"Look," Anapol said. "I won"t stop you from cutting their G.o.dd.a.m.ned heads off if that"s what you want to do, as long as it sells enough comic books. You know that."
"I know."
"It"s just... it makes me nervous."
The entire phenomenon of comic books, as it had turned out, made Anapol a little nervous. For fifteen years he"d broken his back traveling to the remote, humorless hinterlands of Pennsylvania and Ma.s.sachusetts. He had slept little, flirted with bankruptcy, driven six hundred miles a day, eaten appalling food, developed an ulcer, neglected his daughters, and worked his a.s.s off trying to get novelty dealers to laugh. Now, suddenly, having done nothing more than allow himself to be persuaded by someone he had hitherto considered a young maniac to put up seven thousand dollars he could just barely afford, he was rich. All of the tables and equations for calculating the nature of the world had been thrown into question. He had broken off his affair with Maura Zell, moved back in with his wife, attended High Holiday services for the first time in forty years.
"I"m worried about you, you, Kavalier," he went on. "I suppose it can only be healthy for you to get your killer instincts or what have you out of your system that way"-he gestured vaguely toward the studio room-"but I can"t help thinking that in the long run it"s only going to make you ... make you ..." He seemed to lose his train of thought. He had been rummaging inside the paper bag, taking out various other souvenirs of his trip. There was a conch sh.e.l.l with its lush pink lip. There was a grinning monkey head made out of two coconut halves. And there was a framed photograph of a house, the colors hand-tinted and garish. The house in the picture stood on a patch of vibrant emerald lawn. The sky behind it was lurid blue. It was a modernistic house, low and flat and pale gray, charming as a carton of eggs. Anapol stood the photograph on his desk, beside the pictures of his wife and daughters. The frame was sober, plain black enamel, as if to suggest that the picture it contained was a doc.u.ment of rare importance, a diploma or government license. Kavalier," he went on. "I suppose it can only be healthy for you to get your killer instincts or what have you out of your system that way"-he gestured vaguely toward the studio room-"but I can"t help thinking that in the long run it"s only going to make you ... make you ..." He seemed to lose his train of thought. He had been rummaging inside the paper bag, taking out various other souvenirs of his trip. There was a conch sh.e.l.l with its lush pink lip. There was a grinning monkey head made out of two coconut halves. And there was a framed photograph of a house, the colors hand-tinted and garish. The house in the picture stood on a patch of vibrant emerald lawn. The sky behind it was lurid blue. It was a modernistic house, low and flat and pale gray, charming as a carton of eggs. Anapol stood the photograph on his desk, beside the pictures of his wife and daughters. The frame was sober, plain black enamel, as if to suggest that the picture it contained was a doc.u.ment of rare importance, a diploma or government license.
"What is that?" Joe said.
Anapol blinked, looking at the picture. "That is my house in Florida," he said, sounding tentative.
"I thought you went to a hotel."
Anapol nodded. He looked queasy and happy and doubtful all at the same time. "We did. The Delano."
"You bought a house house there?" there?"
"Apparently. It seems crazy to me now." He pointed to the picture. "That isn"t even my house. There is no house. There"s just a piece of muddy sand with string tied around it on little sticks. In the middle of Palm River, Florida. Only there is no Palm River, either."
"You went to Florida and bought a house."
"Why don"t I like the way you keep repeating it? Why do I feel like you"re accusing me of something? Are you saying I don"t have a right to throw my money away on whatever I d.a.m.n well feel like, Kavalier?"
"No, sir," Joe said. "I would not dream." He yawned, a deep, joint-tightening yawn that made his entire body shudder. He was exhausted, but the yawn that racked him was the product of his anger and not his fatigue. The only people winning the war that Joe had been fighting in the pages of Empire Comics since January were Sheldon Anapol and Jack Ashkenazy. Between them, they had pocketed something in the neighborhood, according to Sammy"s guess, of six hundred thousand dollars. "Excuse me."
"That"s right," Anapol said. "Go home. Get some sleep. You look like h.e.l.l."
