The Intuitionist

Lila Mae, now at a loss as to who sabotaged the Fanny Briggs elevator and why, goes to the scene of the incident herself. After easily bypassing security, she enters the elevator opposite the one that crashed, riding it up the shaft in an effort to approximate what she felt during her previous inspection. She enters a meditative state in which she recreates perfectly the experience of inspecting the doomed elevator. Yet, her mind’s eye shows her no evidence of sabotage nor any design flaws. Thus, she is forced to admit that the Fanny Briggs elevator crash was that rarest of events and one neither Intuitionism nor Empiricism can predict: the “catastrophic accident” (227). It’s “[w]hat happens when too many impossible events occur, when multiple redundancy is not enough” (228). In her tendency to anthropomorphize elevators, Lila Mae wonders if the elevator lied to her, choosing to end its own life.

As Lila Mae drives away from the building in a daze, she begins to question everything—even the revelation that Fulton was Black. She quickly reverses herself, however: “Natchez did not lie about that: she has seen it in the man’s books, made plain by her new literacy” (230). Unable to trust the Arbo-backed Intuitionists, Lila Mae goes to the one person who can provide honest answers: Mrs. Rogers. When Mrs. Rogers opens the door, Lila Mae says, “He was joking, right? About Intuitionism. It was all a big joke” (232).

Inside, the house is a mess, torn apart by some party’s henchmen. As they clean, Mrs. Rogers tells Lila Mae, “To answer your question, yes, [Fulton] was having a joke on them at first, but it wasn’t a joke at the end. It became true” (235). She recalls Fulton reading the first glowing review of Theoretical Elevators, in which the reviewer coined the phrase “Intuitionism.” Fulton could only laugh uproariously, telling Mrs. Rogers triumphantly, “They believe it” (238). Fulton was ecstatic for days until, one night, he came downstairs in the middle of the night and said, “But it’s a joke. They don’t get the joke. [...] They were all slaves to what they could see” (239).

Lila reflects on how she too is guilty of this, misjudging Pompey as a certain saboteur. She sees her hatred of Pompey mirrored in “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” (239). She realizes too that the black box, the perfect elevator, is also a lie: “There was no way [Fulton] believed in transcendence. His race kept him earthbound [...]. There was no hope for him as a colored man because the white world will not let a colored man rise, and there was no hope for him as a white man because it was a lie” (240).

Lila Mae also asks why Fulton put her name in his notebooks. All Mrs. Rogers knows about it is that one time Fulton asked her for the name of the only Black student at the Institute. At that, Mrs. Rogers goes into the kitchen, removes some bricks from the back of a dumbwaiter shaft—a primitive elevator—and returns with all of Fulton’s journals. She tells Lila Mae to keep them. Finally, Lila Mae asks why Mrs. Rogers sent the pages out in the first place. Mrs. Rogers answers, “[Fulton] left instructions. He said when I sent them out, someone would come” (242).

Lila Mae’s next stop is to track down Raymond Coombs, formerly known as Natchez. At Arbo’s corporate headquarters, she gives her name and asks for Coombs, who agrees to meet her. Taking stock of his office, she is surprised his employers let him have “a head shot of the famous reverend” (248) on his wall. Coombs replies, “I do my job and that’s all they care about” (248). He goes on to explain that Arbo’s surveillance of Lila Mae began as soon as they saw her name in the notebooks—though Coombs himself thought little of it, given all the random scribbles in the journal, including laundry bills. Jim and John had already been dispatched when the accident occurred; after the accident, Mr. Reed seized the opportunity to pull her in closer.

Meanwhile, Arbo learned that Fulton was Black in the simple course of researching his family. Coombs explains that they could reveal the truth, but most people in the industry wouldn’t believe it and the rest wouldn’t care: “His color doesn’t matter once it gets to that level. The level of commerce” (250). Satisfied that she knows all she needs to, Lila Mae takes some pages from her satchel and drops them on Coombs’ desk: “It’s Fulton’s notebook. [...] I just wanted to help” (251).

In an interlude from Fulton’s third person limited perspective, the aging elevator pioneer scribbles in his notebook. He thinks about the only other person up at this hour and realizes he’s written “Lila Mae Watson is the one” in the notebook margins: “She doesn’t know what she’s in for, he thinks, dismissing her from his mind. He’s always writing things in the margin” (253).

In the present, Lila Mae spends most of the time writing, attempting to approximate Fulton’s voice. Lila Mae only gave some of Fulton’s pages to Coombs. It should keep them busy, and in the meantime, she will send them more pages when they are ready, including her own as she finishes what Fulton started: “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. [...] To let them prepare themselves for the second elevation” (255).