8

Tuesday came and the week was in full swing. People walked headstrong as if there were places to head to and commitments to be upheld.

The weekday’s liftman rose from his bed. He left behind an impression of his head in the starchy pillow that was provided for him. His lodging was his on account of his job and was by no means glorious. The manager had no issues providing it to him. The non-disturbing way the weekday’s liftman went about business was a comfort to the manager. He was one less issue of all the total possibilities that could go wrong and call to divide his attention further.

His housing was a rectangle covered in a reddish hue, close to the terracotta panelling of the lift, with bed and bedding from the last generation provided for the hotel-type rooms. The tan of his uniform was camouflage to the walls of both and he was close, in action and in look, to a piece of furniture.

He kept no frames, posters, calendars or decorations. If he had been given frames he would have been be lost as to what he should put in them. He donned his uniform that was unwashed from Sunday. Idling all day didn’t make him sweat and therefore washing was done infrequently. With the lock in key to the stairwell, he descended from the sixth to the ground.

His intuitive sense that morning tasks had to be done was accompanied by a new, odd awareness. Something was nagging to be let onto the surface level of his consciousness. Little things all around were asking for this privilege. The dayplate for the elevator. It was Tuesday. He found Tuesday in the storage facilities and entered the lift. On this day he had taken notice of the two feet-shaped scuffs on the floor in his nook. It was uncanny how little they varied in space, like a mannequin had been left there eternally unattended to be jostled only by the elevator. Seeing these in front of him already had him fatigued. In noticing and seeing these scuffs, he was moving the focal point of his attention freely. To heave the cone of his attention across his visual plane felt akin to operating the lock of a canal or opening a grand cathedral door. He sunk into the slight feet-shaped depressions and tried to recoup his energy. The day had begun and his body, only one foot now in autopilot, was waiting for the first call.

Floor five. In strolled two spindly gentlemen who, accounting for their similarities, were surely brothers. They were engaged in a lopsided conversation. Headed downward to the ground floor, only the more lively one spoke. He seemed to be dressing down the other, in a brotherly fashion, who was offering no counter criticism and stood sullen. The glum brother sinking his neck into the top-buttoned collar of his overcoat. The other, standing tall, was breathing freely and putting that breath to good use. Here, the liftman was sensing more things and was creating a narrative, just in looking at the two men, as a means to understand them.

He developed a vertigo. The lift seemed to shudder, and slink, left to right, brushing the sides of the lift chamber as it passed from floor one to three. It was by no means clear whether it had always been this way. Perhaps he had not paid attention. This made his head hurt. The onslaught of petty things was filling his head with pressure. Today was no different to any other. It had started with the same routine and no deviation. All the same turns. He woke up at the same time in the same position. But now novelties were rising to the surface.

In the quiet comfort of his own internal world, he tried to remember. Surely something had beckoned him to look out.

Sunday’s service had been busier than usual. A hobbyist cinema club had reserved many of the fifth floor rooms. They finished their get-together at 9pm and hoarded toward their housing. Groups of five were overloading the four-man elevator, and the foyer, in the remorseless, happily ignorant state that alcohol invites. Besides exceeding the weight restriction, there simply was not enough space. A group of four men and one woman flooded the elevator as if they had just fought victorious for their turn. Slightly exhausted, indignant but relieved. There was no particularly familiar air beside a civil politeness.

The woman was fighting for space among the four slightly drunken, comically oversized oafs, well-intentioned as they were. When one of these oafs noticed her trying to express her right to stand unflattened, he prompted all of the rest to shuffle and free up some breathing room. A penguin huddle emerged and began to rotate while the liftman stood strong with the swivel turned right. In the process, one comically oversized heel from the largest gentleman came down upon his right foot.

He not only landed but twisted and pushed off from it. The bones, muscle, sinew and skin spread out and filled with space. That searing pain was effective at breaking all preoccupation with his dream world.

The physical contact with the world, and the pain, was extraordinary and alien. In feeling the world he was bridged to it. In the contact, he had felt where the limits of himself were and that they had touched something. If he had further reflected he might have realised that he was not all too separate from it. It was too painful for heavy thought. This was an invitation from the world and an invasion of the lines he had drawn around himself. Despite having made himself distinct from the world with some diligent ideas about the self, that certain moment shattered it, and obliged him to look around. It was a break from the recent peacetime of his life and it was immediate.

His mind was unaccustomed to such a load, leading him to spend the day in a dull and pulsating ache. He could hear the lift shuffle and the pulley wires draw tension. The two fence diamonds that required oiling shrieked on repeat. The collective muffle of multiple merged speakers from within conversations added to the unrelenting ambient noise. He could hear his toes shuffle in his shoes through the conduction in his bones and he was sure his blood pumping was loud. Perhaps all this had always been there to hear. He doubted it. For the first time, he considered whether he might not have been paying attention.

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