As Leib’s life is celebrated, he meets many
old friends and one new relation.
THE DAWN OF the next day: the Secretary of the Holocaust Festivities Committee arrives, together with the frog-faced chauffeur, to transport me the few scant blocks from the Hotel Gustav Mahler to what looks like nothing more than a high wall of charred bricks.
“What have we here, Miss Crumsovatna?”
“Here is known as Benesova Street Synagogue.”
Instinctively I return to my native tongue: “Was ist das für eine Tragödie?”
“The invaders. They burned it to the ground.”
“Wann?”
“1939.”
1939! When Gaston and Falma, Minchke, and Yakhne, had already sailed in the Kaliope up the Danube. And I, having fled across the Bodensee, was singing for sous among the frugal French.
A tear must have fallen across my cheek, because the Deputy Mayor is dabbing there with her handkerchief.
“Do not be sad, my dear Leib. Give Iveta a smile. This is for you a happy day.”
My dear Leib! Did you hear that? Yet I cannot smile. For in truth I stand not only before this wall of burnt brick, where in youth I heard our Rabbi Goldiamond declare to me, Hayom Leib ben Gaston Ata Bar mitzvah (Perfect Hebrew! A near-century later! Get thee hence, Uncle Al!), but also before the other wall that looms before me at the age of one hundred and three. Peek around those bricks, friends. Dark. Dark. Dark.
“What’s that, Miss Crumsovatna? Gardenia? Could it be L’Air Du Temps?” Indeed, the scent from her handkerchief, like salts in the nostrils of a pugilist, is already restoring my spirits.
With a thin-lipped smile she answers; I cannot hear her words because, from the far side of the ruin, a band has started to play what I know to be the “Radetzky March.” J. Strauss, composer. Part-time Jew. The Crumsovatna takes my left arm; the no-necked chauffeur—Uncle Al exercise: All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads—takes my right. Thus supported, with Hymena trotting behind, I walk around the old synagogue wall.
What a sight greets my eyes. The band, in flower-white uniforms, is toot-tootling away. A crowd of citizen Czechs, at least a hundred or a hundred and fifty, sit in rows of chairs. Their round heads nod to the beat of the music, like green-colored balloons in a breeze. In the actual wind a large banner chuffs against the synagogue wall. On it, the following words:
WELCOM HOME! LEIB GOLDKORNS!
In front of the crowd, a rostrum and microphone. To either side, small boys play with dogs and slings. A stand sells ices. Suddenly the music stops and a cheer, Huzzah!, rises to the cloud-filled sky. I look around, but Iveta, leaning toward my ear, purses her lips, behind which I know a tongue is lurking.
“Is for you.”
Now the multitude are on their feet. Tremendous applause. More huzzahs. A voice rings out in electrical amplification: “Welcome to Holocaust victim Goldkorns!”
I see that a square-shouldered, square-jawed gentleman is speaking into the microphone. “All Jihlava says many halós to native son.”
Slick hair too, like a count.
“Is handsome mayor,” whispers the deputy, her elbow point stabbing my ribs. “Frantisek Kunc.”
On the other side of me, the Mercedes motorman says a single word, “Pozor.”
“Pardon? Poseur?”
Both my companions release my arms. Alone, I totter forward, while the band begins to play the very piece I once recorded with the NBC Orchester: Overture to Il Segreto di Susanna. More cheers. Am I mistaken? Are not a dozen caps, like floaters in eyeballs, flying through the air?
Suddenly all rise from their seats as musicians start in on J. P. Souza’s “Star-Spangled Banner.” This must be in honor of the fact that in 1943 I passed the difficult nationalization exam, Judge Solomon Gitlitz presiding. A serenade for a citizen.
We continue at attention while all sing the Czechist anthem, “Where Is my Home?”
To je Cechu slavné pléme.
“That is the glorious race of Slavs.” Slight exaggeration. Now come the final notes.
Mezi Cechy domoy muj!
“Among Czechs, that’s our home!” Sobs from the ladies. Several bald-headed gentlemen give a stiff-armed salute.
“Honored Mayor Kunc, I am presenting Leib Goldkorns, Holocaust Žid.” So says the Secretary of Festivities, with a curtsy to her square-jawed superior.
