Woebegone (or Karamazov) Publishers

Hello brothers,

As ever, a million things to talk about and I hope we can do so face to face around July 6ish. We're in a swirl of complexities between my commitment at a Paris conference 'til July 4 and Katerina's hope to depart in the less expensive month of June, the ramifications of the boys' missing scout camp, etc. But heck and high water, I will be in Chicago/west by July 6.

Jon, all too briefly, your Dostoevsky study was and is a fascinating specimen of the best undergraduate program imaginable: that is not a condescending statement, as I would also hope graduate coursework would encourage such a disciplined and personal response. One of the many reasons I count FMD as my greatest literary influence, alongside Shakespeare, is that his Underground Man, Raskolnikov and Brothers Karamazov are infinite discussions, as your exam has adumbrated. The 'fill' of his lesser novels Poor Folk, The Gambler and The Eternal Husband, his 'secondary' novels The Idiot, The Possessed and The Adolescent, his installments in Diary of a Writer, including the exquisite short story "Bobek" and "A Nasty Story". There's no way to whittle him down, but a great way to do the opposite is to explore, a la your exam essay, the most complex 'antagonist' in literature: Svidrigailov. Harold Bloom, who sits as Lord Plushbottom at Yale University, only esteems Shakespeare's Iago as a more compelling voice of...evil? No one knows...

Anyway, without making Woebegone Productions too much a diary (which I'm sure Garrison does, more or less), Emma had a fascinating weekend which included an advancement, if possible, from her last year's dance performance of Bach's aria for Suite #2 in D major (which shall be played at my funeral): all day yesterday she rehearsed and performed at Bohenice, the expansive mental health facility of north Prague, where summer festivals bring in intriguing musical acts. I thought of Andrew's fencing, Tilo's trombone, all other endeavors from our kids and cousins, and all the more loved being a dad in the audience. Today Emma excitedly played with her youngest cousin, 2-year-old Josefina, and the 85-year-old grandma of Josefina: predictably in their indoor playing with a 59-cent supermart ball, an antique cup and saucer was hit and smashed to the terracote floor. I could only imagine the 2 and 6 and 85-year-old looking at each other to measure blame and wiggle room. Luckily, the hostess, my sister-in-law Lucie, was out of the room, so the 'shit didn't hit the fan'. The remaining hour of our visit was biding time, hoping the crime would remain undiscovered. The husband of the 85-year-old saw Emma's tearful face and proceeded to show her a dozen magic tricks, all of them pretty good and none of them obfuscating the crime on her mind. But, thank grace and short memory, we left the party undiscovered and Emma singing indiscriminately in the back seat all the way home.

I relay all this because a) I needed the laugh and b) I wondered how narratives take what's real and publishes what may be found out. For instance, I could see a wonderfully deep short story--novella, even--on the Steinmetz family. Never mind that I was beyond head over heals for Tammy, I was completely absorbed in your recall, Jon, of Scoop's insurance scam after the tornado, or Naomi's misguided gall after Roxanne's death. Couldn't Woebegon (or Karamazov) Publishers relay the aesthetic of that, regardless of 'those who'd know (and be embarrassed)'? One might ask, 'well, why should anyone else know?' My response is: it makes damned good literature. There is an immense but perhaps immeasurable difference between between bar-room yarns and the grist for thematic stories: Dad's cousin Doug and his demise at the Omaha racetrack provides such an example.

My days have been rather preoccupied between quotidian tasks, the 1989 dominoes in north Africa and several online forums for the International Baccalaureate program: I'm aiming eventually to become 50% employed as an at-home facilitator of workshops and courses in literature. I never thought I'd want such an eventuality, let alone be solicited for the need, and I don't yet know if that 50% is realistically at hand.  BUT, what I do know is that I would never do anything online that would make life worse. In other words, I could remain in the conventional classroom and will do so, except that the online opportunities are doing enough to fulfill my sense of literature advancement (and that I could add to this evolution).

To 'keep it real', I'm jamming with Ben and Joey (occasionally Em plinks on her xylophone) every other evening: we're playing about eight songs at present, including "Rosaline", "Stay", "The Very Scary Flood", "Tin Roof", "Neruda's #20", "Framing Device", "The Tempest: Act 4", "Break Back, Baby"--these titles are all 'placeholders', but all in effort to turn their own corners. With no illusions that they'll deliver the golden ticket, I'm viewing these songs and all that lurk within as our most important investment: our life insurance is underwritten by AIG, for God's sake!

All for now--sorry for the stream-of-consciousness, but wanted to keep the spirit vibrant in these last cold days of January!

Go Packers and Bulls--one or the other cannot lose!

Dan

Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)

     (la) 

     The general aim of the Underground Man, if not simply to be aimless, was to try to break away from socially imposed rules and chains. Plot was just another restriction, like the system of twice two, it chained the author to something systematically straightforward. He would be locked on a limited course on which his story would depend too much on sequence and consequence, on multiplier and product.

     The Underground Man wanted to defiantly break away from such straight thought patterns because they, like everything else he protested, stood as a threat to his freedom. In fact, in his grasp for freedom, he rebelled against all of the conventional parameters of a normally structured “novel.” Diction is squeezed between an explanatory page-one footnote and a parenthetical closing comment. Thought often becomes contradictory and is never really conclusive. Characters, beyond the anti-hero himself, do not appear for half the book. Conflict is primarily between the writer and the reader, even as the writer is continually unstable and the reader’s existence is denied outright. And the setting through part one is a constricting coffin of an apartment, a “funk-hole” of surreality.

     Finally, the Underground Man had to reject plot, because it is the most formally limiting of literary structures. Whereas the other parameters are primarily passive and abstract, plot is necessarily active and concrete according to the laws of time and space. The Underground Man did not want to exist for such activity. “What do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic?” he asked rhetorically. “As though such stone walls were really the same thing as peace of mind” (272). 

     In conclusion, there is no plot because that was not the purpose of there being a “story.” “An author writes something to please ‘everybody,’” considered the Underground Man (278). But ‘everybody’s’ pleasure is only another “golden dream” (279), and besides, he was simply “imagining an audience” anyway (296). 

