Day: February 10, 2026

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

off a stool lightly for one of her advanced years, and beckoned them. She opened the cage door, then the elevator door, and ushered them in. She waited patiently while Jen, Lona and Maria assembled their baggage. Three persons plus operator appeared to be the elevator’s capacity. Then she closed the doors carefully and pulled a brass lever. Grunting with effort, the box lifted. “Three into seventeen,” Maria calculated as the box jerked upward. “How many trips will this thing make, do you suppose, before we’re all upstairs?”
Ordinarily, I would find this hotel an intriguing anecdote, thought Jennifer, something to tell the folks back home. Right now, I just find it all an intolerable delay. She was becoming quite adept at all the procedures. As she exited at the fifth floor, she went immediately to the dezhurnaya’s desk and rapped smartly on the table. The clerk, another septagenarian, was nodding off in an easy chair. “Key to room 503,” she said briskly in Russian, and proffered her card. This woman could be someone’s grandmother, she thought, and though it’s difficult to view her as the enemy, a nosy floor clerk who noticed that Volodya was Soviet, not Canadian, would be a nuisance or even fatal.
Jennifer opened the door to her room. It was dark and close but not what she would have picked for a briefing session. There was a private bathroom, she discovered with relief, and opened the door thankfully. It held a square, chipped, pedestal basin, a small bath, and gigantic toilet that sat lordly on a dais. Its tank was secured onto the wall above the bowl and there was a chain to pull that worked the flush. Either the last guest had pulled too enthusiastically or the fixture’s age had rendered it incontinent. It had overflowed onto the floor.
“I’d better start working on getting this cleaned up right away,” she muttered. “I don’t want staff in the room while Volodya’s here—that is, if I could even get staff to clean it up.” Once again she was talking to herself—problems, delays. And underneath it all—fear.
Consequently, it was nearly six o’clock by the time Jennifer finally left the hotel, walked briskly along the riverbank, and turned onto the same bridge they had driven across on her way to Red Square. Possibly there was another telegraph office than the one she had already discovered near the east wing of the Hotel Rossiya, but it would save time to head directly toward the familiar one. As she walked, she thought how to word the telegram: “Returned to Moscow. Hotel Bucharest.” That part was easy. Then what? “Jazz with Ella” and maybe she’d better add…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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excerpt

Group Tour
Give the little bugger something, Harold said. He won’t leave us
alone ’til you do.
They had just exited the market across from the hotel. Both
wanted to stretch their legs before dinner, which according to the
itinerary was to be served aboard a boat cruise to a pagoda of apparent
significance. The frenzied pace of the market left Winnie feeling
dizzy. Unfamiliar scents always caused her to gag.
Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the afternoon glare when the boy
touched her on the shoulder. He thrust forward an unwashed
palm.
– Haroo, ’Merican, he said. Straw adhered to his unruly thatch
like dust to a mop.
– Ca-na-di-an! she corrected, hoping louder would somehow
improve the youth’s linguistic skills. It hadn’t worked anywhere else.
– How much should I give him? she asked, but her husband had
wandered ahead.
The boy tugged at her sleeve.
– Hold your horses, sonny, she said.
Coins pooled at the bottom of the handbag she’d purchased in
whatever country they were visiting the previous Tuesday. All she
could recall was that it had been Day 10, halfway through their holiday.
And that Harold had kept her awake most of the night with
gastrointestinal difficulties.
Their tour leader Karen told them not to worry if they forgot how
to convert the currency. Monopoly money, she’d called it.
Winnie handed the boy a coin bearing the profile of an erstwhile
emperor. The youngster appeared disappointed, so she poured the
works into his excited hands. All the countries mixed in together…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

Constantine Cavafy

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To Stay
It must have been one in the morning,
or one thirty.
In one corner of the tavern,
behind the wooden partition.
Except for us two, the place was empty.
Barely lit by a kerosene lamp.
A sleep-deprived waiter was dozing by the door.
No one would see us. And we had
excited ourselves so much,
we were unwilling to be cautious.
Our clothes were half open, and there were not many,
since that divine July was very hot.
Enjoyment of the flesh between
half-open clothes,
a quick glimpse of the memory which
has lasted twenty-six years, and has now come
to stay in this poetry.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562856

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume VI

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THE LIFT OPERATOR

However, the lift operator isn’t surprised; he had seen the same
cloud, though a little darker and deep red in colour, in the mirror
of the elevator, when tiredness and sleep overtake him, pressing
the floor buttons, taking familiar faces of the high-rise offices
or their clients, con-artists, crafty, imaginative or simple-minded
villagers, lawyers with briefcases, tailors, book sellers, cigarette
sellers, unfortunate people who have slowly lost their last virtue
of loneliness, their last dignity of silence, ready to kneel, to beg,
to lie, to flatter, for a little more bread, for half a cigarette, for
a quarter of a kiss, for a thousandth of glory — always unready
for the whole of Eros, for the whole death, for the whole
sacrifice and glory.
And the café man is always there with his tray full of empty or
full cups and glasses
always minding his tray, not seeing the faces and the lift
operator observing nothing, though seen everything
responsible for the ascent or descent
responsible for every stop
responsible for the floor numbers
even the office numbers along the hallways
where the internal telephones are located…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763785