After the Leonid meteor storm during the fall of 1833, one man from Manhattan Island began to shrink. Whether there was a connection between the fact of the meteor storm and the fact of his shrinking was a question beyond him or—probably—any of the best physicians, scientists, and astronomers of the era. Perhaps the storm and the shrinking just coincided, and there were other causes. No one could have known then, and we don’t know now—it stays a muddle. Yet the fact was that one man was reduced to two inches height in November 1833, and remained, in every other sense, a complete person: his memories, his intelligence, his identity, his physical proportions stayed as they were. But he had lost 66 inches of his height.
The storm of 1833 landed over and across the United States and Canada with awesome force and beauty, and during the long, deep nights of that autumn men and women stepped out from wherever they were—Lydia and Levi were in Manhattan, at the time—to get a view of the light show. Lydia, her hair curled and pushed up in a topknot, wearing a long satin gown, with linen chemise underneath, and evening slippers, stretched herself out on the balcony one late November evening, around 11 PM. Her husband, Levi, sat in a chair next to her (he wearing a long black overcoat—a capote—with trousers and a linen shirt).
At the time Levi worked as a law clerk in an office off Fulton Street in the Financial District, was 30 years old, and considering working as a reporter or editor for one the city’s many rags. His wife Lydia was a homemaker, and, at least in her public life, an easygoing and “I will not be bothered” sort of woman. But they had an interesting private life. Levi had a kind of bee in his bonnet—a sexual obsession—for women’s feet—that is, for his wife’s feet. As he wasn’t shy about telling her what he liked, Lydia learned about it very early in their courtship.
In the evenings, after the last meal of the day, she’d unlace her square-toed leather boots and then change into her slippers. But often, instead of doing this on her own, she’d let him—often at his insistence—go through the little routine for her—sometimes from under the bed, and other times kneeling down in front, as one of her maids would have done. “You’re very strange,” she told him, and indulged him. After they’d been married for a few months, it began to feel less and less strange, and his own habits and preferences started to rub off on her. She came to enjoy, and actually look forward to this new aspect of their marriage, and of her own life, perhaps to a greater degree even than Levi himself (who also thought his preferences were ‘strange’, but never really kicked the view that he was playing with old fantasies). Soon, it became all too real for him.
The night of the Big Event, he and she had watched the Leonids together. ‘Together’ meaning that she had watched them, stretched on the balcony, and he had lain underneath her chair most of the time, with his face as a footstool, propping up her unwashed feet. The scent of her bare feet from the square-toed leather boots was strong. It intoxicated him. She commanded him to lay there quietly under her feet for a half-hour—and then, maybe (if he was still enough), she would allow him to get up and watch the storm with her. Beside his head were her satin slippers, which she bought last week, and falling around his head, in waves, was her purple satin night robe. Seeing nothing but the blackening purple of this robe out of the corner of his eye, smelling nothing but the leathery, cheesy scent of her unwashed feet, which covered his face, and hearing nothing but the sounds of the night and, every other minute or so, a gasp of pleasure from his wife as she watched the Leonids, his thinking came slowly and vaguely, but he eventually realized that ‘This wasn’t a typical night for either him or her’—wouldn’t he rather watch the meteor shower with his wife? But it wasn’t his idea. It was Lydia’s. She had suggested, around 11 PM, just before they walked off to their rooms (separate chambers, as was then common in Manhattan apartments), that they sit out that evening and watch the meteor storm together. And he agreed.
For about twenty minutes she rubbed her feet over his face, covering his mouth, reclining, with her heels crossed at his forehead, covering his eyes and pressing down on his neck with her arches, and lightly pinching his nose with her toes (an unspoken order for him to start loudly inhaling). At 11:20, she looked down at him with some surprise. She had large feet, but they seemed larger, somehow. They covered his face entirely (he was still breathing them in calmly and regularly, as she asked). She moved her feet from his face. “Stop, Levi—you can stop.” He stopped and stood up, then walked over to the chair beside her and sat down. After a minute of silence he’d rallied some of his thoughts together, and turned to her: “It’s cold tonight, isn’t it?” She nodded, “It’s frigid. Find me my slippers and we’ll move inside.” He did so—when they stood up, something was odd. She seemed larger, taller, somehow. Not by comparison with the chair or the bushes or the door or the house itself, but with Levi. Levi said something before she could speak, or move a step: “Lydia, stand against the light for a moment, dear. Something’s off, here.” She stood with her back to the door, and he moved toward her. Yes, something was off, if she wasn’t standing on her toes (she wasn’t). He was just as tall as she was (5’4”). He had shrunk four inches in twenty minutes.