"I have an appointment," Joe said stiffly. He put on his hat and slung his jacket over his shoulder. "Goodbye."
2
UNDER ORDINARY CIRc.u.mSTANCES, the trip downtown to the German consulate discouraged Joe; today he found it difficult even to get himself on to the subway. He felt obscurely furious with Sheldon Anapol. He took a comic book out of the hip pocket of his jacket and tried to read. He had become a constant and careful consumer of comic books. By stalking the Fourth Avenue bookstalls, he had managed to acquire a copy of nearly every one that had been published in the past few years, acquiring also, while he was at it, stacks of old Sunday New York Mirrors New York Mirrors so that he could study Burne Hogarth"s vehement, precise, and painterly work in so that he could study Burne Hogarth"s vehement, precise, and painterly work in Tarzan. Tarzan. The same masturbatory intensity of concentration that Joe had once brought to the study of magic and wireless sets he now focused on the fledgling, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, wide-open art form into whose raffish embrace he had fallen. He noticed how strong the influence of movies was on artists like Joe Shuster and The same masturbatory intensity of concentration that Joe had once brought to the study of magic and wireless sets he now focused on the fledgling, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, wide-open art form into whose raffish embrace he had fallen. He noticed how strong the influence of movies was on artists like Joe Shuster and Batman"s Batman"s Bob Kane, and began to experiment with a cinematic vocabulary: an extreme close-up, say, on the face of a terrified child or soldier, or a zoom shot, drawing ever closer, over the course of four panels, on the battlements and keep of a grim Zothenian redoubt. From Hogarth he learned to trouble over the emotional occasion, so to speak, of a panel, choosing carefully, among the infinitude of potential instants to arrest and depict, the one in which the characters" emotions were most extreme. And from reading the comic books that featured art by the great Louis Fine, like the one in his hands right now, Joe learned to view the comic book hero, in his formfitting costume, not as a pulp absurdity but as a celebration of the lyricism of the naked (albeit tinted) human form in motion. It was not Bob Kane, and began to experiment with a cinematic vocabulary: an extreme close-up, say, on the face of a terrified child or soldier, or a zoom shot, drawing ever closer, over the course of four panels, on the battlements and keep of a grim Zothenian redoubt. From Hogarth he learned to trouble over the emotional occasion, so to speak, of a panel, choosing carefully, among the infinitude of potential instants to arrest and depict, the one in which the characters" emotions were most extreme. And from reading the comic books that featured art by the great Louis Fine, like the one in his hands right now, Joe learned to view the comic book hero, in his formfitting costume, not as a pulp absurdity but as a celebration of the lyricism of the naked (albeit tinted) human form in motion. It was not all all violence and retribution in the early stories of Kavalier Clay; Joe"s work also articulated the simple joy of unfettered movement, of the able body, in a way that captured the yearnings not only of his crippled cousin but of an entire generation of weaklings, stumbleb.u.ms, and playground goats. violence and retribution in the early stories of Kavalier Clay; Joe"s work also articulated the simple joy of unfettered movement, of the able body, in a way that captured the yearnings not only of his crippled cousin but of an entire generation of weaklings, stumbleb.u.ms, and playground goats.
Today, however, he could not seem to focus on the copy of Wonder-world Comics Wonder-world Comics that he had brought along. His thoughts veered between irritation with the giddiness, the indecency, of Anapol"s sudden prosperity and dread of his appointment with the Adjutant for Minority Relocation at the German consulate on Whitehall Street. It was not the prosperity itself he resented, for that was a measure of his and Sammy"s success, but rather the disproportionate share of it that was going to Anapol and Ashkenazy, when it was he and Sammy who had invented the Escapist and were doing all the work of bringing him to life. No, it was not even that. It was the impotence of the money, and of all the pent-up warlike fancies that had earned it, to do anything but elaborate the wardrobe and fatten the financial portfolios of the owners of Empire Comics that so frustrated and enraged him. And there was nothing guaranteed to emphasize his fundamental powerlessness more thoroughly than a morning spent with Adjutant Milde at the German consulate. There was no pursuit more disheartening than the immigration goose chase. that he had brought along. His thoughts veered between irritation with the giddiness, the indecency, of Anapol"s sudden prosperity and dread of his appointment with the Adjutant for Minority Relocation at the German consulate on Whitehall Street. It was not the prosperity itself he resented, for that was a measure of his and Sammy"s success, but rather the disproportionate share of it that was going to Anapol and Ashkenazy, when it was he and Sammy who had invented the Escapist and were doing all the work of bringing him to life. No, it was not even that. It was the impotence of the money, and of all the pent-up warlike fancies that had earned it, to do anything but elaborate the wardrobe and fatten the financial portfolios of the owners of Empire Comics that so frustrated and enraged him. And there was nothing guaranteed to emphasize his fundamental powerlessness more thoroughly than a morning spent with Adjutant Milde at the German consulate. There was no pursuit more disheartening than the immigration goose chase.
