Authors: Jhumpa Lahiri
Within twenty-four hours he and his family are back on Pemberton Road, the late August grass in need of trimming, a quart of milk and some bread left by their tenants in the refrigerator, four grocery bags on the staircase filled with mail. At first the Gangulis sleep most of the day and are wide awake at night, gorging themselves on toast at three in the morning, unpacking the suitcases one by one. Though they are home they are disconcerted by the space, by the uncompromising silence that surrounds them. They still feel somehow in transit, still disconnected from their lives, bound up in an alternate schedule, an intimacy only the four of them share. But by the end of the week, after his mother's friends come to admire her new gold and saris, after the eight suitcases have been aired out on the sun deck and put away, after the chanachur is poured into Tupperware and the smuggled mangoes eaten for breakfast with cereal and tea, it's as if they've never been gone. "How dark you've become," his parents' friends say regretfully to Gogol and Sonia. On this end, there is no effort involved. They retreat to their three rooms, to their three separate beds, to their thick mattresses and pillows and fitted sheets. After a single trip to the supermarket, the refrigerator and the cupboards fill with familiar labels: Skippy, Hood, Bumble Bee, Land O' Lakes. His mother enters the kitchen and prepares their meals once again; his father drives the car and mows the lawn and returns to the university. Gogol and Sonia sleep for as long as they want, watch television, make themselves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at any time of day. Once again they are free to quarrel, to tease each other, to shout and holler and
say shut up. They take hot showers, speak to each other in English, ride their bicycles around the neighborhood. They call up their American friends, who are happy enough to see them but ask them nothing about where they've been. And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.
In September, Gogol returns to high school to begin his junior year: honors biology, honors U.S. history, advanced trigonometry, Spanish, honors English. In his English class he reads
Ethan Frome, The Great Gatsby, The Good Earth, The Red Badge of Courage.
He takes his turn at the podium and recites the "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech from
Macbeth,
the only lines of poetry he will know by heart for the rest of his life. His teacher, Mr. Lawson, is a slight, wiry, shamelessly preppy man with a surprisingly deep voice, reddish blond hair, smallish but penetrating green eyes, horn-rimmed glasses. He is the subject of schoolwide speculation, and slight scandal, having once been married to Ms. Sagan, who teaches French. He wears khakis and Shetland sweaters in bright solid colors, kelly green and yellow and red, sips black coffee continually from the same chipped blue mug, cannot survive the fifty-minute class without excusing himself to go to the teachers' lounge for a cigarette. In spite of his diminutive stature he has a commanding, captivating presence in the room. His handwriting is famously illegible; student compositions are regularly returned stamped with tan rings of coffee, sometimes golden rings of Scotch. Every year he gives everyone either a D or an F on the first assignment, an analysis of Blake's "The Tiger." A number of girls in the class insist that Mr. Lawson is indescribably sexy and have raging crushes on him.
Mr. Lawson is the first of Gogol's teachers to know and to care about Gogol the author. The first day of class he had
looked up from the podium when he came to Gogol's name on the roster, an expression of benign amazement on his face. Unlike other teachers he did not ask, Was that really his name, was that the last name, was it short for something else? He did not ask, as many foolishly did, "Wasn't he a writer?" Instead he called out the name in a perfectly reasonable way, without pause, without doubt, without a suppressed smile, just as he had called out Brian and Erica and Tom. And then: "Well, we're going to have to read 'The Overcoat.' Either that or 'The Nose.'"
