562
PARTISAN REVIEW
to the next), and the same, or similar, stout rosy immigrant
maid
with a pail of water to douse the tree in case of fire. Before the presents
could be opened, everyone sang 0
Tannenbaum-the
grownups
with sentiment, the children, impatiently. In the morning, they
found their stockings crammed with nuts, raisins, marzipan, lebkuchen
and special cakes baked for the Christmas season.
When the weather grew warm, the children brought out their
velocipedes and pedaled up and down the back garden piazza. There
were no partitions between the rear porches and they were free to
ride the whole length of the houses, occasionally peering into one or
another kitchen window to see what was being prepared for supper.
Once a week, a farmer drove
in
from outlying Long Island, five
miles away. He sat precariously perched on top of his hay wagon
with a wicker basket filled with fresh country eggs beside him, to
be
distributed among the families. The hay was thrown up into the
stable loft on a long, Mephistophelean pitchfork.
In July, the Kupermanns prepared to leave for the Adirondacks.
Steamer trunks were carried down from the attics, furniture shrouded
in sheets and shutters sealed. The urban brewery yard was exchanged
for the mountain setting, often wistfully compared, by the older
members of the family, to the unforgettable deep green forests of
Bavaria.
I emerged from the stable, blinking in the sudden daylight, and
walked across the street to the office building. The ground floor
looked the same as always; the walls hung with bad family por–
traits and old photographs and adorned with a dado of oak, tor–
tured into the kind of tasteless design that used to decorate the wooden
walking sticks and weathervanes sold as souvenirs in Alpine restaur–
ants in my childhood. I climbed the creaking stairs to my father's
office. At a desk in an antechamber, a trim, unfamiliar secretary
looked up at my arrival. "Mr. Charles isn't in just now, but he's
expected shortly."
Then I remembered; this office, once my grandfather's, then
shared by my father and uncle, now belonged to my brother, who
had succeeded them as head of the brewery. "I'll wait inside, if I
may," I said as I walked in, little knowing that I would find myself
in an unrecognizable room.
