The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

As soon as Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia, a group of influential Jews in Prague began discussing the removal of a sacred symbol, a golem, from the city, so that it wouldn’t be discovered and stolen by the Germans. To aid their plan, they consider the great, retired escape artist Bernard Kornblum, who performs escapes similar to Houdini’s. Kornblum readily accepts the group’s entreaties, and he already has a plan in place

As Kornblum returns home from the meeting about the golem, the concierge tells him that a young man is waiting for him in his apartment. As Kornblum enters his apartment, Josef, a former student of his, stands up to greet him. Josef tells Kornblum he is actually supposed to be on a train leaving the country. When he got to the border, the guards there told him that the rules and regulations for obtaining an exit visa had changed and sent Josef back to Prague.

Kornblum offers to walk Josef back to his family, but Josef cannot bear to see them again just to have to say goodbye again. Kornblum knows how to get Josef and the golem out of the country. He tells Josef that he will have to go to Lithuania. Under the circumstances, Josef doesn’t even ask why and readily places himself at Kornblum’s disposal. As a sign of his readiness and trust in his old teacher, Josef quotes something Kornblum taught him: “Forget about what you are escaping from [...] Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to” (21).

The novel moves back in time a few years. Josef’s desire to gain acceptance to the Hofzinser Club, a club strictly for magicians, began in 1935.

We learn that Josef’s parents are both accomplished doctors. Josef’s father, Emil, is a renowned endocrinologist, and his mother, Anna, a neurologist. The family is sitting at the breakfast table, and Josef’s younger brother, Thomas, notices something shiny in Josef’s mouth. Their mother forces Josef to admit what he has in his mouth. Josef extracts a small torque wrench. Emil reacts sarcastically to Josef’s nonchalant admission of carrying a wrench in his cheek pocket, something that the great Houdini did. Josef’s teacher, Herr Kornblum, told Emil he should get accustomed to it.

Josef met Kornblum at the age of 14 and began learning to be an Ausbrecher (escape artist). Bernard Kornblum is an older Jewish man who was born in Vilna. He is bone-thin, with a long, red beard. He speaks awkward German and virtually no Czech. Even though he is a staunch atheist, he lives kosher, doesn’t work on Saturdays, and hangs a picture of the Temple Mount on the eastern wall of his room.

Josef studied with Kornblum twice a week that summer and into the autumn. When Josef came over, Kornblum would tie him up to various objects, telling him that he “will get used to the feeling of the chain. The chain is your silk pajamas now. It is your mother’s loving arms” (25). Kornblum started by showing Josef many different types of locks. Later, he stuffed Josef into a pine box to find out whether he was claustrophobic. Under Kornblum’s guidance, Josef became relatively adept at picking locks. As a test, Kornblum had Josef tie him to a chair with many ropes, chains, and different locks. Kornblum then had Josef pick all the locks and set him free. After Josef performed this feat, he was allowed to keep the locks.

Back at the breakfast table, after Josef’s and Thomas’s parents leave for work, Thomas has many questions for Josef regarding Houdini. Thomas, “an animated gnome of a boy” (28), is musically talented and is working on a libretto for an opera about Houdini. The two boys furtively discuss what feat Josef could perform that would be grand enough to get him admittance into the Hofzinser Club. Josef desperately wants to be invited to the club as a recognized magician. Thomas has the idea that Josef should do what Thomas has written down in his libretto, showing Josef a picture he’s drawn of Houdini falling through the air after jumping from an airplane, tied to a chair, his parachute tied to another chair, having tea in midair. Josef finds this idea ridiculous and has something else in mind. He asks Thomas where their father’s old medical bag is and finds a thermometer. He wants to measure the temperature of the river.

Josef sends out an announcement to the Hofzinser Club, proclaiming his intention to perform a water escape. He has only two days to practice and prepare. He has learned breath control with Kornblum, and he has been practicing picking locks in cold water at home. He now feels it’s time for some live practice.

On September 27, 1935, at four o’clock in the morning, Josef and Thomas are on a small island in the Moldau near the Charles Bridge. Josef’s plan is to be submerged in a burlap sack, his hands and feet bound by chains and a heavy Rätsel lock. Thomas is reluctant to have Josef go through with the plan, but Josef coerces Thomas into pushing him into the river. Thomas eventually does this and then runs off crying, fearing he has just drowned his brother. He then has a change of heart and jumps into the river to save his brother.

Everything is much more difficult than Josef expected, but he eventually frees himself. As he lies panting on the island, he notices Thomas struggling in the water. Josef swims back out to rescue Thomas, but he doesn’t have the strength to get himself and Thomas back to shore, and he realizes they are drowning. He loses consciousness just as he perceives Kornblum coming to the rescue. It takes Josef and Thomas several days to recuperate. Thomas harbors permanent injuries; perhaps because of the cold, he has sustained damage to his ears, which causes him to lose his interest in music. Kornblum visits often and accepts full responsibility for the accident, though Josef denies that Kornblum had anything to do with it. It is Kornblum who puts an end to Josef’s studies, rather than his parents. Kornblum recognizes something in Josef:

Josef was one of those unfortunate boys who become escape artists not to prove the superior machinery of their bodies over outlandish contrivances and the laws of physics, but for dangerously metaphorical reasons (37).

Two weeks later, Kornblum pays Thomas and Josef a visit and takes them out to dinner at the Hofzinser Club. Both boys are disappointed in the club, Josef more so than Thomas. Josef is shocked by the decrepit nature of many of the members. At nine o’clock that night, as promised, Kornblum drops off the boys back home.

