Aleksandar Hemon: Best European Fiction 2013

The old lady whispered something to her husband and he kneeled on the floor and started poking around the man with the beard (who, meanwhile, had informed the others that he was a painter); soon the old man was squeezing carefully through the other people’s legs. The old lady explained that the sudden stop had caused her glasses to fall off, and she’d only just realized that they were missing. Some of the other passengers kneeled then too, wanting to help the old man, who was still on his knees, impressing the younger people in the elevator with his endurance and persistence. The number of people in the car blocked a lot of the light from the weak fluorescents, their silhouettes casting numerous shadows—a deep darkness on the floor that made their joint quest significantly more difficult. The man in the striped suit—a dandy, really—didn’t pitch in with the search, but instead started calling for help. He started yelling various names, as if he knew important building personnel who were in charge of keeping the place running day to day. No matter the volume, it was all in vain. The building’s elevators had only been recently installed and they were, as it was said, absolutely cutting edge. They had thick walls and solid insulation, which kept their movements perfectly quiet— an utter joy. Nothing like those rickety, terrifying, ancient elevators you find in older buildings, their decrepit mechanisms straining to pull vibrating cords tied to old tin cans up musty tunnels. No, these new models moved quickly and silently, and always stopped with the utmost gentleness. They gave the passengers a feeling of trust and security.

But everyone present had no choice but to accept the fact that the system wasn’t working properly—perhaps a flaw in the installation process? Soon enough, when he noticed that his yells were useless, the man in the suit started to slam his open palms violently against the closed metal doors—something of a shock for everyone else. When he figured out that even this wasn’t loud enough, he lifted his briefcase and he started to smack its tiny wheels against the silvery, mirrored surface. The echoes from this latest assault bounced all over the elevator car, occupying every plane and angle, and inciting even more unrest among his fellow passengers.

Suddenly, the tall fellow grabbed the dandy’s hands. Having gotten his attention, the giant then pointed toward the little girl, who was covering her ears with her hands and looking at them both in confusion. Her father tried to convince the panicking gentleman to apologize to the girl for the scene he was making, but the dandy refused, explaining that he was doing what he was doing for the collective welfare and common interests of all the stranded passengers. The doctor didn’t give up, however, but continued in dignified persistence until their juvenile bickering turned into a heated argument. This was the first actual fight of their ordeal, and it put everyone even more on edge.

Moments later, when he realized that he’d already missed his meeting, the man in the suit removed his jacket, holding it in one hand while still clutching his briefcase in the other, as though there was something strictly confidential in it. The other passengers began to indicate that the temperature, which should have been regulated by the ventilation system, was now increasing in waves, each even more unbearable than the last; they had to do something about that. Most of the men removed some layer of their clothes, and loosened their ties if they had one—or, if they didn’t, like the painter, they rolled up their pants. The old lady pulled out an electric hand fan and started whirring it in front of her face, turning it to her husband’s from time to time, letting her husband work it when she got tired of holding it up. Everyone else was wiping their dewy foreheads with everything within reach—their sleeves or facial tissues that they’d been keeping in their pockets, thinking that they would never need to use them—everyone, that is, except for the soldier and the woman in red, who were chatting incessantly now on various subjects. At that particular moment, the soldier was explaining to the girl how his gun worked, how to switch the safety on and off, how to aim and shoot—things that he wouldn’t be talking about so nonchalantly in other circumstances. The father interrupted them, saying that it would be appropriate to try, for a change, to keep quiet and listen, in case anything was happening outside—whether the elevator next to theirs was moving, for example, or whether they might be able to hear any workers trying to fix whatever malfunction had stranded them all there. They were longing to hear the updates and instructions that rescue teams would surely be calling out, discussing their prognosis and planning the best possible way to get them out of there.

Except for the rumblings of their bodies and the clicking of the old couple’s dentures, however, there still wasn’t a sound to be heard. By now the old man had already stated his hypothesis that the tall fellow was the culprit. Despite everyone’s reasonable rejoinders, the old man blamed the tall fellow and his capricious decision to force himself upon the collective in the elevator for stranding them in this situation; the elevator must have had a weight limit, and the tall fellow must have caused an overload. On account of his being the cause of all of their troubles, the old man then demanded that the tall fellow—who had since revealed that he was a historian—tell everyone some stories, which would put their own unfortunate situation into the proper perspective. So he presented their time in the elevator as historically inevitable and spoke about the old legends, for instance when the galleys of the Githiesh navy got lost in the Salzburg Sea and so couldn’t take part in the battle of Getersburg, providing sea support to their infantry. Later, however, when the sailors worked together, and all the captains coordinated their movements, they surprised the enemy from behind, and thus defeated them utterly. The tall fellow would have certainly continued to dig through these musty catacombs if the well-dressed gentleman, who had been grinding his teeth all the while, hadn’t suddenly—after ferociously mashing his cell phone’s keypad—put his phone to his ear. Not a word was spoken, until this small cause for hope was extinguished as well: no signal.

It would have been one thing had the tenants in the building simply not cared about the passengers trapped in the elevator—that wouldn’t have concerned them quite so much—but the fact that there had been no sign of life, that not a single sound had penetrated the car, and that the passengers had been unable to get a single message through… this seemed to threaten their assumptions and beliefs about the state of the world they’d so recently left. Time was passing, and soon the woman in red, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her hands wrapped around her knees, declared quite loudly that she was about to faint from starvation. The soldier had leaned his head on her and was already dozing off. Swallowing his self-importance, the well-dressed man addressed the group as a whole, concluding that the day must now be over: it was probably night outside. The passengers had long since begun licking their dry lips, hoping to relieve their increasing thirst, and it was then that the artist pulled a liter water bottle out of his bag, and, after taking the first sip, passed it on to the others. When he was first offered a sip from the bottle, the man in the suit politely—albeit with a grimace— declined; a little later he was quick to grab the bottle and fiercely drink down what was left. The water seemed to calm the passengers down, and now they all lay down on the floor—inasmuch as this was possible—which had seemed wide enough at first, but now felt much smaller. Except for the soldier, who would occasionally wake up to keep an eye on his fellow prisoners, and the little girl, who kept complaining to her father—even though he was doing his best to placate her by telling her stories, patiently and quietly—the others soon fell asleep.