Leoš pawed about the room after that bottle of wine. But wine won’t drown it. You’d need a sea of wine for that, more than a sea, a Baikal Lake of vodka; you’d need to get pissed like they do in Russia, like the hopeless Yakuts and Samoyeds, with no shamans and no spells, drunk among their empty tins of conserves. Notorious drunks in the tin hovels allotted them by revolutionary might. That’s might for you.
Leoš gabbed his elbows and closed up tightly within himself, in an effort to somehow squelch the furious rhetoric in his head. He couldn’t defend himself any more; the next step would perhaps be towards the window.
He lay down on his bed. No sooner had he closed his eyes than he heard her stifled breathing. It was a sound not fully human. She did that to him, often, when he was a chil
