I noted it was a picture postcard: Who went to Europe without asking me along? I recognized Alyson’s script. Surely she’s not in Budapest again. I observed the date it was written: 3 Nov. 09. Well, snail mail indeed!
I recalled that Alyson had asked me if I’d received her postcard back in mid-November. When there was no sign of it for over a month, we assumed it was lost forever. So when it showed up in late April, we wondered where it had been. I decided there had to be a story, something in the style of P. D. James (or is it E. G. Bulwer-Lytton?).
The Story
Hotel Gellert, Budapest, Nov. 3, 2009. Andor, the lonely desk clerk, accepted the postcards from the comely American tourist with regret, knowing that she was about to depart. If only they had met sooner. But at least he had the cards, which carried, if ever so faintly, the scent of her perfume. Could he bear to part with them? Of course not. He slid them into the inner pocket of his jacket.
Up the Danube, April 17, 2010. Inspector Kovacs scowled as he gazed at the corpse retrieved that morning from the turgid waters of the Danube just off the sandy shore near tourist-thronged Szentendre. It saddened him to see a young life snuffed out so early, so needlessly. Patting the body, hoping for clues as to what could have driven the youth to take his own life, he found a plastic-wrapped packet in the breast pocket of the Hotel Gellert jacket the man was wearing. How curious — postcards. Art Nouveau Boffo Cupolas, he read, puzzling out the unfamiliar English text. Dated: 3 Nov 09. Five months ago. What had led the young man to keep them? Ah well, he thought, I’ll post them on my way home.
Not the Story
There is a problem with the preceding scenario, though. My card is postmarked November 4, the day Alyson handed it over at the reception desk. So Andor is not the culprit, and we hope he is in good health, however complicated his love life. I’ll have to concoct a more devious plot, perhaps involving Gabor, the postal clerk, and Marika, his beautiful but larcenous girlfriend, who persuaded him to steal a bag of mail after seeing her boss Ferenc pack up a diamond bracelet and post it to his mistress. Stay tuned.
Epilogue
My packet from Germany arrived the next day — a page of stamps promoting Esperanto, which was all the rage a century ago — and, as usual, merely left me hungering for more. That’s the problem with — and the lure of —poster stamps: one can never be sure he has them all!
Wm. M. Senkus coined the term Alphabetilately in 1997. His current collecting passion is poster stamps of the 1914 Leipzig International Exhibition of the Book Industry and Graphic Arts. F&W post to follow.
Alyson Kuhn sent six postcards from Budapest. Five of her correspondents, including Wm. M. Senkus, have checked in to acknowledge receipt of their cards in mid-April.
Happy to report that my sixth correspondent has just kuhnfirmed receipt of his card. I hope we can look forward to further philatelic fantasies from Wm. M. Senkus. I’ve begun an alphagram commemorating this first one: Alyson’s Budapest cards’ delay engenders flight of goulash hallucination …!