The Lost Steps

by Alejo Carpentier

  The doors of a covered patio had been opened, and a group of the lazy was taking sunbaths around a mosaic fountain adorned with potted palms and green porcelain frogs. Mouche went upstairs for her bathing suit. I noticed uneasily that the foresighted among the guests had laid in a supply of cigarettes, stripping the tobacco counter. I walked over to the entrance of the foyer, whose bronze grille was locked. The gunfire had lessened. The rapidity of what firing there was gave the impression that small groups of guerrillas in different quarters were fighting short, no-quarter engagements. Isolated shots came from roofs and terraces. A great fire was burning in the northern sector of the city; some said it was a barracks. As the names that the events seemed to swirl around made no sense to me, I gave up asking questions. I spent my time reading old newspapers, and found a certain pleasure in the news of remote areas—hurricanes, a whale washed ashore, cases of witchcraft. It struck eleven—an hour I had been impatiently waiting for—and I noticed that the tables in the bar were still stacked against the wall. We were then informed that the few waiters who had stayed on the job had left at daybreak to join the revolution.

  This piece of news, which did not strike me as being especially alarming, caused real panic among the guests. Leaving what they were doing, they swarmed into the foyer, where the manager tried to reassure them. A woman burst into tears when she learned that there would be no bread that day. At that moment a faucet that had been turned on spat out a gargle of rusty water and then set up a kind of yodel that was echoed in all the water pipes of the building. As we saw the jet that played from the mouth of the Triton in the fountain die away, we realized that from that moment on we had only what water was on hand, which was very little. There came a buzz of talk about epidemics, plagues, which would be terrible in that tropical climate. Someone tried to call his consulate: the telephones had been cut off, and their silence made them so useless, so helpless, that there were those who in their exasperation shook them and banged them against the table to make them talk.

  “It’s the Worm,” said the manager, echoing the joke that had become the explanation of the catastrophic goings-on. “It’s the Worm.”

  And I was thinking how frustrated man becomes when his machines fail to obey him as I looked around for a ladder to stand on at the bathroom window on the fourth floor, from which one could look out without danger. When I got tired of the sight of the roofs, I noticed that something was going on at floor level.

  It was as though a subterranean world had suddenly come alive, dredging up from its depths a myriad of strange forms of animal life. Out of the gurgling waterless pipe came queer lice, moving gray wafers, and, attracted by the soap, little centipedes that curled up at the slightest alarm, lying motionless on the floor like tiny copper spirals. Inquiring antennae, whose body remained invisible, reached suspiciously out of the faucets. The closets were filled with almost imperceptible noises, the chewing of paper, scratching on wood; if a door had been opened suddenly it would have set up a scurrying of insects not yet accustomed to waxed floors on which, when they slipped, they lay motionless, pretending to be dead. A bottle of syrup on a night-table became the objective of a column of red ants. There were vermin under the rugs, and spiders looking through the keyholes. A few hours of neglect, of man’s vigilance relaxed, had sufficed in this climate for the denizens of the slime to take over the beleaguered stronghold via the dry water pipes.

  A near-by explosion made me forget the insects. I went back to the foyer, where nerves had reached the breaking point. The Kappellmeister appeared at the head of the stairs, baton in hand, at the sound of the screaming arguments. The sight of his tousled head, his stern, frowning regard, imposed silence. We looked at him in hopeful expectation, as though he was invested with special powers to soothe our anxiety. Making use of the authority to which his calling had accustomed him, he reproached the alarmists for their pusillanimity and called for the immediate appointment of a committee to make an exact report of the food on hand; if necessary, he, who was in the habit of command, would take charge of the rationing. And to fortify our souls, he concluded by invoking the sublime example of Beethoven’s resigning himself to deafness.

  Some dead animal was rotting near the hotel, and the stench of carrion filtered through the porthole windows of the bar, the only outside windows that could be safely left open on the first floor, they being above the level of the wainscoting. Since midmorning the flies seemed to have multiplied, buzzing with sticky insistence around our heads. When Mouche got tired of the patio, she came back to the foyer, knotting the cord of her terry robe and complaining that she had been allowed only half a bucket of water to bathe after her sunbath. With her came the almost ugly and yet attractive Canadian painter with the deep singing voice, who had introduced herself to us the evening before. She was acquainted with the country, and took in stride what was happening, saying that the situation would soon be under control, which helped to soothe my friend’s irritation.

  I left Mouche with her new friend, and in response to the Kappellmeister’s appeal went down to the cellar with the members of the committee to take inventory of the supplies. We soon saw that with proper care it was possible to withstand the siege for two weeks. The manager promised, with the help of the foreign employees, to provide a plain dish for each meal, which we would serve ourselves from the kitchen. The cellar floor was covered with damp, cool sawdust, and the penumbra of that underground storeroom, fragrant with food odors, had a soothing effect. Restored to good humor, we went to inspect the wine cellar, where the supply of bottles and barrels was large enough to last a long time. Seeing that we were taking our time about getting back, the others came down to the cellar, where they found us beside the spigots, drinking from whatever receptacles we could lay our hands on.

