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A Letter "Jan! Why don't you write to your uncle?" said Jan's father after dinner one night. They had just received a letter from his brother Hugo, the family's famous Hugo, who had quit the university, acquired some inconvenient gambling debts, then ventured across the sea to a new country where he was learning a new business; something to do with wires. Jan remembered Hugo as a distant, benevolent figure with a black moustache whose laughter rumbled deeply. "You should write a letter," his father insisted. "Don't you like your uncle Hugo?" Jan's mother said, "Of course he does! But he never wrote a letter in his life! You forget he's not even eight years old!" Jan's father said, "Well, it's about time he learned, isn't it? Why don't you show him? I'll look at it when it's done." He picked up his newspaper and soon fell asleep in his chair. Jan's mother got out a piece of paper, a pen-holder, a nib, a bottle of ink, and a blotter. She let her son put the nib into the holder and dip it into the dark well of ink. Then she guided his hand through the letters and numbers of the date, making lovely loops with thick curves. "First, we have to write the salutation," she said. Gripping the pen as if it might escape, Jan wrote shakily, "Dear Uncle Hugo." What to write next? That was the whole problem. Jan wanted to tell Uncle Hugo that he had seen a streetcar run over a chicken, but his mother did not consider this at all appropriate. Instead, Jan wrote, with his mothers very patient help, that he was fine, his parents were fine, his grandparents were fine, and his cousins had given him a dog. The letter wasn't finished by bedtime; the next day Jan's father had forgotten about it and Jan's mother didn't mention it. She had other things to do. The next letter from Uncle Hugo had the same consequences for Jan as the first. "Did you ever finish writing back to your uncle?" asked Jan's father. Jan shook his head and stared at the floor. Sighing, his mother went to the drawer and took out the letter. "Can I just write good-bye, Mama?" asked Jan. His father picked up the letter from the table and said, "Good-bye? After three lines? Are you crazy? Three lines is no letter! What will your uncle think of you?" There was nothing to do but sit down with his mother and continue the letter. Jan wanted to tell his uncle about the old lady who lived in the alley behind their house. She could tell if someone was going to die just by turning an emptied coffee cup into its saucer and examining the configuration of the wet grounds. For some reason, Jan's mother disapproved of the old woman and her saucers. It would be much, much better if Jan would just say that everybody in the family was fine, and he was doing very well in school. Could he write that? He tried. It was slow, painstaking work, requiring a discussion of every sentence. Finally, his mother stood up with a deep sigh. "We'll finish it tomorrow," she said. And they all forgot about the letter again. The next time Uncle Hugo wrote, Jan's father ordered him to finish his letter immediately. This time, however, his mother was too busy to help out, so father yelled out instructions from behind the newspaper he was reading. Jan sat at the table, his legs swinging, and struggled with his thoughts. He wanted to write about an orange-brown cat with one eye that ate fish-heads in the market, but his father bellowed that it wasn't a fit subject for conversation, let alone for written correspondence. Jan asked his father what he should write, and his father told him to stop being such a pest and finish the letter. The scene was such an ordeal for everybody that nobody mentioned letter-writing to him again, not even when Uncle Hugo sent him a brand-new stereopticon with views of canyons and red deserts. By then Uncle Hugo had fallen from the family's good graces. They said that his gifts were only his way of bragging about his prosperity. Everybody was annoyed and secretly hurt that Hugo had not returned even for a short visit. Two years later, the news arrived that Hugo was going to get married in his new country. Jan's mother said, "Why don't you write to your uncle Hugo and congratulate him?" She had forgotten all about the letter that Jan had started once. But Jan hadn't. He rummaged through several drawers until he found it. There was no need for anybody to help him write now. He was already writing in school. As he fit the nib into its holder and dipped it in ink, he wondered what he could say that would be acceptable. Rereading what he had written (the ink was already turning brown) he saw that he had informed Uncle Hugo that the family was fine, the cousins were fine, the dog was fine, and he was doing very well in school. He was about to throw the letter away and start a new one, when it occurred to him that if he continued the same letter, he wouldn't have to repeat all of those tedious sentences. Then he realized, with dizzying clarity, that he could write whatever he wanted. As long as he didn't tell his parents, he was free to tell Uncle Hugo whatever he pleased. He picked up the pen and became excited, even frightened, but it was a delicious fear. He chewed on his fingernails, considering the possibilities. Then he remembered that a schoolmate's father had been arrested for stealing a diamond brooch. Everybody in school was talking about it. He described the whole thing, then stopped cold. What could follow such a sensational story? Nothing could possibly compare with it for interest. Uncle Hugo promised to come back home and introduce his new wife to everybody, but he had applied for citizenship of his adopted country and apparently wasn't free to travel until his papers were finalized and his new passport was in hand. So they had to be content with a photo. Hugo was still smiling as broadly as ever, and had gained quite a lot of weight. His wife was pale, thin, rather blonde. Jan stared at the photo intently, trying to imagine what it must be like to cross the sea, to meet foreigners and impress them all with a great moustache and perhaps a silver-headed cane. He found a stick and practiced twirling it, without much success. Just when Hugo got his citizenship and a passport to prove it, war