The main setting for "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" is Gottesman's house in a Midwestern American city. It is old and cramped, with narrow stairs and a slim bathtub. Its fireplace is artificial. Even so, an enormous rhinoceros moves in, lying on the floor in front of the fireplace like a dog. It loves bathing, especially with Epsom salts, and somehow it manages to make its way up the narrow, winding stairway and to squeeze into the small tub. It explains that it is a unicorn and therefore can do such impossible things, but Gottesman insists that he is just a remarkable rhinoceros.

Touched on briefly is the zoo where Gottesman meets the rhinoceros, who already knows who he is. Gottesman's sevenyear-old niece wanted to see tigers at the zoo, and the tigers were opposite the pen from the rhinoceros. The pen is dirty and unpleasant, as...