The castle staircase

Last Wishes

Let them find my body at the foot of the steps and use it as a model. Let them pose it on two steps and set up an easel at the right distance. Let them take their brightest colours. Let them place my head downwards. Let them open my mouth and hold it open with little wooden wedges between the teeth. Let them make one hand clutch at the wall by nailing it through the fingernails. From a short distance, the nails would not be seen. Let them bend one leg by tying the ankle to the thigh. Let them take their time. Let them try their very best. Let them put their composition into a heavy frame and hang it as well as they can from the cornice. And I shall press down with all my weight and immediately shatter at their feet. Let them open their mouths, shrieking in horror.

Last Words

All of you, inquisitive as you are, will press your ears close to the door of the keep. I shall scream. You will only hear my screams. The further I roll down the steps the louder I shall scream. The further I move away from you the stronger my voice will sound: so you won’t think I am moving further off, and believe that I am screaming to frighten you, and you will imagine that I am flying about over the staircase, screaming to frighten you.
Then you will hear nothing more. Perfect silence. And you wonder if in my flight I have perhaps found a state of happiness. And you will stay a long time in my silence. You will stay with your ears pressed to the door, waiting for me to weary of my happiness and fall back onto the steps.

Last Memories

We were not yet fifteen. At the castle it was the summer of the great purge. At regular intervals the condemned were thrown down the steps of the tower. On execution afternoons we would meet opposite the keep, on the other side of the river. They called us the gang of three. We used to fill our pockets with blackberries, broom-flowers and red toadstools. As soon as we heard the distant command to throw down a condemned prisoner, we took the fruits of our foraging and joyously smeared our faces, hands and legs in a mad free-for-all. We rolled in the moss, then collapsed as if we had just landed at the foot of the sinister stairwell, our bodies daubed with the colours which must also have marked the broken limbs of the victims in the tower.
Some months later, in the depths of winter, we were walking along the river when we heard the execution command shouted from the keep. After the first moment of surprise, we felt the irresistible urge to see the colours of the fall upon our bodies. For want of fruit, we threw ourselves down on the stones beside the river and beat each other black and blue. But while we fought, we hadn’t the heart to shout and scream as we used to do, and in the silence we clearly heard, for the first time, the howling coming from the keep.

Last Dreams

He enters my sleep by surprise every time. I am at the top of the stairs, preparing to jump, and he holds on to me by the skin of my back. He asks my permission to fall instead of me. He is wearing the same clothes as I am. His face is in darkness. He insists on falling in my place, but I do not want to be replaced by a substitute. My hope is that anything that happens in my sleep will never happen to me in real life. He entreats me. His voice is the same as mine. He holds me against the wall and tries to throw himself down the staircase. I shout at him :" No, it’s me." My shout frightens him, he falls backwards down the stairs. He is falling. He is falling. He falls right out of my sleep. He finds himself on the floor, beside the bed. He has dragged me down in his fall, I am clinging to my sleep as if it were a wall covered in soap. Soon I am nothing but a trace of warmth on the surface of my mattress. He stands up, gets back under the blankets and tries to share my warmth. But the bed is now quite cold, and he cannot get back to sleep

Last Thoughts

I have always known what to say. I have always found the right words for every occassion. But now I am too scared of using them wrongly. I am too afraid that they will fall flat. I must find others, more appropriate to the situation. I’m sure I won’t understand them when I say them. But I shall howl them with such force that they will echo through the whole castle tower. At first they may only be incomprehensible screams. But they will rise right to the top of the stairwells, echoing. And when I collapse at the foot of the steps, they will fall back on me, and their meaning will cover the apparent stupor of my lifelessness.

Last Hopes

You would find out how to come to me. As you have always done, to reduce the threat of a danger, you would tell me softly what is about to happen: that the third step will break my legs, that the seventh will sprain my hand, that the nineteenth will snap my neck. I would listen to you and then I would fall down the stairs.
But nothing would happen as you have said. Nothing would happen. I should fall, but feel nothing. I would cry out only because one cries out when one falls down the stairs.
At the bottom of the steps, I would make an effort to think of what you had said. I would think of the third step, and at once I would feel my broken legs. I would think of the seventh, and I find my hand is sprained. But I would not dare to think of the nineteenth step. I would think of you. And my neck would break, without a sound.