     (2a) 

     The Underground Man perceives the prostitute Liza as being a creature and a victim of debauchery, which itself exists, according to his perception, in lovelessness, with a general lack of all feeling. (The quoted translation uses the phrase “at the culmination point” of love. Another text, translated by David Magarshack, says “consummation” (339), which seems to imply that the vice is less a result of true love’s previous existence as an aspect following its absence.) This perception differs from that of one of Liza’s more ordinary clients in that the Underground Man sees into this “general picture” and stays conscious of it, instead of merely being a “course and shameless” part of it. 

     To the ordinary man —the “plain man” or the “man of action” (269) —vice is just another stone wall before which he invariably yields. As the Underground Man had described, to such a man of action “a stone wall is not a challenge as it is, for instance, to us thinking men... and it is not an excuse for turning aside.... No, [the ordinary man] capitulates in all sincerity” (269). In other words, such a man yields to his debauched desire and lets himself be calmed by its effectual wall. 

     The Underground Man, a thinking man, sees debauchery here as “inane... revolting... coarse... shameless;” in another translation, “hideous... gross... absurd” (339). In his mind he seems to turn away, repulsed —and yet he, too, is a living part of it. The spider of vice even makes him feel “creepy” (339), as if he were the spider himself. Indeed, he has spent two hours “capitulating” with this as yet nameless prostitute, and still he continues to ‘lie next to her and look into her eyes. But he is not calmed by her in any way. The ordinary man is not revolted and pretends that there is a kind of consummated love in the prostitute’s bedroom; he becomes sincerely soothed by this lie. But the Underground Man is cursed by a continually sensitive conscience; he is painfully aware of this reality of absent love; and if he has paused at this wall, it has not been for “cheap happiness,” but rather “exalted suffering” (376). 

     (3b) 

     There are two classes of suicide in Crime And Punishment: the selfish suicide and the symbolic suicide of becoming selfless. The selfish type, suicides in the usual sense, are all actual or attempted ends of one’s vitality. The selfless suicides are actual or attempted renouncements of the spiritual self; these may be considered merely symbolic, but they are no less significant.

     The most obvious selfish suicide is Svidrigaylov’s. His is the dark, calculated suicide, filled with typical rituals: a string of ambiguous hints, a wrapping up of affairs, a last night’s reflection, a note, an official witness, and enigmatic final words. But as full and complete as this suicide was, it is the less demonstrative suicides that are often more thought provoking. Raskolnikov earlier witnessed an attempted suicide, as Afrosinyo —“she’s done it again” (189) —jumped off the Vosnessensky Bridge, only days after trying to hang herself. “Well that’s one way out,” thought Raskolnikov, “...but is it a way out?.... What an awful end! And —is it the end?” (189). She didn’t succeed at this latest attempt, and there was the sense that she would try again later. Obviously little planning had gone into her efforts she had been drunk besides.

     There is another death, also with drink and little planning, that did succeed, as Marmeladov gets trampled under the feet and wheels of a horse carriage. “Happen he done it on purpose,” the driver testified, “but he might have done it because he was drunk” (195). Marmeladov, a waste who showed no responsibility to his suffering family, realized his faults and worthlessness, and yet he took no action. To his credit, he asked for no pity. “I ought to be crucified, not pitied,” he told Raskolnikov (40). And he had an expressed hope for his salvation; but nonetheless he was shameless, and he drank, degenerated, and eventually fell under the horses’ hooves, as if by an agreement between destiny and will.

     Sonya’s is the most obvious of the selfless suicides: she had renounced ‘1.10 ) her self before the novel begins by becoming a prostitute for the sake of her family’s welfare. Ironically, Raskolnikov saw three selfishly suicidal ends ahead for Sonya: “She can throw herself into the Yekaterinsky Canal, end up in a lunatic asylum, or... give herself up entirely to her life of immorality” (338). Sonya would continue with a certain virtue, though, much to Raskolnikov’s and her sublings’ ultimate benefits.

     Raskolnikov’s sister Dunya nearly committed suicide by sacrificing herself for her family’s sake. Her attempts, however, would not have been of the same import as Sonya’s success. Had she been totally selfless, she might have married Luzhin without question, or she might have conceded to Svidrigaylov’s final blackmail attempt. These would have been tragically futile “suicides,” and it is to her credit that she saw through them in time; nevertheless, she put herself on the line in both cases, and perhaps deserves more credit for this.

     Finally, the third example of selfless suicide is the effort of Raskolnikov. It might be said that he attempted a sort of suicide after he killed the two women, by going through deep spiritual suffering; but this in its passiveness would be similar to the selfishness of Marmeladov, who loved to have his hair pulled. Raskolnikov’s spiritual selflessness came later, after his selfish suffering. It began when he first confessed his crimes to Sonya: “he felt like a man who was about to jump off a high church tower” (424). And by “kiss[ing] the filthy earth with joy and rapture” (537), he came a step further. Finally, with Sonya’s encouragement, he confessed to the police. His old self “died” at this point, and he was ready to begin a new life. Thus in this kind of suicide the self is both the thing sacrificed and, in its renewed form, the beneficiary. 

     (4a) 

     “Go at once...stand at the crossroads, bow down, [and] kiss the earth,” instructed Sonya (433). It was a command heavy with implications, and at first Raskolnikov refused to comply. What was she asking?

     First, to stand at the crossroads. This implied that he was to stand at the center of Haymarket Square, the busiest part of the busiest city in Russia. There he would be where the whole world could see him, making himself completely vulnerable to whatever reaction his confession would bring. They might laugh, they might scorn and jeer, they might attack him there, or even stone him; they might just pick him up and take him away, never to return again. But he would have no way of knowing their reaction until he carried out the instruction. At the crossroads he would be at St. Petersburg’s point of orientation, where there would be street signs and mileage and direction signs; and this would also be his own orientation point. There, based on all the resulting changes in perspective, he would be able to sort things out. 

     And he would be able to determine his future, for it is at the crossroads that one decides direction. As much as one tries to plan such decisions ahead of time, it is only at the crossroads that the choices are actually made and the steps actually taken for the journey’s continuation. After Sonya spoke these words she offered Raskolnikov a cyprus cross to hang around his neck. “We’ll suffer together, so let us also bear our cross together,” she said (435). Here then was another implication of “crossroads.” Confessing and asking the world for forgiveness is a praiseworthy religious act and a testimony of faith, and yet it is not an easy step to take. The cross to bear along this road is heavy and entails a deep humiliation; it conjures no magic remedy before the symbolic crucifixion, no preview of the resurrection. Yet, Sonya inferred, it was a necessary step for the sinner to take. 

