TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Danutė Kalinauskaitė

betraying, clutching at a hat, having lost their calm, not sleeping at night, afraid to get caught and brought out into the light, but we will bring them out, we will… An hour had gone by. Still… The witnesses gave testimony, but it was as if they conspired to speak into clouds. Someone, having seen a “fact”, admitted that, for all intents and purposes, that was only the form of a fact… a fog. Mist. Nobody gave humanly reasonable testimony. In the end, heat and fatigue have their effect – they smother the most lively interest, the poor elderly and the orphans swelling from starvation. Even the victim, due to a “serious deterioration of health”, without even taking part in the proceedings, collapsed at home, his palace by Bay Leaf, lying on a Louis XIV sofa, the hand of the patron hanging from the armrest like a rag: one hundred thousand in the culo, and not a whiff of the thief – to whom, by the devil, is God responsible? In the courtroom, the judge’s double chin quivered as he pronounced his judgement: “There is not enough evidence to categorically and beyond reasonable doubt constitute a criminal act that would allow us to declare the suspect guilty. The case is decided!” The blow of a hammer. A sunlit cloud of dust rose into the air. Butyrkinas pulled his panama onto his thinning hair… When the whole sweaty current spilled out into the corridor, the two of them couldn’t avoid a face to face meeting, though happily, at a fitting distance.

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