Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Yuri Vynnychuk

had far too little free time saved him from that research, so just going for coffee with her was entirely sufficient to sustain friendly relations and to acquire information about the arrival of new books. Once when he finally went to sleep long past midnight, leaving his papers on the kitchen table, which late in the evening served as his office, and in the morning finding a hot frying pan on his papers spattered with grease, fromwhich his father- in-law was scarfing down an omelet, liberally covered with scallions, blocking himself from the world with his newspaper, this turned out to have been the last straw for him. With unceremonious boldness, which he had never dared before, but with an obliging “excuse me,” he plucked his papers from under the frying pan, shook them over the table in

with which he surrounded herself from every direction like warning flags; overall, her entire wardrobe, which was designed to hide all the protuberances of her body like a nun, was a warning flag, because she was waiting for “serious relationships;” “flirting didn’t interest her,” but “Mr. Myrko is a very pleasant person,” “you can trust him,” “it seems to me sometimes that we’ve known each other for a really long time” – and a long, promising smile, one more little flag that began to gleam on the horizon, more, with a telling caution: “No one, no one, no one – just him alone.” Yarosh looked at her palewhite arms, covered with fine little red strands of hair, and began to imagine her legs, maybe just as hairy, and this even elicited the desire in him to research this continent not studied by anyone yet with all its hidden nooks; just the fact that he

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