Leib has a drink, or two, in the Musiksalon, recalls
his audition with the famed J. J. Epstein, then
falls asleep on his boyhood bed.

OFF I GO the next afternoon on the brief walk from the Hotel Mahler through the Masaryk Square and on to my boyhood home at Number 5 Lindenstrasse. Brief? Mayhaps for Sir Charles Atlas, into whose face an earlier pogromist once kicked the sand, or for Plum Warner, outstanding cricketer. But I must pull in arrears my Samsonite valise—over cobblestones!—while balancing my kitten in her pet hostel. Lindenstrasse? No: Valkova. Named, mayhap, for some famous gent or other: perchance inventor of the portable W.C. or, a Czechist specialty, the open-toed sandal. Or—who knows?—the five-pronged fork.

Arrival, breathless. A pity: gone are the Lindenbäume that gave the street—no, no, Miss Hymena, not a mews—its former name. Except there, in the middle of the block, a single specimen: bent, bowed, older even than the present speaker. No sign of those blossoms that on a summer night could intoxicate a bookish boy. Only, eins, zwei, drei, four pale leaves, all of them a-tremble in the November breeze, fearing deportation. Aha! Subtract one! Now, poor things, only, hmmm, three.

But look: at least our house has not changed. The same green shutters at the windows. The same green door. Let us take out the gift of Fingerhut, fils: the silvery keys. Open sesame! says me. Ho. Ho. Good one.

I stand motionless in the foyer. Goldkorn agog. It is as if I have been whisked on our old Persian carpet one hundred years into the past. In spite of past Slavic or Teuton occupants, all about me remains the same. In the niche to the left, Hermes of yore; in a niche to the right, strong-chinned Athena. Zones of generation draped. Ahead, the debouchment of the spiral staircase. Here sat a lad upon the bottom step as his sister hurtled down the banister, knickers non-draped. Interessant!

Look leftward: the salon for dining. There, as if the family Goldkorn had sat around it only last night, partaking of a robust Rheinischer Sauerbraten, is our Bavarian-style table. If I close my eyes I can see steaming before me a particular favorite, Schlesiches Himmelreich—yes, Kingdom of Heaven, the fruit pieces covering the forbidden bacon.

Look, Hymena! This was my seat à table. Look up: Do you see how our chandelier, of Prague manufacture, has trapped in its prisms the rays of sunny days past, just as the crystal of the nighttime sky discloses stars that have long since expired? Pardon poetics. Now, my honey bear, look down: Do you see that rubber button? The master of the house, and here we speak of Gaston Goldkorn, had only to press it with his foot, and at once a peasant girl, plump Eliska, would appear with a bowl of Leberknödelsuppe. Excellent trick: she would cross her sirloins and with a pumping motion produce the sound of a trombone. Dare we summon her now? I press the semi-sphere and—yes! A far-off chime: but the ghost of Eliska, with her swollen ankles, does not appear.

Let us turn to the right—that is, to the parlor, or, in American vernacular, the “living” room. Identical sensations. That sofa? Ours! The twin leatherette chairs? Ours! The curtains at the windows? Ours as well! And there, as aforementioned, our Persian-type rug. How oft as a child did I imagine that, while lying upon it, I would be borne off to the faraway places in the pages of my books, just as Solomon on his flying carpet could breakfast in Damascus and sup at Medina. Pumped with pride was I, flitting through the clouds like the Hermes in his niche, with wings on my feet and the wind in my hair. Carpet! I cried, with a snap of my fingers. Take me to Bialystok! Foolish child. Only God is perfect, both Jews and Musselmen agree. Thus the weaver in his tent deliberately drops a stitch or leaves, among his myriad of knots, one untied. Thus does he demonstrate the imperfection of man. And how!

Here, Hymena, and here, and also here. Regard depressions in the silk, the threads that are bare. That is where stood the casters of the pianoforte, a Vopaterny grand. Gift to meine Mutter from—well, we know from who. Only God is perfect: thus on that keyboard we find the fateful F-sharp flaw. From this excursion into the past we might learn one other lesson: There is one house in a man’s life—to wit, from the days of his youth—that he will always own. All the others who have lived in it since are only renters.

