GOGOL IN PARIS, A Short Story

GOGOL IN PARIS

A Short Story

By

Christopher Guerin

Note to the Reader

The following manuscript (I have taken the liberty of providing it a title) was found among the personal effects of one Alexander Post, who disappeared while walking home from work in January of 1940.  His wife and her relatives all told the newspapers the same story.  Post had been distant, nervous, and “unnecessarily sullen.”  The night before, he had quarreled with them (which was usual), then had laughed at them (which was not).  They had feared a suicide, but he left no note.  The effects in question were found in 1999, upon the death of one of Post’s former business associates.  In the man’s attic was discovered a large wooden box that contained, along with the manuscript (dated August 22, 1939), a pair of filthy leather boots that Posts’s granddaughter maintains he had been very fond of, a large, cloth briefcase holding the manuscripts (unpublished) of some two hundred stories written by Post’s great-grandfather, Wilfred Post, several articles of clothing of a flamboyant nature (a tuxedo, scarves, a top hat, three silk shirts, also a red brassiere), and, finally, a confession to the embezzlement, never of course discovered, of “approximately one quarter of one million dollars” from the investment firm of Paige, Paige and Page of New York (now defunct), where Alexander Post was employed for 17 years before his absquatulation.

My great-grandfather knew Gogol.  His son, my grandfather, told me the story of their fateful encounter when I was fourteen; when I had just failed to reach even the semi-finals in a writing contest; when my ambition, already burning like “a flame-like gem” (if I may go Pater one better), was to become a writer of stories like my great-grandfather.  It is true that Grandfather often bitterly censured the memory of his father’s “aimless career” because of the hardships he and his family had suffered as a consequence, but I have never questioned the truth of his story of my great-grandfather and Gogol in Paris.

“Did I ever tell you, Sasha, that my father once met a very famous writer while traipsing through Europe?” my grandfather began, pulling a small rocker up close to my bed, where I, employing my pillow as consolation, lay prone and desolate.

“I never told you?  The writer’s name was Nicholai Gogol and he wrote a couple of outlandish stories about people who lose things.  It seems to me he was a trifle obsessed on the subject.”

Grandfather squeezed himself into the rocker and ruminatively began to rock.

“It was in the winter of 1848.  Father was in Paris, staying in a very expensive English hotel, the Westminster.  He was there, so he told anyone who would listen, to find inspiration for his work and to hawk his stories, dozens of which were secreted under false bottoms in his portmanteau.

“Enjoying one of his daily strolls, no doubt peering into gardens and peeking under bowers for something lovely to write about, Father was startled by a cough, like a mastiff’s bark.  Turning around, he saw a little man with a round, worn face, a large, pointed nose, and wispy, shoulder-length hair that gigged on the breeze.  Dressed in breeches worn smooth at the knee and coattails too short by a foot, he was by all appearances a penniless, staring, exhausted clerk.  The little man drew in his head and grinned sheepishly, then he laid his hand flat against his face, palm on chin, fingers – long, bony fingers – touching his forehead, like this.”

Grandfather demonstrated, peeping at me between his first and second, and third and fourth digits, also long, but fleshy, thick.

“Thinking nothing of this, Father continued on his way.  The cough sounded repeatedly, changing timbre, now more like a goose’s honk, again like a bark, but always, clearly, a nasty, human cough.  Father stopped and looked around.  Still with him, the little man stood quite nonchalantly gazing into space.  Father preceded another hundred steps, then spun around without warning.  He had hoped to catch the little man in the very act of spying in which it was now obvious that he was engaged, but his quarry, back turned squarely to him, was yelling something Father couldn’t understand up at a tree.  Determined not to take his eyes from the fellow, determined to confront him eye-to-eye, Father started off again, walking sideways like a crab.  The little man walked crab-like.  Father walked backwards only to be mimicked again.

