Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Louis Armand

‘Five o’clock. Same thing again. Hungarians this time. Go home, there won’t be any meat for you today. ’ I got up and went over to the frosted glass and would’ve shut the door except that right at that moment the woman outside laughed. It was a nervous kind of laugh- ter. All expectation and uncertainty. ‘Five‐fifteen,’ the man’s voice said. ‘ Any comrades from Cheskoslovnikia. Go home, there won’t be any meat for you today. Then it’s the Poles turn, the Lats, Lithuans, Estonians, the Ukrainians, the Moldovans, the Belo- ruskies, Georgians, Cossacks, Azeris, Dagestanis, Chech- ens, Kazakhs—you name it. Finally, the man raised his voice, it’s seven o’clock. Everyone left in the queue is stamping their feet impatiently. It’s down to the Rus- sians now. You can see in their faces a grim Bolshevik sense of destiny. The chosen ones! The elect! They’ve been standing in line for hours. It’s the national pastime, after all. How else can you be expected to properly ex- amine the depths of your soul in a workers’ paradise? Think of Turgenev—Dostoievsky— Pushkin! There’s a

moral in all of this, believe you me.’ The man laughed, the woman laughed.

‘Now picture this. It’s seven in the morning. Let’s say, the week before Easter. Cold even for that time of year. The door of the butcher’s shop opens. The butcher stands in the doorway, arms raised, or let’s say spread wide. Three cheers for the revolution! he cries. Ai! Ai!

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