The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

It’s the last day of November 1941. Joe receives a letter from Thomas. After eight months in Portugal, the ship that will take Thomas to America is finally cleared for departure. Thomas is now 13 years old.

The following day, Rosa visits Joe at the Empire offices and bursts into tears. Mr. Hoffman, as an afterthought, called the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees to make certain that everything was in order. Mr. Hoffman was told that the chairman of the committee was contemplating denying the children visas for reasons of state security. Joe takes the news surprisingly well. While Rosa is crying on his shoulder, he strokes her hair and repeatedly strikes his lighter. His shoulders are tense and his breathing shallow. Rosa wishes there was something they could do. Joe asks her to look at the new comic he and Sam are working on.

The story is told from the perspective of a custodian at the Statue of Liberation. The man is very upset with the “long-underwear bunch” (382) because, just that morning, he witnessed the Scientific American use the Statue to aid him in defeating enemy airplanes and airships. In the ensuing battle, even though the Scientific American places the Statue of Liberation back in her rightful spot, the island and the entire seaport are heavily damaged. The custodian, his brother, and sanitation workers “were already overburdened cleaning up after the donnybrooks in which the super-beings regularly indulged. How could they ever manage to clean up this latest?” (383). It’s at this moment that a plane lands and the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, steps down. She picks up a broom and begins helping clean up. Soon, all the women in the city are coming to help clean up.

This gives Joe the idea of taking his and his brother’s case directly to the First Lady. Rosa informs Joe that, though she doesn’t know how things worked in Czechoslovakia, one couldn’t just pick up the phone and call the First Lady. Joe is disappointed, but then Rosa remembers that her father once met Mrs. Roosevelt. He contacts Mrs. Roosevelt and explains the situation to her. She is furious and promises to do what she can. The Ark of Miriam, Thomas’s ship, sets sail on December 3.

The next day, Joe has Rosa meet him in front of a nice apartment building in the West Seventies. Joe informs her that he just bought an apartment and wants to show it to her. Joe also has a present for her, he says. Rosa tells Joe that he is going to be like a father to Thomas; he agrees but finds the wording odd. Rosa says to herself that she could be like a mother to Thomas if only Joe would ask her to be; lately, she has been feeling “strong, inarticulate feelings of longing, of a desire to be with Joe all the time” (385).

Joe talks about how there are good schools in the area, and how Deasey has even agreed that he will help get Thomas into Collegiate. The two of them ride the elevator to the 10th floor and enter the apartment. Inside, Rosa shows Joe a painting she has made of him—it is the third portrait of him she has painted, and it is also the last painting she will ever produce. In the painting, Joe is working on his art at his drawing table in his and Sam’s apartment. He is naked and entangled by chains, padlocks, cuffs, iron clasps, and manacles; the painting is reminiscent of a pose by Houdini, though Joe’s genitals are tastefully covered by the chains. There is a big lock in the middle of his chest shaped like a heart, “and on his shoulder, in black overcoat and men’s galoshes, sits the figure of the artist herself, holding a golden key” (388).

Joe presents Rosa with her gift: a brass key. It’s a key to the apartment. He wants her to move in and help with Thomas. He tells her that not only is the key to the apartment, but it is also the key to his heart. Rosa tells Joe that nothing would make her happier than to be with him and help him, but she doesn’t feel it’s best for her to move in, for Thomas’s sake, as “he might not understand” (389). She tells Joe she will be there for as long as he needs her. Joe likes her answer and communicates to her that he believes he will need her for a very long time.

The narrator discusses how most boys, when looking back on their bar mitzvahs, only retain fragmentary recollections of a magician named the Amazing Cavalieri. However, that is not the case for Stanley Konigsberg, “whose bar mitzvah reception marked the last known appearance of the Amazing Cavalieri” (390).

It is the evening of December 6, 1941, at the Hotel Trevi in New York City. Joe has arrived an hour before the show to set up, as usual. He is on top of the world. Thomas is due to arrive in just three more days. Setting up with him is Manny Zehn, the leader of the band the Zehnsations. Zehn thinks Joe is acting strangely and asks him if he’s drunk. Joe answers that he is just excited that his brother is arriving and that Joe is getting married: He has decided to propose to Rosa later that night. Just then, Stanley Konigsberg interrupts and asks Joe if he escapes. Joe informs him that once upon a time he did, but not anymore. Stanley then asks Joe what sort of things he can escape from. “You remind me of someone” (392), Joe replies (392).

That evening, Rosa goes to Joe’s new apartment to start work on a mural. It was her idea, and gift to Thomas, to paint a mural on his bedroom wall. That morning, she learned she is pregnant. 

Rosa has never painted a mural, and she finally decided the theme would be American folk heroes like Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Pecos Bill. She also decided to include an image of Houdini, “that immigrant boy from Central Europe, just to connect the theme of the mural that much more directly to Thomas’s life” (385).

While taking a break, Rosa sees a story in the Herald about a ship filled with refugees that’s sunk off the coast of the Azores. Rosa doesn’t know what to do, but she feels she has to find Joe and takes a cab to the Trevi. When she arrives, Joe has already left. After the performance, Joe was supposed to come to the apartment. The fact that he did not indicates to Rosa that something terrible has happened.

Rosa learns from Stanley that Joe left about two hours ago. She calls Sam; he is out of town. Rosa returns to Stanley and learns that Joe was coerced into doing an escape by Stanley’s parents. Joe planned on escaping from a trunk that would be submerged in the fountain. Stanley tells Rosa that he thinks Joe learned about the sinking of the ship from his Uncle Lou, who happened to mention it while everyone was making their way to the fountain. As the hotel detective was placing his handcuffs on Joe and Stanley tied him up, Joe told everyone to come in after him if he didn’t come up in three minutes.

At two minutes and 58 seconds, Mrs. Konigsberg began to scream, and some men jumped into the fountain to pull Joe out. When they opened the trunk and pulled off the bag covering Joe’s head, his face was red, but his lips were already turning blue. The detective removed the cuffs and noticed that they hadn’t been tampered with in any way. Joe’s face was contorted into a twisted expression that none of the guests would ever forget. Joe thanked the crowd and then ran out of the building.

Rosa needs Sam’s help to find Joe. She calls Sam’s mother, Ethel, and tells her all about Joe and the ship. Ethel promises to track down Sam. Rosa believes that Joe tried to die by suicide. Ethel tells Rosa not to talk wildly and to be patient.

The next day’s Journal-American carries a more detailed, though not fully accurate, story about the sinking of The Ark of Miriam. The article states that the ship was sunk by one of the notorious German U-Boot wolf packs. During his trial, the commander of U-328, Gottfried Halse, produced ample evidence that he had obeyed all of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s rules pertaining to “Prize Regulations,” meaning that he had given the ship ample time to evacuate before sinking. However, a storm had developed during the evacuation and many of the lifeboats capsized.