The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Part 31

She took the key and held it in her hand. It was warm from his pocket. "Thank you," she said. She was crying, bitterly and happily, ashamed of herself, thrilled to be able to really do something for him.

"I'm sorry," Joe said, taking the handkerchief from his jacket pocket.

"I wanted you to have a key, because ... but I did the wrong thing." He gestured toward the painting. "I forget to say I love it. Rosa, I love it! It's incredible! It's a whole new thing for you."

She laughed, taking the hankie from him, and dabbed at her eyes. "No, Joe, it's not that," she said, though in fact the painting did represent a new direction for Rosa's work. It had been years since she had attempted to draw from her imagination. Her talent for capturing a likeness, a contour, her innate sense of shadow and weight, had biased her toward life drawing early on. Though she had worked partly from a photograph this time, the details of Joe's body and face were filled in from memory, a process she had found challenging and satisfying. You had to know your lover very well-to have spent a lot of time looking at him and touching him-to be able to paint his picture when he was not around. The inevitable mistakes and exaggerations she had made struck her now as proofs, artifacts, of the mysterious intercourse of memory and love. "No. Joe. Thank you for the key. I want it very much."

"I'm glad."

"And I'm happy to help in every way. Nothing would make me happier. But if you're saying you want to move in here ..." She looked at him. Yes. He had been. "Well, I don't think I should. For Thomas. I don't think it would be right. He might not understand."

"No," he said. "I was was thinking-but no. You're right, of course." thinking-but no. You're right, of course."

"But I will absolutely be here whenever you need me. As much as you need me." She blew her nose into his handkerchief. "As long as you need me."

"That's good," he said. "I think we may be talking about a very long time."

She held out the soiled handkerchief uncertainly, smiling a wincing little apologetic smile at the mess.

"It's fine. You keep it, darling."

"Thank you," she said, and this time burst unrestrainedly into a ridiculous, even bizarre, fit of uncontrollable sobbing. She knew perfectly well that the handkerchief was expressly intended for the comforting of women, and that Joe always kept another, reserved for his own personal use, tucked into the back pocket of his trousers.

13

MANY years afterward, most of the aged boys at whose long-ago bar mitzvah receptions, in a vanished New York City, a young magician named Joe Kavalier had performed his brisk, lively, all but wordless act, could summon only fragmentary memories of the entertainer. Some of the men were able to recall a slender, quiet young man in a fancy blue cutaway who spoke accented English and seemed hardly older than they. Another, an avid reader of comic books, recalled that Joe Kavalier had invited him to drop by the Empire offices one day with his parents. Joe had given him a tour and sent him home with an armload of free comic books and a drawing, which he still had, of himself standing next to the Escapist. Yet another remembered that Joe worked with an entire menagerie of artificial animals: a collapsible fake-fur rabbit; goldfish carved from a carrot; a rather mangy stuffed parakeet that, to the surprise of spectators, remained perched on the magician's hand while its cage cage vanished into thin air. "I saw him cutting up the carrots in the men's room," this gentleman recalled. "In the bowl of water, they really did look like little fish." Stanley Konigsberg, however, whose bar mitzvah reception marked the last known appearance of the Amazing Cavalieri, retained for the rest of his life-like young Leon Douglas "Pipe Bomb" Saks-an ineradicable memory of our hero. An amateur magician himself, he had first seen Joe performing at the St. Regis for his cla.s.smate at Horace Mann, Roy Cohn, and had been impressed enough by Joe's natural movements, his solemnity, and his flawless presentations of the Miser's Dream, Rosini's Location, and the Stabbed Deck to insist that Joe be engaged to baffle his own relatives and schoolmates at the Hotel Trevi two months later. And if Mr. Konigsberg's youthful admiration, and the unfailing kindness shown him by its object, had not sufficed to preserve the Amazing Cavalieri in his memory for the next sixty years, then the singular performance Joe gave at the Hotel Trevi on the evening of December 6, 1941, undoubtedly would have been enough. vanished into thin air. "I saw him cutting up the carrots in the men's room," this gentleman recalled. "In the bowl of water, they really did look like little fish." Stanley Konigsberg, however, whose bar mitzvah reception marked the last known appearance of the Amazing Cavalieri, retained for the rest of his life-like young Leon Douglas "Pipe Bomb" Saks-an ineradicable memory of our hero. An amateur magician himself, he had first seen Joe performing at the St. Regis for his cla.s.smate at Horace Mann, Roy Cohn, and had been impressed enough by Joe's natural movements, his solemnity, and his flawless presentations of the Miser's Dream, Rosini's Location, and the Stabbed Deck to insist that Joe be engaged to baffle his own relatives and schoolmates at the Hotel Trevi two months later. And if Mr. Konigsberg's youthful admiration, and the unfailing kindness shown him by its object, had not sufficed to preserve the Amazing Cavalieri in his memory for the next sixty years, then the singular performance Joe gave at the Hotel Trevi on the evening of December 6, 1941, undoubtedly would have been enough.

