To Reach the Clouds, page 6
Since I no longer have the use of my legs and arms, I let my body be carried back to the house. The sky has already fallen asleep.
At Annie’s suggestion, in the early morning I drive to the village boulangerie and bring back a basket brimming with warm croissants. Then I announce my decision to stop filming the coup. “Either we do a bank robbery, or we do a film about a bank robbery. We cannot do both,” I say. “I have decided to do a bank robbery.”
Jean-Louis beams.
Yves understands. He picks up the camera and, walking backward with his soundman, films their exit from the house and from the coup.
But where is the cameraman?
Someone screams. It’s coming from the big meadow.
Still chewing on croissants, we run outside to find the unfortunate fellow lying on the ground under the Hundred Meters. “I had to give it a try!” he confesses, grinning through his pain.
A couple of hours later, he returns from the Nevers hospital sporting a superb cast and thanks us warmly for our unique hospitality. “Wait!” I say. I go into the house and come back with my New York crutches. “Here, it’s a gift, don’t lose them!”
I leave everyone else to depart when and how they wish, and Annie to clean and close the old house and hitch a ride back to Paris.
I’m already in my truck, rushing back to Germany. I munch on candy bars and pee in a jar, determined to drive the thousand kilometers nonstop.
“Hi, Francis! Thanks for the money! Bye! See you in New York! Got to go!”
On the way back to Paris, I force the truck to its limit, stopping only for gas.
The phone rings and rings.
“What? Tomorrow morning? You’re sure? Oh, that’s very nice, thanks!”
It’s Jean-Louis, offering to drive Mark and me to the airport. I look at the clock and realize that, thanks to exhaustion, I’ve just slept twenty hours straight. Nothing is ready. I panic. But I agree to have a long lunch with Paul the Australian, who is just in from London. A thin fellow with short hair, he is as focused and steady as he was during the Sydney walk. He takes his time questioning me.
Patience is rewarded: two hours later, Paul is in.
During the flight, I interrupt Mark from the movie to help stick address labels on a giant stack of my promotional brochures. “After WTC, I’ll need those.”
Half awake, I ruminate for a rare moment about Annie.
Since long before Vary, she has been angling for an invitation to New York, using tenderness, blackmail, the past, the future, threats, insults, and tears. How disrespectful, how unloving I have been, to evade an answer. But I need absolute detachment, complete freedom. I must be a castaway on the desert island of his dreams, forgotten by all and forced to survive on his wits.
As the plane comes in for a landing, I see through the dirty windows my twin towers, waiting for me.
CUSTOMS
My third arrival in America.
Mark has just passed through customs unchallenged. Why do I always attract suspicion?
“Open up!” orders the towering customs agent.
“What’s all this?” he exclaims, eyeing my three battered suitcases brimming with equipment and pointing at the long cylindrical package I can hardly pick up.
Like an amicable salesman, I lift each item slightly in turn, intoning, “Polypropylene ropes, hemp ropes, nylon ropes. Small block-and-tackles with two sheaves, large block-and-tackles with three sheaves. Steel wire-ropes of various diameters. Pulley-blocks for fiber ropes. Safety belts. Construction gloves. Ratchets and monkey wrenches. And, oh, I forgot, a long balancing pole in four sections, complete with assembling inner sleeves!”
“What’s all this for?” inquires the frowning giant.
“Oh, nothing. I’m a wirewalker, and I’m here to put a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Center!”
With a long, loud laugh and gesture toward the exit, the agent replies, “Sure! Welcome and good luck. Next!”
Being of proper upbringing, I smile and murmur, “Thank you.”
I HAVE NO IDEA
The next day at lunchtime, Mark and I sneak to the roof of the north tower without a problem.
He takes in the panorama, unconcerned by the void, while I note the changes in the construction site and work on my handstand.
Suddenly, a policeman appears behind us. “Hey, you two, come over here!”
We freeze.
“Do you have any I.D.?”
Eager to prevent Mark from saying anything, I volunteer hurriedly, “No, we don’t have any idea! We came here with no idea at all, actually; we just came for the view.”
The officer looks at me strangely and turns to Mark: “And you, you have an I.D.?”
Mark opens his mouth, but again I interrupt before he can utter a word. If this cop thinks we have an idea, he must have a suspicion about the reason for our presence. Maybe he has seen me sneaking around here before, maybe he knows everything. I become agitated, convinced that my answer means life or death for the coup. “No, officer, he does not have any idea either,” I say. “He’s just a friend, a friend with no idea. Actually, it was my idea to ask him to accompany me to see the view, but you can’t really call that an idea. When we’re together, it’s always me who has ideas. I’m always full of ideas. But today, I assure you, we don’t have any ideas, no ideas at all!”
The cop’s amusement at my speech and heavy French accent gives way to impatience. He pulls out a notebook and pen. “Come on, guys, I need an I.D., now.”