“Haló!”
“Greetings, sire.”
“Haló! Haló! Haló! Haló!”
These salutations come from those whom the Crumsovatna introduces as the deputy mayors for housing, for education, for public works, and—another square-jawer, with what seems a broken nose—the policejní prezident, Pan Broz. With a bone-crushing grip, he guides me to a chair. All sit save the shiny-haired Kunc, who begins to speak into a microphone. All in Czech, often vowelless, as in the related Pomeranian tongue. Here is a sample sentence with which we young German-speakers used to torment our knock-kneed countrymen:
STRC PRST SKRZ KRK!
Ha! Ha! Ha! “Stick a finger through your throat!” Is it any wonder that, in spite of all, I harken for the happy Huns?
No sooner does the mayor conclude his remarks than a dozen young ladies of Gymnasium age appear and arrange themselves in two lines in front of the synagogue wall. They are dressed in white and yellow, with leatherette straps crossed over their budding parts. Hmmm. That lass with Haarzöpfen, pigtails. Has she not a perky nose? With a start I notice she is making a wink, yes, a definite nictitation, directly at me.
“Go. You must go,” hisses Iveta, with a halo of Gardenie hovering above her. “Perform ceremony.”
Again the schoolgirl, with her sky-blue eyes, performs her come-hither. So I come. Now I see that she holds, in her plumpish hands, a velvet cord. I draw near.
“Hello, Honigkuchen. What’s the name?”
“Hanna. Hanna Nechvátalová.”
How many years separate us? Ninety? Well, perhaps only eighty-eight or eighty-nine. Shameful, the thoughts that occur as I notice the sweet hair part on her head—and more shameful still what I call up from the depths my charm:
“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”
Ach! I feel the Freudian flush. Vile pantaloon!
“Thank you, Jew Goldkorns.”
She places the cord in my hand, I give it a—here is a pun on my citizenship—yank. On the wall the WELCOM HOME banner falls to the ground, revealing, affixed to the scorched brick, a bronze plaque. The text is in four languages: Czech, Hebrew, German, English. Four tragic tongues. English, then:
On this site stood Benesova Street Synagogue
Destroyed by Nazi Invaders—1939
Here worshipped the Jews of Jihlava
We shall—
(What is this mist over my eyes?)
We shall not forget them.
Great applause from all, though I believe I can detect from the group of hatless, hairless pánové (Can you guess the meaning of this word? Gentlemen? Gold star!), a rude sound that I hope the schoolgirls—and in particular my little cupcake—do not hear.
“Rec! Rec!” cry the others. “Rec!”
The Crumsovatna: “You must make speech.”
Taking a breath, I turn to the crowd. “Dámy a pánové—” I stop, stymied.
“Meine Damen und Herren,” I stammer, and stop once more.
Stumped again. Struck mute, just as I had been before this standing wall four score and ten years earlier, on the day of my bar mitzvah. My subject then was Tamar, and Hirah the Adullamite, and how Onan spilled his, um, seed upon the ground. On that occasion, too, the words stuck in my throat until our rabbi, S. T. Goldiamond, stepped forward, put his hands on my shoulders, and told the world that Leib ben Gaston was a man.
“Siman tov, u’mazal tov! Mazel tov, u’siman tov!” The entire congregation was shouting and chanting and pounding me on the back. “Mazel tov!” The next thing I knew, a volley of hard candies flew through the air, pelting me on the head, the back, the torso zone. I fell, scavenging, to my knees.
And now, in the fall of 2005, who should I see coming toward be but Samuel Taylor Goldiamond himself. Yes, the yarmulke on top of the white locks of hair. A flock of Leberflecken across the forehead. The undershot jaw.
But how can this be? True, in 1914 our rabbi was but a young man of sixty; to approach me now, with a cane in each hand, all a-tremble, he would have to be—hmmm, hmmm, two becomes a nine, carry the one: Gott im Himmel! One hundred and fifty-one! Call Mr. Guinness! Hello, Mr. Ripley!
I look again. That yarmulke: verily, it is a bald spot. That undershot jaw: caused, as in so many musicians, by the chin rest of the violin.
This ancient drops both his walking sticks. I open my arms. We toddle across the space that divides us.
