Fantastic Metropolis

Koberman, a tall, gaunt, quiet man, comes to the house to rent a room. Douglas senses the man’s peculiar nature the moment he sees him. The grandmother takes the stranger in as a border, setting up the classic story plot of a “stranger in the house” (see Steppenwolfe by Hesse, or the Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt as two other examples). Koberman has some odd ways. He sleeps all day and goes out all night. He insists on eating with wooden dining implements he supplies himself. He carries no other change but copper pennies.

Douglas begins on a campaign to irritate Koberman in every way that he can. He bounces his basketball outside the man’s door while he is trying to sleep during the day, bangs a drum, calls out his name at the top of his voice for three straight minutes each afternoon. Still the man does not stir. Then one day, Douglas is standing by the large stained glass window (made up of sections of red, blue, yellow, purple, glass) in the hallway on the second floor of the house. He watches Koberman approaching the house in the early morning. Seeing the stranger through the red glass gives Douglas a new and totally unexpected view of him. It is as if he can see inside of the man’s body, and what he sees disturbs him.

Koberman catches Douglas spying on him through the colored glass and is immediately suspicious. Later that afternoon, while Douglas is out in the backyard in the sandbox, his basketball is thrown through the stained glass window, destroying it. The grandmother blames Douglas and beats him with a belt. The boy knows he’s been set up, and makes sure to salvage a piece of each different color glass from the remains of the window.

That day at dinner with his grandparents and the other boarders, Douglas hears them discuss an unsolved murder that has taken place in the town and also the disappearance of a young woman. Obviously, he, as well as the reader, suspects Koberman. One of the boarders mentions the idea of a vampire and tells how a creature of that sort can be killed with a silver bullet. The boy puts together the fact that Koberman is out all night, sleeps all day while the sun is up, will not eat with silverware, carries only copper pennies, and he decides to take action.

I’m dying to just tell what happens, but it has been my practice so far not to give away the endings of the stories I write about. Suffice it to say that there is no way, unless you have already read the story, that you will guess what transpires. The weirdness in this piece is a bit of inspired genius on Bradbury’s part. Since I can’t give away the ending, it circumvents me from discussing the piece in full, but allow me to pose two points for you to consider when you have finished your reading. 1) You must remember that Koberman has not been proven guilty of anything. 2) What’s the deal with the kid? Pretty peculiar course of action for a ten year old, if you ask me.

“The Man Upstairs” is, for me, a classic story of “the outsider,” “the alien,” “the stranger.” Bradbury’s writing in this piece, as evidenced by the quote above, is absolutely flawless—no excess baggage, no poetic gibberish. The point of view from which the story is told could very easily cause one to miss the depth of its grim nature on the first reading. Douglas and the man upstairs might have more in common than we at first suspect.

For readers and writers alike, one could do much worse than to review the fictions of Ray Bradbury and reassess what you thought you knew about his work. The October Country might be a good place to start.

“Bradbury, The Man Upstairs” first appeared in s1ngularity in 2003.

Jeffrey Ford is the author of a trilogy of novels from Eos Harper Collins—The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond. His most recent novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque (Morrow/Harper Collins), was published in June 2002 as was his first story collection, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant & Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press). His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines—including Fantasy & Science Fiction, SCI FICTION and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet—and anthologies such as The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Green Man: Tales From the Mythic Forest, Leviathan 3, and The Journal of Pulse Pounding Narratives.

Ford lives in South Jersey with his wife, Lynn, and two sons, Jack and Derek. He teaches Writing and Early American Literature at Brookdale Community College in Monmouth County, New Jersey.