To Reach the Clouds (19 page)

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Authors: Philippe Petit

BOOK: To Reach the Clouds
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When timber framers start building a bridge, when magicians present a cord on stage, when kids play tug-of-war, when illegal wirewalkers rig a cable, invariably there is a moment when the line hangs freely between two points, and smiles.
The shape adopted in midair by such lines is called a catenary curve. The name comes from the eighteenth century, a time when
catencœ,
chains, were used instead of the yet-to-be-invented wire rope to link, to pull, to hold. Many engineers had a chain printed on their business cards or embroidered on their lapels. Complex equations were devised that would predict with precision the
shape of a hanging chain according to its span, weight per link, tension, and the place in space of its two anchor points.
There is an infinite number of catenary curves, some—like people—more appealing than others.
Even in the midst of the hardest rigging job or the most demanding clandestine adventure, I never fail to pause and , admire when tension brings my cable to what I consider to be its most seductive shape. Then I take a breath and smile back.
 
This morning, I can't resist stopping the action of the Tirfor handle to review the evolution of the curves as my cable slowly tightens. From the gigantic U of the loose cable an hour ago to the straight line I'm trying to obtain for a safe walk—not true, it's never a straight line—I have stopped to consider many a curve, and now I have one, stored forever in the daguerreotype of my memory.
 
Amid the hundred lights of dawn in the cable, in the sky, in the tower facing me, no one can name the shades that create such a celestial masterpiece.
Now that the cable is at the right tension, we have to pull on the two block-and-tackles anchored by the lower ledge to tension the two cavaletti wires properly. This means we must play monkeys again.
 
Racing even more feverishly than before, I reach an even higher level of insanity. It's contagious: soon Jean-François is scampering again on the edge of the chasm, like a newborn mountain goat.
 
Suddenly, I stop in the middle of tying a highwayman's-hitch with one hand to hit Jean-François's shoulder extremely hard with the
other. I am standing on the channel girts of the crown. I scream to him in a whisper (yes, I can do that), “
Freeze!
Someone just came on the roof! Switch to slow motion! We are two construction workers slowly starting the day! Come up, show him you're wearing a helmet, but don't look at him, and keep working! Keep working!”
 
I keep working, as slowly as I can, my eyes glued to the visitor. He is not a guard, not a policeman, not a construction worker, not a foreman. He looks like a regular guy. He stands there, on the last step of the small staircase, and looks around. He sees me. He sees Jean-François. He looks at us.
Nonchalantly, I pick up my gloves and take a rest, hands on hips—contemplating the work already accomplished—just as a real worker would do.
Damn, he's walking toward us. It's a long, long way to our corner—or am I so deranged that normal movements look like slow motion? As the man draws nearer, he sees the cable between the towers; I see him noticing the Tirfor. He stops for a moment where there is a difference of levels in the concrete slab, and observes at leisure the entire scene and—oh, no!—he turns his head and sees the balancing pole. Obviously, he has discovered everything. Now it's only a matter of … He is moving closer, still in slow motion to my eyes. He's going to … Years of dreaming and building the dream are going to be flattened by this man who is going to … to …
 
I revolt against such injustice. Blood floods full speed through my being, my brain jolts back to real time. Guided by a frighteningly unconscious impulse, I find myself walking toward the visitor. He keeps walking toward me. We are walking toward each other. Thirty feet. I keep walking. It is a duel. Twenty feet. I am looking him in the eyes. My chin is up. I feel strong. I am not afraid. Ten feet. I keep walking. I have fire in my eyes. I'm invincible. My dream is invincible. I see a short metal pipe on the floor; I slow down and pick it up. I'm not brandishing it, I'm just …
The man has stopped.
He is no longer looking at me. He is admiring the site with calm assertion, as if he needs to communicate his desire to avoid confrontation. Has he felt an intangible electricity in the air, a portent of doom?
The mysterious visitor—probably a businessman who works in the tower and wants to admire dawn before going to his desk—leaves my roof as he appeared, slowly and peacefully.
I take it there will be no duel today.
Except the one scheduled between the void and me, where it is written—I wrote it—“Both sides will survive.”
The sky casts off gray, tries on a pale blue cloak, wants to turn brighter still. I had better catch up with the rising sun!
 
It's 6:45 a.m. below. My friends—anxiously watching through shared binoculars, awaiting my first step on the wire—are oblivious to the jostling of the early commuters coming out of the subway.
Up here, time has lost all sense.
 
On my roof, the rigging is basically in place. Now I must fine-tune it, which means running back and forth, pulling here, loosening there, placing antivibration devices, straightening the cable, aligning the cavalettis—the most exhausting part of the operation.
Each passing second brings me closer to the ultimate disaster: the wire will not be ready on time. It simply means my life will be shorter than I had anticipated—because I am going to charge onto that goddamn cable, any which way. I'm going to throw myself onto the nightmarish tightrope of my dream.
 
