The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Michael Chabon
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Knuckle Duster Doyle. He had tried swiping from Hogarth and Lee Falk, from George Herriman, Harold Gray, and Elzie Segar. He kept his sample strips in a fat cardboard portfolio under his bed, waiting for an opportunity, for his main chance, to present itself.
“Japan!” he said again, reeling at the exotic Caniffian perfume that hung over the name. “What were you doing there?”
“Mostly I was suffering from the intestinal complaint,” Josef Kavalier said. “And I suffer still. Particular in the night.”
Sammy pondered this information for a moment, then moved a little nearer to the wall.
“Tell me, Samuel,” Josef Kavalier said. “How many examples must I have in my portfolio?”
“Not Samuel. Sammy. No, call me Sam.”
“Sam.”
“What portfolio is that?”
“My portfolio of drawings. To show your employer. Sadly, I am obligated to leave behind all of my work in Prague, but I can very quickly do much more that will be frightfully good.”
“To show my boss?” Sammy said, sensing in his own confusion the persistent trace of his mother’s handiwork. “What are you talking about?”
“Your mother suggested that you might to help me get a job in the company where you work. I am an artist, like you.”
“An artist.” Again Sammy envied his cousin. This was a statement he himself would never have been able to utter without lowering his fraudulent gaze to his shoe tops. “My mother told you I was an artist?”
“A commercial artist, yes. For the Empire Novelties Incorporated Company.”
For an instant Sammy cupped the tiny flame this secondhand compliment lit within him. Then he blew it out.
“She was talking through her hat,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“She was full of it.”
“Full of …?”
“I’m an inventory clerk. Sometimes they let me do pasteup for an ad. Or when they add a new item to the line, I get to do the illustration. For that, they pay me two dollars per.”
“Ah.” Josef Kavalier let out another long breath. He still had not moved a muscle. Sammy couldn’t decide if this apparent utter motionlessness was the product of unbearable tension or a marvelous calm. “She wrote a letter to my father,” Josef tried. “I remember she said you create designs of superb new inventions and devices.”
“Guess what?”
“She talked into her hat.”
Sammy sighed, as if to suggest that this was unfortunately the case; a regretful sigh, long-suffering—and false. No doubt his mother, writing to her brother in Prague, had believed that she was making an accurate report; it was Sammy who had been talking through his hat for the last year, embroidering, not only for her benefit but to anyone who would listen, the menial nature of his position at Empire Novelties. Sammy was briefly embarrassed, not so much at being caught out and having to confess his lowly status to his cousin, as at this evidence of a flaw in the omniveillant maternal loupe. Then he wondered if his mother, far from being hoodwinked by his boasting, had not in fact been counting on his having grossly exaggerated the degree of his influence over Sheldon Anapol, the owner of Empire Novelties. If he were to keep up the pretense to which he had devoted so much wind and invention, then he was all but obliged to come home from work tomorrow night clutching a job for Josef Kavalier in his grubby little stock clerk’s fingers.
“I’ll try,” he said, and it was then that he felt the first spark, the tickling finger of possibility along his spine. For another long while, neither of them spoke. This time, Sammy could feel that Josef was still awake, could almost hear the capillary trickle of doubt seeping in, weighing the kid down. Sammy felt sorry for him. “Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Ask me what?”
“What was with all the newspapers?”
“They are your New York newspapers. I bought them at the Capitol Greyhound Terminal.”
“How many?”
For the first time, he noticed, Josef Kavalier twitched. “Eleven.”
Sammy quickly calculated on his fingers: there were eight metropolitan dailies. Ten if you counted the Eagle and the Home News. “I’m missing one.”
“Missing …?”
“Times, Herald-Tribune”—he touched two fingertips—“World-Telegram, Journal-American, Sun.” He switched hands. “News, Post. Uh, Wall Street Journal. And the Brooklyn Eagle. And the Home News in the Bronx.” He dropped his hands to the mattress. “What’s eleven?”
“The Woman’s Daily Wearing.”
“Women’s Wear Daily?”
“I didn’t know it was like that. For the garments.” He laughed at himself, a series of brief, throat-clearing rasps. “I was looking for something about Prague.”
“Did you find anything? They must have had something in the Times.”
“Something. A little. Nothing about the Jews.”
“The Jews,” said Sammy, beginning to understand. It wasn’t the latest diplomatic maneuverings in London and Berlin, or the most recent bit of brutal posturing by Adolf Hitler, that Josef was hoping to get news of. He was looking for an item detailing the condition of the Kavalier family. “You know Jewish? Yiddish. You know it?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad. We got four Jewish newspapers in New York. They’d probably have something.”
“What about German newspapers?”
“I don’t know, but I’d imagine so. We certainly have a lot of Germans. They’ve been marching and having rallies all over town.”
“I see.”
“You’re worried about your family?”
There was no reply.
“They couldn’t get out?”
“No. Not yet.” Sammy felt Josef give his head a sharp shake, as if to end the discussion. “I find I have smoked all my cigarettes,” he went on, in a neutral, phrase-book tone. “Perhaps you could—”
“You know, I smoked my last one before bed,” said Sammy. “Hey, how’d you know I smoke? Do I smell?”
“Sammy,” his mother called, “sleep.”
Sammy sniffed himself. “Huh. I wonder if Ethel can smell it. She doesn’t like it. I want to smoke, I’ve got to go out the window, there, onto the fire escape.”
“No smoking in bed,” Josef said. “The more reason then for me to leave it.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Sammy said. “I’m dying to have a place of my own.”
They lay there for a few minutes, longing for cigarettes and for all the things that this longing, in its perfect frustration, seemed to condense and embody.
“Your ash holder,” Josef said finally. “Ashtray.”
“On the fire escape. It’s a plant.”
“It might be filled with the … spacek? … kippe? … the stubbles?”
“The butts, you mean?”
“The butts.”
“Yeah, I guess. Don’t tell me you’d smoke—”
Without warning, in a kind of kinetic discharge of activity that seemed to be both the counterpart and the product of the state of perfect indolence that had immediately preceded it,