The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (27 page)

When he got back up to the offices of the Aryan-American League, he knocked on the scarred oak frame of the door. There was no reply. He hitched up his trousers, knelt down, put his forehead to the door, and set to work. The crude tools, lack of practice, and pulsation of his own excitement in his arteries and joints made the work more difficult than it ought to have been. He took off his jacket. He rolled up his sleeves. He tipped his hat into his hands and set it on the floor beside him. Finally he opened his collar and yanked his tie to one side. He cursed and sweated and listened so avidly for the sound of the door opening downstairs that he could not hear the lock through his fingers. It took him nearly an hour to get inside.

When he did, he found not the elaborate laboratory or manufactory of fascism he had been expecting but a wooden desk, a chair, a lamp, a typewriter, and a tall oak filing cabinet. The Venetian blinds were dusty and crooked, and missing slats. The wooden floor was bare and spotted with cigarette burns. The telephone, when Joe lifted the receiver, was dead. On one wall was a framed color lithograph of the Fuhrer in a romantic mood, chin held at a poetic angle, an alpine breeze stirring his dark forelock. Against another wall stood a shelf piled high with various publications, in English and in German, whose titles alluded to the aims and predictions of National Socialism and the pan-German dream.

Joe went over and stood behind the desk. He pulled out the chair and sat down. The blotter was lost amid a blizzard of notes and memoranda, some typed, some scrawled in a minute and angular hand.

hypnosis used on FT can prove it

FT and haschisshin old man of mountain further study

FT master swordsman

There were bus transfers, candy wrappers, a ticket stub from the Polo Grounds. There was a copy of a book called
Thuggee.
There were numerous newspaper clippings and articles that had been torn from
Photoplay
and
Modern Screen.
All of the magazine articles, Joe noticed, seemed to be concerned with the film star Franchot Tone. And larded throughout the layers of rubbish and cryptic notations were dozens of comic books:
Superman, Marvel Mystery, Flash, Whiz, Shield-Wizard
— as well as, Joe could hardly fail to notice, the latest issues of
Radio, Triumph,
and
The Monitor.
In spots, the drifts of paper grew positively mountainous. Paper clips, tacks, and pen nibs were scattered everywhere, like conventional features on a map. A jagged palisade of pencils bristled from an empty Savarin coffee can. Joe reached out and, with two quick sweeps of his arms, sent everything tumbling. The thumbtacks made a pattering sound as they hit the floor.

Joe went through the drawers. In one he found a statement from New York Telephone promising, reliably as it had turned out, to disconnect service if the AAL account continued unpaid; a typed manuscript; and, inexplicably, the menu from the recent wedding reception, at the Hotel Trevi, of Bruce and Marilyn Horowitz. Joe yanked out the drawer and tipped it over. The manuscript split into halves that sprawled like a dropped deck of cards. Joe picked up a page and read it. It appeared to be science fiction. Someone named Rex Mundy was taking aim with his ray pistol at the suppurating hide of a hideous Zid. Someone named Krystal DeHaven was dangling upside down from a chain above the yawning maw of a hungry tork.

He crumpled the page and resumed his raid on the desk drawers. One contained a framed photograph of Franchot Tone, in the lower left corner of which, tucked into the gap between the glass and the inner edge of the picture frame, was a panel that Joe recognized at once as having been cut from the pages of
Radio Comics
#1. It was a close-up shot of old Max Mayflower as a young man, rich and devil-may-care. His expression was dreamy, his cheeks were dimpled, and in the word balloon he was saying, "Oh, what do I care? The important thing is
having fun."
Joe noticed that the angle of Max's head, a certain wryness in his expression, and his chiseled nose were very similar, indeed identical, to those of Franchot Tone in the publicity photo. It was a resemblance that no one had ever noticed or remarked on before. Tone was not an actor whose work or face were especially familiar to Joe, but now, as he studied the slender, melancholy long face in the glossy photograph—it was signed
To Carl with all the best wishes of Franchot Tone
—he wondered if he could have unconsciously modeled the character on Tone.

