Part 30 (2/2)
”Huh,” Joe said, and then ”Look here” He took hold of her shoulders and spun her around on the stool On a low table next to his drawing board lay a stack of lettered but uninked co sheets of Bristol board Joe shuffled through the stack of pages, passing them to her one by one They presented a story that was narrated by the custodian at the Statue of Liberation, a tall, stooped man with a e Deasey Apparently, the unfortunate fellow had a bone to pick with ”that long-underwear bunch” He then went on to describe how, just that , he had watched in horror as Professor Percival ”Smarty” Pantz, hapless know-it-all rival of Dr E Pluribus Hewnham, the Scientific American, performed an ”electro-brain implantation procedure” on the Lady The idea was to enlist the statue in the effort to keep the skies of Empire City clear of enemy planes and airshi+ps ”She'll be able to swat Messerschmitts like mosquitoes!” Pantz crowed Instead, thanks to the usual miscalculation on the part of Dr Pantz, she had, upon awakening, gone off striding across the bay toward Empire City, her spike-crowned electro-head filled with ho a handy giant robot of his own manufacture that he quickly fitted out with an enormous Clark Gable mask, was able to lure her back to her pillar, and then neutralize her using ”superdynanets” But it all made, to the exasperation of the janitor-narrator, an awful mess Not only the island but the entire seaport lay in shambles His brother janitors and sanitation workers were already overburdened cleaning up after the donnybrooks in which the super-beings regularly indulged Hoould they ever e to clean up this latest?
At that moment, an airplane landed on Liberation Island, and a faure in a broad-bri as if she meant business
”That looks like Eleanor Roosevelt,” said Rosa, pointing to the panel in which Joe had drawn a quite flattering version of the First Lady, waving froplank
”She picks up a broo Soon all the women in the town come out with their brooms To help”
”Eleanor Roosevelt,” Rosa said
”I' to a telephone on a nearby desk
”Okay”
”I wonder if she'll speak to et that picture fros I read of her”
”No, Joe, I really don't think she will,” Rosa said ”I'm sorry I don't knoas in Czechoslovakia, but here you can't just call up the president's wife and ask her for a favor”
”Oh,” Joe said He set the receiver back down and stared at his hand, his head bowed
”But, oh, my God” She climbed down from the stool ”Joe!”
”What?”
”My father He knows her slightly Theyfor the WPA”
”Is he allowed to call up the president's wife?”
”Yes, I believe he is Get your hat, we're going homan Harkoo called the White House that afternoon and was told that the First Lady was in New York City With soh his Red connections, Rosa's father ed to track down Mrs Roosevelt, and received a brief appointment to visit her at her apartment on East Eleventh Street, not far from the Harkoo house For fifteen minutes, over tea, Harkoo explained the predicaers Mrs Roosevelt, Rosa's father later reported, had seeh all she said was that she would see what she could do and its passengers Mrs Roosevelt, Rosa's father later reported, had seeh all she said was that she would see what she could do
The Ark of Miriam, Ark of Miriam, her course smoothed by the invisible hand of Eleanor Roosevelt, set sail from Lisbon on the third of December her course smoothed by the invisible hand of Eleanor Roosevelt, set sail fro day, Joe called Rosa and asked her if she could meet him on her lunch break at an address in the West Seventies He wouldn't tell her why, only that he had so for you, too,” she said It was a sht before She wrapped it in paper, tied it with string, and carried it onto the train Shortly afterward, she found herself standing in front of the Josephine, a fifteen-story pile of cool blue-tinged Vermont marble It had pointed parapets and took up more than half of an entire block between West End Avenue and Broadway The doorman was uniformed like a doomed hussar in the retreat fro for her when she walked up, his coat slung over his arht, the sky as blue as a Nash and cloudless but for one lost la tih apart far away to the north, which had struck her in the past as self-ieois, now had a sturdy, sober look to thes filled with serious and thoughtful people working hard to accos She wondered if perhaps she had had enough of Greenwich Village
”What is this all about?” she said, taking Joe's arned the lease,” he said ”Co out? You're ht?” Did you and Saht with Sauys are a good teaeles Okay, he says for three ood oes What's in the package?”
”A present,” she said ”I guess you can hang it in your new apartmerit” new apart to her about aWhen they had a date, he would never tell her where they were going or what they were going to do It was not soto her about aWhen they had a date, he would never tell her where they were going or what they were going to do It was not so ed to communicate he would prefer it if she didn't ask ”This as that he ed to communicate he would prefer it if she didn't ask ”This is is nice” nice”
There was ajapanese carp, and an echoing interior courtyard of vaguely Moorish flavor When the elevator door opened, with a deep and ot out, followed by two s blue woolen suits Joe tipped his hat
”This is for Tho on the elevator ”Isn't it?”
