Stories: All-New Tales

by Neil Gaiman; Al Sarrantonio

to a crooked staircase.

  I thought those steps led to

  a private villa and paid the gate

  no mind until the day I paused on the

  way down with a load of marble and leaned

  on it to rest and it swung open to my touch.

  My

  father,

  he lagged

  thirty or so

  stairs behind me.

  I stepped through the

  gate onto the landing to

  see where these stairs led.

  I saw no villa or vineyard below,

  only the staircase falling away from

  me down among the sheerest of sheer cliffs.

  “Father,”

  I called out

  as he came near,

  the slap of his feet

  echoing off the rocks and

  his breath whistling out of him.

  “Have you ever taken these stairs?”

  When

  he saw

  me standing

  inside the gate

  he paled and had my

  shoulder in an instant

  was hauling me back onto

  the main staircase. He said,

  “How did you open the red gate?”

  “It was

  open when

  I got here,”

  I said. “Don’t

  they lead all the

  way down to the sea?”

  “No.”

  “But it

  looks as if

  they go all the

  way to the bottom.”

  “They go

  farther than

  that,” my father

  said and he crossed

  himself. Then he said

  again, “The gate is always

  locked.” And he stared at me,

  the whites of his eyes showing. I

  had never seen him look at me so, had

  never thought I would see him afraid of me.

  Lithodora

  laughed when

  I told her and

  said my father was

  old and superstitious.

  She told me that there was

  a tale that the stairs beyond

  the painted gate led down to hell.

  I had walked the mountain a thousand

  times more than Lithodora and wanted to

  know how she could know such a story when

  I myself had never heard any mention of it.

  She said

  the old folks

  never spoke of it,

  but had put the story

  down in a history of the

  region, which I would know

  if I had ever read any of the

  teacher’s assignments. I told her

  I could never concentrate on books when

  she was in the same room with me. She laughed.

  But when I tried to touch her throat she flinched.

  My

  fingers

  brushed her

  breast instead

  and she was angry

  and she told me that

  I needed to wash my hands.

  After

  my father

  died—he was

  walking down the

  stairs with a load

  of tiles when a stray

  cat shot out in front of

  him and rather than step on

  it, he stepped into space and

  fell fifty feet to be impaled upon

  a tree—I found a more lucrative use

  for my donkey legs and yardarm shoulders.

  I entered the employ of Don Carlotta who kept

  a terraced vineyard in the steeps of Sulle Scale.

  I hauled

  his wine down

  the eight hundred

  odd steps to Positano,

  where it was sold to a rich

  Saracen, a prince it was told,

  dark and slender and more fluent

  in my language than myself, a clever

  young man who knew how to read things:

  musical notes, the stars, a map, a sextant.

  Once I

  stumbled

  on a flight

  of brick steps

  as I was making my

  way down with the Don’s

  wine and a strap slipped and

  the crate on my back struck the

  cliff wall and a bottle was smashed.

  I brought it to the Saracen on the quay.

  He said either I drank it or I should have,

  for that bottle was worth all I made in a month.

  He told me I could consider myself paid and paid well.

  He laughed and his white teeth flashed in his black face.

  I was

  sober when

  he laughed at

  me but soon enough

  had a head full of wine.

  Not Don Carlotta’s smooth and

  peppery red mountain wine but the

  cheapest Chianti in the Taverna, which

  I drank with a passel of unemployed friends.

  Lithodora

  found me after

  it was dark and she

  stood over me, her dark

  hair framing her cool, white

  beautiful, disgusted, loving face.

  She said she had the silver I was owed.

  She had told her friend Ahmed that he had

  insulted an honest man, that my family traded

  in hard labor, not lies and he was lucky I had not—

  “—did

  you call

  him friend?”

  I said. “A monkey

  of the desert who knows

  nothing of Christ the lord?”

  The way that

  she looked at me

  then made me ashamed.

  The way she put the money in

  front of me made me more ashamed.

  “I see you have more use for this than

  you have for me,” she said before she went.

  I almost

  got up to go

  after her. Almost.

  One of my friends asked,

  “Have you heard the Saracen

  gave your cousin a slave bracelet,

  a loop of silver bells, to wear around

  her ankle? I suppose in the Arab lands, such

  gifts are made to every new whore in the harem.”

