Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

The Death of Samusis

“I had no right to travel to Amsterdam,” the young man thought to himself. The thing is that only a week ago, Samusis the younger had celebrated his birthday in the following manner: he flew to Amsterdam, popped into his favorite house of pleasure, spent some hour and a half in the company of smooth-skinned Celeste, and returned to New York the same night on the red-eye flight. “Oh, how good it is to have money, youth, health, yard- wide shoulders, six feet of height, an intelligence that could boil water, and all the rest,” thought Samusis the younger onboard the Boeing 747, pushing back his plush seat in the nonsmoking section. A meaningless smile flashed across his lips. So much water under the bridge! Well no, not in the sense of time; time here is besides the point – the difference is the way one feels about oneself. Samusis the younger reached for the wallet in his pocket, took out of it a crumpled roach, turned his face towards the crosswalk, and lit up using a plastic Bic lighter and, sheltering the roach from the rain in his palm, took a deep toke. He sensed a pleasant iciness in his lungs. “It seems that I am an incurable Romantic after all,” he thought to himself. “Hey, pal. How much are your umbrellas?” above his ear the policeman’s voice thundered…. And so we will leave Samusis the younger in his, to put it mildly,

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