The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (35 page)

Sammy had backed quickly out of the kitchen and come looking for Joe; he felt that he wanted to leave, right away. He knew about homosexuality, of course, as an
idea,
without ever having really connected it to human emotion; certainly never to any emotion of his own. It had never occurred to him that two men, even homosexual men, might kiss in that way. He had assumed, to the degree he had ever permitted himself to give it any thought it all, that the whole thing must be a matter of blow jobs in dark alleyways or the foul practices of love-starved British sailors. Rut those men with the neckties and mustaches—they had been kissing the way people kissed in the movies, with care and vigor and just a hint of showiness. One fellow had caressed the other's cheek.

Sammy rummaged through the riot of furs and overcoats draped on hooks in the front hall until he located his own. He settled his hat on his head and went out. He stopped and lingered on the top step. His thoughts were disordered and strange to him. He was appallingly jealous; it was like a heavy round stone had lodged in the center of his chest, but he could not have said for sure whether he was jealous of Joe or of Rosa Luxemburg Saks. At the same time, he was glad for his cousin. It was marvelous that in this big town he had managed to rediscover, a year later, the girl with the miraculous behind. Perhaps she would be able, as Sammy had not, to find a way to distract Joe at least a little from his evident project of getting his clock cleaned by every last German in the city of New York. He turned and looked back at the doorman, a raffish-looking fellow in a greasy gray jacket who leaned against the front door, smoking a cigarette. What had so rattled Sammy about the scene he had witnessed? What was he afraid of? Why was he running away?

"Forget something?" said the doorman.

Sammy shrugged. He turned and went back into the house. Not entirely sure of what he was doing, he forced himself to walk back through the ballroom that was, now that Dali had abandoned his diving costume, filled with happy and confident people who knew what they wanted and whom they loved, and into the black-tiled kitchen. A group of people were standing around the stove arguing about the proper way to make Turkish coffee, but the two men in the pantry had gone, leaving no trace of their presence. Had he imagined the whole thing? Was such a kiss really possible?

"Is he a fairy?" Rosa was, at that moment, asking Joe. They were still sitting on her bed, holding hands.

Joe was at first shocked by this suggestion, and then suddenly not. "Why would you say that?" he said.

She shrugged. "He has the feel," she said.

"Hmm," Joe said. "I don't know. He is—" He shrugged. "A good boy."

"Are you a good boy?"

"No," Joe said.

He leaned forward to kiss her again. They bumped teeth, and it made him weirdly aware of all the bones in his head. Her tongue was milk and salt, an oyster in his mouth. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he could feel her getting ready to push him away, and then after a moment she did.

"I'm worried about him," she said. "He looked a little lost. You should go after him."

"He will be fine."

"Joe," she said.

"Oh." She wanted him, he understood, to leave. They had taken it as far as she was prepared to go now. It was not what he expected from a foulmouthed flower of bohemia, but he had a feeling there was both more and less to her than that. "Okay," he said. "Yes. I—I have work to do, too."

"Good," Rosa said. "Go work. Will you call me?"

"May I?"

"UNiversity 4-3212," she said. "Here." She got up and went over to her drawing table and scrawled the number on a sheet of paper, then tore it off and handed it to Joe. "Get whoever it is to absolutely
promise
to take a message because they're horribly unreliable around here about that kind of thing. Wait a minute." She wrote out another number. "This is my number at work. I work at
Life,
in the art department. And this is my number at the T.R.A. I'm there three afternoons a week and on Saturdays. I'll be there tomorrow."

"The tea array?"

"Transatlantic Rescue Agency. I'm a volunteer secretary there. It's a small operation on this end. Shoestring. Really it's just me and Mr. Hoffman. Oh, he is a wonderful man, Joe. He has a boat, he bought it himself, and he's working right now to get as many Jewish children out of Europe as the boat can fit."

"Children," Joe said.

"Yes. What are—is there—do you have children—in your family? Back in—"

"Where is it?" Joe said. "The T.A.R.?"

Rosa wrote out an address on Union Square.

"I would like to see you there tomorrow," Joe said. "Would that perhaps be possible?"