Joe arrived an hour before the reception began, as was his habit, to check the disposition of the Trevi's ballroom, salt a few aces and half-dollars, and go over the order of events with Manny Zehn, the bandleader whose fourteen Zehnsations, riotous in their mariachi s.h.i.+rts, were setting up on the bandstand behind them.

"How are they hanging?" said Joe, trying out an expression he had just heard in the subway on his way uptown. He pictured a row of pages from a calendar, hanging on a s.h.i.+ny string. He was young, he was making money hand over fist, and his little brother, after six months of quarantine, bureaucratic dithering, and those terrible days last week when it seemed that the State Department might, at the last moment, cancel all the children's entry visas, was on his way. Thomas would be here in three more days. Here, in New York City.

"Hey, kid," Zehn said, squinting a little mistrustfully at Joe, but finally shaking the hand Joe proffered. They had worked together twice before. "Where's your sombrero?"

"Sorry? I didn't-?"

"Our theme is 'South of the Border.' " Zehn reached behind his head and lifted a black sombrero embroidered with silver thread up onto his balding pate. He was a good-looking, portly man with a pencil mustache. "Sid?" The trombonist had been chatting up one of the waitresses, in a pink beribboned dress with Latin flounces. Sid turned around, an eyebrow arched. Manny Zehn raised his hands in the air and threw his head back. "Number three."

The trombonist nodded. "Hit it," he said to the band. The Zehnsations broke into a spirited bounce version of "The Mexican Hat Dance." They played four bars and then Manny Zehn cut his throat with a finger. "So where's your Mexican hat?"

"No one told me," said Joe. He smiled. "Beside to which I'm permitted only to use the topper," he added, pointing to the "loaded" silk hat on his head, which he had purchased secondhand at Louis Tannen's. Or else maybe the Mexican magicians' union will complain."

Zehn narrowed his eyes again. "You're drunk," he said.

"Not at all."

"You're acting goofy."

"My brother is coming," said Joe, and then, just to see how it sounded, added, "and I am getting married. That is, I hope I am. I have decided I am going to ask her tonight."

Zehn blew his nose. "Mazel tov," he said, giving the blot on his handkerchief a chiromantic squint. "Only I thought you guys were experts at getting out out of chains." of chains."

"Excuse me, Mr. Cavalieri?" said Stanley Konigsberg, appearing rather magically at Joe's side. "But that's what I wanted to ask you?"

"You can call me Joe."

"Joe. Sorry. Okay, I was wondering. Do you ever do escapes?"

"At one time," said Joe. "But I had to give it up." He frowned. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you hid a queen of hearts in the centerpiece of table seven," said Stanley. "If that's what you're worried about."

"I did not do any such thing," said Joe. He winked at Manny Zehn and, with a firm hand on Stanley's shoulder, steered the boy out of the ballroom and into the gilded corridor. Guests were taking off their coats, shaking the rain from their umbrellas.

"What kinds of things could you escape from?" Stanley wanted to know. "Chains? Ropes? Boxes? Trunks? Bags? Could you do it jumping off of a bridge? Or a building? What's so funny?"

"You remind me of someone," Joe said.