“Father had had enough.  He turned and walked toward his pursuer, who of course turned and walked in the opposite direction.  Father started to run.  With a screech, the little man bolted.  You never saw your great-grandfather; as odd as it may sound, he was tall, fast, very athletic, and didn’t look the least bit like a writer.  He had the little man by the collar in a trice.

“The little man shrieked something in Russian as Father spun him around.  His face was a red mask of terror.  A big pimple blushed on the tip of his nose.  Not knowing a word of that garbled tongue, Father demanded in French to know why he was being followed.  (He knew the language well enough to employ it gratuitously, you will notice, in those stories of his.)  The little man squealed – what sounded like ‘Nyet!’ – and sawed the air with his arms.

“As Father lifted the unhappy fellow so that his toes barely danced on the ground, he continued the interrogation, shaking him earnestly until another hand, thin but powerful, came down on Father’s arm so hard that he had to let go.  His prisoner fell to the ground like an empty coat and pants.  Father’s arms were roughly yanked and pinned behind his back.  He watched in dismay as the little man jumped up and ran off, the satin lining of his coattails flashing like the white tail of a rabbit.

“Father was surprised to see the little man disappear through the lobby doors of the Westminster.  The painful grip on his arms was released.  He turned to confront his assailant:  a tall, elegant stranger dressed in immaculate black satin – a frock coat with a crimson collar – and top hat.  On a red ribbon around his neck dangled a silver medallion, imprinted with foreign lettering.  In the crook of his elbow he held what appeared to be the Bible.

“Father swore at him, demanding – again in French – to know why he should be treated in such mysterious and violent fashion.

“‘But you were hurting Monsieur Gogol,’ said the stranger, in thick, Russian accents, chuckling as though it were all a joke.

“Father explained that he had been followed, that he, as an American citizen, had every right to know why.

“‘Monsieur Gogol is a famous man,’ the stranger explained. ‘He is a very great writer.  You should feel honored.’

“Of course, in those days, the Russians were little known for their writings in this country.  People like my father thought of them either as anarchists, monarchists, or slave-keepers.  Again, Father demanded to know why the name of Gogol – he added, ‘the ludicrous name of Gogol’ – should grant anyone the right to follow him around like a suspect in a robbery?

“His interlocutor said, with continued chuckling, that Gogol did it all the time.

“‘Actually, it is a very great honor.  You are certainly being studied for inclusion as a character in one of Nicholai’s famous stories.’

“Father thought about that for a moment.

“‘Well, that’s different’ he admitted, ‘why didn’t he say so?’

“Father grinned.  Here, after all, was a colleague!  He decided to introduce himself – slipping into English in the process – but the tall one, still chuckling softly, cocked his chin and strode majestically off toward the Westminster Hotel.

“The rudeness of all this odd behavior left Father in something of a daze.  He recovered his senses in time to dash after the tall stranger just as he stepped through the doors of the hotel.  Bursting into the lobby himself, Father found neither Gogol nor his guardian angel.  There was no one in sight except a bellboy, wrapped in a faded blue uniform three sizes too big, splayed and snoring raucously in an overstuffed armchair.

“The next morning, having quite forgotten the intrigues of the preceding afternoon, Father ate breakfast in his room.  As he sliced into some fresh-baked bread, he noticed a small package next to his jelly jar.  ‘Where did this come from?’ he asked the waiter, who was just about to leave. ‘No idea, Guvnah,’ he replied, ‘I ‘oist the trays.  That’s all I does.’ A sly, crouching fellow, resplendent in a constellation of brass buttons.  Father had never trusted Englishmen and he didn’t believe this one for a second.  There was nothing, however, to be done.  He dismissed the young lout by staring him down.

“The package was wrapped in crumpled newsprint, tied with three pieces of tired shoestring.  Inside, he found his wallet, contents intact.  A plain, white card read, ‘Mes compliments. G.’  Father hadn’t even noticed that the wallet was missing!

“‘I must meet this fellow,’ Father thought to himself, ‘I’ve never known anymore more curious. He should be a character in one of my stories!’

