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And the wood watcher was also present, Dad of Garrick from the 4th form, putting a good word in, in Armenian, that the tree had been long since kaput already.
In short, the following day they gave me a truck and a couple of young hands to fetch the cut over to the one-room two-storied house. True, on the way some part of the booty was dropped by another house too, yet the remainder still lasted to the next summer…
And the 4th was the most populated grade at school, by the bye. Two boys and two girls. But later Arega’s parents moved to Armenia and took her over as well.
So, when the The Portrait… was finished, I did not instantly switch over to Ulyssesbut felt some inclination for that rascally scribbling once again.
The payoff on the try amounted to 11 pages, however, not a sequence to what had stayed back in the gray notebook, yet from a period ten years later.
Well, I saw they hit it off well, the pages, and only then I plunged into Ulyssesbecause there remained just 9 years of the stretch stipulated.
Thus I put my self-made doodling off, for fifo remains fifo in the Caucasus too, and if you want to get it indeed what it could mean then ask your system administrator.
However, as it turned out, my own writing was put off for 29 years and till some absolutely offbeat village…
What the heck! See? To find the point for a start is just half the battle because the question of equal vagueness and importance is to shut up in time. A lil bit more and this here blog installment would call for a whole keg instead of the routine bottle…
* * *
Bottle #4: ~ The Skedaddler ~
But let the things said up till now create no illusion nor vain anticipation that this here Island will serve just at a snap whatever is your want delivering it on a dish of great artistic aptitude and antiquarian value. Damn no! Prepare yourself for a plain earthenware and no rim embellishments in curly blue vignettes. Just for the record, at times you’d better keep in check your expectations, firm and proper. Don’t drip your mouth water within other guy’s property while having no idea who’s who in the turf of this particular neighborhood…
To start with, Island, if you are fit to recollect, is Uninhabited, and besides, the over-indulgence in colors like blue color or, say, pink, not to mention their dazzling combinations with other catchy daring hues, would result in a closer attention of folks digging the slant of your orientation. Roger that? No prescriptions intended though, just a friendly hint that the like services stayed way back, in the past, sweet, innocent, naive, and fucked up with all kinds of deficits, past, straight and strict, past which wouldn’t tolerate your finicky nitpicking about rim color and stuff but slurp whatever was ladled out and dished to you, asshole!
To wit, don’t ever count on any dainty dishes here. Yet, on the other hand, they won’t take you for a bird of their feather, them those faggy parrots in their gaudy horny, epidermal outgrowth all aglow and—look! ah! dearie cuties!—see those whoopee tails on them?! So big, and long, and simply yummy!
Besides, no, not everything is here in heaps and plenitudes. The calendar, for one, is what Island lacks, in toto. Though yes, who gives a fuck smack bang among the everlasting tropical summer?.
Or is it winter, after all? Well, you sure feel the switch of seasons when they are taking turns, but it is still hard to say if we are drenched with Cancer’s non-stop winter rains or they are Capricorn’s similarly unceasing summer downpours, eh? Right now?
Then, secondly, watch your mouth as regards “fuck” because OBPS (check Bottle #1 in this here blog for the explication) perlustrate your bottle messages and whenever you glide into talking the natural way they substitute your words with asterisks like this “****” and that’s their way to fucking filter your stream of conscience out and expose it as an unnormative lexical anomaly. So if you take aim at presenting human emotions whole-hog then go and break the orthography rules.
So, who turns out now a real lover and who’s the asterisked perverter of the language alive?
How come them OBPS guys see thru thick ocean waves obscured, additionally, by the dim bottle glass? No problem at all. They keep a computer program out there to run down and eradicate from texts the very roots and footing.
Can you imagine? Teaching an innocent machine all the “bad” words and mutilating her lamb-like immaculate psyche? Those purity champions, they!
Now, who’s bitched here in the back “metal has no psyche”? You? Then it's your likes, the so-called Church Fathers, who for more than 300 years rated woman into the class of soulless household utensils/beasts of burden and even voted on this issue in one of their summit get-togethers. One “aye” exactly made woman into human being…
So, dogs also have no soul? Eh? Like any other animal that you maim and torture for your experimental ends? Huh? You, cloned clowns of vivisectionists!.
Taking all the above-said into consideration, you may safely call this areal, populated by me alone, the Island of Freedom from Time because when you struggle thru the preliminary 2 Levels your connection with time breaks up, and you can’t get ball rolling even by knife-slits on the post as advised by the Robinson Crusoe's hack. For which reason right now it is Unknown month in the year of **** here.
Well, not that I’m much concerned on that point. No sweat. Not even in this here tropics. It's only for the sake of curiosity and stuff.