14

That same evening, Rosa shoved her paint box, a folded canvas tarp, a yardstick, and a small stepladder into the back of a taxi, and headed uptown to the apartment at the Josephine. The echoing emptiness of the place, a tin-plate rattle in the ears, unnerved her, and although with Joe's approval she had hastily called Macy's to order a dining table and chairs, some basic kitchen things, and bedroom furniture, there would be no time to furnish the rooms properly before Thomas arrived. It occurred to her that, having gone from the cramped jumble of a two-family flat on Dlouha Street, to the provisional pandemonium of a convent refectory, to the packed-in-oil tin of a stateroom on the Ark of Miriam, Ark of Miriam, the boy might actually welcome a bit of s.p.a.ce and emptiness, but all the same she wanted him to feel that the place at which he had arrived, at long last, was home, or a kind of home. She had tried to think of ways she could accomplish this. She knew enough about thirteen-year-old boys to be fairly certain that a plush bathrobe, a bouquet of flowers, or a ruffled canopy on the bed was not going to do the trick. She thought that a dog or a kitten might have been nice, but pets were not allowed in the building. She asked Joe about his brother's favorite meal, color, book, song; but Joe had proven quite ignorant of such preferences. Rosa was irritated with him-she had said he was impossible-until she saw that he was, for once, pained by his ignorance. It was the mark not of his usual luftmensch obliviousness but of the chasm of strange separation that had opened up between the brothers in the last two years. She apologized at once and went on trying to think what she could do for Thomas, until finally she'd had the idea, which struck them both as a nice one, of painting the blank expanse of his bedroom with a mural. It was not just that she wanted Thomas to feel at home; she wanted him to like her-instantly, right away-and she hoped that the mural, whether it softened the edges of his arrival or not, would at the very least stand as an offer of friends.h.i.+p, as a hand extended in welcome from his American big sister. But intermingled with, secretly bubbling beneath, these other motives for the gesture was concealed a desire that had nothing to do with Thomas Kavalier. Rosa was the boy might actually welcome a bit of s.p.a.ce and emptiness, but all the same she wanted him to feel that the place at which he had arrived, at long last, was home, or a kind of home. She had tried to think of ways she could accomplish this. She knew enough about thirteen-year-old boys to be fairly certain that a plush bathrobe, a bouquet of flowers, or a ruffled canopy on the bed was not going to do the trick. She thought that a dog or a kitten might have been nice, but pets were not allowed in the building. She asked Joe about his brother's favorite meal, color, book, song; but Joe had proven quite ignorant of such preferences. Rosa was irritated with him-she had said he was impossible-until she saw that he was, for once, pained by his ignorance. It was the mark not of his usual luftmensch obliviousness but of the chasm of strange separation that had opened up between the brothers in the last two years. She apologized at once and went on trying to think what she could do for Thomas, until finally she'd had the idea, which struck them both as a nice one, of painting the blank expanse of his bedroom with a mural. It was not just that she wanted Thomas to feel at home; she wanted him to like her-instantly, right away-and she hoped that the mural, whether it softened the edges of his arrival or not, would at the very least stand as an offer of friends.h.i.+p, as a hand extended in welcome from his American big sister. But intermingled with, secretly bubbling beneath, these other motives for the gesture was concealed a desire that had nothing to do with Thomas Kavalier. Rosa was practicing practicing- beginning to dabble, on the walls of a boy's bedroom, with the idea of becoming a mother. This morning, her doctor had called to confirm the tale of a missed period and of a week of sudden squalls and unexpected flare-ups of emotion such as the one that had sent her into hysterics over the loan of an old pocket square. Thomas was going to be an uncle. That was how she had decided that she was going to put it to Joe.

When she got into the apartment, she first changed into a pair of dungarees and an old s.h.i.+rt of Joe's, and put her hair back with a kerchief. Then she went into the bedroom that was going to be Thomas's and spread out the tarp on the floor. She had never painted a mural before, but she had talked it over with her father, who had been involved in the fracas over the Rivera murals at Rockefeller Center and who knew many artists who had worked on murals for the W.P.A.

