Mr. Vertigo

by Paul Auster

  Fair enough. Master Yehudi was smart to let me carry on like that, and I’m not going to blame him if I acted like a dumbbell and carried it too far. Right in the middle of my outburst, I came up with what had to be my all-time stupidest idea, the howler to end all howlers. Oh, it seemed pretty clever at the time, but that was only because I still couldn’t face up to what had happened —and once you deny the facts, you’re only asking for trouble. But I was desperate to prove the master wrong, to show him that his theories about my condition were so much flat fizzy water. So, right there in that Philadelphia hospital room, on the third day of November 1929, I made a sudden, last-ditch attempt to resurrect my career. I stopped punching the wall, turned around and faced the master, and then spread my arms and lifted myself off the ground.

  “Look!” I shouted at him. “Take a good look and tell me what you see!”

  The master studied me with a dark, mournful expression. “I see the past,” he said. “I see Walt the Wonder Boy for the last time. I see someone who’s about to be sorry for what he just did.”

  “I’m as good as I ever was!” I yelled back at him. “And that’s the goddamned best in the world!”

  The master glanced down at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he said. “For every second you stay up there, you’ll have three minutes of pain. I guarantee it.”

  I figured I’d put my point across, so rather than risk another long bout of agony, I decided to come down. And then it happened—just as the master had promised it would. The instant my toes touched the ground, my head cracked open again, exploding with a violence that sucked the daylights out of me and made me see stars. Vomit burst through my windpipe and landed on the wall six feet away. Switchblades opened in my skull, tunneling deep into the center of my brain. I shook, I howled, I fell to the floor, and this time I didn’t have the luxury of fainting. I thrashed about like a flounder with a hook in his eye, and when I pleaded for help, imploring the master to call in a doctor to give me a shot, he just shook his head and walked away. “You’ll get over it,” he said. “In less than an hour, you’ll be as good as new.” Then, without offering me a single word of comfort, he quietly straightened up the mess in the room and started packing my bag.

  That was the only treatment I deserved. His words had fallen on deaf ears, and that left him with no choice but to back off and let my actions speak for themselves. So the pain spoke to me, and this time I listened. I listened for forty-seven minutes, and by the time class was out, I’d learned everything I needed to know. Talk about a crash course in the ways of the world. Talk about boning up on sorrow. The pain fixed me but good, and when I walked out of the hospital later that morning, my head was more or less screwed on straight again. I knew the facts of life. I knew them in every crevice of my soul and every pore of my skin, and I wasn’t about to forget them. The glory days were over, Walt the Wonder Boy was dead, and there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d ever show his face again.

  We walked back to the master’s hotel in silence, wending our way through the city streets like a pair of ghosts. It took ten or fifteen minutes to get there, and when we reached the entrance I couldn’t think of anything better to do than stick out my hand and try to say good-bye.

  “Well,” I said. “I guess this is where we part company.”

  “Oh?” the master said. “And why is that?”

  “You’ll be looking for a new boy now, and there ain’t much point in hanging around if I’m just going to be in the way.”

  “And why would I look for a new boy?” He seemed genuinely astonished by the suggestion.

  “Because I’m a dud, that’s why. Because the act is finished, and I ain’t no good to you no more.”

  “You think I’d drop you like that?”

  “Why not? Fair is fair, and if I can’t deliver the goods, it’s only right for you to start making other plans.”

  “I have made plans. I’ve made a hundred of them, a thousand of them. I’ve got plans up my sleeves and plans in my socks. My whole body’s crawling with plans, and before the itch works me into a frenzy, I want to pluck them out and put them on the table for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Who else, squirt? But we can’t have a serious discussion standing in the doorway, can we? Come on up to the room. We’ll order some lunch and get down to brass tacks.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get? We might be out of the levitation business, but that doesn’t mean we’ve closed up shop.”

  “You mean we’re still partners?”

  “Five years is a long time, son. After all we’ve been through together, I’ve sort of grown attached. I’m not getting any younger, you know. It wouldn’t make sense to start looking for someone else. Not now, not at my age. It took me half a life to find you, and I’m not going to kiss you off because we’ve had a few setbacks. Like I said, I’ve got some plans to discuss with you. If you like those plans and want in, you’re in. If not, we divide up the money and part ways.”