“Leib Gladstone!”
“Is it you? Young Murmelstein! Second violin!”
We clasp each other. A touching moment, even though, from his body parts, there rises a smell of kumquats.
“I flew in an airplane,” he announces.
“Me too. Did you meet Miss Milada? D-cup? ‘Tommy Girl’?”
More questions flood my mind. Who else is alive? Who is not? For example, fellow members of the Steinway Quintet. Salpeter, first violin. J. Dick, with his double viol. But, as if he had been reading my thoughts, Murmelstein shakes his hoary head.
“Gone? All gone? What of Mosk? The waiter. Looks like a penguin.”
To this inquiry, the violinist only shrugs.
“Rec! Rec!” The cry of the heartless horde. But it is to Mr. Murmelstein that they are directing this command.
He takes, from his breast pocket, a paper, which he unfolds before the microphone. “Leib Gladstone played the Bechstein instrument for many years in the Steinway Quintet. I am from the town of Nasielsk. I played violin. How come I don’t get a celebration? The end.”
Applause, of the polite variety. I too have heard better speeches. Now Pan Kunc returns to the microphone and says—I don’t know what: Strk prst skrz krk, or some such Slavic silliness. Hard to imagine how such a vowel-challenged folk could produce melodious works like the “Hippodamia” of Zdenek Fibich or the tuneful arpeggios of that mad genius, Stich-Punto.
The Secretary of the Holocaust Festivities Committee, with whom I have established suggestions, rises to make an announcement. “Now arriving before us is a special lady friend of Honorary Jew. Can he make a guess to who is such a woman?”
From the crowd there comes a tittering, and among the non-follicled strongmen a sort of sucking sound. I even hear, from the direction of the single-fanged feline, a mocking mew. Needless to say I am in a maelstrom of anticipation. Who could this past personage be? A paramour? The one, the only Hildegard Stutchkoff? On whose Sealy-brand—please see Goldkorn Tales, whose author the half-Finn called “an exuberant writer,” end quote—I had achieved an expostulation? At the thought of that double bosom there occurs in the hinterland a stir of hedonism. Ja! It must be the Stutchkoff. Hilda, honey!
But who should now come from around the edge of the wall, and in a wheelchair at that, but a woman—neck bent, head shaking, tongue hanging too, who is definitely not the former proprietress of the Steinway Restaurant, but, but, but: Aha! Madam Schnabel, the contralto, formerly of 138 West Eightieth Street, with whom I oft fought for possession of the W.C.
“Greetings, Myra,” I say.
To my surprise the voice that issues from the shrunken sack before me is just as I remember it when—Yoo-HOO! Yoo-HOO!—she attempted to invade my refuge within the cabinetto.
No need for a microphone now. The busty Brünnhilde belts out her line:
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
I turn to the Crumsovatna: “Madam Schnabel was not, you know, an inamorata.”
“Patience, Pan Leib. Soon you shall hear from the lady of your dreams.”
But it is not a dream damsel, or any sort of lady at all, who next appears. Instead, imprisoned within an aluminum walker, comes a gent who looks nearly as old as the guest of honor. And, with his pale face, dripping nose, and what appears to be a single strand of jet-black hair coiled on top of his head, a stranger. Wait! Wait! That short stature; the corner of a trembling lip raised in a mischievious smile: Could it be?
“Willi!” I shout. “Willi Wimpfeling!”
“Den leibliche Leib!” he answers, in a voice that twangs like the viol he once used to play. “Leib Kornfeld!”
Yes, here was my fellow Akademician—like L. Goldkorn, a prize graduate.
“Goldkorn, I reply. “Class of ’16.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughs my classmate, with something of the old twinkle in his eye. “Do you remember the time we spied on Fräulein Minchke? Splitterfasernackt!” Which means, stark-naked.
I turn once more to the Deputy Mayor for Sports.
“Miss Crumsovatna. This playmate was not, you know, a significant other.”
“Ah, but he carries a message from one that was.”
A message? With a trembling hand my classmate removes from his breast pocket an envelope with Old Glory stamps—thirteen stripes, Judge Gitlitz, for Delaware and the twelve original states.