11

"we have one ship," said Hermann Hoffman. He was dimpled and plump, with a trim Vandyke, bags under his eyes that had an air of permanence, and a shiny black hairpiece almost aggressive in its patent falsity. His office at the Transatlantic Rescue Agency overlooked the iron-black trees and rusty foliage of Union Square. He had spent twenty times on his gray worsted suit what Joe, whose economy grew more draconian as his income increased, had spent on his own. With the precision of someone cutting a deck of cards, Hoffman drew three brown cigarettes from a pack that featured a gilt pharaoh and dealt one to Joe, one to Rosa, and one to himself. His nails were clipped and pearly, and his brand of cigarette, Thoth-Amon, imported from Egypt, was excellent. Joe could not imagine why such a man would wear a toupee that looked as if it had been ordered from the back cover of
Radio Comics.
"One ship, twenty-two thousand dollars, and half a million children." Hoffman smiled. It was, on his face, an expression of defeat.

Joe glanced at Rosa, who raised an eyebrow. She had warned him that Hoffman and his agency, struggling to achieve the impossible, operated on the perpetual brink of failure. In order to avoid having his heart broken, she said, her boss adopted the manner of an inveterate pessimist. She nodded, once, urging Joe to speak.

"I understand," said Joe. "I knew, of course—"

"It's a very nice ship," Hoffman continued. "She was called the
Lioness,
but we've renamed her the
Ark of Miriam.
Not large, but extremely well maintained. We bought her from Cunard, which had her on the Haiphong-to-Shanghai run. That's a picture of her." He pointed to a tinted photograph on the wall behind Joe. A trim liner, its plimsoll colored bold red, steamed across a bottle-green sea under a heliotrope sky. It was a very large photograph, in a platinum frame. Hermann Hoffman regarded it lovingly. "She was originally built for the PO Company in 1893. A good deal of our initial endowment went toward her purchase and refitting, which, due to our emphasis on hygiene and humane treatment, proved to be quite costly." Another hangdog smile. "Most of the remainder went into the bank accounts and mattresses of various German officers and functionaries. After we take out pay for the crew and documentation, I don't honestly know how much we'll be able to accomplish with the little we have left. We may not be able to underwrite passage for half the children we have already arranged to bring over. It's going to cost us more than a thousand dollars per child."

"I understand," Joe said. "If I may say, I—" Joe looked at Rosa again. She had, overnight, worked a thorough transformation on herself. Joe was amazed. It was as though she had set out to eradicate every trace of the moth girl. She had on a Black Watch kilt, dark hose, and a plain white blouse buttoned at the wrists and collar. Her lips were bare, and she had ironed her flyaway hair into two frizzy pleats parted down the middle. She had even put on a pair of glasses. Joe was taken aback by the change, but found the presence of the caterpillar girl reassuring. If he had walked into the outer office of the T.R.A. and found a wild-haired portraitist of vegetables, he might have been a little dubious about the agency's credentials. He was not sure which of the two poses, moth or caterpillar, was the less sincere, but either way, he was grateful to her now.

"Mr. Kavalier has money, Mr. Hoffman," Rosa said. "He can afford to underwrite his brother's passage himself?'

"I'm happy for you, Mr. Kavalier, but tell me. We have space on
Miriam
for three hundred and twenty-four. Our agents in Europe have already arranged for the transit of three hundred and twenty-four German, French, Czech, and Austrian children, with a waiting list that is considerably longer than that. Should one of them be left behind to make room for your brother?"

"No, sir."

"Is that what you propose we do?"

"No, sir." Joe shifted in his chair miserably. Couldn't he think of anything better to say to this man than
No, sir,
over and over again like a child being shown the error of his ways? His brother's fate might well be settled in this room. And it all depended on him. If he was, to Hoffman, in any way insufficiently ... something, the
Ark of Miriam
would sail from Portsmouth without Thomas Kavalier. He stole another look at Rosa. It's all right, her face told him. Just tell him. Talk to him.

"I understand there may be room in the sick bay," Joe said.

