The Ficuses in the Open

Month three

February 4

It was a superbly picturesque dream of a

…jam-session in a pride of gay guys moving so pliantly in their queer mantles of feathers and slouch hats but I had nothing to do with the action and was only watching my Ukrainian crony Twoic doing his level best to obtain admittance to their chest-shaven company where everything went so creamy and velvety from violet to purple to crimson to white…

One attack in the morning—not very long though.

Lenic came to the club with the news about the competition announced by the government. They wanna have a nice design for the Republic's coat of arms. Lenic showed his drawing and launched an agitated harangue about that double timer – his sham partner. The lowgrade buster burned the road racing to the Special Jury and presented this inimitable design as his patent idea executed by a painter of no account.

(…"Negroes system" of Dumas-perě is still alive and kicking…)

In her comment, Rita said the meanest thing was to keep people down here. All those self-proclaimed ministers and the wide specter of half-criminals putting their hands on fire-arms might like to stay, but why should we?

After the Club I carried the envelope with Sahtik's letter and Ahshaut's photo in it to the Main Post Office.

In the afternoon Etehry, a young girl from the Underground, came to our place to trim Roozahna's and Ahshaut's hair.

I puzzled out one more version of the gas jet. This try seems to be more successful. It burns bright enough and there's no gas smell, only I could not tame its darn flickering.

One page by Joyce translated.

At times Roozahna becomes simply ungovernable, eager to rip-roaringly butt her finger into every pie whatsoever. Today I decided to punish her by completely ignoring for at least ten days.

Sahtik washed the kids. Then she and I played backgammon.

At the water-walk the handcart behaved quite fine.

The mother-in-law is baking breads. Ahshaut will be left to sleep home. Roozahna keeps to the Underground.

Sahtik, perhaps, will also stay home – she has been getting better today and the recovery process should be backed up.

Good night.

February 5

…walking along a completely dark road I encountered a dozen of Afro-Africans discernible only by the scanty streaks of gleaming of their skin against the solid pitch-black background and one of them was advancing like a panther on his fours with another one riding on his back and then their cold coal faces showed up in a sudden flood of light rushing through the glazed lattice in our hall-aka-kitchen door and for the second time in my dreams I beheld the miraculous view of a lighted electrical bulb and the TV-set got alive pouring forth a stream of richly colored pictures and I called Sahtik and she awoke unable to believe in the reality of what was happening and holding back happy tears and this very moment…

… crushing din of explosions filled the town.

Sahtik jolted up, pulled on her clothes and shot off to the Underground. It was three in the morning. Ahshaut—left over—slept on.

I spent the morning at the Club. Araic came and left. We had no chat. It's too cold even for a small talk.

Why did I get ill? Because of the conditions? OK, may be. Still, to fall ill in any sort of conditions there must be a "go-ahead" given to an illness by my subconscious. Why did it give it?

A few days ago while poking about at the Underground's dump (the realm of dust) in search of some wheels for a handcart, I discovered someone's half-empty box of matches and took it. Actually, I didn't need it, but I took it. That's why. Don't take bad nickels, sirrah.

(…Freud is right: at a crisis time, man starts nit-pickingly find faults with himself…)

I slept after lunch. (A sin for a Brahman.)

One page. Supper. Backgammon with Sahtik.

Now, I have only to see them to the Underground and then – out for the water.

So, here is one more – Good night.

February 6

Shelling in the night.

The day entirely calm.

Till noon at the Club.

After lunch, two pages from Joyce.

Yoga. Supper.

A major breakdown occurred at the water-walk. I had to haul the water home in a flask—together with the broke handcart's parts tied up onto the handle. The remaining two wheels, screaking under the abnormal strain, held to the end.

It's twenty-to-ten pm – So long.

February 7

No changes to the parting words work no wonders, be it "Good night" or "So long", the result is the same – the words don't have the power to prevent shelling in the dead of night.

At the Club the veteran porter, Shamir, asked me, as a man of learning, to give an informed answer to his, uneducated folk's, question, 'How will this mess end?'

