Alice Krebs, third daughter of Shmuel and Reisele Krebs, proprietors of Krebs Famous Strictly-Kosher Meats and Poultry, on Avenue B, the Lower East Side, in 1898. She was the first of their eleven children to be born into the New World. In 1916, a year in which with romantic ardor I, in Zurich, pursued, and pursued in vain, the devastatingly beautiful Magda Damrosch, a year in which my passionate young heart throbbed upon the altar of love, in that very year Alice Krebs married Morris Gitlitz, ten years her senior, ritual slaughterer and, according to the Contessa, already a "world-class" Talmudic student. "A mitzvah a day keeps the Torah okay" was his cheery watchword.
It was an arranged marriage but successful for all that: "My father was no dope," the Contessa confided to me. In Morris (she pronounced the name "Meurice") "Poppa outdid himself: in him he found for me a saint." Perhaps Shmuel Krebs
had intuited that Meurice would shift by a kind of natural affinity from the profession of ritual slaughterer to the more rarefied profession of ritual circumciser. Such, at any rate, was Meurice's ascent. And since in those years, and in their crowd, large families were a cause for congratulation, not for disapprobation, and since, too, boy babies appeared with much the same frequency as girls, the Gitlitzes prospered. In 1922 they moved to the Bronx, the Grand Concourse, painting their apartment "passionate puce," in that year the color of the smart set.
But there was a single large and lowering cloud ever on the horizon of their marital bliss. Adonai elohenu had not blessed them with offspring, not even one, despite Meurice Gitlitz's frequent and enthusiastic efforts. They did not go to a doctor, neither wishing to be able to accuse the other of sterility. The Gitlitz line—he had only sisters—was doomed. Poor Alice Gitlitz! Where was she to direct her burgeoning creative energies? She wanted respect, and this, for a barren woman in her circle, was hard to come by. That was why she changed her name, Contessa being her second choice. Her first had been Principessa, but she was afraid that no one would pronounce it properly (except perhaps the Italian shoemaker on Fordham Road, but with him she was not on a first-name basis). So Contessa Gitlitz she became, legally: she had the paper to prove it. And soon after that she began to call Morris by the "classier" name, Meurice.
By 1953 Meurice had reached his sixty-fifth year. His hand-eye coordination was not what it had been. No longer was he the "Paganini of the Scalpel." There was talk of botched jobs, ugly rumors. It was time to retire. Financially secure, the Gitlitzes traveled south and moved into the Versailles, a condominium in Miami. Alas, Meurice's retirement was short-lived. In 1957 disaster struck: one morning before breakfast Meurice executed a perfect dive into the Versailles' "Olympic-size"
swimming pool, stayed underwater rather longer than usual, and eventually surfaced as a corpse. The Contessa, for forty years a wife, had become a widow.
I have given this account of the Contessa up until the time of her widowhood only because I want you to have something to put into the balance when I come to tell my own side of things. That is only just. Still, any reasonable person would think it unlikely that our paths, the Contessa's and mine, should ever cross, much less result in matrimony. Such a mismatching strains the credulity of even the most credulous. But note, please, the following: on the afternoon of June 30,1957,1 was given a small retirement party by some colleagues in the Preparation Division; on the morning of July 1, 1957, Meurice Gitlitz took his classic dive into Eternity. My first day of retirement was his last day of life! Coincidence or Purpose? The question answers itself. The stage had been cleared; a new act was about to begin.
I met the Contessa in Central Park, a fine spring morning in 1960. We shared a bench by the Alice in Wonderland
It was an arranged marriage but successful for all that: "My father was no dope," the Contessa confided to me. In Morris (she pronounced the name "Meurice") "Poppa outdid himself: in him he found for me a saint." Perhaps Shmuel Krebs
had intuited that Meurice would shift by a kind of natural affinity from the profession of ritual slaughterer to the more rarefied profession of ritual circumciser. Such, at any rate, was Meurice's ascent. And since in those years, and in their crowd, large families were a cause for congratulation, not for disapprobation, and since, too, boy babies appeared with much the same frequency as girls, the Gitlitzes prospered. In 1922 they moved to the Bronx, the Grand Concourse, painting their apartment "passionate puce," in that year the color of the smart set.
But there was a single large and lowering cloud ever on the horizon of their marital bliss. Adonai elohenu had not blessed them with offspring, not even one, despite Meurice Gitlitz's frequent and enthusiastic efforts. They did not go to a doctor, neither wishing to be able to accuse the other of sterility. The Gitlitz line—he had only sisters—was doomed. Poor Alice Gitlitz! Where was she to direct her burgeoning creative energies? She wanted respect, and this, for a barren woman in her circle, was hard to come by. That was why she changed her name, Contessa being her second choice. Her first had been Principessa, but she was afraid that no one would pronounce it properly (except perhaps the Italian shoemaker on Fordham Road, but with him she was not on a first-name basis). So Contessa Gitlitz she became, legally: she had the paper to prove it. And soon after that she began to call Morris by the "classier" name, Meurice.
By 1953 Meurice had reached his sixty-fifth year. His hand-eye coordination was not what it had been. No longer was he the "Paganini of the Scalpel." There was talk of botched jobs, ugly rumors. It was time to retire. Financially secure, the Gitlitzes traveled south and moved into the Versailles, a condominium in Miami. Alas, Meurice's retirement was short-lived. In 1957 disaster struck: one morning before breakfast Meurice executed a perfect dive into the Versailles' "Olympic-size"
swimming pool, stayed underwater rather longer than usual, and eventually surfaced as a corpse. The Contessa, for forty years a wife, had become a widow.
I have given this account of the Contessa up until the time of her widowhood only because I want you to have something to put into the balance when I come to tell my own side of things. That is only just. Still, any reasonable person would think it unlikely that our paths, the Contessa's and mine, should ever cross, much less result in matrimony. Such a mismatching strains the credulity of even the most credulous. But note, please, the following: on the afternoon of June 30,1957,1 was given a small retirement party by some colleagues in the Preparation Division; on the morning of July 1, 1957, Meurice Gitlitz took his classic dive into Eternity. My first day of retirement was his last day of life! Coincidence or Purpose? The question answers itself. The stage had been cleared; a new act was about to begin.
I met the Contessa in Central Park, a fine spring morning in 1960. We shared a bench by the Alice in Wonderland
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