And it’s just a pity that I can’t wield the astrolabe or else by juxtaposing meridian to longitude you would see which of the Tropics your tan is from, namely.
Nope, I’ve been anything but a navy cadet…
The matter is that last week this atoll’s lagoon (how on earth could it pop up here at all? the island 2Bsure is 100% of volcanic origin) was visited by The Flying Dutch. You easily can see it by her sails torn and fretted to hankie size and the bowsprit adorned with the brassiere XXXL large, also in tatters…
So, their boatswain wanted to peddle me an astrolabe for just three piastres.
No, he did not venture ashore and only waved to me ‘come aboard, bro!’, yet I abstained from taking risks because the holes in his singlet allowed for glimpses of his skeleton, well-gnawed and brightly polished in the process.
Next morning the vessel was no more in the lagoon and neither any trace of her. Hard to say the reason for their visit. Not to replenish their supply of fresh water anyways.
The lagoon’s water body might be a junction in their traffic routes or else a rendezvous spot to hang out with seals in divers suites. I dunno…
However, to decide the day of week is easy as pie, each and every day here is Friday. Ha! And no less. The most best of the best days in the week full of yummy expectancy to live a little at long last, since you’re thru the working week.
So now, precisely last Friday, that is yesterday, in harmony with my constant pre-dinner habit, I came down to the beach and stretched out in the palm-tree shade because the sand temperature beyond it is too scorching in the sun. And there lay I enjoying peace of mind, and the general state of imperturbation as it usually is on Friday nearing the dinner time and rather evidently so. The fingers of my both hands laced under around the back of my head, I watched from the supine position the vast serenity of the brine expanse behind the monumental sight of the sea shell stuck in the middle of the beach.
It’s a bivalve, as the majority of its fresh-water counterparts which, as an inquisitive kid, you scraped out in the shallows of ponds and rivers, but the selfish shellfish latch themselves from inside and there are no means to break in until you let them bask for some time in the fire embers.
But this here mollusk beats them all, some overseas wonder, you can’t grab it – whew! caliber 1.5 meters, and the corresponding weight of over 500 pounds. However, the valves are rounded, not oval as by their tribe in the fresh water. And watch this exotic finishing, both luxurious and equatorial, fanning off from the hinges that connect the two half-spheres, running all the way to the rounded edges in a kinda basso-rilievo of cable-thick gimp trimming worked over with the finest polish, as if Ural serf artisans were sharing the know-how of malachite processing based on the local raw materials.
Deep in myself, I’ve baptized this ogres with the name of Pec-tin-din and it baffles me to guess why. The scallop-like bottom of this huge cauldron has half-buried in the sand, sunk as deep as the Peccy’s weight forces it to enter, and the lid remains somewhat raised, like for airing.
But there’s nothing inside to air. Peccy had passed away to better world before my getting to Isle of No Time, not a shred of her mantle stayed behind in between the valves, all's shell-lifted, looted, scraped, gnawed, swept up and taken away, and only this bare calcium structure still tarries in the sand of the beach…
Of dust art thou knocked together and dust art thou to become…
Well, not quite Friday thoughts rolled up and, in unison to them, some wind began to whine in gusts whose unevenness furnished those wails a certain emotional curve, like, say, grief lamentations, “O, woe! Peccy! Why have you left me!”
Besides, with a noteworthy brashness, the wind blew radically athwart the direction of monsoon winds that on Friday, in a stably predictable manner, blow either to the shore or off it. But no! This bitchy one pulls alongside the shoreline! Some crying anomaly, this hydra of counter-hydrometeorology!
A split-moment before shining radiantly, the azure of the sky went out, squeezed by the cephalopod mollusk of the heavy black cloud unwinding, spreading its distorted tentacle-protuberances all over the firmament.
The waves dropped out of caressing languidly the shore in the habitual foreplay and, all of a sudden, sprung erect and wheeling, their tips amok foaming at the mouth, and rushed to crash their whole mass against the beach spread out in the boot-licking kowtow.
The darkness condensed in the blink of an eye and reigned all around, thru which, like whitish ghosts, there flashed foamy fragments of water sheets torn by the gnarly squall off the shore-lashing waves.
And now the torrential tropical rain joined the cluster pandemonium fucking with dogs and cats the surface of the flattened sand, spilling about splashy streams and violent rivulets.
Everything awaited for the thunder, everything, out of their mind, implored in crazy urge: do it! O, do it! And the thunderclap—KRGAHDAHDAN!!—burst out twined with the lightning that sliced the world by its crackle-and-hiss into two, horizontally, passed its blinding shot from a knobby tentacle to the suckers in that at the opposite end of the world—SHUHHK-NNBA-CHUHKZZ!!