began. The family business suffered because virtually all the employees were mobilized. Luckily, Jan was too young and his father too old to be drafted, so the family stayed together during monotonous years of anxiety, boiled vegetables, and mass arrests of the people who lived in the alleys behind the house. During cold nights when it seemed that war and winter would last forever, Jan would take the letter out of the drawer and write to Uncle Hugo until his spirits were lifted a little. At war's end, the country in which Jan lived won independence from the decrepit empire that had ruled it for so long, only to fall under the control of a more modern and ruthless empire. Gray suits replaced epaulets and gold braid, but the new bureaucracy was as chaotic as the old, and operated out of the same ornate palace, its facade somewhat damaged by air raids. Many shops and cafés reopened. The black market traded in cameras and gold watches now, not sugar and cigarettes. Jan decided to go to the university. But he quickly became tired of wooden benches and droning lectures, and had little enthusiasm for drunken ideological arguments at three in the morning with other students. He didn't know what he wanted to do. One evening got a whimsical inspiration to write to Uncle Hugo. Hadn't Hugo tried the university and then left without a degree? Jan turned over all the drawers in the house and finally found the letter. He realized for the first time that the letter (now more than twenty pages long) was written in a dozen different kinds of ink, and in a variety of styles, each paragraph rendered in a tighter, more accurate penmanship than the previous one. He saw the date on top and remembered his mother's hand guiding his own through the loops and curves. Well, he certainly wasn't going to throw it away now. He sat down, opened a bottle of beer, and began to write about his dilemma. Should he continue to study? Or go to work? Or cross the sea, like Hugo in his prime? He thought about being far away in a strange place where he would walk the streets alone and never run into anybody he knew. He put the letter away, went to his father, and asked to be put to work in the family business. One morning, after visiting an important client in a neighborhood he had never been in before, Jan stopped in a bakery. The baker's daughter was alone behind the counter. Jan was in a good mood, and properly dressed. When he left the bakery, he had a dozen rolls and a promise from her to meet him later that evening. Not too many weeks later, Jan found himself sitting in a café overlooking the river, rubbing his new moustache, and writing to Uncle Hugo about his girlfriend. During their honeymoon in the mountains, Jan wrote a page or two of reverie on some paper provided free of charge by the old couple that ran the hotel. When they returned to his parents' house to live with his wife (apartments were scarce), he added these pages to the letter. They applied to the state for an apartment and received a suitable one in less than two years, thanks to a government policy that favored young couples. In this apartment, they raised three children. Jan's parents died within a year of each other. Every time something significant occurred, Jan added it to the letter. He was very scrupulous about details of births, deaths, illnesses. He discussed his children's futures. As he got older he spent less and less time in his office. None of his children were at all interested in joining the business, so he saw little reason to build it up. He became interested in philosophy and spent his free time reading in his garden or study. He put down his thoughts on various subjects and appended these little treatises to the letter. After his wife died, Jan became feeble-minded. Although he tried to read and write, he could no longer keep his mind focussed. His children visited him out of a sense of obligation but he had become withdrawn; sometimes he barely acknowledged their presence. They hired an old woman to look after him and clean the house. One night in autumn, when a cold, damp wind was blowing, Jan sat up in bed and began to scream. The nurse dropped her knitting and ran into his room, alarmed. "Give me the letter!" he said. She stared at him, not understanding. He pointed vehemently at a particular drawer in the dresser. "Open it!" He demanded. There was nothing in the drawer but a very bulky brown folder, which she lifted up to show him. He excitedly motioned to her to put the folder on the bed. He opened it up and pulled out a heap of scribbled sheets. Taking a pen from the night-table, he wrote on the bottom sheet, "Love, Jan." The nurse could not help but peek. He put the papers back into the folder with trembling fingers, and fell back into his pillow. The next day, in a moment of lucidity, he called for an old leather-bound address book which he had owned for most of his life. He found what he hoped was Hugo's most recent address, which he wrote out shakily on a separate sheet of paper. He gave it to the nurse, and said, in a weak voice, "Mail the big brown folder to this address." He sighed and fell asleep. When she returned from the post office, he looked as if he were sleeping, but without the rise and fall of breath. She called up Jan's family but never said a word about her trip to the post office. She didn't want to give the impression that she had abandoned her vigil for the sake of a senile whim. Two weeks later, the envelope arrived at Hugo's house across the sea. He had passed away some years before, but the house still belonged to his family. The tenants mailed the envelope to Hugo's grandson and his grandson's wife, who were surprised to see Hugo's name, and then puzzled to find a bundle of flaking papers in a language they could barely identify, let alone read. The handwriting varied considerably--the first pages were in childish block letters, the middle pages precise and careful, the last few pages just a scrawl. Some pages stained and wrinkled, some faded to illegibility, some still legible, depending on the ink. It gave off a faint odor of mold. They didn't know what to do with it. They put it on a closet shelf. Several years later, while they were in the process of moving, they came across it and threw it away. •