In the last, bottom-right drawer, at the back, there was a small, leather-bound diary. On its flyleaf was an inscription dated Christmas 1939.
To Carl, someplace to put his brilliant thoughts in order, with love, Ruth.
For its first fifty pages or so the diary carried on a tiny and furious handwritten argument, the burden of which—insofar as Joe could make it out—seemed to be that Franchot Tone was a member of a secret league of assassins, funded by the company run by Tone's father, American Carborundum, who were bent on eliminating Adolf Hitler. The revelation stopped mid-sentence, and the remaining pages of the diary were taken up by several hundred variations on the words "Carl Ebling," signed in an encyclopedia of styles from florid to scratchy, over and over again. Joe opened the diary to its center, gripped each half, and tore it down the spine into two pieces.

When he had finished with the desk, Joe went over to the bookcase. Coolly, methodically, he sent the stacks of books and pamphlets fluttering to the floor. He was afraid that if he allowed himself to feel anything, it would be neither rage nor satisfaction but merely pity for the mad, dusty nullity of Carl Ebling's one-man league. So he proceeded without feeling anything, hands numb, emotions pinched like a nerve. He lifted the picture of Hitler from its hook, and it hit with a tinkle. Proceeding next to the file cabinet, he drew out the top drawer, A-D, upended it, and shook its contents loose, like the Escapist emptying soldiers from the turret of a tank. He yanked out E-J, and was about to send its contents spilling down atop the mound of A-D when he noticed the legend typed on the index tab of one of the very first files in the drawer: "Empire Comics, Inc."

The rather swollen folder contained all ten issues of
Radio Comics
that had so far appeared; affixed by a paper clip to the first issue were some twenty-five sheets of onionskin, densely typed. It was a report, in the form of a memorandum to All League Members, from Carl Ebling, President of the New York Chapter, AAL. The subject of the memorandum was, of all things, the superpowered escape artist known as the Escapist. Joe sat down in the chair, lit a cigarette, and started to read. In the opening paragraph of Carl Ebling's memorandum, the costumed hero, his publisher, and his creators, the "Jew cartoonists" Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, were all identified as threats to the reputations, dignity, and ambitions of German nationalism in America. Carl Ebling had read an article in the
Saturday Evening Post
[3]
^[3]
detailing the success and burgeoning circulation of Empire's comic book line, and he expounded briefly on the negative effects such crass anti-German propaganda would have on the minds of those in whose hands rested the future of the Saxon peoples—America's children. Next he drew his readers' hypothetical attention to the remarkable resemblance between the character of Max Mayflower, the original Misterioso, and the secret Allied agent Franchot Tone. After this, however, the sense of critical purpose seemed to abandon the author. In the paragraphs that followed, and for the remainder of the memorandum, Ebling contented himself—there was no better way of putting it—with summarizing and describing the adventures of the Escapist, from the first issue detailing his origins through the most recent issue to hit the newsstands. Ebling's summaries were, on the whole, careful and accurate. But the striking thing was the way, as he went along, month by month adding another entry to his dossier on Empire, Ebling's tone of dismissive scorn and outrage moderated and then vanished altogether. By the fourth issue, he had stopped larding his descriptions with terms like "outrageous" and "offensive"; meanwhile, the entries grew longer and more detailed, breaking down at times into panel-by-panel recitations of the action in the books. The final summary, of the most recent issue, was four pages long and so devoid of judgmental language as to be completely neutral. In the last sentence, Ebling seemed to realize how far he had strayed from his original project, and appended with unpunctuated haste that implied a certain shamefaced recovery of purpose, "Of course all this is the usual Jewish warmongering propiganda
[sic]!'
But it was plain to Joe that there was no real purpose being served by the Ebling memorandum except the exegesis, the precisely annotated recording, of ten months of pure enjoyment. Carl Ebling was, in spite of himself, a fan.