Now Hoffman shot a look at Rosa. "Well, ye-es. In the best of circumstances, perhaps. But suppose there is an outbreak of measles, or some kind of accident?"

"He is a very small boy," Joe said. "For his age. He would not occupy very much space."

"They are
all
small, Mr. Kavalier," Hoffman said. "If I could safely pack in three hundred more of them, I would."

"Yes, but who would
pay
for them?" Rosa burst out. She was getting impatient. She pointed her finger at Hoffman. Joe noticed a streak of aubergine paint on the palm of her hand. "You say that three hundred and twenty-four have been cleared for passage, but you know that right now we can't pay for more than two hundred and fifty."

Hoffman sat back in his chair and stared at her in what Joe hoped was only mock horror.

Rosa covered her mouth. "Sorry," she said. "I'll be quiet."

Hoffman turned to Joe. "Watch out when she points that finger at you, Mr. Kavalier."

"Yes, sir."

"She's right. We are short of funds around here. The right adverb, I believe, is 'chronically.'"

"This is what I was thinking," Joe said. "What if I paid for another child
beside
to my brother?"

Hoffman sat forward, chin in palm. "I'm listening," he said.

"It's possible that I most likely can arrange to pay the fare for two or perhaps three others."

"Indeed?" Hoffman said. "And just what is it you do, Mr. Kavalier? Some kind of artist, is that it?"

"Yes, sir," Joe said. "I work in comic books."

"He's very talented," Rosa said, though last night she had admitted to Joe that she had never looked between the covers of a comic book in her life. "And very well paid."

Hoffman smiled. He had been concerned for some time at the apparent lack in his young secretary's life of a suitable male companion.

"Comic books," he said. "That's all I hear about, Superman, Batman. My son, Maurice, is a regular reader." Hoffman reached for a picture frame on his desk and turned it around, revealing the face of a smaller version of himself, bags under the eyes and all. "He's having his bar mitzvah in a month."

"Congratulations," Joe said.

"Which comic book do you draw? Do you draw
Superman?"

"No, but I know a guy, a young man, who does. I work at Empire Comics, sir. We do the Escapist. Also, maybe your son knows them, the Monitor, Mr. Machine Gun. I draw a lot of it. I make about two hundred dollars a week." He wondered if he ought to have brought along his pay stubs or some other kind of financial documentation. "I usually manage to save all of this but perhaps twenty-five."

"My goodness," Hoffman said. He looked over at Rosa, whose face also betrayed a fair amount of surprise. "We're in the wrong line of work, dear."

"It seems that way, boss," she said.

"The Escapist," Hoffman continued. "I think maybe I've seen that, but I'm not sure—"

"He is an escape artist. A performing magician."

"A performing magician?"

"That's correct."

"Do you know anything about magic?"

There was a whetted edge to the question. It was more than a friendly inquiry, though Joe could not imagine why.

"I have studied it," Joe said. "In Prague. I studied with Bernard Kornblum."

"Bernard Kornblum!" Hoffman said. "Kornblum!" His expression softened. "I saw him once."

"You saw Kornblum?" Joe turned to Rosa. "That's astonishing."

"I'm completely astonished," Rosa said. "Was it in Konigsberg, sir?"

"It was in Konigsberg."

"When you were a boy."

He nodded. "When I was a boy. I was quite an amateur magician myself at one time. Still dabble from time to time. Now let me see." He waggled his fingers, then wiped his hands on an invisible napkin. His cigarette was gone. "Voila." He rolled his heavy-lidded eyes to the ceiling and plucked the cigarette from thin air. "Et voila." The cigarette slipped from his fingers and fell onto his jacket, left a streak of ash on his lapel, then dropped to the floor. Hoffman cursed. He pushed his chair back, clapped a hand onto his head, and, with a grunt, bent over to pick up the cigarette. When he sat up again, the warp of his wig seemed to have come free of the weft. Coarse black hairs stood up all over his head, wavering like a pile of iron filings drawn toward a distant but powerful magnet. "I'm terribly out of practice, I'm afraid." He patted down his hairpiece. "Are you any good?"