Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer
Tango of Death
God, so it says “Be-ee!” We went caroling with that tiny manger and to the Zamarstyn and Lychakiv cemeteries and had incredible success everywhere. Even Yosko went with us, and although he didn’t sing carols, he played along on his violin. We sang carols in three languages and even went to Vynnyky, which was a German settlement, and caroled for the Germans, and they couldn’t have been happier, because already just mostly older people were there, because their young people had gone to the Vaterland, and there was no one to carol to them in their native language until we did. Oh-hhh, we stuffed our bellies there! They even gave us some for the road. But Yas was a thin pole, he had long legs, long arms, and climbed trees like a monkey, and there wasn’t any ditch that he couldn’t jump across,
and happy, and whoever doesn’t believe it can put his ear to his stomach and listen to them happily cackling, and we pressed our ears and really heard some kind of clucking, similar to a chicken’s, and Wolf laughed and his belly twitched. Wolf was a master of all trades and knew how to make a sailboat and an airplane with a motor, and during the winter he made tiny mangers, the kind with three kings and a tiny baby Jesus, as though they were all alive, and a tiny donkey, a tiny ox, and a tiny horse nodding their heads, and when Wolf pulled a string, the tiny baby Jesus would wave his tiny arms and legs and whimper “Be-ee!” Mrs. Rita said that it was a sin to mock the baby Jesus, but we couldn’t understand what she meant, becausewhat kind of mocking can be going on there. Because it was an infant, it can’t preach the Word of
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