“The question was how to approach him?  He might enquire at the front desk as to Gogol’s room number, but Father’s sense of good form, and the fear that such direct measures – bearding the lion, etc. – might further terrorize and alienate the little man, ruled this inadvisable.  There was another way.

“Minutes later, he was walking through the streets of Paris, glancing repeatedly – like some mild paranoiac – over his shoulder.  He hardly even noticed that it was raining in buckets.  It wasn’t until he had accomplished the circuit to the Tuileries and back three times, with no sign of anyone following him – except for a gendarme in front of the hotel, who, watching him pass for the fourth time, stepped out from a kiosk, only to look up at the drenched and somber sky, shake his head as though to say, ‘To hell with it!’ and return to his cozy shelter – that Father began to wonder if this weren’t a futile manner in which to make contact with Gogol after all.

“Entering the hotel lobby, Father was surprised and gratified to find the tall, elegant stranger, having appeared out of nowhere, preceding him by less than a dozen paces, his long coat soaked and dripping.  Father hadn’t noticed him before, but perhaps, if he’d just then been deposited by some coach or similar means of transportation, which he had to admit, was a distinct possibility, then his little gambit had not been a complete disappointment.  The tall man’s shoulders hook violently, perhaps to shake off the rain, although Father couldn’t be sure he wasn’t having another fit of laughter.

“Father decided to confront the man.  He concluded that if he handled himself with his customary gentlemanly mien, the fellow would certainly agree to introduce him to Gogol.  Who better than Gogol’s rescuer to enlist on his own behalf?  Who better to clear up any misunderstandings between them, to put them on comfortable speaking terms, without which neither could ever profitably study the other?  But then, without really knowing why, Father let the opportunity pass.  He told himself that it wouldn’t be polite to detain the man, who might possibly need a change of dress or a good stiff drink to warm his blood.  He watched as the tall one disappeared through the doors to the clubroom, then he went to remove his own drenched clothing and to wait for it to dry.”

Here Grandfather paused and took several deep breaths.  Exhaling, he distended his pale and parchment-like cheeks.  He shook his head as though two thoughts were at war within.  He sighed as though the unpleasant had triumphed, then he proceeded with the account.

“Later that afternoon, Father ensconced himself in a thickly upholstered armchair in the hotel lobby with the statewide news in his lap.  Holding the papers at arm’s length, he perused intermittently the latest word from home, and, around the paper’s edge, each and every person who passed.

“Engrossed for a moment in a story about an acquaintance who was in a fix at the bank where he was employed, Father looked up to see Gogol’s flashing coattails disappear through the lobby doors.  ‘Quid pro quo!’ he thought as he jumped out of his chair, tossing the papers in a heap on the floor.  He didn’t stop as the desk clerk yelled something and pointed at the mess.

“Sometimes, in this tantalizingly elusive and bafflingly enigmatic world, it is advisable to become a Hunter.  Sinews stretched, eyes on fire, teeth bared in block-thick concentration, the Hunter plays the game of life and death.  He crouches, he slithers, he levels his weapon, perhaps he doesn’t even have one!  The pursuit itself is sufficient reward for all the effort put to the test.  The thrill of the chase!  A man such as my father had never, up to this moment, enjoyed this particular exercise of power and cunning in the pursuit of that fleeting and intangible prey – Inspiration!  Perhaps he wasn’t even aware of it.  Who can say?

“Keeping an even twenty paces between them, and chuckling into his fist, your great-grandfather followed Nicholai Gogol.  The writer, coughing all the way, led him a merry chase indeed.

