La Escalera

In the metro stop by my residence in Madrid there were two exits. One of these the city outfitted with escalators, and the other it did not. It was practical to walk, no matter which side of the train I came out of, to the end of the hall where I went around a bend and encountered the second exit with its escalators. Only once did I take the stairs. I will tell you about that day.
The metro line I used, the circle six, was deep underground. There were nine escalators in my station: a stack of three to the right and three to the left, going up, going down. The passage was narrow. I had a routine for the mornings when I was half-awake and descending. Riding the first escalator, I fished out my wallet and removed my transport card. I stepped off and onto the next one. Riding the second escalator, I put my wallet back into my pocket. I stepped off and onto the next one. When I reached the last escalator, I had to watch and listen for my cue. The people around me would tell me what to do. If I didn’t see anyone, I stood still and yawning while the escalator carried me down. I was early to the station. If I saw a crowd bustling at different speeds up the tunnel, making their way towards the foggy and cool streets above, then the train had just arrived and it would stay a little longer. I was right on time. But if I saw a few lonely people stepping quickly on the left side of my escalator, I would move to the left and go quickly too—those other people paid attention to their watches, and as we neared the half-hour mark, the train sat restless in the station, itching to leave.
Whether or not I hurried depended on where I was going. On the trip back, though, I never hurried. Usually I was trying my best not to sweat through my clothes. You had to wear layers in Madrid and by the time I was coming home on the hot midday train, I was always wearing too many. I listened to loud music to distract myself from the sweat.
On that day, I wish I hadn’t been listening to music. As I went up the final escalator, holding my elbows slightly akimbo so my pits would dry out, I noticed that its perfect twin—the escalator to my left—had stopped moving. They had wrapped caution tape around the top of it, and at the summit three people crouched behind the tape. Two of them wore blue vests and carried flashlights. The third was a woman with a backpack. They had stopped the escalator and removed one of its segments. Segments, I say, rather than steps, because the mechanical chunks of an escalator that compress and expand seem more to me like the segments of a millipede or the scales of a dinosaur than a staircase. This escalator, then, was missing one of its segments, and in the empty space I saw nothing but a dark hole.
I wish I had heard what the people said. The scene swept by me as I made my habitual exit from the station. It was not unusual for an escalator to break down, of course, but I had never lived next to an escalator before. Where I came from we had very few escalators. I had ridden them before in cities like Boston and New York, and I had come across broken ones, too. But to me those escalators were always broken. I had never before made friends with an escalator and found myself startled to see it paralyzed. I had no idea how they were serviced. I imagined that the backpack-woman had lost her wedding ring under the escalator. She must have lost something important, I reasoned, for them to open the escalator up like that. I wondered at night if they had found what they were looking for.
The next morning the escalator was still roped off. Nobody guarded it. Its body lay open like an unattended surgical patient. I abandoned my theory about the ring—there was something wrong with the escalator. I thought it must have its insides gummed up. That morning, I had to take the stairs down to the station.
In the train I thought about what kind of equipment you would need to operate on the inside of an escalator. Would they lower you down on a rope like a cave diver? Was there some secret passage that opened up underneath the escalator where you would find a tall, dark, triangular chamber, empty except for a circuit board and an old bucket of paint? Later, in the cafeteria, I ate hard bread and stew. I imagined working in that tall, dark chamber, with the jagged segments of the escalator forming a ceiling above my head.
An escalator must be shaped like a conveyor belt. The segments collapse, pass underneath the body, then resurface on the other end before expanding again. But if an escalator must be shaped this way, what is wrong, I wondered, with my escalator? (Firsty, I started calling it, because it was the first of nine). Did one of its pieces crack and bend? On the way back home I passed it again and paid close attention. Still it was missing a part of its exoskeleton, and beneath the missing chunk there was no conveyor belt, no slick metal stream of flattened teeth ready to make their way backwards. There was only a hole.
I didn’t sleep well that night. In the morning I was late to class and made my way out of the residence so quickly I forgot my headphones. I jogged down the stairs, feeling my pockets to check that my wallet and my documents were still there. It was quiet in the station. The train hadn’t arrived. Halfway down I thought I heard someone coming up behind me, one of those students who hurried more than I did when they were late. Their shoes were scuffling the way sneakers tend to. When I looked to the side, nobody came. There was just the escalator to my right, defunct, and the escalator to my left, moving slowly and steadily along.
Down the escalators. Up the escalators. Up the stairs. Back outside. In the Mercadona. The only image I could think about was the hole. The escalator with its gaping hole. Would the escalator catch dry socket? Someone should put a blanket over it. Do they sell blankets in the Mercadona? I didn’t think so. I bought a jar of peanut butter and left.
On the way from the Mercadona to my residence, there are more stairs. A thick, ample set of outdoor stairs, each stone eroded, little sprouts growing between the steps. Difficult stairs to climb. I walked halfway up and saw it. The sky was dark, but in front of me, at the top of the stairs, something darker moved.
A dog, I thought. But it was long. Very long. And rolling. The creature came down the steps. It was like a long, sad tire, a tire that had been spun, wrung, twirled around like pizza dough, and finally splattered on the ground. Its shape was limp, stretched, and not symmetrical. But the creature was a perfect circle. Yes, a perfect circle, like a tire. And from its circumference sprung hundreds of little tiny legs.
The creature rolled towards me. It swerved to my left. As it went down the stairs, its tired, rubbery body slagged against each step. It made quick time. It was going quickly away, as if it didn’t wish to be known.
“Wait!” I cried out, turning.
The creature continued on slinking down the stairs.
“Wait!” I cried again. “Aren’t you lost?”
The creature bent sideways. It turned, and when it turned it wobbled like a bubble billowing in the wind, trying to take shape. Its skin shone like tar. Then it stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
What did it see? I imagined it was staring at me with an invisible eye which occupied the center of its body. But the only color it would have recognized was the color of my shoes. They were black. Or perhaps it didn’t see me at all. Perhaps it couldn’t even hear. Perhaps the vibrations from my black shoes on the stone caused it to turn around. Certainly, I knew, it could feel.
I approached it calmly. I made sure to put the heel of my foot down first when I walked. The creature shrunk back. That is when I knew I had met the creature that lives inside the escalator.
“Don’t worry. I won’t step on you,” I said. At that point I walked very slowly. Very quietly.
The creature came forward a little. I stood still. It rolled on top of my foot, bumping against my leg. It felt squishy like a taffy.
“It’s okay. Did you want me to show you the way back? The way back to the station?”
At that, the creature reeled back. It started to roll backwards at a speed that shocked me, its tiny legs dragging its circular body across the stones, away from the stairs, and around the corner. With barely a sound it was gone.
I stayed on the steps. I could hardly bring myself to move. I don’t remember climbing the stairs, but eventually I found myself walking back home.
When I arrived at my residence, dinner had almost ended. I bypassed the buffet entirely. Instead I took a cup of peaches and began to stuff my face with them. It was always crowded at this time. I couldn’t care less to stand in a line. I was staring out the windows into the dark street, hoping to see the creature. I thought of what its tracks might look like. Like tire tracks, of course, but with a fuzziness around the edges—the disturbance of all those little legs.
I nearly gasped when something hit my table. My friend had put her tray down.
“You’re eating those peaches?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Did you eat already? Or are you eating those peaches for dinner?”
“Nothing looked good,” I remarked. In my mouth the peaches turned squishy like a worm.
The next day they fixed the escalator. When I ride it now I stroke the black rubbery handle with my palm. In my head I say, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You’ll make it out again.