What is that smell? A sniff. A second sniff. Is this not the fragrance once generated by the Imperial and Royal Tobacco Monopoly, an aroma that hung not only over Iglau but Humpletz, Budwitz, and far-off Tábor? Such fumes were not absent from Lindenstrasse Number 5. Sister Yakhne, on feminist grounds, would enjoy a Dutch Liliputano. At times the playful Eliska would make the smoke from a cigarillo come out of her ear. But I know that what I smell now is the residue of the putative père. His habit was to sit with feet up in the music room, lost both in the clouds of his Trabucco D.D., or Doppeldezimeter, a terrifying eight American inches, and in the newsprint of his rustling Prager Tagblatt.

And so, as Hänsel und Gretel followed the Brotkrumen, I follow my Jewish-style nose. Through the parlor, a leftward turn, and voilà! Der Musiksalon! With, at its rear, the schnapps bar. Oho! Here are all my old friends: Goldwasser, Edelkirsch, Becherovka, Himbeergeist; also Jägermeister, slivovitz, Spätburgunder—all arranged by decree of G. Goldkorn in the order of the spectrum, from the blue-violet Curaçao on the left to where the rainbow ends, at the right, with the ruby-red Campari. At once I spy the same bottle of Fernet Stock that, with a tumbler of Mr. J. Walker and a thimble of Signor Cinzano, I turned into a first-rate Rob Roy. How many times, as a pubescent, did I tiptoe down the staircase as the père, the mère, and les deux soeurs lay all abed, and mix together this excellent digestive.

“I say, Hymena, dost care for a drop?”

Mee?

“Verdammt! This cap is tight. Aha! There!” I pour a “finger” of Fernet into a glass and place it before my fur-bearing friend. “On guard. This is not Milchwasser. Fourteen herbs. Eighty-proof!”

Fitz! Futz!

“Ha! Ha! Did I not warn you? It puts a hair on the chest!”

For myself, two “fingers.” Maybe three. “In your eye—” Up goes the glass: “Mud!”

Of a sudden there falls on my head the nightstick of a policeman. The blow is only partly caused by the forty percent alcohol in my drink. The true shock comes from the sight of the Monarch-model machine that gave this room its name.

It is just as I remember: a consul-type, with windup motor and metal horn skillfully painted to look like wood. And there, above the Grammophon, lined up on open shelves, are the ten-inch discs of the Fonotipia-brand. With a cry of joy I peruse the labels with their angels and lyres. Here is Léon Escalais, as Eleazar in La Juive, J. F. Halévy composer. And here? Vannutelli in selections from Oscar Straus. Also Gli Ugonotti, of Monsieur Meyerbeer. Fear not: in this collection are works by non-Jews. Par exemple, Gounod. Elisa Petri (what a dish—a pretty pun, Uncle Al) sings “O mia lira immortale” from the opera—well, am I not a grown man? May I not disclose without blushes the name of this work? Sappho! Yes, the perverse Poetin from the isle of Lesbos! Hee-hee.

“What? Is my glass empty? Signor Cinzano, welcome. Did I mention that Rob Roy was a hero of Scotland?”

Fittz! Futtz!

My feline is once again imitating a Spürhund—ridge fur fluffed, tail stump erect, one paw, of the three remaining to her, raised. To what does she direct my attention? Ah! It is the Fido, a.k.a. “Nipper,” on the label of Die Stimme Seines Herrn.

Fizz! Footz!

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Silly little Kätzchen! This is only a painting of a dog. He listens to His Master’s Voice. Look: he is on every disc of the Deutsche Grammophon collection.”

So speaking, I pluck to my bosom a disc of the k. und k. Infanterie Regiment Nr. 4 Band. How lively their “Toreador Marsch.” What next? Here is an old favorite. The Tanzpalast Orchester playing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.” Room in my arms for one more: the Grammophon Orchester in the stirring “Arabische National-Hymne.” Oh! Musik! Gods of Musik! These tunes that come to me now are not embedded in the shellac of the recordings but within the crevices of my cranium.

