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"Sit down, Chevalier."

"Thanks, I’d better keep standing."

Inokenty's fingers went on struggling with the brass button in the lap of his double-breasted frock coat.

"I cannot help noting the frivolity of cut in the camisole you wear. A new collection by Verzacci?"

"No! What fuc… I mean it’s from a galleon…" still trying to force thru, answered he.

"So you’re also engaged in a part-time privateering? Commendable preoccupation. Making hay while the sun's up… And stop this fuss, please. We, thank heavens, have seen the views. It’s 17th century already, you know… The accomplished tolerance of all sorts of manners."

Aramis played along with the sacerdotal wish and let his hands hang by his hips, respectively. The skirts of the frock coat slid open…

"Holy Cow! He has risen, amen!" exclaimed the prelate in sheer bewilderment. "Yes, you are right, Aramis, such a center piece would better be buttoned up. It’s hard to concentrate on what we are about… distracts, you know…"

After a brief rummaging through the innards of his cassock (scarlet as well), the cardinal took out a tight roll of the pencil-shaped stick of a cigar.

Creaked the iron door of the lantern picked hastily up from the floor as one of the black-camisolemen flicked open this 17th-century lighter at ready for His Eminence.

Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu entered his nose and the cigar sticking out beneath it into the narrow rectangle of light shed by the oil-smoking wick thru the unclosed lid.

With slow twirls of the cigar end in between his caressing lips, he carefully lit it up, raising his eyebrows, in stages, higher and higher, and finalized the drag with a couple of catching-on shallow inhales thru his closed teeth, a kinda cork to keep the in-take in his up-risen lungs then, issuing a long moan, emitted the rarefied smoky mixture within the surrounding atmosphere.

The Guardsman click-closed the lighter and put the lantern back from where it had been grabbed.

Aramis's Adam's apple hopped spasmodically, he licked his lips with fleeting shoot of his tongue, sank onto the chair rejected by himself just a moment back, and slightly dragged it closer to the conversationalist.

In all the audience that followed, he kept breathing exclusively through his nose, as any Ministry of Health would advise upholding the advocacy of Master Denis, the founder of blood transfusion from ram to man.

"Yes, Chevalier, our tireless explorer, Monsieur Tavernier, did manage to establish connection with the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia where he’s brought samples of the native variety of tobacco from, for the benefit of France."

The cardinal's eyelids drifted halfway down his eyeballs filled already with that oily luster so characteristic of the organs of vision, which happened to inadvertently catch the "welder’s bunny" from the wick directly, without the protective mica.

"I have no intention to conceal the fact of looking through your dossier presented by the State Chancellery on my demand. A seminarian picks the career of a Musketeer? Ha! This speaks volumes.

However, mon ami, why under the command of that martinet de Treville?

Though being a Captain, deep in his heart that war-horse still remains a salabon, a bugged-eyed rookie, as presented in his psychical portrait, compiled by that doctor from Vienna, what’s his name again?

It's time to think about your future. Submit a report for transfer to the Cardinal's Guard. The uniform of the bravest cut, not to mention the rations and high boots of tanned goatskin.

Besides, there are the most magnificent openings on our side after two of the best Guardsmen, de Kauzak and his provincial cousin from Provence, were put out of action with a boarding pistol, which one has been already attached to the investigation materials. Finger-prints and stuff, you know…

Do we understand each other correctly now? On the same wave-length, eh?"

Inokenty choked on the aroma of the cigar from Hong Kong—he suddenly remembered where the pistol had gone—but chose to offer no comment.

The cardinal took his silence for the confession and signing of Inokenty’s own accord the honest-to-God protocol stating his perpetration of the unlawful act…

"Fine. Now, let's turn to the defense of French interests.

You know as well as I do, that the king is still too young to be the Sun. And his widowed mother, Queen Anne of Austria, a juicy woman…

(Aramis, in a spontaneous body-language response, crossed his legs alertly and pressed across the lap the double-layer lid of his hands—right palm put firmly upon the left hand back)

…yes, sure… but more on that later…

so, she’s too weak to look after the state.

My biggest worry is the British MI6, that baked by the late Sir Walsington layer-cake where a James Bond’s overlying another and so all the way from bottom up.

Yes, of course, raw sodomy, but the smart asses do know the trade. And, take my word, quite penetrating bastards they are.

To out-smart them, we will offer Chamberlain the French fig version in the form of our secret weapon.