Joe had received letters from readers over the past months, boys and girls—mostly boys—scattered all over the United States from Las Cruces to LaCrosse, but these were usually limited to rather simple expressions of appreciation and requests for signed pinups of the Escapist, enough that Joe had evolved a standard pinup pose, which at first he drew each time by hand but had recently had photostatted, complete with his signature, to save time. Reading the Ebling memorandum marked the first time that Joe became aware of the possibility of an adult readership for his work, and the degree of Ebling's passion, his scholarly enthusiasm replete with footnotes, thematic analyses, and lists of dramatis personae, however reluctant and shamed, touched him strangely. He was aware—he could not deny it—of a desire to meet Ebling. He looked around at the havoc he had created in the poor, sad offices of the Aryan-American League and felt a momentary pang of remorse.

Then, abruptly, it was his turn to feel ashamed, not only for having extended, however momentarily, the consideration of his sympathy to a Nazi, but for having produced work that appealed to such a man. Joe Kavalier was not the only early creator of comic books to perceive the mirror-image fascism inherent in his anti-fascist superman—Will Eisner, another Jew cartoonist, quite deliberately dressed his Allied-hero Blackhawks in uniforms modeled on the elegant death's-head garb of the Waffen SS. But Joe was perhaps the first to feel the shame of glorifying, in the name of democracy and freedom, the vengeful brutality of a very strong man. For months he had been assuring himself, and listening to Sammy's assurances, that they were hastening, by their make-believe hammering at Haxoff or Hynkel or Hassler or Hitler, the intervention of the United States into the war in Europe. Now it occurred to Joe to wonder if all they had been doing, all along, was indulging their own worst impulses and assuring the creation of another generation of men who revered only strength and domination.

He never knew afterward whether he failed to hear the sounds of Carl Ebling entering the building, climbing the stairs, and fingering the violated knob of the door because he was so lost in thought, or because Ebling walked with a light tread, or if the man had sensed an intruder and hoped to catch him unaware. In any case, it was not until the hinges squealed that Joe looked up to find an older, pastier version of Franchot Tone, the weak chin weaker, the recessive hairline farther along in its flight. He was zipped into a ratty gray parka, standing in the doorway of the Aryan-American League. He was holding a fat black sap in his hand.

"Who the hell are you?" The accent was not the elegant Tone drawl but something more or less local. "How did you get in here?"

"The name is Mayflower," Joe said. "Tom Mayflower."

"Who? Mayflower? That's—" His gaze lighted on the fat Empire file. His mouth opened, then shut again.

Joe closed the file and rose slowly to his feet. Keeping his eyes on Ebling's hands, he began to circle sideways around the desk.

"I was just leaving," Joe said.

Ebling nodded and narrowed his eyes. He looked frail, consumptive perhaps, a man in his late thirties or forties, his skin pale and freckled. He blinked and swallowed repeatedly. Joe took advantage of what he perceived to be an irresolute nature and made a dash for the door. Ebling caught him on the back of the head with the blackjack. Joe's skull rang like a coppery bell, and his knees buckled, and Ebling hit him again. Joe caught hold of the doorway, then turned, and another blow caught his chin. The pain swept away the last of the shame and remorse that had been muddling his thinking, and he was aware of a fast freshet of anger in his heart. He lunged at Ebling and caught hold of the arm that swung the sap, yanking it so hard that there was a pop of the joint. Ebling cried out, and Joe swung him by his arm and threw him up against the wall. Ebling's head struck the corner of the shelf on which the Nazi literature had been piled, and he dropped like an empty pair of trousers to the floor.

In the aftermath of his first victory, Joe hoped—he never forgot this wild, evil hope—that the man was dead. He stood breathing and swallowing, ears ringing, over Ebling and wished the twisted soul from his body. But no, there was the breath, lifting and lowering the fragile frame of the American Nazi. The sight of this involuntary, rabbitlike motion stanched the flow of Joe's anger. He went back to the desk and gathered up his jacket, cigarettes, and matches. He was about to leave when he saw the Empire Comics file, with a corner of the Ebling memorandum poking out of the top. He opened the folder, tugged the memorandum free of its clip, and flipped it over. On the back of the last page, using his mechanical pencil, he drew a quick sketch of the Escapist in the standard pose he had developed for pinups: the Master of Escape smiling, arms outstretched, the sundered halves of a pair of handcuffs braceleting his wrists.