Ghost Letters by Stephen Alter

reversed.”
    â€œHow much is it worth?” said Gil.
    â€œA thousand dollars at least.”
    â€œWhoa!” Nargis whispered.
    Prescott turned the page and showed them a set of stamps with Alexander Hamilton’s face on them. Another page had nothing but Benjamin Franklin. Even though they were worth a lot of money, Gil couldn’t understand why anyone would get excited by stamps with pictures of dead patriots and presidents.
    â€œLet me show you the first collection I ever made,” said Prescott, unlocking one of the lower drawers of the desk. He took out a smaller, scuffed album with a leather cover and thick black pages. The album contained more than two hundred stamps from America and other countries like Mexico, France and England.
    â€œWhen I started, I collected everything I could find and stuck them in this album in random order. Later, I started to get more specialized. Now I collect mostly nineteenth-century American stamps.”
    Gil flipped through the pages of Prescott’s first album, which had descriptions and dates written in white ink on the black pages. The handwriting was childish but neat.
    â€œEvery stamp is a story,” his grandfather said. “You see that one with the yellow butterfly? It’s from Vietnam, or Indochine, as it used to be called under the French. When I was still in seventh grade, back in 1953, my father got a letter from a man in Saigon. I soaked the stamp off the envelope and added it to my collection. Whenever I see that butterfly, I think of that day, and how naive I was. I’d never heard of Vietnam before. A few years later, it was a place we’d never forget. A lot of my friends were fighting over there, and I was in jail as a conscientious objector.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” asked Gil.
    â€œA pacifist,” said Prescott. “I refused to be drafted and join the army.”
    This was something else Gil had never known about his grandfather. For a moment, he forgot about the stamps.
    â€œHow long were you in jail?” he asked, intrigued.
    â€œSix months,” Prescott replied. “After that I did Alternative Service, teaching at a school for the blind in Alabama. It was the most important experience of my life, teaching Shakespeare in Braille.”
    â€œWhat’s in the other albums?” Nargis asked.
    â€œMostly American stamps. These are from an earlier period.” Gil could see that the dates were printed on the outside of each album. 1870–1879. 1880–1889. Unlocking a second drawer, Prescott took out an album embossed with ornate gold patterns.
    â€œHere’s one that might interest you,” he said. “I’ve got a complete collection of stamps from the kingdom of Ajeebgarh, which no longer exists. It’s part of India now. The maharajah issued his own postage until the British forced him to stop. I got interested in Ajeebgarh because that was where Ezekiel Finch had his tea estates. He died there in 1879. Among our family papers we had a lot of his old letters that carried these stamps and I’ve been able to put together a complete collection.”
    Nargis nudged Gil with her elbow and the two of them exchanged startled glances. Most of the stamps in the album had pictures of the maharajah on them. Gil recognized his profile from the postage on the genie’s envelope.
    â€œMaharajah Lajawab Singh II,” said Prescott. “He was an interesting man, who wanted to turn his kingdom into a modern state. The post and telegraph office in Ajeebgarh was one of the most efficient in India. Lajawab Singh II had all sorts of trouble with the British, who thought he was an upstart, full of dangerousideas. He insisted on issuing his own postage and brought the telegraph to Ajeebgarh. Supposedly, Lajawab Singh was also negotiating with the Russians to export his tea. Eventually the British invaded Ajeebgarh and took over the kingdom by force. It’s sometimes