Part 3 (1/2)
”It is very big”
”We'll never get it through theAnd if we do, we'll never get it dressed”
”Why do we have to dress it? It has those cloths, the Jewish scarves,” Josef said, pointing to the tallises in which the Goleave off no odor of corruption The only s from the swarthy flesh of the Golereen, that he was only later to identify as the sweet stench, on a su days, of the Moldau ”Aren't Jews supposed to be buried naked?”
”That is precisely the point,” Kornbluation, it was illegal to transport even a dead Jew out of the country without direct authority of Reichsprotektor von Neurath ”We must practice the tricks of our trade” He se his cheeks and lips Fit that do Someone will look inside the coffin, and when he does, ant hiiant” He closed his eyes as if envisioning what he wanted the authorities to see, should they order the coffin to be opened ”Preferably in a very nice suit” giant” He closed his eyes as if envisioning what he wanted the authorities to see, should they order the coffin to be opened ”Preferably in a very nice suit”
”The ed to a dead giant”
Kornblu an implication in the words that he was unable to catch
”Alois Hora He was over two meters tall”
”From the Circus Zeletny?” Kornbluland, on Savile Row Enors”
”Yes, yes, I re ”I used to see hireed
”I think-” Josef began He hesitated He said, ”I knohere I can find one”
It was not at all uncolandular cases to maintain a wardrobe of wonders, stocked with underlinens the size of horse blankets, hoer than berry bowls, and all ies of haberdashery and the shoemaker's last These iteiven over the years, were kept in a cabinet in his office at the hospital, with the laudable but self-defeating intention of preventing their beco objects of morbid curiosity to his children No visit to their father at his place of as ever co an attempt to persuade Dr Kavalier to let theiant Vaclav sobk, or the digitalis-blossom slippers of tiny Miss Petra Frantisek But after the doctor had been dis with the rest of the Jews on the faculty, the wardrobe of wonders had co boxes, stuffed into a closet in his study Josef was certain that he would find so theue as a shadow, it was as a shadow that he finally went home It ell past curfew, and the streets were deserted but for a few long, flag-fendered sedans with iray-coated boys carrying guns Josef went slowly and carefully, inserting hi behind a parked car or bench when he heard the clank of gears, or when the fork of passing headlights jabbed at the housefronts, the awnings, the cobbles in the street In his coat pocket, he carried the picks Kornbluot to the service door of the building off the Graben he found that, as was not uncommonly the case, it had been left propped open with a tin can, probably by soabond husband
Josef met no one in the back hall or on the stairs There was no baby whiht radio, no elderly ss Although the ceiling lights and wall sconces were lit, the collective slu seeasse 26 Josef found this stillness disturbing He felt the sa of his flesh, that he had felt on entering the Golem's empty room
As he slunk down the hall, he noticed that someone had discarded a pile of clothes on the carpet outside the door of his family's hoht that, by soht had somehow been abandoned there Then Josef saw that it was not abut one actually inhabited by a body-soirl, he thought, one of his mother's patients It was rare, but not unheard of, for an analysand, tossed by tides of transference and desublimation, to seek the safety of Dr Kavalier's doorstep or, by contrast, inflamed with the special hatred of countertransference, to leave herself there in some desperate condition, as a cruel prank, like a paper sack of dog turds set afire
But the clothes belonged to Josef himself, and the body inside them was Thomas's The boy lay on his side, knees drawn to his chest, head pillowed on an arers spread with an air of lingering intention, as if he had fallen asleep with a hand on the doorknob, then subsided to the floor He had on a pair of trousers, charcoal corduroy, shi+ny at the knee, and a bulky cable sweater, with a large hole under the arrease on the yoke, which Josef knew his brother liked to put on whenever he was feeling ill or friendless From the collar of the sweater protruded the piped lapels of a pajas of the borrowed pants Thoainst his outstretched arh his permanently rheumy nose Josef smiled and started to kneel down beside Thomas to wake him, and tease him, and help him back to bed Then he remembered that he was not permitted-could not permit himself-to make his presence known He could not ask Thomas to lie to their parents, nor did he really trust hi to think what could have happened and how best to proceed How had Thootten himself locked out? Was this who had left the service door propped open downstairs? What could have pro out so late when, as everyone knew, a girl in Vinorhady, not much older than Thomas, had just a feeeks before sneaked outside to look for her lost dog and been shot, in a gloo curfew? There had been official expressions of regret from von Neurath over the incident, but no proain If Josef could so a five-haleru piece at his head fro to be let in? Or would he be too ashaht in the chilly, dark hall, on the floor? And hoould he, Josef, possibly be able to get to the giant's clothes with his brother lying asleep in the doorway or else with the whole household awakened and in an uproar over the boy's ardness?