Two young German professors are thwarted in their attempt to find the Golem of Prague in the attic of the Altneuschul (Old-New School) synagogue, where the golem was rumored to have been stored. Earlier, there had been a fear that the Altneuschul would be demolished, so the golem was moved to a newly constructed apartment building. While the Altneuschul was spared, the golem was never returned. Subsequently, the exact location of the golem was lost after the library—which held the information regarding the golem’s storage place—fell to a wrecking ball. No one in the Jewish Council could remember having seen the golem since 1917, though rumor persisted that it was being stored in a certain apartment building. Kornblum and Josef head to this apartment building.

In disguise as census takers for the Council, they easily gain access to the residents. As they go off in search of the apartment where the golem might be located, they discover the discontent of the building’s residents, many of whom are living in cramped quarters now because of so much displacement of the Jewish community after the Nazis began relocating them. After four hours, they have checked most of the residents.

Josef and Kornblum go to a cafe and try and figure out if they missed anything. They quickly figure out there are a couple more mysterious apartments and return to the apartment building. Back in the building, Josef and Kornblum quickly surmise that there is something odd about apartment 42. Once they have picked the lock and are inside the apartment, they find themselves confronted by a 50-year-old woman holding a gun. Two younger women are with her. She tells them, “[H]ands up, gents” (46). An elderly man comes out of an adjoining room. Kornblum recognizes the man as Max, who also recognizes Kornblum. Josef recognizes Max from the Hofzinser. Max tells Kornblum, “[Y]ou aren’t going to find it here [...] I’ve been poking around this apartment for years” (47). The apartment happens also to be a brothel. Kornblum and Josef stay the night; Josef loses his virginity to one of the younger girls.

In the morning, Kornblum and Josef are a little embarrassed to be around one another. Josef remembers hearing from some of the kids in the building about a window “at which no one sees a face” (48). Kornblum and Josef both think that perhaps the golem is in that room but wonder how to find it. Kornblum gets an idea to have everyone who was counted yesterday hang a blue Star of David in their windows. This way, Kornblum and Josef will be able to determine which apartment the golem is in, as it will be the only one without a star. The trick works, and he and Josef discover the location of the golem. The apartment’s door has been covered over; Josef and Kornblum have to scale down the roof and enter through the window to get into the room.

At night, they descend to the room where the golem is. Once inside, they realize the golem is much larger than they’d anticipated. It’s stored in a plain pine box, in keeping with Jewish tradition, and is also without clothes, covered only in Jewish scarves. Kornblum plans on dressing the golem up so that it looks like a dead body in order to transport it safely out of the country, but the golem’s size is a problem. Josef, however, has a plan. He remembers seeing some very large suits that belonged to a man named Alois Hora, who was more than six-foot-seven. In order to get the suit, Josef has to go back to his parents’ house, where Josef’s father has accumulated a small collection of items belonging to former patients. When he gets to his building, he notices the back door ajar, and he finds his brother, Thomas, lying at the foot of the door to his family’s apartment. Josef tries to figure out how to get around his slumbering brother while at the same time worrying about why Thomas risked leaving the building at night when breaking curfew could mean death.

As Josef makes a step toward the door, he hears a crunching sound under his feet. It’s his old lockpick set, given to him by Kornblum a few years earlier. Thomas awakens. Josef discovers that his parents have been evicted from the house and forced to live with relatives in another part of the city. Thomas doesn’t like the relatives, saying that “[t]he Katzes are vile people” (56). Josef wants Thomas to go back to their parents, but Thomas is tired and wants to stay the night. Their parents will be over in the morning to move the rest of their possessions out. Josef gives in. He finds the suit without much trouble and returns to his brother. They have a sentimental parting before Josef leaves again and rejoins Kornblum with the golem. Josef promises they will see one another again in New York City.

Kornblum has jerry-rigged a system for getting the golem and its coffin out of the apartment. He’s cut a hole in the wall, leaving the wallpaper on the other side intact. Kornblum then strategically cuts the paper, leaving a hinge at the top and thereby giving them the possibility of removing the Golem and putting the wallpaper back in its place when they leave. While Josef is gone, Kornblum cuts a viewing window in the coffin lid and shortens the nails, so that when it comes time for Josef, who will be hiding in the lower section of the coffin, to escape, he can easily kick open the lid. Kornblum and Josef dress the golem and carry it and the coffin out of the building. Once they have the golem out of the building, they transport it to a mortuary provided to them by the Council; there, they will finish the preparations and sleep for the night.

Seventeen hours after Josef climbs into the coffin, the train he and the golem are on makes a stop in Oshmyany, Poland, where Josef narrowly avoids detection by a German customs agent. He makes it out of German-occupied territory and into Lithuania. From there, Josef stays with Kornblum’s brother and hears about a Dutch consul who is in league with a Japanese official. The official is willing to grant rights of transit via the Empire of Japan to any Jew heading for the Dutch colony of Curaçao.

Josef rides the train to Vladivostok. From there, he sails to Kobe, Japan, and then from Kobe to San Francisco. While in San Francisco, Josef discovers an envelope Thomas gave him upon first parting nearly a month ago: “It was the drawing of Harry Houdini, taking a calm cup of tea in the middle of the sky, that Thomas had made in his notebook during his abortive career as a librettist” (66). The picture makes Josef feel like every burden has been lifted from him.