By Leo Rosten

About the author: Leo Rosten is best remembered for his stories about the night-school " prodigy" Hyman Kaplan (first published in The new Yorker in the 1930s, under the pseudonim Leonard Q. Ross. Rosten was a successful screenwriter. He wrote the story for The dark Corner. He is listed as one of the writers for Captain Newman M.D. adapted from his novel of the same title. Other films: All Trough the Night (1942) (story), The Conspirators (1944) (screenplay), The Velvet Touch (1948), Sleep My Love (1948) (novel) (screenplay), Double Dynamite (1951) (story), Walk East on Becon (1952), and Mister Cory (1957) (story).He is also well-known for his encyclopedic volume The Joys of Yiddish (1968), a guide to the Yiddish language and to Jewish culture (as well as a source for anecdotes and Jewish humor.

Among his own many quotations are: " Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense, " " We see things as we are, not as they are, " and " I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."

In 1935, Rosten married Priscilla Ann " Pam" Mead (1911-1959), sister of anthropologist Margaret Mead. They had two daughters.Leo's and Pam's marriage ended in divorce. Rosten's second wife, whom he married in 1960, was Gertrude Zimmerman (1915-1995).

Ivan was a timid little man - so timid that the villagers called him '" Pigeon" or mocked him with the title, " Ivan the Terrible". Every night Ivan stopped in at the saloon, which was on the edge of the village cemetery. Ivan never crossed the cemetery to get to his lonely shack on the other side. The path through the cemetery would save him many minutes, but he had never taken it - not even in the full light of noon.

Late one winter's night, when bitter wind and snow beat against the saloon, the customers took up the familiar mockery. “Ivan’s mother was scared by a canary when she carried him in her womb." ''Ivan the Terrible - Ivan the Terribly Timid One."

Ivan's sickly protest only fed their taunts, and they jeered cruelly when the young Cossack lieutenant flung his horrid challenge at their quarry.

" You are a pigeon, Ivan. You’ll walk all around the cemetery in this fiendish cold – but you dare not cross the cemetery."

Ivan murmured, " The cemetery is nothing to cross. Lieutenant It is nothing but earth, like all the other earth."

The lieutenant cried, " A challenge, then! Cross the cemetery tonight, Ivan, and I'll give you five rubles - five gold rubles! "

Perhaps it was the vodka. Perhaps it was the temptation of the five gold rubles. No one ever knew why Ivan, moistening his lips, said suddenly: “Yes, Lieutenant. I'll cross the cemetery! "

The saloon echoed with their disbelief. The lieutenant winked to the men and unbuckled his saber. " Here, Ivan. When you get to the earner of the cemetery, in front of the biggest tomb, stick the saber into the ground. In the morning we shall 20 there. And if the saber is in the ground - five gold rubles to you! "

Ivan took the saber. The men drank a toast: " To Ivan the Terrible! " They roared with laughter.

The wind howled around Ivan as he closed the door of the saloon behind him. The cold-was knife-sharp. He buttoned his long coat and crossed the dirt road. He could hear the lieutenant’s voice, louder than the rest, yelling after him, " Five rubles, pigeon! If you live! ”

Ivan pushed the cemetery gate open. " He walked fast. " Earth, just earth...like any other earth." But the darkness was a massive dread. “Five gold-rubles…” the wind was cruel and the saber was like ice in his hands. Ivan shivered under the long, thick coat and broke into a limping run.

He recognized the large tomb. He mast-have sobbed - that was the sound that was drowned in the wind. And he kneeled, cold and terrified, and drove the saber into the hard ground. With his fist, he beat it down to the hilt. It was done. The cemetery... the challenge... five rubles.

Ivan started to rise from his knees. But he could not move. Something held him. Something gripped him in an unyielding-and implacable hold. Ivan tugged and lurched and pulled - gasping in his panic, shaken by a monstrous fear. But something held Ivan. He cried out in terror. Then made senseless gurgling noises.

They found Ivan, next morning, on the ground in front of the tomb that was in the center of the cemetery. His face was that of a frozen man's, but of a man killed by some nameless horror. And the lieutenant's saber was in the ground where Ivan pounded it - through the dragging folds of his long coat. '

" The Story of An Hour"