add the month of June: hmmm, hmmm, 127. The heat of July! The heat of August! May one in such months eat oysters? Uncle Al, I stare thee in the face: 189. Is there milk in the mams? Does the babe kick his wee feet against the belly? Let us hope that the putative père refrains from conjugations. September, October—thirty plus thirty one, equals sixty-one, plus 189, here we must carry the one from the third column, and heft it again from the second, hmmm, hmmmmmm, yes, 250! Subtract that sum from 266, and we may calculate there are only sixteen days to go!

But nature has us for a surprise. For only nine days later, on the ninth of November, the early bird arrives. Bald head, ears not yet Dumbo-esque, shoulders non-haired. And look! But look, Gustav! You too, Gaston! And you, fruitful Falma! Let the bells ring from the Jakobskirche! Ja! And from der Kirche des heiligen Ignatius von Loyola! It is a boy! Well, let us look twice. Ja! Ja! Ja! A definite boy!

“HI HO, HYMENA! AWAY!”

Still in my Skivvies, with the ball of my nightcap a-flutter, I leap off the bed and dash to the door. “We have not a moment to lose!”

Down the hallway we trot. Down the stairs. To the lobby, where the clerk sits with his round head propped sleeping on his chubby Czech hands. Onto Krížová—née Kreutzergasse—go Leib and his kitten. Where to? What next? I move a few steps to my left, then turn right onto Dominikánská. We take the angle, against the traffic—two lazy hackneys—onto Husova, then right on Krivá. Whoops! On this former Krammergasse, a dead end. My breath comes now visibly from my mouth, my heart beats like a drumstick on the drums of my ears.

Meee-OW!

Pardon. A misstep upon the tattered tail and—what’s that ahead? Heavens! We are at Frauengasse, a.k.a. Matky Boží: in other words, right back at the square named for the man whose son jumped from the window. Oh, woe: I almost wish I had jumped from 138 West Eightieth Street myself.

What’s this? My wondercat once more stands rigid, like a puss pointing at a partridge. Then she stares at her master, closing a red eye, gazing with her blue one, almost as if she were a traffic signal bidding Leib Goldkorn: Go!

Instead, she runs off herself, making a U-turn and heading west, always west, bounding across the main boulevard of Dvoráková, then a left, and a loop, and a right again. I have lost all grasp of the compass. I see no street signs. All my senses are trained on the fleeing feline. Mein Gummibärchen! Slow down! But she speeds off even faster: this way, that way, this way again.

Who knows where we are going? Hymena does! She gives a last look over her shoulder, breaks into a three-legged gallop, and, hoopla!, leaps onto a wall. On two legs I come stumbling after. What’s this? A gate, with the branches of a candlestick emblazoned upon it. I push forward. Unlocked. And so I step inside what I now know was my destination all along: the Jewish cemetery of Iglau, by the living called Jihlava.

S. WERNER, L. FERNBERG, J. J. UNGER, a rabbi. TAUSSIG. SCHICK. ZELENGASS. These are the names etched on the tombstones, some tumbled, some standing. I plod onward, peering as best I can by the light of the moon and the stars:

GRISSMAN, FRANZ: Ach, only a boy of, 1877–1880, hmmm, three. The family MILRAR, Little ANTOINETTE, hardly a breath taken in the year 1904. SONNENFELS, a professor. TORBERG, WERTHEIMER, DUSSL. Dust. All dust. And Leib? Living, though near his own date of expiration. I sink in weariness to the ground.

Tombs to my left. Tombs to my right. But nowhere the graves of the family Goldkorn. With each breath I inhale tiny particles of Falma, Minchke, Yakhne, the putative père—all of whom were sent into the system of atmospherics by the invaders. They exist in that mausoleum of molecules, not the tumbled tombstones of Iglau.

Meee-now!

A ghost? A specter? A shade risen from its crypt? No, only Hymena, who has jumped to the top of a tall gray slab. There she sits, blinking, lanternlike, her ruby-red eye.

With the last of my strength, I rise once more to my feet, which only now do I realize are unshod and unstockinged. Painfully I stagger to the upright stone. Blank. I circle around it. What are these names on the reverse side? MAHLER, BERNARD. MAHLER, MARIE. Parents of Mahler, G. I squint to read more. Ah! The tragedy! Both perished in 1899, just two years before that annum mirabilis—transmission by Marconi, for example, across the broad Atlantic—in which I had been born. I drop once more to my knees. I stretch out my arms to the granite.

“Grossmutter!” I cry, my voice echoing back and forth among the mute monoliths. “Grosspater! Hier ist dein Kleiner Junge Leib!”