A stubborn automaton with very little spring power left, dead-weighted
with fatigue, heartsick, I drag myself back to work, toiling against the odds. I keep watching the giant metal wheel hanging above a scaffold of beams at the center of my roof—the assembly for the freight elevator that brings construction personnel to the highest floors. A minute or so after the wheel starts turning, foremen and workers will be on my roof.
I catch Jean-Louis making wide sweeping gestures.
The intercom has been buzzing me for ten minutes! Racing back and forth with Jean-François, I've forgotten to pay attention to it. Jean-Louis gives me the worst technical news: after tensioning their first cavaletti (the short one), they realized they had made a mistake—they let the little metal plate that is bolted to the walk-cable turn on itself. The two small wings of the device are facing the sky instead of the ground, creating a sharp obstacle for my sliding feet on the wire. Jean-Louis awaits my instructions.
Shielding my eyes from the daylight, I focus my gaze on the problem. The cavaletti plate will certainly impair my crossing, but it's more dangerous than that. At any moment during the walk, the plate might slide into a different position; or worse, swaying under tension, the cavaletti lines might force the plate open, sending it into the void with the cavaletti wires, and my walk-cable, suddenly freed, will jump up without warning.
Since I know it will take a good half hour to fix the problem, and since thanks to Papa Rudy's safety advice the plate is held by three bolts instead of the two I normally use, my response is to the point: “Too late! Tighten to death. I'll deal with it.”
 
With everything we can find, Jean-François and I are building a barricade around the anchor of the cable, and we add to it a DO NOT DISTURB sign—in the foolish hope that it will prevent the first workers and the police from touching the cable.
Again I see Jean-Louis waving in distress—again I have forgotten to attend to the intercom's buzz. His latest rigging misfortune is even more dramatic to me: he's unable to tie his second cavaletti wire, the long one, to its block-and-tackle at the foot of the inclined column. Because of the location change necessitated by
the encroachment of the aluminum panels, he is now dealing with many extra feet of quarter-inch wire-rope and can't use the eye with thimble I had prepared at the extremity of the line. “Plus,” Jean-Louis tells me, “this time Albert has really given up. He's packed his bag. I think he's changing back into his businessman's clothes.”
For me there is only one solution, a very bad solution: “Forget about it!” I tell him just to wrap the cavaletti wire directly around the foot of the column, and to finish by making a festival of knots. I'll give him some slack, and when he's done, I'll retension my two cavalettis. “It won't be great, but it might work.”
 
I drop to the lower ledge and loosen my two cavalettis, wiping out thirty minutes of painstaking precision work in thirty seconds. Back on the upper roof, I see a sight that makes me scream in terror: “The wheel! The wheel! It's turning!”
At the top of its heavy support, the gigantic steel wheel is screeching as it gathers speed.
I yell last-minute instructions to Jean-Francois and jump, literally jump, from the upper edge to the deadly lower ledge. One of my feet misses the indexing tube; one of my legs falls over the void.
I retrieve my leg. “Faster! Faster! Faster!” I yell to Jean-Louis, who is still struggling to anchor his cavaletti.
Jean-Louis gives me a thumbs-up.
With the power of despair, I fly from one block-and-tackle to the other—I tie, I take up the slack, I tension—why does it take an eternity? To hell with fine-tuning; I fly back up and roll onto the roof like a martial artist. The elevator wheel whirls and screams. I see smoke from the motor.
 
My last communication with the north tower uses all the energy I have left. I concentrate on sending intelligible words across the air. I tell Jean-Louis to get dressed, so that no one can seize him as a rigging accomplice. I tell him I'll wait to start walking until he's back at the edge of his roof, movie camera in hand. “Make sure
you film the first steps before taking pictures!” is my last supplication.
Jean-Louis promises me everything. I disconnect the intercom wire, which floats for a moment in the air currents. Good. It reminds me the wind is about to catch up.
 
My dear friend quickly pulls in the free line and disappears.
To save precious time, I leap over the flat bar to the path by the lower ledge instead of climbing down the five channel girts. There, out of sight from my friends on the street, out of reach of the wind, I have created a dressing room. I grab the bag with the costume and rip it open. Frantically rummaging, I find the black slippers and put them on, I jump into the pair of black pants. I've already torn off my shirt, but I cannot find my black turtleneck sweater. I pour the contents of the bag onto the concrete floor, and madly throw item after item over my shoulder, desperately searching for the missing piece.
 
A quarter mile below, my watching friends scream in unison as Annie howls, “He's falling!”
With horror, they see a black silhouette surging from my corner of the south tower and falling into the void. At first it's a human shape, whirling and twirling, then it turns into what my friends conclude looks like a piece of cloth; their moment of terror passes.
What a tragedy—seconds before my entrance onto the stage of my life, my costume is incomplete!
It is crucial; it is essential for me to appear in the sky dressed as the street-juggler performing on the sidewalks, being arrested by the police. It is my revenge against authority, my statement to my street audience, my … Heartbroken, I turn my head to the sky—help! And I hurl down at Annie the worst invectives. No doubt,
after mending the sweater, she forgot to put it back in the bag. Little do I know that in my excitement, I have sent the garment flying!
 
Grumbling, I put on the thin, dark gray V-neck sweater I brought as an undergarment. It has a pocket roughly stitched in the back that holds my passport and a neatly folded twenty-dollar bill.
 
What a shame.
Back on the upper roof, I am standing precariously on the turntable of the window-washer, about to pick up the balancing pole, when Jean-François offers me the water bottle. Ignoring my friend, I turn my back to the wire to create the sense that I am backstage and, trembling with thirst, bring the liquid to my lips but stop. I'd better wash my hands and face. In an instant, the precious liquid is gone, and my face is still dirty. I lick it with my paws like a cat. A wild cat. Jean-François spits in a rag and wipes the grease off my hair.
I turn, face the wire, and look down at the balancing pole. I dry the sweat on my palms against the sides of my pants. With joy and fear, I whisper to Jean-Francois, as if we were both going to step on the cable, “Let's do it. Let's go!” For him, it is the password to victory. I am not aware that he is waving his helmet in a dance of happiness. I am concentrating on bending down so my fingers can reach the pole.

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