To Reach the Clouds (6 page)

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Authors: Philippe Petit

BOOK: To Reach the Clouds
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By now, not only friends but also friends of friends know my secret. An air mail envelope from Argentina lands in my mailbox. It contains a message written in purple ink on onionskin stationery:
Philippe,
I was thinking about this idea you have. Have you given some thought to the high-velocity winds systematically generated by very tall structures?
I'm sure there are some books to be found on the subject.
Yours,
Antoine
Another question also prevents me from sleeping lately. In search of answers, I go engineer-hunting. Since disagreement seems to be the pastime of that profession, I expect to collect multiple opinions, but the responses are disconcertingly similar:
“Oh, it's pretty simple”—here all of them clear their throats—“the towers have been designed to sway, and it's not your tiny cable”—here their tone shows technical disdain—“that will prevent them from doing so. A violent draft or a sudden change of temperature will force the entire structural-steel skeleton alternately to expand and contract, a phenomenon known as harmonic oscillation. The tension in the wire-rope will go instantly from three to three thousand tons. The whole thing will explode, and you with it.”
How I would have loved them to differ!
Even Alain, the world's youngest airline pilot, the sensational acrobatic flyer who last year coaxed me into joining him for an unforgettable demonstration of
voltige
, sneaking his Stampe under telephone wires along deserted country roads; Alain, whose extreme cold-bloodedness and impeccable rigor of judgment I admire; Alain, who already suspects my new coup and
whom I invite to the Vietnamese restaurant on rue Laplace; even he tells me the project contains too many unknowns.
“You're on your way to getting really screwed!” he says, and, setting his chopsticks aside, he explains with his hands how turbulence, air vacuums, and whirlpools form in the vicinity of towers.
Undaunted, I ask him if he'll help with the rigging.
“Listen,” he says. “If you need me on such and such a day, at such and such an hour, and my job is clearly defined, I'll be there if I possibly can. But right now you're completely dreaming. All that you're telling me—the helicopter, the model, the pictures, the friends—it's cute, but you've got nothing solid. And for me to be there, it's gotta be rock-solid.”
 
Ouch! Worse than Jean-Louis.
“Let's go see Omankowsky!” I bark to Annie, as if it were my idea. I've just spent another frustrating morning with the model, tying and untying colored threads.
As we drive away from Paris, my mood lightens. Passing Blois, I find myself singing Russian songs. Annie reminds me I had better gather my thoughts: I have a list of rigging questions for Omankowsky, and it's never easy to get straight answers from him. I practice aloud, with Annie playing a distracted, unfocused, anecdote-spewing Papa Rudy.
“Make a right!” she screams when I almost miss the intersection.
 
We arrive at dusk at the edge of a tiny wine-growing village. I park the truck in front of a red portal protecting a two-story brick pavilion surrounded by thick ivy. Practice wires can be seen in the garden, but the house seems asleep; the shutters are closed, all is quiet. I honk, and instantly, as if it were a surprise party, a joyful, almost dancing group appears from behind the residence. Here comes Papa Rudy, a diminutive yet savagely strong man in a Bavarian jacket
and short-sleeve shirt with a silver bolo at the collar. His round face displays a wide smile, but his teeth are clenched and his mouth is shut—how does he do that? Between fingers so thick there is no way his fist can close, he delicately holds, as a mother gorilla would her newborn, a golden cigarette holder. As he approaches, three playful dogs bounce off him so exuberantly they would prevent any other human being from walking straight.
“Holla! Mister Brown! Anita!” greets the old performer, kissing us each six times and squinting merrily.
 
Inside, the frail yet authoritative Mrs. Omankowsky is finishing her preparation of the mandatory
Goulash mit Knedliky
I've learned to appreciate. As usual, the house is overheated, overdecorated with pictures of their wirewalker children and kitsch from all over the world, and overloud with four television sets blasting, three dogs barking, two cats fighting, and the loud, disrespectful squawking of a cockatoo Papa Rudy has taught to repeat insults in six languages.
There's no way to address Omankowsky during dinner: he has to tell me about the health problems of Circus Knie's hippopotamus. After dinner is no good either. Snifter in hand, we must play chess in the way I hate: talking, talking, talking. Whenever I bring up the subject of WTC, Papa Rudy is reminded of another circus story to share.
I try until three in the morning. And I thought I was tenacious!
Determined to corner the old man tomorrow, I fall asleep with Annie, under a rack of poisoned arrows framed by a pair of shrunken human heads.
 
