I woke to the sound of voices, the shuffling of shoes against the bare wood floor. When I opened my eyes, I found myself looking directly into the blackness of Master Yehudi’s left trouser leg. “Greetings, kid,” he said, nudging me with his foot. “Forty winks on the cold kitchen floor. Not the best place for a nap if you want to stay healthy.”
I tried to sit up, but my body felt so dull and turgid, it took all my strength just to lift myself onto one elbow. My head was a trembling mass of cobwebs, and no matter how hard I rubbed and blinked my eyes, I couldn’t get them to focus properly.
“What’s the trouble, Walt?” the master continued. “You haven’t been walking in your sleep, have you?”
“No, sir. Nothing like that.”
“Then why so glum? You look like you’ve been to a funeral.”
An immense sadness swept through me when he said that, and I suddenly felt myself on the verge of tears. “Oh, master,” I said, grabbing hold of his leg with both arms and pressing my cheek against his shin. “Oh, master, I thought you’d left me. I thought you’d left me, and were never coming back.”
The moment those words left my lips, I understood that I was wrong. It wasn’t the master who had caused this feeling of vulnerability and despair, it was the thing I’d done just prior to falling asleep. It all came back in a vivid, nauseating rush: the moments I’d spent off the ground, the certainty that I had done what most certainly I could not have done. Rather than fill me with ecstasy or gladness, this breakthrough overpowered me with dread. I didn’t know myself anymore. I was inhabited by something that wasn’t me, and that thing was so terrible, so alien in its newness, I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. I let myself cry instead. I let the tears come pouring out of me, and once I started, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop.
“Dear boy,” the master said, “my dear, sweet boy.” He lowered himself to the ground and gathered me in his arms, patting my back and hugging me close to him as I went on weeping. Then, after a pause, I heard him speak again—but he was no longer addressing his words to me. For the first time since regaining consciousness, I understood that another person was in the room.
“He’s the bravest lad who ever was,” the master said. “He’s worked so hard, he’s worn himself out. A body can bear just so much, and I’m afraid the poor little fellow’s all done in.”
That was when I finally looked up. I lifted my head off Master Yehudi’s lap, cast my eyes about for a moment, and there was Mrs. Witherspoon, standing in the light of the doorway. She was wearing a crimson overcoat and a black fur hat, I remember, and her cheeks were still flush from the winter cold. The instant our eyes met, she broke into a smile.
“Hello, Walt,” she said.
“And hello to you, ma’am,” I said, sniffing back the last of my tears.
“Meet your fairy godmother,” the master said. “Mrs. Witherspoon has come to rescue us, and she’ll be staying in the house for a little while. Until things get back to normal.”
“You’re the lady from Wichita, ain’t you?” I said, realizing why her face looked so familiar to me.
“That’s right,” she said. “And you’re the little boy who lost his way in the storm.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said, extricating myself from the master’s arms and finally standing up. “I can’t say I remember much about it.”
“No,” she said, “you probably don’t. But I do.”
“Not only is Mrs. Witherspoon a friend of the family,” the master said, “she’s our number-one champion and business partner. Just so you know the score, Walt. I want you to bear that in mind while she’s here with us. The food that feeds you, the clothes that clothe you, the fire that warms you—all that comes courtesy of Mrs. Witherspoon, and it would be a sad day if you ever forgot it.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, suddenly feeling some spring in my soul again. “I ain’t no slob. When a handsome lady enters my house, I know how a gentleman is supposed to act.”
Without missing a beat, I turned my eyes in Mrs. Witherspoon’s direction, and with all the poise and bravura I could muster, flashed her the sexiest, most preposterous wink ever beheld by womankind. To her credit, Mrs. Witherspoon neither blushed nor stammered. Giving as good as she got, she let out a brief laugh, and then, as cool and collected as an old bawd, tossed back a playful wink at me. It was a moment I still cherish, and the instant it happened, I knew we were going to be friends.
