The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Tracy Bacon is with Sam on his way to his mother’s. Sam is drunk and can’t quite remember when he invited Tracy to come along. The two of them, it turns out, wound up in a bar at the St. Regis, where Bacon quickly moved the conversation from the Escapist to his own personal history. Despite Bacon’s ravishing good looks, Sam realizes that at his core, Bacon is lonely.

Sam rings the doorbell and playfully warns Tracy Bacon about his mother. Sam is amazed at how relaxed and suave Tracy is around his mother. Even though Sam describes his mother’s cooking as “a fur muff, a dozen clothespins, and some old dish towels boiled with carrots” (310), Tracy cleans his plate. Sam feels Bacon is making him look bad. After the meal, Sam and Ethel discuss Joe and the fact that Thomas is on his way to America. They talk about Joe and Rosa. Sam mentions that he would like to find someone, too. His mother says she would like that as well. Ethel asks Sam how Tracy did at the rehearsal earlier. Sam says he’ll do fine. Ethel asks, “Will he?” (313), and then looks Sam straight in the eye for the first time all evening.

Joe is going to perform as the Amazing Cavalieri at the bar mitzvah of Rosa’s second cousin, Leon Douglas Saks.

Rosa wakes up from a post-coital nap and catches Joe admiring himself in the mirror, naked. She likes that he is admiring his physique until she realizes that he is actually rehearsing magic tricks. Joe is nervous about performing. He doesn’t want Harkoo to think poorly of him if he doesn’t perform well, and Rosa is touched that her father’s opinion means so much to Joe, which she takes as “further evidence of his belonging to her” (315).

Joe is a careless performer, making little mistakes here and there. He complains that he isn’t getting any better at magic. Rosa reminds him that he’s better than he used to be, and adds, “with just a hint of self-servingness,” that “everything’s much better, isn’t it” (317).

When Rosa first met Joe, he was a solitary, forlorn figure, wounded by his constant internal conflict with the Nazis. But he has changed, she tells herself, and she has changed him. Even though Joe continued to fight, he did it much more in the pages of his work. Luna Moth’s artwork is much different from the others, and it’s thanks to Rosa’s father having introduced Joe to Surrealist artists, especially the work of Windsor McKay.

Rosa continues her art as well, but it takes a back seat to supporting Joe in his work and helping to get Thomas to America. Regardless, she will soon be recognized as a genius.

Just as Rosa and Joe are getting intimate, Rosa’s father knocks on the door, looking for Joe. He has a suit for Joe, one made to look very much like the Escapist’s uniform, replete with a lapel pin in the shape of a golden key. There is even a mask to go with it. Rosa is pleased. Joe is, too, and clumsily embraces Harkoo. Harkoo proposes they toast to the Amazing Cavalieri, mentioning, with Rosa’s okay, that there is always room for another in his family. “I already have a family” (321), Joe says. There is a moment of disquietude. Joe tries to save the moment, thanking Harkoo for the suit, for everything, for Rosa. He thinks he’s succeeded, but Harkoo quickly leaves, and Joe and Rosa are “left alone, on the bed, naked, staring at the empty blue suit” (321).

Joe receives the last letter he will ever get from his mother. It is redacted in areas. Joe’s mother tells him that, with Thomas gone, she feels she has nothing left to live for. She has begun work again on her book, Reinterpretation of Dreams. She then tells Josef that he must move on with his life and forget all about her. She wants him and Thomas to be happy. She ends the letter telling him that he is in her thoughts every waking hour of the day, and in her dreams as well.

Joe carries the letter around in his new tuxedo, unread and unopened, for days, afraid of the letter’s contents. He thinks about how he is in love with Rosa. Without his realizing it, Joe’s thoughts have turned away from his family in Prague, though he still doesn’t know his mother has asked him to do exactly that.

Joe gets to the bar mitzvah early to surreptitiously set up some of his tricks. Rosa asks Joe if they are going to have a bar mitzvah someday. When Joe grasps that Rosa is talking about having children, he tells her he can’t be sure if he wants children at all, given the world they are living in. She brushes the conversation aside. She asks if Joe ever had a bar mitzvah. He tells her his family wasn’t religious, then realizes he used the past tense and corrects himself. Rosa tells him her family isn’t religious either. She then sees Joe extract his mother’s letter from his jacket. She wants to know what it is, and how long he’s had it.

As he prepares for his act, Joe hears a cry and sees, just in time, the white coattails of a waiter dashing out of the ballroom.