at the top

clementina coppini

A
“What are we doing here?” asked Alì Gomaa, known as Bagdad, looking down below him. “Hey, sorry, but weren’t you the one who insisted on coming?” answered Nino.
An incredibly tall, empty building. A hole, in short, extending upwards instead of down into the ground.
On each of the four infinitely high vertical walls, hoists were constantly moving up and down in parallel rows.
Simple platforms, without any protection for the people on them.
Nino and Alì were on one of these primitive lifts, going up.
“Where are we going” Alì asked then.
“What is this, existential question hour?! We’re going up, can’t you see?”
The movement felt slow, and perhaps it was. Still, the climb created in Alì the same sense of emptiness you feel when you go upwards very quickly.
Alì realized he was holding a rope and hammer in his hand.
Nino had some nails and a big pair of pincers.
They were firemen and these objects might have been tools of the trade.
Suddenly Alì was gripped by a doubt: “We are firemen, aren’t we?”
“What’s wrong with you today? It scares me when you act like this! I don’t like these jokes, you know.” Nino was getting nervous.
He remembered Nino. They’d always been mates. But for what? Firemen, they were firemen. But who knows why they weren’t wearing their uniforms …
What he couldn’t understand was how they’d got there. Amnesia?
Nino seemed to decipher his look of puzzlement: “Two days ago you hit your head hard, that’s why you feel confused. The doctors at the Accident and Emergency said you’d have some occasional loss of memory for a while. Don’t worry. And it’s your own fault, anyway, you didn’t want to take any time off!”
Ah, yes, his head. The blow had occurred while he was saving a child trapped in an unstable building. A piece of the eaves had fallen on his head. It was lucky that Nino had managed to take the child out of his arms and get him out. How strange – a silent memory in the dark.
“The earthquake – Alì’s face lit up – There was an earthquake!”
“Unfortunately, yes, Bagdad. That’s why we couldn’t leave you at home in bed. There’s hell all around. Half the city has collapsed.”
Half, except for that building, which was perfectly intact. He watched for a few minutes. No damage, not even a crack, was evident at first glance. But that might not be the case. The structure could be unstable. There could be a fire burning somewhere inside.
“Are we going to put out a fire?”, asked Alì, just to say something.
“Without water? If you don’t stop asking questions like that, Bagdad, I think I’ll wind up giving you a knock on your head myself!”
“So where are we going then?”
“Don’t you remember? It’s a secret mission. We’re going to explode the blast charges.”
“The charges?”
Meanwhile the lift continued going up, but the top wasn’t in sight.
Every once in a while they met other lifts going up or down. They were all moving at different speeds, but there were no other passengers.
For safety reasons, probably. Alì thought and thought, without finding peace. He could not remember why he was there, he couldn’t identify Nino perfectly, he couldn’t even remember why with a short name like Alì they’d given him the nickname Bagdad. And then, he came from Egypt, not from Iraq. He could picture in his mind the Temple of Hatshepsut on one of the many sunny days in his native land.
But why was the building completely empty inside? What was the meaning of those hoists travelling crazily up and down those infinitely high walls? He was in an upside-down ditch, reaching up from the ground instead of down.
He must have banged that head of his really hard.
“I don’t really remember what mission it is,” he told Nino.
“Neither do I,” his friend answered, “If I’d known, I probably wouldn’t have accepted. They only told us to go up to the top. And that once we got there, we’d understand.” Nino pointed upwards. It seemed they were almost there, but neither of them would have sworn it. The top seemed to be covered in fog, as though there was no visibility. Strange, inside a building. But it was also true that the building itself was strange. It was impossible to explain what it was doing there, just as it was impossible to explain what they were doing there.
They were two particles in a hole like a chasm. “After all, an abyss isn’t only infinite descent. It’s also an infinite climb,” observed Bagdad.
“Are you feeling ok? Is your head still spinning?” asked Nino.
“Yes, it is, maybe that’s why I feel so philosophical.” Alì looked down and couldn’t make out where the floor started, or even if there was a floor. Far, far away it looked as though there was a spiral, like a vortex turning round on itself to form the infinitely high walls. Perhaps it was only an optical illusion of the floor.
“Maybe it’s the concussion,” he reflected out loud.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Nino. Nothing.” This time the name felt familiar as he pronounced it, as though he’d said it thousands of time, as though the two syllables came directly out of a thread of his own being. Yes, he was a friend. Or else, his being was by now completely unravelled.
The mission, then, was to go up.
“Why do you think this place is made like this?”
“No questions, Alì. Concentrate on what’s up there.”
“We have to explode the charges. And fast.” Bomb-disposal expert! That was his job! Now he remembered, finally. But what charges did they have to explode? He didn’t have any equipment.
“Is that up there, too?” he asked.
“What?” asked Nino.
“The equipment.”
“Ah, I see you’re getting your memory back. Anyway, it’s there beside you.”
“Where?” Alì looked down and saw that there was in fact a big red bag with narrow blue stripes. He would have sworn to God it hadn’t been there a moment ago, but considering what shape his mind was in it was better not to make any serious commitments with the almighty. He bent down to open it.
“We’re there,” said Nino.
The hoist gave a lurch. In fact, the whole building seemed to give a lurch. Alì’s head began to spin, he let out a groan, and fainted.

