Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster

machines, and the idea of being stuck in the boondocks was a bit hard to swallow. If I’d been making some headway on my loft and locomotion, it might not have been so awful to be left behind, but I wasn’t getting anywhere, and I told the master that a change of scenery was just what I needed to get the juices flowing again. He laughed in that condescending way of his and said, “Your time is coming, champ, but it’s Aesop’s turn now. The poor boy hasn’t set eyes on a sidewalk or a traffic light forseven years, and it’s my duty as a father to show him a little of the world. Books can only go so far, after all. A moment comes when you have to experience things in the flesh.”
    “Talking about flesh,” I said, gulping back my disappointment, “be sure to take care of Aesop’s little pal. If there’s one experience he’s been craving, it’s the chance to put it somewhere other than in his own hand.”
    “Rest assured, Walt. It’s on the agenda. Mrs. Witherspoon gave me some extra cash for precisely that purpose.”
    “That was thoughtful of her. Maybe she’ll do the same for me one day.”
    “I’m sure she would, but I doubt you’re going to need her help.”
    “We’ll see about that. The way things stand now, I ain’t interested anyway.”
    “All the more reason to stay behind in Kansas and do your work. If you keep at it, there might be a surprise or two for me when I come back.”
    So I spent the month of February alone with Mother Sioux, watching the snow fall and listening to the wind blow across the prairie. For the first couple of weeks, the weather was so cold that I couldn’t bring myself to go out to the bam. I spent the better part of my time moping around the house, too dejected to think about practicing my stunts. Even with just the two of us, Mother Sioux had to keep up with her chores, and what with the extra effort required because of her bum leg, she tired more easily than she had before. Still, I pestered her to distraction, trying to get her to talk to me as she went about her work. For over two years I hadn’t given much thought to anyone but myself, accepting the people around me more or less as they appeared on the surface. I had never bothered to probe into their pasts, had never really cared to know who they’d been before I enteredtheir lives. Now, suddenly, I was gripped by a compulsion to learn everything I could about each one of them. I think it started because I missed them so much—the master and Aesop most of all, but Mrs. Witherspoon as well. I’d liked having her around the house, and the place was a lot duller now that she was gone. Asking questions was a way to bring them back, and the more Mother Sioux talked about them, the less lonely I felt.
    For all my insistence and nagging, I didn’t get much out of her during the daytime. An occasional anecdote, a few dribs and drabs, suggestive hints. The evenings were more conducive to talk, and no matter how hard I pressed her, she rarely got going before we sat down to supper. Mother Sioux was a tight-lipped person, not given to idle chatter or shooting the breeze, but once she settled into the right mood, she wasn’t half bad at telling stories. Her delivery was flat, and she didn’t throw in many colorful details, but she had a knack for pausing every so often in the middle of a sentence or an idea, and those little breaks in the telling produced rather startling effects. They gave you a chance to think, to carry on with the story yourself, and by the time she started up again, you discovered that your head was filled with all kinds of vivid pictures that hadn’t been there before.
    One night, for no reason that I could understand, she took me up to her room on the second floor. She told me to sit on the bed, and once I’d made myself comfortable, she opened the lid of a battered old trunk that stood in the corner. I’d always thought it was a storage place for her sheets and blankets, but it turned out to