Whenever he found himself with an empty morning or a week between issues, Joe would put on a good suit, a sober tie, a neatly blocked hat, and set out as he had this morning, burdened by an ever swelling satchel of doc.u.ments, to try to make headway in the case of the Kavaliers of Prague. He paid endless visits to the offices of HIAS, to the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs, to travel agents, to the New York office of the President"s Action Committee, to the wonderfully polite Adjutant at the German consulate with whom he had an appointment for ten o"clock that morning. To a certain cross section of clerks in that city of rubber stamps, carbon paper, and spindles, he had become a familiar figure, a slender, tall twenty-year-old with nice manners and a rumpled suit, appearing in the middle of a stifling afternoon, looking painfully cheerful. He would doff his hat. The clerk or secretary-a woman, more often than not-pinned to a hard chair by a thousand cubic feet of smoky, rancid air that caught like batter in the blades of the ceiling fans, deafened by the thunder of file cabinets, dyspeptic, despairing, and bored, would look up and see that Joe"s thick thatch of curls had been deformed by his headgear into a kind of glossy black hat, and smile.
"I come to be pesky once again," Joe would say, in his increasingly slang-deformed English, and then take from the breast pocket of his jacket a slim humidor filled with five fifteen-cent panatelas or, when the clerk was a woman, a folding paper fan patterned with pink flowers, or simply a pearly-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. And she would take the fan or the soda pop, and listen to his pleas, and want to help him very much. But there was little to be done. Every month, Joe"s income increased, and every month, he managed to put more and more money away, only to find that there was nothing to spend it on. The bribes and bureaucratic lubrications of the first years of the protectorate were a thing of the past. At the same time, obtaining a United States visa, never an easy thing, had become nearly impossible. By last month, when his own permanent residency had been approved, he had acc.u.mulated and sent to the State Department seven affidavits from noted New York gland doctors and psychiatrists attesting to the fact that the three senior members of his family would be unique and valuable additions to the populace of his adopted country. With each pa.s.sing month, however, the number of refugees making their way to America shrank, and the news from home grew darker and more fragmentary. There was word of relocations, resettlements; the Jews of Prague were all to be sent to Madagascar, to Terezin, to a vast autonomous reservation in Poland. And Joe found himself in receipt of three officially discouraging letters from the Undersecretary for Visas, and a polite suggestion that he make no further inquiries in this regard.
His sense of entrapment in the toils of bureaucracy, of being powerless to help or free his family, also found its way into the comics. For as the Escapist"s powers were augmented, the restraints required to contain him, either by his enemies or (as happened more rarely now) by himself when he was performing, grew more elaborate, even baroque. There were gigantic razor-jawed bear traps, tanks filled with electric sharks. The Escapist was tied to immense gas rings into which his captors needed only to toss a stray cigar b.u.t.t to incinerate him, strapped to four rumbling panzers pointed in the cardinal directions, chained to an iron cherry at the bottom of an immense steel tumbler into which a forty-ton frothing "milkshake" of fresh concrete was poured, hung from the spring-loaded firing pin of an immense cannon aimed at the capital of "Occupied Latvonia" so that if he freed himself, thousands of innocent citizens would die. The Escapist was laid, lashed and manacled, in the paths of threshing machines, pagan juggernauts, tidal waves, and swarms of giant prehistoric bees revived by the evil science of the Iron Chain. He was imprisoned in ice, in strangling vines, in cages of fire.
