The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

The elevator pretended to be what it was not. Number Eleven passed for longevous. Passed for healthy so well that Arbo Elevator Co.’s quality control could not see its duplicity, so well that the building contractors could not see for the routine ease of its assembly coeval doom. So well that Lila Mae Watson of the Department of Elevator Inspectors, who is never wrong, did not see it. Did it know? After all of Fulton’s anthropomorphism: did the machine know itself. Possessed the usual spectrum of elevator emotion, yes, but did it have articulate self-awareness. Erlich, the mad Frenchman, of course, posited such but he never gets invited to conferences and his monographs wilt on the shelves of his relatives’ libraries. Did it decide to pass? To lie and betray itself? Even Fulton stayed away from the horror of the catastrophic accident: even in explicating the unbelievable he never dared broach the unknowable. Lila Mae thinks: out of fear.

Pompey gave them a blueprint for colored folk. How they acted. How they pleased white folks. How eager they would be for a piece of the dream that they would do anything for massa. She hated her place in their world, where she fell in their order of things, and blamed Pompey, her shucking shadow in the office. She could not see him anymore than anyone else in the office saw him. Her hatred. Fulton’s hatred of himself and his lie of whiteness. White people’s reality is built on what things appear to be—that’s the business of Empiricism. They judge them on how they appear when held up to the light, the wear on the carriage buckle, the stress fractures in the motor casing. His skin.

Their sacred Empiricism has no meaning when it can be bought.

“He was making a joke of their entire way of life and they couldn’t see. The joke wasn’t funny to him anymore. Once he realized that—that it was a joke but they didn’t see it like that, it wasn’t a joke anymore. His sister come to visit soon after that. He told me later she saw him in the newspaper. Like I said, he got strange after that. He started writing that second book. He’d lock himself in his study and he wouldn’t come out. I had to start leaving his dinner outside the door because he wouldn’t come down to eat. This went on for months and months. Then one day he comes down and says he finished.” Lila Mae knew he was joking because he hated himself.

A joke has no purpose if you cannot share it with anyone. Lila Mae thinks, Intuitionism is communication. That simple. Communication with what is not-you. When he gives lectures to his flock, years later, they are not aware of what he is truly speaking. The elevator world will look like Heaven but not the Heaven you have reckoned.

😂💯🦑

She writes a sentence and then scratches it out. Sometimes she almost gets his voice down but then it flutters away and it takes her some time to catch it again. The biggest problem, she finds, is nailing Fulton’s voice as it appears in Volume Three of Theoretical Elevators, as opposed to the arid academic voice of Volume One and the aimless mystic voice of Volume Two. The rhythms of the first two books have been scored into her brain. The optimism of this new book is taking some getting used to. She has to recalibrate. Luckily, she’s just filling in the interstitial parts that Fulton didn’t have time to finish up. She knows his handwriting. The most important parts are there. They just need a little something to make them hang together. Seamlessly.

It is not perfect but it’s pretty good. She particularly likes the cab design, which takes care of engineering necessity without sacrificing passenger comfort. Just like they did in the old days. This third volume of Fulton’s truly understands human need, she’s found. The elevator she delivered to Coombs, and then to Chancre and Ben Urich, should hold them for a while. Then one day they will realize it is not perfect. If it is the right time she will give them the perfect elevator. If it is not time she will send out more of Fulton’s words to let them know it is coming. As per his instructions. It is important to let the citizens know it is coming. To let them prepare themselves for the second elevation.

😂😂😭😵

Sometimes in the room she thinks about the accident and its message. Much of what happened would have happened anyway, but it warms her to know that the perfect elevator reached out to her and told her she was of its world. That she was a citizen of the city to come and that the frail devices she had devoted her life to were weak and would all fall one day like Number Eleven. All of them, plummeting down the shafts like beautiful dead stars. Sometimes in her new room she wonders who will decode the elevator first. It could be Arbo. It could be United. It doesn’t matter. Like the election, their petty squabbling feeds the new thing that is coming. In its own way, it prepares them. She returns to her work. It didn’t have to be her, but it was. Fulton left instructions, but she knows she is permitted to alter them according to circumstances. There was no way Fulton could foresee how the world would change. She returns to the work.