Stories: All-New Tales

Joe Hill. The Devil on the Staircase by

I was

born in

Sulle Scale

the child of a

common bricklayer.

The

village

of my birth

nested in the

highest sharpest

ridges, high above

Positano, and in the

cold spring the clouds

crawled along the streets

like a procession of ghosts.

It was eight hundred and twenty

steps from Sulle Scale to the world

below. I know. I walked them again and

again with my father, following his tread,

from our home in the sky, and then back again.

After his death I walked them often enough alone.

The

cliffs

were mazed

with crooked

staircases, made

from brick in some

places, granite in others.

Marble here, limestone there,

clay tiles, or beams of lumber.

When there were stairs to build my

father built them. When the steps were

washed out by spring rains it fell to him

to repair them. For years he had a donkey to

carry his stone. After it fell dead, he had me.

I

hated

him of

course.

He had his

cats and he

sang to them

and poured them

saucers of milk and

told them foolish stories

and stroked them in his lap

and when one time I kicked one-

I do not remember why-he kicked me to

the floor and said not to touch his babies.

So I

carried

his rocks

when I should

have been carrying

schoolbooks, but I cannot

pretend I hated him for that.

I had no use for school, hated to

study, hated to read, felt acutely the

stifling heat of the single room schoolhouse,

the only good thing in it my cousin, Lithodora, who

read to the little children, sitting on a stool with her

back erect, chin lifted high, and her white throat showing.

I

often

imagined

her throat

was as cool as

the marble altar

in our church and I

wanted to rest my brow

upon it as I had the altar.

How she read in her low steady

voice, the very voice you dream of

calling to you when you’re sick, saying

you will be healthy again and know only the

sweet fever of her body. I could’ve loved books

if I had her to read them to me, beside me in my bed.

I

knew

every

step of

the stairs

between Sulle

Scale and Positano,

long flights that dropped

through canyons and descended

into tunnels bored in the limestone,

past orchards and the ruins of derelict

paper mills, past waterfalls and green pools.

I walked those stairs when I slept, in my dreams.

The

trail

my father

and I walked

most often led

past a painted red

gate, barring the way

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

stairs 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 landing.

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

because that was where my legs gave out.

Neither of us spoke at first. He smiled across the blanket spread with his goods, and I pretended an interest in the stone wall that overhung the landing there. That light in the jar built and built until our shadows lunged against the rock like deformed giants, before the brightness winked out and plunged us back into our shared darkness. He offered me a skin of water but I knew better than to take anything from that child. Or thought I knew better. The light in the jar began to grow again, a single floating point of perfect whiteness, swelling like a balloon. I tried to look at it, but felt a pinch of pain in the back of my eyeballs and glanced away.

“What is that? It burns my eyes,” I asked.

“A little spark stolen from the sun. You can do all sorts of wonderful things with it. You could make a furnace with it, a giant furnace, powerful enough to warm a whole city, and light a thousand Edison lights. Look how bright it gets. You have to be careful though. If you were to smash this jar and let the spark escape, that same city would disappear in a clap of brightness. You can have it if you want.”

“No, I don’t want it,” I said.

“No. Of course not. That isn’t your sort of thing. No matter. Someone will be along later for this. But take something. Anything you want,” he said.

“Are you Lucifer?” I asked in a rough voice.

“Lucifer is an awful old goat who has a pitchfork and hooves and makes people suffer. I hate suffering. I only want to help people. I give gifts. That’s why I’m here. Everyone who walks these stairs before their time gets a gift to welcome them. You look thirsty. Would you like an apple?” Holding up the basket of white apples as he spoke.

I was thirsty-my throat felt not just sore, but singed, as if I had inhaled smoke recently, and I began to reach for the offered fruit, almost reflexively, but then drew my hand back for I knew the lessons of at least one book. He grinned at me.

“Are those-” I asked.

“They’re from a very old and honorable tree,” he said. “You will never taste a sweeter fruit. And when you eat of it, you will be filled with ideas. Yes, even one such as you, Quirinus Calvino, who barely learned to read.”

“I don’t want it,” I said, when what I really wanted to tell him was not to call me by name. I could not bear that he knew my name.

He said, “Everyone will want it. They will eat and eat and be filled with understanding. Why, learning how to speak another language will be as simple as, oh, learning to build a bomb. Just one bite of the apple away. What about the lighter? You can light anything with this lighter. A cigarette. A pipe. A campfire. Imaginations. Revolutions. Books. Rivers. The sky. Another man’s soul. Even the human soul has a temperature at which it becomes flammable. The lighter has an enchantment on it, is tapped into the deepest wells of oil on the planet, and will set fire to things for as long as the oil lasts, which I am sure will be forever.”

“You have nothing I want,” I said.

“I have something for everyone,” he said.

I rose to my feet, ready to leave, although I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t walk back down the stairs. The thought made me dizzy. Neither could I go back up. Lithodora would have returned to the village by now. They would be searching the stairs for me with torches. I was surprised I hadn’t heard them already.

The tin bird turned its head to look at me as I swayed on my heels, and blinked, the metal shutters of its eyes snapping closed, then popping open again. It let out a rusty cheep. So did I, startled by its sudden movement. I had thought it a toy, inanimate. It watched me steadily and I stared back. I had, as a child, always had an interest in ingenious mechanical objects, clockwork people who ran out of their hiding places at the stroke of noon, the woodcutter to chop wood, the maiden to dance a round. The boy followed my gaze, and smiled, then opened the cage and reached in for it. The bird leaped lightly onto his finger.