  Our report produced a contagious happiness. Decanted into bottles, the liquor rose up in the building from basement to top floor, and the noise of typewriters was replaced by that of phonographs. For the majority, the nervous tension of the past hours had been transformed into a furious desire to drink, as the stench of the rotting flesh grew more penetrating and the invasion of the insects spread. Only the Kappellmeister was still in a foul humor, breathing fire and brimstone against the malcontents who, with their revolution, had spoiled the rehearsals of Brahms’s Requiem. In his wrath he referred to a letter in which Goethe had sung the praises of nature tamed, “forever freed from its demented and feverish upheavals.” “Here, jungle!” he roared, stretching out his long arms, as when he wrenched a fortissimo from his orchestra.

  The word “jungle” turned my eyes toward the patio with the potted arecas. I thought Mouche had gone back to her deck chair; not seeing her in it, I decided that she must be getting dressed. But she was not in our room either. I waited for her a moment, and then the liquor I had drunk that morning on an empty stomach gave me the notion of looking for her. I set out from the bar, like someone tackling an important job, up the stairs that rose from the foyer between two solemn marble caryatids. The addition to the more familiar alcohols of a local brandy that tasted of molasses had turned my face suddenly stiff, and I was weaving between the banister and the wall like a blind man feeling his way in the dark.

  When I noticed that the stairs had become shallower against a background of yellow stucco, I realized that I had gone beyond the fourth floor, without the slightest idea where my friend was. But I kept on, sweaty, dogged, with a determination not to be deflected by the expressions on the faces of those who mockingly stepped aside to let me by. I tramped along endless corridors over red carpet as wide as a road, past numbered doors—unbearably numbered—which I kept counting as I went by, as though this were a part of my assigned task.

  Suddenly a familiar form brought me up short, confused, with the strange sensation of not having traveled, of always having been there, on one of my daily trips, in some abode of the impersonal, the styleless. I knew that red metal fire-extinguisher, with its label of instructions; I had known
, for a long time, too, the carpet I was treading on, the modillions of the ceiling, and those brass numbers behind all of which stood the same furniture, equipment, objects, all arranged alike beside a colored view of the Jungfrau, Niagara Falls, or the Leaning Tower. This idea of never having moved sent the numbness from my face to my body. The image of the hive returned, and I felt oppressed, compressed between parallel walls, where the brooms left by the servants looked like tools dropped by a chain gang in flight. It was as though I was serving a horrible sentence that doomed me to wandering for all eternity among numbers, leaves of a great calendar set in the walls—a labyrinth chronology that might be that of my own life, with its unremitting obsession with time, and all in breathless haste that served only to bring me back each morning to the point of departure of the previous evening.

  I no longer knew whom I was looking for in that range of rooms where people left no memory of their passing. The thought of the steps I still had to ascend before reaching the floor where there was no more stucco trim or acanthus, only gray cement with patches of gummed tape on the windows to protect the servants from the weather, overwhelmed me. The absurdity of this wandering amidst the superficial brought to my mind the Theory of the Worm, the only explanation for this labor of Sisyphus, with a female stone on my shoulders, to which I was condemned. I laughed at the thought, and this drove from my mind my frenzy to find Mouche. I knew that when she had been drinking she became especially vulnerable to sensual appeal, and though this did not imply a real desire to degrade herself, it could carry her to the verge of the most dubious enticements. But this no longer troubled me, what with the weight of the wineskin my legs were dragging along. I went back to our darkened room and threw myself face-downward on the bed, sinking into a sleep that was soon ridden with nightmares having to do with heat and thirst.

  My throat was parched when I finally heard someone calling me. Mouche was standing beside me with the Canadian painter we had met the day before. For the third time I found myself in the presence of that woman with her angular body, whose face with its straight nose jutting from a stubborn forehead gave her something of the air of a statue in contrast to her unfinished mouth, greedy, like that of an adolescent. I asked my friend where she had been that morning. “The revolution is over,” was her answer. It seemed that the radio stations were broadcasting the victory of the winning party and the jailing of the members of the previous government. In this country, I was told, passing from power to prison was the normal thing.

  I was on the point of giving thanks for the end of our confinement when Mouche added that a six p.m. curfew would be in force for an indefinite period, with severest penalties for anyone found in the streets after that hour. All this mess was going to spoil the fun of our trip, so I suggested returning at once, which would have the added advantage of making it possible for me to report “mission unaccomplished” to the Curator without having to return the money spent on my vain attempt. But my friend had already learned that the airlines were swamped with requests and would not be able to give us space for at least one week. Moreover, she did not seem to me especially put out, and I attributed her acceptance of the situation to that feeling of relief which the solution of any abnormal state of affairs brings.

