Part 44 (1/2)
”A lie to cover a lie”
”I asked Joe about Orson Welles,” Saarettes, and Sas crossed, facing him Her stomach hurt; that was nerves Nerves, and the i all at once, toppling like a row of painted flats She had i trucks on a lonely road but drowned in reed in a drawer in a ue, killed in a jail riot, and in any nu to defenestration She could not help it She had a catastrophic iination; an air of iuessed at the presence of violence in the story of Joe's disappearance (though she hadof the tale) One heard uilt,” as it was called-a the more fortunate relatives of those who had died in the camps Whenever Rosa read or was told of such a case, she could not prevent herself fro the same act, by the saas And every newspaper account of somebody's ill fate in the hinterlands-the man she had read about just yesterday tue of San Francisco-she recast with Joe in the lead Bear e of a bus full of schoolchildren (he was at the wheel)-the edy was too baroque or see Joe into it And she had lived daily, for several years noith the pain of knowing-knowing-all fantasy aside, that Joe really would never be coet hold, now, of the apparently simple idea that Joe Kavalier, secret life and all, was asleep on her couch, in her living roohan of Ethel Klayman's
”No,” she said ”I don't think he's out of his mind You know? I just don't know if there's a sane reaction to what hewhat happened to his fao to work, you have a catch in the yard with the kid on Sunday afternoon How sane is that? Just to go on planting bulbs and drawing co all the same old crap as if none of it had happened?” reaction, and o to work, you have a catch in the yard with the kid on Sunday afternoon How sane is that? Just to go on planting bulbs and drawing co all the same old crap as if none of it had happened?”
”Good point,” Sa profoundly uninterested in the question He worked his legs up toward his chest and laid the legal pad against theh with this conversation As a rule, they tended to avoid questions like ”How sane are we?” and ”Do our lives have ?” The need for avoidance was acute and apparent to both of them
”What is that?” she said
”Weird Planet” He did not lift his pencil froalaxy Mapping the far fringes” While he spoke, he did not look at her, or interrupt the steady progress across the ruled lines of the tiny bold block letters he produced, regular and neat, as if he had a typewriter hand He liked to talk through his plots for her, coreild tufts in hishe's ever seen And he's seen it all The beehive cities of Deneba The lily-pad cities of Lyra The people here are ten feet tall, beautiful golden hus They welco is on their , one iuy wakes up in his nice big bed, the entire city is shaking He hears this terrible bellowing, raging like soe electric flashes It's all coe he had filled, folded it over, plastered it down Went on ”The next day everybody acts like nothing happened They tell hiuy has to find out He's an explorer It's his job So he sneaks into this one huge, deserted palace and looks around In the highest tower, a iant Twenty feet tall, huge wings, golden like the others but with ragged hair, big long beard In chains Giant atomic chains” He did not lift his pencil froalaxy Mapping the far fringes” While he spoke, he did not look at her, or interrupt the steady progress across the ruled lines of the tiny bold block letters he produced, regular and neat, as if he had a typewriter hand He liked to talk through his plots for her, coreild tufts in hishe's ever seen And he's seen it all The beehive cities of Deneba The lily-pad cities of Lyra The people here are ten feet tall, beautiful golden hus They welco is on their , one iuy wakes up in his nice big bed, the entire city is shaking He hears this terrible bellowing, raging like soe electric flashes It's all coe he had filled, folded it over, plastered it down Went on ”The next day everybody acts like nothing happened They tell hiuy has to find out He's an explorer It's his job So he sneaks into this one huge, deserted palace and looks around In the highest tower, a iant Twenty feet tall, huge wings, golden like the others but with ragged hair, big long beard In chains Giant atomic chains”
She waited while he waited for her to ask
”And?” she said finally
”We're in heaven, this planet,” said Sam
”I'm not sure I-”
”It's God”
”Okay”
”God is a o Just before He, you know Created the universe”
It was Rosa's turn to say, ”I like it Does He, what? I' he eats the spaceman?”
”He does”
”Peels him like a banana”
”You want to draw it?”
She reached out and laid a hand on his cheek It arm and still dewy froertips She wondered how long it had been since she had last touched his face
”Saet this down”
She reached out for the pencil and arrested its ht her; there was a tiny creaking of splinters, and the pencil began to bend Finally, it snapped in two, splitting lengthwise She handed hi like et him off?”
”I told you”
”My father called the mayor's mother,” Rosa said ”Who was able to manipulate the criminal-justice system of New York City Which she did out of her deep love of Rene Magritte”
”Apparently”
”Bullshi+t”
He shrugged, but she kneas lying He had been lying to her steadily, and with her approval, for years It was a single, continuous lie, the deepest kind of lie possible in a e: the one that need never be told, because it will never be questioned Every once in a while, however, ss like this one would break off and drift across their course, mementos of the trackless continent of lies, the blank spot on their et hi to get the truth out of himan in Casablanca, Casablanca, round The lies were for her protection as well as his round The lies were for her protection as well as his
”I talked to the arresting officer,” Sa steadily at her ”Detective Lieber”
”You spoke to hiuy”
”That's lucky”
”We're going to have lunch”
Sa lunch, on and off, with a dozen men over the past dozen years or so They rarely displayed any last names in his conversation; they were just Bob or Jies of Rosa's consciousness, hang around for six ue ray suit, then vanish as quickly as he had come Rosa always assumed that these friendshi+ps of Sammy's-the only relations, since Joe's enlistment, that merited the name-went no further than a lunch table at Le Marmiton or Laurent It was one of her fundamental assumptions
”Well then, maybe Daddy can help you out with this Senate committee, too,” Rosa said ”I'll bet Estes Kefauver is a terrific Max Ernst fan”
”Maybe we should just get hold of Max Ernst,” Saet”
”Are they calling in everyone?” everyone?” Rosa said Rosa said
Sa not to look worried, but she could tell that he was ”I made some calls,” he said ”Gaines and I see”
Bill Gaines was the publisher and chief pontiff of Entertainuy, excitable and voluble the way that Sammy hen the subject ork-and, like Sammy, he harbored ambitions His comic books had literary pretensions and strove to find readers ould appreciate their irony, their humor, their bizarre and pious brand of liberal ruesos abounded Awful people did terrible things to their horrible loved ones and friends Rosa had never liked Gaines or his books very ulars, refined and elegant in both print and person and a daring manipulator of panels
”Some of your stuff is pretty violent, Saht not be the stabbings and vivisections,” Sa his lips, ”At least not only that”
She waited
”There's, well, there's, sort of a whole chapter on me in Seduction of the Innocent” Seduction of the Innocent”
”There is?”
”Part of a chapter Several pages”
”And you never toldto read the daured you didn't want to know”