The Man from the Elevator

Sooooo, turns out I've won my high school's literary contest award for best original short story in a foreign language (English)... for the THIRD TIME IN A ROW. I'm definitely not bragging. :D But seriously this year the honor makes me feel indescribably happy because of how much these 3-4 pages mean to me. I'd like to thank everyone who was (knowingly or not) an inspiration to me and helped create "The Man from the Elevator". I find a whole lot of myself in this particular story and I would like to dedicate it to anyone who feels the same.

The Man from the Elevator

19…20…21

I watched the numbers on the elevator floor indicator slowly morph into one another in that particular way that doesn’t quite please the impatient person. I was once again in a hurry. I’ve been having these “Oh, crap! I’m going to be late again!” episodes ever since I moved to the “big” city. The city isn’t actually that big which says a lot about my tiny diminutive of a hometown.

The elevator doors finally opened before me. I was not hesitant to enter even though the whole idea of an elevator or any kind of lift, for that matter, generally horrified me. I would have taken the stairs as I usually did, but - as my guilty conscience had reminded me several aggravating times by now - I was already pretty late.

It took me a while to acknowledge that I was not alone in the elevator. There was this tall dark man dressed in some kind of a uniform standing right next to me. Nevertheless, I did not notice him until he asked, “Where to, miss?”, with his deep throaty voice and slightly irritating optimistic tone, given the early morning hours. I’d say he was around 80 but a person who could actually approximate people’s age would say he was 65. He was the elevator man.

“Ground floor, please”, I answered as I glimpsed and smiled at him. He had oddly shaped bright eyes – quite strange given his dark complexion. He pressed the bottom-most button with I might say a great sense of mastery and satisfaction. My gaze now lay onto his shoes, which were somewhat shabby to put it nicely. After a few more moments of shoe staring I decided that the elevator man’s clothing was a metaphor I was deeply fascinated by and so I honored it with yet another smile.

In a little under half a minute the elevator suddenly stopped. The event was accompanied by a brief screeching sound mingling with my unholy shrieks to compose a symphony of my own improbable elevator-related disasters paranoia. I immediately tried to make my adrenaline-rushed body an integral part of one of the corners and having attempted to catch my breath looked at the man with eyes full of terror. He had hardly changed his posture, which made me think he was too old to notice occasional occurrences of as apocalyptic a magnitude as getting stuck in an elevator. Then, without ever so slightly turning his head to me he asked:

“Do you mind me telling you one of my favorite stories, miss?”

“What should we do? Should we call for help? There should be a panic button around here somewhere”, I cried out irrelevantly. My voice now had an annoyingly high pitch, which was sadly quite ungovernable.

“There was once a young woman much like you”, he ignorantly went on,
“She was headed to the place where all the respected people from her village had gone when the time was right and the radiant sun had become too bright for their eyes. As she strode along the beaten track walked on by so many before her she met this raven, you see… and the raven said in the most humanly of voices:
“It is unwise of you to pass this way just yet, child”

“But I am ready! You must let me pass!”, the lady replied.

“There is much for your eyes to see and for your ears to hear before you are to understand why I cannot allow it”, the raven calmly replied.

“Please, let me prove my worth to you!” she pleaded…”

“Excuse me, sir, but what does this have to do with anything?” I asked rather angrily, still not having parted with my fear-fed stance. He giggled for a while, which made my eyebrows rise a little bit higher than usual. After he was done he turned to me and asked:
“What do you fear, miss?”

“You mean besides getting stuck in a hell-spawn elevator of doom?”

“Yes, besides that” he giggled some more.

“Hmm, let’s see… even though I am currently living my utter nightmare I could say that oblivion ranks pretty high as well”
“Why?” he asked, appearing intrigued.

“Well, for starters, it is the end of all ends! The final chapter. I do not know what would become of me if I was to face oblivion and I sure as hell don’t even remotely understand it…so yeah, that pretty much sums it up”

“And do you fear love?”