  It was then that the painter, at a word from Mouche, suggested to me that we spend a few days with her at her house in Los Altos, a quiet summer resort whose climate and silversmiths made it a favorite with foreigners, and where, for that reason, police regulations would be lightly enforced. She had her studio in a seventeenth-century house that she had picked up for a song, whose main patio recalled that of the Posada de la Sangre in Toledo. Mouche had already accepted the invitation without consulting me, and was babbling of walks through wild hydrangeas, of a convent with baroque altars, beamed ceilings, and a room where the nuns scourged themselves at the feet of a black Christ before the horrifying relic of a bishop’s tongue, preserved in alcohol in memory of his eloquence. I did not answer, unable to make up my mind, not so much because I did not want to go as annoyed at Mouche’s taking things for granted.

  As the danger was over, I opened the window on a twilight that was turning into night. It was then that I noticed that the two women had put on all their finery to go down to dinner. I was on the point of making some sarcastic comment when I saw something in the street which interested me far more. A grocery store, with ropes of garlic hanging from the ceiling, which had caught my attention by reason of its odd name, La Fe en Dios, was opening its side door to let in a man hugging the wall, a basket on his arm. In a little while he came out with a load of bread and bottles and smoking a freshly lighted cigar. I had awakened with a gnawing need for a smoke, and there was no tobacco left in the hotel. I pointed out what I had seen to Mouche, who had been reduced to smoking butts, and ran down the stairs. At the thought that the store might close, I streaked across the plaza. I had twenty packages of cigarettes in my hands when a fusillade of gunfire began in the nearest side-street. Several snipers, stationed along the inner slope of a roof, were replying with rifles and pistols over the cornice.

  The owner of the store slammed the door shut, slipping heavy bars into place. I gloomily sat down on a stool, realizing what a fool I had been to take stock in Mouche’s words. Possibly the revolution was over as far as the capture of the key points of the city was concerned; but the cleaning out of rebel nests was still going on. In the back of the store various female voices were murmuring the rosary. The smell of salt cod was getting into my throat. I turned over some playing cards lying on the counter, and recognized the different suits of the Spanish deck: bastos, copas, oros, espadas, whose look I had forgotten. The gunfire was now coming at longer intervals. The storekeeper watched me in silence, smoking a cigar under a picture showing the sorry plight of the storekeeper who did business on credit and the sleek prosperity of the one who sold for cash only. The peace that reigned within this house, the scent of the jasmine that grew under a pomegranate in the inner patio, the drip of water filtering through an old earthen water jar, submerged me in a kind of stupor, a sleep that was not sleeping, with nods that jerked me back to my surroundings every few seconds.

  The clock on the wall struck eight. The sound of firing had died away. I opened the door a crack and looked toward the hotel. In the midst of the darkness that surrounded it glowed all the portholes of the bar and the chandeliers of the foyer, which could be glimpsed through the grille of the door to the marquee. There came a burst of applause, followed by the first measures of Les Barricades mystérieuses, telling me that the pianist was playing some of the pieces he had been practicing that morning on the dining-room piano. He must have had a good many drinks under his belt, for his fingers frequently slipped on the ornaments and grace notes. On the mezzanine, behind the iron blinds, there was dancing. The whole building was celebrating.

  I shook hands with the storekeeper and got ready to run for it when a shot—a single one—whined past, a few feet from what might have been the height of my breast. I fell back in utter terror. To be sure, I had been in the war, but my experience as staff interpreter had been something different; the risk was shared by many, and one did not make the decision when to fall back. But here death had almost caught up with me because of my own folly.

  More than ten minutes elapsed without the sound of a shot. But just as I was asking myself whether to try it again, there came another report. There was a kind of solitary lookout posted somewhere who every now and then fired a blast from his gun—probably an old breech-loader—to keep the street empty. It would not take me more than a few seconds to reach the opposite sidewalk, but those few seconds were enough for my dangerous game of chance. By some strange association of ideas, I thought of Buffon’s gambler, who tossed a stick on the floor in the hope that it would not intersect any of the lines of the boards. Here the lines were these shots being fired without target or aim, indifferent to my designs, cutting unexpectedly through space, and the thought that I might be the gam
bler’s stick, and that at some point of possible incidence my flesh would intersect the bullet’s trajectory, terrified me. The element of fatality did not enter into this calculation of probabilities, inasmuch as it was in my power to choose whether I would risk losing all to gain nothing.

  When all was said and done, I had to accept the fact that it was not the desire to return to the hotel that was causing my exasperation at being unable to cross the street. It was the same thing that hours before, in my drunken state, had driven me to wander through all those halls. My present impatience was due to my distrust of Mouche, Thinking things over here, on this side of the moat, the hateful gaming board of chance, I believed her capable of the greatest physical perfidies although I had not been able to make a single specific accusation against her since we had known each other. I had no basis for my suspicions, my eternal doubt; but I knew all too well that her intellectual background, abounding in ideas that justified everything, in reasons that were excuses, could lead her to lend herself to any new experience, encouraged by the night’s abnormal atmosphere.