“All right, then, so he can fly.” Sammy looked at Joe. “Joe?”
Joe glanced up briefly from his work. “Why.”
“Why?”
Sammy nodded. “Why can he fly? Why does he want to? And how come he uses his power of flight to fight crime? Why doesn’t he just become the world’s best second-story man?”
Davy rolled his eyes. “What is this, comic book catechism? I don’t know.”
“Take one thing at a time. How does he do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying you don’t know.”
“He has big wings.”
“Think of something else. A rocket pack? Antigravity boots? An autogyro hat? Mythological powers of the winds? Interstellar dust? Blood transfusion from a bee? Hydrogen in his veins?”
“Slow down, slow down,” Davy said. “Jesus, Sam.”
“I’m good at this shit. Are you scared?”
“Just embarrassed for you.”
“Take a number. Okay, it’s a fluid. An antigravity fluid in his veins, he has this little machine he wears on his chest that pumps the stuff into him.”
“He does.”
“Yeah, he needs the stuff to stay alive, see? The flying part is just a, like an unexpected side benefit. He’s a scientist. A doctor. He was working on some kind of, say, artificial blood. For the battlefield, you know. Synth-O-Blood, it’s called. Maybe it’s, shit, I don’t know, maybe it’s made out of ground-up iron meteorites from outer space. Because blood is iron-based. Whatever. But then some criminal types, no, some enemy spies, they break into his laboratory and try to steal it. When he won’t let them, they shoot him and his girl and leave them for dead. It’s too late for the girl, okay, how sad, but our guy manages to get himself hooked up to this pump thing just before he dies. I mean, he does die, medically speaking, but this stuff, this liquid meteorite, it brings him back from the very brink. And when he comes to—”
“He can fly!” Davy looked happily around the room.
“He can fly, and he goes after the spies that killed his girl, and now he can really do what he always wanted to, which was help the forces of democracy and peace. But he can never forget that he has a weakness, that without his Synth-O-Blood pump, he’s a dead man. He can never stop being … being …” Sammy snapped his fingers, searching for a name.
“Almost Dead Flying Guy,” suggested Jerry.
“Blood Man,” said Julie.
“The Swift,” Marty Gold said. “Fastest bird in the world.”
“I draw really nice wings,” said Davy O’Dowd. “Nice and feathery.”
“Oh, all right, damn it,” Sammy said. “They can just be there for show. We’ll call him the Swift.”
“I like it.”
“He can never stop being the Swift,” Sammy said. “Not for one goddamned minute of the day.” He stopped and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His throat was sore and his lips were dry and he felt as if he had been talking for a week. Jerry, Marty, and Davy all looked at one another, and then Jerry got down from his stool and went into his bedroom. When he came out, he was carrying an old Remington typewriter.
“When you’re done with Davy’s, do mine,” he said.
Jerry did manage to slip out for an hour, late Saturday, to return Rosa Saks’s purse to her, and then again on Sunday afternoon, for two hours, returning with the crooked mark on his neck of the teeth of a girl named Mae. As for Frank Pantaleone, he disappeared sometime around midnight on Friday and eventually turned up fully dressed in the empty bathtub, behind the shower curtain, drawing board against his knees. When he finished a page, he would bellow out, “Boy!” and Sammy would run it upstairs to Joe, who did not look up from the shining trail of his brush until just before two o’clock on Monday morning.
“Beauteeful,” said Sammy. He had been finished with his scripts for several hours but had stayed awake, drinking coffee until his eyeballs quivered, so that Joe would have company while he finished the cover he had designed. This was the first word either had said for at least an hour. “Let’s go see if there’s anything left to eat.”
Joe climbed down from his stool and carried the cover over to the foot-high pile of illustration board and tracing paper that would be the first issue of their comic book. He hitched up his trousers, worked his head around a few times on the creaky pivot of his neck, and followed Sammy over to the kitchen. Here they found and proceeded to devour a light supper consisting of the thrice-picked-over demi-carcass of a by now quite hoary chicken, nine soda crackers, one sardine, some milk, as well as a yellow doorstop of adamantine cheese they found wedged, under the milk bottle, between the slats of the shelf outside the window. Frank Pantaleone and Julie Glovsky had long since gone home to Brooklyn; Jerry, Davy, and Marty were asleep in their rooms. The cousins chewed their snack in silence. Joe stared out the window onto the blasted backyard, black with ice. His heavy-lidded eyes were ringed with deep shadows. He pressed his high forehead against the cold glass of the window.
