Summersault

We have lived in skyscrapers for hundreds of years. There are so many of us and we are so busy so much of the time, that it would be dangerous if we all walked around scattered through the city. That I understand. But when spring arrives many of us rebel a little, grabbing our bikes, going in search of the few butterflies we can still find. That is what I was up to, searching for butterflies, when I saw him for the first time. I raised my eyes, following the flight of the particularly pretty blue butterfly, and I saw him. He looked down, calmly, one foot in front of the other, arms relaxed at his sides and not extended in the typical position of the high-wire artist. The sun about to set grew larger. Its reflection on the skyscrapers illuminated his hair with an orangey brightness that dazzled me. I lost sight of the blue butterfly. “What are you doing?”, I yelled, intrigued. “What are you doing?”, he answered. It seemed to me that it was up to him to offer an explanation, there, suspended between two skyscrapers, on a high-wire that from below looked like a little piece of string. But my reactions are very slow, and I tend to lose arguments, so I replied: “I was following a blue butterfly when I saw you. What are you doing up there?” “Why are you following a butterfly?”, he asked. “I don’t know, but I asked you first. What are you doing up there?” “Why do you ask?” he said in reply. The game began to irritate me: “Don’t you ever answer questions?” Then he smiled and said, “Sometimes”, and without warning flipped in the air and landed again on the rope that swayed dangerously. And my heart, my ridiculous heart, flipped too, leaving me breathless. He looked at me seriously. At that distance it was difficult to be sure, but he also seemed out of breath and, somehow, pleased. I stood there not knowing what to do, staring back at him. I had a million questions, but I sensed he wouldn’t answer them, so I kept them in my pocket and got on my bike ready to leave. “See you tomorrow”, he said as I pedaled away, confused, dizzy, my eyes dazzled by the orange and blue reflections in the sky. When I went to bed that night in my room on the sixteenth floor, I didn’t miss the beaches or the gardens. I only felt that my bed lulled me to sleep, rocking as if on the high-wire. The following day, in the office, I found myself looking out the window every five minutes, imagining ropes hung from skyscraper to skyscraper, asking myself if he would be there, suspended in his pirouettes. The clock struck five, but a stupid meeting kept me a little longer and, when I could finally get to my bike I was thankful for the long days of the season. There were still several hours of sunshine ahead, but I was not even looking for the butterflies. I stopped when I came to his street. I looked up and saw him. He was sitting with a laptop on his knees, deep in concentration. I stayed there looking at him. For a moment I was afraid that a crowd would gather and stare, following my gaze, because that is what urbanites do, stop to look at what everyone else is looking at. In fact, the passersby were surprised to see me with the bike, next to the curb, looking up to the sky, and they followed the direction of my stare, immediately shrugging their shoulders as they continued on their way. As if there was nothing extraordinary about seeing an individual sitting on a rope between two buildings. Finally, I brought myself to talk to him: “Hey, what’s your name?”. “Oh, hi. Can you wait a minute?” He closed the computer and slid it down the rope. I didn’t see it disappear through the window. I actually found it difficult, from the ground, to see where the cord began and where it ended. It could have been the twentieth floor, the twelfth, the fifteenth, the sixth. He wasn’t lost in the stratosphere, but he was at considerable distance from the ground and me. He settled himself on the rope and looked back at me, seated, swaying, propelling himself gently with his legs. “What is your name?”, I asked him again.