by Paul Auster
Soaring reviews for Mr. Vertigo
“Mr. Vertigo is a thrilling flight of fancy that never abandons the world. A magical pertinent book, it gives us a bird’s-eye view of the strange, violent, paradoxical century behind us.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A rollicking tale of greed and redemption … Auster has created a character who will remain aloft in readers’ memories.”
—People
“An exuberant novel of ideas … strange and masterful… . Walt Rawley may well be Auster’s finest creation … his is a shrewd, larger-than-life American voice in the tradition of Huck Finn and Holden Caufield.”
—Harper’s Bazaar
“Mr. Vertigo proves that nothing beats a good old yarn.”
—Details
“The language crackles, the plot jumps, and the characters astonish in this tale of magic and loss, loneliness and exaltation.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Auster Americanizes a miracle and takes us to a place where only magicians have gone before.”
—Playboy
“Auster soars on the wings of a metaphor with a tale that’s light and engaging—as well as fraught with meaning.”
—The Boston Phoenix
“Beautiful writing does soar, and at his best, Auster makes it look easy.”
—Chicago Tribune
PENGUIN BOOKS
MR. VERTIGO
PAUL AUSTER is the author of the novels The Brooklyn Follies, Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, Timbuktu, Mr. Vertigo, Leviathan (awarded the 1993 Prix Medicis Étranger), The Music of Chance (nominated for the 1991 PEN/Faulkner Award), Moon Palace, In the Country of Last Things, and the three novels known as “The New York Trilogy”: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room. He has also written two memoirs (The Invention of Solitude and Hand to Mouth), a collection of essays, and a volume of poems, and edited the book I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project. Auster was the recipient of the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award for Letters and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2006. He has won literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in both poetry and prose, and in 1990 received the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He wrote the screenplays for Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Lulu on the Bridge, which he also directed. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
PAUL AUSTER
MR. VERTIGO
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN COMPASS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited 1994
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1994
Published in Penguin Books 1995
Copyright © Paul Auster, 1994
All rights reserved
Portions of this book appeared in Granta, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Grand Street.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:
Auster, Paul.
Mr. Vertigo/Paul Auster.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-670-85209-0 (hc.)
ISBN 978-0-14-023190-8 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1-101-56263-5 (epub.)
1. Aged men—United States—Fiction. 2. Magicians—United States—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Title: Mister Vertigo.
PS3551.U77M7 1994
813’.54—dc20 93-34887
Designed by Francesca Belanger
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Table of Contents
I
II
III
IV
I
I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water. The man in the black clothes taught me how to do it, and I’m not going to pretend I learned that trick overnight. Master Yehudi found me when I was nine, an orphan boy begging nickels on the streets of Saint Louis, and he worked with me steadily for three years before he let me show my stuff in public. That was in 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, the precise year when night began to fall on the world forever. I kept it up until a few days before the October crash, and what I did was greater than anything those two gents could have dreamed of. I did what no American had done before me, what no one has ever done since.
Master Yehudi chose me because I was the smallest, the dirtiest, the most abject. “You’re no better than an animal,” he said, “a piece of human nothingness.” That was the first sentence he spoke to me, and even though sixty-eight years have passed since that night, it’s as if I can still hear the words coming from the master’s mouth. “You’re no better than an animal. If you stay where you are, you’ll be dead before winter is out. If you come with me, I’ll teach you how to fly.”
“Ain’t nobody can fly, mister,” I said. “That’s what birds do, and I sure as hell ain’t no bird.”
“You know nothing,” Master Yehudi said. “You know nothing because you are nothing. If I haven’t taught you to fly by your thirteenth birthday, you can chop off my head with an axe. I’ll put it in writing if you like. If I fail to deliver on my promise, my fate will be in your hands.”
It was a Saturday night in early November, and we were standing in front of the Paradise Cafe, a slick downtown gin mill with a colored jazz band and cigarette girls in transparent dresses. I used to hang around there on weekends, cadging handouts and running errands and hustling cabs for the swells. At first I thought Master Yehudi was just another drunk, a rich booze hound stumbling through the night in a black tuxedo and a silk top hat. His accent was strange, so I figured him to be from out of town, but that was as far as I took it. Drunks say stupid things, and the business about flying was no stupider than most.
“You get too high in the air,” I said, “you could break your neck when you come down.”