  “The money. Jesus God, I clean forgot about the money.”

  “You’ve had other things on your mind.”

  “I’ve been so low in the dumps, my noodle’s been on holiday. So how much we got? What’s it tote up to in round figures, boss?”

  “Twenty-seven thousand dollars. It’s sitting in the hotel safe, and it’s all ours free and clear.”

  “And here I thought I was down-and-out broke again. It kind of puts things in a different light, don’t it? I mean, twenty-seven grand’s a nice little booty.”

  “Not bad. We could have done worse.”

  “So the ship ain’t sunk after all.”

  “Not by a long shot. We did okay for ourselves. And with hard times coming, we’ll be pretty snug. Dry and warm in our little boat, we’ll sail the seas of adversity a lot better than most.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “That’s it, mate. All aboard. As soon as the wind is up, we’ll lift anchor—and with a heave and a ho we’ll be off!”

  I would have traveled to the ends of the earth with him. By boat, by bicycle, by crawling on my belly—it didn’t matter what means of transportation we used. I just wanted to be where he was and to go where he went. Until that conversation in front of the hotel, I thought I’d lost everything. Not only my career, not only my life, but my master as well. I assumed he was finished with me, that he’d kick me out and never give it a second thought, but now I knew different. I wasn’t just a paycheck to him. I wasn’t just a flying machine with a rusty engine and damaged wings. For better or worse, we were booked for the duration, and that counted more to me than all the seats in all the theaters and football stadiums put together. I’m not saying that things weren’t black, but they weren’t half as black as they could have been. Master Yehudi was still with me, and not only was he with me, he was carrying a pocketful of matches to light the way.

  So we went upstairs and ate our lunch. I don’t know about a thousand plans, but he certainly had three or four of them, and he’d thought each one through pretty carefully. The guy just wouldn’t quit. Five years of hard work had flown out the window, decades of scheming and preparation had turned to dust overnight, and there he was bubbling over with new ideas, plotting our next move as if everything still lay before us. They don’t make them like that anymore. Master Yehudi was the last of a breed, and I’ve never run across the likes of him since: a man who felt perfectly at home in the jungle. He might not have been the king, but he understood its laws better than anyone else. Bash him in the gut, spit in his face, break his heart, and he’d bounce right back, ready to take on all comers. Never say die. He didn’t just live by that motto, he was the man who invented it.

  The first plan was the simplest. We’d move to New York and live like regular people. I’d go to school and get a good education, he’d start up a business and make money, and we’d both live happily ever after. I didn’t say a word when he finished, so he passed on to the next one. We’d go out on tour,
he said, giving lectures at colleges, churches, and ladies’ garden clubs on the art of levitation. There’d be a big demand for us, at least for the next six months or so, and why not continue to cash in on Walt the Wonder Boy until the last lingering bits of my fame had dried up? I didn’t like that one either, so he shrugged and moved on to the next. We’d pack up our belongings, he said, get into the car, and drive out to Hollywood. I’d start a new career as a movie actor, and he’d be my agent and manager. What with all the notices I’d had from the act, it wouldn’t be hard to swing me a tryout. I was already a big name, and given my flair for slapstick, I’d probably land on my feet in no time.

  “Ah,” I said. “Now you’re talking.”

  “I figured you’d go for it,” the master said, leaning back in his chair and lighting up a fat Cuban cigar. “That’s why I saved it for last.”

  And just like that, we were off to the races again.