What do you say? A few fingers more? Down to the hatch!

Time to dance, darling! Turning and turning, as fast as a disc on the Plattenteller of the Monarch itself. Eighty-two revolutions each minute. Round and round! An interesting factotum: shellac comes from a beetle. Tanz, Leib Goldkorn. Tanz, Hymena. Young again!

Für Weh und Wunden

gab sie Balsam

What? Who’s there? Who utters these words? Looking this way, looking that, I see no one, save for Hymena, mouth wide, palette pink, singing in what is my native tongue.

für böse Gifte

Gegengift

Clever cat! To have learned these R. Wagner words. Does she know those that come next?

für tiefstes Weh

für höchstes Leid

What is this? I hear not only the cadence from this talented tabby, but the sonorities of an entire Orchester. Are these the delusions of a man who has imbibed, I confess it, a fistful of fingers? What’s next? Rosen Elefanten? Wait! It is not the room that is spinning but the disc on the Monarch-model machine. In my dance I have bumped against it. It is not my Liebchen who is singing but—Ja! This vibrato. This crystal tone: the great Lilli Lehmann. Tristan. Act One. Scene Four. Isolde orders Brangäne to—

Heavens! The voice drawls to a stop. I leap to the machine. I grasp the—what do you call it? Oh, addled Uncle Al! The crank. The handle. Der Kurbelgriff! There! A turn! There! Another!

gab sie den Todestrank

The death potion! Worse than absinthe! In the golden goblet!

Der Tod nun sag ihr Dank!

Futz! Fwatz!

No, no, honey-heart. Do not fear. You’ll see! This is not a death drink. No, it is a Liebestrank! Love! A drink to love! I have seen it in person. I played a part. Listen! Listen, my kitten, to my tale.

THE YEAR IN QUESTION is 1907. In that Jahr, Lieutenant General R. Baden-Powell founds the Boy Scout movement. In America, Oklahoma becomes—hmmm, just one minute, Judge Gitlitz, Your Worship—the forty-sixth state. Inhabitants, in spite of late entry into the Union, known as Sooners. Also introduction, in the state of Pennsylvania, of Hershey’s “Kisses.”

Mee-yow!

Ha! Ha! She knows these are made of milk chocolate.

Now let us fly on our magic carpet all the way to the capital of our beloved empire: 1907, Vienna, where Jews and gentiles—not to make any comparisons—have just been given the freedom to vote. It was in that same city ninety-eight years ago that I saw a Tristan, whose Isolde was sung by the same fair-haired soprano whose voice—let us wind up the Monarch motor once more—comes back to us now from the land of the dead.

On the day of this event, a bright and sunny one, a father and his large-eared son could be seen riding along the Schubertring in an open-air tram. On a youth from provincial Iglau, what an impression! The many ladies in hip hoops and puff sleeves, with visible chests. The men in caps and derbies and fezzes. The lurch of the red-painted car on its metal tracks. Where are the horses? This question the boy put to the man.

“Ho! Ho! Diese Trambahn ist elektrifiziert!” True, as evidenced by the lightning bolts that snapped along the wires above, and the smell of lightning, like burnt cork, that wafted down from those same taut strands. Through the glassless windows anyone could see—two, three, five, ten: too many to count—the many Personnenwagen, weaving back and forth along the streets, leaving here a cloud of white steam, there a cloud of black smoke. Poor horses! Goodbye, fair dobbin! The century to come belongs not to you.

A clang. A double clang. The car came to a stop. The father took the son by the collar, as a cat might a kitten, and the two passengers stepped from the platform to the ground. Surprise: it is I, little Leib, on my first trip to Vienna, and the gentleman with the moustache and woolen waistcoat is none other than the putative père. We left the Schubertring and turned onto a street named for Pestalozzi, whose educational principles I had already encountered in my kindergarten class, and then on to a small side street that took its name from the confirmed bachelor Immanuel Kant.

At the third house, a tall, narrow one, I squinted up at the brass nameplate: J-U-L.—I spelled out, only to have G.G. speed through the words. JULIUS J. EPSTEIN: HERR PROFESSOR DOKTOR.