”Ten,” Joe said to the elevator hborhood You know, for mefor me to ”
”For you to raise hi ”That sounds very strange”
”You are going to be like a father to him, you know,” she said And I could be like a mother Just ask ue to say this, but she held back What would she be saying if she did? That she wanted to marry him? For ten years, at least, since she elve or thirteen, Rosa had been declaring roundly to anyone who asked that she had no intention of getting married, ever, and that if she ever did, it would be when she was old and tired of life When this declaration in its various forms had ceased to shock people sufficiently, she had taken to adding that the man she finally married would be no older than twenty-five But lately she had been starting to experience strong, inarticulate feelings of longing, of a desire to be with Joe all the tiage with him in some kind of joint enterprise, in a collaboration that would be be their lives She didn't suppose they needed to get ht not to their lives She didn't suppose they needed to get ht not to ant to to But did she? When her father had gone to see Mrs Roosevelt, he had told the First Lady, explaining his connection to the matter, that one of the children on the shi+p was the brother of the young lected to pass that part of the story on to Joe ”I think it's very sweet of you Sensible and sweet” But did she? When her father had gone to see Mrs Roosevelt, he had told the First Lady, explaining his connection to the matter, that one of the children on the shi+p was the brother of the young lected to pass that part of the story on to Joe ”I think it's very sweet of you Sensible and sweet”
”There are good schools nearby I have an interview for him at the Trinity School which I am told is excellent and takes Jews Deasey said he would help iate where he attended”
”Goodness, you've been ht to know better than to take offense at his secretiveness Keeping things to himself was just his nature; she supposed it hat had drawn hiic in the first place, with its tricks and secrets that ed
”Well, I have a lot of ti for this to happen I've been doing a lot of thinking”
The elevator operator braked the car and hauled the door aside for the at her with a strange, fixed look, and she thought, or perhaps she only wished, that she saw a glint of mischief there
”Ten,” said the operator
”A lot of thinking,” Joe repeated
”Ten, sir,” the elevator man said
In the apart one side, gilded fixtures in the larger of the two bathroo and mathematical There were three bedroo fro; every room had at least one bookshelf built in She visited all the rooining a life in these elegant rooh over this cultivated swath of Manhattan with its Freudian psychoanalysts, first cellists, and appellate-court judges They could all live here, she and Joe and Thomas, and maybe in time there would be another child, imperturbable and fat as a putto
”Okay nohat do you have foranyes in his pockets, but whatever it was ht be concealed under the drape of his coat Or it could be so very, very s to say if he did?
”No,” he said ”You first”
”It's a portrait,” she said ”A portrait of you”
”Another one? I didn't sit for it”
”How odd,” she said teasingly She untied the wrapping and carried the painting over to the mantel
She had done two previous portraits of Joe He sat for the first in shi+rtsleeves and vest, sprawled in a leather chair in the dark-paneled parlor where they had first become acquainted In the piece, his doffed jacket, with a curled newspaper in its hip pocket, hangs froainst the ar wolfhound face cocked a little to one side, the fingers of his right hand lightly pressed to his right tearette in the fingers of his left hand Rosa's brush caught the rime of ash on his lapel, the missed button of his waistcoat, the tender, impatient, defiant expression in his eyes byto convey to the artist, telepathically, that he intends, in an hour or so, to fuck her In the second portrait, Joe is shoorking at the drawing table in his and Sammy's apartment A piece of Bristol board lies before him, partly filled in with panels; careful examination reveals the discernible for with a long slender brush toward a bottle of ink on the taboret beside hiht sixth- or seventh-hand shortly after his arrival in New York, is crusted and constellated with years of splattered paint Joe's sleeves are rolled to the elbow and a few dark coils of hair dangle over his high forehead The end of his necktie can be seen to lie precariously close to a fresh stroke of ink on the paper, and on his cheek he wears an adhesive bandage over some faint pink scratches In this picture, his expression is serene and almost perfectly blank, his attention focused entirely on the bristles of the brush that he is about to dip into the bright black ink
The third portrait of Joe Kavalier was the last painting Rosa ever made, and it differed from the first two in that it was not painted from life It was executed with the same easy but accurate draftsmanshi+p of all her work, but it was a fantasy The style was si the cartoonish, slightly self-conscious naivete of her food pictures In this one, Joe is posed against an indeterround of pale rose, on an ornate carpet He is naked More surprisingly, he is entirely entangled, from head to toe, in heavy le padlocks, cuffs, iron clasps, andirons The weight of all this h, staring out at the vieith a challenging expression His long, ht, his feet spread as if he is ready to spring into action The pose was borrowed froraph in a book about Harry Houdini, with the following crucial differences: unlike Houdini, who in the photo guarded his enitals, with their forlorn expression, though heavily shadoith fur, are plainly visible; the big lock in the middle of his chest is shaped like a hualoshes, sits the figure of the artist herself, holding a golden key
”That's funny,” he said He reached into his trousers pocket ”This is what I have for you” He held out a fist to her, knuckles up She turned the hand over and pried the fingers apart On the pal to need help to do this,” he said ”I hope with all my heart, Rosa, that you ant to help me”
”And what is this the key to?” she said, her voice sharper than she wanted it to be, knowing perfectly well that it was the key to this apart she had been on the verge of asking for herself-that she be allowed to act as asister, to Thomas Kavalier She was disappointed in the sa, and thrilled to the degree that she was horrified by her desire for one
”Like in the painting,” he said, in a kidding way, as if he could see she was upset, and was trying to figure out what tone to adopt with her ”The key to my heart”