51�Թ�

The German man's small, correct handwriting mentioned unmentionable things—bed conversations were recreated on the thin blue sheets of aerogramme letters.

But that didn't keep him from sending me an aerogramme every week, which always ended the same way: Come and visit.

The last aerogramme added a postscript: Only a few weeks left before I head back to New York.

I typed up an earnest request on a light-blue aerogramme and fed it into a bright-red postbox.

The elephant is a replica of a drawing her father had done for Gogol over twenty-seven years ago, in the margins of an aerogramme.