The Nose: barber finds nose in his morning bread; officer wakes to find his face is missing his nose; same nose seen parading the streets of Russia in full military dress. ( )

This story is catching. Initially it is simply a sad little tale of a little man, the kind of man who is in no way noteworthy, who spends his days as a clerk and his evenings at home in a modest room. It is bleakly Russian, with descriptions of the bitter chill of a St. Petersburg winter, the hautiness of recently promoted officials, the destitution and meaningless suffering of a character who has done no wrong. And yet this story is not serious, really. I mean, in some ways it is serious, but it does not follow the typical moralistic cliches, does not make out the poverty-stricken clerk to be in Dickensian misery, or morally reprobate, or alternately a heroic individual. He's simply a little man. But when his coat is stolen, and you've seen how he scrimped and scraped just to be able to afford it, and he dies an ignoble death of the fever because of the loss of his coat, you cannot help but feel pity. He is a pitiful character.

If the story ended here it would be a simple story, not quite as maudlin as the Little Match Girl, or the Gift of the Magi. In fact, it wouldn't be particularly memorable. But the story continues, with Arkaky (our stricken "hero") rising from the dead to steal coats from passersby. And even so, it is not told in a haunting, frightening, creepy way, but rather as a fitting and just answer to the injustices of his life. This story is not exactly serious and not exactly funny, though it is both in places. It is real without being gritty and true without being moralistic. It is quite simply satisfying. That's the only word that truly fits.