     Thus Raskolnikov was to stand at the crossroads: he was to bear his cross of repentance, stand in front of all people, recognize where he stood, and determine his future. 

     And he was to kiss the earth: “...the earth which you have defiled,” Sonya said in full (433), implying that at the crossroads he would be making his apology directly to the world. By murdering, he had not only wronged his particular victims, who now lay under the soil, he had also sinned against all humankind across the globe. 

     Furthermore, kissing the earth was a demonstration of the deepest humility. He was to bow down and prostrate to the world as low as he possibly could, showing with face to the ground that he deferred to everyone. 

     By touching the soil this way he would also atune himself with “Holy Mother Earth,” from whence he came, upon which he walked, and whither he was going. Thus, in one action he would recognize his origin, his existence and his mortality, acknowledging his defilement with respect to all three. 

     But finally, kissing the earth is more than a humble, atoning apology. It is experiencing a purgatory cleansing by bringing sensuality to its fullest: the taste, the smell, the feel of city dirt next to one’s nose and on one’s lips would stir the soul. And indeed, when Raskolnikov put Sonya’s directions into practice, his sensuality was so dramatic that one observer remarked that he was drunk. “He simply plunged... into this new and overwhelming sensation... tears gushed from his eyes... and [he] kissed the earth with joy and rapture” (537). 

     (5b) 

     Ivan’s “Grand Inquisitor” poem and Father Zossima’s last words are polar statements, yet they bring up similar issues. Separately, they discuss the concepts of freedom and happiness and the values of miracle, mystery, and authority. The two speakers even begin to agree on some points, although their differences on these issues are numerous, to say the least. But the general difference that separates Ivan’s Inquisitor and Father Zossima more than points on any of the individual concepts is the difference of the speakers’ perspectives. The Inquisitor lectures pedantically as from a podium, but only one person is meant to hear him; Father Zossima bears witness to only a few people around his deathbed, but it is a testimony for the world. As the Inquisitor speaks, he sees the universe with the conditions of “them” and “us”; Father Zossima does not separate as such, but says, here is what I have seen, how it has been for me, and how it can be for you. 

     This difference in perspective is evident in all the individual issues. Freedom, the Inquisitor says, brings “unrest, confusion, and unhappiness” (301), and so “[we] have vanquished freedom... in order to make [them] happy” (294). “...They will submit themselves to us gladly and cheerfully” (304). Father Zossima, too, sees negative aspects in the world’s idea of freedom: it brings “slavery and self destruction... separation and isolation” (369). His response, however, is not to perpetuate the us/them separation and enslavement, but to acknowledge the alternative, truer freedom of a Christian. Zossima does not quote the apostle Paul, but the allusion is implied: “For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all” (1 Cor. 9:19). There is no us and them in Zossima’s kind of servitude, because it is universal. 

     Meanwhile, the Inquisitor is concerned with conquering people and holding them captive for the sake of their happiness. “We shall reach onr goal and be Caesars... [for] the universal happiness of man,” he says (302). “We shall give them quiet, humble happiness, the happiness of weak creatures” (303). 

     Father Zossima also talks about happiness in terms of humility and the universe, but again he does so with a different perspective. He speaks of being “consumed by a universal love, as though in a sort of ecstacy” (376). He also addresses global conquest: “...by humble love... you may be able to conquer the world” (376). Thus, he reverses the role of the happily humble, making them captors, not captives, with the force of love.

     The Inquisitor’s forces are threefold: “miracle, mystery and authority” (299), the three things denied us when Christ resisted the devil’s temptations and established our dreaded freedom. But the church resumes control of these forces, providing the bread of satisfaction, possessing people’s consciences, and wielding dominion to make the world “happy;” thus, man knows “whom to worship, to whom to entrust his conscience and how... to unite all” (302). To Father Zossima, although love remains “the strongest [force] of all” (376), he, too, values the forces of miracle, mystery, authority; unlike the Inquisitor, though, he appreciates this triune on the same plane as the recipients, and furthermore, he sees their combined force as inclusive of God’s plans. In fact, he finds miracle, mystery, and authority not only in God’s world and in God’s people, but also in the Word of God itself: “What a miracle and what strength is given with [the Holy Bible] to man!... And how many solved and revealed mysteries!” (343). And he sees this power in “sorrow... [passing] gradually into quiet, tender joy” (343); in “Divine Justice, tender reconciling and all forgiving,” and in the central promise of a future life. And it is all a difference of perspective. 

     (6a ) 

     One of the interesting qualities of The Brothers Karamazov is its unique version of the omniscient point of view. Dostoyevsky narrates his final novel with an all-knowing force, yet he personifies the force with first-person commentary, in the form of the singular “I” speaking for the collective “us.” The singular is never identified; he is primarily a part of the collective, the citizenry of the district and village in which Fyodor Karamazov lived “exactly thirteen years ago” (3). Nevertheless, this collaborative style of an “eyewitness” account is underlaid with an absolute omniscience such as no compilation of witnesses would be able to relate. The singular narrator asserts himself as an actual eyewitness only once, for the novel’s trial scene, of which he describes “only what struck me personally and what stuck in my mind” (772). Outside of the courtroom, though, when he speaks as a narrator at all, he speaks secondarily: “I do not know the details, I have only heard...” (10), or in the plural: “as we heard afterwards...” (145), or with a qualified passive voice: “it was said (and it is quite true)...” (193). Occasionally he asserts an opinion, usually brief, although at one point, in book two, chapter seven, it goes on for several pages: “...that’s my opinion!” (397). These editorial comments slide into the plural voice, too, as at the end of the novel’s first chapter: “In the majority of cases, people... are much more naïve and artless than we generally assume. As, indeed, we are ourselves” (6).

     Now and then, it seems quite feasible that the story is merely a collaboration of accounts. The elder’s words, for instance, are largely “according to Alexey” (336); and hints here and there allude to the possible anonymous observer, as when Ivan and Smerdyakov have their “clever man” talk: “Anyone looking at Ivan’s face at that moment would have known...” (322).

