The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content) by Michael Chabon Page A

emanation from the Golem itself that seemed connected to its high-summer, rank-river smell, all conspired to overcome the severe pain in his hips and back, the cramping of his leg and arm muscles, the near-impossibility of urination, the tingling, at times almost jolting, numbness of his legs and feet, the growling of his stomach, and the dread, wonder, and uncertainty of the voyage on which he had embarked. When they took the coffin from the train, he did not waken, though his dream took on an urgent but inconclusive tinge of peril. He did not come to his senses until a beautiful jet of cold fir-green air singed his nostrils, lighting his slumber with an intensity matched only by the pale shaft of sunlight that penetrated his prison when the “inspection panel” was abruptly thrown open.
    Once more it was Kornblum’s instruction that saved Josef from losing everything in the first instant. In the first dazzling panic that followed the opening of the panel, when Josef wanted to cry out in pain, rapture, and fear, the word “Oshmyany” seemed to lie cold and rationalbetween his fingers, like a pick that was going, in the end, to free him. Kornblum, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the railroads of this part of Europe was in a few short years to receive a dreadful appendix, had coached him thoroughly, as they worked to gaff the coffin, on the stages and particulars of his journey. He felt the jostle of men’s arms, the sway of their hips as they carried the coffin, and this, together with the odor of northern forest and a susurrant snippet of Polish, resolved at the last possible instant into a consciousness of where he was and what must be happening to him. The porters themselves had opened the coffin as they carried it from the Polish train to the Lithuanian. He could hear, and vaguely understand, that they were marveling both at the deadness and giantness of their charge. Then Josef’s teeth came together with a sharp porcelain chiming as the coffin was dropped. Josef kept silent and prayed that the impact didn’t pop the gaffed nails and send him tumbling out. He hoped that he had been thrown thus into the new boxcar, but feared that it was only impact with the station floor that had filled his mouth with blood from his bitten tongue. The light shrank and winked out, and he exhaled, safe in the airless, eternal dark; then the light blazed again.
    “What is this? Who is this?” said a German voice.
    “A giant, Herr Lieutenant. A dead giant.”
    “A dead Lithuanian giant.” Josef heard a rattle of paper. The German officer was leafing through the sheaf of forged documents that Kornblum had affixed to the outside of the coffin. “Named Kervelis Hailonidas. Died in Prague the night before last. Ugly bastard.”
    “Giants are always ugly, Lieutenant,” said one of the porters in German. There was general agreement from the other porters, with some supporting cases offered into evidence.
    “Great God,” said the German officer, “but it’s a crime to bury a suit like that in a dirty old hole in the ground. Here, you. Get a crowbar. Open that coffin.”
    Kornblum had provided Josef with an empty Mosel bottle, into which he was, at rare intervals, to insert the tip of his penis and, sparingly, relieve his bladder. But there was no time to maneuver it into place as the porters began to kick and scrape at the seams of the giantcoffin. The inseam of Josef’s trousers burned and then went instantly cold.
    “There is no crowbar, Herr Lieutenant,” one of the porters said. “We will chop it open with an ax.”
    Josef struggled against a wild panic that scratched like an animal at his rib cage.
    “Ah, no,” the German officer said with a laugh. “Forget it. I’m tall, all right, but I’m not that tall.” After a moment, the darkness of the coffin was restored. “Carry on, men.”
    There was a pause, and then, with a jerk, Josef and the Golem were lifted again.
    “And he’s ugly, too,” said one of the men,