GR translation: Child phantoms—white whistling, tears never to come

[Mike Jing]

V398.3-12, P404.20-29  He sits tonight by his driftwood fire in the
cellar of the onion-topped Nikolaikirche, listening to the sea. Stars
hang among the spaces of the great Wheel, precarious to him as candles
and goodnight cigarettes. Cold gathers along the strand. Child
phantoms—white whistling, tears never to come, range the wind behind
the wall. Twists of faded crepe paper blow along the ground, scuttling
over his old shoes. Dust, under a moon newly calved, twinkles like
snow, and the Baltic crawls like its mother-glacier. His heart shrugs
in its scarlet net, elastic, full of expectation. He’s waiting for
Ilse, for his movie-child, to return to Zwölfkinder, as she has every
summer at this time.

"Child phantoms" are phantoms that resemble children, is that correct?

And what is "white whistling"?
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l