The Elevator Collector

Other diplomats collected exotic artifacts like fans and kimonos. He collected elevators. He stored his finds in the basement, gathered over a lifetime of travel—days spent in conference rooms, negotiating coefficients, evenings spent wandering alone through cities, searching for a new little room to bring back to his villa.

I discovered the collection during a dinner party. I was actually headed to the bathroom but took a wrong turn, suddenly tottering down the stairs into the basement. I quickly realized I must have made a mistake, since the steps descended so far, but by then I wanted to keep going—and down there, at the very bottom, I met the collection. Easily forty or fifty elevators, all sorted by year of manufacture and genre, as far as I could tell.

The colonial-African models caught my attention immediately. One of the more distinguished was a Schindler that had once lived inside an art deco building in Zamalek. Its double doors were delicately carved in an intricate, ominous pattern—something like a promise to be swallowed. Another was a paternoster lift from HSB’s offices on Fleminggatan, with open carriages and original buttons. The safety instructions were engraved in French, and might well still be useful, judging by how rickety the construction seemed.

The entire basement must have been blasted out beneath the house to make room. Half in jest, I stepped into a metal cage from the Central European 1930s group, drew the gate shut, sank into the leather seat, and pressed the button for the second floor. On cue, the elevator groaned and began rising toward the sky. Floor after floor slid by outside until I stopped with a slight jolt at level two. I stood, pulled the gate open, and stepped out.

I landed in a stairwell on Kommendörsgatan, which I hadn’t visited in thirty-three years, so I had to consult long-stored muscle memory before, with the help of nameplates, I understood where I was. Right next to the Montessori preschool was the apartment where I spent my earliest years: Löwenfeldt. I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. I put my hand on the doorknob—it turned, and the lock gave way.

There in the hallway, beside the Persian rug, stood the uncomfortable Malmsten armchair I once managed to crawl under during a game of hide-and-seek. I crouched down, reached in—and to my surprise, felt a warm, supple, moving body. Let go, cried a high-pitched young voice, I’m coming out. Footsteps, muffled, struck the parquet. But I saw no one. Not even the child I had found. A voice—reminiscent of my father’s, but a bit sharper—spoke into the air: Where could he be? Seriously, where could he be? And then the child again: But I’ve been found, I was under the armchair. But there were no bodies, only sound waves.

Before time had the chance to reveal my trespass, I returned to the stairwell and the elevator and pressed the round button for the ground floor. The cage trembled and we fell back. Soon I could step out into my friend’s basement. I half-jogged up the stairs and quickly found the way to the bathroom, without needing to ask. Not hard to find at all—I had simply mistaken the door.