“Father had read about the more noisome streets of Paris, but never had he envisioned anything like those through which his quarry led him.  The rain had stopped, but gloom and futility hung in the air like a noose.  Everywhere the smell of some hot, thin gruel and old women in ragged clothes making their raids on limp-necked passersby just as ragged and desperate.  Beggars gathered near the doors of cafés where the drowsy Ganymedes, brooms held out in warning, threw them stale pies and bits of fat.  Nowhere in sight a proper lady, though now and then a gentleman of dubious breeding slunk through the garbage holding his trousers up like skirts.  The women Father did see, he wished that he had not:  pocky noses, hair coarse and dry, brown as spent dandelions, skirts faded and stained, and make-up so thick it would require a trowel to remove it from their cheeks.  The children saddened him most of all.  Rachitic orphans and limping tatterdemalions danced around him as he passed. They seemed actually happy in their ignorance, almost philosophical, as if to say, ‘If we are lucky enough to have sufficient food and clothing for today, why shouldn’t we laugh and frolic and tease the visitor in our midst?’  They laughed at Father as though he were the know-nothing.  He gave them money and hurried on so as not to lose sight of his prize.

“And what of our famous writer?  Father could not help but notice that he changed, that he looked more stooped and tired with each and every step, as though as he walked he took upon his own thin, cough-racked shoulders the weight of all the suffering and boredom that he met, not, like a Christ, with compassion and understand, because he was stronger than all of it, but like a sinner, cringing under the weight of his own transgressions, seeing them mirrored in the lives of others, destined to take up and labor under their common load without the knowledge that his own mortification would relieve even one soul’s agony in this incomprehensible world – or in the next one.

“Now and then, Father heard Gogol’s cough above the din of the street.  Sometimes it sounded like a stifled yelp of laughter.

“Thus through the dingy, hopeless, ugly, most degraded byways of Paris – the little man not once turning around or stopping, walking on at slower and ever slower pace, almost to a crawl – Father pursued his former pursuer.

“Then Father lost him.  Turning a corner, he was alone.

“He looked up the street, which seemed by far the most necessitous yet, a very avenue of destitution.  Gogol was nowhere in sight.  Nor was anyone else, for that matter.  Being a proper man, Father could not bring himself to glance through a window, let alone knock on a stranger’s door.  All he could do was listen.  For the longest time he walked softly up and down the bleak and deserted street, straining to hear a single muffled hack.

“Now, Sasha, I would like for you to imagine; imagine that you are a reasonably uninteresting person, that life is good to you when it offers three square meals a day, an occasional, vapid entertainment, and the friendship of similar folks; imagine the indifferent days and nights, the dog-eat-dog world in which you are trapped, a willing and unwilling prisoner; imagine, above all, the boredom.  Then, out of nowhere, someone appears with an offer. With a wry smile and shifty eyes, she says to you, ‘Take the mud from the street into your hands and make something of it.  Make me sculptures from the mud.  Make hundreds, thousands of them, until you’ve mastered the principles and techniques of making beautiful mud sculptures.  Then make thousands more.  Finally, when you’ve made the very best little mud sculpture that you can possibly make, then, only then, and then only perhaps, I will make you happy and never bored, to the very end of your life.’ Imagine, my boy, that that is precisely what you do.  You make the thousand sculptures, and then the thousands more, until you can make none better than the last.  Imagine that you imagine it to be an excellent, a perfectly realized mud sculpture indeed.  Only, what if it is snatched from your very hands, stolen the moment you have a chance to show it proudly, with great expectations, to your challenger.  Can you imagine, imagine how you’d feel?”

At first I thought that Grandfather was being merely rhetorical, but the baleful intensity of his stare informed me that he expected an answer.  I remember that the corners of his mouth curled up like the twisted tips of a dainty handle-bar mustache.

“I think I can imagine, Grandfather,” I said meekly.

“Well?”

“I mean, I can certainly imagine what it would be like, Grandfather,” I said earnestly.

“Yes?”

“Um, well, I’m not sure what you want me to say?” I said.

“Tell me what you think it would be like, boy!” Grandfather shouted.

“Very, very unpleasant, I should think,” I replied with utmost gravity.

Grandfather squinted at me.

“Yes, well, that’s exactly right.  Nicely put,” he added gruffly, leaning back I his rocker.  He patted the pockets of his worsted wool vest bemusedly, with satisfaction.  His smile slowly broadened, then he went on.