I, to our mutually felt disappointment, had no answer.

Arcadic visited the Renderers' to ask if Lenic kept popping up.

The attack during the lunchtime left me alone at our family dinner table.

Three hours of mending the handcart.

One page from Joyce. I was finishing Yoga. They started having supper. A random shell burst shooed them away. They fled leaving the tea filled just a moment before to steam away the tailing whiffs from the untouched cups.

Nothing could convince Sahtik to finish the supper first. Maybe, she's right too.

Then I finished my yoga and now—while my supper is being warmed up—I scribble these notes.

After having my supper and paying the 'end-of-day' visit to the Underground, I'll go for water.

Then, finally, will come the time for those worn-out words of the powerless conjuration – "Good night".

February 8

A peaceful day after a peaceful night because of the weather conditions, I guess. Deep snow everywhere made it a day of leisure for all.

One page.

The handcart is of no use among the knee-deep snow drifts. For the water-walk, I took just two pails and coming back thoroughly soaked my pants with the water slopping over the brim.

Now, I'm relatively alone (if not taking into account the racing Parathma fellows behind the kitchen-aka-hall door and those under the floor). However, the mother-in-law is still to come for bread baking.

So long.

February 9

In the yesterday's entry I omitted to mention the cannon shot (the only one) which made Sahtik and me take the U-turn when going downtown to the Carina's. Today, there was not even a single one.

In the morning I went to the Site to find the poles I had cut out for the projected retaining wall were not there.

I visited Armen, the nearest neighbor on the opposite side of the gorge.

He pointed out that the poles were cut down at the gorge bottom. Because their house is located above, everything from down there is theirs.

Maybe, he put it in a softer way, yet the core, when stripped of diplomatic wrappings, was just that.

I most politely declined a drink proposed by him to varnish it all over.

Carina with her children came on a visit to our place.

After lunch, two pages from Joyce. Yoga. Supper.

The water-walk and taking a bath (in the tub) are ahead.

Sahtik intends to leave Ahshaut home tonight. Well, we'll see.

The mother-in-law and Roozahna went over to the Underground already.

So, Good night.

February 10

A bombardment in the morning kept the family in the Underground till 11 am.

Meanwhile, I went to the Club twice to find both times its door locked.

The day was calm.

They say there were two missiles that failed to explode. Stancil marks on the defective ammunition run as "Made in the USSR" with manufacture date from the end of the previous month. End of month production in the USSR always was a downright waste, but what a wondrous swiftness in the missiles shipment!

According to rumors circulating in the Underground, the town is flooded with spies. They say there is a list of at least sixty traitors signaling for the enemy's artillery.

Two pages from Joyce translated.

At three pm, Sahtik came home from the Underground. We also locked the door.

For a few days the Soviet Army helicopters touch down once a day among the barracks of the local garrison to evacuate some mysterious boxes. Their arrival is a clear-cut indication that there would be no shelling for at least half an hour.

Without lingering too long at foreplay, we went over to the essentials. She, as usual, was supremely perfect; I just did my level best but only functionally, lacking the all-effacing eagerness.

(…to get enraptured by the Game in earnest, one should be innocent enough—not spoiled by reading of the BHAGAVBAT-GITA and suchlike stuff… Or else, you simply should be young enough…)

Nevertheless, I duly performed my part in the action.

Yoga as scheduled. Supper.

Now, all have gone over to the Underground. Only the dough—brimming up the basin—and I stay here.

It's half-past-eight pm. I am going out for the water-walk.

Distant noise of the battle at Malu-Balu, an Azeri village in the eastern suburb hills, mingled up with the close bangs of shells exploding in the town every other minute.

"So long" in combination with "Good night".

February 11

During the past good night forty (so the local radio) missiles and shells hit the town. The bombardment went on till ten in the morning. They fired from all the quarters and from Malu-Balu too until it was captured and set on fire.

The Club was locked.

At home after translating half a page, I had to put Joyce aside. The mother-in-law sent me to the downhill town with breads for her daughters' families (three loafs to each household).

