Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

A Light in the Night

whatsoever in being true to life. Ilya Ilych deposited the ruined ear onto God’s lap and carefully descended back to the garden. As he did so, he noticed that his stick had poked through the cloud cover in several places, with familiar grey cotton nothingness showing through the openings. – Ha! – said Ilya Ilych loudly. – I’ve got a feeling that filthy lucre had something to do with all this! He extracted a penny, tossed it into God’s lap, and ordered: – Fix whatever I messed up here, right quick! The patches on the cloud turned out to be completely undetectable, however the replacement ear looked entirely too new, a pinkish doll-like blot on the chalky surface of the statue that involuntarily drew the eye. Ilya Ilych frowned, but decided to leave it alone. He gingerly traversed the heavenly garden, studying the kneeling angels with their arms stretched in adulation toward the throne, angels that were soundlessly singing or else playing trumpets taken by force from alabaster young pioneers 4 , truculent archangels, guarding the perimeter of this miniature heaven with swords in hand… The word “mini-heaven” popped into Ilya Ilych’s head, and he marveled at its appropriateness. 4 The Young Pioneers were a Soviet-era youth organization, a stepping stone to the Komsomol and eventually the Communist Party. The trumpet, along with a scarlet neck-tie, was one of the standard attributes of the Young Pio- neers, which fact is being parodied by the author here.

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