“As you know, my boy, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the life your great-grandfather led.  He was a brilliant man, a genius, perhaps, in his own silly way, but when I think of the things he might have accomplished . . .”  Grandfather paused for a deep, apparently self-pitying sigh.  “Well, c’est la vie!  Enough of this maundering.  What it all leads up to is that when Father returned to his room it looked as though a bomb had exploded in his suitcase.  Pants draped the coat rack.  His shirts, some torn in two right down the back lay heaped in separate corners of the room.  Underwear bedecked his dressing table mirror and his collars encircled the base of a gilded lamp stand as though the thieves had whiled the time playing ring toss.  Father looked under his pillow and found intact his precious, tiny cache of American dollars.  Little did he care, however, because the product, the total output of his life and soul – two-dozen-odd manuscripts, short stories and a short novel – was gone!  Someone had plundered the fake bottoms of his portmanteau!

“With that one moment in my father’s life, I can sympathize,” sighed my grandfather.

“He stood in the center of the room, his mind a glazed and fissured pot.  The small of rat grew strong in the room.  Mr. Gogol, Father concluded, was nothing more than a clever, common thief.

“It came as no surprise when Father learned from the desk clerk that Gogol had checked out of the hotel just twenty minutes earlier.  Slowly, Father backed into the very center of the crowded hotel lobby, stunned like a steer at the slaughter.  He tried to calculate the extent of his loss in terms that might register on some scale, any scale.  He could not.  The manuscripts were irreplaceable.  He felt that the death of one’s firstborn child could be no more painfully absolute a diminishment of one’s life and measure.

“He wondered, what could he do?  Call the gendarmerie?  Contact the press?  Relate to them the intertwining lines of the sinister plot in which he’d been ensnared, a sad, duped victim?  Appeal to the American Embassy?  Demand as an American citizen that everything, everything be done immediately toward the apprehension of the criminal and the return of his manuscripts?

“Then, ah, then dawned upon my father, in all its radiant idiocy, an idea only he could have struck upon.  Listen to this, Sasha!  If the thief really was the writer Gogol, Father mused, truly, if it were Gogol himself who had just robbed him of all the treasures of his pen; if, as he was so well aware, only his manuscripts were missing, then here was certainly no crime of avarice in the abstract; the famous Gogol could be nothing more nor less than a literary pirate, a bootlegger!”

Grandfather paused.  I smiled encouragingly, afraid that he might have stopped to ask me another question.

“At this juncture, my boy, let me clarify how and why your great-grandfather might have been led to such an astonishing conclusion.  You know already that Father was never published.  If I may put the finest gloss on the matter, perhaps his work, as Poe might have said it, ‘did not permit itself to be read.’ But his unpublishing was not for want of trying.  In the four or five years preceding his encounter with Nicholai Gogol, his submission of manuscripts to the editors of literary magazines and publishing houses was carried out in the most painstaking and exhaustive fashion.  Meticulously and conscientiously, he monitored the rejection of dozens of short stories, each one mailed to dozens of magazines and received home again accompanied by the curt and fateful rejection notice.  He filled two whole ledgers with the record of his stories’ peregrinations. A manila folder bulged with the slips of paper that were the sole reward for all his labors.

“He fared no better with the book publishers.  His novelette landed on the desks of several editors in every publishing house, major and minor, for which he could find an address at the local library.  It was as though the desks and not the men who sat in them were responsible for processing his submissions, the notes returned with his clean, unrumpled manuscript seeming hardly more sensitive to his achievement.

“Father made certain that he had retrieved every single one of his own beautifully and painstakingly hand-written pages before leaving for Europe, thinking that editors in the seat of Western culture might be more sympathetic to his achievement.  Of course, he never got a chance to find out.

