Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster Read Free Book Online

me yet.”
    I heard him all right. He was coming through to me loud and clear, and tempted as I was to say something in response, I beatback the urge and held my tongue. A long silence followed. Master Yehudi sat there in the darkness stroking my hand, and after a while, if I’m not mistaken, if I didn’t doze off and dream what happened next, I heard, or at least I thought I heard, a series of broken-off sobs, an almost indiscernible rumbling that spilled out from the large man’s chest and pierced the quiet of the room—once, twice, a dozen times.
    It would be an exaggeration to say that I abandoned my suspicions all at once, but there’s no question that my attitude started to change. I’d learned that escape was pointless, and now that I was stuck there whether I liked it or not, I decided to make the most of what I’d been given. Perhaps my brush with death had something to do with it, I don’t know, but once I climbed out of my sickbed and got back on my feet, the chip I’d been carrying around on my shoulder was no longer there. I was so glad to be well again, it no longer bothered me that I was living with the outcasts of the universe. They were a curious, unsavory lot, but in spite of my constant grumbling and bad behavior, each one of them had developed a certain affection for me, and I would have been a lout to ignore that. Perhaps it all boiled down to the fact that I was finally getting used to them. If you look into someone’s face long enough, eventually you’re going to feel that you’re looking at yourself.
    All that said, I don’t mean to imply that my life became any easier. In the short run, it proved to be even rougher than before, and just because I’d throttled my resistance somewhat, that didn’t make me any less of a wisenheimer, any less of the pugnacious little punk I’d always been. Spring was upon us, and within a week of my recovery I was out in the fields plowing up the ground and planting seeds, breaking my back like some grubby, bird-brained hick. I abhorred manual labor, and given that I had no knack for it whatsoever, I looked upon those days as a penance,an unending trial of blisters, bloody fingers, and stubbed toes. But at least I wasn’t out there alone. The four of us worked together for approximately a month, suspending all other business as we hastened to get the crops in on time (corn, wheat, oats, alfalfa) and to prepare the soil for Mother Sioux’s vegetable garden, which would keep our stomachs full throughout the summer. The work was too hard for us to stand around and chat, but I had an audience for my complaints now, and whenever I let forth with one of my caustic asides, I always managed to get a laugh out of someone. That was the big difference between the days before and after I fell sick. My mouth never stopped working, but whereas previously my comments had been construed as vicious, ungrateful barbs, they were now looked upon as jokes, the rambunctious patter of a clever little clown.
    Master Yehudi toiled like an ox, slogging away at his tasks as if he had been born to the land, and he never failed to accomplish more than the rest of us put together. Mother Sioux was steady, diligent, silent, advancing in a constant crouch as her vast rear end jutted up into the sky. She came from a race of hunters and warriors, and farming was as unnatural to her as it was to me. Inept as I might have been, however, Aesop was even worse, and it comforted me to know that he was not one bit more enthusiastic about wasting his time on that drudgery than I was. He wanted to be indoors reading his books, to be dreaming his dreams and hatching his ideas, and while he never openly confronted the master with his grievances, he was particularly responsive to my cracks, interrupting my jags of whimsy with spontaneous guffaws, and each time he laughed it was as if he were exhaling a loud
amen
, reassuring me that I’d hit the nail on the head. I had always thought of Aesop as a