An Analysis Of Levko's 'A Lunch With A Banker'

4. A lunch with a banker Levko has chosen Chinese cuisine for this lunch. First dish was to be a swallow's nest, that’s a soup cooked of small fishes caught and brought by swallows to build their nests, and glued together with something tasty. Second dish was simpler, the duck a la Peking with bamboo shoots. Levko hired his first private cook in the nineties when he found his first bank. It was quite vital: in those wild years the less the banker showed up in crowded places, longer he lived. He named his first bank as a born gambler and reckless card player: Bid Credit. This bank, with the doors in a dirty backyard, did not deal in loans, but mainly borrowed and laundered criminal money. If Levko ever gave any loans, that was to traders who brought to the country second-hand
“Did you tell your men?” “Not yet, too early.” Both fell silent taken up by their soup. Rebrov tasted some, and then just stirred the soup with the spoon, driving swallow’s little fishes around the cup. Levko ate with healthy appetite, considering his next important and touchy question. “What on earth happened to that Sergey?” He asked very lightly. “Suicide, they say. Hung.” Rebrov shrugged his shoulder. “Why? Such a capable twin!” Levko contemplated Rebrov's face with sharp eyes of a skilled gambler: any muscle of his face could give him out. Levko had met that Sergey just once, and he went to see him out of curiosity, as a freak of nature, and was amazed by his resemblance to the great poet. Levko didn’t care at all about that strange out-of-date twin, and whether he already met with his great prototype. What he worried about now was a possible double game being played behind his back. Didn’t Rebrov himself put Sergey’s head into the noose? Rebrov didn’t answer the question considering it rhetorical. He caught with a spoon little fish and asked, “How do the swallows catch them, as they can’t