Part 20 (1/2)
”I', sir?”
”It was in Konigsberg”
”When you were a boy”
He nodded ”When I was a boy I was quite an aician myself at one tiled 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 froers 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 draard a distant but powerful net ”I'm terribly out of practice, I'ood?”
Kornblum had disdained patter as unworthy of the true master, and now Joe rose, wordlessly, and took off his jacket He shot his cuffs and casually presented his empty hands for Her a certain risk Close work had never been his forte He hoped that his index finger was all right
”How is your finger?” Rosa whispered
”Fine,” said Joe ”May I trouble you for your cigarette lighter?” he asked Hoffman ”I'll only need it for a old lighter to Joe
”And another cigarette, I' Joe carefully Joe stepped back froarette to his lips, lit it, and inhaled deeply Then he held up the lighter between the thu blue jet of s and held it, and pinched his nose, and coed out his eyes The brown Thoth-Amon vanished He opened his mouth and breathed out slowly The smoke had vanished, too
”Sorry,” said Joe ”Cluhter?”
”Here is the smoke”
Joe raised his left hand in a fist, drew it across his face, and then opened his hand like a flower A teased knot of smoke floated out Joe s froarette case He opened the case and revealed the Egyptian cigarette snug inside it, like a brown egg in a carton full of whites It was still burning He leaned forward and rolled the burning end in the ashtray on Hoffhtened, he put the cigarette back into his uished coal The lighter reappeared He scratched up a new fla into a war
Rosa applauded ”How did you do it?” she said
”Maybe I'll tell you one day,” Joe said
”Oh, no, don't do that,” Hoffree to underwrite, let us say to children, in addition to your brother, then ill start working on your brother's case, and do e can to find room on children, in addition to your brother, then ill start working on your brother's case, and do e can to find room on Miriam Miriam for him” for hiain she looked all business She nodded He had done well ”That's very-”
”But first I have a favor to ask of you”
”What's that? Anything”
Hoffman nodded toward the picture of Maurice
”If I were a wealthy man, Mr Kavalier, I would finance this entire venture out of oes to the agency I'm not sure if you're aware of this, or what it was like in Prague, but here in New York, bar mitzvahs are not cheap In the circle my wife and I move in, they can be quite lavish It's deplorable, but there it is A photographer, caterers, the ballroo”
Joe nodded slowly and glanced at Rosa Was Hoff him to help pay for his son's reception?
”Do you have any idea,” Hoffician?” A cigarette appeared between the fingers of his right hand It was, Joe noticed, still burning-it was the one he had dropped on the floor a few minutes before Joe was certain he had seen Hoffman pick it up and snuff it in the ashtray On further consideration, he was so so up?”
”I-I will be happy to”
”Excellent,” Hoffman said
They went out of his office Rosa closed the door and grinned at him, her eyes wide ”How about that?”
”Thank you,” he said ”Thank you very ht now” She went over to her desk, sat down, and took a printed form from a tray on the desk ”Tell me how to spell his name Kavalier” ”With a K”
”Kavalier with a R Thomas Is that with an h, or-?” ”With an h I want to see you,” he said ”I want to take you to dinner” ”I'd like that,” she said without looking up ”Middle naain, the sky was shi+ning like a nickel and the air was filled with the s, and it was hot in the hip pocket of his twelve-dollar suit He walked across the street to the square Tho to A the park, he found hiarette trick Where had he concealed the holder froarette? What kind of holder could keep a cigarette burning for so long? He was halfway across the square before he had the answer-the toupee
Just as he passed the statue of George Washi+ngton, he noticed a s green benches to his right Joe, supposing that so out slices of the latest grim confection from the battlefields and capitals of Europe, plucked a cashew fro, tossed it into the air, threw back his head and caught the nut, and kept on walking As he passed the little knot ofpeople, however, he saw that they all see not at the bench but at the tall slie So An older wo little backward step away, hand pressed to her chest, laughing in eht, be some kind of animal on the tree, a mouse or a monkey or a monitor lizard escaped from the Central Park Zoo He went over to the bench and, when no one would make room for him, pushed up on the tips of his toes to see
A surprising fact about the ician Bernard Kornbluic Not in the so-called s Not in the kitchen enchants fro Not in astrology, theosophy, chiro statues, olves, wonders, or arded as fakery far different-far more destructive-than the brand of illusion he practiced, whose success, after all, increased in direct proportion to his audiences' constant, keen awareness that, in spite of all the vigilance they could bring to bear, they were being deceived What bewitched Bernard Kornbluic of life, when he read in a uise itself as any one of seven different varieties of sea bottom, or when he learned fro star that eacycles approximatedIn the realh not always, a sadder business-sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel Here its stock-in-trade was ironies, coincidences, and the only true portents: those that revealed thenore, in retrospect In the realh not always, a sadder business-sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel Here its stock-in-trade was ironies, coincidences, and the only true portents: those that revealed thenore, in retrospect
There was, on the slender bole of the youthful e on the west side of Union Square, an enors with a certain languor like a lady fanning herself, iridescent green with a yellowish undershi+s lay spread flat and when, every so often, they pulsed, the woman in the checked coat would squeal, to the aathered around, and jump back
”What is this moth?” Joe asked the man beside him
”Guy here says it's called a luna” Thefellow in a tyrolean hat with anearer to the tree and the ht,” the portly man said in an oddly wistful voice ”A luna moth We used to see them from time to time when I was a kid In Mount Morris Park” He reached out his pudgy hand, in its yellow pigskin glove, toward the beating blue heart of his childhood memory
”Rosa,” Joe said, under his breath Then, like an a with an audible rustle, tueneral direction of the Flatiron Building
13
So hts and ballroohtclubs and jazz joints, her avenues of neon and chro in the summertime with paper lanterns On this steely autu way fro down, under the ground, to a rooh heels and the jackhaators, lower even than the bones of Algonquins and dire wolves-to Office 99, a small, neat cubicle, airless and white, at the end of a corridor in the third subbasement of the Empire City Public Library Here, at a desk that lies deeper in the earth than even the subway tracks, sits young Miss Judy Dark, Under-assistant Cataloguer of Decommissioned Volumes The nameplate on her desk so identifies her She is a thin, pale thing, in a plain gray suit, and life is clearly passing her by Twice a week a man with skin the color of boiled newspaper comes by her office to cart away the books that she has officially pronounced dead Every ten minutes or so her walls are shaken by the thunder of the uptown local racing overhead
On this particular autu lies before her She will fry her chop and read herself to sleep, no doubt with a tale of wizardry and romance Then, in dreao adventuring in chainshe ake up alone, and do it all again Poor Judy Dark! Poor little librarians of the world, those girls, secretly lovely, their looks lasses!
Judy packs her satchel and turns out her light, not forgetting to take her umbrella from its hook She is a kind of huht She walks down the long corridor and accidentally steps into a huge puddle; whenever it rains, Subbaseins to leak Her feet are soaked to the ankles Shoes squeaking, she gets into the elevator Like a diver, she rises slowly to the surface of the city Turning up her collar, she heads for the front door of the library Tonight, as every night, she is the last to leave
There is a policeuard the book
”Good night, Miss,” the policeman says as he unlocks the heavy bronze door for her He is a big-shouldered, knuckle-chinned felloith a twinkle in his eye because her shoes are squeaking
”Good night” Miss Dark is mortified by the sound of her feet
”The nalossy as a squirt of black paint
”Judy Dark”