Free Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster Page A

and blinking back a rush of tears. “There’s no time to waste,” he said to me. “Gangrene has set in, and unless we get rid of that finger now, it’s liable to spread through his hand and up into his arm. Run outside and tell Mother Sioux to drop what’s she’s doing and put on two pots of water to boil. I’ll go down to the kitchen and sharpen the knives. We have to operate within the hour.”
    I did what I was told, and once I’d rounded up Mother Sioux from the barnyard, I dashed back into the house, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and parked myself beside my friend. Aesop looked dreadful. The lustrous black of his skin had turned to a chalky, mottled gray, and I could hear the phlegm rattling in his chest as his head lolled back and forth on the pillow.
    “Hang on, buddy,” I said. “It won’t be long now. The master’s going to fix you up, and before you know it you’ll be downstairs at the ivories again, twiddling out one of your goofy rags.”
    “Walt?” he said. “Is that you, Walt?” He opened his bloodshot eyes and looked in the direction of my voice, but his pupils were so glazed over I wasn’t sure he could see me.
    “Of course it’s me,” I answered. “Who else do you think would be sitting here at a time like this?”
    “He’s going to cut off my finger, Walt. I’ll be deformed for life, and no girl will ever want me.”
    “You’re already deformed for life, and that hasn’t stopped you from hankering for twat, has it? He ain’t going to cut off your dick, Aesop. Only a finger, and a finger on your left hand at that. As long as your willy’s still attached, you can bang the broads till kingdom come.”
    “I don’t want to lose my finger,” he moaned. “If I lose my finger, it means there’s no justice. It means that God has turned his back on me.”
    “I ain’t got but nine and a half fingers myself, and it don’t bother me hardly at all. Once you lose yours, we’ll be just like twins. Bonafide members of the Nine Finger Club, brothers till the day we drop—just like the master always said.”
    I did what I could to reassure him, but once the operation began, I was shunted aside and forgotten. I stood in the doorway with my hands over my face, peeking through the cracks every now and then as the master and Mother Sioux did their work. There was no ether or anaesthetic, and Aesop howled and howled, belting out a horrific, bloodcurdling noise that never slackened from start to finish. Sorry as I felt for him, those howls nearly undid me. They were inhuman, and the terror they expressed was so deep and so prolonged, it was all I could do not to begin screaming myself. Master Yehudi went about his business with the calm of a trained doctor, but the howls got to Mother Sioux just as badly as they got to me. That was the last thing I was expecting from her. I’d always thought that Indians hid their feelings, that they were braver and more stoical than white folks, but the truth was that Mother S. was unhinged, and as the blood continued to spurt and Aesop’s pain continued to mount, she gasped and whimpered as if the knife was tearinginto her own flesh. Master Yehudi told her to get a grip on herself. She apologized, but fifteen seconds later she started sobbing again. She was a pitiful nurse, and after a while her tearful interruptions so distracted the master that he had to send her out of the room. “We need a fresh bucket of boiling water,” he said. “Snap to it, woman. On the double.” It was just an excuse to get rid of her, and as she rushed past me into the hall, she buried her face in her hands and wept on blindly to the top of the stairs. I had a clear view of everything that happened after that: the way her foot snagged on the first step, the way her knee buckled as she tried to right her balance, and then the headlong fall down the stairs—the thumping, tumbling career of her huge bulk as it crashed to the bottom. She landed with a thud that shook