They were in their respective undergrounds.

Valyo invited me to go up to his flat, and there put a bottle of tootovka on the table and a plate of eatables, over which items unfurled a gaudy oration on everybody's right to live at their liking because we were born to see our kids happy and live long lives but now children from the both sides kept killing each other in this senseless dirty war while cannabis smokers and thieves were burglarizing houses of honest towndwellers.

I skipped the drink but ate.

On my way to the downhill town, the Club happened to be open with only Shamir, the porter, present and he also was about to leave.

I made a print of the padlock key on the bar of modeling clay kept in my pockets for the purpose. At home after lunch, I began to file a duplicate key.

Sahtik came home with the kids, and we went out for a walk. Sunny weather. Calm day. Sometimes it's not so bad to be alive.

When Sahtik stopped to have a chat with a friend of hers, Ahshaut pulled me by the hand to go on. Then she discovered that the phones in the booths by the Hotel were working and rang up her another friend – Gaiana. The latter's husband had recently become a phedayee and participated in the first, unsuccessful, storm of Malu-Balu two days ago. Then, he came home in the morning with his legs almost frozen off and slept till three in the afternoon.

Returning from the walk we met our teenage neighbors, Arthur and Romah, in the company of a man in a brave mustache, khaki fatigue, and an AK under his oxter marching them, presumably, over to loot Malu-Balu.

(…paupers expropriating paupers…)

Back at our one-but-spacious-room flat Sahtik and I had a senseless ugly clash, ' Why don't you go to a nearby water queue? The queues are not too long early in the morning. What's the use of bringing water from as-far-as-hell-itself?'

'Because I'm ready to go twice as far if it keeps me clear of water queues.'

'The reason of a stupid stubborn ass, besides the water you bring is not enough anyway.'

'I bring as much as I can. Not satisfied? Then wait till I am done with, and keep a real ass in my stead!'

Eventually, I had brains enough to smooth it out with begging pardon for everything said by both of us.

Yoga. Supper.

And, right now I hear a stir in the yard: agitated voices, laughter, baaing of the lamb brought by the two boys from their raid to Malu-Balu.

Poor lamb. Poor boys.

Well, let's go for the water-walk mutely chanting the Maha-Mantra, and trying to forget where and who we are.

Good night, everybody.

February 12

A general meeting occurred at the Club (the former Editorial House). Hamlet What’s-his-name, an MP, the would-be minister of information, (…judging by his sturdy, thick-soled boots…) visited the institution to check the needs and potentials of the paper.

After the meeting was over I asked Alyosha, the paper's Home Manager, for the entrance key in order to make a duplicate (the one I had produced from the modeling clay impression was not doing the trick).

I explained to him that I had some work to do in the Renderers' but the Editorial House was oftener closed than otherwise. And he gave me the key not just for duplicating but for keeping it!

After everybody had left, Wagrum turned up as always late but freshly shaven and highly optimistic about the current war situation.

At home I finished the duplicate key.

One and a half page from Joyce translated.

Sashic came bringing a jar of lard-suet and took away with him the last bottle of vodka we stored. Now, with our supply of alcohol gone through, I'm wholly clean and free of spirits.

A neighbor from the opposite side of the street had hired a tractor with trailer and ventured to looting Malu-Balu but phedayees there sent him back, "Where were you while we were shedding our blood?"

Beno, a crony of Sashic's, brought from the captured village two furniture sets and a piano. He's a veteran freedom fighter, a Sergeant already, besides, he has four daughters to be provided with the hope-chests.

At six pm, a few explosions scared the family and sent them off to the Underground.

Yoga. Supper. The water-walk looms ahead.

Last night my "Good Night" was followed by a good deal of shelling and yet I can't think of anything else but wishing – Good Night.

February 13

The duplicate key matches the Club's doorlock OK.

Only Rita, the secretary, came to discuss those rotten rats—MPs—and informed that the block-of-flats she lives in was hit by a missile smashing all her window panes, and that Alyosha, the House Manager, promised to give her sheets of glass to restore the panes.

