Saki's wonderful story 'Dusk'

In general, I prefer short stories to novels. I have a fatal attraction to both Saki and O. Henry.

I hear people mention O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” as if it were a universally known parable. I don’t hear much about Saki’s story “Dusk.”

Warning: The following summary is to refresh your memory. If you haven’t read the story, stop here.

The story is set on a bench in Hyde Park. Norman Gortsby sits down at dusk.

“The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonized with his present mood. Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the defeated.” We can hide our wounds, our dashed hopes and shabby clothes in the twilight.

“On the bench by his side was an elderly gentleman with a drooping air of defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything.” Gortsby pictures him in “some bleak lodging where his ability to pay a weekly bill was the beginning and end of the interest he inspired.”

The old guy leaves, and a nicely dressed young man sits down and tells Gortsby he can’t find his hotel. His usual hotel had been torn down. A cabby recommended another. The young man said he stepped out to buy a cake of soap — he hates hotel soap — and he had a drink. Now he can’t remember the name of the hotel or the street.

The story is headed in the direction of a loan for cab fare, possibly more.

Is it improbable?

Not at all, Gortsby reassures the young man. Gortsby says the same thing happened to him in a foreign capital. He remembered the hotel was near a canal, found the canal and followed it to the hotel.

Of course, Gortsby tells the young man, the weak point in your story is that you can’t produce the soap.

The young man checks his pockets, mutters and runs. Gortsby ponders the irony. The soap was the one convincing line in the story, yet it brought the young man to grief.

Gortsby gets up to leave and sees a cake of soap on the ground.

Gortsby finally finds the young man in a crowd. He lends him money and returns his soap. It’s a lesson, Gortsby tells himself, about judging people harshly when we know only circumstances, not the facts.

Gortsby returns through the park and sees the old guy searching around the bench they had shared. The old guy was looking for his lost soap.

We think we are good at reading the motives of other people, and that thought can be poisonous. Saki’s masterpiece is the antidote.

I could go on about how Saki handles irony: his characters go from savoring irony to being flustered and back again. But Christopher Morley, who edited Saki’s stories, wrote a line that cuts off any more sermonizing.

He wrote: “There is no greater compliment to be paid the right kind of friend than to hand him Saki, without comment.”