Best European Fiction 2013 Read Online Free Page A

were all asking each other on which floor they’d joined the party, and where each had planned to exit the elevator, and concluded finally that they must be somewhere between the tenth floor and the fourteenth—the destination of the father and his little daughter.
    The father, a doctor, holding the little fingers of his daughter tightly, went up to the soldier after a while and looked at his bruised forehead in the dim elevator light. The doctor examined the head of the man in uniform, and told the soldier that his injury couldn’t be treated in these conditions, and all they could do was try to make him comfortable. They looked for a hard object to bandage against the soldier’s bump, which looked like a small horn growing on a newborn calf. Not having too many other options, the doctor’s daughter pointed to the soldier’s belt where a gun hung in a white holster that would have been more or less level with her head. The soldier reached for his gun slowly and bashfully, checked the safety, and put the handle on his forehead. The sudden coldness surprised him and he dropped the weapon. It bounced off of the door and fell on the floor. Some of the passengers looked at each other silently— keeping their fears to themselves. The woman in red was the first to reach for the gun. But rather than give it back to the frightened and clumsy soldier, she went up to him and pressed the handle to his reddened skin herself. Yet, it didn’t bring him relief; on the contrary, now he was embarrassed as well as in pain.
    The old lady whispered something to her husband and he kneeled on the floor and started poking around the man with the beard (who, meanwhile, had informed the others that he was a painter); soon the old man was squeezing carefully through the other people’s legs. The old lady explained that the sudden stop had caused her glasses to fall off, and she’d only just realized that they were missing. Some of the other passengers kneeled then too, wanting to help the old man, who was still on his knees, impressing the younger people in the elevator with his endurance and persistence. The number of people in the car blocked a lot of the light from the weak fluorescents, their silhouettes casting numerous shadows—a deep darkness on the floor that made their joint quest significantly more difficult. The man in the striped suit—a dandy, really—didn’t pitch in with the search, but instead started calling for help. He started yelling various names, as if he knew important building personnel who were in charge of keeping the place running day to day. No matter the volume, it was all in vain. The building’s elevators had only been recently installed and they were, as it was said, absolutely cutting edge. They had thick walls and solid insulation, which kept their movements perfectly quiet— an utter joy. Nothing like those rickety, terrifying, ancient elevators you find in older buildings, their decrepit mechanisms straining to pull vibrating cords tied to old tin cans up musty tunnels. No, these new models moved quickly and silently, and always stopped with the utmost gentleness. They gave the passengers a feeling of trust and security.
    But everyone present had no choice but to accept the fact that the system wasn’t working properly—perhaps a flaw in the installation process? Soon enough, when he noticed that his yells were useless, the man in the suit started to slam his open palms violently against the closed metal doors—something of a shock for everyone else. When he figured out that even this wasn’t loud enough, he lifted his briefcase and he started to smack its tiny wheels against the silvery, mirrored surface. The echoes from this latest assault bounced all over the elevator car, occupying every plane and angle, and inciting even more unrest among his fellow passengers.
    Suddenly, the tall fellow grabbed the dandy’s hands. Having gotten his attention, the giant then pointed toward the little girl,