munnmæli

The call comes in, and I hear.

No, I say, terrible. How? And I had been about to give him a fat stack of paper to read, too. Well, it sounds like he went as he would have liked to, in a way. He had always spoken with admiration about a friend who had been found upright at his typewriter.

I send the call back out.

Some disbelief, some shock here and there. Some already know. Soon there is a buzzing network a-chatter, spanning continents already, and the story gets told again and again, call and response (No! Terrible. How?), with minor variations (I know! Terrible, yes ...). Always the same story, though.

It is taking shape. In a few days, it will have its own life. It will hazard its way out into the larger society of narrative, bumping up against other tales told about this man and others like him (already I can tell that this story and the story of the typewriting friend will themselves become fast companions, more often together than apart), and making the rounds wherever so-minded folk meet. Never quite the same twice, but always recognizably the same story.

I am nagged by the feeling that there ought to be another version. I haven't heard it yet, but it is very likely out there; I simply haven't spoken to the right person, the right teller who knows this story (recognizably the same story) but knows it with a different ending.