Rosa had wrestled for a long time with the proper subject. Characters from nursery rhymes, wooden soldiers, fairies and frog princes and gingerbread houses, such motifs would be considered hopelessly puerile by a boy of thirteen. She considered doing a New York scene- tall buildings, taxicabs, traffic cops, the Camel sign blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. Or perhaps some corny American montage, with redwood trees and cotton plants and lobsters. She wanted it to be sort of generally American, but also to relate in some way to the specific life Thomas was going to be leading here. Then she had started thinking about Joe, and the kind of work that he did. She suspected that Thomas Kavalier was going to be learning a good deal of his English from the pages of Empire Comics. While she would not have felt comfortable doing a mural that featured the Monitor, the Four Freedoms, or-G.o.d knew-Luna Moth, the idea of heroes, American heroes, intrigued her. She went to the public library and checked out a big book, with impressive Rockwell Rent-style woodcuts, called Heroes and Legends of the American People. Heroes and Legends of the American People. The larger-than-life figures of Paul Bun-van, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and the rest-her favorite was the original man of steel, Joe Magarac-struck her as perfectly suited to the mural form, and not beneath the contempt of a boy to whom they would probably be largely unknown. What was more, Rosa had taken to thinking of Joe himself as a hero-he had paid, out of his own pocket, for fifteen of the children who were now steaming across the Atlantic. Though she would not put Joe into the mural, she decided to include an image of Harry Houdini, that immigrant boy from Central Europe, just to connect the theme of the mural that much more directly to Thomas's life. The larger-than-life figures of Paul Bun-van, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and the rest-her favorite was the original man of steel, Joe Magarac-struck her as perfectly suited to the mural form, and not beneath the contempt of a boy to whom they would probably be largely unknown. What was more, Rosa had taken to thinking of Joe himself as a hero-he had paid, out of his own pocket, for fifteen of the children who were now steaming across the Atlantic. Though she would not put Joe into the mural, she decided to include an image of Harry Houdini, that immigrant boy from Central Europe, just to connect the theme of the mural that much more directly to Thomas's life.

She had made dozens of preliminary sketches and a two-by-three cartoon of the mural, which she now set about transferring, by means of a simple grid, to the largest of the room's walls. It was tricky work laying out the guidelines on the walls with the yardstick, first the horizontals, moving the stepladder across from left to right three feet at a hop, then the verticals, easy enough at the bottom but flirting more and more dangerously with wobbliness as she drew nearer to the top and was forced to go up on tiptoe. It required far more patience than she possessed, and several times she came close to abandoning the grid and just trying to sketch the thing out freehand on the wall. But she reminded herself that patience was a cardinal virtue in a mother-G.o.d knew her own mother had had little enough-and kept to her careful plan.

By ten o'clock, she had finished laying out the guidelines. Her shoulders ached, and her neck, and her knees, and she felt that before she started in on transferring the gridded cartoon to the wall she would go for a walk around the block, for a sandwich or a cigarette. She might run into Joe; he ought to be through with his show by now and on his way up to meet her. So she pulled on her coat and took the elevator back down to the lobby. She walked up to the corner of Seventy-ninth Street, where there was a late-night grocery.

Later, Rosa would imagine that, like a cat or a spirit camera trained on a dying person, she had seen her lost happiness at the instant of its pa.s.sing. As she was paying for her Philip Morrises, she happened to glance down at the Sunday papers stacked in front of the counter, bulldog editions hot off the press. In the upper-right-hand corner of the Herald Herald there was an extra, boxed in red. She read it five times, with all her heart and attention, but the tiny amount of information it conveyed never increased or-then or afterward-made any better sense. The ten lines of tentative, bland prose said only that a boat filled with refugees, many from Central Europe, most if not all of them believed to be Jewish children, was missing in the Atlantic off the Azores and believed lost. There was no mention, as there would not be for several more hours, of a U-boat, a forced evacuation, a sudden storm tearing in out of the northeast. Rosa stood there for a moment, her lungs filled with smoke, unable to exhale. Then she looked up at the storekeeper, who was watching her with interest. Evidently something quite engrossing was going on in her face. What should she do? Was he still at the Trevi? Was he on his way up to the Josephine, as they had planned? Had he heard the news? there was an extra, boxed in red. She read it five times, with all her heart and attention, but the tiny amount of information it conveyed never increased or-then or afterward-made any better sense. The ten lines of tentative, bland prose said only that a boat filled with refugees, many from Central Europe, most if not all of them believed to be Jewish children, was missing in the Atlantic off the Azores and believed lost. There was no mention, as there would not be for several more hours, of a U-boat, a forced evacuation, a sudden storm tearing in out of the northeast. Rosa stood there for a moment, her lungs filled with smoke, unable to exhale. Then she looked up at the storekeeper, who was watching her with interest. Evidently something quite engrossing was going on in her face. What should she do? Was he still at the Trevi? Was he on his way up to the Josephine, as they had planned? Had he heard the news?

She drifted out to the curb and fretted for a moment longer. Then she decided she had better just go back to the apartment and wait for him. She was sure that he would eventually come looking for her there, whether in ignorance or grief. Just as she was coming to this decision, however, a taxicab pulled up and let out an elderly couple in evening clothes. Rosa brushed past them and climbed into the back of the cab.

"The Trevi," she said.

