FICTION
Danilo
Kis
RED STAMPS WITH LENIN'S PICTURE
Song of Songs 8:6
Dear Sir,
In the course of your rue Michelet lecture you asked, "What
has become of Mendel Osipovich's correspondence?" and stated that
the
Collected Works
published by Chekhov House in New York must
be
considered incomplete, that the correspondence might one day be
found and will not therefore be limited to the twenty or so letters
reproduced therein. After paying tribute to the labors of the tragi–
cally departed losif Bezimensky ("It took thirty years of research to
pick up the trail of people who, though they had not lost their lives,
did lose their names, cities, countries, even continents"), you con–
cluded there was still hope that the letters would surface and "the ir–
reparable would be repaired ."
I have been prompted to write to you by your unbeliev–
able-unbelievably audacious-conviction that the greater part of
the correspondence still exists and that it is in the hands of an in–
dividual (I quote from memory) "who for sentimental reasons or out
of certain other considerations does not wish to part with these
valuable documents." It never entered my mind to ask you then, at
the lecture, what it was that all of a sudden - because you expressed
no such notion two years ago, nor did you mention anything of the
sort in your preface - what it was that made you so certain as to
state, "The individual in question, if luck is with us, may still be
alive somewhere in Berlin, Paris, or New York!" Your optimistic
conclusion was doubtless based primarily on the research of the late
Bezimensky and on his archives, to which you have had access.
The individual whom you seek, sir, "The individual who holds
the key to the mystery," as you put it, was sitting several feet from
Editor's Note: "Red Stamps with Lenin's Picture" and "The Story of the Master and
the Disciple" are selections from
The Encyclopedia ofthe Dead
by Danilo Kis, to be pub–
lished in March by Farrar, Straus
&
Giroux, Inc. English translation by Michael
Henry Heim. Translation copyright
<C
1989 by Farrar, Straus
&
Giroux, Inc. All
rights reserved.