“So, what is the point?  As a result of this miserable history, I submit that Father became convinced that he was the unfortunate object of a fiendish conspiracy.  Why, he wondered, should Gogol, or any other writer for that matter, become a famous author, when he, regardless of his efforts, could not?  Why did every story come back from every editor with the same response almost every time – ‘This is not right for us’ – unless they were all working together?  He didn’t quite know where Gogol fit into the hierarchy of what could be nothing less than a cabal of international proportions, but he did have an idea as to Gogol’s role in its machinations. Why else would Gogol steal Father’s manuscripts unless he and the editors intended to publish them under the name, the ludicrous name of Nicholai Gogol!

“Perhaps, my boy, this is not precisely the twisted path my father’s thoughts followed when he happened upon a plan of action, standing like some marble tribute in the middle of the Westminster lobby – for who am I to say? – but surely something must account for the folly he was about the commit.

“Even as he stood, the bustling, anonymous patrons of the hotel rushing past, some bumping right into him, Father’s plan took on clear and substantial outline.

“A maitre d’hotel grabbed him roughly by the arm and said, “Eh, Guvah? You ull right? Yur ‘holdin’ up traffic!’

“Startled from his reverie, Father bent close and whispered in the man’s ear, ‘I need your advice.’

“The two conversed briefly – much gesturing of hands and nodding of heads – to the effect that an hour later, Father sat in the office of ‘a barris’er, discree’ and trus’worthy.’  In no time at all, a fee was negotiated and his plan committed to contractualese.  Father left an enormous retainer with the man’s secretary, then proceeded straight to book his passage home.  After a stay of only three weeks, Father cut short his lifetime dream sojourn to the capitals of culture by eleven months, one week, and two and one-half days.

“Before we approach our denouement, I supposed I should mention a last, curious, perhaps inconsequential event that took place on Father’s departure. Aboard his ship, he had tired quickly of the farewell celebrations on deck; the streamers and noisemakers, and the pretty girls wistfully dangling handkerchiefs from above and below, quite obviously meant nothing to him.  Lying on his bed, he stared at the little rectangular ceiling and listened to the sounds – whistles, horns, laughter, and crying – which came in at his open portal.  Then he heard a voice above the tintamarre, speaking English with a decidedly Russian accent.  The voice said again and again, “All shordd whos goink ashordd.  All ashordd whos goink shordd.’  At first, Father thought the voice emanated from the hallway, which was as logic told him only proper.  But he couldn’t stop believeing otherwise.  The sound was coming from the portal!  Surely the caller was a steward up on deck.  The thought did not convince him.  Not just the direction, but the tone of the voice – taunting, beckoning – did not seem right.  And that damned Russian accent!  Finally, he could stand it no longer.  He jumped from his bed, leapt to the portal, and poked his face through.  He had a clear view of the dock – thronged, colorful, and boisterous.  Looking up and down, here and there, Father half expected to see a pair of flashing coattails, to hear a bark-like cough.  Then he heard it again.  The sound clearly came from the hallway.  Without a trace of Russian in his voice, the caller passed his door – ‘All ashore who’s going ashore.  All ashore who’s going ashore.’ – then he went away.

“For the next four years, Father was too preoccupied to write a single word of fiction.  His mind, or most of it, as you shall see, was bent on Europe.  Once each month he received – having eagerly awaited and anxiously ripped it open – a report, a list of publications that his Paris lawyer had undertaken to peruse on his behalf.  Can you guess why?  Why, Sasha?  To find one of Father’s stories published under Gogol’s signature, what’s why, my boy!  Ha!  Your great-father was paying a high-toned Parisian barrister enormous sums of money just to read the literary magazines of Europe!”

Grandfather thumped the armrest of the rocker repeatedly with his beefy fists and began to laugh.  Tears soon poured from his eyes.

“And, to come up with the scratch, your great-grandfather held down the only honest job he ever had – writing copy for an advertising agency in downtown Manhattan!  Damned good he was, too,” he added, belly laughing between guffaws.  “They doubled his salary after only one year!”

