Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

The Death of Samusis

somewhat different aims, are we not? We can no longer be wowed by psychological realism, n’est ce pas? And, truth be told, we already find modernism repulsive. (I’ve had the occasion to previously address in these pages my feelings about post-modernism and the new sentimentality.) And so, the telephone conversation with his son left a particularly unpleasant sensation in Samusis the elder’s mouth, but we will not here describe his subsequent thoughts and actions (all the more because in another four and a half hours, he will no longer be among the living,) but instead, let us jump in our thoughts to the year 1970, when Samusis the elder himself was not in the least a fool for rolling a crisp dollar bill into a short straw and, having previously chopped up the white substance on the surface of the mirror, pinching one of his nostrils with his index finger, and with the other nostril inhaling the aforementioned powder through the same dollar straw to the sounds of his favorite song, «Within you and without you,» wafting from the single working speaker of his decrepit old stereo. Have you jumped in time with us? Very well then. And now, once again in thought only, let us jump two and a half hours ahead, when Samusis the elder, wearing only his tidy whities, is chasing through the corridor of the dormitory after a cackling brunette with a pretty blue vein on her left temple. Then the brunette, having shut her eyes, clucks on the mangy carpet of her cramped room while Samusis the elder, hiking up her mini-skirt, labors to

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