At 6 a.m., Papa Rudy bounds into our room without knocking, wearing a poncho and a sombrero, and serenades us with Mexican love songs on his guitar.
By noon, I succeed in showing the model to Papa Rudy and start asking questions. With hardly a look at the wire and cavalettis, he makes faces at Annie and asks, “Why is Philippe in such a bad mood?” But for this circus veteran, a glance at the model is all he needs. He has instantly understood all my rigging problems, computed all the parameters in his head, and arrived at the solutions. He shares them with me at last only because he is alarmed to see me so white, teeth clenched, trembling with frustration and on the edge of tears. And maybe because Annie's supplicating eyes have not let go of his for quite some time.
In less than five minutes, I have all my answers, including many that I disagree with, and the model is damaged—because you can't tell Papa Rudy, “Don't touch!”
When I bring up wind turbulence and structural swaying, he becomes violent: “Nobody knows! Nobody knows!”
“But I talked with some engineers who—”
“Engineers! A bunch of numskulls! They know nothing!” he roars, striking the oak table with his enormous fist. I hear a crushing noise—his knuckles, or the table?
Suddenly, he pulls me to the salon. He wants to talk to me in private, he has an idea. He whispers to me: On the wire I must install a little metal carabiner linked by a very thin wire to a safety belt concealed under my costume. “Nobody will notice at such height.”
I try to dismiss the notion on practical grounds—the ring will get stuck where the cavalettis are tied to the cable. Papa Rudy gets almost angry: “Come on! Are you a wirewalker or are you not a wirewalker? You just kneel there, people will think you are saluting. You unhook the damn ring and you clip it on the other side of the cavaletti, come on!”
In the gentlest manner, I explain to my friend, daredevil of the old circus tradition, how our wires are different, how mine is a theater stage, a canvas on which to paint poetry. About the safety
belt, I conclude, “I cannot, I never will … do that.” Am I speaking another language?
Papa Rudy holds my hand and looks at me with brimming eyes. “Oh, but don't think I can't understand. I know. You want to do something … something … something beautiful, you!”
Another one who thinks I'm going to die. Except this time it's a wire-walker; he knows.
 
As Annie and I are departing, Papa Rudy disappears and quickly returns.
“In America, you have something to measure with?”
Without waiting for a reply, he places in my hands an antique leather-bound 50-meter cloth measuring tape, embossed in gold with his grandfather's initials.
“Here, it's a gift, don't lose it.”
 
The old man and his wife insist on waving goodbye at the truck, and they keep waving even after it passes the hill. It's a family tradition. It is how, each year, they send their children off on world circus tours, not entirely sure of seeing them all alive again.
Blois to Vary, two hundred kilometers.
I know the itinerary like I know my cable: Romorantin. Vierzon. Bourges. Nevers. St.-Pierre-Le-Moutier.
We'll be at Vary before dusk.
 
Annie is joyful. Omankowsky's advice has somewhat reassured her. I continue to believe that the towers may sway, that the wind may take me out. And I'm still worked up about my unresolved argument with the old master: he says the cavaletti ropes should be tied at the same level as the cable, it's simpler and faster. So what if, during the walk, I have to lift my balancing pole here and there, to avoid hitting the ropes? This idea is unacceptable to me;
it would make the walk inelegant, circuslike. I want traditional cavalettis that slant down from the cable. But where to anchor the ropes on the windowless buildings?
“
Waaaatch it
!” screams Annie, as I swerve to avoid a head-on collision with a sixteen-wheeler.
 