She sat in a dark corner of the taxi. The light came and went, and in the mirror of her compact, her reflection was intermittently brave. She closed her eyes and tried to recite a s.n.a.t.c.h of Buddhist prayer her father had taught her, claiming it had a calming effect. It had little apparent impact on her father, and she wasn't even sure she had the words right. Om mani padmi om. Om mani padmi om. Somehow it did make her feel calmer. She said it all the way from Seventy-ninth Street to the curb outside the Trevi. By the time she stepped out of the cab, she had pulled herself fairly together. She came into the severe marble reception hall, with its icy chandeliers, and went up to the desk to inquire. From the lobby came the somehow baleful laughter of the famous fountain. Somehow it did make her feel calmer. She said it all the way from Seventy-ninth Street to the curb outside the Trevi. By the time she stepped out of the cab, she had pulled herself fairly together. She came into the severe marble reception hall, with its icy chandeliers, and went up to the desk to inquire. From the lobby came the somehow baleful laughter of the famous fountain.

"The magician was a friend of yours?" said the clerk with an unaccountably hostile air. "He cut out hours ago."

"Oh." It hit her like a blow. He was supposed to come up to the apartment after the performance. The fact that he had not done so meant that something terrible had happened to him. And in its wake, in possession of this knowledge, he had not wanted to see her. "Are they-is anyone-"

"There's the bar mitzvah boy now," the clerk said, pointing to a skinny little kid in a three-piece pink suit lolling on one of the watered silk couches in the lobby. "Why don't you ask him?"

Rosa went over, and the boy introduced himself as Stanley Konigsberg. Rosa told him she was looking for Joe, that she had some very bad news to give him. Oh, she had some wonderful news, too, but how would she ever be able to tell him? He would think she was trying to make some horrible equivalency, when it was only one of the monstrous coincidences of life.

"I think he already knows," Stanley Konigsberg said. He was a squat boy, small for his age, with crooked spectacles and coa.r.s.e brown hair. The suit was incredible, trousers trimmed with white braid, pockets and b.u.t.tonholes with white frogs, precisely the color of humiliation itself. "Is it about that boat that sank?"

"Yes," Rosa said. "His little brother was on it. A boy about your age."

"Jeez." He fidgeted with the end of his brown necktie, unable to make eye contact with Rosa. "That explains it, I guess."

That explains what, Rosa wanted to ask him, but she stuck to the more pressing question. "Do you know where he went?" she said.

"No, ma'am, I'm sorry. He just-"

"How long ago did he leave?"

"Oh, two hours at least. Maybe even more."

"Wait here," Rosa said. "Will you wait here, please?"

"I guess I kind of have to." He pointed to the doors of the Trevi's ballroom. "My parents aren't finished arguing."

Rosa went to a pay telephone and called Sammy and Joe's apartment, but there was no answer, and that was when she remembered that Sammy had gone out of town for the weekend with Tracy Bacon. To the Jersey sh.o.r.e, of all places. She was going to have to try to track him down. Next she had the operator call the superintendent of the Josephine, Mr. Dorsey. Mr. Dorsey grumbled and warned her not to make a habit of it, but when she told him it was urgent, he went up and checked the apartment for her. No, he said when he returned to the phone, there was n.o.body there, and no note. Rosa hung up and went back to Stanley Konigsberg.

"Tell me what happened," she said.

"Well, I mean, I guess he was upset, but n.o.body knew. I mean, everybody else was pretty upset when they heard. My uncle Mort works for the J.T.A. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency. It's a wire service."

"Yes."

"So he came in and told us the news, he heard it first."

"Did you see Joe leave, Stanley?" said Rosa.

"Well, yeah, I mean, yes, everybody did."

"And he seemed to be upset?"

Stanley nodded. "It was really quite strange," he said.

"What happened?" said Rosa. "What was strange?"

"It was all my fault," Stanley began. "I guess I was kind of nudzhing him, and he kept saying no, no, no, so then I went to my father and he said he'd give your friend another fifty dollars, and he still said no, so then I went to my mother." He winced. "After that, I guess he didn't really have any choice."

"Any choice about what?" Rosa said. She put her hand on Stanley's shoulder. "What did you want him to do?"

