Part 26 (1/2)
”You also look very handso to have one of these things one day?”
”We are too old,” he said, not quite paying attention Then he caught on ”Oh,” he said ”Well”
”I suppose we irl can have them, too, now Somebody told me this Then it's called a boss mitzvah”
”Which do you prefer?”
”Bas mitzvah Bas or boss, I'm not really sure”
”Joe?”
”I don't know, Rosa,” he said He sensed that he should stop what he was doing and go over to her, but so about the topic irritated hi up inside ”I can't be sure I want to have children at all”
The playfulness had left her manner ”That's okay, Joe,” she said ”I'm not sure I do either”
”I mean, is this really the time or the kind of world that ant a child to be born, is all the thing”
”Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said ”Forget it” She blushed and smoothed out her skirt ”Those purple rocks look so so familiar” familiar”
”I think so, too”
”I can't believe this room,” she said ”I've never really, you know, dipped into the Taline that they were leaping out of giant cla as they did not eat eat the clams,” Joe said the clams,” Joe said
”Did you have one of these?”
”No, I did not I considered it But no We were not religious”
”Uh-huh”
”Are,” he said ”Are not” He looked stricken He stood up straight and flexed his fingers a few tiious”
”No, we aren't either”
He walked back over to the chair where he had hung his jacket He reached into the pocket and took out the letter in its pale-blue envelope and held it, looking at it
”Why are you carrying that around?” Rosa said ”Did you open it? What does it say?”
There were voices; the ballroom doors burst open and the musicians came in, followed by one of the white-jacketed hotel waiters, pushi+ng a cart Thetheir cases Joe had worked with some of them before, and they nodded to one another, and Joe accepted their whistles and teasing about his new clothes Joe replaced the envelope, then put his jacket back on He shot his cuffs, smoothed back his hair, and tied on the silken mask When the musicians saw that, they burst into applause
”Well?” he said, turning to Rosa ”What do you think?”
”Very e, strangled cry by the door, and Joe turned in time to see the white-jacketed waiter dash out of the ballroom
5
The Steel Gauntlet, Kapitan Evil, the Panzer, Siegfried, Swastika Man, the Four Horsemen, and Wotan the Wicked all confine their nefarious operations, by and large, to the battlefields of Europe and North Africa, but the Saboteur, Ring of Infiltration, Vandal Supreuised as a cru tenement, in hell's Kitchen That is what makes him so effective and feared He is an American citizen, an ordinary man from a farm in small-town America By day he works as a humble unknown in one of the anonyht he creeps forth fro of dirty tricks, and makes war on the infrastructure of the city and the nation He is every bit the dark obverse of the Escapist, as skilled at wor his way out As the Escapist's power has increased, so has the Saboteur's, until the latter can walk through walls, leap thirty feet straight up, and befogthem
On one wall of the coiant electrical map of the United States On it, ht, reen After the Saboteur strikes, the lightbulb for that target, whatever its original hue, turns an evil shade of red The Saboteur is fond of declaring that he will not rest until the entire nation is alight with blood-red bulbs On another wall hangs the Videoscope, by means of which the Saboteur keeps in constant contact with his network of agents and operatives throughout the country There is a laboratory, in which the Saboteur devises sinister new kinds of explosives, and a machine shop in which he crafts the novelty bo Derby Hat, the Exploding Pine Tree-for which he is known and reviled There are also a fully equipped gymnasium, a library filled with all the most advanced texts on science and world domination, and a posh paneled bedroom with a canopy bed that the Saboteur (iirlfriend and a founding member of the United Snakes It is in the Saboteur's well-appointed Lair that the Snakes hold their regular s, over rare sweeter, of the United Snakes of A obsidian table, the Fifth Columnist, Mr Fear, Benedict Arnold, Junior, the Spy Queen, and he, regaling one another with tales of the havoc, hate, and destruction they have sown over the past week, laughing like theout new courses of action for the future Ah, the terror they will cause! Ah, the subnor up by their rel necks! Ah, Renata, in her slick black trench coat and glea hip boots!