I had no idea what the master’s arrangement with her was, and at the time I didn’t give the matter much thought. What concerned me was that Mrs. Witherspoon was there and that her presence relieved me of my job as nursemaid and bottle-washer. She took things in hand that first morning, and for the next three weeks the household ran as smoothly as a new pair of roller skates. To be honest, I didn’t think she’d be capable of it, at least not when I saw her in that fancy coat and those expensive gloves. She looked like a woman who was used to having servants wait on her, and though she was pretty enough in a fragile sort of way, her skin was too pale for my taste and there was too little meat on her bones. It took me some time to adjust to her, since she didn’t fit into any of the female categories I was familiar with. She wasn’t a flapper or a hussy, she wasn’t a meek house-wifey blob, she wasn’t a schoolmarm or a virgin battle-ax—but somehow a bit of all of them, which meant that you could never quite pin her down or predict what her next move was going to be. The only thing I felt certain about was that the master was in love with her. He always grew very still and soft-spoken when she entered the room, and more than once I caught him staring at her with a far-off look in his eyes when her head was turned the other way. Since they slept together in the same bed every night, and since I heard the mattress creak and bounce with a certain regularity, I took it for granted that she felt the same way about him. What I didn’t know was that she had already turned him down in marriage three times—but even if I had known, I doubt it would have made much difference. I had other things on my mind just then, and they were a hell of a lot more important to me than the ups and downs of the master’s love life.
I kept to myself as much as possible during those weeks, hiding out in my room as I explored the mysteries and terrors of my new gift. I did everything I could to tame it, to come to terms with it, to study its exact dimensions and accept it as a fundamental part of myself. That was the struggle: not just to master the skill, but to absorb its gruesome and shattering implications, to plunge into the maw of the beast. It had marked me with a special destiny, and I would be set apart from others for the rest of my life. Imagine waking up one morning to discover that you have a new face, and then imagine the hours you would have to spend in front of the mirror before you got used to it, before you could begin to feel comfortable with yourself again. Day after day, I would lock myself in my room, stretch out on the floor, and wish my body into the air. I practiced so much that it wasn’t long before I could levitate at will, “lifting myself off the ground in a matter of seconds. After a couple of weeks, I learned that it wasn’t necessary to lie down on the floor. If I put myself in the proper trance, I was able to do it standing up, to float a good six inches into the air from a vertical position. Three days after that, I learned that I could begin the ascent with my eyes open. I could actually look down and see my feet rising off the floor, and still the spell would not be broken.
Meanwhile, the life of the others swirled around me. Aesop’s bandages came off, Mother Sioux was fitted with a cane and began to hobble around again, the master and Mrs. Witherspoon shook the bedsprings every night, filling the house with their groans. With so much hubbub to contend with, it wasn’t always easy to come up with an excuse for shutting myself in my room, A couple of times, I felt certain that the master saw straight through me, that he understood my duplicity and was lenient only because he wanted me out of his hair. At any other moment, I would have been consumed with jealousy to be shunned like that, to know that he preferred the company of a woma
n to my own sterling, inimitable presence. Now that I was airborne, however, Master Yehudi was beginning to lose his godlike properties for me, and I no longer felt under the sway of his influence. I saw him as a man, a man no better or worse than other men, and if he wanted to spend his time cavorting with a skinny wench from Wichita, that was his affair. He had his affairs and I had mine, and that’s how it was going to be from now on. I had taught myself how to fly, after all, or at least something that resembled flying, and I assumed that meant I was my own man now, that I was beholden to no one but myself. As it turned out, I had merely advanced to the next stage of my development. Devious and cunning as ever, the master was still far ahead of me, and I had a long road to travel before I became the hotshot I thought I was.
Aesop drooped in his nine-fingered state, a listless shadow of his former self, and though I spent as much time with him as I could, I was too busy with my experiments to give him the kind of attention he needed. He kept asking me why I spent so many hours alone in my room, and one morning (it must have been the fifteenth or sixteenth of December) I let forth with a small lie to help assuage his doubts about me. I didn’t want him to think I’d stopped caring about him, and under the circumstances it seemed better to fib than to say nothing.
