Harry Houdini

“It was Bess Houdini,” he said. “She knew her husband’s face. She could read the writing of failure in his eyes. She could go to the man from the newspaper. She could beg him, with the tears in her eyes and the blush on her bosom, to consider the ruin of her husband’s career when put into the balance with nothing more on the other side than a good headline for the next morning’s newspaper. She could carry a glass of water to her husband, with the small steps and the solemn face of the wife. It was not the key that freed him,” he said. “It was the wife. There was no other way out. It was impossible, even for Houdini.” He stood up. “Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks.” He wiped at his raw cheek with the back of his hand, on the verge, Joe felt, of sharing some parallel example of liberation from his own life.

Michael Chabon, ‘The amazing adventures of Kavalier & Clay’. p.535.

Claro, al final la mejor historia del libro, la del fracaso de Harry Houdini en la apertura de la doble cerradura de acero bramah, es la matriz desde la cual se dispara la sumatoria argumental de Michael Chabon, todo se concentra en la línea “Only love could pick a nested pair of steel bramah locks.” En ella se plantea que la única redención a la mutilación en que consiste la represión homosexual de Sam Clay y a la dolorosa culpa de Joe Kavalier se encuentra en no huir de la transformación que implica aceptar el amor, su carga y el impulso por destruirlo.