Outside the train window, the early morning mist was rising from the river and rolling over the land so that the hills seemed to be smoking. Anatole held his breath. “Hold your breath when you pass a graveyard,” the kids on the school bus always chanted, “or you’ll be there soon.” But he could not hold it long enough to pass this one.
“Is that Himmel Hill?” asked a nun seated across the aisle, and she pointed out Anatole’s window.
“Sure is,” said the conductor. “We don’t stop there if we can help it.”
Then they rushed into total darkness. Anatole’s mouth felt dry, and his father’s words, as he waved good-bye, came back to him: “If Uncle Terrible isn’t there when the train pulls in, call your mother and me right away.”
Anatole opened his knapsack, took out his comics, and counted them. Six comics: Thor, Spiderman, Captain America, The Legion of Superheroes, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk. All in mint condition. Uncle Terrible would accept them, read them, and return them to Anatole. And maybe he would give Anatole some of the comics he bought for himself.
The train stopped so abruptly that everyone lurched forward. There was a general scramble for suitcases. Anatole clutched his knapsack and followed the nun into the aisle, where a throng of passengers was moving slowly toward the door.
“You have quite a collection of comics,” she observed, smiling down at him.
“They’re not mine,” said Anatole. “They’re a present for Uncle Terrible.”
The nun stared at him. “How old is your uncle?”
“He’s not my uncle. He’s a family friend. And he’s—grown up,” added Anatole, realizing that he did not know Uncle Terrible’s age.
“What did you say your friend’s name was?” she asked.
“Uncle Terrible. Because”—and now it was Anatole’s turn to smile—“because he’s so terribly nice.”
Anatole watched her step down to the platform and disappear into the crowd of strangers, and suddenly he felt he had lost his last friend. He touched his back pocket to check on his glasses. “Four eyes, four eyes,” the kids at school called him. He had quit wearing them after that, but he always carried them.
“Is someone meeting you?” asked the conductor as he helped Anatole down the steps.
“Yes. No—I—”
Among the bustle of passengers getting off, somebody was hurrying down the platform toward the train and combing his thick black hair with his fingers: a large man, in faded jeans, a tweed jacket, a shirt as red as a fire truck, and rainbow suspenders, into which he had tucked his black beard like an ascot.
“Uncle Terrible!”
The man lurched forward, seized Anatole under the arms, and lifted him into a hug. His beard was as soft as a cat and smelled of cigars.
“Thank goodness you’ve come,” said Uncle Terrible. “The apartment is like a tomb. An Egyptian tomb, crammed with treasures. This morning I actually lost myself between the kitchen and the bedroom. Anatole, where would you look for your Self if you lost it?”
He took Anatole’s hand as they walked so that they would not be parted by the men and women rushing past them.
“I’ve invented a new game, Anatole. This is your Self—” and Uncle Terrible held up a gold button with a lion embossed on it. “Now, close your eyes. In which of my one hundred pockets have I hidden you?”
“Let’s find a quieter place to play, Uncle Terrible,” suggested Anatole.
“We’ll play at lunch,” said Uncle Terrible.
Outside the station, warm rain was beginning to fall. Everyone except Anatole and Uncle Terrible scurried for shelter. The two friends strolled past the shops, ducking from awning to awning. A few windows still showed masks and paper pumpkins, though Halloween had come and gone two weeks before.
They passed a window, empty of all but the sign:
MAMA’S HEROS, HOTDOGS, SUBMARINES
“Closed,” said Uncle Terrible. “What a shame!”
In the window of the bar next door, Tarzan burst into light over the pinball machine. Bells clanged, balls clattered and spun, bim! bim! Through the half-open door drifted a strong smell of beer.
“For lunch,” said Uncle Terrible, “I fancy a chocolate cat.”
Anatole half expected Uncle Terrible to pull a chocolate cat from one of his pockets. But instead, his friend paused in front of a revolving door and pushed Anatole gently ahead of him.
After the bustle of the street, the boy was glad to sit at one of the small tables, close to a showcase of corn muffins and chocolate cats. The coffee shop was full of people. They sipped their coffee or waited in line at the counter, for this was a bakery as well as a coffee shop. Two girls behind the counter drew string from a golden ball that hung from the ceiling, with which they tied parcel after parcel, quick as shoelaces.
“Your order, sir,” a plump girl said to Uncle Terrible.
Uncle Terrible ordered two chocolate cats and a bowl of whipped cream. As the girl started to leave, he called after her, “And bring me one of those apples from the bowl on the counter, please.”
Then he turned to Anatole. “I mustn’t neglect your health, or your mother won’t let you visit me again. Now, where did I put that gold button?”
He took off his jacket. The lining drooped with pockets, and pockets lined the front of his vest, so that he seemed to be full of doors, like an apartment building.
“What a wonderful vest!” said Anatole, quite forgetting about the gold button.
“Do you like it?” asked Uncle Terrible, quite forgetting about it also. “It was knitted for me by a tailor on twelve golden needles. His grandfather got them from the emperor of China. Ah, the apple has arrived.”
“Aren’t you having an apple, Uncle Terrible?”
“I shall have a little nibble of yours.”
He took a very small bite, as if he were eating poison.
Anatole shivered. It’s my wet sneakers, he thought, and he could almost hear his mother saying, “Anatole, didn’t I tell you to wear your boots?” At that moment he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“. . . HE . . . REMINDED ANATOLE OF A HERON THAT . . . COCKS ITS HEAD AND SCANS THE WATER FOR FISH.”
A man with red hair and a red beard and a long neck was bending toward him, holding out a paper fan of the sort that does not conveniently fold into one’s pocket, and the way he hunched into his shabby fur coat reminded Anatole of a heron that crooks its neck and cocks its head and scans the water for fish.
One side of the fan was painted with dragons, the other with this brief message:
I AM A FAN OF ARCIMBOLDO THE MARVELOUS,
179 WEST BROADWAY.
YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND.
MAGIC SHOWS EVERY NIGHT, 7 AND 9.
“You do not feel the need of a fan now,” said the stranger, “but later, on a hot day, when all creation can scarcely draw a breath, you will remember your fan, and you will fan yourself, slowly at first, then faster and faster, and you will thank Arcimboldo from the bottom of your heart. I am Arcimboldo the Marvelous.”
At the next table, an old woman was setting a shopping bag on the table. Her fur coat was all tight gray curls—just as if it had gotten a permanent, thought Anatole. She plunked herself into a chair, kicked off her boots, and massaged her bare feet.
“I came in all the way from Brooklyn to pick up my new dress, and it’s still not ready,” she said to Uncle Terrible, just as if they were old friends. “Cicero Yin is a good tailor, but is he worth it?” She turned to Arcimboldo. “Sometimes I wish I had wings instead of feet.”
Arcimboldo the Marvelous muttered to himself. It sounded to Anatole like “I want my dinner” or “I’m growing thinner.” To Anatole’s astonishment, the woman vanished before his eyes, like a flame that Arcimboldo had blown out. A little brown and white barn owl hopped from her empty chair to the table and cried in a mournful voice, “Whoooooooo! Whoooooooo!”
All around them, people shielded their faces with their arms, and the girls wrapping parcels behind the counter sank to their knees in terror.
“Open the door!”
The door was flung open, and the owl circled the room twice and flew out into the world.
When Anatole glanced around for Arcimboldo the Marvelous, the old man, too, was gone.