  I came

  to my feet

  so quickly my

  chair fell over.

  I grabbed his throat

  in both hands and said,

  “You lie. Her father would

  never allow her to accept such

  a gift from a godless blackamoor.”

  But

  another

  friend said

  the Arab trader

  was godless no more.

  Lithodora had taught Ahmed

  to read Latin, using the Bible

  as his grammar, and he claimed now

  to have entered into the light of Christ,

  and he gave the bracelet to her with the full

  knowledge of her parents, as a way to show thanks

  for introducing him to the grace of our Father who art.

  When

  my first

  friend had

  recovered his

  breath, he told

  me Lithodora climbed

  the stairs every night

  to meet with him secretly

  in empty shepherds’ huts or in

  the caves, or among the ruins of

  the paper mills, by the roar of the

  waterfall, as it leapt like liquid silver

  in the moonlight, and in such places she was

  his pupil and he a firm and most demanding tutor.

  He

  always

  went ahead

  and then she

  would ascend the

  st
airs in the dark

  wearing the bracelet.

  When he heard the bells he

  would light a candle to show her

  where he waited to begin the lesson.

  I

  was

  so drunk.

  I set

  out for

  Lithodora’s

  house, with no

  idea what I meant

  to do when I got there.

  I came up behind the cottage

  where she lived with her parents

  thinking I would throw a few stones

  to wake her and bring her to her window.

  But as I stole toward the back of the house

  I heard a silvery tinkling somewhere above me.

  She was

  already on

  the stairs and

  climbing into the

  stars with her white

  dress swinging from her

  hips and the bracelet around

  her ankle so bright in the gloom.

  My

  heart

  thudded,

  a cask flung

  down a staircase:

  doom doom doom doom.

  I knew the hills better

  than anyone and I ran another

  way, making a steep climb up crude

  steps of mud to get ahead of her, then

  rejoining the main path up to Sulle Scale.

  I still had the silver coin the Saracen prince

  had given her, when she went to him and dishonored

  me by begging him to pay me the wage I was properly owed.

  I put

  his silver

  in a tin cup

  I had and slowed

  to a walk and went

  along shaking his Judas

  coin in my old battered mug.

  Such a pretty ringing it made in

  the echoing canyons, on the stairs,

  in the night, high above Positano and the

  crash and sigh of the sea, as the tide consummated

  the desire of water to pound the earth into submission.

  At

  last,

  pausing

  to catch my

  breath, I saw

  a candleflame leap

  up off in the darkness.

  It was in a handsome ruin,

  a place of high granite walls

  matted with wildflowers and ivy.

  A vast entryway looked into a room

  with a grass floor and a roof of stars,

  as if the place had been built, not to give

  shelter from the natural world, but to protect a

  virgin corner of wildness from the violation of man.

  Then

  again it

  seemed a pagan

  place, the natural

  setting for an orgy hosted

  by fauns with their goaty hooves,

  their flutes and their furred cocks.

  So the archway into that private courtyard

  of weeds and summer green seemed the entrance

  to a hall awaiting revelers for a private bacchanal.

  He

  waited

  on spread

  blanket, with

  a bottle of the

  Don’s wine and some

  books and he smiled at

  the tinkling sound of my

  approach but stopped when I

  came into the light, a block of

  rough stone already in my free hand.

  I

  killed

  him there.

  I did

  not kill

  him out of

  family honor

  or jealousy, did

  not hit him with the

  stone because he had laid

  claim to Lithodora’s cool white

  body, which she would never offer me.

  I

  hit

  him with

  the block of

  stone because I

  hated his black face.

  After

  I stopped

  hitting him,

  I sat with him.

  I think I took his

  wrist to see if he had

  a pulse, but after I knew

  he was dead, I went on holding

  his hand listening to the hum of the

  crickets in the grass, as if he were a

  small child, my child, who had only drifted

  off after fighting sleep for a very long time.

  What

  brought

  me out of

  my stupor was

  the sweet music

  of bells coming up

  the stairs toward us.

  I leapt

  up and ran

  but Dora was

  already there,

  coming through the

  doorway, and I nearly

  struck her on my way by.