At 12 a.m. Alyosha came and told me to return the key back to him.

Here you are!

The mother-in-law and Roozahna went to the Carina's to bake breads; the gas oven over there being far more effective.

An unforeseen bounty: Sahtik took a bath (a pail to be more exact), we played the Simplest Game; and rather sweet it was at this, unscheduled, time.

Then, we put on our clothes just in time for a visit of Nuneh, the landlord's elder daughter, who came to be advised in her knitting skills and to share the tale of her mother and brother's adventures on their looting expedition.

A day ago our landlady Nasic, briefly complained to my mother-in-law that everything portable had already been taken away from Malu-Balu; however, she also managed to bring some plates and cutlery from down there.

Her son, Arthur, returned with a tightly packed sports-bag and the story how in one of the houses he saw an alive Azeri old woman.

How many looters before him had been entering that house and taking away her miserable belongings in front of her eyes?

Yes, yes, I know, in the Azeri town of Gyanja eleven Armenian oldies were pulled out of the geriatric house lined up in the field and mown down 'en masse' with machine guns. I know that and yet …

(…seven-or-so-years ago, having neither friends nor family, I performed a self-invented rite to exhume the WW III. For a lonely wolf, the Armageddon seems nothing but a drizzle. And 'Ewige Weibliche' hasn't missed out on playing one of its practical jokes: I've got some war now on my hands when there are beings the fear for whom makes me vulnerable.

"War" is a conventional term to cover and render pardonable the most inhuman atrocities of raging bestiality. Taking sides in a war not only besmears the joining partaker with its gory dirt—current and previous—but makes him one with all the parties involved.

Tell me of no "holy causes" or "historical justices", all I see is – you're possessed.

That's why I am not over-sympathizing with any side in this here war where, of course, no one will understand anything in this schizoid blah-blah-blah of mine but still and all…)

…still and yet, I'm glad that that poor old robbed Azeri woman was left alive by marauding paupers.

Now, to stop the looting in Malu-Balu, they've posted check points on the roads to the village. A useless post-facto move.

One page from Joyce translated. Yoga. Supper.

From-four-till-six pm, there was a rather intense bombardment. One of the salvos caught the mother-in-law and Roozahna on their way to the Underground. No damage except the psychological shock.

Now, they all are in the Underground, I am leaving for the water-walk.

I wonder where this distinct taste of tobacco in my mouth is from? Strange indeed.

As a nice good guy say I – "Good ni…"

February 14

The ten-day punitive communicational estrangement that I imposed on Roozahna expired today – I commenced speaking to her again.

At first, she was quite surprised, then promptly scratched a few drawings and showed them to me, as a reward for my improved behavior, I guess.

Aesthetic treats were served to me also at the Club where Lenic brought and exhibited two of his paintings, fifteen by twenty-inches each.

Enlarged copies of mawkish postcard pictures. The first depicted a sparrow in a straw hat holding a bunch of three strawberries. A fully-clad dog was on the second one with a newspaper in his pocket. Both paintings finished off in an astoundingly straw-splitting manner.

(…microscopic masterpieces…)

Communion with art in any of its forms sends man's thoughts and looks aloft. Taking a leak in the Club's WC, I raised my eyes and noticed half a dozen of whitely icicled spiders hanging from their cobweb stuck to the ceiling.

On my way home back from the Club I spotted a foreigner shooting with his camera the pot-pail-tin-cone-etc. pawn line at the Three Taps.

(…a pot shot…)

I visited Lydia to collect the iron wheel proposed to me by her husband Nerses in our talk end last year when I mentioned my intention to construct a wheel-barrow for the Site. Lydia informed me that some international commission was going to visit this region.

The briefing was cut short when she took off her slipper and hurriedly whack-whacked to death a tiny mouse on the asphalted ground of her yard in front of me.

(…the International Society for Animal Protection wouldn't approve of the barbarity…)

After lunch, one page from Joyce translated.

There was some shelling, but Ahshaut slept on, and I asked Sahtik to leave him home. With the shelling stepped up to be reiterated hourly all of the family went over to the Underground at six pm.

