Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

The Combinations

ing Ninja, the Space Cruiser, the Hurricane. They were heavy, blunting themselves on the far wall— thudding into the window—nosediving into the parquet. I tore and folded ’til my head became numb with the point- lessness of it: an idiot casting unreadable messages into the void. Like the men in the Karelian gulags. The way Blecha said they’d sometimes draw straws to cut off a finger and tie it to anything that’d float—a bottle, some foam‐ rubber, a piece of wood—in the vain hope that someone downriver would find it, and know they were there. And so, irrationally, I waited for Hájek’s ghost to re‐appear.

*Except maybe Adolf Eichmann, four centuries late.

_____

217