All musical Vienna, and all Iglauans too, knew of this famed friend of Brahms, mentor to the greats, and professor of piano at the Conservatorium, now retired.

“Teacher of Ignaz Brüll!” I piped. “Who composed Die Bettler von Samarkand!”

“Ja,” answered the owner of hundreds of hectares of hops. “Also teacher of Gustav Mahler.”

Something in the way he ground his molars at the word Mahler, and cracked his knuckles too, made me shiver. With his thumb pad he pressed the button beneath the name of the pedagogue-pianist and, at the answering signal, led me into the building.

Up we went on the stone staircase, one flight, then another; suddenly, silently, and smoothly too, the lift came down. I heard, from the père, a gasp, like a puncture in a rubberized tire, and just had time to see a blond-haired woman—wide, black-rimmed eyes, long nose of the aristocratic type, and manly chin—press the palm of her hand against the cabin glass, before she dropped away. On the landing, Gaston Goldkorn paused to mop, with his handkerchief square, his brow; then we walked onward to the topmost floor.

The man who ushered us into his rooms was small, bent, semi-bald, and as white as the keys he had depressed for much of his seventy-five years. “Aha,” he declared upon seeing Leib in lederhosen. “Here is the Wunderkind!”

Proud putative père: “This Junge plays two-handed piano and is known throughout the town of Iglau for woodwind expertise.”

Here G. Goldkorn squeezed my shoulder, a signal that I should remove from between my suspender straps my instrument, a panpipe similar to the pinkillo of Peru, on which I could produce six notes on the diatonic scale, the last of which would cause die Hausfrauen of the Jewish quarter to run to their kitchens, certain that their kettles were a-boil.

Julius J.: “This is a fine, sturdy lad. Such ears! Such lips! And from Iglau! I remember the day, it was more than thirty years ago, that another boy from this town arrived at my studio to audition for the Konservatorium. And tonight that former fifteen-year-old will at the Hofoper conduct the Tristan of Richard Wagner. Question number one of my exam: Of whom do I speak?”

L.G.: “Hmmm. Hmmm. Humperdinck! Composer of—”

J.J.: “Ha, ha. I mean little Gustav. Gustav Mahler.”

The molars ground. The knuckles cracked. The père pushed me forward. “Herr Professor Doktor. I leave you this afternoon my precious treasure. My only Sohn. The Moravian Mozart, people say. I return at five p.m. Here, a small token”—impossible not to see how a thousand-Kronen banknote passed from one hand, tanned, to another, pale. “And now, goodbye. Make music! Auf Wiedersehen!”

My father, the good Gaston, moved to the door. I meant to trod after, but he quickly closed it behind him.

“So, my little woodwinder, we shall now hear whether you can play for J. J. Epstein the way the famed J. J. Quantz played for Frederick the Great. Please to follow me.”

Here the pianist led the way into a small room overlooking the Kantgasse. The afternoon sun streamed through its open windows. A black-lacquered Bösendorfer took up most of the space, along with a small round table, covered with a rug and a piece of the white lace named for the Englishman Doiley.

“Gieselinde!” Herr Esptein called. “We shall have a tea. Mit Butterkeksen!”

“Ja, ja, Herr Doktor,” answered a female voice, from deep within the apartment.

As the snow-white foot of a woman slips into her patent-leather pump, so did the professor slide onto the bench of his piano. “What should we play together, eh? Perhaps the Sonata in E-flat Major, Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis 1031.” So saying, the maestro ran his hands over the keys in an impromptu cadenza: Glissando, Bruscamente, Furioso. I stood, immobile, the pipe at my lips. Then the pianist paused, Smorzando, and into the hum of the fading notes I threw back my head and cried:

Fly in the buttermilk,

Shoo, fly, shoo—

Da capo:

Fly in the buttermilk,

Shoo, fly, shoo—

“Fantastisch!” exclaimed my accompanist, bringing all ten fingers down on the proper G-minor chord. “Ein amerikanisches Volkslied!”