     Still, the omniscience is often blatant. Following the “clever man” chat, the narrator continues to observe Ivan “We will not describe the trend of his thoughts... and even if we attempted... we should have found it very difficult, because they were not really thoughts, but something very vague...” (323). After which follows an account of these same vague thoughts, up to the moment he falls asleep on a train far away from the singular “I” and the collective “we.” 

     Similarly, Alyosha’s and Dmitri’s minds are delved into, exposing many private thoughts that “flash through” (399). Most of the time, there isn’t even any pretense of an eyewitness. The story is simply told with full description and complete conversational account, and every detail that is needed is presented, without explanation of how the facts were procured. In fact, despite all the examples I have given of Dostoyevsky’s first person technique, he has written the great majority of this novel in the third person, with no eyewitnesses to speak of. 

References 

     Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov, Trans. David Magarshack. New York: Penguin, 1982. 

     —. Crime and Punishment. Trans. David Magarshack. New York: Penguin, 1951. 

     —. Notes from the Underground. Trans. David Magarshack. Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Ed. Ronald Hingley. New York: Harper, 1968. 

This Production Team Thing

Hi Dan,

(Josh, I’ll copy you on this, although it’s mostly directed to Dan. But let’s get going on this production team thing, we’re running out of time! Yes, you have a few extra years before hitting fifty, but we want to hear from you!)

Finally, I have given myself the time to sit down and read your Glassworks story. At three pages I should not have taken two weeks to do so, but for some reason I wanted to save this for part of an unrushed afternoon. I am not overwhelmed with my single parenting obligations, my work schedule and my housekeeping, but whole afternoons in the easy chair are rare enough to be appreciated. And it is good to have an appreciable moment to read a story, however long or short.

Yesterday afternoon was just right, too. I spent the morning carting Andrew back and forth to a fencing class, stealing a couple of hours at the office in between, and then my day was free. Kirsten has come down with a nasty cold, so there was no chance on impulsive afternoon activities, and I had nothing else planned. Today will be a contrast: I write this early in the morning, then there is breakfast and church and annual meeting, then lunch and a Bears-Packers game for all time, then Kirsten’s choir practice, if she’s up to it. But yesterday, I not only read your story but finished the novel I was reading, and then we watched two movies and called it an early night.

Glassworks. I like it best for its structure, with a close second going to the silver-haired man. Maybe I notice this because your single mood-setting Vanuska and your flashbacking Side-swiped tale have their own structural identities, and I like your change-up to an episodic story. Not easy to do in three pages, either, but you have very distinct parts that could even have titles of their own: The Hart, The Factory, and The Call of Nature. No, don’t add those titles, just my observation. And I find I don’t even care how the parts go together, because they just do.

I also like the shift in voices, but I want to make sure I am getting something here: the silver-haired man is not the one actually giving the factory tour. He should not be anyway, and maybe this is even obvious, but I was thrown off by the bathroom question to the guide and the response of stopping in the next town. Let the tour guide be a factory fixture, and the silver haired man —also a guide, but don’t call him that —be the one they have lunch with.

And it is because of the silver-haired man’s voice that I like him, but how about leaning even a little more into caricature with his dialect. You would know the true nuances best, but give the reader just a little more to appreciate in this “willager.” How about getting rid of the word “it”, for instance. Try it in the first paragraph.

I also like how the old man forgets to finish his stories, as if every breath is a separate remembrance. To this end, too, lean a little further. In the second paragraph, for instance, don’t let him pick up where he left off, try changing “But after I stopped, a...” to “I remember, was a...”. Or you can prematurely end The Hart story with an exclamation, kind of announcing the second story — “This is the Glassworks!” —before he has to be reminded to finish the first.

I guess I like the silver-haired man, too, because he is the story’s muse, balancing the instructional voice of the second part and the diversional voice of the third. I am reminded of two books: one, the book I recommended in last summer’s family trivia game: Peter Matthieson’s Shadow Country, which had a great way of telling each chapter from the perspective of a different character, never letting one character set the pace and tone. The book I just finished also does this: American Rust, a first novel by Philipp Meyer, which follows my recent interest in Americana settings, this one in economically depressed central Pennsylvania, present time. A good read, maybe slightly less enduring than Shadow Country but quite remarkable for a first effort. Anyway, this device of switching up the voice probably works better in a longer story, but it’s neat to see it in the smaller scale of Glassworks. Keep crafting!

I will share more of my 1990 papers, but I am still trying to fill in some blanks, if only for my own understanding. Josh told me more about Rod Broding, and while much of that would have to remain his own story to tell it helps me start to understand a 20 year old conversation I was having with Josh. For your part, I have notes that refer to Dad’s appreciation at Christmas 1988 of two things you wrote: a sonnet and your Clown Story. Any chance you have either of these?

What I will share, for now, is something you will hopefully appreciate as a literature teacher and Dostoevsky fan: the final take home exam for my 1990 Dosty class. In my journal I mention wanting to be sure to save all my notes from this class. Unfortunately I didn’t, and didn’t even save the question part of this exam, but here are the answers along with the teacher’s transcribed comments.

Go Bears!
Love, Jon

Karamazov Publishers

Dear brothers Vold/Lamken/Karamozov (maybe the allusion from Dostoevsky fits better than that of Keillor, as adumbrated below),

After a first reading, Jon, I spontaneously echoed what Josh and John Elstad often exclaim at the Blanchardville pool table: “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

A second reading this morning affirmed that yours is not only a brilliant story, but a wonderful launch. I remotely recall Rod Broding but cannot place him as clearly as Milan Davig; I have a falling feeling that Dad was concerned with Rod’s egotism, if he was the pastor of a Pine River church. What is valuable about Rod’s postulate is the resonance of Romans 8:26: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (NIV).  Lev Tolstoy and Andrei Tarkovsky both have monumental works late in their careers entitled Resurrection; David Remnick, in his book Lenin’s Tomb credits Tarkovsky’s film as veritably one of the ten leading factors that brought the Soviet Union to closure.  Your story is emulates the attributes of both, especially the tree image that Tarkovsky uses.

