Paternoster

February 3, 2012 by joachim

Today, on the elevator of the 168th Street Subway stop, a man decided to recite Our Father in Heaven. “Padre nuestro que estás en el Cielo,” he said, “santificado sea tu nombre, venga a nosotros tu Reino . . . “. There are no laws against this since the elevator is not a classroom. Still, the fact that there was no escape, no choice to not hear him made me nervous. It then occurred to me, in a Nobokovian moment of language association, that Paternoster is in fact the name of a particular kind of elevator, seen in some old movies but now extinct, in which cars are lined up in a continuous fashion, moving slowly and continuously, with doors open all the time. I’m not sure but the name, Paternoster, probably relates to the similarity between the chain of elevator cars and the chain of beads in a rosary.

This entry was posted in Blog and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

© 2024 Franx Fiction – Joachim Frank. All rights reserved.
The Alliance of Independent Authors - Author Member