Unfinished Stories (Part 8)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

Gary Spencer, the last man alive to have read all of Richard Allen Garston's works, changed his name to Father William and now resides at a Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Father William had agreed to open up a little regarding Garston's writings and life. In this second dialogue, Joe Urban learns of the content of Garston's stories. It's probably my favorite part of the story.

The Unfinished Stories of Richard Allen Garston (Part 8)
Dialogue Two

I returned to my room with pen in hand, hastily outlining the details of our conversation. While my record may be imprecise in certain respects, overall it captures the essential elements of our conversation.

Our second conversation was immensely different. We spoke of the stories themselves.

His stories had a strange effect on me. When later I returned to my room it was as if my brain had become benumbed by liquor (though I had had none other than the Kentucky Bourbon which saturates the unique Trappist fudge they manufacture) or that I had fallen into a stupor of some sort. Whereas I spent the first night furiously attempting to reconstruct our dialogue, the second night left me in a state of introspective psycho-emotional inebriation. The first day's dialogue was liberating because I had attained a remarkable sense of self-forgetfulness. The stories of day two, on the other hand, were like a mirror, and ultimately I could not close off my day without attempting to find in myself the causation for this dark resonance.

Now that a measure of time has passed, I have no notes to adequately re-construct the day, or the stories. Here is the best of what I recall.

We began by the garden and walked along a narrow path to a field below the Abbey. I reminded him that he would tell me about the stories, and he began with this.

"Here's one I remember vividly," he said, "about a man who spent his whole life writing and re-writing the same story. The first half of his life it kept getting longer and more complex. The novella became a novel, which subsequently became an epic. The story ultimately grappled with every conceivable theme and the infinite permutations on those themes.

"The second half of his life he began to distill each facet of the story down to its unifying essence. For decades he re-wrote and edited and revised and polished his prose so that it became a lengthy, but finely crafted poem. This he continued to tighten and sharpen until it became ever more pointed, and potent. As the old man's heart weakened, the power of his verse strengthened.

"The last week of his life he attempted to compress all of his life's work into seventeen syllables..."

"A haiku!"

"Yes."

"What happened next?"

"It's unfinished."

This is how the day went. Stories were summarized and apparent meanings attached to them, stories about old people, children, orphans, criminals, natives, Orientals, immigrants, slaves, rich, poor, warriors, powerful, powerless. Stories from all stations of life, all facets of time, all portions of human history. Stories differing as greatly as mountains differ from deserts, rivers from butterflies, mould spores from the sun. Complicated puzzles, plots, games, dazzling wordplay, a hideous monster who had healing powers; a murder, told from the point of view of a piece of furniture, and the incriminating fragment of testimony it offered; a magic stone that made children tell the truth when they touched it; a temple made of daisies that turned men into birds; a stone that gave supernatural knowledge; the man who held the answer to a question no one dared to ask.

The stories were strange, dense, multi-dimensional, yet so simply told.

There was one story about a man whose hands and feet had been cut off during the Spanish Inquisition. He survived the atrocity and, in a story called The Ghost of Isla Rosa, went on to gain revenge on his tormentors.

In another story, Don Quixote, Oedipus and Bertrand Russell become engaged in a debate regarding the thesis "Is it futile to Dream?"

Another story I remember had something to do with time. Evidently it was built around the premise that history is elastic. That is, that future events can change past ones. I'm not sure what it was really about, but I recall being somewhat impressed by the manifold distortions of reality inherent in this concept.

Then there were the innumerable stories about struggle. Struggles with lust, with greed, with the need for freedom, with impulsiveness, the longing for spontaneity... struggles with materialism, solipsism, discontent, passivity, hypersensitivity, futility, austerity, pugnacity, hysteria... and ultimately the struggle for meaning and significance. These latter were difficult for me. They had a pointedness that frightened me.

There were also enigmatic stories, bewildering riddles, ambiguous conundrums and labyrinthine psychological spectacles.

Some of the stories he told in deplorable detail, others he summarized in a few swift sentences, and still others he simply alluded to or implied. He may not have said a word about them but I knew of their existence by the way he avoided speaking of them. I regretted the lack of time, and somehow he felt shortchanged as well.

Finally there were the suicide notes.

"Emma shared with me the introduction to one of these," I said.

"Emma?" he said. The way he said it threw me off because I couldn't tell if he were indicating he knew her, or didn't know her.

"Garston's sister-in-law. Wife of the brother, you know, the one who burned his work."

"I know, yes, I know."

Father William took an inordinate amount of time composing his thoughts. Eventually he continued to tell me of the thousand and one suicide notes.

"Ironic, isn't it?" I asked.

"What's that?"

"Well, all that energy spent attempting to keep his characters alive. But no one was able to help keep him alive."

"Yessssss," said he, enunciating it with a prolonged hiss.

I thought of the fragment. I thought of Emma. And I wondered now what I was really looking for.

CONTINUE