Trafika Europe 3 - Latvian Sojourn

It’s too much. Both throw themselves into battle, bray and try to butt with their tips, night rains full of cuffs and slaps. Footwear all around is disturbed. When the pastele and the bast shoe are finished, one feels that they are tired and a little loose in the strings. Overall the bast shoe is starting to fall apart. The pastele is so smug that it maintains the last word. It smiles and calls after the bast shoe, whose broken bits run each in a different direction: “Away! And don’t come back!” After that our heroine shakes off the mud that dirtied the threshold and looks intently into the moonlight, which like the lantern of a mischievous stone’s throw brings in slight sadness over some friend, who drowned in manure, where the foolish puppy had carried it.

Note: A pastala is a sandal made from one piece of leather, gathered up and tied with a thong.

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