  She reached out for me with

  one of her delicate white hands

  and said my name but I did not stop.

  I took the stairs three at a time, running

  without thought, but I was not fast enough and

  I heard her when she shouted his name, once and again.

  I

  don’t

  know where

  I was running.

  Sulle Scale, maybe,

  though I knew they would

  look for me there first once

  Lithodora went down the steps and

  told them what I had done to the Arab.

  I did not slow down until I was gulping for

  air and my chest was filled with fire and then

  I leaned against a gate at the side of the path—

  you know

  what gate—

  and it

  swung open

  at first touch.

  I went through the

  gate and started down

  the steep staircase beyond.

  I thought no one will look for

  me here and I can hide a while and—

  No.

  I

  thought,

  these stairs

  will lead to the

  road and I will head

  north to Napoli and buy

  a ticket for a ship to the U.S.

  and take a new name, start a new—

  No.

  Enough.

  The truth:

  I

  believed

  the stairs

  led down into

  hell and hell was

  where I wanted to go.

  The

  steps

  at first

  were of old

  white stone, but

  as I continued along

  they grew sooty and dark.

  Other staircases merged with

  them here and there, descending

  from other points on the mountain.

  I couldn’t see how that was possible.

  I thought I had walked all the flights of

  stairs in the hills, except for the steps I

  was on and I couldn’t think for the life of me

  where those other staircases might be coming from.

  The

  forest

  around me

  had been purged

  by fire at some time

  in the not so far-off past,

  and I made my descent through

  stands of scorched, shattered pines,

  the hillside all blackened and charred.

  Only there had been no fire on that part of

  the hill, not for as long as I could remember.

  The breeze carried on it an unmistakable warmth.

  I began to feel unpleasantly overheated in my clothes.

  I

  followed

  the staircase

  round a switchback

  and saw below me a boy

  sitting on a stone la
nding.

  He

  had a

  collection

  of curious wares

  spread on a blanket.

  There was a wind-up tin

  bird in a cage, a basket of

  white apples, a dented gold lighter.

  There was a jar and in the jar was light.

  This light would increase in brightness until

  the landing was lit as if by the rising sun, and

  then it would collapse into darkness, shrinking to a

  single point like some impossibly brilliant lightning bug.

  He

  smiled

  to see me.

  He had golden

  hair and the most

  beautiful smile I have

  ever seen on a child’s face

  and I was afraid of him—even

  before he called out to me by name.

  I pretended I didn’t hear him, pretended

  he wasn’t there, that I didn’t see him, walked

  right past him. He laughed to see me hurrying by.

  The

  farther

  I went the

  steeper it got.

  There seemed to be

  a light below, as if

  somewhere beyond a ledge,

  through the trees, there was

  a great city, on the scale of Roma,

  a bowl of lights like a bed of embers.

  I could smell food cooking on the breeze.

  if

  it was

  food—that

  hungry-making

  perfume of meat

  charring over flame.

  Voices

  ahead of me:

  a man speaking

  wearily, perhaps

  to himself, a long

  and joyless discourse;

  someone else laughing, bad

  laughter, unhinged and angry.

  A third man was asking questions.

  “Is

  a plum

  sweeter after

  it has been pushed

  in the mouth of a virgin

  to silence her as she is taken?

  And who will claim the baby child

  sleeping in the cradle made from the

  rotten carcass of the lamb that laid with

  the lion only to be eviscerated?” And so on.

  At

  the

  next

  turn in

  the steps

  they finally

  came into sight.

  They lined the stairs:

  half a dozen men nailed on

  to crosses of blackened pine.

  I couldn’t go on and for a time

  I couldn’t go back; it was the cats.

  One of the men had a wound in his side,

  a red seeping wound that made a puddle on

  the stairs, and kittens lapped at it as if it

  were cream and he was talking to them in his tired

  voice, telling all the good kitties to drink their fill.

  I

  did

  not go

  close enough

  to see his face.

  At

  last

  I returned

  the way I had

  come on shaky legs.

  The boy awaited me with

  his collection of oddities.

  “Why

  not sit

  and rest your

  sore feet, Quirinus

  Calvino?” he asked me.

  And I sat down across from

  him, not because I wanted to but