Ascension (2 page)

Salvo is nearly halfway across now, making good time but not hurrying, and things are going very well. The wire is holding tight, and the wind isn’t bad. At the halfway point there will be a piece of red tape marking the place where Salvo has agreed to do a handstand, a special bonus for the crowd below. The promoters had also asked him to unfurl an American flag from his leg. He refused. Not only is such a stunt unnecessarily dangerous, but Salvo is a performer, not a politician. Besides, he isn’t even American.

For Salvo, a handstand on a wire isn’t that difficult, and the height of this wire will actually work to his advantage. Because the audience is so far away, he has decided not to bother to “sell” the trick. Ordinarily, if he were working at a lesser height, he would waver and wobble his handstand slightly, not so much that he would lose control but enough that the audience would wonder if he were about to topple. At this height, however, there’s no point in such theatrics, which is too bad. The selling of the trick
is the real essence of it, but from a safety standpoint, at fourteen hundred feet, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to bother.

Salvo lowers his body to the wire, bending at the knees and placing the pole perpendicular to his path. He bows his head and thrusts his legs skyward. His hands hold the pole on either side of his head, allowing him to correct his balance from side to side and to use his inverted legs to control his back-and-forth movements. Only the slightest of corrections is possible: if he over- or under-corrects he will fall. That gets most people, he knows. Once you over-correct, you have to compensate on the other side for your mistake, and more often than not that gets you wobbling from side to side until you lose it and you’re gone.

When his legs reach their apex he arches his back, and the handstand is complete. There follows a brief moment when the wind catches his body at an unfortunate angle, and he’s not sure if he will be able to right himself. His arms tighten, and his stomach and thighs strain to halt his momentum. A streak of pain shoots through his hip, but he ignores it and struggles to undo the damage. His torso has twisted slightly and he rotates it back into alignment, almost going too far, barely saving it. His left arm, exerted to its fullest capacity, begins to shake, but he continues to struggle, pushing his body so that it screams in protest, then pushing it still further, until he is balanced again and the danger has passed. He holds the handstand for several more seconds, partially to make sure he has fully regained his equilibrium before attempting to dismount, and partially to assert his control over the wind, to show it that it can’t blow him over that easily.

Satisfied that he has conquered the handstand, Salvo gingerly returns his feet to the wire. He pauses and lets the blood rush through the capillaries emptied by his inversion, feeling his flesh tingle as sensation returns, his face hot and red. When he has
recovered completely, he stands, heaving up the balancing pole and continuing his journey. Salvo knows that what has just happened would have caused most wire walkers to crumple. He has seen others in less trouble give up, and if they hadn’t fallen they’d held on tight to the wire and either dropped into makeshift nets or were forced to traverse the rest of the way hand over fist. No matter which, the walk ended in defeat and disgrace. The difference between Salvo and other wire walkers is that Salvo has long ago learned to tell his body to keep going, even when it seems that he has reached the end of his endurance.

He imagines what it must be like on the ground, how the street would be so quiet that you could hear the person next to you breathing, except during his handstand, when some would have been unable to stop themselves from gasping. When he’d teetered to the side it must have seemed like something had burst; the whole crowd would have erupted into shouts and cries. After he’d righted himself and returned his feet to the wire, people would have applauded without reserve, smiling at the stranger beside them as if to say they’d known all along that this was how it would turn out.

His confidence and strength renewed, Salvo steps forward, glad to feel the wind across his face, glad for the cool freshness of the air, glad for the busy smell of the city and the solid, steady beating of his heart. Salvo knows that if he were to fall he would stand absolutely no chance of survival. After only one second he would be over 160 feet from the wire, travelling at a speed of twenty miles an hour. After five seconds he would be four hundred feet down, going nearly 110 miles an hour. At this point he would reach terminal velocity, the highest speed at which a human body can fall. That he would hit the ground a mere seven seconds later, twelve seconds after leaving the wire, he knows
because he read it in the paper this very morning, a not so encouraging piece about today’s skywalk.

Salvo has long maintained that most people do not want to see him fall. Perhaps one in twenty do, and perhaps nine in twenty come so that they are present if he should fall. The other half of the audience is there to see him face death and make it. It is for these people that Salvo has spent a lifetime performing. He has fear, but he’s not afraid. He likes to think that if people see him face his fear, they will in some small way be able to do so as well. That’s what he thinks when he’s being most optimistic. Newspaper articles like the one that ran today do much to deflate him.

It doesn’t matter now, however, because he is advancing steadily and feels certain he will not fall. He is three-quarters of the way across and moving at a good pace. The wind has died down, stopping the wire’s singing. Sweat covers his face, and he licks his lips, savouring the salty taste of his hard work. His hip is throbbing a little, but Salvo doesn’t mind the pain, having grown used to it long ago. He pictures the crowd below grinning with anticipation; he has completed the handstand and, he believes, even managed inadvertently to sell it. He has visions of his wife, Anna, down on the ground below, pouring rye whisky over ice—one for her, two for him. He always drinks two ryes after a walk; to him, the smell of whisky has become the smell of success.

With his next step he feels the wire slacken. Not a lot, but a little, and that’s how trouble starts. He is not overly concerned; his crew can tighten the guy lines and winch up his wire, and everything will be fine. But as he takes another step the slackening grows, and for the next three steps it continues to worsen. He is now more than a little worried and contemplates stopping to wait for the wire to tighten. Just as he is weighing his options the wire does begin to pull taut. He breathes a sigh of relief and picks up his pace.

There is still a little slack in the wire when Salvo is hit hard from the side by a gust of wind, the strongest yet. He strains against the force of the blow, dipping his pole precariously low to one side, legs and arms and stomach fighting for equilibrium. A split second later the wire beneath his feet drops at least three inches. Salvo drops with it, aware that the worst is happening.

