Part 48 (1/2)
Joe started to argue, but as he did he are that, from theimmensely relieved It had been decided for hiet the ood idea after all He put the car in gear
”Okay,” he said ”I will”
In the course of trying to find his way back out to Long Island, he et very effectively lost in Queens He was nearly to the old World's Fair grounds before he realized his mistake and turned around
After a while, he found hireen stretch of cenized as Cypress Hills To hills like sheep in a Claude Lorrain He had been here once, years before, soon after his return to the city It had been Halloween night, and a group of the boys from Tannen's back room had persuaded hirave of Harry Houdini, as buried here in a Jewish cemetery called Machpelah They had taken sandwiches and flasks and a ther about Mrs Houdini's surprisingly involved love life after her husband's death and waiting for the spirit of the Mysteriarch to appear, as Houdini had pro turn out to be feasible, it would At the break of dawn on All Hallows' Day, they had joked and whistled and pretended to be disappointed at Houdini's failure to show, but in Joe's case at least-and he suspected it had been so for some of the others-the show of disappointment had only served to mask the actual disappointment that he felt Joe did not in the least believe in an afterlife, but he genuinely wished that he could An old Christian kook in the public library in Halifax had once attereat assurance, that it was hitler, and not the Allies, who had liberated the Jews Not since his father's death-not since the day he had first heard a radio report about the wonder ghetto at Terezin-had Joe stood so near to consolation All he would have needed to do, to find comfort in the Christian's words, was to believe
He was able to find Machpelah again without too loon that reh the gates and parked the car Houdini's toest andwith the general modesty, even austerity, of the other headstones and slabs It was a curious structure, like a spacious balcony detached from the side of a palace, a letter C of marble balustrade with pillars like serifs at either end, enclosing a long low bench The pillars had inscriptions in English and Hebrew At the center, above the laconic inscription houdini, a bust of the lateas if he had just licked a battery A curious statue of a robed, weeping woainst it in a kind of eternal grieving swoon; Joe found it quite gauche and disturbing There were nosegays and wreaths scattered around in various states of decay, and many of the surfaces were littered with small stones, left by family, Joe supposed, or by Jewish ads were all buried here: everyone but his late wife, Bess, who had been refused admission because she was an unconverted Catholic Joe read the prolix tributes to the mother and the rabbi father that Houdini had quite obviously composed himself He wondered what he would have put on his own parents' toiven the opportunity Nah
He started picking up the stones that people had left, and arranged the, as it were, of the balcony, in lines and circles and Stars of David He noticed that someone had slipped a little note into a fissure in the es salted here and there, wherever there was a seam or a crack He took them out and unrolled the little strips and read what people had written They all seees left by various devotees of spiritualisiveness to the great debunker for having oppugned the Truth that he had, by now, undoubtedly discovered After a while, Joe sat down on the bench, a safe distance away fro out her eyes He took a deep breath, and shook his head, and reached out soainst some remnant of Harry Houdini or Thoain and again by hope, but he would never be capable of belief
Presently, he made a pillow of his coat and lay back on the coldsurf of traffic on the Inter-borough Parkway, the interh of airbrakes from a bus on Jamaica Avenue The sounds seeray sky that he was looking up at, intermittently bruised with blue He closed his eyes for a moment, just to listen to the sky for a little while At a certain point, he becarass beside hireen field-the sun was shi+ning now, somehow-and the hillsides with their flocks of white sheep, and saw, co toward him, in his cutaway coat, his old teacher Bernard Kornbluht and critical His beard was tied up in a net
”Lieber Meister” Josef said, reaching toward hiulf that separated thee ”What should I do?” Josef said, reaching toward hiulf that separated thee ”What should I do?”
