Misarranged Names and Titles

Here the story begins: the last three pages turned over to a conclusive period waiting at the end of a chapter (the cover falling closed, the story at rest). "A memorable novel, an immortal article if I had ever written one. The perched headdress in the first chapter, the long nouns laughing at the little black haired lad in the park, yes, this one surely deserves the recognition." The candle letting loose strands of hot wax as the pale fire flickered over the back shoulder of the inhabited chair, quietly turning pages and muttering over miscorrections. S�croeb Ivan Ilich let his hand on the cover, twitching a thick grey mustache, fingering out the outset indents on the black dust jacket. The first finger curled around his "Q" like a child riding on a merry-go-round, kicking its feet into the dirt to build momentum. "A good work, a very good piece of work. And the title too�"
The ruffles in the tan slacks wrinkling into a denser point as S�croeb leaned forward at his aged pace, met with each fold to cover the dark valleys in between to contract as he straightened himself out. The black suspenders tightening in the front, a light churning fire breathing in the stove (a metal prod laying at the foot of the fire, conducting itself) and the book juggled itself from his left hand, to his right, and then rested on a busy stand by his chair clouded with other occupants (was that Tolstoy underneath, or perhaps Dostoyevsky?). A creak ensued, following a heavy step into the red and orange woven tapestry set over the floor, an old wooden walkway. Sulky candles, shaded portraits, corners hoarding points of paint chipped at the edges, and the open door at the end of the hall with a tiny cluttered desk. A fistful of scraps scraped to the left for a yellow crumpled piece (a trivial thought three or four days ago that came while reading a letter from Eugene), plucked like a dead honey-suckle, a cancerous twig, a rotten apple. It read: Begins thinking it does, but as the stories progress and they decide the story is worthless, the main character concludes reality is a construct, a mirage, a curtain held over a blind beggar who forgot how to speak. "Rubbish, what a worthless scrap of fiction. My editor would have me on the streets."
A ring, then a second and third from the black bell on the phone. Mumbles ensue, followed by a heavy cough before picking the earpiece off the receiver. "Eghem, hgm, yes, um, hello?"
"Mr. Ilich? Ah, how are you my good friend? It's Eugine, your editor. I was wondering if you would mind my dropping by this afternoon to talk about what you are working on next. You mentioned something in your letter about a short story or some shorter work of fiction you might be interested in drafting. I've never read anything of a shorter thickness from you, nothing less than a hearty novella."
"Ah, yes, I'm still toying with ideas after all Mr. Mor�ux, but I'd love your opinion regarding a couple of stragglers all tugging at my strings for a due plot, and I'm not sure which I owe it to most."
"Very well, I'll be in perhaps around three, but I may be running a tad behind. You know how busy it can be with the ladies and all in the square at St. Petersburg. You know the hour my friend, it is a crowded one at best."
"Till three then, I have some ideas I'd like too� well, I'll see you then. Send my regards to Lucrette, won't you kind fellow? Yes, a wonderful woman she is in my humble opinion."
S�croeb twitched at his chin, the black bell earpiece clicking down on the receiver while his shoulders slouched back into the chair. A St. Petersburg paper lay opened on top of a stack of drafts, the window to his left opened a crack for a fresh draft to flush out the moldy stuff cottoning up the house. "Yes, now what to write about? How to begin this piece?" S�croeb leaned his chair back off of the forward legs a hair or so. Then, a smug grin wiping itself into an idle thought with his left hand coming up to scratch at his mustache burned itself on a wick, a soul source, a prose piece joking itself as a remote thought.