Now it seemed very warm in the subway car. The fan in the center of the ceiling was motionless. A bead of sweat splashed a panel in the story about the fire-spewing Flame, lean and balletic in the great Lou Fine style, that Joe had been pretending to read. He closed the comic book and stuck it back in his pocket. He began to feel that he could not breathe. He loosened his tie and walked down to the end of the car, where there was an open louver. A faint black ripple of breeze blew from the tunnel, but it was sour and unrefreshing. At the Union Square station, a seat became available and Joe took it. He sat back and closed his eyes. He could not seem to rid his mind of the phrase superintend its population of Jews. superintend its population of Jews. All of his greatest fears for his family"s safety seemed to lie folded within the bland envelope of that first word. Over the past year, his family had had their bank accounts frozen. They had been forced out of the public parks of Prague, out of the sleeping and dining cars of the state railways, out of the public schools and universities. They could no longer even ride the streetcars. Lately the regulations had grown more complex. Perhaps in an effort to expose the telltale badge of a yarmulke, Jews were now forbidden to wear caps. They were not allowed to carry knapsacks. They were not permitted to eat onions or garlic; also banned was the eating of apples, cheese, or carp. All of his greatest fears for his family"s safety seemed to lie folded within the bland envelope of that first word. Over the past year, his family had had their bank accounts frozen. They had been forced out of the public parks of Prague, out of the sleeping and dining cars of the state railways, out of the public schools and universities. They could no longer even ride the streetcars. Lately the regulations had grown more complex. Perhaps in an effort to expose the telltale badge of a yarmulke, Jews were now forbidden to wear caps. They were not allowed to carry knapsacks. They were not permitted to eat onions or garlic; also banned was the eating of apples, cheese, or carp.
Joe reached into his pocket and took out the orange that Anapol had given him. It was big and smooth and perfectly spherical, and oranger than anything Joe had ever seen. No doubt it would have seemed a prodigy in Prague, monstrous and illicit. He held it to his nose and inhaled, trying to find some kind of cheer or comfort in the bright volatile oils of its skin. But instead, he felt only panic. His breath was shallow and labored. The sour tunnel smell pouring in through the open louver seemed to drive away everything else. All at once, the shark of dread that never deserted its patrol of Joe"s innards rose to the surface. You cannot save them, You cannot save them, said a voice very close to his ear. He turned around. There was no one. said a voice very close to his ear. He turned around. There was no one.
He found himself looking at the back page of the newspaper, a Times, Times, that was being read by the man in the seat beside him, and his eye alighted on the shipping column. The that was being read by the man in the seat beside him, and his eye alighted on the shipping column. The Rotterdam, Rotterdam, he saw, was due in port at eight a.m.-twenty minutes from now. he saw, was due in port at eight a.m.-twenty minutes from now.
Joe had often entertained fantasies of the day he would go to greet his family as they disembarked from the Rotterdam Rotterdam or the or the Nieuw Amsterdam. Nieuw Amsterdam. He knew that the Holland America docks were across the river, in Hoboken. You had to ride the ferry to get there. When the train pulled into the Eighth Street station, Joe got off. He knew that the Holland America docks were across the river, in Hoboken. You had to ride the ferry to get there. When the train pulled into the Eighth Street station, Joe got off.
He walked along Eighth Street, over to Christopher, then to the river, threading his way like a pickpocket through the crowds just off the ferryboats from New Jersey: taut-jawed men in stiff hats and suits and obsidian shoes, newspapers pinned under their arms; brusque, brick-lipped, hard-heeled women in floral dresses. They stampeded down the ramps and onto Christopher and then scattered like raindrops blown across a window. Jostled, excusing himself, offering his apologies as he stumbled against them, half overwhelmed by the acrid miasma of cigar smoke and violent coughing they brought with them from the other sh.o.r.e, Joe nearly gave up and turned back.
