Deep rivers run quiet.Īnother thing, most of the gadgets an elevator is supposed to have were missing. There wasn’t a sound-literally not one sound-from the moment I stepped inside and the doors slid shut. Immaculately carpeted in a handsome moss-green.

The walls and ceiling were absolutely spotless polished stainless steel, the floor immaculately carpeted in a handsome moss-green. You might even squeeze in three camels and a mid-range palm tree while you were at it. Put in a desk, add a cabinet and a locker, throw in a kitchenette, and you’d still have room to spare. This elevator was so spacious it could have served as an office. The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators.įirst of all, consider the space. You’d never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the same purpose. How would I know?Įvery last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in my apartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket. Maybe I’d gone up twelve stories, then down three. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn’t moving at all. Or at least I imagined it was ascent.There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. THE elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Somewhere between Kafka and Wong Kar Wai… The following excerpt is the first lines of the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami which describes the main character’s “journey” in an elevator so slow that he does not know if it goes up or down to eventually access a long neutral corridor of which the doors’ number do not follow each other.

Hard boiled wonderland ending