MWWTW: em-dub-dub-tee-dub : Man Who Walks Through Walls!

How about that? And Batman’s ass got kicked around!

The man who slips into the safe of the King of England containing the accountancy report for the fiscal year!

Who visits the Escurial vault full of the Aztec gold nuggets…

A flying excursion to the Pomegranate Chamber in the Kremlin—damn it! Can you keep up with those shifty Russians?.

A call to the Vatican's collection of paintings…

Do you follow the alluring nature of perspectives, mon cher?"

"Well, I dunno… need to consult with my friends… what will Athos say? and Parthos too…"

"Stop making monkey out of you, citizen suspect. You do know, Count De la Fere got gulped by the green shit, and Parthos has become a wheeled gimp under the investigation by Down Syndrome Scrutinizers.

To put it curtly, you’re allowed 48 hours to think, for the sake of humanism and all that jazz."

"But what about Maya, citizen cardinal?"

"The chick will be returned for the period specified and, as a former straight man, I advise you to purchase un preservatif.

The cutie’s just crossed the English Channel, but those British bulls are so too stupid—not realizing that Covid is an STD, they hook the masks onto the wrong piece in their anatomy…"

His Eminence approached the window and, like the most low-grade son-of-a-motherfucking-bitch and sadist, threw the unfinished Hong Kong fag end—at least of a couple of full drags yet—into the rainy dark night.

"Keep in touch, Aramis. And don't you try at getting lost, no use – the cardinal's spies know their stuff."

Slamming his brown hood back over his red skull-cap, accompanied by the pair of Guardsmen with drawn swords, the Duke du Plessis de Richelieu left the room with the obscenely lax gait of a gouty courtier and behind-the-scenes sneak..

* * *

Bottle #31: ~ To Struggle And Search, To Find And Not Surrender It ~

In the history of any family arrives the point when everything nose-dives into snafu even in the absence of a French governess, as it was the case at the Oblonskys' house by Leo Tolstoi…

In ours, for instance, all got messed up for the more inevitable reason which unavoidably catches on any family: the children had grown up.

Ruzanna wedded a citizen of Greece and moved over to her husband’s country, Ashot got married at the place of residence and started paying off the mortgage for a two-room apartment on the second floor – the life trail for the coming couple decades got clearly determined.

Emma, having just graduated from school, still lived in the house no older than her and, with the principle functions and purposes for our individual cell of society accomplished, it was time to check a little closer who exactly the life was spent with.

The worst property of mine disclosed in the course of check-up was my catastrophic discordance with normal people (damn no! because of my innate perfect politeness, I don’t even give a fuck about their normality! Ever!)

‘Not guilty’ pledge I. Tolerance to the bypassed preterite is my life motto because they are the most challenged segment in the population of this here planet and the most—alas!—numerous.

Nonetheless, such was the deduced reason for my being unable to secure a decent income and stable support for the family, and all I was good at was my willing attitude to reproductive labor (okay, fine, the quality of final products stays undeniable as well, but why don’t I care a bean? After?).

Now, to avoid a possible exposure of my other, equally negative, but undetected, as of yet, shortcomings immorally tucked away, all the time… (No! the basic motive was my desire to keep the beloved off further disappointments, were all of my hidden faults to pop in their shocking pack up suddenly!)

That’s why, to move the object of too close scrutiny out of sight, end August 2013, I put myself forth before the unsuspecting observation by Karina, the Head of People Education of Lachin City and the same-named District, and proposed my pedagogical services to her.

The skin-deep scan was rather hasty and I obtained the post of a teacher at the village school in Yezznaggomer—50 km off the customs on the border with Armenia by the make-believe road which climbed along the Zabukh River valley and, when up there, the right turn for a steeper ascend to 2.5 km above mean sea level…

The following seven years became the most amazing adventure of my life. And anyone familiar, more or less, with parallel worlds will understand me here…

You’ll never find a parallel world on any map, be it even a contour map, which we were tortured with at school.

There is no parallel world whatsoever because it doesn't exist until you get there.

At school, everything is quite simple – you flick the ball of globe to spin: see? Asuncion! and here we have New Guinea, and this is Greenland for you – just a cinch, easy as pie!.

Reality tumbles the seeming simplicity…

I happened to wade through the grasses, which in the world left behind would hardly be knee-deep, but—lo!—they sway their unreachable tops way above my head.

Been choosing my way across mountain landslides that looked like momentarily stopped waterfalls of multi-ton boulders.