But then he arrived at the huge, peeling shed that served the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad ferries on the Manhattan side. It was a grand old barn whose high central gable was improbably endowed with the lilting pediment of a Chinese paG.o.da. The people disembarking here from New Jersey retained a faint air of wind and adventure, hats askew, neckties disarranged. The smell of the Hudson River that filled the building stirred memories of the Moldau. The ferryboats themselves amused Joe. They were wide craft, low-slung, upcurving at either end like dented hats, trailing pompous billows of black smoke from their solemn funnels. The pair of big wheelhouses on either side of the boats sent Joe"s imagination drifting down the bear-haunted Mississippi to New Orleans.
He stood on the foredeck, hat in hand, squinting into the haze as the terminus of the DLW and the low red roofline of Hoboken drew nearer. He breathed in coal smoke and a whiff of salt, wide-awake and flush now with the optimism of transit. The color of the water shifted in bands that ran from verdigris to cold coffee. The river was as crowded as the city itself: garbage scows piled high, swarming with gulls; tankers pumped full of petroleum, kerosene, or linseed oil; anonymous black cargo ships and, in the distance, at once thrilling and terrible, the magnificent steamship of the Holland America Line on the arm of its proud tugboat escort, lofty, remote. Behind Joe lay the jumble, at once regular and random, of Manhattan, strung like the roadbed of a bridge between the high suspending piers of midtown and Wall Street.
At a certain point about halfway through the crossing, he was taunted by a hopeful apparition. The mad spires of Ellis Island and the graceful tower of the New Jersey Central terminus came into conjunction, merging to form a kind of crooked red crown. It was, for a moment, as if Prague herself were floating there, right off the docks of Jersey City, in a shimmer of autumn haze, not even two miles away.
He knew that the chances of his family"s suddenly appearing, unheralded and intact, at the top of the Rotterdam"s Rotterdam"s gangway were nil. But as he walked along River Street in Hoboken, past raw bars and cheap sailors" hotels, to the Eighth Street pier, with all of the other people come to greet their arriving beloveds, he found he could not prevent a tiny flame from kindling in his chest. When he reached the pier, there seemed to be hundreds of men, women, and children shouting and embracing and milling around. There was a bright line of taxis, and there were black limousines. Porters rumbled around with their hand trucks, yelling out "Porter!" with opera-bouffe gusto. The elegant black-and-white ship, all 24,170 tons of it, loomed like a mountain in a dinner jacket. gangway were nil. But as he walked along River Street in Hoboken, past raw bars and cheap sailors" hotels, to the Eighth Street pier, with all of the other people come to greet their arriving beloveds, he found he could not prevent a tiny flame from kindling in his chest. When he reached the pier, there seemed to be hundreds of men, women, and children shouting and embracing and milling around. There was a bright line of taxis, and there were black limousines. Porters rumbled around with their hand trucks, yelling out "Porter!" with opera-bouffe gusto. The elegant black-and-white ship, all 24,170 tons of it, loomed like a mountain in a dinner jacket.
Joe watched as several families reunited. Few of them seemed to have been separated by a mere whim to travel. They came from the countries of the war. He heard people speaking German, French, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, even Czech. Two men whose relation Joe could not quite figure out, but whom he finally decided must be brothers, went past him, arms around each other"s necks, one man saying to the other in Czech, with joyful solicitude, "First thing we do is get you filthy stinking drunk, you poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" From time to time, Joe"s attention would be diverted by the spectacle of a couple kissing or by some vaguely governmental-looking men shaking hands, but for the most part he watched the families. It was an incredibly cheering sight; he wondered that he had never thought of coming over to meet the Rotterdam Rotterdam before. He felt left out, and deeply envious of them, but what he felt most was the radiant ache of happiness that attended their reunions. It was like a noseful of wine that he could not drink; yet it intoxicated him. before. He felt left out, and deeply envious of them, but what he felt most was the radiant ache of happiness that attended their reunions. It was like a noseful of wine that he could not drink; yet it intoxicated him.
