Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

A Souvenir from New York

my elder sons. Forgive me, Gotynyu, for bothering you when I know how busy you are. You have more things to do than Stalin, and your heart feels as heavy as his. So don’t listen to me, do your own things, I’m just talking. All my life I was silent, and now I want to talk. As it is written in the Torah: when the time is right, the words will come. And so now the time is right, and the words come, but no one wants to listen to them. Everyone just wants to talk. So I’m thinking, what happened to people? Cain rose up against Abel. And yet didn’t we all live under the same sun and didn’t the same rain pour down on us? We used to be all together and now we are dispersed to the four corners of the world, just like after the Tower of Babel. I know that some became like this from fear, while others - from innate malice. White became black, and black became white. We had a bookkeeper in our kolkhoz, Kuzma - the quietest, most peaceful person in the world, the kind who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Etta used to say “Kuzma - a guter man” . So what do you think? He became the first politzei in our town. He’s as cruel as a mad dog. Yet Lyonka, the son of Tamarka the saleswoman, who was always a bully and never missed a fight, saved Rachel’s little granddaughter by covering her with his own body when the policemen practiced shooting on her. Oh, Gotynyu , what’s going on? The

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