B
“Alì! Alì! Damn it, Bagdad, open your eyes!”
The words pierced the bubble of unconsciousness Alì had fallen into. He woke up. Had he slept or dreamed he was sleeping? It took him a while to regain control over his arms and legs before he stood up, with great effort, mumbling “My head’s spinning.”
“Poor Alì, it’s not going well for you, is it? Buck up, in a few minutes we’ll be back on the ground floor and I’ll take you to the first-aid station.”
“What do you mean ground floor? Weren’t we going up?” Alì was confused. He stretched his vision towards to edge of the hoist and was overcome by nausea.
“Trust me: we’re going down,” repeated Nino.
Bagdad took his face in his hands any scratched his eyes with the tips of his fingers. When he finished, his sight was more misted over than before. Had they ever arrived at their destination? “What did we do on the roof?” he asked Nino.
“What we were supposed to do. Neither more nor less.”
“Did we blast the charges?” His ideas began to grow clearer, in a summary way.
“Obviously.”
“But it doesn’t look like anything has happened in here. No cracks, not even a mote of dust.”
Bagdad thought something strange should be visible after the explosion on the roof. But no.
Alì looked down. The big bag was still there, it looked exactly the same as before. Why should it have changed? Nino was the same, too – and how should he have changed? – except that his hands were black and his clothes dirtier. Alì’s hands were black, too. The roof must have been dirty.
He remember having been in that condition often in the past, so it must be part of his job.
But exactly what he’d done, exactly what he usually did, he couldn’t remember. It was as though his existence was concentrated around going and coming back, and staying on the ground or at the top was an accessory. He felt the oppression of the lungs caused by the movement of the lift more than he felt the fatigue of his daily actions. “It’s clear that I’m a philosophical fireman,” he muttered.
“That’s un understatement, my dear Bagdad,” laughed Nino.
“And the mission?”
“It was to explode the charges, don’t you remember? Jeez, Bagdad, you really did get a knock on the head!”
“Do you think I should go to the first-aid station?”
Nino was upset by now. “Ok, let’s forget it.”
But Alì wanted to understand: “So, Nino, to sum up, we got to the top without me realizing it, and we exploded the charges, together – interrupt me if I’m wrong – and now we’re going back to the city, which is half-destroyed by the earthquake.”
“So you got that at least?”
“Yes, but where’s the rest? I don’t even know if we gave up, if we backed down, or completed our mission.”
“But I’ve told you a thousand times that we did what we had to do,” snorted Nino, who no longer knew what to say; he felt like giving Alì a slap to bring him out of that unbearable identity crisis, but instead told himself to hold on, they’d reach a doctor soon. Nino took Alì,s arm and tried to shake him. Alì fainted.
When he woke up for the umpteenth time with the same headache, Bagdad found himself in the same situation in the same damned lift. With one difference: Nino was bleeding from the belly, though he was standing.
“My God, Nino, what happened to you?” he went over to him, terrified.
“It’s nothing, Alì, just a drop of blood.”
“What do you mean, a drop? We have to stop the haemorrhage, immediately.”
Alì got close to Nino and made him lie down, gave him something to drink and tried to examine the wound.
But Nino pushed him away brusquely, “Don’t touch me! I told you, it’s nothing.”
“Come on, mate, let me help you. But how…?”
“I don’t understand, either. I was here and all of a sudden a fragment of metal arrived and hit me.”
“A fragment of metal? How big was it?” Alì was afraid that others might arrive, but above all he was afraid of being left alone. It frightened him to see Nino covered with red, because the man gave him a sense of safety, he was the only sure point of reference in that lift.
“It’s nothing, I’ve already told you. We’ll soon be on the ground and we’ll find medical help for both of us. Now cut it out.” Nino wasn’t irritated. He was hiding his fright, and not doing it very well.
“But was up there?” asked Alì. A dumb question, because they were going down, anyway. The question that came to Alì’s throat couldn’t be pronounced out loud. He whispered it softly to free himself of it: “What’s down there?”

