The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [49]
“Welcome welcome” said their host, smiling broadly. He was beautiful, olive-skinned with an Asian lilt to his eyes. He wore a pair of loose Turkish pants belted with a cord of brightly colored yarn and a short-sleeved black T-shirt. “Please,” he urged Phoebe, “take a seat.”
Oriental carpets covered the floor, a kaleidoscope of golds and crimsons and blues overlapping crazily, disappearing near the windows beneath a heap of pillows piled like a kind of bed. Phoebe chose a cushion at the edge of this mass and folded her legs underneath her.
Karl spoke to Nico curtly in Dutch. With military swiftness the boy turned on his heel and disappeared through a curtain of beads into another room, where Phoebe heard cupboards being opened, a running tap.
Karl seated himself at the sewing machine. “You are visiting Amsterdam the first time?” he inquired politely.
Phoebe told him yes. Slivers of muscle flicked in Karl’s arms as he poked through his mountain of fabrics. His hair fell to his chest, heavy and dark as an Asian’s hair, but wavy. Phoebe guessed he must be forty.
“What are you sewing?” she asked.
“Everything,” he said. “I am a tailor.”
His accent was strange to Phoebe, clearly not Dutch, for it was nothing like Nico’s. His English sounded British, in fact, but underneath that a deeper accent leaned at the words.
Karl pried a green velvet vest from the heap, threaded a needle and began sewing a square yellow button on it. Nico returned to the room holding three beers, wisps of steam rising from their throats. Karl addressed him sharply in Dutch and the boy answered meekly, then seemed on the verge of returning the third bottle to wherever it had come from. But Karl waved a hand and grinned, suddenly easy. Nico sank onto the cushions near Phoebe, cupping both palms protectively around his bottle.
“You are traveling alone?” Karl asked, finishing with the yellow button and snapping the thread with his teeth.
“No,” Phoebe said instinctively. “My friends are at the museum.”
Nico began prattling in Dutch. Karl listened with more patience than he’d shown his friend thus far, nodding over his sewing, asking occasional questions. Phoebe listened, too, hoping for some familiar word, some clue to what they were saying.
Finally Nico pushed at her arm. “Show him,” he said. Phoebe looked at him. “The photo.”
She’d forgotten it. Hastily Phoebe produced the picture of Faith and brought it to Karl at his sewing machine. He glanced at it briefly and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I remember.”
“You do?” Phoebe cried.
“She was here some years ago, yes?”
Her heart flinched. “Eight years.”
Karl pressed the pedal that operated the sewing machine and began coaxing a piece of blue fabric under the needle. The machine was an old black Singer, curved like a woman’s waist, the name in gold lettering.
“So … you knew her,” Phoebe prompted him.
“Knew her, no, I did not. I remember her,” Karl said. “There were people coming, people going all the time, but that one I do remember.” After a moment he added, “Dead?”
Phoebe stared at him. “How did you know?”
“If she is alive, then why you are coming to me with a picture in your hand?” He flashed a white grin, his needle greedily gobbling the fabric. “OD?”
“Oh no,” Phoebe said, but stopped short of divulging the truth. “So,” she said, at a loss, “I mean, what did you think of her?”
Karl turned the fabric under the needle to pull it through in another direction. “You know, there were so many people,” he said. “She was a nice girl. Fun, a little crazy? Beautiful,” he said. “Lots of boyfriends.”
“Did she ever come here?”
Karl worked the pedal, prompting the machine’s rhythmic mutterings to increase in speed and pitch until they seemed to verge upon speech. When he lifted his foot from the pedal, a hush fell over the room. Karl shut his eyes. “Yes. I think yes,” he said, opening his eyes again. “I can remember her there.” He pointed to the cushions beneath the windows. Turning, Phoebe was surprised to