“Love? No, of course not…” His odd question made me think of my boyfriend back home, about the fight we had over the phone a little while ago - before I’d realized I was late for work. It made me think of the uncertainty of love and my fear of calling him again tonight when I got back to my apartment. To put it simply – I lied. I do fear love, but I really wish I didn’t.

“Love is the emotion we least understand, yet it is only in its mysterious ways that we find meaning”, the elevator man said. “It is very much similar to oblivion, you see, because love doesn’t have a past nor does it have a certain future – love is now or never”.

I do not know what made me burst into tears after hearing him say that. I do not know what made me open up and tell him all about my boyfriend and our growingly frequent rows and my fear of ending up alone, which in my deranged view meant somehow being forgotten. I do not know what made me share my regret of moving into a city that I did not understand and having left everything behind to pursue a career I wasn’t even sure I was meant to aspire to. But I did… and he listened.

After a not so brief moment of silence which was deafened by the sounds of my sobbing he turned to me and asked:
“What is it that you do, miss?”

“I’m a journalist” I answered as I was wiping off the last of my tears “I work for the local journal. But I don’t want to be just a journalist. I want to be great at it, to be respected, honored, and remembered like so many of my idols. I thought that here I’d be able to make it… write a story that was worth reading and thinking about, worth discussing… I thought that maybe I’d receive some kind of recognition… I don’t know… So far, it’s been nothing but a disaster. I’m trying so hard, yet I keep screwing up, I keep ending up writing about all the different methods of hair removal or some crap like that”, I laughed out loud after hearing myself say that, but it was a bitter laugher, a desperate one. He laughed with me for a while and then said:
“Listen, child, success is a picture that only fits a frame of failure and that’s all I have to say on the matter”.

“I guess…” I reluctantly replied.

“As for what you said about your fear of oblivion… let me ask you something. When you were back home with that boy of yours and you were alone in that special place lovers go to, where silence is always enough and time cannot rule, and you looked into his eyes and he looked back at you… did you fear death or the inevitable end of all things or not being remembered or anything like that?”

“No…”

“That’s the point. We are made to live. Only when we love do we defeat death, only when we love do we let go of fear and defy the certainty of oblivion until we are alone and fear is once more invited into our lives and we start looking for love again. It is the never-ending story; it is the world without an end.”

The elevator now seemed to have finally resumed its descent. I did not notice it right away because I was still trying to grasp what the old man had said. Could he be right? If the world was to cease to exist tomorrow, would I spend my last hours looking for love, adding my own installment to the never-ending story? I sure hoped I would. The elevator doors opened before me.

I looked at him as he looked at me with those odd bright eyes.

“Before you go, miss, know that my life has taught me that with every choice we make much is gained and much is lost.”

“Have you always wanted to be an elevator man?” I asked, still sustaining eye contact. He smiled and said:
“In this world we have two choices: to love and to fear. People nowadays fear more than they love. It’s a shame, really. It is only us that stand in the way of our own happiness, no one else. Have a nice day, miss!”

“I’ll make sure I will!” I grinned.

The doors closed behind me. As I walked away I thought about the mysterious ways of love the elevator man had spoken of and for the first time in months I seemed to have let go of fear if only just for a short while. All of a sudden, I remembered the story he was trying to tell me – the one about the young woman and the raven. I do not know why but in mind and body I desperately felt the need to know the ending. Did she succeed in convincing the raven she was worthy of going where she felt she was meant to go? I had to know.

I ran back towards the elevator. As I was passing through the lobby I thought about how this peculiar old man from the elevator had somehow taught me so much in a matter of a few minutes, yet I knew nothing about him. Hell, I didn’t even have the decency to let him finish his story. At that point I felt that knowing its ending would be the only way I could get to know him a little bit better. I felt like I owed him that. Who was the man from the elevator? I had to know.

I eagerly pressed the call button as I watched the numbers on the elevator floor indicator slowly morph into one another in that particular way that doesn’t quite please the impatient person.

3…2…1