Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

Naum Vaiman

could not have risen higher. Even a year later, people I barely knew would come up to me and ask: well, did you shag Kharitonova? I would invariably react with pugnaciousness, something that, for those quick on the uptake, was incontrovertible proof of my success. I then invited her to an evening with Voznesensky: after the boxing ring, it is safe then to move on to poems – this combination works like a charm – then to Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” at the Actors’ Guild, a closed viewing, boy did I make out like a bandit, scoring some tickets back channel! I “caught up to” Pasolini and his “gospel” only thirty years later, when these black and white (in reality, they are straw-colored, straw-colored!) stony landscapes, on which in the future I would be crawling with a rifle in hand (who could have known!) and this prophet of resentment, who in recent days has been taunting my imagination, interested me little; I sat close to her, neither breathing nor thinking; if I take her hand in mine now, will it be perceived as boldness on my part or childishness? Alas, on this note, our joint forays into society were interrupted – she was now in the final stretch leading up to the defense of her dissertation, but we would see each other from time to time when I came to visit Pyor Naumovich. Of course, I was infatuated, but at the same time, I sensed a strange atrophy of feeling. In her presence, it was as though I submerged into an ethereal cloud

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