Kornblu his eyes a little as if this was a the more stupid questions he had ever been asked
”For God's sake,” he said ”Go home”
When Joe walked in the front door of 127 Lavoisier Drive, he was nearly knocked off his feet Rosa dangled by one arm from his neck and, with the other, punched him on the arm, hard Her jaas set, and he could see that she was refusing to let herself cry To, then stepped aardly away, backing into the hi-fi cabinet and upsetting a pewter vase of driedall at once Where have you been? Why didn't you call? What's in the box? Hoould you like sooodness” He saw that they thought he had left them-had stolen the family car! He felt ashamed to be worthy, in their minds, of such suspicion ”I drove to the city What box? What-”
Joe recognized it right aith the ease and unsurprise of so inside of it, in his drea companion, his other brother, had survived the war
”What's in there?” Tommy said ”Is it a trick?”
Joe approached the casket He stretched out his hand toward it and gave it a little push It tipped an inch and then settled again on its end
”It's so pretty damned heavy,” Rosa said ”Whatever it is”
That was how Joe knew that soht the box with the Golem inside had felt as he and Kornbluasse 26, like a coffin full of birds, like a suit of bones The dreadful thought that there ain be a body nestled in there with the Golem dashed across his mind He leaned his face in a little nearer to the box At soed observation panel that Kornbluuards had been padlocked shut
”Why are you s it?” Rosa said
”Is it food?” said Tommy
Joe did not want to say what it was He could see that they were half-insane with curiosity, now that they had witnessed his reaction to the box, and that quite naturally they expected him not only to tell theht now This he was reluctant to do The box was the same, of that he had no doubt, but as to itsThey could be souy it was your chains,” Rosa said
Joe tried to think of absolutely the most dull substance or ite it was a load of old school exa about chains
”It's right,” he said ”You must be clairvoyant”
”It's really your chains?”
”Just a bunch of iron”
”Wow! Can we open it now?” Tommy said ”I really want to see that”
Joe and Rosa went into the garage to look for Sa, but Rosa said, ”Stay here”
They found the toolbox right away, but she would not let him past her back into the house ”What's in the box?” she said
”You don't believe it's chains?” He knew that he was not a good liar
”Why would you smell smell chains?” chains?”
”I don't knohat's in there,” Joe said ”It's not what it used to be”
”What did it used to be?”
”It used to be the Goleue”
It had always been rare to catch Rosa without a reply She just stepped aside, looking up at hio back into the house, not right away
”Let me ask you this,” Joe said ”If you had a ive it to Sammy so that he could buy Euess that's the way it has to be”
She worked on an answer for athe money a dozen different ways Finally, she shook her head
”I don't know,” she said as though it hurt her to admit it ”The Escapist was kind of the croels”
”That is what I was thinking”
”Why were you thinking about that?”
He didn't answer He carried the toolbox back into the living room and, with help fro the coffin to the ground He lifted the padlock, hefted it, tapped it tith his index finger The picks that Kornbluiven him-until now the only relic from that time which he still possessed-were in his valise It was a cheap-enough lock, and with a little effort he would no doubt be able to get it off He let the lock drop back against the hasp and took a crowbar out of the toolbox As he did so, it occurred to hied to find hi Island had see that it had been following hiht up to him Joe studied some of the labels pasted to the box and saw that it had crossed the ocean only a feeeks before How had it knohere to find hi tabs on his movements?
He went around to the side opposite the padlock and dug with the teeth of the crowbar into the seam of the lid, just under a nail head The nail whined, there was a snap like a joint popping, and then the entire lid sprang open as if pushed froreen smell of mud and river scum, with a stench of suret
”Dirt,” To anxiously at his mother
”Joe,” Rosa said, ”that isn't-those aren't ashes'' ashes''
The entire box was filled, to a depth of about seven inches, with a fine powder, pigeon-gray and opalescent, that Joe recognized at once from boyhood excursions as the silty bed of the Moldau He had scraped it from his shoes a thousand times and brushed it from the seat of his trousers The speculations of those who feared that the Golem, reht degrade had been proved correct
Rosa came over and knelt beside Joe She put her arm around his shoulder ”Joe?” she said