Rancid Aluminium [antikvár]

A betting man would have said blind that a Lada had brought Stefan Szymanski's coffin to the markét at Otradny this morning. Money for nothing: because everything in the ten-acre medieval chaos that submerges this biodegrading ex-Red Army parade ground each Sunday has come in, or has been towed up by, one of the Ladas corralled in the muddy yard beside the white-and-orange church of St Maria of the Sorrows. And the customers too. They have come from a hundred miles about, whole families of them stuffed into Ladas, clutching their ferociously saved hard currency to hunt down the objects of their long, slow dreams. A western trader, or a western customer, the hardest-bitten of either, would stand out here with their wonderful shoes and fat, pampered eyes like a being from another world. This is where the First World ends and Lada Heaven begins. And what makes a coffin so different? So Stefan Szymanski died of an overdose of 5.65111111 bullets, what is so special about that, these days? A coffin gets a Lada too: a black stretch Lada with extra chrome. The black stretch Lada stands out among the other Ladas by the church. Most of them are pale grey, like the unrendered breeze-block walls of the houses. A good few are a washy brown, like the high-sulphur coal-smoke which pukes from rusting factories and tinroofed shacks alike (brown coal is the only alternative here to the electricity coaxed irregularly from the