“Okihcim Inatukak!” The name bursts involuntarily from my lips. The Esquimaux Queen! She has received my “air” mail. She has scriven in return. A sacrilege that her words are about to be spoken by this aged sybarite:
My dearest Leibie—
To my ears, music!
I am so very very sorry I can’t be with you on your big day. Think of it! Honorary Jew! Of course, I discovered your heritage on that magical night beneath the moon, the stars, the palms.
Palms! The Court of Palms. Our date at the Hotel Plaza. There it was that I yearned—as you may read in my not-yet-remaindered Ice Fire Water—for my bountiful beauty.
Alas, I rarely fly now because of my broken eardrums. My punishment, Leibie, for spending so much of my youth underwater.
Aha! The Finnish baths. Pressure of the sauna.
So all I can do is send you my words and tell you that I will never forget our night together. You were more a man than Victor Mature.
Victor: Yes, I have beaten all rivals.
Mature: Here we have Asian-style delicacy: not someone old, but a gentleman of such-and-such years. Fit as a fettle. All marbles intact.
More a man: Could this be a reference to, you know, the American inches?
Always yours,
Always!
Yours!
Esther.
Esther?
Mayor F. Kunc seizes the microphone. Dámy a Pánové, you are hearing tribute from Hollywood film star of Pagan Love Song. The famed Paní Esther Williams!”
Tremendous applause. Vocal approval.
“Would our Honorary Jew make response? Say some words?”
“But, but, but—” I cannot help stammering. “She ran off with Fernando Lamas!”
At once the Bohemia-Moravia band strikes up yet another trademark tune: “Bells of St. Mary’s,” oft played to Harlemites in return for Roosevelt dimes. Now old acquaintances—young Murmelstein, Madam Schnabel, wee Willi Wimpfeling—shout in unison:
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
At these words who should come striding forward but the plump proprietor of the shop of prawns. The next thing I know, he is hugging against me his non–Charles Atlas bosom.
“Larry Goldkorn!” he exclaims. “Repeat customer!”
Once more, His Honor takes charge. “Jew Goldkorns. Here is the man who has helped you in time of needs. Pan Ernie Glickman!”
Fanfare. Huzzahs.
The lord mayor turns to the American. “Do you not have for us a gift presentation? Made possible by generous Jihlava citizens?”
Ernest picks up from his feet a cloth valise. “Yes, yes. On behalf of my brother, Randy, and thanks to the contribution of this municipality, I am very pleased to return to its owner—”
“Bulova! Gift of the Zanuck!”
“No, no, no, no. Not the Bulova. No tickie. Ha, ha, ha! No watchee!”
“Hee, hee,” chuckles Murmelstein. “That’s funny.”
Glickman: “As I was saying, I am pleased to return to you—” Here the prawnbroker breaks off to unhinge his jiffy and rummage inside. Simultaneously a Czechist cloud moves aside from the sun, whose rays fall blindingly onto the object within the bag.
I squint, shading my eyes from the silvery glare. “What is it? What can it be?”
Wimpfeling has better vision than I. “Gott im Himmel! Die Flöte! Der Preis der Akademie!”
True. Before me I see, shining, glittering, all a-sparkle, the Rudall & Rose. Nine decades fall from me like so many old clothes. I am the lad of fifteen who, on the occasion of our Graduation-Day Concert, accepted from His Apostolischen Majestät this First-Place Prize.
It is not from the hands of the emperor, but those of the broker of prawns that I receive the beloved instrument. Instantly hundreds of Czechs, in a Slavic gesture of joy, clap their hands over their ears.
“Nehraju!” they cry. And again: “Ne! Ne! Nehraju!”
Obviously, they wish to hear a ditty. Madam Schnabel has clasped her hands together. “Leib! Leib! I am begging you!”
“Well, friends, since you insist . . .” Does my dear old instrument leap to my lips, or do my lips descend to that open mouth I have so often kissed?
“Auch das noch!” cries my fellow Akademician. “Bitte! Bitte!” Why, there are tears in his eyes!
Murmelstein, too, holds out his hands in supplication. “Please, Gladstone! Think of my heart!”
Even Hymena, who has adopted the Czechist manner, has a paw over her half-eaten ear.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I declare, with my fingers already on the E, the B-flat, the F. “The Scottish Rhapsody.”