 
 
Concealed in the muddiest countryside imaginable, the hamlet of Vary appears, awaiting its daily rain. The cows start a concert of welcome as we turn down the long dirt road leading to the Castle—that's how the local farmers refer to the large estate my parents intend to sell.
Nothing has changed.
The hundred-foot spruce continues to grow a short distance from the steps of the Big House, a comfortable eighteenth-century mansion with yellow walls, a steep slate roof, and pretentious pinnacles. The Big House is off-limits to me.
Leaning against it, as if to take its place, is a smaller, shorter, much older structure with grapevine fissuring its roughcast facade and handmade tiles in countless shades of red covering a misshapen roof. This tiny mildewed dwelling, with its post-and-beam oak attic where I used to play hide and seek, its single bedroom and adjoining quarters, its lack of running water, is my domain, all that I'm allowed until further notice. And I cherish it.
It was here that I spent a winter writing my
Treatise on the High Wire
, constantly throwing logs at the fireplace. It was on these grounds nine years ago that I installed my first hemp rope between two trees and fought alone, all summer long, for the art of balance. It was across the big meadow that, much later, I stretched my first long practice cable, nine feet off the ground—the Hundred Meters. It still hangs there, sagging alarmingly low to the dung-covered field.
 
“Quick! No time!”
Constantly talking to myself, I feverishly set up headquarters for the WTC operation while Annie opens the house.
I take the bedroom for Annie and myself and in the living room make a pile of all the old mattresses, pillows, and blankets I can find for the numerous visitors I'm expecting.
I cover the walls with rigging plans, views of the twin towers, and maps of Manhattan. I pin schedules and lists of equipment all over the kitchen in such a way that it's not possible to open all the cabinets. I set the WTC model on the dining table, announcing, “We'll eat on the floor!”
Annie knows better than to intervene.
 
“Let's go, let's go!” I croon like a rooster every morning at 6 a.m.
On a piece of plywood I paint the words WORLD TRADE CENTER ASSOCIATION, with a large red arrow underneath. I add a silhouette of my towers, a wire, and a wirewalker. Then I nail it to a stake and run to plant the sign at the turnoff for Vary.
 
I straighten the two Xs supporting the Hundred Meters, wipe the cable, tension it to 5 tons, and throw six cavaletti ropes on it. That's a day's work. Next, I drag out of the barn the “circus installation”: two masts 20 feet high supporting a 30-foot cable, all disassembled and rusty. I struggle with the equipment, repairing, scraping, painting all day, forgetting to eat. Wielding a twenty-pound sledgehammer, I'm about to drive the first of twenty-five three-foot steel stakes necessary to anchor the installation, determined to erect it before dark, when Annie breaks in: “You're crazy! It's absurd to kill yourself, rigging the installation alone! In two days, Mark will be here to help you. Instead, you should be practicing the Hundred Meters, getting stronger, making the new balancing pole, preparing your agenda with Jean-Louis—if not, you'll end up arguing with him again …”
She's right.
Angered by my own stupidity, I hammer the heavy stake all the way down to the neck and move on to something else.
 
“Allo
? Good morning. I'm calling to find out the maximum permissible length for a cylindrical package to be checked as baggage on a flight to New York … When am I flying? That's irrelevant, I just— … How long is my package? I don't have a package yet. I'm making one. And I wanted to know how long it— … Excuse me? Call you when I am finished making the package? No, but you don't understand, I—Wait! Wait!”
I spend the afternoon on the phone, reaching all sorts of offices in every airport of the Paris region, and net—along with insults, hang-ups, and endless discussions—fifteen different answers.
I calculate the mean of all the dimensions I've been quoted and start to make the WTC balancing pole. To fight the wind and to reinforce the illusion that my life is not at stake, it has to be much longer and much heavier than all my previous poles, so it will measure 8 meters long and weigh 25 kilograms. It will break down into four sections, forming a cylindrical package 2.5 meters long, 8.2 feet.
For a full day, I saw, file, weld, hammer, and drill. I paint the finished balancing pole flat black, not only to render it visible in the whitish sky, but to underscore the link between the street-juggler and the funambulist. In my chalk circle on the sidewalk, I always appear dressed in black. Yesterday, in the middle of the night, I decided: I will appear all in black on the wire between my towers.
 
 
It's raining.
 
I don't have enough hours in the day. Not only do I refuse to eat, I start using my nights to sort things out. I don't really sleep: I think in my sleep. In addition to working the Hundred Meters at dawn every day—a grueling exercise—I'm organizing everything. And I'm not good at it.
It keeps raining.
 
