Stairway to Heaven

Stairway to Heaven
Slowly, reluctantly, he placed his foot on the first step and began to climb the stairs...
He was returning from his trip again. He was probably addicted to traveling. After a poor night's sleep, he'd been behind the wheel since dawn – blinded by the rising sun in the morning, by afternoon he'd driven under a darkening canopy of clouds. The radio was playing the news, then a scientific editorial, a conversation with a doctor. What was this guy even talking about? Some kind of pineal gland, a brain stem… A gland that produces melatonin, the sleep hormone: "In fish and reptiles, the pineal gland reacts to light through the skin and is like their third eye…" That would come in handy, because my eyes are getting stuck… He started flipping through the channels until he came across an old Led Zeppelin hit. For a moment, he screamed at the top of his lungs, along with the singer, "There's a lady who's sure," just to stay awake. "And she’s buying the stairway"… At the last moment, he noticed a truck coming from the right and abruptly changed lanes. The idiot thinks he can do whatever he wants because he’s a big guy! He wiped the sweat from his brow and kept driving, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. Soon, the two-lane road turned into a regular narrow road. The GPS began to fade, and for a long time, no signposts appeared. The road narrowed, became increasingly neglected, and at one point, it consisted mainly of potholes, until it became a bumpy gravel path. I must have taken a wrong turn… He turned off the engine and got out to rest and stretch his legs. The wind ruffled his hair and chased away elongated clouds that looked like tattered birches. The smell of the meadow reminded him of his childhood – chamomile, sage, drying puddles with frog eggs. He looked around. His attention was drawn to a distant structure, rising unexpectedly above the horizon like a solitary exclamation point and seemingly disappearing into the clouds. A pyramid? A tower? A temple? Who could have built such a thing in this wasteland, and when? A path meandering through the weeds led towards it. After a tiring walk (how long could it have taken? The watch, as if to spite him, had stopped at five to three), he reached the foot of the structure, slightly out of breath. He was exhausted. His blood was pounding, and his temples were throbbing, black spots darting before his eyes.

Now, up close, he saw an elaborate, multi-level staircase rising before him, built who knew when and for who knew why. It reminded him of the wooden footbridge over the tracks, which he used to run onto as a boy to watch the steam locomotives pass beneath, and then watch the whole world, even the footbridge and his own feet, disappear in the white, stinking smoke.

He was reminded of the Spanish Steps in Rome. He raced up them to catch up with a girl who had left her cell phone on a pot of azaleas.
And another staircase, similar to the ones he'd climbed last year, in Portugal, in Braga. He was halfway up when suddenly, for the first and only time in his life, he fainted. He slumped onto the sun-scorched granite steps. For a moment, he sank into oblivion. Some tourists helped him up and gave him water.
He faced the staircase again, similar to the Portuguese ones, but the balustrades were crumbling, and the plaster, the color of Venetian rose, was peeling in sheets from the pillars. On a post to the left, he noticed a carving: a stone pine cone. He'd seen something like that before. He gasped, closing his eyes. He was reminded again of Rome, the Vatican Museums. And a huge marble pine cone set in the middle of the courtyard, similar to this one, only flanked by two peacocks. Where had it come from? Who had carved it, and when? He then approached a group of tourists and heard a guide explain in German that, according to mystics, a pine cone was a symbol of enlightenment. Perhaps because it resembled the pineal gland—the mythical "third eye" that allows one to see the invisible. He looked up and felt a slight dizziness: the stairs seemed to lead straight into an azure opening between the clouds. And they would never end.
He glanced back—the car was invisible from this distance, but the wind carried a mixed murmur of noise, the roar of engines, the constant panting of the highway, which was rather strange—he had long since left the two-lane highway. Amidst the din, he picked out raised voices and then the siren of an ambulance. It all seemed distant and unimportant.
Slowly, reluctantly, he placed his foot on the first step and began climbing the stairs. The sounds behind him grew louder, and at one point he even felt as if he could make out individual words:
"He must have fallen asleep at the wheel, I saw him crash into a truck..."
"Doctor, this is the third accident at this spot this year..."
As he climbed the second step, he heard a calm, composed voice just above his ear:
"He's breathing, he'll live. Bring a stretcher, quickly! And get an IV ready!"