The Tenants

Afterword

I had a duodenal ulcer and suffered horribly from it from the age of twenty-nine to the age of fifty-eight, when I finally had a partial gastroectomy—just a few years before it was discovered that ulcers were microbial in nature and could be treated by antibiotics. But I still look at this story or that by me and remember the amount of pain-time involved.

The week in which I wrote “The Tenants” was one of the worst. I typed the piece with one hand, massaging my abdomen with the other, while chugging down chalky tablespoonsful of a reasonably popular antacid of the time.

When I brought it to Horace Gold as a submission to his fantasy magazine, Beyond, he immediately commented on the white blobs on almost every page (this being before the age of the computer and printer: retyping a long manuscript then, if you didn’t have the money to hire someone, was a murderous chore).

“What is it,” he asked holding a page up to the light, “Maalox or Amphojel? I use Maalox, and this looks very much like it.”

Then he disappeared into his bedroom to read the story. He came out a few minutes later, grimacing, and called to Sam Merwin, his associate editor. “I want you to take a look at this,” he said.

I immediately felt a lot better. I had known Sam Merwin since he had been an editor at Thrilling Wonder Stories; I had great respect for his literary judgment (he had bought a lot of Ray Bradbury over the protests of his publisher) and he had always liked everything I wrote. But Sam read “The Tenants” and shrugged. “What is it supposed to be,” he asked, “something funny? Something eerie? What?”

“That’s how I feel,” Horace said. “What exactly were you trying to do?”

“Oh,” I said, picking up the story and heading for the door. “Nothing much. No thirteenth floor in a lot of buildings. I’ve always been curious about what’s on that floor.”

“Well, it’s meaningless to me,” I heard Horace say as I closed the door, and I heard Sam Merwin mutter agreement.

I sent the piece to Anthony Boucher of The Magazine of Fantasy Science Fiction, who, up to then, had not seen anything of mine he wanted to buy. By return mail I got a check with a bonus rate and a long letter burbling with praise over the story. “But don’t use Maalox,” it ended. “Stick to plain bicarbonate of soda.”

I called him and thanked him. Then I told him of Horace’s reaction, and Sam Merwin’s.

“Some people are color-blind,” he said. “And some are tone-deaf. You know that. Well, some have absolutely no sense of the thirteenth floor. You just have to feel sorry for them.”

Written 1953 / Published 1954