“It’s in the nature of a surprise,” I said. “If you promise not to breathe a word about it, I’ll give you a hint.”
Aesop eyed me with suspicion. “You’re up to another one of your tricks, aren’t you?”
“No tricks, I swear. What I’m telling you is on the level, the whole gob straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“You don’t have to hem and haw. If you have something to say, just come out and say it.”
“I will. But first you’ve got to promise.”
“This had better be good. I don’t like giving my word for no reason, you know.”
“Oh, it’s good all right, you can trust me on that.”
“Well,” he said, beginning to lose patience. “What’s the pitch, little brother?”
“Raise your right hand and swear you’ll never tell. Swear on your mother’s grave. Swear on the whites of your eyeballs. Swear on the pussy of every whore in Niggertown.”
Aesop sighed, grabbed hold of his balls with his left hand—which was how the two of us swore to sacred oaths—and lifted his right hand into the air. “I promise,” he said, and then he repeated the things I’d told him to say.
“Well,” I said, improvising as I went along, “it’s like this. Christmas is coming up next week, and what with Mrs. Witherspoon in the house and all, I’ve heard talk about a celebration on the twenty-fifth. Turkey and pudding, presents, maybe even a fir tree with baubles and popcorn on it. If this shindig comes off like I think it will, I don’t want to be caught with my pants down. You know how it is. It ain’t no fun to receive a present if you can’t give one in return. So that’s what I’ve been up to in my room all these days. I’m working on a present, concocting the biggest and best surprise my poor little brain can think of. I’ll be unveiling it to you in just a few days, big brother, and I hope to hell you aren’t disappointed.”
Everything I said about the Christmas party was true. I’d overheard the master and his lady talking about it one night through the walls, but until then it hadn’t occurred to me to give anyone a present. Now that I’d planted the idea in my head, I saw it as a golden opportunity, the chance I’d been waiting for all along. If there was a Christmas dinner (and that same night the master announced there would be), I would use the occasion to show off my new talent. That would be my present to them. I would stand up and levitate before their eyes, and at last my secret would be known to the world.
I spent the next week and a half in a cold sweat. It was one thing to perform my stunts in private, but how could I be sure I wouldn’t fall on my face when I walked out in front of them? If I didn’t come through, I’d be turned into a laughingstock, the butt of every joke for the next twenty-seven years. So began the longest, most tormented day of my life. From whatever angle you chose to look at it, the Yuletide bash was a triumph, a veritable banquet of laughter and gaiety, but I didn’t enjoy myself one bit. I could barely chew the turkey for fear of choking on it, and the mashed turnips tasted like a mixture of library paste and mud. By the time we moved into the parlor to sing songs and exchange presents, I was ready to pass out. Mrs. Witherspoon started off by giving me a blue sweater with red reindeer stitched across the front. Mother Sioux followed with a pair of hand-knit argyle socks, and then the master gave me a spanking new white baseball. Finally, Aesop gave me the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, which he’d cut out of the book and mounted in a sleek ebony frame. They were all generous gifts, but each time I unwrapped one, I could do no more than mumble a grim, inaudible thanks. Each present meant that I was drawing closer to the moment of truth, and each one sapped a little more of the spirit out of me. I sank down in my chair, and by the time I’d opened the last package, I had all but resolved to cancel the demonstration. I wasn’t prepared, I told myself, I still needed more practice, and once I started in with those arguments, I had no trouble talking myself out of it. Then, just when I’d managed to glue my ass to the chair forever, Aesop piped in with his two cents and the ceiling fell on top of me.
“Now it’s Walt’s turn,” he said in all innocence, thinking I was a man of my word. “He’s got something up his sleeve, and I can’t wait for him to spring it on us.”
“That’s right,” the master said, turning to me with one of his piercing, all-knowing looks. “Young Mr. Rawley has yet to be heard from.”
I was on the spot. I didn’t have another present, and if I stalled any longer, they’d see me for the selfish ingrate I really was. So I stood up from my chair, my knee-bones knocking together, and said in a feeble little church-mouse voice: “Here goes, ladies and gentlemen. If it don’t work, you can’t say it’s from want of trying.”
