Your Steps On The Stairs by Antonio Muñoz Molina
Antonio Muñoz Molina is a prize-winning Spanish writer — here translated by poet Curtis Bauer — with over two dozen books to his name. The story is simple on the surface: the narrator and his partner, Cecilia, have become disillusioned with life in New York, a combination of shock at witnessing 911, fear about the destruction of the environment, and disgust at the capitalist system that sacked him with no respect for his years of service. They are moving to Lisbon. He has travelled ahead with the furniture from the New York flat, Cecilia is to follow. He sets about, with the help of handyman Alexis, making the Lisbon apartment as close as he possibly can to look the same as their old place.
All is not as it seems though. The narrator’s days are a cycle of repeated experiences: walking his dog, or imagining what is going through the dog’s mind in certain circumstances; talking to Alexis; reading curious books, for example about Admiral Byrd, a man who lived for six months in an ice-hole in the Antarctic; using knowledge of the human brain gleaned from Cecilia to explain the oddness he notices in his own behaviour. We see each of these scenes as we might view a room reflected in a shattered mirror: each shard reflects a perfect image, but they are scattered and haphazard. Two scenes might be right next to each other but may be unrelated in space and time. Memories of New York become hopelessly intermingled with Lisbon, past and present swap out and back again. His perceptions of time become increasingly dislocated.
He sets out with his dog through the back streets of Lisbon, gazing down on the Tagus, and moments later they are in Central Park or looking out over the Hudson. The similarity of the Lisbon flat to the New York flat further blurs the lines.
At first the narrator struggles with the hour, choosing not to look at his watch, but soon he loses track of days and as the story progresses he finds himself wondering what age he is, refusing to look in the mirror in case he gets a shock. The dislocation is at once disturbing but also fantastic, it is disorderly but leaves the reader with a sense of calm.
One of the odd stories that the narrator relates from his books tells of a former monk. “The monk says that repeating the same tasks exactly the same way every day in a place that never changes immobilises time, even eliminates it.” The narrator seems to be stuck in a monastic discipline that is immobilising. The effect is a mesmerising narrative as the shards of his life are built into something that resembles change but is in fact stuck, copper fastened to one moment.
Another story relates to a psychiatric patient whose lobotomy operation went wrong leaving him without the ability to form new memories. Again the narrator appears at times to be similarly afflicted, pressing bravely on through repeated events expecting the outcome to differ.
In the end an explanation for the displacement he experiences is offered, but in truth there is no need for such an explanation; the extraordinary nature of the narrator’s journey stands for itself.
Molina’s text is not, perhaps, a page turner for a long distance flight, but rather something to bring you into communion with your soul in the quiet of a peaceful weekend.
(c) Kieran Marsh
Order your copy of Your Steps On The Stairs by Antonio Muñoz Molina online here.
And read Kieran Marsh’s review of Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song here.