  We checked out of the hotel early the next morning, and by eight o’clock we were on the road, heading west to a new life in the sunny hills of Tinseltown. It was a long, grueling drive back in those days. There were no superhighways or Howard Johnsons, no six-lane bowling alleys stretching back and forth between coasts, and you had to twist your way through every little town and hamlet, following whatever road would take you in the right direction. If you got stuck behind a farmer hauling a load of hay with a Model-T tractor, that was your tough luck. If they were digging up a road somewhere, you’d have to turn around and find another road, and more often than not that meant going hours out of your way. Those were the rules of the game back then, but I can’t say I was perturbed by the slow going. I was just a passenger, and if I felt like dozing off for an hour or two in the back seat, there was nothing to stop me. A few times, when we hit a particularly deserted stretch of road, the master let me take over at the wheel, but that didn’t happen often, and he wound up doing ninety-eight percent of the driving. It was a hypnotic sort of experience for him, and after five or six days he fell into a wistful, ruminating state of mind, more and more lost in his own thoughts as we pushed toward the middle of the country. We were back in the land of big skies and flat, dreary expanses, and the all-enveloping air seemed to drain some of the enthusiasm out of him. Maybe he was thinking about Mrs. Witherspoon, or maybe some other person from his past had come back to haunt him, but more than likely he was pondering questions about life and death, the big scary stuff that worms its way into your head when there’s nothing to distract you. Why am I here? Where am I going? What happens to me after I’ve drawn my last breath? These are weighty subjects, I know, but after mulling over the master’s actions on that trip for more than half a century, I believe I know whereof I speak. One conversation stands out in memory, and if I’m not wrong in how I interpreted what he said, it shows the sorts of things that were beginning to prey on his spirit. We were somewhere in Texas, a little past Forth Worth, I think, and I was jabbering on to him in that breezy, boastful way of mine, talking for no other reason than to hear myself talk.

  “California,” I said. “It never snows there, and you can swim in the ocean all year round. From what folks say, it’s the next best thing to paradise. Makes Florida look like a muggy swamp by comparison.”

  “No place is perfect, kid,” the master said. “Don’t forget the earthquakes and the mudslides and the droughts. They can go for years without rain there, and when that happens, the whole state turns into a tinderbox. Your house can burn down in less time than it takes to flip an egg.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Six months from now, we’ll be living in a stone castle. That stuff can’t burn—but just to play it safe, we’ll have our own fire department on the premises. I’m telling you, boss, the flicks and me was made for each other. I’m going to rake in so much dough, we’ll have to open a new bank. The Rawley Savings and Loan, with national headquarters on Sunset Boulevard. You watch and see. In no time at all, I’m going to be a star.”

  “If everything goes well, you’ll be able to earn your crust of bread. That’s the important thing. It’s not as if I’m going to be around forever, and I want to make sure you can fend for yourself. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Actor, cameraman, messenger boy—one trade’s as good as another. I just need to know there’ll be a future for you after I’m gone.”

  “That’s old man talk, master. You ain’t even fifty yet.” “Forty-six. Where I come from, that’s pretty long in the tooth.” “Swizzle sticks. You get out in that California sun, it’ll add ten years to your life the first day.”

  “Maybe so. But even if it does, I still have more years behind me than in front of me. It’s simple mathematics, Walt, and it can’t do us any harm to prepare for what’s ahead.”

  We switched onto another subject after that, or maybe we just stopped talking altogether, but those dark little comments of his loomed larger and larger to me as the days dragged on. For a man who worked so hard at hiding his feelings, the master’s words were tantamount to a confession. I’d never heard him open up like that before, and even though he couched it in a language of what ifs and what thens, I wasn’t so stupid as to ignore the message buried between the lines. My thoughts went back to the stomach-clutching scene in the New Haven hotel. If I hadn’t been so bogged down with my own troubles since then, I would have been more vigilant. Now, with nothing better to, do than stare out the window and count the days until we got to California, I resolved to watch his every move. I wasn’t going to be a coward this time. If I caught him grimacing or grabbing his stomach again, I was going to speak up and call his bluff—and hustle him to the first doctor I could find.

  He must have noticed my worry, for not long after that conversation, he clamped down on the gloom-and-doom talk and started whistling a different song. By the time we left Texas and crossed into New Mexico, he seemed to perk up considerably, and alert as I was for signs of trouble, I couldn’t detect a single one—not even the smallest hint. Little by little, he managed to pull the wool over my eyes again, and if not for what happened seven or eight hundred miles down the road, it would have been months before I suspected the truth, perhaps even years. Such was the master’s power. No one could match him in a battle of wits, and every time I tried, I wound up feeling like a horse’s ass. He was so much quicker than I was, so much defter and more experienced, he could fake me out of my pants before I even put them on. There was never any contest. Master Yehudi always won, and he went on winning to the bitter end.