"I wanted him to do an escape," said Stanley, twitching as she touched him. "He said he knew how. Maybe he was just joking, I don't know. But he told my mother okay, he would. He said I was a nice kid and he would throw it in for no charge. But there was only about a half hour before he was supposed to go on, you know, so he had to rush it. He went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and got a big wooden packing crate that something, I think it was a filing cabinet, came in. And also a laundry bag. And a hammer and some nails. Then he went and talked for a while to the house detective, and he said no. My father had to go and give him fifty dollars, too. Then it was time for him, your friend, Joe, to go on. He did his show. He was really good. He did some card tricks, and some coin tricks, and he did some tricks with apparatuses. A little of everything, which is hard, which I know, see, because I'm a magician too, kind of. Most of them, when you see them ... they have a specialty. Like I just do mostly stuff with cards. Then after maybe a half hour he, your friend, got us all to stand up, and we had to leave the ballroom, and he brought us down here. Over to that." He pointed to the fountain out in the lobby, an exact replica of the famous one in Rome, all tritons and seash.e.l.ls and blue-lit cataracts. "Everyone. I think it was on the way down that Uncle Lou must have told him about the s.h.i.+p, you know, sinking and all, 'cause when we got down here he looked, uh, I don't know. Like his mouth was kind of hanging crooked. And he kept putting his hand on my shoulder, like he was leaning on me. Then some waiters brought in the bag and the box. The hotel detective came over and put him in handcuffs. He got in the bag, and I got to tie it myself. We put him in the box, and I got to nail it shut. We dropped him into the fountain. He told us if he didn't come out in three minutes to come in after him."

"Oh my G.o.d," said Rosa.

Two minutes and fifty-eight seconds from the time of his immersion in the cool blue water of the Trevi's fountain, the two waiters, the house detective, and Mr. Konigsberg in his best suit went splas.h.i.+ng in after Joe. They had been watching the crate for signs of movement, a telltale shuddering, a visible straining in the planks that made up the crate. Rut there was no motion at all. The crate lay inert, covered up to within an inch of its nailed-on lid, in water. When Mrs. Konigsberg began to scream, though there were still a few seconds to go until the deadline, the men went in. They rolled the crate up and out of the water, but in their haste they lost their grip on it, and it shattered against the floor. The laundry sack rolled out and flopped wildly on the floor like a gasping fish. Joe was thras.h.i.+ng around so much on the carpet that the house detective couldn't get the sack opened alone, and had to call on the other men to lend a hand. It took three of them to hold Joe down. When they peeled away the bag, his face was red as a fresh welt, but his lips were almost blue. His eyes rolled in their orbits, and he gagged and coughed as though fresh air were poison to him. They got him to his feet and the house detective removed the cuffs; when they were pa.s.sed around afterward, it was plain they had not been tampered with. For a moment Joe wavered there, soaking wet, looking slowly across the two hundred faces ranged in an anxious and wondering ring around him. His face was twisted in an expression that most of the guests would later characterize as shame but that others, Stanley Konigsberg among them, saw as a terrible, inexplicable anger. Then, in a parody of the smooth courtliness he had exhibited toward them in the ballroom a bare twenty minutes before, he bowed deeply from the waist. His hair fell down over his face and then, as he snapped back upright, flung water across the bodice of Mrs. Konigsberg's silk dress, leaving spots that proved to be ineradicable.

"Thank you very much," he said. Then he dashed across the lobby, through the revolving doors, and out into the street, shoes squeaking every step of the way.

After Stanley had finished, Rosa went back to the telephone. If she was going to try to find Joe, she would need help, and the person whose help she most wanted was Sammy. She tried to think of who might be able to track him down. Then she picked up the phone and asked the operator if there was a listing for Klayman, in Flatbush.

"Yes? Who is this?" The voice was a woman's, deep, slightly accented. A little suspicious, perhaps, but not troubled.

"This is Rosa Saks, Mrs. Klayman. I hope you remember me."

"Of course, dear. How are you?" She had no idea.

"Mrs. Klayman. I don't know how to tell you this." All week she had been the slave to unpredictable torrents of sadness and rage, but from seeing that newspaper headline until now, she had remained remarkably calm, almost devoid of feeling apart from the urge to find Joe. Somehow the thought of poor, hardworking, sad-eyed Mrs. Klayman, in her tiny apartment in Flatbush, broke the ice. Rosa started to cry so hard that it was difficult for her to get the words out. At first Mrs. Klayman tried to soothe her, but as Rosa grew more incoherent, she lost her temper a little.

"Dear, you must calm down!" she snapped. "Take a deep breath, for G.o.d's sake."