Because of their massive height, at their summit the twin towers of the World Trade Center can sway as much as four feet in any direction when confronted with a hard wind. Although Salvo had no intention of walking in any wind capable of blowing an entire building four feet to the side, even a slight movement could threaten him. To compensate, the wire has been mounted onto large, stiff springs at either end. The springs are strong enough that it would take a fair amount of force to move them, only barely less than it would take to snap the wire in two.

He knows that the wind that just hit him has caused one of the towers to sway towards the other, slackening the wire. He instantly prepares himself for the wire’s imminent tightening. He bends his knees and drops his arms, lowering his centre of gravity: there is a great danger of his being tossed into the air, which would be very difficult to recover from. Of course, there is also the danger that the wire might snap, but if that happened there’d be nothing Salvo could do. It would be over.

The wire comes taut with a crack that cuts through the air. As much as he tries to hold to the wire, he can’t. He doesn’t panic when he feels the air under his feet. With honed reflexes he straightens his body and feels his upward momentum halt. For the tiniest part of a moment he is motionless, hanging in mid-air six inches above the wire, nearly fourteen hundred feet above the ground. Then he is moving downward and his feet connect with the wire. He bends at the knees, and every part of his body—from
his toes up through his ankles, shins, thighs, into his stomach and chest, arms, neck and head—works to buoy his balance and keep him upright. Even his breathing plays a part in his struggle.

All Salvo is aware of is his muscles tensing and relaxing, and the only sound he hears is the coursing of his blood. There is no past, no future, only this fraction of a second, and then this one and then this one. In four seconds Salvo lives more than many people do in a lifetime, with a singular purpose few can comprehend. He does not think; he does not even start to think. His survival depends on reflex, training and luck.

Reflex and training he has. Luck, however, does not seem to be on his side today. Just as he feels his balance returning, just as it seems as though the situation is once again under control, his left foot slips off the wire. He is fast to act, and he manages to recover somewhat but not completely. His right leg is bent impossibly at the knee; his left hangs orphaned in the air.

He freezes, considering his options. Just don’t move, he tells himself. There are things that can be done. He can try and lower himself even more, rest his pole on the wire and lift his left leg. Or he can try to stand, using all his strength to force his right leg to straighten.

Neither option offers any guarantees. If he tries to stand up and doesn’t have the strength, he will topple. If he tries to lower himself onto the wire and a stong gust of wind comes before he is ready, he will be blown off. Better to go to the wire, he decides. At least that way if he fails, he can always grab the wire.

Slowly, with great care, Salvo lowers his body. His right leg feels as though it is being burned with a torch. He can hardly keep his grip on his pole. His jaws are clenched so tightly he can hear his teeth grinding against each other, and his vision begins to blur. The pressure in his arms is relieved as the pole comes to rest on
the wire, and as his left knee rises to the wire, the pain in his right leg lessens. For the next few seconds he rests. Do not stay here too long, he thinks, knowing that his right leg will cramp if he doesn’t stand up soon.

He exhales, feels his lungs burn as the air escapes, and breathes in deeply, summoning all his remaining strength. There’s not much left, he knows. Better make good on what’s there. If I can stand up, I’ll be fine, he thinks. Just stand.

And so he stands. It isn’t as hard as he expected; the wire has become solid under his feet, and the wind is gone. High above, the clouds have parted slightly, and a weak beam of sunlight streams down onto the wire in front of him. He confidently steps into the light, scanning the horizon. He is so far above the skyline of New York City, it seems small and insignificant from where he stands. Steel and bricks and concrete are reduced to lumps in a child’s sandbox.

Salvo takes a step, then another. The wire feels good, like a familiar warm coat, and he is glad to be where he is. Fear has left him completely. He has faced the worst and has not fallen. That’s good, but don’t get too happy, a voice inside him says. You’re not on the other side yet.

He pushes the euphoria to the back of his mind. There will be plenty of time for celebration later. He won’t think of it again until he’s down in the trailer with Anna, drinking a rye whisky.

He pauses on the wire, centring his balance, adjusting his grip on the balancing pole. He catches a whiff of baby powder but ignores it, stopping memory from invading his focus. He takes a slow step forward, settles himself and lifts his foot to step again. At that precise moment, the wire drops once more. As he follows the wire downward, the wind hits him like a wave, more than he can handle. When the wire springs up he does not go
with it. He pitches to the side, his left leg completely off the wire. He feels the wire snap into the back of his right knee and buttock, and his pole twists far to the side. He can hardly hold it and then his fingers release and the pole is no longer in his hands. His hands reach blindly for the wire, and somehow he manages to clutch it and capture the falling pole between his forearms. Whatever happens, he believes he must not lose the pole. His belief is pure instinct; at this point the pole is irrelevant, but Salvo has been walking the wire for so long that reflex overrides logic. He can hold onto the wire or hold onto the pole, but not both.

His body corkscrews further to the side, and now only his right calf is on the wire, now only his ankle. Salvo is off the wire. He is falling. In his arms he still clutches the balancing pole.

He knows instantly that he’s falling, he’s dead. He isn’t shocked and he isn’t afraid. Yet as he falls, he remains focused on one final task. He twists and writhes, hands still tight around his balancing pole, manoeuvring his feet so that they are beneath him, fighting to stay vertical. In the many still photographs that are taken of him as he falls, it appears almost as though he is still on the wire.

He remembers a Romany proverb his father would mutter in times of hardship:
Bury me standing. I’ve spent my whole life on my knees
. Salvo has a different idea, though, one he has kept in the back of his mind nearly his whole life, one which will be his last earthly thought.

Bury me however you do. I will die standing.