They were both silent for a moment, and the sounds of the crickets and the wind went on behind them (along with that splendid meteor shower, also silent).
“I don’t understand this at all. Am I dreaming?” Lydia said. But the words didn’t seem to be hers.
Levi felt strangely and unreasonably guilty about what was happening (what was happening?), as though he were the cause of it. He should have an answer. But he was shrinking. He was shrinking before her eyes (and she, and everything around her, was growing before his).
“I’m…No, I don’t know. Let’s go inside.” He ran inside and strode, leapt up the stairs to his room. He stood before the mirror for a moment, and then turned around in confusion and despair. His wife was at the door watching him, her eyes welling with tears and her arms pinned down at her sides. She swept across the room to one of the chairs, and sat down rigidly. She couldn’t talk, and her tears didn’t seem to be hers, either. She seemed to have heard and felt them, to have seen all this, somewhere. “Where did it happen before?” she thought to herself—No, all of this is new. This has never happened before. Levi staggered back against the bed, and then turned around to his wife, who was looking at him strangely.
He ran over to her and pushed his head, trembling, against her knees. He had shrunk, after coming indoors, another four inches, and was now just about five feet tall. She thought about calling a doctor or a preacher, but he waved her off, in shame and horror. What would a doctor know? (And a doctor would only broadcast this to the medical world—his mind raced too far ahead, and he saw his life as a free man ended, pinned like a butterfly in some glass casket, his clothes stripped off, his miniature brain removed for study…horrific). He shivered.
And he was shrinking more rapidly. He was four feet in height. “But what about Rev. Thayer?” she asked.
“Rev. Thayer, Rev. Thayer”…he turned the name around in his head like an incantation. Who was Rev. Thayer? He finally remembered. “No, no, no…not him, never him.” Who needs a preacher in times of real trouble? And again, he could not confide in such a man safely. His condition would be known. (Levi then asked himself the question—Why shouldn’t the world know that he was shrinking? He could think of no answer to such a question except: 1) He may be dreaming; or 2) If he's not dreaming, then perhaps this is due to…what? Guilt or Shame? Something he ate? The cold air? The meteor storm? His wife? (He looked at Lydia’s tear-stained face, and shook his head.)
Nothing was making sense, and meanwhile he was down to three and a half feet, the height of a five-year-old.
“I’ll get you some warm milk,” Lydia said – hardly realizing what she was saying – and bustled out of the room, leaving her red satin evening slippers behind. Levi got up from the floor and climbed up onto the bed, with some trouble. For the first time he seemed to be aware of the smells and the lights around him. A candle burned by the mirror, and another by the nightstand. The only smell, he realized, was the smell of Lydia’s sweat on his face, sweat that was still somewhat wet, though drying. Strange as it was, his despair and confusion seemed only to intensify his arousal, and he began to stiffen. Way down beside the bed he saw his wife’s slippers, now huge. He climbed down from the bed.
Fifteen minutes passed before Lydia returned with the milk. She looked around for her husband, on the bed, by the mirror, by the chair, and then by her shoes. She couldn’t find him. She called his name, but there was no response. Putting the milk down by the large cherry-wood dresser, she sat down to put on her slippers, left and then right. She felt something wriggle under her right foot, and drew back in a panic, rattling the insides to dump them out onto the floor. A voice, very faintly, protested. “Lydia,” she heard, “it’s me. It’s Levi.” She gasped, and dropped the shoe. She saw her husband now, about five inches in height, crawl out of the shoe and stumble out onto the deep-red & green carpet, in rose patterns.