Let the Great World Spin
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Authors: Colum McCann
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For readers in Canada
For readers in the U.K.
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A L S O B Y C O L U M M C C A N N
Zoli
Dancer
Everything in This Country Must
This Side of Brightness
Songdogs
Fishing the Sloe-Black River
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L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N
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w o r l d s p i n
A N o v e l
C O L U M M c C A N N
b
R A N D O M H O U S E
N E W Y O R K
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Let the Great World Spin
is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Colum McCann
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
R a n d o m H o us e and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
l i b r a ry o f c o n g r e s s c a t a l o g i n g - i n - p u b l i c a t i o n d a t a McCann, Colum.
Let the great world spin : a novel / Colum McCann.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4000-6373-4
1. Immigrants—Fiction. 2. Irish—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 3. Judges’
spouses—Fiction. 4. Grief—Fiction. 5. Teenage mothers—Fiction. 6. Petit, Philippe, 1949– —Fiction. 7. Tightrope walking—Fiction. 8. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.
9. Nineteen seventies—Fiction. 10. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C335L47 2009
823'.914—dc22 2008046963
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper www.atrandom.com
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
f i r s t e d i t i o n
Book design by Barbara M. Bachman
Title-page drawing by Matteo Pericoli
The photograph of Philippe Petit on page 237 is reprinted here
courtesy of Rex USA and is © Rex USA.
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For John, Frank, and Jim.
And, of course, Allison.
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“All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be,
they are everywhere. That is what the world is.”
—Aleksandar Hemon,
t h e l a z a r u s p r o j e c t
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T H O S E W H O S A W H I M H U S H E D
B O O K O N E
All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here
1 1
Miró, Miró, on the Wall
7 3
A Fear of Love
1 1 5
L E T T H E G R E AT W O R L D S P I N F O R E V E R D O W N
B O O K T W O
Tag
1 6 7
Etherwest
1 7 5
This Is the House That Horse Built
1 9 8
T H E R I N G I N G G R O O V E S O F C H A N G E
B O O K T H R E E
Part of the Parts
2 4 7
Centavos
2 7 5
All Hail and Hallelujah
2 8 5
B O O K F O U R
Roaring Seaward, and I Go
3 2 5
a u t h o r ’ s n o t e
3 5 1
a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
3 5 3
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L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N
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Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty.
Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall.
Others figured it might be the perfect city joke—stand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed, until all were staring upward at nothing at all, like waiting for the end of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker. Or a jumper.
Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky.
He could only be seen at certain angles so that the watchers had to pause at street corners, find a gap between buildings, or meander from the shadows to get a view unobstructed by cornicework, gargoyles, balustrades, roof edges. None of them had yet made sense of the line strung at his feet from one tower to the other. Rather, it was the man-shape that held them there, their necks craned, torn between the promise of doom and the disappointment of the ordinary.
It was the dilemma of the watchers: they didn’t want to wait around for nothing at all, some idiot standing on the precipice of the towers, but they didn’t want to miss the moment either, if he slipped, or got arrested, or dove, arms stretched.
Around the watchers, the city still made its everyday noises. Car McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 4
4
C O L U M M c C A N N
horns. Garbage trucks. Ferry whistles. The thrum of the subway. The M22 bus pulled in against the sidewalk, braked, sighed down into a pothole. A flying chocolate wrapper touched against a fire hydrant. Taxi doors slammed. Bits of trash sparred in the darkest reaches of the alleyways. Sneakers found their sweetspots. The leather of briefcases rubbed against trouserlegs. A few umbrella tips clinked against the pavement.
Revolving doors pushed quarters of conversation out into the street.
But the watchers could have taken all the sounds and smashed them down into a single noise and still they wouldn’t have heard much at all: even when they cursed, it was done quietly, reverently.
They found themselves in small groups together beside the traffic lights on the corner of Church and Dey; gathered under the awning of Sam’s barbershop; in the doorway of Charlie’s Audio; a tight little theater of men and women against the railings of St. Paul’s Chapel; elbowing for space at the windows of the Woolworth Building. Lawyers. Elevator operators. Doctors. Cleaners. Prep chefs. Diamond merchants. Fish sellers.
Sad- jeaned whores. All of them reassured by the presence of one another.
Stenographers. Traders. Deliveryboys. Sandwichboard men. Cardsharks.
Con Ed. Ma Bell. Wall Street. A locksmith in his van on the corner of Dey and Broadway. A bike messenger lounging against a lamppost on West.
A red- faced rummy out looking for an early- morning pour.