Shalamov: ‘In the Night’

 A recent note about Faulkner’s story “The Bear” prompted some doubts and second thoughts.

The note focused on Faulkner’s use of details — his showing, rather than telling.

But there’s a related art in conveying a story: pacing.

One example is Valam Shalamov’s “In the Night.”

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t read this story and think you might, stop here.

This story is only 1,300 words or so, but it unfolds slowly. 

We are looking over the shoulder of Glebov, who is with a group of men in a camp. As the men go out at night, led by Bagretsov, it becomes clear they are in a prison camp.

It slowly becomes clear that the men are going to rob a grave. When a prisoner dies, the other prisoners can’t let warm clothes and boots go to waste. Sometimes, cigarettes are found in a dead man’s pockets.

Bagretsov cuts his hand, digging stones from the cairn. The bleeding won’t stop.

Glebov examines the wound and says, “Poor coagulation.” 

“Are you a doctor?” Bagretsov asks sarcastically. And then it hits you: Of course he was a doctor, before the gulag. That’s the kind of place a gulag is.

Details make a story. But they aren’t just reported. A story, as opposed to a report, is allowed to unfold at its own pace.

Shalamov was a master at pacing.

• Source: Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories, edited by Irving Howe and Ilana Wiener Howe; New York: Bantam Books, 1983, pp. 159-62.