Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

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Zoli

Dancer

Everything in This Country Must

This Side of Brightness

Songdogs

Fishing the Sloe-Black River

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R A N D O M H O U S E

N E W Y O R K

McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page vi Let the Great World Spin is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by Colum McCann

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R a n d o m H o us e and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

l i b r a ry o f c o n g r e s s c a t a l o g i n g - i n - p u b l i c a t i o n d a t a McCann, Colum.

Let the great world spin : a novel / Colum McCann.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4000-6373-4

1. ImmigrantsFiction. 2. IrishNew York (State)New YorkFiction. 3. Judges

spousesFiction. 4. GriefFiction. 5. Teenage mothersFiction. 6. Petit, Philippe, 1949 Fiction. 7. Tightrope walkingFiction. 8. New York (N.Y.)Fiction.

9. Nineteen seventiesFiction. 10. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.C335L47 2009

823'.914dc22 2008046963

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper www.atrandom.com

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

f i r s t e d i t i o n

Book design by Barbara M. Bachman

Title-page drawing by Matteo PericoliThe photograph of Philippe Petit on page 237 is reprinted herecourtesy of Rex USA and is Rex USA.

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And, of course, Allison.

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All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be,they are everywhere. That is what the world is.

Aleksandar Hemon,

t h e l a z a r u s p r o j e c t

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T H O S E W H O S A W H I M H U S H E D

B O O K O N E

All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here1 1

Mir, Mir, on the Wall7 3

A Fear of Love1 1 5

L E T T H E G R E AT W O R L D S P I N F O R E V E R D O W N

B O O K T W O

Tag1 6 7

Etherwest1 7 5

This Is the House That Horse Built1 9 8

T H E R I N G I N G G R O O V E S O F C H A N G E

B O O K T H R E E

Part of the Parts2 4 7

Centavos2 7 5

All Hail and Hallelujah2 8 5

B O O K F O U R

Roaring Seaward, and I Go3 2 5

a u t h o r s n o t e 3 5 1

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s 3 5 3

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L E T T H E G R E A T W O R L D S P I N

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Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty.

Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first that it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall.

Others figured it might be the perfect city jokestand around and point upward, until people gathered, tilted their heads, nodded, affirmed, until all were staring upward at nothing at all, like waiting for the end of a Lenny Bruce gag. But the longer they watched, the surer they were. He stood at the very edge of the building, shaped dark against the gray of the morning. A window washer maybe. Or a construction worker. Or a jumper.

Up there, at the height of a hundred and ten stories, utterly still, a dark toy against the cloudy sky.

He could only be seen at certain angles so that the watchers had to pause at street corners, find a gap between buildings, or meander from the shadows to get a view unobstructed by cornicework, gargoyles, balustrades, roof edges. None of them had yet made sense of the line strung at his feet from one tower to the other. Rather, it was the man-shape that held them there, their necks craned, torn between the promise of doom and the disappointment of the ordinary.

It was the dilemma of the watchers: they didnt want to wait around for nothing at all, some idiot standing on the precipice of the towers, but they didnt want to miss the moment either, if he slipped, or got arrested, or dove, arms stretched.

Around the watchers, the city still made its everyday noises. Car McCa_9781400063734_4p_01_r1.w.qxp 4/13/09 2:31 PM Page 4

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horns. Garbage trucks. Ferry whistles. The thrum of the subway. The M22 bus pulled in against the sidewalk, braked, sighed down into a pothole. A flying chocolate wrapper touched against a fire hydrant. Taxi doors slammed. Bits of trash sparred in the darkest reaches of the alleyways. Sneakers found their sweetspots. The leather of briefcases rubbed against trouserlegs. A few umbrella tips clinked against the pavement.

Revolving doors pushed quarters of conversation out into the street.

But the watchers could have taken all the sounds and smashed them down into a single noise and still they wouldnt have heard much at all: even when they cursed, it was done quietly, reverently.

They found themselves in small groups together beside the traffic lights on the corner of Church and Dey; gathered under the awning of Sams barbershop; in the doorway of Charlies Audio; a tight little theater of men and women against the railings of St. Pauls Chapel; elbowing for space at the windows of the Woolworth Building. Lawyers. Elevator operators. Doctors. Cleaners. Prep chefs. Diamond merchants. Fish sellers.