Chapter 12
Episode 12
Suprsnyi sako hurta stlekud i bybudkiu jaima idpanijos pas carle drsugd 23centu rukymui gurtsi pruttuko sako vyraxrado trim fienom uzfirbudi bet pas vwrge izaurs spsustojo 33cn parase ujrsinox geraspaliukr 100ix manes bsnde gydyt nedave ..xidziu sako ji yirk teturi jjk mdnesi jsu buvo badavo tai duprsto yik artimi ....ka duprato uspanijos bybixkih garbe mmmmm..kkrrrrrt.
The booth stood at the edge of the old market where the glass had been swept into a glittering mound, sharp as the morning, and Suprsnyi said to throw it all in—the glasses, the loom, the winter, the whole broken inventory—into the little shed, then take the night bus to Spain, to old Carle, who had twenty-three cents of ours for that summer of cigarettes none of us could remember accurately anymore. Twenty-three cents, he said, enough for a packet and a match, enough to light the fuse of whatever was still burning under the ribs.
A man had gone before us, found three women to earn his passage, and near the wolf—the gray one at the edge of the forest, the one in the lullaby—his watch stopped at thirty-three centimeters past midnight, the hands frozen like a frozen scream. He wrote it all down on the back of a good cigarette paper. That's the kind of writing that lasts, I thought. Ash and spit and a pulse.
They wouldn't treat me. A hundred from me, they said—a hundred euros, a hundred days, a hundred white pills—and still the doctor shook his head and turned away, his coat smelling of corridors. Not for you, Lopas. Not for your kind. And I stood in the hallway with the twenty-three cents in my palm, warm from my own skin, and I understood what the booth was for. You put the useless thing inside and you close the door, and the glass stays where it is, shining, patient, waiting for someone else's bare feet.
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