C
“Excuse me, Nino, it’s all the fault of this damned amnesia!” he said, giving him a clap on the shoulder.
But there was no shoulder. Or back, or even Nino. He was going down with a being that had no body. “But, but… you don’t exist!” Alì couldn’t catch his breath.
“Stop being so stupid!” grumbled Nino.
Bagdad stared at his companion as though he were a ghost. Because he actually was a ghost, killed by a wild fragment shot out of nowhere, or born a ghost. But was he alive when they were going up? “Has he ever been alive? Have I ever known him?” Alì felt worse and worse, as though he was going to faint yet another time.
But what were these endless descents and ascents in the company of beings as bodiless as they were incredibly efficient? A pin prick travelled from his cerebellum all the way down his spine, pulling at every nerve.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered. It didn’t make any sense to shout, at that point. “But anyway my grandma, who raised me since my parents weren’t there, always said that the cards are never written till the end, that’s why we have to wait till the end to understand.”
Understand what? “For example, where it’s going to end. For example, why my colleague is a ghost. I’m beginning to think I am, too.” No, Bagdad wasn’t a ghost, at least not yet.
Alì was alive.
Maybe he was only suffering from a problem of a double personality that muddled his mind. He was Alì and also Bagdad. Or maybe the problem included a third personality, the ghost of Nino. “Maybe I should just throw myself off this damned hoist and make my head spin round once and for all.”
“Will you knock it off?” interrupted Nino.
“Ah, so you’re still here?” Bagdad thought that for some reason Nino had disappeared forever. But no, he was still there, his third personality, bleeding as always and, as always, very wise.
Suddenly he felt a strong desire to go back to Egypt. “Yes, as soon as I’m better I’ll go back home.” As soon as he got out of the abyss, he’d go back to the desert. He would watch the clouds, nothing else.
And he would remember, of that he was certain. At the top there was an answer, but not at the top of the long box he found himself in. No doubt it was at the top of the sky.
The effort of trying to imagine what by now he could hardly even perceive made him faint again.
“Alì, Bagdad, Alì, wake up, for heaven’s sake,” Nino was shouting.
“Huh, what is it? What’s going on?” Alì forced himself to open one eye.
“We’re here, Bagdad! We’re here!”
“Really? Where?”
“The Ground Floor, Alì, the Ground Floor!”
“So it really was possible to arrive.” Alì felt his strength coming back, and he could feel that they’d stopped.
He got up, looked around and saw a floor.
“I’m afraid to get off,” he confessed.
“Why?” marvelled Nino.
“I don’t know. I can only remember Egypt.” He said whatever came into his head, just to say something. But now that he thought about it, it was true. He did only remember Egypt.
Before stepping outside and leaving the hoist forever, he thought about it for quite some time. Now that he was on the ground floor again, he was sorry to give up the possibility of another inexplicable trip upwards.
“Come on, move, the ambulance is waiting.” Nino tugged him.
“But you’re dead. What good is a hospital to you?”
“Listen, shut up and get moving. We’ll talk about it later,” Nino cut him short.
Alì called Bagdad who suspected he was Nino followed his ghost and left the scene to go towards the nearest first-aid station. Everything had been solved, except for a remaining doubt as to what really was up there.
Truth? It must, roughly speaking, have three personalities.
It is a blind passageway, a lift going up and down with no intention of arriving. It is a desert with a an immeasurably wide wingspan. A moment of enlightened unconsciousness.
The top does not exist. Only the climb exists.
And even if the top does exist, by the time we arrive, we have fainted.

Clementina Coppini was born Milan. After taking her degree in classical literature, for many years she wrote childrens’ books for the publisher, Dami Editore. These include the series, "Mamma, raccontami una storia", as well as simplified versions of the classics, among them The Odyssey. She has published La guida insolita di Milano and La guida insolita della Lombardia (Newton Compton), I Lombardi e i Veneti (in the ‘xenophobic guides’ series, Edizioni Sonda). She translates texts from English for il Battello a Vapore. She is now working for several hard-copy and online reviews, including "mondointasca.org", "Vie del Gusto", "Genteviaggi", "Class", "Vivere". Recently she has started to publish her stories online on the site, dols.net.