“We’ll talk about technique later,” the master said. “It’s not an easy skill to learn, but if you listen to me and obey my instructions, we’ll both wind up millionaires.”
“You’re already a millionaire,” I said
. “What do you need me for?”
“Because, my wretched little thug, I barely have two dimes to rub together, I might look like a robber baron to you, but that’s only because you have sawdust for brains. Listen to me carefully. I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime, but you only get that chance once. I’m booked on the Blue Bird Special at six thirty a.m., and if you don’t haul your carcass onto that train, this is the last you’ll ever see of me.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said.
“Because you’re the answer to my prayers, son. That’s why I want you. Because you have the gift.”
“Gift? I ain’t got no gift. And even if I did, what would you know about it, Mr. Monkey Suit? You only started talking to me a minute ago.”
“Wrong again,” said Master Yehudi. “I’ve been watching you for a week. And if you think your aunt and unele would be sorry to see you gone, then you don’t know who you’ve been living with for the past four years.”
“My aunt and uncle?” I said, suddenly realizing that this man was no Saturday-night drunk. He was something worse than that: a truant officer or a cop, and sure as I was standing there, I was up to my knees in shit.
“Your Uncle Slim is a piece of work,” the master continued, taking his time now that he had my attention. “I never knew an American citizen could be that dumb. Not only does he smell bad, but he’s mean and ugly to boot. No wonder you turned into such a weasel-faced guttersnipe. We had a long conversation this morning, your uncle and I, and he’s willing to let you go without a penny changing hands. Imagine that, boy. I didn’t even have to pay for you. And that dough-fleshed sow he calls his wife just sat there and never said a word in your defense. If that’s the best you can do for a family, then you’re lucky to be rid of those two. The decision is yours, but even if you turn me down, it might not be such a good idea to go back. They’d be plenty disappointed to see you again, I can tell you that. Just about dumbstruck with sorrow, if you know what I mean.”
I might have been an animal, but even the lowest animal has feelings, and when the master sprang this news on me, I felt as if I’d been punched. Uncle Slim and Aunt Peg were nothing to write home about, but their home was where I lived, and it stopped me in my tracks to learn they didn’t want me. I was only nine years old, after all. Tough as I was for that age, I wasn’t half as tough as I pretended to be, and if the master hadn’t been looking down at me with those dark eyes of his just then, I probably would have started bawling right there on the street.
When I think back to that night now, I’m still not sure if he was telling me the truth or not. He could have talked to my aunt and uncle, but then again, he could have been making the whole thing up. I don’t doubt that he’d seen them—he had their descriptions dead on—but knowing my Uncle Slim, it strikes me as next to impossible that he would have let me go without wheedling some cash out of the bargain. I’m not saying that Master Yehudi welshed on him, but given what happened later, there’s no question that the bastard felt wronged, whether justice was on his side or not. I’m not going to waste time puzzling over that now. The upshot was that I fell for what the master told me, and in the long run that’s the only fact that bears telling. He convinced me that I couldn’t go home, and once I accepted that, I didn’t give a damn about myself anymore. That must have been how he wanted me to feel—all jangled up and lost inside. If you don’t see any reason to go on living, it’s hard to care much about what happens to you. You tell yourself you want to be dead, and after that you discover you’re ready for anything—even a crazy thing like vanishing into the night with a stranger.
“Okay, mister,” I said, dropping my voice a couple of octaves and giving him my best cutthroat stare, “you’ve got yourself a deal. But if you don’t come through for me like you say, you can kiss your head good-bye. I might be small, but I never let a man forget a promise.”
It was still dark when we boarded the train. We rode west into the dawn, traveling across the state of Missouri as the dim November light struggled to crack through the clouds. I hadn’t been out of Saint Louis since the day they buried my mother, and it was a gloomy world I discovered that morning: gray and barren, with endless fields of withered cornstalks flanking us on both sides. We chugged into Kansas City a little past noon, but in all the hours we spent together I don’t think Master Yehudi spoke more than three or four words to me. Most of the time he slept, nodding off with his hat pulled down over his face, but I was too scared to do anything but look out the window, watching the land slip past me as I pondered the mess I’d gotten myself into. My pals in Saint Louis had warned me about characters like Master Yehudi: solitary drifters with evil designs, perverts on the prowl for young boys to do their bidding. It was bad enough to imagine him taking off my clothes and touching me where I didn’t want to be touched, but that was nothing compared to some of the other fears knocking around in my skull. I’d heard about one boy who had gone off with a stranger and was never heard from again. Later on, the man confessed he’d sliced up the lad into little pieces and boiled him for dinner. Another boy had been chained to a wall in a dark cellar and given nothing to eat but bread and water for six months. Another one had had the skin peeled off his bones. Now that I had time to consider what I’d done, I figured I might be in for the same kind of treatment myself. I’d let myself fall into the clutches of a monster, and if he turned out to be half as spooky as he looked, the odds were I’d never see the dawn rise again.