Then into my panpipe I blew with all my might:

TWORP! TWIPPLE! TWAPFT!

“Gott im Himmel!” cried J. J. Epstein, whose skin, impossibly, grew a shade lighter.

TWAZZIP! TURUPPPT!

From outside, on the Kantgasse, on Christengasse, and even on the distant Beethovenplatz, a variety of canines began to howl. On our own block schnauzers and dachshunds, two boxer-types, and an Affenpinscher ran through doors and leaped from first-story windows. Behind my back I heard a shriek and a crash: Gieselinde, the servant, had spilled the tea service, with shortbreads, onto the hard wooden floor. There was a second crash: the fallboard of the piano had slammed down on the keys. The piano itself, like a living beast, was trembling and making a sospirando:

Cow’s in the cornfield

What’ll I do?

Da capo:

Cow’s in the—

“Halt! Bitte! Halt!” The Herr Professor Doktor, seeming, like certain peanut worms, to have not a drop of blood in his body, was crawling beneath his instrument.

Suddenly the entire sky went dark and there was a clapping sound: Had the sun fled from the heavens? No. Flights of crows, numbering thousands, were wheeling over the roofs and chimney pots of Vienna, creating an artificial eclipse. It was then that I noticed something in that unnatural shade: a man and a woman, huddled in a doorway, holding their hands over their ears.

The septuagenarian regained his feet. He leaned out the window—so far, in fact, that, like a desperate man in a burning building, it seemed he would jump. Instead, he called toward the couple on the Kantgasse:

“Zurückkommen! Now! At once! Do you hear me? Kommen Sie schnell!”

The man and woman turned; each looked up. To my amazement I saw that it was the lady in the lift and the putative père.

“Bitte! Bitte! I beg you. Look. Look! See what I am doing! I am destroying the Geld! I don’t want it! I refuse to take it!”

True to his word the professor was tossing pieces of the thousand-Kronen note into the air like so much confetti. The père, adjusting his waistcoat, blinked upward, against the sun that had just come out from the cloud of crows. His mouth was open, though he said not a word.

“So hören Sie doch! Listen!” J.J.E. cried imploringly. “The audition is completed. Come back at once. I make a promise. I take an oath. I shall recommend him to the Akademie. I swear it! Once at age fifteen, he will be admitted. Woodwind section. One hundred percent guarantee. In Gottes Namen! Take this child away!”

Two things occurred: the blond-haired woman ran up the street in the direction of Johannesgasse, and Gaston, glowering, moved back toward our building, inside of which the Herr Professor Doktor, the maidservant in black skirt and white apron, the Bösendorfer, and the boy all stood motionless, listening to the heavy tread of his feet upon the stairs.

ON LINDENSTRASSE LILLI LEHMANN has fallen silent, as if the potion she had swallowed were poison after all. The motor on the Monarch model once more needs winding. The centurian ignores the crank. Instead he addresses Hymena, who cocks her only ear to hear Her Master’s Voice:

“And that, my dear, is how Leib Goldkorn came to enter, and become a Graduate of, the Akademie für Musik, Philosophie, und darstellende Kunst.”

IT HAS GROWN dark in the Musiksalon. The sun, it seems, has set on the Czechs and their republic. In response, Hymena yawns, and in a friendly reflex I yawn back. I feel of a sudden the weight of my years: fatigue, hunger, and bladder twinges. First things, as my fellow New Yorkers say, first. The W.C., I know, is in the far wing, off the kitchen. With Hymena at my heels I retrace my steps to the johnny, where the Tiefspültoilette is just as I remember it, with a tank and chain at the top and a pattern of roses along the circumference of the seat. Suffice to say that in mere minutes I stand with Pan Johnson wrested from the depths of my S. Kleins and held in what since earliest adolescence has been an overhand grip. Yet nothing occurs. The urge is great—mein Gott!, like a tide pulled by the strength of the moon—but not a drop appears.

Mee-now?

Ah: the cause. Impossible to make excretions when another pair of eyes, especially female ones, looks on. A case for Krafft-Ebing, Baron von. I put out the little miss. Consummation achieved. With finishing touch.