Staying with Russian philology for a moment, I couldn’t help but look up a ‘clinging-to-cliffside’ image, as suggested in The Snow Leopard, in the contemplations of Raskolnikov: “’where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet—and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him—and he had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity—it would be better to live so than to die right now! Only to live, to live, to live! To live, no mater how—only to live!...  How true, Lord how true! Man is a scoundrel! And he’s a scoundrel who calls him a scoundrel for that,’ he added in a moment” (Crime and Punishment, tr. Revear and Volkonsky, p. 158). There is plenty in the Epilogue about resurrection, well worth the re-read. I also enjoyed scanning Dostoevsky’s late short story, “Bobek”, which has interred people talking candidly, in an almost folksy way, until a living eavesdropper sneezes, to instantly shut them up.

Keep the title “Resurrection”, then, though I love the phrase on page 3, “afterward serenity”…  I think I’ve relayed the story of how Dad and I were playing Scrabble or something on a quiet evening, and probably the springer spaniel Homer was still alive and out ‘soft-mouthing’ the neighbor's chickens, and a muted crunch caused Dad to flinch for the worst (but city-slicker me to instantly dismiss as a truck trailer buckling on the county highway a quarter mile away). Indeed Dad’s instinct was correct: two cars collided at high speed around that bend, and a phone call some ten minutes later roused Dad and me from our oblivion. Before the ambulance arrived with the new and necessary “jaws of life” tool to pry out the paralyzed driver, there were a half dozen people talking the victims to cling on to life. The smell of blood was thick in the autumn air, but everyone, miraculously, survived.

Karamazov/Woebegone Publishers should include such literature, movie reviews (has JMO reviewed Tarkovsky’s film, btw?), exegeses, music, Scrabble tips, theory such as my formalistic ‘triangle of text’, relevant contributions from those who ‘friend’ us—no, we won’t have to cater to the nomenclature of Zuckerburg, who rolled the dice his own way. 

Summer: Emma and I leave Prague July 6ish and hopefully I get a Wisconsin drivers license before Katerina and the boys fly in around July 24. That gives us just enough time to rent a car and head to Oregon. If I resign from department chair, I can ‘buy’ a couple of days and enjoy a more leisurely return via U.S. Highway 2. The boys don’t need to come back until late August, but we’re not sure how independent to have their itinerary.

If it seems like I’m putting lots on this trip, I guess I am: Frost’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (which informs the ditch before ‘the family tree’) concludes “the work is play for mortal stakes […F]or Heaven and the future sakes.”

Love,

erstwhile Ivan

Resurrection

   It was Monday morning, two hours after midnight. Two brothers lay motionless in a ditch on the side of a country road. Beer cans had scattered on either side of them and behind them towered a fat oak tree. Nineteen and eighteen years old, they were in the early morning stage of drunkenness, full of philosophical questions and profound shrugs.

   “Could you picture us being old farts?” the younger one asked.

   “No.”

   “Sitting around all day, lying under the trees, farting...”

   “And drinking beer.”

   “Sure. Where do you think the farts would come from?” He giggled.

   They finished their beers together and started in on two more.

   “What do you want to be remembered for?” asked the older one.

   “I don’t know, the other answered. He paused, considered. Finally he said, “I just want to live.”

   “Yeah. Me too.”

   They breathed together for a while, looking up at black sky through the tree branches, then the older one sat up and leaned against the tree. The younger brother sat up with him.

   “I mean it, Sal,” he said. “I just want to live, that’s all. That’s the whole answer.”

   “Hey, it’s a good answer,” Sal replied. “And it’s what I’m going to remember you for now. I’ll even put it on your tombstone: ‘Dave Nekro. He wanted to live.’” His hands framed the epitaph in the air and he pronounced the words with exaggerated drama. They laughed together. It was funny to be irreverent, to pretend that they would die, one before the other. But then they fell quiet and lied down again, because it was serious to be thinking of death at all, and strange to be laughing at it. A third brother, older than both of them, had died not so long before, and suddenly they were sober again.

   He had crashed his car into the same fat oak tree —it would come to be known as “the family tree” —that loomed behind them. He had got drunk, passed out while driving and veered off the road. Now Dave and Sal were sprawled next to the same tree, lying flat against the same ground. And one was talking about writing the other’s epitaph.

   “So you plan on outliving me.”

   “Yes,” Sal answered. “Maybe six, seven years. I guess I just want to live a little bit more than you, that’s all.”

   Dave tried to match his brother’s wit. “Then we’ll have to put it on your tombstone: ‘Sal Nekro. He wanted to live longer.’” He swept his hands in the air, just like his brother had done, and they laughed again. “That’s how you want it, right?”

   “Yep, just like that, remember me that way,” Sal said. The beer was making him speak more slowly. “If I’m the first one to go, I mean, which like I said, I won’t be. But put it in stone. I’ll do the same for you.”

   They shook hands and called it an old wine pact. “That’s what the old farts would call it,” Sal explained, and they sealed it, in lieu of wine, with their last two beers. Dave suggested that the pact be written down, but Sal reminded him that the key word was ‘remember,’ and ink would be a hypocrisy. They didn’t have a pen with them anyway, Dave pointed out.

   Then they began to meditate on this pact, and each separately thought how they could not be hypocrites now, how they would have to remember each other in a special way. And each was reminded again of where they were, at the sight of their brother’s death, under the family tree.

   “What’s on Jim’s stone?” asked Dave, after they had been quiet long enough. They were getting sleepy, but had not fallen off yet.

   “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

   “Me neither. I think it’s a bible verse.”

   “Try to remember.”

   “I am...”

   They lay next to the oak tree quietly. Sal picked bark off the tree, reaching mindlessly behind his head, and Dave returned to staring at the pre-dawn sky. Eventually Sal stopped picking bark, and Dave closed his eyes, and they both slipped away into the darkness of sleep.

   It was the same night, exactly one year before them, that Jim had rested against the tree. Metal caged him in and separated him from the bark and the stars and the ground, and when it was light —Sunday morning light then —he did not wake up. There was no one there to shake him at the sunrise, and he would not have responded anyway. When he was finally discovered several hours later, it took blow torches and power saws to get to him. Even then, with all of the racket and commotion he did not rouse. He just lay there, with his head covered with drying blood, in the middle of metal and beer cans and broken glass, next to the big old oak.

   Dave had dreamt the scene many times in the last year. They were bad nightmares at first —Jim would not move! —but they evolved slowly to a kind of afterward serenity. In the early dreams he had tried to shake Jim awake, but eventually he would come to just sit with him. Sal would always be there, too, and after a while they began to take on a sleepy sameness, Jim lying there, Dave and Sal next to him, and the fat oak standing like a monument.