Now that I am silent at last, Mark tactfully explains to me what an I.D. is. We show our passports. The policeman writes down our names and New York address. Like a juggler, he flips shut the pad’s heavy cover with a twist of the wrist. With the other hand, he flicks the pen closed in mid-air and returns it to a groove in his leather holster, like John Wayne. “Get out of here! And don’t even think of coming back to the roof. I don’t ever want to see you guys around these towers again. Is that understood?”
ABORT
Being caught up there—I keep saying “arrested”—slices my dream in two like a saber stroke.
I’ve crashed back down to earth.
I tell Jim.
I call Jean-Louis, then Annie, then Paul. “Allo? We were arrested on the roof. The coup is over!”
TO FORGET WTC
To dispel the gloom, I force myself to go hunting for a new site.
I drag myself to Times Square, where I look at tiny reproductions of New York landmarks in the tourist shops and scan all the postcards.
I go sightseeing: the George Washington Bridge, Lincoln Center, Rockefeller Center. I even stare at the tall apartment buildings bordering Central Park.
Nothing.
Nothing can replace the twin towers.
Nothing is dominant enough, proud enough, noble enough.
Discouraged, I dedicate myself to a new season of street-juggling.
It doesn’t work. I cannot forget WTC.
Three days after my arrest in the sky, I call Annie: “Please, come over quickly!”
With her by my side, I’ll suffer the pain of failure less, I’ll feel stronger. Who knows, maybe I’ll even succeed in relaunching the coup.
I don’t tell anyone, but today I feel life is no longer worth living.
MY FRIEND BARON
The knowledge that Annie is coming fills me with energy.
Mark and I cannot continue to camp out on the floor of Jim’s studio. There is barely enough room for his two cats. We go in search of a new home. We answer a couple of classifieds.
I prefer the tiny apartment with only one bedroom and a cramped living room that opens onto a private garden, 12 by 20 feet, where I can practice my juggling. Mark insists on the plush comfort of the old brownstone, very English with its numerous rooms and crystal chandeliers. We introduce ourselves to the tenants, an older couple on their way to Europe. Just as Mark is about to seal the deal, I inquire innocently, “Excuse me, I forgot to mention—I am a juggler and I wanted to know if it was all right with you if I move the Chinese vases to the other room when I practice the large balls in the salon. But don’t worry—when I do the flaming torches, of course I’ll roll up the antique Persian rug.”
Under Mark’s black glance, and to my profound astonishment, we’re politely escorted to the door.
At the tiny place with the garden at 422 West 22nd Street, we meet Judy, an attractive young actress on her way to Hollywood.
The place is ours if we will agree to take care of the dog for a few days; after that, a neighbor will come to pick it up. On cue, an immense Irish setter bounds from the bedroom (it must have been hiding under the bed), knocks over a chair, and leaps at Mark’s neck in a show of passionate affection.
With a smile of revenge, Mark informs our hostess, “Oh, I should tell you, my friend Philippe here really hates an—”
“I really hate an … empty apartment,” I cut in, not missing a beat. “I love animals! What’s his name?”
“Baron.”
“Baron? What a beautiful name! Baron, come greet your new friend!” And in front of a flabbergasted Mark, I let my face be licked all over by the drooling giant.
PRELUDE TO AN INTERVIEW
I have decided to attempt to pull off an interview with the workers on the top of the towers, using the flimsy letter of introduction from the architectural digest. I make lists of neutral questions, sensitive questions, information to get, photographs not to miss.
I’ll play the journalist, Jim will be my photographer, and Mark the recording engineer. Mark calls the WTC’s public relations office. We get an appointment, not for the interview, but first to be interviewed ourselves. That’s how it works, for security reasons.
Mark and I go to an office on the 68th floor of the north tower. I explain to an affable man with white hair my desire to interview the construction workers toiling on the highest towers in the world, to write an article for a prestigious French architecture magazine.
With a paternalistic smile—the man must already consider us a pair of amateurs—he tells me, “There’s no more construction. The towers are built. All the workers are gone, busy now on a new building.”
I know he is lying—I’ve seen plenty of workers during my innumerable clandestine visits—but what can I say? I mention that the magazine had me rent a helicopter recently to take aerial shots, and that during the flight, it seemed to me—yes, I’m quite sure—I saw people working on the unfinished roofs of both towers.
The man is surprised by my insistence. He knows that every journalist wants to ask questions of the renowned “sky-framers” who assemble steel at dizzying heights. “They’re famous for their absence of vertigo, you know. And those”—he deliberately slows his delivery, so that this time I may understand—“those, as I told you earlier, have finished their job, they’re gone. For two months already. We’ve got crews of secondary welders, electricians, plasterers, painters, and so on still on the job, mainly on the upper floors of the south tower, but those are not the people you’re interested in.”
I don’t give up so easily.