“Zavrete ho!” So cries Pan Broz, the chief of police, who runs toward me holding what seem to be silver bracelets.
But before he can bestow upon me this additional gift a dozen voices cry out—
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
—and a familiar figure steps forward to join us.
“Hello, everybody!”
I cannot believe my eyes. This man knows the fifth floor of 138 West Eightieth Street only too well. Frank Fingerhut! The fils!
“Help!” I cry, and position myself behind the policeman. “He wants his rent!”
“No, no. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
What’s this? On the freckled face of F.F. not a frown? But an actual smile? This causes discombobulations, like the day, at the Steinway Restaurant, a cheese blintz was mixed with the Roumanian broilings.
“Nothing? Further?”
“That’s right! I come not to take away your old home but to give you a new one!”
At this the fils produces a piece of paper and begins to read the following words:
“Leib Goldkorn, 5-D, stabilized. It gives me great pleasure to announce that you will now be able to live out your days amidst familiar surroundings, indeed in your very own boyhood home, Number 5 Valkova. May you live there in happiness and health for—heh! heh! heh!—many years.”
“Heh! Heh! Heh!” echoes the crowd. “Mnoho Let!”
“Pardon. Valkova?”
“Psst. Pan.” That is the Sports Deputy, leaning forward in her chair. “Was before Lindenstrasse.”
“Former tenant Goldkorn. Here are the keys to your home. They are yours. Take them.”
Your home. Instant reverie: The tile roof. The pool for carp. The staircase that Yakhne ran up three steps at a time, and the banister down which, rump foremost, Minchke used to slide. Our Persian-style carpet. Our cage of budgies, hopping from stick to stick. The rainbows in the lozenges of our chandelier. Ah, the bathing tub, with its lion’s claws, its dolphin snout. Once, Minchke and the present speaker—
His Lordship, the mayor: “Is a problem, Pan Goldkorns? Why not take happily keys?”
“My sisters! My mother! The père!” My voice in a wail resonates among the ruins of the Benesova Street Schul. “Even budgerigar birds! Gone! The house is empty! Alone! Leib alone! The only survivor at Number 5!”
The Deputy Mayor for Sports leans close with a smile. “No, dear friend Leib. You will not be alone.”
“What? How can that be? Even the poor yellow carp!”
As if in answer the cry goes up yet again—
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
—and into the ruins of the temple steps a child of perhaps thirty-one, perhaps thirty-two. Her black hair is in ringlets and, in spite of the chill, a bodice of frills cannot disguise the pneumaticals. Also high heels.
I squint. I stare. But the coquettish Czech cloud has moved once more across the face of what has become the noonday sun. Still, I note that these eyes, with dark irisis; these cheeks, with disappearing dimples; that leftward bosom, with its spot of perfection—all these things are somehow, to me, familiar.
“Tell me!” I say to the mysterious minx. “Who are you? What is your name?”
Instead of answering, she takes from the front of her dickey a white handkerchief and, turning away, begins to dab at her eyes.
I wheel about to address the Deputy Mayor for Culture, Entertainments, and Sports. “Who, Miss Iveta, is this damoiselle?”
But she too has buried her face in a Kleenex-type tissue.
“Excellency,” I say, bowing to the lord mayor—then notice that he, like the others, is shedding a tear.
“Pan Goldkorns.” This is the head of municipal police. “Pan Goldkorns—” But he also breaks off and begins to rub ten thick knuckles into the sockets of his eyes.
Why, even Frank Fingerhut, the fils, is fighting against his feelings.
In the end, it is my colleague, young Murmelstein, who manages to get out the words: “Leib Gladstone: Do you not recognize a member of your own family?”
I gasp. I gape. “You are mistaken. I have no family. All were at Auschwitz ermordet.”
Now the Schnabel rolls forward, the tears glistening on her cheeks. “Not all.”
What is this? What can it mean? The dimpled darling who stands before me is no more than a babe in her fourth decade.
“Alas, alle. With my own eyes I saw older sister, younger sister, Mutter, and dubious dad: all sailed on the Kaliope to Dachau. Auschwitz next. None escaped. None returned.”
