I discovered this object while reading page 103 of Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars, where he tells the story about archeologist Dr. Isailo Suk, who woke up one morning with an ancient key in his mouth. At that moment I was chewing on the bread baked by my grandfather, and felt a slight pain in my mouth. I inserted two fingers and pulled out this screw, which turned out to have been made and used for military machinery in the USSR, the country which I was born in and which does not exist anymore. My grandfather, who is now too old to enjoy most of the pleasures in life, still bakes bread with a recipe learned in his youth while working in a bread factory — the only workplace in the postwar Soviet Union where one could be sure to avoid starvation.

Goda