And now to bed. The stairs loom above me as the Himalayas once did before Sir Edmund Hillary. I surmount them. At last, the upper floor. To the left, down the hallway, is the Hauptschlafzimmer, where, on the four-poster, under a cloud of gauze, G. Goldkorn and the former Falma Krupnick engaged in connubials. Once only: note Yakhne. But on the second occasion, Ha! Ha! Ha! Instead, it was G. Mahler who performed that act of pollination. Mad for love!

Let us turn our backs on this scene of Fleischeslust and move down the hall to the right—past the door of that older sister, beneath which the exhaust of the Liliputanos oft curled; past the door of younger sister, Minchke, behind which she transposed her beauty spots; and past Eliska’s closed portal, which, though stout, could not muffle the nighttime moans of self-befriendingness. Thus we arrive at the room of the home’s only youth.

My heart is a-quiver as my hand touches the knob of the door. “Open,” says me. No longer funny. Odd, how a joke can be told only once. Let us think of a new one. Confucius say: Woman who fly upside down have crack up. Ha! Ha! Ha! Get it? Crack up?

Alas, I can no longer with digressions put off the moment of entry. Voilà! My boyhood room is no more changed than the parlor below. There is my bed, a Biedermeier, with its spread of taffeta nubs. Wearily, I fall upon it—Whoops! Hoop-la! You too, my tabby?—and stare in wonder at the two poster images that after all these many decades remain affixed to the opposite wall.

There, to the left, the reproduction of Old Shatterhand riding atop Halatitla, Lightning, while beside him gallops his blood brother, Winnetou, upon—amazing how this name has lain in storage among my cortex coils—Iltschi, Wind. By these two “Westmen,” an Apache with a feather in his hair and the German paleface, I was taught a lesson not available in the Akademie: We are all, Gentile and Jew, Afrikaner and Esquimaux, Trobriand Islander and Swedish masseur—all, in this adventure of life, Blutsbrüder.

And to the right the rotogravure depiction of RRS Discovery, locked in the grip of Antarctic ice. She was launched in that year of note 1901, commanded by the greatest of all heroes, R. F. Scott. Beaten to his prize, the southern pole, he and his men suffered as few had before them: frostbite, snow blindness, scurvy. Exhaustion of provisions: the meat of the ponies, the meat of the dogs, Pinguinfleisch, and plum duff. The final storm: marooned in their tents, day after day, night after night. Gentlemen! Do not fall asleep! Pinch each other’s cheeks! Alack, all strength ebbs away. Last written words by Scott to his wife: “What tales you would have had for the boy.” And for all boys, in all nations, including the one in Iglau who has all his life admired such English pluck. God save the Queen!

Westwärts

schweift der Blick

What’s this? Who’s there? Someone is singing. Has the Monarch model self-started again? No. Not possible. This is the voice of a lusty young man.

Ostwärts

streicht das Schiff

Das Schiff? What ship? The Discovery? Der fliegende Holländer? Is Leib Goldkorn a-doze? Gentlemen! Do not fall asleep! Our pemmican is buried nearby. Ach: I am confusing past and present, one ship with another. So, Hymena, honey, as the commander staved off that drowsy death by telling his tale, so I shall complete the story of that fateful day in Vienna when, after my successful Julius J. Epstein audition, the putative père rewarded his supposed son with an excursion to the kaiserlich-königliche Hof-Operntheater. The opera that night was Tristan und Isolde.

Frisch weht der Wind

Yes, fresh blows the wind that takes the lonely sailor and the kidnapped Isolde away from her beloved Ireland, home of Book of Kells and Book of Records (most number of bikini waxes in four hours: 262, but, ha-ha-ha, who is counting?). Potatoes. And Jewish mayor of Dublin. Believe it or not! But we are speaking of an ancient land in ancient times.

Irische Maid

du wilde, minnige Maid!

Yes, the tenor misses his wild Irish maid—as do I my frolicsome Finn. Let us climb back on our Persian rug. Carpet! Take me to Vienna! To the Hofoper! Away!