The Chapter About A Betrayal And The Terror Of The Outside World
Maxim, the elevator-boy, stood in his cabin, one hand on the the open sliding grate, the other on the long lever that sent the elevator on its trip through the landings. He smiled across to Mouse.
She stayed a few steps away from him. The interior of the cage was lined with polished brass, gold, and mirrors. Electric light filled the narrow box with the glow of an eternal sunset. Its radiance flowed out of the interior of the elevator into the hall and touched the tips of Mouse’s feet.
Maxim looked past her down the corridor. “Where is your shoe wagon?”
Strange for him to ask about it. The elevator-boy hated it when Mouse occupied his cabin with the clumsy cart. Mouse herself had not been able to notice the scent of the shoes for a long time, but the boys claimed that the elevator stank of sweat and leather for an hour afterward. Annoyingly, there was only this one elevator in the hotel, and the use the wagon on the stairs was impossible. In fact, this was the first elevator of its kind in all of Russia, imported from America, where the new technology was being developed by a man named Otis. The board of directors of the Aurora was tremendously proud of it.
Maxim was not just any elevator-boy. At sixteen years old, he as the oldest and most experienced among them. And pretty, besides. Mouse had once been secretly in love with him – until the day she had seen how, for a few copecks, he had let the rich daughter of a hotel guest kiss him.
“Well?” he asked.
She sought vainly for mockery or deceit in his tone of voice. Perhaps he really did just want to be friendly.
“Well what?” she asked crisply.
“Your wagon.”
“Oh, that…I left it a few floors below.”
“Oh, that…I left it a few floors below.”
“Shall I take you down?” All the elevator boys were immensely proud of their task, nearly as much as though they carried the cage on their own shoulders through the floors. Besides that, they had the best-looking uniforms. All velvety red and set with the same imitation gold that decorated their cabin. In the elevator, they melted entirely into the sparkling, mirrored area. My golden boys the Concierge called them, whose darlings they were. But Maxim was everyone’s darling.
“I’d rather take the stairs,” Mouse said, and wanted to turn away.
“Oh, just come inside. In the middle of the night, no one uses the elevator at all. I’m bored.”
And she of all people should change that? Maxim had never given her any more attention than a dirty footprint that a guest had left in his elevator.
Carefully, she went into the cabin and stepped completely into the golden light. For some silly reason, she suddenly seemed to herself to be a real girl, as though this time the unearthly light made not only the elevator boy but also her much prettier.
“Fourth floor?” asked Maxim, and took the lever in his hand, as though the Czar himself had walked into his cabin.
Mouse hesitated briefly, looked around the deserted corridor one last time, then stepped over the narrow crack into the interior of the cabin. She became a little dizzy as her feet made a faint, high sound despite the carpet. The certitude of the deep, black chute under her always filled her with unease.
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