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Antonio Muñoz Molina: Tus pasos en la escalera (Your Steps on the Stairs)
Any novel that starts off I’ve moved to this city to wait for the end of the world looks interesting, not least because there are not many end of the world novels on this site. This one is on a topic we are likely to see more off – climate change. It is more than than 100°F in Siberia. Our narrator – we only learn that he is alled Bruno right at the end of ther book – has moved to Lisbon from New York and his wife Cecilia will be joining him shortly. However the end of the world may be coming but he seems to have an REM approach: It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
He is now supervising their newly bought flat in a somewhat run-down part of Lisbon while Cecilia is finishing her job in New York which involves study of the brain, including the brains of rats and slugs. He had had an unspecified corporate job which he did not like and from which he has been made redundant.
How far into the future this takes place is not clear but we do know that Trump is president as he comments that forest fires in California are caused by climate change regulations. The book was written during Trump’s first term but those comments mirror ones made in his second time which shows how prescient Muñoz Molina is. Of course the action could be taking place during Trump’s third term.
The flat is not in particularly good condition and needs a lot of work. He is lucky enough to find Alexis who either does what needs to be done or can easily get someone to do it. Our narrator lives in a hotel while the work is being done but seems to move in with the dog before it is finished.
Alexis is a marvel. He is Argentinian but had spent time in Brazil so speaks good Portuguese, unlike our narrator. He can do anything, even getting into the flat at 11 p.m. when the lock does not work.
We get glimpses of what is going wrong, Portugal is bankrupt. It seems that there might have been a major terrorist attack in New York, possibly involving nuclear weapons,hence their escape though it does seem that the plane crash involved was a simple plane crash and not a 9/11 style terrorist attack. They had both been in New York on 9/11 and it was this event that led to Cecilia moving in with him as her apartment was near Ground Zero and inaccessible.
So now he is on his own with Luria, their dog, named after Alexander Luria, a Russian neuropsychologist. He goes for walks with the dog, ruminates about Cecilia and their relationship, reads a lot and gets the flat in order with the help of Alexis. It is Alexis who explains how to cope with an economy that crashes as he had it in Argentina and maintains people soon adapted.
He soon forgets what day it is and drifts into a dreamlike state, remembering his life in New York but also following the news as there are various catastrophes caused by climate change and, of course he has read about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
He is now on his own, so he walks the dog , goes for runs without the dog, reads a lot and thinks back to his life in New York, including his awful job he hated and from which he was fired. Cecilia plans to work when she comes over. He plans never to work again.
Gradually we come to realise that this book is as much about solitude as about climate change and the end of the world. Apart from occasional visits from Alexis and the weekly cleaner, he has virtually no contact with anyone. He thinks back to their time in New York when they shared a flat yet barely communicated . Even when we spoke to each other the silence still hung in the air.. Interestingly enough he has more or less modelled this flat on their New York apartment.
As Cecilia studies memory, this also becomes an issue. Cecicilia says that memory has more to do with what’s to come than with the past and cites examples of animals who have had a reaction to something they had eaten being wary of that plant/animal in the future.
He compares himslf to famous explorers whi were in remote regions such as Captain Cook, Charles Darwin and, in particular Admiral Byrd who spent five months alone in Antarctica.
While he now has his groceries delivered, ans shuns Alexis he does have minimal contact with others. He receives a visit from his old New York friend Dan Morrison, whom he tells Cecilia is at a conference in Porto. Morrison gives him an invitation he, Morrison, has received to a party at a huge house in Lisbon which he attends and where he ses both Alexis and Cecilia. Alexis is there, and has been doing for the aging rock star owner what he did for Bruno. Apparently celebrities owning mansions in Portugal is a thing. The woman he thoughtt was Cecilia turns out to be Ana Paula and they chat together and she even gives him a lift home.
However for Bruno things are getting worse “I am a Montaigne and Robinson Crusoe and Captain Nemo wannabe equipped in my seclusion with an excellent library. he is not sure if he is in Lisbon or New York and is Cecilia coming?
This is a strange book, starting on one subject – climate change – and moving to another – solitude and its effect on the mind. Muñoz Molina keeps us guessing as to what is going on but tells his story well as we cannot help feel some sympathy for a man cut off from life and the real world.
h3>Publishing history
First published in Spanish 2019 by Seix Barral
First English translation in 2025 by Other Press
Translated by Curtis Bauer