We got off the train and started walking down the platform, wending our way through the crowd. “I’m hungry,” I said, tugging on Master Yehudi’s coat. “If you don’t feed me now, I’m going to turn you in to the first flatfoot I see.”
“What’s the matter with the apple I gave you?” he said.
“I chucked it out the window of the train.”
“Oh, not too keen on apples, are we? And what about the ham sandwich? Not to speak of the fried chicken leg and the bag of doughnuts.”
“I chucked it all. You don’t expect me to eat the grub you give me, do you?”
“And why not, little man? If you don’t eat, you’ll shrivel up and die. Everybody knows that.”
“At least you die slow that way. You bite into something filled with poison, and you croak on the spot.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Master Yehudi broke into a smile. If I’m not mistaken, I believe he even went so far as to laugh. “You’re saying you don’t trust me, is that it?”
“You’re damn straight. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw a dead mule.”
“Lighten up, squirt,” the master said, patting me affectionately on the shoulder. “You’re my meal ticket, remember? I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head.”
Those were just words as far as I was concerned, and I wasn’t so dumb as to swallow that kind of sugary talk. But then Master Yehudi reached into his pocket, pulled out a stiff new dollar bill, and slapped it into my palm. “See that restaurant over there?” he said, pointing to a hash house in the middle of the station. “Go in and order yourself the biggest lunch you can stuff inside that belly of yours, I’ll wait for you out here.”
“And what about you? You got something against eating?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Master Yehudi replied. “My stomach can take care of itself.” Then, just as I was turning to go, he added: “One word of advice, pipsqueak. In case you’re planning to run away, this is the time to do it. And don’t worry about the dollar. You can keep it for your trouble.”
I walked on into the restaurant by myself, feeling somewhat mollified by those parting words. If he had some sinister purpose, then why would he offer me a chance to escape? I sat down at the counter and asked for the blue-plate special and a bottle of sarsaparilla. Before I could blink, the waiter shoved a mountain of corned beef and cabbage in front of me. It was the largest meal I had ever encountered, a meal as large as Sportsman’s Park in Saint Louis, and I wolfed down every morsel of it, along
with two slices of bread and a second bottle of sarsaparilla. Nothing can compare to the sense of well-being that washed through me at that filthy lunch counter. Once my belly was full, I felt invincible, as if nothing could harm me again. The crowning touch came when I extracted the dollar bill from my pocket to settle the tab. The whole thing toted up to just forty-five cents, and even after I threw in a nickel tip for the waiter, that left me with four bits in change. It doesn’t sound like much today, but two quarters represented a fortune to me back then. This is my chance to run, I told myself, giving the joint the once-over as I stood up from my stool. I can slip out the side door, and the man in black will never know what hit him. But I didn’t do it, and in that choice hung the entire story of my life. I went back to where the master was waiting because he’d promised to turn me into a millionaire. On the strength of those fifty cents, I figured it might be worth it to see if there was any truth to the boast.
We took another train after that, and then a third train near the end of the journey which brought us to the town of Cibola at seven o’clock that night. Silent as he had been all morning, Master Yehudi rarely stopped talking for the rest of the day. I was already learning not to make any assumptions about what he might or might not do. Just when you thought you had him pegged, he would turn around and do the precise contrary of what you were expecting.
“You can call me Master Yehudi,” he said, announcing his name to me for the first time. “If you like, you can call me Master for short. But never, under any circumstances, are you to call me Yehudi. Is that clear?”
“Is that your God-given name,” I said, “or did you choose that moniker yourself?”
“There’s no need for you to know my real name. Master Yehudi will be sufficient.”
“Well, I’m Walter. Walter Claireborne Rawley. But you can call me Walt.”
“I’ll call you anything I like. If I want to call you Worm, I’ll call you Worm. If I want to call you Pig, I’ll call you Pig. Is that understood?”
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