   But on this commemorative night something different appeared in the dream. Above the wreckage Dave noticed —and they must have been there all along —three tombstones that read like a roll call: “Jim Nekro: He wanted to live ...Sal Nekro: He wanted to live... Dave Nekro: he wanted to live.” Dave thought, in his dream, that he ought to start screaming, but he found he had neither energy nor will.

   When it was daylight, both Dave and Sal continued to sleep. Finally, several hours after dawn, Dave was the first to stir. His eyes opened, fluttered, closed. He raised an arm up to his forehead, brushing against empty beer cans beside him, and he groaned. His eyes opened again and he saw oak leaves and blue sky. As if these conscious senses had rung an effective alarm he sat up and reached over to shake his brother.

   “Sal. Hey, wake up, we’re in deep shit.”

   Sal grunted, rolled over with his face to the ground, and covered his ears and head with both arms. Dave shook him harder.

   “Come on. We were supposed to go see Jim this morning.”

   “No.”

   “Sal, we never made it home. Mom’s probably just now telling Dad how our beds haven’t been slept in. We’re going to get it big this time.”

   Sal rolled over again, uncovered his head and opened his eyes halfway. “Dave, will you please cool it?” he said. “My head hurts and yours ought to, too.”

   “But Sal...”

   “Yeah, okay.” He started to pick himself up slowly; it was clear that he was in no hurry. Dave tried another tactic.

   “Sal, Mom wanted us all dressed up and at the graveyard this morning. She’d probably be crying as it is, and here we are making it worse.”

   “All right, all right. Let’s go.”

   They stumbled over to their car and got in. Sal started the engine up and began driving straight to the graveyard. They would not have time to go home, he said. Dave agreed, but he was convinced that one place or another their father was going to kill them and their mother was going to cry.

   For the better part of the drive they were silent. Dave finally spoke.

   “Hey Sal, do you remember?”

   “Remember what?”

   “Last night. Our pact.”

   Sal paused, thought, and said, “Yeah. We were going to live forever, right?”

   Dave looked at him, didn’t answer. Sal thought, remembered more clearly. “We were talking about our epitaphs.” Dave nodded, and they continued the trip quietly.

   The graveyard was a large estate on the edge of town. It smelled of drying lawn and withered flowers. A scattering of trees gave character to the rows of marble and granite, and the green leaves balanced the yellowing of the late August grass.

   The family was already at the graveyard, standing in front of the family plot. Their mother wore a summer dress with a big floppy hat. Their father had on one of the same sport jackets he wore every Sunday. Their little sister Susan was dressed up like her mother but without the hat. She stood between mother and father, who each had an arm around her. She looked like an only child, sure to be held tightly in the years to come.

   The three were looking down at Jim’s grave marker now. “James Allen Nekro,” it said, giving his life span of twenty one years. “Rest in peace” was inscribed below it. “I am the resurrection. Even though a man dies, yet shall he live.”

   Sal and Dave had stopped their car a hundred yards away and were standing beside it, inconspicuously watching the family’s frozen pose. For several minutes the brothers stood frozen themselves, not daring to approach. They smelled of beer and their clothes were dirty and ruffled, and their stance, up to that point, had a sway from the night before. But now they did not move.

   Sal finally said, “Dave, let’s not go.” Dave nodded, and they quietly got back into their car, opening and closing the doors without giving themselves away.

   “Are we going home then?”

   “No. We’ll go back later, when they’re asleep.”

   “What about Jim? His gravestone, we were going to see what it said,”

   “We’ll have to come back after they’re gone.”

   And they left the graveyard and drove off as quietly as ghosts, back to the family tree where they decided to kill some time.

Your Production Company Idea, Why Not?

Yes, brother.  These are the kinds of letters I like, full of dreams and inspirations, a memory of Dad and a little mortal philosophy.  Dan, I have always appreciated your way of throwing in a dozen tangents, and I want to seize on each one of them.

And politics, too, of course.  Let me start with that, because —and you may not appreciate this outside of our wearisome media cycle ----I find myself wanting to be done with it lately.  I will not look at another video or read another blog on what happened in Arizona, because frankly we as a nation are not listening to each other anyway.  But here, in the interest of closure, is my take on it.  A year ago Rep. Gaby Giffords objected to the vitriol of the right wing and specifically to the gun metaphors of Sarah Palin.  “Words have consequences,” she said.  Conversely, in 2007, Jared Loughner first became disenchanted with Rep. Giffords when she would not properly answer his townhall question: “What can government do when words have no meaning?”  Whatever side you take, you are essentially agreeing with one of these postulates. And if you are taking the second (and I don’t mean the amendment), you probably should have nothing more to say, unless you have the excuse of being certifiably insane.

There.  Then again, if one espouses the first postulate, as I do, one should continue to have things to say...  And I suppose I will, but not now.  I need a rest.

For this summer, not sure what you meant by Bejou/Boy River being west enough.  Are you saying we have our own reunion there and drive no further?  I wouldn’t want to stunt any plans either of you may have, but, extended family guilt aside, I may be in line with that.  On the other hand, if either of you wants to persuade me otherwise, please do —just know that logistically, with what I hope will be a busy summer month. I would probably not be able to drive to Oregon — maybe fly there, meet you guys, share a ride back with a larger rented vehicle?

Now, for your production company idea, whynot?  Although my problem is that I have not sufficiently tried to submit my stuff anywhere beyond a dozen high-odds contests.  And I agree with your outlook —actually Sioux Chief Crazy Horse’s —that one lives well who lives with the mantra “today is a good day to die.”  And a step further, with a paraphrase of John: Anyone who loves his life loses it, but live without fear of death (or of publisher’s rejection) and one can have life to the fullest.  I am reading Peter Mathiesson’s The Snow Leopard right now, about his journey through the Himalayas in search of one of the world’s rarest species, and the author suggests that those who cling to the cliff edge as to life itself never get anywhere.  “To clutch the mountain,” he notes, is an Assyrian euphemism that signifies “to die.”

And with this you have given me a good opportunity to submit, to you guys anyway, the first excerpt of what I have found in my 1990 files, a ghost story that I call “Resurrection,” in which my characters talk, ironically, about "wanting to live."