One Saturday afternoon, after a particularly boisterous convocation of the Snakes, the Saboteur wakes in his sumptuous chambers and prepares to leave the Lair for the menial job that is a cover for his subversive activities He peels off his night-black action suit and hangs it froside its six duplicates His symbol, a crimson crowbar, is outlined in silver on the chest Is there a ses on the shoulder of the costuars? He will have to send it out to be cleaned The Saboteur is particular about such things; he cannot abide dirt or filth or disorder, unless it be the mess, the splendid entropy of a fire, an explosion, or a train wreck Having removed his costume, he pulls on a pair of black trousers piped in black He runs a da colorless hair and shaves his babyish pink face Then he puts on a boiled white shi+rt, attaches the collar, ties on a black bow tie, and takes dohite dinner jacket It has just co He slings it over his shoulder and then exits, not without regret, the clean and cavernous aroes into his laboratory and picks up the disasse Trident, cleverly concealed inside of a pink cake box from a Ninth Avenue bakery With the box under his aroodbye to Renata, who lies, gazing lazily at hi-lashed lids, under the portrait of the Fuhrer, in the great oak bed
”Knock 'e Boy,” she says in her verh the Lair's air lock and enters the grit, filth, and foul atroes and uid farewell; he is on the job, all business now
He hops a bus across town to Fifth Avenue, then another to ride the twenty blocks uptown Ordinarily he dislikes taking the bus, but he is late already, and if you are late, they take it out of your pay His rent on the Lair is cheap, but his pay is low enough without being docked again for lateness He knows he can not afford to lose another job; his sister Ruth has already warned him that she will not ”prop him up” Absurd that the Saboteur should have to trouble with such mundane concerns, but these are the sacrifices entailed bya secret identity- look at all the headaches and trouble that Lois Lane, for example, makes for Clark Rent
He arrives ten minutes late-that's fifty cents, five Te Aets there, finds that they have already begun to set up the ballroo around his e the fishnets, asse rubber rock forer, has told hiirlie show on the midway at the World's Fair The Saboteur is well infor's reception, for it is the one he has chosen to irlie show on the midway at the World's Fair The Saboteur is well infor's reception, for it is the one he has chosen to reatest exploit to date
The Pierre is a popular venue for the wedding and bar mitzvah receptions of the rich Jews of the city, as the Saboteur discovered shortly after taking the job Alh and throw their ht up to the pimply kid-of-the-week, for God's sake, and stuff packets of cash into his cuet drunk and dance their tedious dances to the alls him to have to serve and wait upon such people, the Saboteur has known from the first that this secret identity will afford him, in due course, the opportunity to strike a terrible blow For uidance of a drunken old anarcho-syndicalist naler and Spengler (and Radio Co for his ht last winter, the Aarettes through handkerchiefs andflowers bloom in his boutonniere, and turned out to be none other than Joe Kavalier (The Saboteur had long since rectified his misapprehension that it was the Sam Clay half of the team who had been responsible both for the destruction of the AAL offices and for the autographed sketch of the Escapist, which now hung froymnasium at the Lair) The Saboteur was too astonished to act at the tiht soon be at hand For weeks after that night, he chatted up Mr Dawson and, through hi the big schedule book for a reappearance of the Aht When he arrived at work, it ith the intention of showing Joe Kavalier that while Carl Henry Ebling may be a shi+ftless bumbler and pamphleteer, the Saboteur is not one to be trifled with, and hiswith rels happened to be standing in the young Jew's vicinity Yes, he would have been contented with just that How surprising, disturbing, e it is, then, to roll into the Grand Ballroo Trident, and discover that the perforician hired for the Saks barscribbler but the Escapist himself, the Saboteur's dark idol, his opposite nu in his lapel the sy for his ht last winter, the Aarettes through handkerchiefs andflowers bloom in his boutonniere, and turned out to be none other than Joe Kavalier (The Saboteur had long since rectified his misapprehension that it was the Sam Clay half of the team who had been responsible both for the destruction of the AAL offices and for the autographed sketch of the Escapist, which now hung froymnasium at the Lair) The Saboteur was too astonished to act at the tiht soon be at hand For weeks after that night, he chatted up Mr Dawson and, through hi the big schedule book for a reappearance of the Aht When he arrived at work, it ith the intention of showing Joe Kavalier that while Carl Henry Ebling may be a shi+ftless bumbler and pamphleteer, the Saboteur is not one to be trifled with, and hiswith rels happened to be standing in the young Jew's vicinity Yes, he would have been contented with just that How surprising, disturbing, e it is, then, to roll into the Grand Ballroo Trident, and discover that the perforician hired for the Saks barscribbler but the Escapist himself, the Saboteur's dark idol, his opposite nu in his lapel the syue
At that mo's mind have been drawn is like a map that has been folded and carelessly refolded too h; the poles rid of city streets lies an expanse of virgin blue sea
Was there ever ain his timid Rent aspect and suffered a fatal hesitation? Did the Escapist ever forget to clasp his taliss into the fray? The Saboteur tries to re doormat hom he must share his existence is a bundle of nerves and, like a fool, goes running out of the roo against a wall, his cheek pressed against the soft, cool flocked wallpaper He lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, cal of Infiltration, and he knohat to do He stubs out the cigarette in the sand of a nearby ashtray, and takes hold of the cart once again This time, when he enters the ballroom, he has the presence of nized by the Escapist
”Sorry, folks,” he e, by the shi+vered timbers of the sunken shi+p It has a squeaky wheel, and he feels certain that hethe attention of the irl But when he looks back, they are absorbed in their own preparations She is a pretty enough girl, he supposes, and her black e of the queen of his own desire When he reaches the shi+p, he stops, crouches behind the cart, and opens the compartment in which hot plates of food are stored by the room-service waiters on their way up to rooms
Until now the ballroom has been too croith decorators, waiters, and hotel staff, co as they prepared the room for the event, for him to find the opportunity to asse Trident Noorks quickly, screwing the length of thin pipe that contains the black powder and cut-up nails into a second length of pipe that is empty This will be the shaft At the dummy end, he affixes tines of stiff red cellophane, copped fro tape It looks a little suspicious, he knows, but fortunately, verisienerally expect from a sea God's trident He unrolls the six-inch strip of fuse that protrudes through a hole drilled in the thing's business end Then he stands up and, checking to see that he is not being observed, edges over toward one of the fishnets tacked to the wall, filled with its catch of fake crustaceans No one sees; his rich lifelong powers of invisibility reerly, he slides the trident down through the heavy mesh of the fishnet until the fuse end buun his legendary act-the Saboteur will contrive to pass by here again He will rest half a lighted Caainst a strand of the net, so that the unlit end touches the fuse Then he will hie himself out of harrels of E of the terror theirhalfway around the world
The Saboteur pushes the cart back toward the ballrooician, he cannot prevent hi his adversary in the eye If there is a flicker of recognition there, it is extinguished in an instant as the doors to the ballroo out in their loud barnyard voices, the first of the guests arrive
6
What follows is the intended progra Cavalieri on the evening of April 12, 1941 A copy, printed by the perfor Press that he had dug out of the Empire Novelties stockroo, was handed out to every guest just prior to the show