As he watched the people emerging from under the striped awning of the gangway, he was surprised to see Dr. Emil Kavalier. His father appeared in the parting between two old women, squinting nearsightedly through the mica-chip lenses of his eyegla.s.ses, head tilted ever so slightly backward, scanning the faces, looking for one in particular, it was Joe"s, yes, he started this way, his face broke into a smile. He was enveloped in a large blond woman and her timber-wolf coat. It was not his father at all. The smile, if not the woman, was all wrong. The man saw Joe staring at him, and as he and his paramour moved past, he tipped his hat and nodded in a way that was once again eerily identical to the manner of Joe"s dad. The forlorn trill of a purser"s whistle sent a shiver down Joe"s spine.
On his return to the city, although he was late for his meeting, he walked from Christopher Street to the Battery. He was snuffling, and his ears burned with cold, but the sunshine felt warm. He had shaken off his attack of panic from the train, the despair that had been brought on by the report from Vichy and his resentment of Anapol"s prosperity. He bought a banana from a fruit stand, and then another several blocks farther down. He had always been pa.s.sionately fond of bananas; they were the sole indulgence of his own sudden affluence. By the time he arrived at the German consulate on Whitehall Street, he was ten minutes late, but he thought it would be all right. It was only a matter of paperwork, and no doubt the secretary would be able to handle the problem herself. Joe might not even need to see the Adjutant.
The thought was appealing. The Adjutant, Herr Milde, was a polite and genial man who seemed to make a point of-indeed, he seemed to enjoy-wasting Joe"s time. While he would never make promises or predictions, and never seemed to be in possession of information that had any but the most remote pertinence to the situation of the Kavalier family, he steadfastly, even pedantically refused to rule out the possibility that Joe"s family might any day be granted their exit visas and permitted to leave. "Such things are always possible," he would affirm, though he never gave any examples. Milde"s cruelty made it impossible for Joe finally to do that which his head counseled and his heart opposed: give up hope of his family"s ever getting out until Hitler was defeated.
"It"s quite all right," Fraulein Tulpe said when Joe walked into Milde"s office. It was in the farthest corner of the consulate, which occupied a middle story of a drab neocla.s.sical office block near the Bowling Green, at the back, between the agricultural desk and the men"s lavatory. Milde"s secretary was a sullen young woman with tortoise-sh.e.l.l gla.s.ses and straw-colored hair. She, too, was unfailingly polite with Joe in a way that, in her case, seemed intended to convey gentle distaste. "He isn"t back from breakfast yet."
Joe nodded and sat down beside the watercooler. It sent a derisive belch of comment wobbling up into its reservoir.
"A late breakfast," he said, a little uncertainly. Her gaze seemed to fixate on him more than usual. He gazed down at his wrinkled trousers, the semipermanent bend in his necktie, the ink blotches on his cuffs. His hair felt lank and clammy. No doubt he smelled. For a moment he was acutely sorry that he had not stopped at Palooka Studios to shower on his way downtown, instead of wasting an hour on a foolish cruise to Hoboken. Then he thought, the h.e.l.l with her. Let her smell my high Jewish smell.
"It is a farewell breakfast," she said, returning to her typewriter.
"Who is leaving?"
At that moment Herr Milde returned. He was a broad, athletic-looking man with a heroic chin and a receding hairline. He had stern, handsome features marred only when his upper lip lifted to reveal a set of big yellow equine teeth.
"I am," he said. "Among others. Sorry to keep you waiting, Herr Kavalier." am," he said. "Among others. Sorry to keep you waiting, Herr Kavalier."
"You are returning to Germany?" Joe said.
"I have been transferred to Holland," he said. "I sail Thursday on the Rotterdam." Rotterdam."
They went into his office. Milde showed Joe to one of two steellegged chairs and offered a cigarette, which Joe declined. He lit one of his own instead. It was a petty gesture, but it gave Joe satisfaction. If Milde remarked it, he did not let on. He folded his hands on his desk blotter and hunched over them, leaning forward a little bit, as if eager to help Joe in any way. It was part of his policy of cruelty.