I was going to hold off on any excerpt sharing until after I had asked you both to help me solve a few enigmas.  At one point I mention, for instance, that, a la Rod Broding, we should  “consider insincerity as much a prayer as the sincerest praise.”  Any ideas what I was talking about?  Broding was a Minnesota pastor, I believe, but he is not otherwise mentioned here.

But here is my excerpt anyway.  Hope you enjoy.  (And yes, Dan, I will get to reading Glassworks)

- Jon

Woebegone Productions

Dear brothers,

A Russian adage describes the fulfilled life: have a family, build a home, plant a tree. Chekhov extends that by personal example, going off to doctor the tubercular sanitaria in the forsaken expanse of Siberia.  As Christians, we know the fulfilled life is not mostly up to us, that our fulfillment comes through a salvation guaranteed in our infancy; and with Jesus’ 33 years or Hamlet’s 27, we take what duties befall and contribute aesthetically, ethically, immanently, transcendently however we can.

Before we’re all fifty we’re going to produce something that enhances the world. We already have: Lena, Kirsten, Josef, Andrew, Tilo, Andrea, Ben, Emma.  I told a friend in Prague (cousin of Vinny Del Negro, incidentally) on March 19, 1999, “Not that I’d desire to, but having held baby Joey, I now can die.” Of course I alluded to the Ojibwa proverb that Dad liked, “today is a good day to die.” Around the same time, when a music reviewer for the Guardian newspaper met Liam Gallagher, prepared for a prima dona and then surprised by being swept into the charm of the moment, asked the singer for an autograph for his daughter; “She’ll die with delight” the papa gushed, so dead-pan Liam included under his autograph, “Don’t die.”

Enough of mortal talk—too much and maybe not enough ripples from Tuscon (see the “Young Turks” commentary on the aftermath on YouTube, btw).  I’m forever interested in this stuff, but want to suggest something more:

How about we meet this summer to plan a production company—really and literally.

Josh, you have a penchant and background that can absolutely extend musicology whether in reviews (your interview of Liam Gallagher would compete favorably with the Guardian guy’s), management (Joey on bass, Ben on drums, Kirsten on keyboards, Tilo on brass, etc—and believe me, we have dozens of originals already in my head, if only occasionally on my fretboard) or theory (you have conceptual wordpower beyond outlandish Scrabble scores). You also understand the twists and turns of cyberspace.

Jon, you have a poetic journey that is as authentic as Seamus Heaney’s (I’m on an Irish lit binge, having enjoyed The Dubliners for the dozenth time and having a part in persuading our drama teacher to try Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa for the high school spring play). Your sensitivities to engineering, literary and legal foundations are unique and auspicious toward the pragmatics that contribute to (or, in cynical hands, douse) dreams. Your bird poems should not depend on other publishing house wait lists.

I’ll play the part of Lev Mikaleavich Myshkin, suggesting a name like “Woebegone Productions” or envisioning how our aforementioned kids could tap into their dads’ and uncles’ pre-humous inheritance.

Jon, you want an excuse to attend the family reunion despite the late July contracts you’d miss. I want an excuse to get out of my stultifying 1,700 Euro duties as department chair, which would compel me to be back in Prague August 6, effectively dousing dreams… If I take the trip west, I’d definitely swing through Cutbank, Montana, revising A Bruised Reed along the way. We could meet in Boy River or Bejou or Glyndon—that’s west enough.

I’m not suggesting we jettison the enterprises that pay our wages so we can pay our bills. Before we’re fifty, though, shouldn’t we shake the dice better than Mark Cuban or Jimmy Wales?

Solo gracie, logos, veritas (or however Luther squared the Greek and Latin!),

Dan

Glassworks (Grown Old)

   “Last time, too, it was hard to find, but, heh heh, I think it’s just around the next hill. I remember a willage around here where I once stopped to ask directions—”
   “Should we probably stop now?” 

   “No, no, heh heh heh, it’s just around the next hill, I’m sure. But after I stopped, a little hart—a fawn, just—came dashing around the corner. A couple of kids were tying to chase it away but only managed to scare it into the main road through the willage, and all the gates of the fences were closed—” 

   “Yes, I’ve noticed the fences everywhere, in front of every house, without exception.” 

   “—heh heh, yes, and jumping up against one in particular like it lived there and was locked out. It was something to see. And some men in the town surrounded the poor animal—yes, we’re on the right road, now, good; just some minutes more…. It’s repaved, I see, and some houses look new, but you can’t rightly change the hills.” 

   “What happened to the deer?” 

   “Oh, yes, heh heh. Well, no one could grab it at the first closed gate, and it ran to another and another; my duty, I supposed, was to drive ahead (even it was against the way I was headed) and make sure no car speeding into the willage would hit the hart—it’s acceptable to say ‘hart’, yes?—unaware. And then one man looking like so—” 

   “barrel-chested?” 

   “—yes, yes, like a barrel, heh heh heh, grabbed the hart with his big hands and another thinner fellow had to brace him from falling down. The little hart was full of struggle and thrashing, can we say?” 

   “They can be aggressive in America if backed into a corner. People forget that their bark and their bite even exist.” 

   “He was barking, yes, yelping I suppose for a mother nowhere near. And bleeding at the mouth, probably because of the gates he was crashing into. So the big man—ah, we’re here! Marvelous. You can turn into that gravel drive.” 

   “The big man what?” 

   “Heh heh, the big man said he’d walk it to the side of the willage and release, with the thin fellow still propping him up and I don’t think they would have managed, but fortunately a green lorry came by and the three of them hopped into the back and away to the forest. Yes. Somewhere in there I hope he’s had a happy life, little grandchildren harts of his own, heh heh heh. Yes, that’s fine. So! We can begin our visit.” 

   The groomed parking lot spread like a bay between a citadel of a building and its conveyor-like wing, single and curving back toward the road so that distribution trucks wouldn’t rut the gravel. From their rental car five adults unfolded and stretched for the immanent tour. “Just a moment, please,” the silver-haired man advised and went into the visitors’ office. The air was light and warm, inviting a walk through the color-coded paths through the woods. Instead, they’d enter the furnacy environs of an ageless foundry, a roundabout way to personalize the purchase of blown glass. 

