Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

The Combinations

Ai! The queue surges forward. The butcher thrusts out his right hand and stops everyone in their tracks. Tova- rishchi russkiĭ! he says. Go home. There isn’t any meat today. ’ The woman giggled. ‘A little while later,’ the man’s voice continued, ‘two old veterans, who’d been in line half the night to get their meat ration, are standing on the platform at Prazhska- ya Metro station. Neither says a thing. After about ten minutes the train still hasn’t come. One of them spits on the ground, turns to the other, and says: Goddamn I leant against the door so that it clicked into place. ‘Mr Němec?’ I jerked away from the sound of laughter and saw Volta’s secretary advance towards me and stop halfway across the room. I looked from the secretary to the clock on the wall and back to the secretary: it was three minutes past ten. ‘The doctor will see you straightaway,’ he said, in what I suppose he imagined was a withering tone of voice, but sounded like a wet rag that’d only been half wrung‐out. I walked past him into the inner sanctum. What else had he expected me to do? ‘So,’ Volta said by way of greeting, directing me to the chair opposite him. ‘How are we progressing?’ zhids! They always scam the best deal. ’ ‘That’s not funny ,’ the woman shrieked.

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