"I'm sorry," Rosa said. She took a deep breath. "All right."

She related the little she knew. There was a long silence over there in Flatbush.

"Where is Josef?" Mrs. Klayman said finally, her voice calm and measured.

"I can't find him. I was hoping Sammy might-might help-"

"I'll find Sammy," Mrs. Klayman said. "You just go home. Back to your family's house. He may come there."

"He doesn't want to see me, I think," Rosa said. "I don't know why. Mrs. Klayman, I'm afraid he may try to kill himself! I think he already tried it once tonight."

"Don't talk crazy. We just have to wait," Mrs. Klayman said. "That's all we can really do."

When Rosa wandered outside to get another cab, there was a boy selling papers, tomorrow's Journal-American. Journal-American. This carried a more detailed, if not quite accurate, version of the sinking of the This carried a more detailed, if not quite accurate, version of the sinking of the Ark of Miriam. Ark of Miriam. A German U-boat a.s.signed to one of the dreaded "wolf packs" that were tormenting Allied s.h.i.+pping in the Atlantic had set upon the innocent s.h.i.+p and sent it to the bottom with all hands. A German U-boat a.s.signed to one of the dreaded "wolf packs" that were tormenting Allied s.h.i.+pping in the Atlantic had set upon the innocent s.h.i.+p and sent it to the bottom with all hands.

This account, it later developed, was not quite true. When, after the war, he was put on trial for this and other crimes, the commander of U-328, U-328, an intelligent and cultivated career officer named Gottfried Halse, was able to produce ample evidence and testimony to prove that, in full accordance with Admiral Donitz's "Prize Regulations," he had attacked the s.h.i.+p within ten miles of land-the island of Corvo in the Azores-and given ample warning to the captain of the an intelligent and cultivated career officer named Gottfried Halse, was able to produce ample evidence and testimony to prove that, in full accordance with Admiral Donitz's "Prize Regulations," he had attacked the s.h.i.+p within ten miles of land-the island of Corvo in the Azores-and given ample warning to the captain of the Ark of Miriam. Ark of Miriam. The evacuation had proceeded in an orderly fas.h.i.+on, and the transfer of all pa.s.sengers to the lifeboats might have been effected safely and without incident if, immediately after the firing of the torpedoes, a storm had not appeared out of the northeast, overwhelming the boats so quickly that the crew of The evacuation had proceeded in an orderly fas.h.i.+on, and the transfer of all pa.s.sengers to the lifeboats might have been effected safely and without incident if, immediately after the firing of the torpedoes, a storm had not appeared out of the northeast, overwhelming the boats so quickly that the crew of U-328 U-328 had no time to help. It was only luck that had enabled Halse and his crew of forty to escape with their own lives. If he had known that the s.h.i.+p carried children, Halse was asked, a good many of them unable to swim, would he still have proceeded with the attack? Halse's reply is preserved in the transcript of his trial without comment or any notation as to whether his tone was one of irony, resignation, or sorrow. had no time to help. It was only luck that had enabled Halse and his crew of forty to escape with their own lives. If he had known that the s.h.i.+p carried children, Halse was asked, a good many of them unable to swim, would he still have proceeded with the attack? Halse's reply is preserved in the transcript of his trial without comment or any notation as to whether his tone was one of irony, resignation, or sorrow.

"They were children," he said. "We were wolves."

15

When the line of cars pulled into the front drive of the house, Ruth Ebling, the housekeeper, who was watching from the great front porch as the chauffeur and Stubbs unloaded the guests and their baggage, noticed the little Jew at once. He was so much smaller and more spindly than the other men in the party-smaller, indeed, than any of the rangy, slouching, sandy-haired types, with their Brooks suits and their polished manners, who formed the usual complement of Mr. Love's entertainments. Where the other fellows emerged from the cars with the lithe step of adventurers come to plant a conquering flag, the little Jewish boy scrambled out of the back of the second car-a monstrous new bottle-green Cadillac Sixty-one-like a man who had just fallen into a ditch. He looked as if he had spent the past several hours not so much sitting alongside the other fellows in the backseat as carelessly scattered in the s.p.a.ces among them. He stood, fumbling with a cigarette, blinking and pale, eyes watering in the stiff wind, rumpled, vaguely misshapen, viewing the looming gables and mad cheminations of Pawtaw with unconcealed mistrust. When he saw Ruth watching him, he ducked his head and half-raised his hand in greeting.