Michael that it sounded like an interesting engineering problem, rather than a poltergeist. No, he told me. There was more. While they tried to work out what to do with the lifts, and everyone started reaching for their lawyers, various other strange things began to occur.
• The telephone lines on the fourth floor misbehaved. They would go dead. Or, while working, would pick up crossed lines in unison, so that from each extension could be heard a sample section of the city’s babble.
• Two electricians, called in on a Saturday to sort out the non-functioning sockets in one of the fourth-floor offices, contacted the project manager to report the fourth floor inaccessible due to some joker having bricked up the stairwell on the third-floor landing. The project manager arrived and met the electricians downstairs. Together they took the lift to the third floor because, well, that was as far as it would take them, and went into the adjacent stairwell. The brick wall had vanished. Both electricians fled, upset, ashen (distraught, said Michael), and had refused to work in the building since.
• Four workmen from the roofing contractors were asked to explain their presence on the fourth floor one morning – they could be clearly seen from the ground, moving around behind the windows, and at one point firing up a welding gun, by at least half a dozen people. They insisted that they had been where they were supposed to be – on the roof – the entire time. And indeed, as revealed by subsequent checks, they had no access to the fourth floor. The lift didn’t go there, and the door from the stairwell had been locked the night before by a security guard who reported that he had felt ‘uneasy’ patrolling there, and had sealed it off.
• Carpets on the fourth floor had been replaced three times due to unexplained staining before they just gave up and left them as they were, including one with a strange Australia-shaped discoloration.
• When the CEO of BOX came on his first visit he got out of his car, stared up at the building and asked why there were only three storeys. Those accompanying him, including the chief architect, the project manager and the main contractor, looked from him to the building and back again. But there are four storeys, they told him. He looked at the building and he looked at them, and he looked at the building again. No there are not, he insisted. Then they had that argument, Michael laughed – that argument – about whether a four-storey building was a ground floor and three above it, or whether a four-storey building was a ground floor and four above it, and what was the difference anyway between a storey and a floor. It was only when the CEO used his finger to point and count that they all finally agreed that there was a fourth floor. Inside the building, the CEO remained silent throughout the tour, until, on the fourth floor, he was taken ill and had to leave. The nature of the illness, Michael had not been able to determine. It was simply reported that he had been taken ill, a phrase which, as Michael pointed out, covers everything from the shits to a stroke.
The CEO had not been back since. In fact, Michael believed, there had been efforts made to get BOX out of the deal entirely, and this having apparently failed, the company appeared now to be trying to sell the place without ever having taken up residency, and while still operating out of a cramped two-storey lease in the impossible city centre. But word was out, said Michael, and a sale would be difficult. He was surprised, Michael was, that it hadn’t made the papers yet.
Actually, I am myself unclear about the difference between a storey and a floor – if there is one – and I get very confused by all talk of an x-storeyed building. Where do you start counting? Surely you include the ground floor as a storey? But if so, why is the first floor not the second floor? Because surely the ground floor has to be the first floor – as in Storey 1 – rather than the zero floor, the nought floor – Storey 0. Because if the ground floor is just that – the ground floor – and the first floor is the first storey, then a four-storey building, such as the BOX offices which Michael had described, was a building with five levels. A ground floor, and four storeys above it. Or was it a four-level building – with a ground floor and three storeys above it?
I opened my mouth to voice this puzzlement to Michael, but shut it again because I was suddenly sure that we had already had this conversation at some previous time, and I was sure also that he had explained it to me and that I had forgotten. Then I opened my mouth again to suggest that the building wasn’t haunted at all, it was just jinxed by the fact that no one ever knew what other people meant when they said ‘a four-storey building’. But I shut it immediately. That was just stupid.
I have a very amateur interest in architecture. By which, Michael tells me, I mean that I like buildings. He has explained to me that what I like is actually not really architecture at all, it is the placement of people against things. He insists that I am far too interested in people to really have any proper appreciation of architecture. Most of the time of course he is joking with me, teasing, but I think that he does actually, in truth, have quite a condescending attitude towards my interest in his profession. Which, I suppose, is fair enough. Architecture is probably one of those things that we all feel entitled to discuss without ever really understanding the principles. What I’m not so sure about is just how serious he is when he insists that architecture cannot concern itself too much with people. With actual real people and their physical needs and their practical necessities. These are technical matters, and should be given only minor, cursory attention. Sometimes I think he is not serious at all, that he can’t be. Other times I’m convinced that this is what he really thinks, and that he dresses it up in deniable humour because he is ashamed of it. Maybe it is a cross between the two. Part of one thing and part of the other.
I was impressed, though, by Michael’s story of an old building refusing to allow a new one to take its place. I liked the idea that the space had been defined at a certain height, and the new construction would not be allowed to go any higher – that it did not have metaphysical planning permission. I thought it reminded me of a film I had seen once, though I couldn’t remember the details. I mentioned this to Michael.
—Oh, I know what you mean.
He was fiddling with his phone, reading a text I think.
—It’s a Bob Hope thing, isn’t it? he said.
—No, it’s European, subtitles, German maybe.
—Fassbinder? Not like him I don’t think. Who was in
it?
—Oh, I can barely remember. Something about a house and the house is actually the one doing –
—The Haunting.
—Yeah …
—Well, that’s American.
—It wasn’t American. It was in German or something.
—Well, The Haunting is an American film.
—No, it wasn’t called that.
—You just said it was.
—I didn’t. I said that in this film the house was the one doing the haunting, and that the film was German. Michael was replying to his text.
—You’re thinking of The Haunting.
—I’m not! Is The Haunting German?
—No, it’s American.
—Then why were there subtitles?
—Are you thinking of Tarkovsky? There’s a bit in Stalker –
—I don’t know who that is.
