Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

Katia Kapovich

“How deficient?” we’d all like to know. “Lower than most children. Definitely lower than Galileo’s brother.” That’s when we all remember that Galileo has a younger brother, Rafa. “Did his father take him too?” Diana asks Malcolm. Diana is the only girl among the “Inseparables”. She’s been taking Tae Kwan Do and can give anyone a kick in the head. Malcolm nods and Diana loses her cool; out of indignation, she’s about to burst into tears. Girls are always that way, even the ones that do martial arts; they first have to cry their eyes out. So we give her some time. “That’s all crap – wardrobes, automobiles.... Mes enfents, what mush have you been reading? Old detective stories?” Mirsky asks, raising his eyes up at the sky. “I propose we poison his ass.” We all look at him with respect, mixed with horror, and he continues: “This is the iron-proof method! I tell you for sure! Listen to a grownup!” Mirsky is in fact older than the rest of us, almost by a year, because he was born in December and wasn’t allowed to enroll in school with his peers. Mirsky already has braces on his teeth, which he kneads all the time

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