I must get invitation letters from Jim Moore for Jean-Louis, Mark, and me, to facilitate our getting visas long enough to prepare the coup.
The crew has to be reconfigured: two friends have given up already. Mark had the brilliant idea of asking Paul, the other Australian accomplice from Sydney, a young architecture student who is currently in London. I must write to him immediately.
I need to follow Jean-Louis's progress with the bow and arrow. He's coming in three days; we'll practice shooting the fishing line across. If the bow doesn't work, what will?
I call Francis. He has the money. When can I come?
I spend countless sessions with the model, sorting out the remaining technical problems and torturously listing the possible solutions. At times, exhausted, I wonder if Jean-Louis is right: maybe I don't know enough of what I'm supposed to know.
I call Omankowsky for advice, but it's worse on the phone than in person, and we end up yelling at each other.
What about the rest of the equipment? I go buy things. I go make things. It's endless.
Madly, I surround myself with more sketches, more plans, more lists, more schedules, bringing on a Kafkaesque state of asphyxia.
And it's raining.
As if life were not complicated enough, a film crew—friends of friends—is coming to shoot our preparations in 16mm with sound. I've been arguing with the director, Yves, about a contract for a month already. He's calling every five minutes.
It's still raining.
Philippe works with the model —
a still from the 16mm film
Loud honking at the gate.
It's Mark and his Australian girlfriend, Woose, in a green minivan held together with gaffer's tape. I give them a calm five-minute tour of the property before I throw work gloves at Mark.
With that extra pair of very fast and very practical hands, and with Annie's help organizing things—which for once I accept—the days find the hours they had lost.
The circus installation is up. I'm on the wire half of the day, happy.
It's stopped raining.
 
 
 
This morning the sky is ready to spit at us.
With a shower of sand, tires screeching, Jean-Louis slides his immaculate white coupé to a halt, almost hitting the front step. I run out with Papa Rudy's measuring tape to check the distance between the bumper and the stone: 15 centimeters.
As Jean-Louis helps his Japanese girlfriend, Setsuko, out of the car, the sky turns black, and suddenly hail the size of quail eggs falls on us with a biblical vengeance.
“Well, when you bring bad weather, you don't do things halfway!” I say.
“Actually, it was snow I was aiming for,” deadpans Jean-Louis.
Mark and Woose, Jean-Louis and Setsuko, Philippe and Annie—the house reverberates with international laughter and jokes no one entirely gets.
 
 
 
I make everyone sit around the model, and for the first time I present the coup in its full scope, primarily addressing Jean-Louis.
I quickly grow irritated, at first by the constant joking interruptions from the group, and then by the dawning realization that my presentation is in fact a lengthy expose of the coup's
unsolved problems. I raise my voice, I speak faster to conceal the weaknesses of the project, but I can tell from Jean-Louis's silence that he feels betrayed. The operation I have portrayed as almost ready to go is still a bag of loose ends. And just as I am on the verge of engaging him in a productive exchange, the movie crew enters, camera rolling.
Instantly, Jean-Louis pulls back, frowning. I pick a fight with Yves—the contract again—that continues far into the evening and sets Jean-Louis sulking by the fireplace. When he finally explodes—“It's the film or the coup!”—I shift my wrath to him, and we argue bitterly about ways to sneak into WTC until Annie, who has further enraged me by taking sides with Jean-Louis, throws me out of the living room at 3 a.m.
Everyone goes to sleep without saying good night.
How could I have noticed that, in a dark corner by the chimney, Mark was following every aspect of the technical discussion and analyzing the options?
 
 
 
We breakfast quietly and without joy, but Yves films us.
Suddenly Mark breaks the silence. He has an idea about where to anchor the cavalettis, which he shows me on the model: “You see, if you put this here … and this here … then you …” Still in a foul mood, I begin to tear apart his idea, until the genius of what he suggests dawns on me. Everyone crowds around as Mark once again proudly demonstrates his discovery.
Feverishly, I clear the model of all its threads. I glue a new red wire from tower to tower, not on the midpoint of the lower ledge of the building as before, but this time at the corner of the upper edge. Perpendicular to the wire and at even intervals, I lay two blue cavaletti ropes, fixing each intersection with a drop of glue. Then I tie their four extremities, not to the rooftops but to the ledge 11 feet, 3 inches below, where it is so frightening to stand.
Seen from above, the geometry looks asymmetrical, but in profile it's the best configuration, allowing the cavaletti ropes
to slant down slightly from the wire, a compromise between Papa Rudy's horizontal solution and Mark's vertical one.
Everyone applauds and shouts congratulations; Jean-Louis and I wrestle Mark to the floor.

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