Bet your farm, I was up already full-length and hugging the palm pillar bent after the fringe of its long drenched fronds jitter-bagging impetuously at the waving tree top.
I clenched to the trunk horrified by the might of the drumming rain ready to wash me off into the berserk serf any next moment.
I clenched immobilized by the mortifying fear that the very next lightning wouldn’t miss this one and only tree in the beach.
Clung to the dribbling tree, I just waited to see: which of my fears was the first to come true? And all of a sudden, against the deathlike backdrop of enraged foamy waves, I made out the shadowy half-sphere of Peccy’s lid.
What followed came off all by itself—a desperate dash… couldn’t you keep your gap wider, fucking slut?. the head is thru the rest will follow…
And tearing off me all that could be peeled by the sharp edges of the two valves, I squeezed into the Peccy’s nest, half-meter deep.
Burst another discharge of the deafening yet belated thunderclap. Eff you, bitch! You can’t reach me in here!.
I’m drenched thru and thru and it is so narrow a nook I am in, but the rain is not molesting me any further… I cuddle into the favorite posture of intrauterine babies. Good news the walls here lack any nasty lips.
The noise of rain splashes outside subsides, gets gently muffled, little by little…
Wait-wait-wait! But how come that I cannot hear the surf any more?
In answer, there sounds a dry short click, the tooth in the upper valve locked into the dimple of recess in the bottom one…
Thick silence pervaded the narrow darkness. The deafening silence of a sound chamber and pitch-black impenetrability, copulated, engulfed all the world…
* * *
Bottle #5: ~ The Ways We Are Chosen By ~
29 years is a serious stretch, in the Soviet Union because of the deep humanism inbred in the very foundation of the Communist regime, you'd never meet a person been sentenced to longer than 15 years in prison/camps. No use trying. 15 constituted the ceiling, above that limit you straight off plopped to face the firing squad at ready for the sentence execution. Each one had their job to do for the state well-being, you know.
In 29 years Nikita Khrushchev, who ruled USSR Empire 1953-1964, would have built in the Soviet Union 1.45 Communisms (no, yeah, that is almost one and a half of them) if not for the palace coup in the Central Committee of the CPSU. He got life within his personal dacha walls and the throne of the General Secretary went under the Leonid Brezhnev's ass who ran the farm till 1982.
Which exculpatory circumstances—if any, when compared to so loft background—would mitigate my slowness to a fault about the production of RR (The Rascally Romance) procrastinated for so serious a stretch?
To put my best foot forward, I won't ask how long a piece of string is and answer with my usual openness.
The confluence and most perplexing entanglement of differently varying yet similarly unfavorable exigencies determined dawdling away those years.
To begin with, I okayed a war…
The choice was not invitingly wide at that period with the USSR engaged in just one war – Afghanistan (1979 – 1989), however, its undisguised Communist-imperialistic nature ran counter to my beliefs and I subscribed to a pending war flagged off with my participation.
The first war for independence of Mountainous Karabakh…
On entering the village club—a serviceable edification of raw stone used, a certain period back, to be the village church before the cross was brought down and rows of plywood seats went in together with the sturdy stage—dropped in at night by, basically, a dozen of mujiks to tarry over a couple of boards of chess and backgammon, and to chat of I had no idea what because my too insignificant command of Armenian, and where to, about once a month, they brought an Indian movie of 2 series—I got puzzled to see a crowd thrice thicker than had ever gathered for any Indian movie. Which was there not at all on that night.
The Chairman of the Village Council, delivering a speech from behind the breastwork of the on-stage lectern, was ofttimes interrupted by vehement orators from the audience who just stood up from their respective seats so as to become seen and heard and who, in their turn, got interrupted by other orators up-springing from other seats… The common meeting of the villagers revved on at full swing.
Pargev, a ten-grader from the right seat next to me and, simultaneously, the Chairman’s son, updated me thru the mutual buzz that the rally was convened for collecting the folks' signatures and Grisha, the school Principal's husband on my left, elucidated that the collection would serve the decisive instrument for breaking away from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan because living on as its constituent part had become intolerable, utterly. Armenian drivers operating buses on the route Stepanakert-Agdam-Stepanakert were paid twice less than the Azerbaijani drivers operating buses on the route Agdam-Stepanakert-Agdam.
It should be mentioned here that throughout my conscious life I have never driven a bus of any kind and, additionally, that during my hitch in the Soviet Army, a construction battalion it was, our team of bricklayers reported to Lance-Corporal Alik Aliev (an Azerbaijani) and, synchronously, I had a buddy plasterer Robert Zakarian, an Armenian from Third Company, because of my reckless not giving a fuck about racial differences and the wholesome negation of prejudices on the grounds of national affinity. Another of my distinguishing constants.