“Where am I?” he said.
“In New York City,” said Sammy.
“New York City.” He thought it over. “New York City, U.S.A.” He closed his eyes. “That is not possible.”
“You all right?” Sammy put his hand on Joe’s shoulder. “Joe Kavalier.”
“Sam Clay.”
Sammy smiled. Once again, as when he had first enclosed the pair of newly minted American names in a neat inked rectangle of partnership on page 1 of the Escapist’s debut, Sammy’s belly suffused with an uncomfortable warmth, and he felt his cheeks color. It was not merely the blush of pride, nor of the unacknowledged delight he took in thus emblematizing his growing attachment to Joe; he was also moved by a grief, half affectionate, half ashamed, for the loss of Professor von Clay that he had never before allowed himself to feel. He gave Joe’s shoulder a squeeze.
“We’ve done something great, Joe, do you realize that?”
“Big money,” said Joe. His eyes opened.
“That’s right,” said Sammy. “Big money.”
“Now I remember.”
In addition to the Escapist and the Black Hat, their book now boasted the opening adventure, inked and lettered by Marty Gold, in the career of a third hero, Jerry Glovsky’s Snowman, essentially the Green Hornet in a blue-and-white union suit, complete with a Korean houseboy, a gun that fired “freezing gas,” and a roadster that Sammy’s text described as “ice-blue like the Snowman’s evil-detecting eyes.” Jerry had managed to rein in his bigfoot style, letting it emerge usefully in the rendering of Fan, the bucktoothed but hard-fighting houseboy, and of the Snowman’s slavering, claw-fingered, bemonocled adversary, the dreaded Obsidian Hand. They also had Davy O’Dowd’s first installment of the Swift, with his lush, silky Alex Raymond wings, and Radio Wave, drawn by Frank Pantaleone and inked by Joe Kavalier with, Sammy was forced to admit, mixed results. This was Sammy’s own fault. He had yielded, in the creation of Radio Wave, to Frank’s experience and prowess with a pencil, not daring to offer him assistance in the development or plotting of the strip. This act of deference resulted in a dazzlingly drawn, tastefully costumed, sumptuously muscled, and beautifully inked hero with no meddling girlfriend, quarrelsome sidekick, ironic secret identity, bumbling police commissioner, Achilles’ heel, corps of secret allies, or personal quest for revenge; only the hastily explained, well-rendered, and dubious ability to transmit himself through the air “on the invisible rails of the airwaves,” and leap unexpectedly from the grille of a Philco into the hideout of a gang of jazz-loving jewel thieves. It was soon apparent to Sammy that once they were wise to him, all the crooks in Radio Wave’s hometown need simply turn off their radios in order to thrive unmolested, but by the time he had a chance to look the thing over, Joe had already inked half of it.
Julie had done a nice job on his Hat story, illustrating one of Sammy’s retooled, custom-fitted Shadow plots in a flat, slightly cartoony style not too different from that of Superman’s Joe Sh
uster, only with better buildings and cars; and Sammy was satisfied with the Escapist adventure, though Joe’s layouts were, to be honest, a little static and overly pretty, and then rushed and even scratchy-looking at the very end.
But the undisputed glory of the thing was the cover. It was not a drawing but a painting, executed in tempera on heavy stock, in a polished illustrator’s style, at once idealized and highly realistic, that reminded Sammy of James Montgomery Flagg but which Joe had actually derived, he said, from a German illustrator named Kley. Unlike the great anti-Nazi covers to come, there was no hullabaloo of tanks or burning airplanes, no helmeted minions or screaming females. There were just the two principals, the Escapist and Hitler, on a neoclassical platform draped with Nazi flags against a blue sky. It had taken Joe only a few minutes to get the Escapist’s pose right—legs spread, big right fist arcing across the page to deliver an immortal haymaker—and hours to paint in the highlights and shadows that made the image seem so real. The dark blue fabric of the Escapist’s costume was creased with palpable pleats and wrinkles, and his hair—they had decided to do the kerchief as a mask that left the hair exposed—glinted like gold and at the same time looked messy and windblown. His musculature was lean and understated, believable, and the veins in his arm rippled with the strain of the blow. As for Hitler, he came flying at you backward, right-crossed clean out of the painting, head thrown back, forelock a-splash, arms flailing, jaw trailing a long red streamer of teeth. The violence of the image was startling, beautiful, strange. It stirred mysterious feelings in the viewer, of hatred gratified, of cringing fear transmuted into smashing retribution, which few artists working in America, in the fall of 1939, could have tapped so easily and effectively as Josef Kavalier.