I tried to laugh along.  I mean, I did laugh along, but it wasn’t until I was almost finished with high school while searching my soul for the right way to spend the rest of my life, that I truly understood.  I remember sitting in English class, listening to a book report on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” when it hit me.  I started laughing so hard the teacher had to send me to the principal.

“To each and every list that Father received,” Grandfather continued, having regained some control of himself, “a note was attached.  It always said the same thing:  ‘As you can see, M. Post, the substance of your claim has not been borne out in an actionable manner, as yet.’  Now, that’s a clever lawyer.

“With every check Father mailed in response, he included a note instructing the lawyer to be patient and, above all, diligent on his behalf.  Always, he urged, in just a month or two, somewhere, in black and white, his stories would appear, and then they’d have Gogol right where they wanted him.

“Now, Sasha, you may wish to ask a question or two at this point.  For instance, how could Father have ever proved his stories had been thus published?  Or, why didn’t Father find a lawyer in Russia, one that might at least have been capable of taking more precipitous action against the thief?  Why did he employ a lawyer to begin with, and not a detective?  You might even ask why he simply took it on faith from the tall stranger that Gogol was indeed a published writer, let alone a great and famous one?  Or, most sanely, why didn’t he just admit a loss on all those damned manuscripts and get on with it?  I have no sensible answers for any such questions.

“One day, in the summer of 1852, Father received a wire: ‘Gogol’s dead,’ the lawyer wrote, ‘No evidence, your claim, preliminary disposition, his estate.  Heard of manuscript burning.  Title:  Dead Souls.  Hoax?  Will investigate.’

“Minutes later, the noon post arrived.  In his shattered condition, Father wouldn’t have given it a second glance, except that it included a package of dubious aspect, wrapped in filthy cloth and tied with coarse bailing string.  He noticed, too, the foreign stamps.  Inside, Father found a cheap cigar box full of ashes and a scrap of vellum scribbled with characters he took to be Russian.

“Father ran from the house.  Half an hour later, he handed the note to a young lady at the Russian Embassy.  She was pretty, with dark hair and a dimple in her right cheek.  He looked at him shyly.  Totally out of breath, he couldn’t say a word.  She asked, ‘Vot can I do fordddd you?’

“For a brief moment, Father thought she was flirting. ‘I want you to tell me what it says,’ he replied, gasping for air, pushing the note at her, ‘if you don’t mind, my dear.’  The woman said . . .”

“Great-grandmother?!” I interrupted excitedly, sitting up quickly, jangling the bedsprings.

“Sasha!”  Grandfather said, beaming.  “Please!  Let me finish.  The woman said, brushing her thick curls back from her forehead, smiling as though something in the note amused her, ‘Loozely, it says, “I take da frddeedom.  Hope you don’t mind.  It vas the only merciful ting to do. G.”’”

Grandfather stopped talking.  He gazed, smiling widely, over my shoulder.  He saw that I was about to speak; as though wiping the smile from his face, he brushed his lips with his fingers and continued.

“And that, my boy, is the end of the story.  You know how Father spent the rest of his life, toiling fruitlessly in the truck gardens of verbiage.  The editors never really convinced him, I supposed, that he couldn’t write to save his own life.  Yet he died a happy man, convinced that he had at least one time written as well as any man could ever hope to.  The memory of those stolen, conflagrant, unrewritable stories stayed with him always, proof intangible that no one had ever written any better.  You see, he died certain – having eventually read Gogol’s work – that the great, undeniably great writer had, after all, burned his stories out of spite, that the word ‘merciful’ in that fateful note had been Gogol’s confession of envy.  The object of Gogol’s mercy, your great-grandfather reasoned, was Nicholai Gogol himself!”

Thus Grandfather concluded his story, his grin a thin line, a smile scratched on paper with a pencil.

Having giving up writing for accounting at the age of sixteen, my only reason for setting this story down lies in the knowledge that few people can say his great-grandfather knew Nicholai Gogol.  The story is its own justification for being.

August 22, 1939