One January morning, the week after Christmas vacation, Gogol sits at his desk by the window and watches a thin, sugary snow fall inconsistently from the sky. "We're going to devote this quarter to the short story," Mr. Lawson announces, and instantly Gogol knows. With growing dread and a feeling of slight nausea, he watches as Mr. Lawson distributes the books piled on his desk, giving half a dozen well-worn copies of an anthology,
Short Story Classics,
to each of the students at the front of the rows. Gogol's copy is particularly battered, the corner blunted, the cover spotted as if by a whitish mold. He looks at the table of contents, sees Gogol listed after Faulkner, before Hemingway. The sight of it printed in capital letters on the crinkly page upsets him viscerally. It's as though the name were a particularly unflattering snapshot of himself that makes him want to say in his defense, "That's not really me." Gogol wants to excuse himself, to raise his hand and take a trip to the lavatory, but at the same time he wants to draw as little attention to himself as possible. And so he sits, avoiding eye contact with any of his classmates, and pages through the book. A number of the authors' names have been starred with penciled asterisks by previous readers, but there is no sign or mark by Nikolai Gogol's name. A single story corresponds with each author's name. The one by Gogol is called "The Overcoat." But for the rest of the class, Mr. Lawson does not mention Gogol. Instead, to Gogol Ganguli's relief, they take turns reading aloud from
"The Necklace," by Guy de Maupassant. Perhaps, Gogol begins to wonder hopefully, Mr. Lawson has no intention of assigning the Gogol story. Perhaps he's forgotten about it. But as the bell rings, and the students rise collectively from their desks, Mr. Lawson holds up a hand. "Read the Gogol for tomorrow," he hollers as they shuffle through the door.
The following day, Mr. Lawson writes "Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol" in capital letters on the board, draws a box around it, then writes the dates of the author's birth and death in parentheses. Gogol opens the binder on his desk, reluctantly copies the information down. He tells himself it isn't so strange; there is, after all, a William in the class, if not an Ernest. Mr. Law-son's left hand guides the chalk rapidly across the board, but Gogol's pen begins to lag. The loose-leaf pages remain blank as those of his classmates fill up with facts on which he will most likely soon be quizzed: Born 1809 in the province of Poltava to a family of Ukrainian Cossack gentry. Father a small landowner who also wrote plays, died when Gogol was sixteen. Studied at the Lyceum of Nezhin, went to St. Petersburg in 1828 where he entered, in 1829, the civil service, in the Department of Public Works for the Ministry of the Interior. From 1830 to 1831, transferred to the Court Ministry in the Department of Royal Estates, after which time he became a teacher, lecturing on history at the Young Ladies' Institute, and later at the University of St. Petersburg. At the age of twenty-two, established a close friendship with Alexander Pushkin. In 1830, published his first short story. In 1836, a comic play,
The Government Inspector,
was produced in St. Petersburg. Dismayed by the play's mixed reception, left Russia. For the next twelve years lived abroad, in Paris, Rome, and elsewhere, composing the first volume of
Dead Souls,
the novel considered to be his finest work.
Mr. Lawson sits on the edge of his desk, crosses his legs, turns a few pages in a yellow legal pad covered with notes. Beside the legal pad is a biography of the author, a thick book called
Divided Soul,
the pages marked by numerous scraps of torn-up paper.
"Not your ordinary guy, Nikolai Gogol," Mr. Lawson says. "He is celebrated today as one of Russia's most brilliant writers. But during his life he was understood by no one, least of all himself. One might say he typified the phrase 'eccentric genius.' Gogol's life, in a nutshell, was a steady decline into madness. The writer Ivan Turgenev described him as an intelligent, queer, and sickly creature. He was reputed to be a hypochondriac and a deeply paranoid, frustrated man. He was, in addition, by all accounts, morbidly melancholic, given to fits of severe depression. He had trouble making friends. He never married, fathered no children. It's commonly believed he died a virgin."
Warmth spreads from the back of Gogol's neck to his cheeks and his ears. Each time the name is uttered, he quietly winces. His parents have never told him any of this. He looks at his classmates, but they seem indifferent, obediently copying down the information as Mr. Lawson continues to speak, looking over one shoulder, his sloppy handwriting filling up the board. He feels angry at Mr. Lawson suddenly. Somehow he feels betrayed.
"Gogol's literary career spanned a period of about eleven years, after which he was more or less paralyzed by writer's block. The last years of his life were marked by physical deterioration and emotional torment," Mr. Lawson says. "Desperate to restore his health and creative inspiration, Gogol sought refuge in a series of spas and sanatoriums. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Palestine. Eventually he returned to Russia. In 1852, in Moscow, disillusioned and convinced of his failure as a writer, he renounced all literary activity and burned the manuscript to the second volume of
Dead Souls.
He then pronounced a death sentence on himself, and proceeded to commit slow suicide by starvation."
"Gross," someone says from the back of the classroom. "Why would someone want to do that to himself?"
A few people glance at Emily Gardener, rumored to have anorexia.