“Ano. Pravda,” says His Honor. “Our researches have made the confirmation. All perished.”
“I knew it. Poor sisters. Poor Mutter. And the père.”
“Except—”
“Except, my lord?”
Iveta Crumsovatna: “Was one of your sisters not a famed beauty?”
“Not Yakhne. Absence of brisket. Plus Adam’s apple: the same as a man.”
“And the other?”
“Minchke? A peach. But why do you ask? You don’t mean . . . ?”
“Ne. Ne. You must not hope. But she did live more long than others. Until January 1945.”
“Ach. Not even forty-three years of age. Little more than a schoolgirl.”
“And is it not true,” continues His Excellency, “that she was . . . in our language, svudný?”
“Enticing,” translates the Crumsovatna, with a slight reddening of her rouge.
“Sexy,” adds the chief of police.
“Ja. True. At the Graduation Concert, 1916, I won from his Apostolischen Majestät the First Prize; but she won his heart. It is rumored that, just months later, in the joint act of, you know, conjugation, he kicked over the bucket.”
“Well, Pan Goldkorns,” says His Worship. “Is it not possible that Mademoiselle Minchke outlived her family by using those same charms to make a . . . we say a svádení?”
“A seduction.” That from Chief Broz.
“Ano, a seduction of a high officer among the Nemci. The Germans. The Nacisté.”
“What? Do you mean Minchke? And a Teuton? That they . . .” And here I made the international symbol of a finger fornication.
The Deputy for Sports—at what game does she excel, I wonder? Volleyball, as on her nation’s stamps? Bowling? Boules? The deputy gestures toward her vacated chair. “Perhaps, dear friend, you might wish to sit down?”
Dear! Friend! And such a long neck! “No, no. Nein. Are you suggesting that my sister and a Nacistický made together an eructation?”
Pan Broz: “Not only that: we have proof that there were consequences. Do you know what is meant? A chlapecek. A baby boy.”
At these words I do sink onto the hardwood chair—only to spring up again, with the sort of joy one receives from a schnapps shot. “What? Can it be true? Leib Goldkorn, Graduate, ist ein Onkel!” But no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I droop down once more. For there can be no doubt as to the fate of this poor little chlap. Never the chance to play Köchel Number 265.
“Sad,” I say.
My “dear friend” leans down, so close that I pick up anew the sweet scent of Gardenie. “No. Please. Do not feel despairs. The father, the tata: he was big man. Hauptsturmführer. Also a doctor. He made arrangements of escape.”
“This is not, Miss Crumsovatna, cheery news. Better if this Nordic had been killed. Shot. Hanged. Executed with the others.”
“You do not understand. Yes, he made escape. But he took with him his child. They crossed the ocean together. And together they landed in Jižní Amerika. First Argentina. Then Brazil.”
This time I almost fall off my uncushioned seat. “Zusammen?” I murmur. “Together?”
Chief Broz: “Let us get move on. Do you see that the sky becomes dark?”
I do see. Overhead, the clouds are rubbing shoulders. The bulb of the sun dims; the breeze, in response, grows stronger.
“Please, Pan. This suspense. What happened to my kleiner Neffe?”
“I will tell.” Thus does His Honor take charge. “This boy, Josef Juniorsky, grew and thrived. At the age of twenty-seven he had a child of his own. A dívka. 1977. São Paulo. Honorary Jew Leib Goldkorns: this girl baby stands before you now.”
A tremendous cry arises, not just from the figures in my past, not just from the Holocaust Festivities Committee and the band members and the assembly of round-headed Czechs, but, so it seems, from the gallery of stratocumulus clouds:
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!
I stand, thunderstruck, dropping my flute to the ground. I turn toward the double-breasted maiden. Those irises. Those dimples. Minchke’s eyes! Minchke’s cheeks! The mark of beauty: I could have sworn it was on the leftward mam. It seems now to have drifted to the right. The movable mole!
“Meu tio!” These words burst from the red-painted lips. Portuguese. Her native tongue. “Meu tio Leibie!”
She flies toward me, arms outspread, the wind-whipped tears springing from her eyes. I also open my arms. The next instant my own flesh, my own blood, in a silk skirt and open blouse, is inside them.