   “Now the potash that comes from this region is very fine,” the commentary began, “the product can be brittle but the expert blower knows the balance of what to keep, what to discard.” As if to demonstrate, a portly man mired in sweat inspected the tip of his two-meter pole to determine the goblet-in-the-making had no future and thus lanced it back into the oven. A couple of jabs to stoke new stuff, and “Jezhesh Maria!”—a fresh molten globule spun just an armlength from the quintet who had, to that point, assumed they were a safe distance from the work zone. “You might want to step back, mmm.” 

   “Speaking of balance, I see an extra art in perching their mugs of beer on their tool trays!” 

   “Well, it gets pretty hot—Ah! Look over here (dobry den)—see how he rounds out the stem!” A more athletic man in a white tank top nodded politely without breaking his concentration. Indeed the rotating pole served as its own lathe while a spatula stroked the glow and carved a tiny trough for the snap to come, a second-nature swig of beer before his reach for a spanner, a click on the pole and tcink: a clean break, stem from stem, to the discerning eyeball of the artisan to meet his approval or, in this case, rejection. With some disinterest he tossed the flawed piece into a metal box on the floor that hardly contained all the shatter and shards. 

   “OSHA would have a field day shutting this place down.” 

   “Yeah, but they’re an ocean away! Besides, the evidence appears rather circumstantial…” 

   “Heh heh heh… What is it, OSHA?” 

   Each of the eight furnace stations had its own chimney, but heat rose uniformly in translucent undulation to the octagon of windows some twenty meters up to—what would appear from the outside—a widow’s walk. Pigeons flew across the lower expanse of the room to this peaked space, battering the closed windows with their wings before squeezing through the open wedges or perching upon the adjustment levers. The tour moved on to the molding and finishing rooms, a path courteously swept clean of broken fragments. 

   The silver-haired man shared an animated ”nazdar” to a wheezing worker his age and clued the group in: “he is making crystal here for forty years. Oh, it’s so fine!” he proclaimed of the mold his friend unhinged. 

   “I thought the other room was crystal—thin and fragile...” 

   “No, no, that’s blown glass and crystal is heavier, has a metallic base—cobalt is what they use here, and—“ clarifying with the worker who wanted to interject a point, “this very glassworks is one of the few places that does both. Everything handmade.” 

   The rest of the visit was in choosing what to have stylized: brass to rim the steins, painted monograms, dimples and décor. The one who brought up OSHA asked the guide where the restrooms were and, to the embarrassment of both, there weren’t any that he knew of. “We’ll stop for lunch in the town right after this, though.” 

   “Well, okay. I guess I can wait.” But he really couldn’t, through all the hemming and hawing from the others about what glass would suit a given cabinet or purpose. 

   He thought it best to abscond, not back through the main furnace hall but onward, forging his own tour (in a sense), past the loading dock where there was no trailer now to plug the open space. After jumping from the platform, half his height, he reddened at the sight of the wheezing man, smoking near little stairway that would have provided the better exit. “Bathroom?” the American asked to the older man’s unassuming glance; a shrug and grin was all he could offer. But figuring out from the foreigner’s grimace and soccerwall stance, he gestured to the woods behind the building—a veritable domain for any such creature in need. 

   “Thanks,” he jogged by and, honoring the man his smoking space, timed in strides the extra building length. He turned the corner and let loose, exclaiming an “ahhh” before his stream hit the ground. 

   Not ten strides further was a different chorus of guttural relief: the receptionist (who hadn’t really received their group) was koala-wrapped around the lathe expert, his white tank top serving as her reins. His shorts and her skirt were looped knowingly on a peg near another exit door, as if positioned there for no other purpose, coupling in their own right. Both had their shoes on as the pisser could clearly see the nettles that would have no sympathy for exposed flesh. “Gosh, I’m sorry, I…uh—” and as much as turning away seemed the right reaction, the amorous pair kept their rhythm in the precious fleeting minutes of this coffee break. The American’s eyes fought hard from ‘going there’ and surveyed the nettles, planning his retreat while urinating still (how could he stop?) and, as a result of all distractions, he forgot to keep clear and clean his khaki trousers. The girl must have noticed, because he heard giggles as he staggered back around the corner. 

   There wasn’t enough breeze or sunshine behind the building to hope his miscues would evaporate, and though the old smoker had left the exit door open to facilitate his re-entry to the factory, the tourist walked past that door and the platform dock to the bright middle of the parking lot and sprawled face-up upon the rental car hood. Indeed it would be odd to have abandoned the group in such fashion, but if he could just be dry…. 

   Maybe he was, actually, by the time the others came out. “We looked all over for you!” said the silver-haired man; at least one of the others reinforced the concern with a stay-with-the-program glare, while the others scrutinized his strange recline, if not his trousers. “So, we’re all here now, yes? That’s fine. And hungry I suppose? The canteen (can we say?) is in this same willage, just five minutes away. Oh, and you needed a W.C.—we make it in four minutes in that case, heh heh heh!” 

   “Well,…” he figured wash his hands there, anyway. 

   As they ordered and asked the bartender to inaugurate their tailor-made beer mugs, the silver-haired host narrated a bit more about this part of the country. “I think here in this willage would be a good place to live and probably to die—at a ripe old age, of course. I myself was too young to be conscripted by the Nazi army when they occupied this land, but friends of mine who were a little older took refuge for many crucial months in a forest like this—ours was sixty kilometers to the west, but quite like what you see here…. No, they never caught up with our group, heh heh heh—we had our code language, our own way to get in and out without looking unusual. It was different when the war ended, of course. Less lethal, but also less clear who was the enemy. It always seemed to me that communism didn’t reach little places like this much—oh, the whole population had to play the silly game, but in this very stream, for instance, people fished for their own little living, and the glassworks kept operating like it has now for three hundred years. You asked about the forest trails and whether anybody was followed by some secret police; maybe if there were some suspicion, that was possible, but not this far from the city, or this far from the border. We’re in the center of the country, heh heh—it was a longer country back then, but still—we’re in the middle of nowhere. Paths in the middle of nowhere don’t go anywhere of note. And people here like it that way, I think.” 

   As if on cue, half a dozen employees of the glassworks clambered in, including the tank top and the skirt, not looking any more an intimate pair than the rest of them. “Ah, it is fine, heh heh heh, nazdar!”, the host called in their direction.
   The American absconder trembled as he felt more exposed than the hour before. “Dobro chut,” the receptionist said in a hint of a giggle. 

   “Good appetite,” translated the host, raising the local glass.