Mr. Lawson, holding up a finger, goes on. "In attempts to revive him on the day before his death, doctors immersed him in a bath of broth while ice water was poured over his head, and then affixed seven leeches to his nose. His hands were pinned down so that he could not tear the worms away."
The class, all but one, begins to moan in unison, so that Mr. Lawson has to raise his voice considerably in order to be heard. Gogol stares at his desk, seeing nothing. He is convinced that the entire school is listening to Mr. Lawson's lecture. That it's on the PA. He lowers his head over his desk, discreetly presses his hands against his ears. It's not enough to block out Mr. Lawson: "By the following evening he was no longer fully conscious, and so wasted that his spine could be felt through his stomach." Gogol shuts his eyes. Please, stop, he wishes he could say to Mr. Lawson. Please stop, he says, mouthing the words. And then, suddenly, there is silence. Gogol looks up, sees Mr. Lawson drop his chalk on the blackboard ledge.
"I'll be right back," he says, and disappears to have a cigarette. The students, accustomed to this routine, begin talking among themselves. They complain about the story, saying that it's too long. They complain that it was hard to get through. There is talk of the difficulty of Russian names, students confessing merely to skimming them. Gogol says nothing. He has not read the story himself. He has never touched the Gogol book his father gave him on his fourteenth birthday. And yesterday, after class, he'd shoved the short story anthology deep into his locker, refusing to bring it home. To read the story, he believes, would mean paying tribute to his namesake, accepting it somehow. Still, listening to his classmates complain, he feels perversely responsible, as if his own work were being attacked.
Mr. Lawson returns, sitting once more on his desk. Gogol hopes that perhaps the biographical portion of the lecture is over. What else could he possibly have left to say? But Mr. Lawson picks up
Divided Soul.
"Here is an account of his final moments," he says, and, turning toward the end of the book, he reads:
"'His feet were icy. Tarasenkov slid a hot-water bottle into the bed, but it had no effect: he was shivering. Cold sweat covered his emaciated face. Blue circles appeared under his eyes. At midnight Dr. Klimentov relieved Dr. Tarasenkov. To ease the dying man, he administered a dose of calomel and placed loaves of hot bread around his body. Gogol began to moan again. His mind wandered, quietly, all night long. "Go on!" he whispered. "Rise up, charge, charge the mill!" Then he became still weaker, his face hollowed and darkened, his breathing became imperceptible. He seemed to grow calm; at least he was no longer suffering. At eight in the morning of February 21, 1852, he breathed his last. He was not yet forty-three years old.'"
Gogol does not date anyone in high school. He suffers quiet crushes, which he admits to no one, on this girl or that girl with whom he is already friends. He does not attend dances or parties. He and his group of friends, Colin and Jason and Marc, prefer to listen to records together, to Dylan and Clapton and The Who, and read Nietzsche in their spare time. His parents do not find it strange that their son doesn't date, does not rent a tuxedo for his junior prom. They have never been on a date in their lives and therefore they see no reason to encourage Gogol, certainly not at his age. Instead they urge him to join the math team and maintain his A average. His father presses him to pursue engineering, perhaps at MIT. Assured by his grades and his apparent indifference to girls, his parents don't suspect Gogol of being, in his own fumbling way, an American teenager. They don't suspect him, for instance, of smoking pot, which he does from time to time when he and his friends get together to listen to records at one another's homes. They don't suspect him, when he goes to spend the night at a friend's house, of driving to a neighboring town to see
The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
or into Boston to see bands in Kenmore Square.
One Saturday, soon before he is scheduled to take the SAT, his family drives to Connecticut for the weekend, leaving Go
gol at home alone overnight for the first time in his life. It never crosses his parents' minds that instead of taking timed practice tests in his room, Gogol will drive with Colin and Jason and Marc to a party. They are invited by Colin's older brother, who is a freshman at the university where Gogol's father teaches. He dresses for the party as he normally does, in Levi's and boat shoes and a checkered flannel shirt. For all the times he's been to the campus, to visit his father at the engineering department or for swimming lessons or to run laps around the track, he has never been in a dorm before. They approach nervously, a bit giddy, afraid to be caught. "If anyone asks, my brother said to say we're freshmen at Amherst," Colin advises them in the car.