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Yevgeny Rivilis, great-great-grandson of Bonaparte

Rafael Grugman

For Mikhail Godkin

While having dinner once, the Almighty dropped a plate, and it shattered into many pieces. Don’t rush to pick them up. Take a closer look. Call the biggest fragment Long Island and draw the outline: Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk. Call the smaller fragments Manhattan, Staten Island, Roosevelt…

Now give each fragment the exotic-sounding name of «island.» Put together a mosaic and place the biggest plate right next to it, upside down. Once you have it, make it a dessert and call it «the mainland.» Since there may be several dishes, your mainland is North America. Call a tiny part of the mainland adjoining the mosaic The Bronx. Connect everything with invisible Scotch tape. And then take off!

That’s how I imagined the picture of the creation of the world when I first saw the majestic panorama of New York City from the cockpit of the police helicopter.