“On the contrary! I’m tired of all those articles about acrobats taking lunch breaks on narrow I-beams, enough of this high-steel stuff! What I want to write about, what my readers want to know is: Who are those secondary workers no one ever talks about? What are their working conditions? How do they feel? Are they proud? Are they afraid—because they do have vertigo? We need a story on the humble and obscure people putting the finishing touches on the twin towers!”
The man stares at me quite suspiciously. “You said you had a letter of introduction from that magazine? May I see it?”
I hold out the falsified Metropolis document, trying to still the trembling of my hand.
The man takes the letter, gives us a long appraisal, reads the letter, pauses, looks me and Mark in the eyes, then orders, “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
Mark and I exchange a glance of terror. I turn toward the door. Now’s the moment to flee.
But our man soon reappears. “Permission granted. Come back tomorrow.”
THE INTERVIEW
The interview goes smoothly.
After talking to a few workers in the upper floors of the south tower, I insist on going to the roof. Our man from the public relations office, trying to be helpful, introduces me to all the contractors and stays close.
By walking around hurriedly, I manage to lose him whenever I need to give discreet directions to Jim or Mark.
“Jim, right there!” I whisper, brushing by him, directing three fingers glued together (so it doesn’t look like I am pointing) to an I-beam that interests me.
Jim focuses his camera on a group of workers spreading cement, but at the instant of clicking the shutter, he turns the camera covertly to the I-beam in question.
“Mark, he’s all yours for two minutes!” I murmur, retying my shoelaces.
Mark sticks the too-large microphone of his toylike tape recorder—bought yesterday at Woolworth—under the nose of our host and asks, in a reporter’s obnoxious I-have-a-right-to-know tone, for some clarifications on trivial points. The man frowns at the instrument, probably thinking, “These French journalists are so cheap,” but he responds with lengthy explanations, during which I speed unimpeded to an area I need to inspect.
When the spokesman is not too close, I start bits of conversation with the workers. Under cover of my less-than-fluent English, I succeed in gleaning information about their work schedules, locker room locations, entry routes, security conditions, and countless other details relevant to the coup. I also learn the correct terms for the different features of the roof.
Our guide is obviously intrigued by the constant dispersal and regrouping of this weird trio of journalists and their unusual style of questioning. Naturally, he focuses on me. He seems impressed by my perfect knowledge of the towers, but he’s a bit mystified.
I’m pleased at his consternation when I address several workers in their native tongues, conversing in turn in French, Russian, German, and Spanish.
But when I ask a passing architect if I can take a look at his blueprints, and inquire whether he knows why the towers are not true twins, why they’re of different heights, the PR man orders, “Stop the tape recorder! Who gave you that information? No one knows that besides a couple of engineers.”
Keeping my cool, I crouch and point at the other roof, squinting. “Well, it’s obvious! No?”
The spokesman, in a sweat, crouches and squints his eyes. Now he is confused! Mark and Jim turn quickly to conceal their silent laughter.
Back on the ground, Jim rushes his film to the lab, Mark busies himself transcribing his tapes, and I, all smiles, put my notes and sketches in order.
The success of this first “official” intrusion seems to bring the coup closer to …
To reality?
INSIDE MY VEINS
I am encouraged.
Encouraged enough to resume looking for the equipment still lacking.
Not far from the island of Manhattan, I discover a cable factory, or rather a cable factory’s warehouse and workshop.
Finding myself surrounded by hundreds of coils of steel wire-rope of different constructions and diameters; lifting enormous U- or Lyra-shackles one after another off the greasy concrete floor; caressing the grain left by the foundry on heavy-duty thimbles; comparing the design of cable clamps that jingle when I pick them up and put them back; and chatting under dim lights with men who have dedicated their lives to handling the unforgiving steel, who have black grease forever imprinted on their skin—and who love it—all this rekindles from embers to living flames my determination to fight for my mad project.
Thus, like the pair of impassable towering shadows that peacefully stretch every evening above the rooftops of the voracious metropolis as if to invade it, as if to force it to surrender, as if to suffocate it; like these two silvery pylons whose summits deface the clouds, and between which the sun must sneak in order to chase out the last of the night; similarly, inexorably, my insane dream of the twin towers has once again infiltrated my veins, has once again become essential to my existence.
Silent emptiness prolongs this thought.
DEAR JEAN-LOUIS …
Dear Jean-Louis:
The coup is back on!
We have a new home. The interview was a success. I got all the information and all the photographs I was missing. I found out why we were arrested—we weren’t wearing helmets. I found all the equipment (except the Tirfor). Paul the Australian is arriving tomorrow, Annie is joining me soon …
Now you can come to New York.
Let’s do it!
Philippe
Jean-Louis receives the letter exactly ten days after the arrest. He reads between the lines that I could not have reorganized anything so quickly, especially considering that I spent most of that time regaining my lost enthusiasm. But he thinks if he comes he’ll be able to impose a serious plan and push the coup to victory. If he waits for impeccable organization, he’ll never see New York!
He asks for two weeks’ leave and his boss replies, “No way! One week, and not an hour more!”