"The story would begin" muttered S�croeb, turning a quill to a notecard, "with a Russian man, very cheerful fellow with a burley mustache (the bird resting on the end of the stick hatches from its shack on the wall, count one, two, two whistles). He is a musician, a great violinist per say. And he just played a major concert at� no, that isn't at all right. The violin is too sad a stringed instrument, perhaps the piano? Or even the trombone maybe? He must be a genius of some sort, perhaps a cheerful composer who is about to have his wife die in his arms� no, this must be provocative. Perhaps a chess prot�g� dressed in a tattered suit and a torn handkerchief. But he will be from St. Petersburg, a stubborn and socially inept genius that is totally beyond the ability to fit into a conventional sort of life. But he won't, because he will loose his position in a tournament to a bright young mathematician. Yes, I will discuss those great questions of existence, a work of literature, a philosophical novelty! But, he will then kill himself in the end, but he is a musician� (Did I get the mail? Hmm, it is lovely out, I had best do that. I've been expecting that certain package from my niece. What is that sound, the burning song, the flaming flute I'm hearing? A Zhar-Ptitsa? Best attend to that package, but, oh well bother, it didn't come today I'm sure. Back to the desk, heavens it's almost two thirty). Hmm, perhaps a writer? It could be about a writer (since I can do this well, I know its process) who is in the process of writing a novel and what it entails. How creative� perhaps I could make the writer reflective of myself, perhaps I could write something that would entail the writer to� to what? Hmmm, this is a conundrum. What must I make this fellow do? What I have, an empty space of action, inertia, movement, a void in verb."
"Mr. Ilich, my good friend?"
A voice at the door, a familiar character, the bird laughing on its third stroke. "Mr. Mor�ux, Ahem, excuse me I didn't hear you at the door. Please (again, the creak in the spine and the slip in the step out of the seat), let me get the door for you. It is so very nice of you to stop by, it being such a marvelous day and all�" Eugene, a grey bowler hat twirling gaily around the left hand and a thick notebook huddled under the right, stuffed to the brim and maybe leaking a tad, grinned a deep, well shaven smile with each cheek wrinkling over at the vertex. "Oh, no bother really," passed off Eugene, the advisor stepping right past his host and into the kitchen; wiping off his souls in the tattered brown rug. Mr. Ilich stammered his lips over something as his editor helped himself to a small stash of biscuits in the den as he sat back down into a chair, nibbling away.
"So, my friend Mr. Ilich, what juicy morsel do you have for me? Ah, now I know you won't disappoint me (and coughs a little, a fist to his mouth out of common courtesy), what is it you have? Out with it man, after all we only have a fixed time in which to live. Life is short, speak up my friend."
"Yeh, eghem, well, it is something like this. I only have a few renegade notes and scribbled note cards (no corrected draft as of yet) that amount to a story about a writer who is writing�"
"Ah, yes, I see the genius in this already. What a wonderful notion, absolutely brilliant. What may I ask is this story going to be about?"
"Well, the writer is trying to come up with�"
Eugene, laughing aloud, roaring in his own imagination into the glory of the whole speculation (and what did this tainted mediator think, what was that plot he saw in this?) picked up his hat and stood firmly up, pulling his chin back to his neck. "You won't let me down S�croeb, I know you and your work my good man." Whisking himself out the door, the bottom two gold buttons left unfastened on his coat, and the mudroom door bounced shut a capped man pranced back down to a small carriage waiting (was that another biscuit in his hand?). The two windows half shut, the small tears in the curtains, thoroughly bleached and blonded, the little vase of dried Russian knapweed sitting in the center of the table, the petals crusted out and laying on the bare wood surface. S�croeb's left hand in his pocket toying over three blue lined note cards, one bent unevenly in the center and the others blank. "What nonsense is this man," S�croeb mumbled under his mustache. "He doesn't even know what it is I am pondering over. Good gracious me, what nonsense, what absolute nonsense."
Absentmindedly stepping through the narrow hallway, stepping through boxes and papers, the left shoelace undone itself and S�croeb opened the door to his office and sat back down into his chair, a delicate handmade piece that creaked when anyone would sit in it. A nice tapered draft spilt out of the window and over the loose pages laying on his desk. The note card in his pocket, the matching unused stack laying on a small wooden rocking chair next to a dwarf tree in a pot.
"Hmm, now, about this story. I suppose it would be the Russian thing to write about a Russian writer, someone with a great amount of likeness to a master. An admirable Pushkin or a gifted Gogol." S�croeb sighed a heavy sign of fatigue, ruffling a handkerchief in his pocket. "A shy, refined sort of fellow who cannot speak out for himself but instead must write to say what he thinks. He is too afraid of his brother to get very much published, but just prior to this current project (Greet Sinners Amidst Mandala, the title written on the card) he does manage to put out a novella that gets some good reviews and a small following."
