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Palewski comes for dinner

Something else he found it hard to identify, pungent and fruity

“At the head of the stairs Palewski paused to catch his breath and analyze the peculiar mixture of fragrances seeping through the lighted crack at the foot of the door in front of him.

Yashim the Eunuch and Ambassador Palewski were unlikely friends, but they were firm ones. ‘We are two halves, who together become whole, you and I,’ Palewski had once declared, after soaking up more vodka than would have been good for him were it not for the fact, which he sternly upheld, that only the bitter herb it contained could keep him sane and alive. ‘I am an ambassador without a country and you-a man without testicles.’