These speculations were cut short when Josef stepped on soid, under his heel His heart seized, and he looked down, dancing backward in disgust, to see not a burst mouse but the leather wallet of lock picks that had once been his reward from Bernard Kornblum Thomas's eyes fluttered, and he snuffled, and Josef waited, wincing, to see if his brother would sink back into sleep Thomas sat up abruptly With the back of his arave a short sigh
”Oh, dear,” he said, looking sleepily unsurprised to find his Brooklyn-bound brother crouched beside him, three days after he was supposed to have departed, in the hallway of their building in the heart of Prague Thoain, but Josef covered it with the flat of his hand and pressed a finger to his own lips He shook his head and pointed at the door
When Thomas cast his eyes in the direction of the door to their flat, he finally seemed to awaken Hissour on his tongue His thick black eyebrows piled up over his nose He shook his head and again atteain Josef covered his ently this time Josef picked up his old pick-wallet, which he had not seen in ave the ht at all, to be lost The lock on the Kavaliers' door was one that, in another era, Josef had successfully picked ot them inside noith little difficulty, and stepped into the front hall, grateful for its familiar smell of pipe smoke and paper-whites, for the distant hu room and saw that the sofa and piano had been draped in quilts The fish tank stood ee in its putti-crusted terra-cotta pot was gone Crates stood piled in the center of the room
”They e
”To Dlouha eleven,” Tho”
”They h there was no one to hear them, no one to alert or disturb
”It's a vile vile place The Katzes are place The Katzes are vile vile people” people”
”The Katzes?” There were cousins of his mother, for whom she had never cared much, ent by this name ”Viktor and Renata?”
Thoave a vast roll of his eyes ”And their vile vile parakeet They taught it to say 'Up your bum, Thomas' ” He sniffed, snickered when his brother did, and then, with another slow agglohing sobs, careful and choked, as if they were painful to let out Josef took hi it had been since he had heard the sound of Tho, a sound that had once been as common in the house as the teakettle whistle or the scratch of their father's ht of Thomas on his knee was unwieldy, his shape aard and unerown from a boy to a youth in just the last three days parakeet They taught it to say 'Up your bum, Thomas' ” He sniffed, snickered when his brother did, and then, with another slow agglohing sobs, careful and choked, as if they were painful to let out Josef took hi it had been since he had heard the sound of Tho, a sound that had once been as common in the house as the teakettle whistle or the scratch of their father's ht of Thomas on his knee was unwieldy, his shape aard and unerown from a boy to a youth in just the last three days
”There's a beastly aunt,” Thomas said, ”and a moronic brother-in-law due tomorrow froht Only I couldn't work the lock”
”I understand,” Josef said, understanding only that, until now, until this moment, his heart had never been broken ”You were born in this flat”
Tho to cheer the boy ”I was never so disappointed in my life”
Thooff of Josefs knee ”Only the Kravniks and the Policeks and the Zlatnys are allowed to stay” He wiped at his cheek with a forear his brother's arht send for it”
”Why aren't you gone?” Thomas said ”What happened to your shi+p?”
”There have been difficulties But I should be on ht You mustn't tell Mother and Father that you sawto see them?”
The question, the plaintive rasp in Thomas's voice as he asked it, pained Josef He shook his head ”I just had to dash back here to get sonored the question ”Is everything still here?”
”Except for sos And my tennis racket And my butterflies And your wireless” This was a twenty-tube set, built into a kind of heavy valise of oiled pine, that Josef had constructed fro succeeded illusion and preceded modern art in the cycle of Josef's passions, as Houdini and then Marconi had given way to Paul Klee and Josef's enrollment at the Academy of Fine Arts ”Mother carried it on her lap in the tra to your voice, and she would rather have your voice to reraph, even”
”And then she said that I never photograph well, anyway”
”Yes, she did, as afor the rest of our things I' to hold the reins What is it you need? What did you come back for?”
”Wait here,” Josef said He had already revealed tooto be very displeased
He went down the hall to their father's study, checking to nore the piled crates, the open doors that ought at this hour to have been long shut, the rolled carpets, the forlorn knocking of his shoe heels along the bare wooden floors In his father's office, the desk and bookcases had been wrapped in quilted blankets and tied with leather straps, the pictures and curtains taken down The boxes that contained the uncanny clothing of endocrine freaks had been dragged from the closet and stacked, conveniently, just by the door Each bore a pasted-on label, carefully printed in his father's strong, regular hand, that gave a precise accounting of the contents of the crate: DRESSES (5)-MARTINRA HAT (STRAW)-ROTHMAN CHRISTENING GOWN-sobK For soht of these labels touched Josef The writing was as legible as if it had been typeset, each letter shod and gloved with serifs, the parentheses neatly cri The labels had been lettered lovingly; his father had always expressed that e with details In this fatherly taking of pains-in this stubbornness, persistence, orderliness, patience, and calm-Josef had always taken comfort Here Dr Kavalier seee es in the very alphabet of imperturbability itself The labels seeoing to require to survive the ordeal to which Josef was abandoning thee, the Kavaliers and the Katzes would doubtless e to form one of those rare households in which decency and order prevailed With patience and cal and careful labeling, they would nity, and hardshi+p head-on
But then, staring at the label on one crate, which read SWORD-CANE-DLUBECK SHOE TREE-HORA SUITS (3)-HORA assORTED HANDKERCHIEFS (6)-HORA Josef felt a bloom of dread in his belly, and all at once he was certain that it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved Orderly or chaotic, well inventoried and civil or juue were dust on the boots of the Germans, to be whisked off with an indiscriminate broo In later years, when he remembered this moment, Josef would be te at those e-caked labels, of the horror to come At the time it was a simpler matter The hair stood up on the back of his neck with a prickling discharge of ions His heart pulsed in the hollow of his throat as if someone had pressed there with a thu the penmanshi+p of someone who had died
”What's that?” Thomas said, when Josef returned to the parlor with one of Hora's extra-large gar over his shoulder ”What happened? What's wrong?”
”Nothing,” said Josef ”Look, Thoo I'm sorry”
”I know” know” Thoed on the floor ”I'ht” Thoed on the floor ”I'ht”