"I trust you are well?" he said.
Joe nodded.
"And your family?"
"As well as can be expected."
"I am gratified to hear it."
They sat there a moment. Joe waited for the latest bit of mummery and stage business from the Adjutant. Whatever it was, he could bear it today. He had witnessed, on the pier in Hoboken, as people something like his own had found themselves rejoined on the other side of the world. The trick could still be done. He had seen it with his own eyes.
"Now, if you please," Milde said, a little curtly. "I have a busy schedule and I am getting off to a late start."
"By all means," Joe said.
"What did you wish to speak to me about?"
Joe was thrown into confusion. "What did I I wish?" he said. "You telephoned wish?" he said. "You telephoned me." me."
Now it was Herr Milde"s turn to look confused. "Did I?"
"Fraulein Tulpe did. She said you had found some problem in the paperwork for my brother. Thomas Masaryk Kavalier." He inserted the middle name as a patriotic gesture.
"Ah, yes," Milde nodded, frowning. It was clear he had no idea what Joe was talking about. He reached for the ranked dossiers waiting in a wire rack on his desk and found Joe"s. He paged through it for a few minutes with an air of great diligence, flipping back and forth amid the crinkly sheets of onionskin it contained. He shook his head and clucked his tongue. "I"m sorry," he said, lifting the file to replace it in the rack. "I can"t seem to find any reference to- h.e.l.lo."
A piece of pale yellow paper that looked as if it might have been torn from a teletype machine fell out. Milde picked it up. He appeared to make his way very slowly through its contents, forehead furrowed, as if they presented an argument that was difficult to follow.
"Well, well," he said. "This is regrettable. I don"t- It appears that your father has died."
Joe laughed. For the briefest instant, he thought that Milde was making a joke. But Milde had never made a joke before in Joe"s hearing, and Joe saw that he was not kidding now. His throat tightened. He felt his eyes burning. If he had been alone, he would have broken down, but he was not alone, and he would rather have died himself than allow Milde to see him cry. He looked down at his lap, clamping down on his emotions and setting his jaw.
"I just had a letter..." he said weakly, his tongue thick amid his teeth. "My mother said nothing...."
"When was the letter posted?"
"Nearly a month ago."
"Your father has been dead for only three weeks. It says here that the cause was pneumonia. Here."
Milde pa.s.sed the ragged sheet of soft yellow paper across the desk to Joe. It had been torn from a much longer list of the dead. The name kavalier emil dr was one of nineteen, beginning with Eisenberg and running alphabetically through to Kogan, each of them followed by a terse notation of age and date and cause of death. It appeared to be a partial list of the Jews who had died in Prague or environs during the months of August and September. Joe"s father"s name had been circled in pencil.
"Why ... ?" Joe could not seem to sort out the knot of questions interfering with his thoughts. "Why was I not informed?" he managed finally.
"I have no idea how that piece of paper, which I have never seen before, even found its way into your dossier," Milde said. "It"s perfectly mysterious. Bureaucracy is a mysterious force." He seemed to realize that humorous remarks might not be appropriate at this time. He coughed. "It is regrettable, as I said."
"It may be an error," Joe said. It must be, he thought, for I saw him only this afternoon, in Hoboken! "A case of mistaken ident.i.ty."
"Such things are always possible," Milde said. He stood up and extended a condolent hand. "I shall write a memorandum to my successor about your father"s case. I will see that inquiries are made."
"You are most kind," Joe said, rising slowly from his chair. He felt a flush of grat.i.tude to Herr Milde. Inquiries would be made. He had at least managed to obtain that much for his family. Someone now would take an interest, if only to this extent, in their case. "Goodbye, Herr Milde."
"Goodbye, Herr Kavalier."
Afterward, Joe found he had no memory of how he got out of Milde"s office, along the warren of corridors, down the elevator, into the lobby. He wandered up Broadway for a block before it occurred to him to wonder where he was going. He went into a saloon and telephoned the office. Sammy was in. He started in about Joe"s pages in grandiloquent terms, but when he perceived the silence on Joe"s end, he ran out of steam and asked, "What?"
