SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 17, 2021] “From the Fifteenth District”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
I thought had read more by Mavis Gallant, but apparently I hadn’t. This is a light and amusing ghost story, set in the fifteenth district of Paris.
But Gallant has an amusing twist on the concept right from the start.
A deceased soldier says that he is haunted by the entire congregation of St. Michael and All Angels on Bartholomew Street. Since he received his posthumous purple heart, people await for him to come and receive communion, and the crowd gets larger every year.
Mrs Ibrahim, mother of twelve, aged thirty-seven complains of being haunted by Dr L. Chalmeton and the social investigator who accompanied him on his visit to her squalid flat. The two feel that they did not do enough for her, but Mrs. Ibrahim’s account of their visit is very different and wishes they would leave her alone.
Mrs Carlotte Essling is haunted by her husband. She was seventeen when she married her husband, a widower with four children. They remained married for thirty-six years until her death. He now haunts her with proof of her goodness. Whenever he sees her he asks for a message or to thank her for her years of sacrifice. She wants the police to threaten him and keep him off the streets. He’s an old man, it should be easy.
There’s not much more to this amusing trifle, but it should bring a smile.
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