Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

A Light in the Night

one end, making it clear that the pine tree it came from was sawed down only recently. Ilya Ilych gingerly inhaled the vigorous piney smell and said: – Lively! A strange word indeed to come out of the mouth of a dead person, but how else to describe the sharp aroma of pine cutting through the distilled air of insubstantial, jelly-like nothingness? Ilya Ilych now looked upon the bulging money bag without his earlier sarcasm. Money with power such as this evokes the respect of even the most unmercenary person. It wasn’t even about the fact that he now had a landmark at his disposal. The important thing was that in a world utterly devoid of material quality there was now the smell of sap and the roughness of uncut wood. – Could I have another? – inquired Ilya Ilych, putting out a second penny. The stake appeared instantly, much like the first, but without any bark and with a small hole in a spot where a knot used to be. Without a doubt, these were perfectly real poles, the very same kind Ilya Ilych had used to mark the site of a future road when he’d worked as a topographer on highway construction projects in his youth. Ilya Ilych left the second marker where it appeared,

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