“It sings the most beautiful song,” he said. “It finds a master, a shoulder it likes to perch on, and it sings for this person all the rest of its days. The trick to making it sing for you is to tell a lie. The bigger the better. Feed it a lie, and it will sing you the most marvelous little tune. People love to hear its song. They love it so much, they don’t even care they’re being lied to. He’s yours if you want him.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” I said, but when I said it, the bird began to whistle: the sweetest, softest melody, as good a sound as the laughter of a pretty girl, or your mother calling you to dinner. The song sounded a bit like something played on a music box, and I imagined a studded cylinder turning inside it, banging the teeth of a silver comb. I shivered to hear it. In this place, on these stairs, I had never imagined I could hear something so right.

He laughed and waved his hand at me. The bird’s wings snapped from the side of its body, like knives leaping from sheaths, and it glided up and lit on my shoulder.

“You see,” said the boy on the stairs. “It likes you.”

“I can’t pay,” I said, my voice rough and strange.

“You’ve already paid,” said the boy.

Then he turned his head and looked down the stairs and seemed to listen. I heard a wind rising. It made a low, soughing moan as it came up through the channel of the staircase, a deep and lonely and restless cry. The boy looked back at me. “Now go. I hear my father coming. The awful old goat.”

I backed away and my heels struck the stair behind me. I was in such a hurry to get away I fell sprawling across the granite steps. The bird on my shoulder took off, rising in widening circles through the air, but when I found my feet it glided down to where it had rested before on my

shoulder

and I began

to run back up

the way I had come.

I

climbed

in haste for

a time but soon

was tired again and

had to slow to a walk.

I began to think about what

I would say when I reached the

main staircase and was discovered.

“I will confess everything and accept

my punishment, whatever that is,” I said.

The tin bird sang a gay and humorous ditty.

It

fell

silent

though as

I reached the

gate, quieted by

a different song not

far off: a girl’s sobs.

I listened, confused, and

crept uncertainly back to where

I had murdered Lithodora’s beloved.

I heard no sound except for Dora’s cries.

No men shouting, no feet running on the steps.

I had been gone half the night, it seemed to me but

when I reached the ruins where I had left the Saracen

and looked upon Dora it was as if only minutes had passed.

I

came

toward

her and

whispered

to her, afraid

almost to be heard.

The second time I spoke

her name she turned her head

and looked at me with red-rimmed

hating eyes and screamed to get away.

I wanted to comfort her, to tell her I was

sorry, but when I came close she sprang to her

feet and ran at me, striking me and flaying at my

face with her fingernails while she cursed my name.

I meant

to put my

hands on her

shoulders to hold

her still but when I

reached for her they found

her smooth white neck instead.

Her

father

and his

fellows and

my unemployed

friends discovered

me weeping over her.

Running my fingers through

the silk of her long black hair.

Her father fell to his knees and took

her in his arms and for a while the hills

rang with her name repeated over and over again.

Another

man, who held

a rifle, asked me

what had happened and

I told him-I told him-

the Arab, that monkey from the

desert, had lured her here and when

he couldn’t force her innocence from her

he throttled her in the grass and I found them

and we fought and I killed him with a block of stone.

And

as I

told it

the tin bird

began to whistle

and sing, the most

mournful and sweetest

melody I had ever heard

and the men listened until

the sad song was sung complete.

I

held

Lithodora

in my arms as

we walked back down.

And as we went on our way

the bird began to sing again as

I told them the Saracen had planned

to take the sweetest and most beautiful

girls and auction their white flesh in Araby-

a more profitable line of trade than selling wine.

The bird was by now whistling a marching song and the

faces of the men who walked with me were rigid and dark.

Ahmed’s

men burned

along with the

Arab’s ship, and

sank in the harbor.

His goods, stored in a

warehouse by the quay, were

seized and his money box fell

to me as a reward for my heroism.

No

one

ever

would’ve

imagined when

I was a boy that

one day I would be

the wealthiest trader

on the whole Amalfi coast,

or that I would come to own the

prized vineyards of Don Carlotta, I

who once worked like a mule for his coin.

No

one

would’ve

guessed that

one day I would

be the beloved mayor

of Sulle Scalle, or a man

of such renown that I would be

invited to a personal audience with

his holiness the pope himself, who thanked

me for my many well-noted acts of generosity.

The

springs

inside the

pretty tin bird

wore down, in time,

and it ceased to sing,

but by then it did not matter

if anyone believed my lies or not

such was my wealth and power and fame.

However.

Several years

before the tin bird

fell silent, I woke one

morning in my manor to find

it had constructed a nest of wire

on my windowsill, and filled it with

fragile eggs made of bright silver foil.

I regarded these eggs with unease but when I

reached to touch them, their mechanical mother

nipped at me with her needle-sharp beak and I did

not after that time make any attempt to disturb them.

Months

later the

nest was filled

with foil tatters.

The young of this new

species, creatures of a new

age, had fluttered on their way.

I

cannot

tell you

how many birds

of tin and wire and

electric current there

are in the world now-but I

have, this very month, heard speak

our newest prime minister, Mr. Mussolini.

When he sings of the greatness of the Italian

people and our kinship with our German neighbors,

I am quite sure I can hear a tin bird singing with him.

Its tune plays especially well amplified over modern radio.

I don’t

live in the

hills anymore.

It has been years

since I saw Sulle Scale.

I discovered, as I descended

at last into my senior years, that

I could no longer attempt the staircases.

I told people it was my poor sore old knees.

But in truth I

developed a

fear of

heights.