Joe nodded and squeezed Sammy’s hand in return. “You’re right,” he said. “Maybe we done something good.”
Joe leaned against the wall of the kitchenette, then slid down until he hit the floor. Sammy sat down next to him and handed him the last saltine. Joe took it but, instead of eating it, began snapping off tiny pieces of cracker and tossing them out into the greater Pit. His nose in profile was a billowing sail; his hair descended in exhausted coils over his forehead. He seemed to be a million miles away, and Sammy imagined that he was wistfully recalling some part of his homeland, some marvel he had seen long ago, an advertising jingle for pomade, a dancing chicken in a gimcrack museum, his father’s ear-whiskers, the lace hem of his mother’s slip. All at once, like the paper flower inside one of Empire Novelty’s Instant Miracle Garden capsules, the consciousness of everything his cousin had left behind bloomed in Sammy’s heart, bleeding dye.
Then Joe said, half to himself, “Yes, I would like to see again that Rosa Saks.”
Sammy laughed. Joe looked at him, too tired to inquire, and Sammy was too tired to explain. Another few minutes passed in silence. Sammy’s chin dropped down onto his chest. After bobbing there for a moment, his head bounced up again and he snapped open his eyes.
“Was that the first woman you ever saw naked?”
“No,” said Joe. “I drew models at the art school.”
“Right.”
“Have you seen?”
There was more implicit in this question, naturally, than the mere observation of a woman without her clothes. Sammy had long ago prepared a detailed account of the loss of his virginity, the moving tale of an encounter under the boardwalk with Roberta Blum on her last night in New York City, the eve of her departure for college, but he found he lacked the energy to recount it. So he just said, “No.”
When Marty Gold wandered upstairs an hour later, in search of a desperate glass of milk to counteract the effects of the coffee he had drunk, he found the cousins asleep on the floor of the kitchenette, half in and half out of each other’s arms. Sleepless, ulcerated, Marty was in a very ill mood, and it is to his lasting credit that, instead of throwing a fit at their having violated his prohibition on sleeping in the apartment, he threw an army blanket over Joe and Sammy, one that had returned with the Waczukowski son from Ypres, and warmed the five toes of Al Capp. Then he brought in the bottle of milk from the windowsill and carried it with him back to bed.
MONDAY DAWNED as the most beautiful morning in the history of New York City. The sky was as blue as the ribbon on a prize-winning lamb. Atop the Chrysler Building, the streamlined gargoyles gleamed like a horn section. Many of the island’s 6,011 apple trees were heavy with fruit. There was an agrarian tinge of apples and horse dung in the air. Sammy whistled “Frenesi” all the way across town and into the lobby of the Kramler Building. As he whistled, he entertained a fantasy in which he featured, some scant years hence, as the owner of Clay Publications, Inc., putting out fifty titles a month, pulp to highbrow, with a staff of two hundred and three floors in Rockefeller Center. He bought Ethel and Bubbie a house out on Long Island, way out in the sticks, with a vegetable garden. He hired a nurse for Bubbie, someone to bathe her and sit with her and mash her pills up in a banana. Someone to give his mother a break. The nurse was a stocky, clean-cut fellow named Steve. He played football on Saturdays with his brothers and their friends. He wore a leather helmet and a sweatshirt that said ARMY. On Saturdays, Sammy left his polished granite and chromium office and took the train out to visit them, feasting in his private dining car on turtle meat, the most abominated and unclean of all, which the Mighty Molecule had once sampled in Richmond and never to his dying day forgotten. Sammy hung his hat on the wall of the charming, sunny Long Island cottage, kissed his mother and grandmother, and invited Steve to play hearts and have a cigar. Yes, on this last beautiful morning of his life as Sammy Klayman, he was feeling dangerously optimistic.