The four of them were looking at me with such curiosity, such a raptness of puzzlement and attention, that I shut my eyes to block them out. I took a long slow breath and exhaled, spread my arms in the loose, slack-jointed way I’d worked on for so many hours, and went into my trance. I began to rise almost immediately, lifting off the ground in a smooth and gradual ascent, and when I reached a height of six or seven inches—the maximum I was capable of in those early months—I opened my eyes and looked out at my audience. Aesop and the two women were gaping in wonder, their three mouths formed into identical little o’s. The master was smiling, however, smiling as the tears rolled down his cheeks, and even as I hovered before him, I saw that he was already reaching for the leather strap behind his collar. By the time I floated down again, he had slipped the necklace over his head and was holding it out to me in his extended palm. No one said a word. I started walking toward him, Crossing the room with my eyes fixed on his eyes, not daring to look anywhere else. When I came to the place where Master Yehudi was sitting, I took my finger joint from him and fell to my knees, burying my face in his lap. I held on like that for close to a minute, and when I finally found the courage to stand up again, I ran from the room, rushing to the kitchen and out into the cold night air—gasping for breath, gasping for life under the immensity of the winter stars.
We said good-bye to Mrs. Witherspoon three days after that, waving to her from the kitchen door as she drove off in her emerald green Chrysler sedan. Then it was 1927, and for the first six months of that year I worked with savage concentration, pushing myself a little farther each week. Master Yehudi made it clear that levitation was only the beginning. It was a lovely accomplishment, of course, but nothing to set the world on fire with. Scores of people possessed the ability to lift themselves off the ground, and even after you subtracted the Indian fakirs and Tibetan monks and Congolese witch doctors, there were numerous examples from the so-called civilized nations, the white countries of Europe and North America. In Hungary alone, the master said, there had been five active levitators at the turn of the century, thr
ee of them right in his hometown of Budapest. It was a wonderful skill, but the public soon grew tired of it, and unless you could do more than hover just a few inches off the ground, there was no chance of turning it into a profitable career. The art of levitation had been sullied by tricksters and charlatans, the smoke-and-mirror boys out for a quick buck, and even the lamest, most tawdry magician on the vaudeville circuit could pull off the stunt of the floating girl: the bombshell in the scant, glittering costume who hangs in midair as a hoop is placed around her (Look: no strings, no wires) and travels the length of her outstretched body. That was standard procedure now, an established part of the repertoire, and it had put the real levitators out of business. Everyone knew it was a fake, and the fakery was so widespread that even when confronted with an act of genuine levitation, audiences insisted on believing it was a sham.
“There are only two ways of grabbing their attention,” the master said. “Either one will bring us a good life, but if you manage to combine the two of them into a single routine, there’s no telling how far we might go. There isn’t a bank in the world that could hold all the money we’d make then.”
“Two ways,” I said. “Are they part of the thirty-three steps, or are we past that stuff now?”
“We’re past it. You’ve gone as far as I did when I was your age, and beyond this point we’re entering new territory, continents no one has ever seen before. I can help you with advice and instruction, I can steer you when you’ve gone off track, but all the essential things you’ll have to discover for yourself. We’ve come to the crossroads, and from now on everything is up to you.”
“Tell me about the two ways. Give me the lowdown on the whole kaboodle, and we’ll see if I’ve got it in me or not.”
“Loft and locomotion—those are the two ways. By loft I mean getting yourself up into the air. Not just half a foot, but three feet, six feet, twenty feet. The higher you go, the more spectacular the results will be. Three feet is nice, but it won’t be enough to stun the crowds into amazement. That puts you just a little above eye-level for most adults, and that can’t do the trick over the long haul. At six feet, you’re hovering above their heads, and once you force them to look up, you’ll be creating the kind of impression we want. At ten feet, the effect will be transcendent. At twenty feet, you’ll be up there among the angels, Walt, a wondrous thing to behold, an apparition of light and beauty shining joy into the heart of every man, woman, and child who lifts his face up to you.”