The quill, upright and tightening the margins on the small flab of paper, dibbling out admirable Puskin or a gifted Gogol in small curves and long lines, finishing of the sentence with an over pronounced smudge with a dribble here and there blurring into the next capital letter. "Cruebso V. Gorbachyov, the gifted talent in the closet. Winding his pen as a soul mate yearning to write out every syllable of some epic love poem (a horrible clich�, the typical post of the pen and that isn't the writer's intent, scratch that useless poetic rambling out) to slash out his fury, a brilliant short work entitled Greet Sinners Amidst Mandala."
The feather end fell pack from its dictating to an elevated position, and then as S�croeb pondered his next move the end fluttered over his chin. "Perhaps he shall write a prophetic novel, one that will predict his captivation under the Czar and eventual execution though the entire time he shall think it about one of his comrades. The two of them will be arrested together, put in prison together, but when it comes time for their execution Cruebso will die and his friend will be pardoned."
The author, tired of these muddled thoughts and idle speculation, set to work on his creation. "Ah," you could hear come from the office. The chair squealing from rocking back and forth over two legs, slipping back in the wooden floor. "I see, the short work entitled Greet Sinners Amidst Mandala will be about a genius writer, a quiet fellow yes! His editor, a completely brash man with no manners or tact who bullied the fellow into writing a short story for his magazine. Cruebso V. Gorbachyov will drag his feet into it and write up a short thing for the man. The thing will be about a fellow named B�osruc who is revising a short story called Madden Titles, Sirens Anagram. And it, that package inside of the package, will be the same thing (of course in a brief squib tossed out to those deeper readers if there are such things, B�osruc will point to his story being a representation of the same thing but I will carry the insiders joke no further) as its predecessor except B�osruc will be in the final stages of revision. The last title of coarse is greater than the first, but what an idea, and to think, to simply imagine�
Standing up, S�croeb thought over the story as a whole, and what he could do with a possible plotline. The quill, set on the desk fell over onto the chair and rolled back and forth, back and forth. An editor killing his client over a disagreement on a title? The character leaving the book unfinished to fall in love with his editor's secretary and have an affair? A personal narrative? A Russian epic of some kind? B�osruc read of the last several paragraphs of Madden Titles, Sirens Anagram, crumpled each sheet individually and tossed it back into a dented tin waste can beside a small nightstand with a copy of Eugene Onegin (Pushkin madness) and Chekov's Swan Song.


A N O T E O N T H E T E X T

So now, the joke of it all is that if the author of Misarranged Names and Titles should like to comment on this early work (1913) of his, he should very well be able to leave a note for his audience. I wrote this as a mere idea, not knowing how it should be properly executed. I had thought about including myself in at the very end, but because it was who revised the story I thought it best to be the middle name in the plot. To be honest I don't quite know what to think of it, other than I still have little chuckles about the idea, starting out to crumple up and tear the thing in the end. Stylistically it is nothing in comparison to my masterwork Amaranth Pigment (1952-1953), but it was those early stories that make an accomplished writer smile through his teeth.
I have since read a great deal of the criticism on the thing (it is noteworthy to mention that this little riddle was published under the name H. Kerkervin) and it was received badly in the �migr� papers while I was in Germany. In particular, it might have been better received perhaps if my real name had been known and the pun with the middle man (the paragraph opening with "The author, tired of these muddled thoughts" the real sport of the whole thing, as that was not interjected by S�croeb, but the writer of the piece as named Misarranged Names and Titles) was made plain to the reader. So, here is the chuckle to the whole gag, the elusive pawn at the edge of the board with one space the lesser and the opponents king two spaces horizontal. You prosing poets, watch the confused names and titles, they are lost letters without any real particular order, just a shuffled syntax, a jumbled string, the disarranged mandala. That is all I have to say, it was a good game.
Cruebso Volodyadima Gorbachyov, 1974