"I come from the consulate," Joe said. The telephone was old-fashioned, with a speaking tube and a cylindrical earpiece. There had been one like it in the kitchen of the house off the Graben. "They had some bad news for me." Joe told him how, quite by accident, he had learned that his father was dead.
"Could there be a mistake?"
"No," Joe said. He was thinking more clearly now. He was a little shaky, but it seemed to him that his thoughts were clear. His grat.i.tude toward Adjutant Milde had turned once again to anger. "I"m sure it is not a mistake."
"Where are you?" Sammy said.
"Where am I?" Joe looked around and realized for the first time that he was in a saloon on Broadway, down at the toe of the city. "Where am I." It was not a question the second time he said it. "I"m on my way to Canada."
"No," he heard Sammy say, as he hung the receiver back on its hook. He went over to the bar. "I wonder if you can help me?" he said to the bartender.
The bartender was an elderly man with a shining pate and big rheumy blue eyes. He had been trying to explain to one of his customers, when Joe interrupted him, how to work the abacus he used to figure tabs. The customer looked glad of the interruption.
"Montreal, Canada," the bartender repeated, when Joe told him where he wanted to go. "I believe you want to leave from Grand Central Station."
The customer agreed with this. He said Joe wanted to take the Adirondack.
"What do you want to go there for?" he said. "If you don"t mind my being so nosy?"
"I"m going to enlist in the R.A.F.," Joe said.
"Are you?"
"Yes. Yes, I"m tired of waiting."
"Attaboy," said the customer.
"They speak French up there," the bartender said. "Watch out."
3
Joe did not stop at home to pack a bag. He did not want to risk running into someone who would try to talk him out of his plan. Anyway, there was nothing he needed that he could not buy in a drugstore or find in a bus-station vending machine; his pa.s.sport and visa he carried with him at all times. The Royal Air Force would dress and shoe and feed him.
He distracted himself for a while on the train by worrying about his interview with the recruiters. Would his resident-alien status in the United States be an impediment to his enlisting in the R.A.F.? Would they find some unknown flaw in his body? He had heard of guys being rejected for having flat feet and bad eyesight. If the air force didn"t take him, he would join the Royal Navy. If he was not deemed fit for the navy, then he would take his chances in the infantry.
By Croton-on-Hudson, however, his spirits began to flag. He tried to cheer himself with thoughts of dropping bombs on Kiel or Tobruk, but his fantasies struck him as uncomfortably reminiscent of his slugfests in the pages of Radio, Triumph, Radio, Triumph, and and The Monitor. The Monitor. In the end, neither fretting nor bravado could distract him any longer from the thought that he was fatherless. In the end, neither fretting nor bravado could distract him any longer from the thought that he was fatherless.
He and his father had in their jocular, gingerly fashion loved each other, but now that his father was dead, Joe felt only regret. It was not just the usual regret over things left unsaid, thanks unexpressed and apologies withheld. Joe did not yet regret the lost future opportunities for expatiation on favorite shared subjects, such as film directors (they revered Buster Keaton) or breeds of dogs. Such regrets would come only belatedly, a few days after, when he made the realization that death really did mean that you were never going to see the dead person ever again. What he regretted most of all just now was simply that he had not been there when it happened; that he had left to his mother, grandfather, and brother the awful business of watching his father die.
Emil Kavalier, like many doctors, had always been a terrible patient. He refused to acknowledge that he could fall prey to an illness, and had never taken a sick day in his life. When laid low by a grippe, he would suck mentholated pastilles, consume copious amounts of chicken broth, and go about his business. Joe could not even imagine imagine him sick. How had he died? In a hospital? At home? Joe pictured him lying in a heavy scrolled bed in the middle of a jumbled apartment like the ones he had seen in the building where the Golem had been hidden. him sick. How had he died? In a hospital? At home? Joe pictured him lying in a heavy scrolled bed in the middle of a jumbled apartment like the ones he had seen in the building where the Golem had been hidden.