Bliss. Not to be alone. To know that some part of you, of the Goldkorn-Krupnick line, will survive. I cling to the lovely lass. I bury my head, with its horseshoe of hair, its still-growing ears, its woodwinder’s lips, into the nest of ringlets. And she? She, all weeping, with both arms draws me to her. Now, methinks, let these clouds hurl their bolts of lightning. Let this heart of mine cease its own Boom-de-Boom. This is the moment to die.
Then, in less than that moment, all happiness turns to horror. Down in no-man’s-land I begin to experience, yes, a salty sensation. Rabbi Goldiamond! Help me! Is there in the Talmud a taboo? Against a Hebrew and, in high heels, his Grossnichte? Now what? This mammary pressed to my chest. These abdominals against my own. Haunch to haunch. Ham to ham. Pan Johnson: Down, sir! Down at once!
“Ay-eee,” cries—what is her name? Karima, like her fellow Hispanic? Josefina, like her dad?
“Ay-eee!” Again that cry as, jumping backward, she stares wide-eyed at the netherlands.
“Please. My dear, please. In the saga of the Kalevala, lusty Kullervo has his way with his, um, sister. And among the Pharaohs of Egypt—”
“Safado! Homem velho safado!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” The laughter comes from the Honorable Frantisek Kunc, who now rushes forward. “With such touching reunions our festivities are complete. Welcome, Pan Goldkorns, to your boyish home.”
Now comes the chief of police, waving some kind of paper. “I have agreement. The Jew signs here.”
“Here is excellent pen, already filled with ink.” His Honor withdraws the implement from his breast pocket and hands it to me.
I take it. “Very good. Waterman-brand. L. E. Waterman, founder. You require my John Hancock?”
Of all people, we hear now from the feckless Frank Fingerhut, fils. “It’s just, you know, paperwork.”
Madam Schnabel: “A mere formality.”
“Ano,” comes the shout from the crowd. “Formalita!”
Ernie Glickman: “You can even keep the pen.”
I lean over the paper, which turns out to be a multicolored map of our town. “Look, friends,” I declare. “We are standing here.”
Chief Broz places a fat finger on a paragraph of consonants, followed by a signature line. “You write name there.”
His Honor points too. “You can do it. The l. The e. Then the i.
“But it’s all in Czech.”
Iveta comes close. “Don’t worry, my dear Leib. A formalita. Is no problem to sign.”
Those gardenias! “All right, missy.” I unscrew the top of the Waterman and place the tip to the paper. “If you say so.”
“Pozor!”
Again that word. Again from the Mercedes man. I glance to where he first shakes his head and then wags his finger. The message is clear: Beware.
“Sign! Sign!” All my old friends, my old colleagues, are in unison declaiming this word.
“Oznacit! Oznacit!” The crowd echoes the same demand.
Just then I notice something on the map. The municipality of Jihlava has in the course of the twentieth century spread far beyond the borders of the old Iglau. “Look, fellow citizens. This stadium for sports. These houses and streets. Even this railway depot. Why, in my day all of this territory was nothing more than fields of hops. You know, Hopfen. Oft as a child I would lie among such female flowers, watching the white clouds float by, like the marble busts of Mendelssohn, Mahler, Mayerbeer—the three great musical M’s. Just think! My father, Gaston Goldkorn, would now own half your town!”
A hush. And then, as if from the intestinals of some invisible giant, a far-off rumble. Thunder? The approach of a storm?
Or was it a growl from the part of the crowd without Haar on their heads? Could these chaps be part of a local Polar Bear Club? Perhaps, in January, in February, they take a bracing dip in the Iglawa. Now I see that they have raised their fists in the air. “Ne reparace! Ne honorár!” What are those things in their hands? Sticks? Stones? “Oznacit. Špinavý Žid. Necistý Žid!”
What to do? I turn back to where the automobilist was standing, but I see that he is now surrounded by the Polars, who—to swim all the faster—have shaven their heads. They have pinned his arms behind him. One fellow, in a demonstration of British calisthenics, has crooked his own arm around the good man’s throat.