  The most tedious part of the trip began. We spent days riding through New Mexico and Arizona, and after a while it felt like we were the only people left in the world. The master was fond of the desert, however, and once we entered that barren landscape of rocks and cacti, he kept pointing out curious geological formations and delivering little lectures on the incalculable age of the earth. To be perfectly honest, it left me pretty cold. I didn’t want to spoil the master’s fun, so I kept my mouth shut and pretended to listen, but after four thousand buttes and six hundred canyons, I’d had enough of the scenic tour to last me a lifetime.

  “If this is God’s country,” I finally said, “then God can have it.”

  “Don’t let it get you down,” the master said. “It goes on forever out here, and counting the miles won’t shorten the trip. If you want to get to California, this is the road we have to take.”

  “I know that. But just because I put up with it don’t mean I have to like it.”

  “You might as well try. The time will go faster that way.”

  “I hate to be a party pooper, sir, but this beauty stuff’s a great big ho-hum. I mean, who cares if a place looks crummy or not? As long as it’s got some people in it, it’s bound to be interesting. Subtract the people, and what’s left? Emptiness, that’s what. And emptiness don’t do a thing for me but lower my blood pressure and make my eyelids droop.”

  “Then close your eyes and get some sleep, and I’ll commune with nature myself. Don’t fret, little man. It won’t be long no
w. Before you know it, you’ll have all the people you want.”

  The darkest day of my life dawned in western Arizona on November sixteenth. It was a bone-dry morning like all the others, and by ten o’clock we were crossing the California border to begin our glide through the Mojave toward the coast. I let out a little whoop of celebration when we passed that milestone and then settled in for the last leg of the journey. The master was clipping along at a nice speed, and we figured we’d make it to Los Angeles in time for dinner. I remember arguing in favor of a swank restaurant for our first night in town. Maybe we’d run into Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, I said, and wouldn’t that be a thrill, huh? Imagine shaking hands with those guys over a mound of baked Alaska in some posh supper club. If they were in the mood for it, maybe we could get into a pie fight and tear the joint apart. The master was just beginning to laugh at my description of this screwy scene when I looked up and saw something on the road in front of us. “What’s that?” I said. “What’s what?” the master said. And a couple of moments later, we were running for our lives.

  The what was a gang of four men spread out across the narrow turnpike. They were standing in a row—two, three hundred yards up ahead—and at first it was tough to make them out. What with the glare from the sun and the heat rising off the ground, they looked like specters from another planet, shimmering bodies made of light and thin air. Fifty yards closer, and I could see that their hands were raised over their heads, as if they were signaling us to stop. At that point I took them for a crew of road workers, and even when we got still closer and I saw that they had handkerchiefs over their faces, I didn’t think twice about it. It’s dusty out here, I said to myself, and when the wind blows a man needs some protection. But then we were sixty or seventy yards away, and suddenly I could see that all four of them were holding shiny metal objects in their upraised hands. Just when I realized they were guns, the master slammed on the brakes, skidded to a stop, and threw the car into reverse. Neither one of us said a word. Gas pedal to the floor, we backed up with the engine whining and the chassis shaking. The four desperadoes took off after us, running up the road as their gun barrels glinted in the light. Master Yehudi had turned his head in the other direction to look through the rear window, and he couldn’t see what I saw, but as I watched the men gaining ground on us, I noticed that one of them ran with a limp. He was a scrawny, chicken-necked sack of bones, but in spite of his handicap he moved faster than the others. Before long, he was out in the lead by himself, and that was when the handkerchief slipped off his face and I got my first real look at him. Dust was flying in all directions, but I would have known that mug anywhere. Edward J. Sparks. The one and only was back, and the moment I laid eyes on Uncle Slim, I knew my life was ruined forever.