The Last Step

Going down fifteen more steps, you reach the end of the line. It looks like the end of the line, anyway, but you prefer to be sure: “Is this the end of the line?” “This is the end of the line, yes.” The one who answers you is a shrunken old lady who occupies two steps — her left foot on the top one, the right on the bottom one. “This is the end of the line, yes,” she says looking down, where the line makes a turn and disappears behind a wall. She then looks up and confirms that the line now ends with you. She slowly turns completely towards you, looks up and asks: “How is it up there?” You answer that it is quite empty. At least it was when you left. “So that is where I will go,” she says and joins the sporadic stream of people going up the stairs. One, two, three people going up.

You wait patiently at the end of the line. It doesn’t take long for everyone to take two steps down. At least it’s moving, you think, going down those very two steps that have just cleared up, noticing the woman wearing CrossFit clothing right in front of you. Her right leg seems to be hurt, a sprained ankle, perhaps, since she went down those two steps jumping on her left foot and holding on to the handrail the whole time. Someone taps on your shoulder; it’s a man wearing a hat: “Is this the end of the line?” “This is the end of the line, yes,” you answer realizing that behind you there are now two people, responsible for the end of the line. You didn’t notice their arrival and subsequent usurping of your position, as you did to the shrunken old lady. Now you are part of the line, one of the many links that make up its body, from beginning to end. The idea weighs on your shoulders. The flow of people going up starts to look more appealing. The woman with CrossFit clothing already left the line, she gave up, she’s going up now, she went up limping and is already gone. So fast. You go down two more steps.

The man with a hat taps on your shoulder again: “Hey, excuse me, sorry, where does this line go?” “What do you mean where does it go?” Your answer is more of a question, and it comes out with a hint of disbelief in your voice. “Yeah, what’s at the end?” he asks again. You laugh and tap the shoulder of the woman in front of you. She is holding a child and they both look at you when you say: “Man over here doesn’t know where the line goes.” “He doesn’t know?” “Yeah, not a clue!” She lets out an awkward laugh and quickly taps the shoulder of the hooded figure in front of her: “Psst, excuse me, what is this line for? Where does it go?” The hooded figure shrugs its shoulders and asks the businessman in front of them: “Where does the line end, anyway?” The businessman clearly has no idea and taps the woman blowing her nose on a yellow handkerchief: “Let me ask you something — this line, where does it go?” The woman with the handkerchief turns to someone in front of her, but nobody knows what she says, because that’s where the stairs make a curve and disappear behind a wall, and you can’t see anything besides the constant rivulet of people going up. You count seven people and go down two more steps.

The silence on the stairs is immense, a bit awkward. You look back and see that the line is also making a curve up there as well, disappearing behind another wall. You go down two more steps. You count eight people going up.

You hear chatter bubbling up the line. You see the woman who was blowing her nose saying something to the business man, the businessman saying something to the hooded figure, the hooded figure saying something to the woman holding a child, the woman holding a child turning towards you and saying something in a quiet whisper, as if it was an unspeakable secret, so quiet indeed, she has to repeat it: “The line goes to the last step.” “The last step?” “The last step!” “My God…” You count twelve people going up. The man with a hat behind you is curious, he wants to know what’s the gossip. You get closer to him and whisper in the same tone: “The last step.” “What about the last step?” he asks. “That’s where the line ends, that’s where it goes!” The man with a hat looks confused. Four more people go up. “No, no, the last step is up there,” he says and points up. “No, it doesn’t!” you say, realizing you are not completely sure. He turns around to the young man with pimples on his face: “Didn’t we come from the last step, all the way up there?” The young man agrees, nods his head and raises his two thumbs. “What’s down there must be the last step,” the man with a hat says. You turn around and repeat the information to the woman holding a child, who says it to the hooded figure, who says it to the businessman, who says it to the woman you can’t see anymore, because everyone went down two more steps.

It doesn’t take long for people to begin to spout up the stairs. You count twenty, forty, eighty, so many angry people with tired faces coming up the steps that you can’t count them anymore. You ask what happened and the businessman says: “We were in the wrong line — down there is the first step.” “The first step?” “Yeah, the last one is back the other way.” The man with a hat laughs at you. You realize your mistake and join the people going up. Behind you are the woman with the yellow handkerchief, the hooded figure, the woman holding a child, a woman with eight necklaces and a man wearing a bishop’s robes. You see them all not as a flow anymore, but as a strong current going up, and you are now part of it, one of its many molecules in constant movement, unstoppable, free. You go up fifty steps in this effusion, you make two turns, and you are all stopping again. There is another line going up. The businessman is right in front of you, now, and he is behind a man dressed as a dalmatian. You wait. You go up two steps. You wait. You go up two more steps and you go back to waiting. You count one, two, three people going down the stairs.