Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Tamangur + 11 Poems

of their mouths so strangely and awkwardly.

Together they go in to the kitchen. Grandmother unpacks the carp, which she had ordered from the butcher weeks ahead of time, as she did every year, and which the child has just brought back from the village. It’s immediately clear: the fish is too big for two people. It’s their first Christmas without Grandfather. A year earlier, he had suddenly flown the coop, that coward, as Grandmother put it. Kasimir and his wife can’t come this year. Father and Mother have moved away. Only the two of them are left, the old woman and the child. And Chan the dog. That’s why Grandmother also invited Elsa who lives in the yellow house and sometimes gives her a hand picking berries or washing windows or with the ironing. One shouldn’t be alone on evenings like this. The doorbell rings at seven on the dot. Elsa steps into the room like an angel in fur. She has woven tinsel into her gray braids and fastened them on top of her head with paperclips. The child is a little afraid of Elsa, but Grandmother finds her refreshing. With most people, you already know what they’re going to say, it’s deadly dull and only bearable if you put on a friendly face and nod off inside, Grandmother says. Elsa, on the other

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