By David Albahari, from Learning Cyrillic, a collection of short stories forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press in December. Albahari is a Serbian novelist whose books include Words Are Something Else, Snow Man, and Leeches. Translated from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać.

I have always envied travelers who enjoy flying. The world is like a speckled pear for them, around which they wing their way as fast as they can go. Maybe that is the way it should be. In this day and age, which despises slowness, planes are not a luxury but instead a way to assert one’s place…