Three hundred yards down this street a shell-fragment pierced the heart of a woman.

(…an enviable piece of luck: she never knew what happened…)

Yoga. Supper.

The water-walk's ahead, the day's behind.

Why not to say – "Good night"?

February 15

During yesterday's water-walk, I met one more me—a cart-pulling figure with a flask of the same make, plodding away through the night from the same some-hell-of-a-faraway quarters.

At night I heard explosions of the GRAD—an advanced weapon of mass destruction, according to the Russian TV news program VESTI. What will come next? An H-bomb?

In the morning I went to the Site. The water hose was stolen there.

I clapped up a rough-and-ready one-wheeled barrow. A robust thing—clumsy but functional.

From ten am till now, the bombardment is going on. They fire five-to-ten missiles at a time every half-hour.

When at the Site, I watched a pillar of thick black smoke from a cottage set on fire by a missile. No crowd around it, no firefighters; only the usual shooting-like cracks of the roof slate devoured by flames.

On the way back, I surveyed recent destruction. In the building of Sahtik's school, there also appeared a fresh hole as wide as a church gate. Lots of glassless windows a-gape above the side-walks littered with debris. Rare cars burn the road. Solitary pedestrians abruptly duck and look around after every thundering crack, some of them keep jogging.

I've trained myself not to pull my head into the shoulders at the bangs of bursting shells. Whenever they start to explode I switch on chanting of the Maha-Mantra in my mind—to secure a one-way ride from this here world.

However, during one of the water-walks, in spite of all my cultivated braveness, I quaked and stooped very low at what I took for the wheezing of a shell fragment, but it was just a loud catcall from the fence over my head.

After lunch I, together with Arto, stopped a couple of rat holes in the Underground room; some other maintenance work was done there too.

One page translated. Yoga.

The mother-in-law baked breads upstairs, in the Nasic's kitchen: the landlady's gas oven is much more efficient.

I had supper all by myself.

The water walk's ahead. Good night…

February 16

A lot of shelling occurred last night, they used the GRAD missiles lavishly.

In the morning I went to the Site, took the barrow constructed the day before and made off for the nearest wood.

It turned out to be rather a crowded place as for a wood. While felling trees to cut out twelve poles for the Site's projected fencing, I spotted no less than half a dozen men (some with guns), a woman and a horse trafficking along the trail.

I brought the poles to the Site—an up-hill work most of the way. Straining at the barrow-handles was taking too much out of me. At times I simply had to stop for a rest and—swimming in the sweat inside my clothes—stretch out on the roadside beside the loaded barrow.

Back at the Site, no sooner had I untied the poles from the barrow but there broke out the Sodom-and-Gomorrah which goes on till now.

Today I saw:

explosion bursts ahead and behind me;

a huge piece of a tree trunk thrown aloft like a pencil stub among the spray of roofing parts madly spinning in all the planes;

a large pack-house going up in flames;

a mangy dog with his head completely lost desperately tearing off for life not knowing where to among those crazy thunder-bolts from everywhere.

And from the evening impressions:

fatty red sparks and thundering flashes when a GRAD volley hit a block-of-flats in the street where I was pulling the handcart;

a coal black stream of smoke bending under the blue sea of the moonlit sky;

one more fire but from afar.

In the intervals I:

took a bath (one pail);

translated one page.

And I had:

a quickie with Sahtik,

yoga,

supper,

water-walk.

Now I've got all the right to call it a day and to wind up with a – "So long".

February 17

It can be scored as a day of impossible incredible calmness. They say the international commission has arrived.

In the morning four or five members of the editorial staff popped up, in turn, at the Club for no longer than a couple of minutes each.

Only Rita sat for a half-hour describing the destruction she saw, and how during the bombardments she was covering her face with a blanket to stave off uglifying scars in case a missile hit her place and she were wounded. She wound up in her usual vein, lashing out at the bunch of social misfits calling themselves the Government. The wackos were not fit to hold a candle to Boss.