The sky darkens further. Boom-Boom-de-Boom! The percussion of thunder. A single drop, a raindrop, emerges from the heavens and falls onto the atlas, at a spot, lower left, that is familiar to me: Židovský hrbitov. Jewish cemetery.
“Meu tio. Meu querido.” It is my Grossnichte, granddaughter of sister Minchke. Her dark skin has turned somewhat pale. “Meu amado. Won’t you sign? So we can live happy together in new house? I want to take care of you. Like your filha. Bring you café com leite, eh? You like? Bring you porridge. Sign. Okay?”
A second drop. A third. “Ha, ha! Not coffee. Maybe a slivovitz? Made from plums!”
To my surprise, and delight, the little darling goes up on her toes—and I cannot help but smell distinct notes of oak moss—and plants on my cheek a kiss. Do I blush? Ho, ho: we know what that means.
“Assine seu nome,” she murmurs, directly into my ear. “Sign, Leibie Goldkorns.”
How can I, with such blandishments, resist?
“Oh! Oh! Pomôžte mi!” That cry comes from my former chauffeur, as the Polar Bears perform a folkish kick-dance on his back. “Pomôžte mi!”
“Easy, lads!” I cry. “Queensbury rules!”
With that the fraternity—I see they wear tattoos, an art form forbidden to Yiddish speakers—abandons the driver and instead comes striding toward me. One of them throws smartly against my shins a sharp-edged stone. Another raises his stick. A third repeats what seems to be their password. “Oznacit! Oznacit, Žid! Ne reparace!” A fourth makes the translation. “Sign, Jew! No reparations!”
All fall upon me. They seize my lumberman-type jacket; they pull at my beltless gabardines. A raindrop on my neck? No, an expectoration. Can it be? In the twenty-first century? Pogrom!
Ow! Ow! Ow! These cries come not from my own lips but from a spot some yards away. Ow! Ow! Meeee-ow! It is Hymena. Now she bounds toward me with, clamped in her jaws, my Rudall & Rose.
The crowd—let us call them by their correct name: Cossacks!—They fall back as the feline dashes to my feet.
“Ne! Ne! Nikdy!”
I stoop. I grasp by its silver shank my beloved companion.
Now all repeat the gesture of throwing their hands to their ears, perhaps in this instance against the tremendous thump of the thunderclouds.
“Ne! Ne!” from the Czechs.
“Nicht!” from the German speakers.
“No!” from those who are either naturalized or native-born citizens of the USA.
And from Leib Goldkorn: “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for a change of pace: Borscht Capades, J. Rumshinsky, composer.”
Splat. Splat. Splat. It has begun to rain in earnest. Is that why the multitude seems to flee? Just as our concert begins?
TWAT-TWARP-TWAT!
There go the pogromchiks, as rapidly as if they had been mounted on their steeds of the Steppes.
TWEET-TWAP-TWARPT!
And there fly all the figures from my past. What’s a little rain, friends? Why this fear of getting wet?
TWANK-THRPPT-THWUPPT!
Farewell, Festivities Committee. A pang at the sight of the Deputy for Culture, Entertainments, and Sports. Hopscotching from sight, while hiking her skirts above her spindleshanks. Stay, dear Iveta. Do not miss the Dance Divertimento.
TWIZZLE-TWAZZLE-THWONK!
Wave goodbye to the bowlegged Czechists. All disappear, seeking shelter from the downpour. Thump, Kerthump! The thunder has driven everyone away, save for the Mercedes operator, clearly a music lover, who remains at his spot on the ground. And, of course, my own flesh and blood, who stands with her inner elbows over her ears. Who knew that she was a fan of Rumshinksy?
A-one. A-two—
TWANG-TWIPPLE-TA-ROO!
The face of F. Kunc, Lord Mayor, appears from behind the remnant of the synagogue wall. Hair bangs plastered to forehead. Droplets dripping from chin.
“Pssst! Madam Mengele! This way! Over here!”
And in a flash, she too is gone.
I must play now to an audience of one, who accompanies me with his musical moans. No: two. For at these well-known tunes, spun forth in a sprightly D-major—
TZZT-TZZAT-TZAAM!
—the clouds themselves seem to hasten away, also carrying their skirts behind them, leaving only, over all of what had been the former Czechoslovakia, the round smiling face of the sun.
