Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

Svyatoslav Loginov

for judgement and cast him down to hell by now. And they certainly would not have supplied him with travel money. Presently, Ilya Ilych was taking a closer look at himself, as much as the poor lighting allowed. He did not like his body, in the last thirty years it has become unpleasant: flabby, with an unhealthy, soapy-looking tone. It failed to serve him properly entirely too frequently, and tortured him with near-constant pain in the last few years. And it was still the same now, except the ache under his right ribs had disappeared, and the solid, alien-feeling lump had melted away. Which was still money, as they used to say forty years ago. And once again his thoughts, running in circles, turned to the money, with which one could apparently purchase wooden poles around here. Ilya Ilych pulled out a third coin and asked, as if speaking to a living being: – What about clothes, do you think you could put something together for me? He placed the coin at his feet, waited for about a minute, sighed: – Guess not… I’ll pretend to be a nudist for the time being. His eyes found the far pole, and he shook his head – sure as rain, he would soon lose sight of it – but he decided to leave it where it was, to mark the place of his initial landing. He patted his sides with his palms,

276