Life itself made me peek deeper into the historical aspect of the question and find out that Mountainous Karabakh (the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region during the Soviet rule) from the times immemorial was populated by Armenians whose huchkars (stone crosses) as well as churches being erected (also of stone) before and after the 10-th century AD prove it to the hilt.
Yet, in early 20’s of the 20th century, when the 11th Red Army brought the Soviet rule to the Southern Caucasus, Mountainous Karabakh was handed over into the configuration of the Soviet Azerbaijan because of evidently empire-prone and, possibly, personal reasons adhered to by the then General Secretary Jugashvily, handled Stalin.
By the moment of my immigration, lots of Armenian had left Mountainous Karabakh and numerous Azerbaijanis moved into. Two of whom, for instance, had settled in the village of Seidishen where I was provided with the job of a village teacher by the Stepanakert Regional Department of People Education.
They were Biashir, the forester, and his son Eldar, engaged in delivering gas in 40-liter tanks to kitchens in the villages of the Askeran District by a truck rigged for the purpose.
There had even appeared purely Azerbaijani villages, about ten of them, in Mountainous Karabakh.
Being unaware of these minutiae at the mentioned meeting, I still responded to the Grisha’s question in the affirmative as long as it concerned the right of peoples for their self-determination. The right which is as fundamental as the freedom of assembly (hmm!), as inalienable as the freedom of speech (hmm-hmm!), as sacred as the freedom of thought and religion (someone shut me up please!)…
So naive and stupid idiot was I at that moment and scratched my signature among the uncountable other autographs collected in the region.
Four years later I confirmed the accord by taking part in the referendum on the Declaration of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh.
That day Stepanakert was being bombarded without even the lunch break, nonetheless, I ventured to the town theater and ticked “for” in my voter ballot. And even today, with my status plunged down to that of a refugee, I’ve got no regrets because up till now that right seems irresistibly attractive to my simple mind.
However, back to "in order of appearance"…
A month later there was another surprise meeting to collect donations for the victims of the Spitak earthquake in Armenia (the seismic magnitude at the epicenter in the range of 10 to 12, 25 000 dead, 514 000 homeless, 140 000 crippled).
I donated 2 rubles and 50 kopecks, all I could contribute without losing a chance of surviving up to the following payday.
The Biology teacher, Rafic Shakarian, a ready-made Roman senator by his looks, began to carp: “No need for kopecks!” I had to curb his patrician pride by reminding that he, personally, was not the target of my offering, and 50 kopecks were equivalent to 2 bread loaves… The discussion dried up, the kopecks were accepted.
In February, Lenin Square in Stepanakert saw the outset of mass rallies in the support of exit from under the Azerbaijani jurisdiction and unification of Mountainous Karabakh with Armenia. The Regional Council of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region sent petitions on this account to Moscow, Baku and Yerevan…
From the jokes of that period:
“They clear up the heaps of debris in place of the houses tumbled by the Spitak earthquake. The derrick pulls up a huge piece of concrete flooring, reveals a man still alive, miraculously.
‘Is Karabakh given back to us?’, asks the survivor.
‘No, man! No!’
‘Drop the fucking slab back then!’"
Some stuff to perk you up, huh? Still, I heard then folks laughing at it…
Laughing even after the beastly carnage of Armenian population in the city of Sumgait, 27 – 29 February 1988.
I cannot write on that. Physiological stoppage. Hands hang, spasmodic clutch at the throat to keep back senseless whine of a small kid. Looks like senility has its say already. Maybe…
The troops of the Soviet Empire did not interfere, kept on stand-by for three days and nights. When they entered the city to disperse the ferocious mobs, 276 soldiers got bruised.
There followed a bubble of hush for a couple of months, when multi-thousand streams of evacuees filled the highways between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Armenians from Baku to Armenia and Karabakh, Azerbaijanis from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Counter-directed migration of peoples…
The leadership of the USSR responded to the situation by sending special troops to Stepanakert, by means of the curfew imposed there, and by visits of high officials to dissuade the people from their urge to unite with the rest of Armenia. They made speeches in the Lenin Square, the visitors did.
"What's the fuss? How can't you, 2 brotherly Muslim peoples, Azerbaijani and Armenians, peacefully live together?"
Was he drunk, that official? Counting them to Muslim peoples when Armenians pride themselves on being the 2nd people who took up the Christianity? (Forgetting the Ethiopians that, just for the record, became Christians a sliver of a period earlier.)
"2 Muslim peoples…"
That's who we were ruled by… Later he became the first President of the Russian Federation (before told to step down for a younger operative selected by the invisible decision-making body of the MIC) and his hang-over turned a staple byword by the stand-up comics…
