TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Dragonfly

The plot was like this: a samurai was listening at a door. He was listening, listening, and suddenly some women appeared. They blundered onto him and started laughing. The samurai turned around and stuck his tongue out at them. The women vanished, and I didn’t understand a thing. Then I bought some books and began to look for traces of the tongue. At first, in Japan, later, in China. So far, my findings have been meagre. I discovered just one little short story: A Japanese man loves a Japanese woman. At first, not so much, later, more strongly. From a distance, without her knowing. The man occasionally considers confessing, or kissing her, but checks himself at once: he is, after all, Japanese, and couldn’t possibly behave so insolently. But he could easily stick out his tongue or make a face. Just like that. 3. I’m standing in front of the mirror, pulling a pug face. I’m not pretty. Well, out of a hundred women I could maybe squeeze into the top twenty. By force, as one of my old friends said. A quarter of a million live in our city alone – into which thousand there could I squeeze?

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