“Did you bring me a Superman?” Anapol said without preamble when Sammy and Joe walked into his office.
“Wait till you see,” said Sammy.
Anapol made room on his desk. They opened the portfolios one after another, and piled on the pages.
“How much did you do?” Anapol said, lifting an eyebrow.
“We did a whole book,” said Sammy. “Boss, allow me to present to you”—he deepened his voice and flourished his hands in the direction of the pile—“the debut issue of Empire Comics’ premier title, Masked—”
“Empire Comics.”
“Yeah, I was thinking.”
“Not Racy.”
“Maybe it’s better.”
Anapol fingered his Gibraltar chin. “Empire Comics.”
“And their premier title …” Sammy lifted the sheet of tracing paper on Joe’s painting. “Masked Man Comics.”
“I thought it was going to be called Joy Buzzer or Whoopee Cushion.”
“Is that what you want to call it?”
“I want to sell novelties,” said Anapol. “I want to move radios.”
“Radio Comics, then.”
“Amazing Midget Radio Comics,” Joe said, clearly under the impression that it sounded very fine.
“I like it,” Anapol said. He put on his glasses and leaned down to examine the cover. “He’s a blond. All right. He’s hitting someone. That’s good. What’s his name?”
“His name’s the Escapist.”
“The Escapist.” He frowned. “He’s hitting Hitler.”
“How about that.”
Anapol grunted. He picked up the first page, read the first two panels of the story, then scanned the rest. Quickly, he scanned the next two pages. Then he gave up.
“You know I have no patience with nonsense,” said the Northeast’s leading wholesaler of chattering windup mandibles. He put the pages aside. “I don’t like it. I don’t get it.”
“What do you mean? How can you not get it? He’s a superhuman escape artist. No cuffs can hold him. No lock is secure. Coming to the rescue of those who toil in the chains of tyranny and injustice. Houdini, but mixed with Robin Hood and a little bit of Albert Schweitzer.”
“I can see you have a knack for this,” said Anapol, “by the way. I’m not saying that’s a good thing.” His
large, woebegone features drew tight, and he looked as if his breakfast were repeating on him. He smells money, thought Sammy. “On Friday, Jack talked to his distributor, Seaboard News. Turns out Seaboard’s looking for a Superman, too. And we’re not the first ones they’ve heard from.” He hit the switch that buzzed his secretary. “I want Jack.” He picked up the phone. “Everybody’s trying to get in on this costumed-character thing. We’ve got to jump on it before the bubble goes pop.”
“I already have seven guys lined up, boss,” said Sammy. “Including Frank Pantaleone, who just sold a strip to King Features.” This was nearly true. “And Joe here. You see what kind of work he can do. How about that cover?”
“Punching Adolf Hitler,” Anapol said, inclining his head doubtfully. “I just don’t know about that. Hello, Jack? Yeah. That’s right. Okay.” He hung up. “I don’t see Superman getting mixed up in politics. Not that I personally would mind seeing somebody clean Hitler’s clock.”
“That’s the point, boss,” said Sammy. “Lots of people wouldn’t mind. When they see this—”
Anapol waved the controversy away. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Sit down. Stop talking. Why can’t you be a nice, quiet kid like your cousin here?”
“You asked me …”
“And now I’m asking you to stop. That’s why a radio has a switch. Here.” He pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out his humidor. “You did good. Have a cigar.” Sammy and Joe each took one, and Anapol set fire to the twenty-cent lonsdales with the silver Zippo that had been presented to him as a token of gratitude by general subscription of the International Szymanowski Society. “Sit down.” They sat down. “We’ll see what George thinks.”
Sammy leaned back, letting out one vainglorious swallowtail cloud of blue smoke. Then he sat forward. “George? George who? Not George Deasey?”
“No, George Jessel. What do you think, of course George Deasey. He’s the editor, isn’t he?”
“But I thought … you said—” Sammy’s protest was interrupted by a fit of severe coughing. He stood up, leaned on Anapol’s desk, and tried to fight down the spasm of his lungs. Joe patted him on the back. “Mr. Anapol—I thought I was going to be the editor.”