If watching yourself through the eyes of hawks hung hovering in the sky – you’ll see an ant who pries for her way over a pile of sand grits – hey! beware! some of those move under your feet with hollow taps and the dickens only knows what damn Ant Lion (preying on ants only?) harbor the depths under…

Flowers… Fields of unknown, unseen colors, and even if they did have been met sometime back, somewhere, still it never were fields deluged with the bloom of that stunning hue.

Hornets… Well, okay, let's call them hornets… the size of a grown-up fella's fist…

Or else. Here’s a plain for you. Yes, I know it’s in the mountains, the altitude of 2.5+ km, but I am smack bang in the middle of a plain which has no end, and the mountains are far off, over there, and I walk for a half-day, and fall, dead tired, face up to the sky, where there are no mountains, nor plains, but just one blazing sun and a pair of hawks waltzing, wingtip to wingtip, synchronously…

And how about a summertime snowdrift?

End June, you are beastly dying of thirst, it’s a one-day walk off the village, the plastic bottle is crackling-empty, and all of a sudden, in a deep pothole with green grass on steep walls, a snowdrift is waiting for you. Yes, darkened by the dust spilt over it, loose, but from under its bottom a tiny brooklet gurgles full of coolness, which will not let you die…

Rivers, in whose rare backwater stretches it’s impossible to make out that border where the air ends and starts the water, and you have to guess that, aha! – those stones over there are already the bottom, overgrown with algae of semi-precious flowers, and the opposite riverbank is so temptingly close, but still unattainable – the glacially cold gushing current will topple you and drag away together with your alpenstock…

And everything around is overflowing with life, over the brim, it buzzes, whistles, rustles, rumbles in the peals of thunder somewhere in the clouds below your boots, plays with the sunlight and gusts of the wind…

Unknown roads, not too difficult, it’s just that at times you have to bypass hefty boulders… and you walk for a kilometer, and one more and… it cut off without a trace, any advance farther only by a chopper—caravan routes from millennia back…

A 3D replica of the Vereshchagin's masterpiece "The Apotheosis of War" – the heap of rounded bleached skulls of boulders as tall as a 12-story building…

And those faces, muzzles, snouts stuck out from inside the rocks? Gigantic forms on thrones?.

I was not drunk and I remember everything seen in the parallel, unlike the one which they had been staffing, cramming, ramming into me…

But the main difference between a parallel and the inoculated world is the immeasurable boundlessness of the first, the infinitude which you will find neither among the tombs of Egypt, nor along the musty Venice canals, not even above the abyss of the Grand Canyon, and not at any other well-promoted tourist route equipped with hot-dog booths at convenient joints, and warning signs, and guides wearing smiles wider than natural.

Billy…

The dog is man's friend? Bosh!. The dog is a part of you, that most faithful part, remaining full of trust when even you already have betrayed yourself…

They presented Emma with a small silly puppy, Billy, and when he grew too big to suit the backyard by the house of Emma's age, she asked to move the hiddy mongrel to the village.

To meet her request I hired Karen with his "Niva" vehicle, he’s my neighbor in Yezznaggomer.

On the way back, we stop in Lachin City to buy provender as there are no shops in our village.

The dog leaps out of the car after me.

I fasten his leash at the iron pipes in a road-side contraption, a kinda fence. Okay, wait, buddy, it won’t take long.

With full bags in both hands leave I the supermarket to be met by his delighted lezghinka-dance on all sides of me.

The brand-new leash from a specialized store keeps a-swish-a-swinging, torn in two by this son of a bitch…

Another passage.

Winter, dead night dark around. I leave the village to be in time for the bus, from Moshatagh Village.

It’s 5.30 am, the bus starts at 9 am, and it’s a 15-km leg to get there.

The sky is overcast, zero visibility, I walk on and kinda feel, at times, something shoots past rustling over the snow rind in the darkness.

Only nearby Mekyand Village, after the eight most wolf-dangerous kilometers, he shows up, but keeps off, never coming closer. The SOB damn well knows his wrongdoing because I did have told him to stay home, look after the order! And he kinda obeyed and jumped over the hedge back into the courtyard.

And now what?! I need to urgently visit Stepanakert (100 km off).

A pack of cookies bought from Susanna’s shop in Moshatagh Village for the parting treat, spilled on the roadside, the bus door slams – fare thee well, fucking moron!

Three days later I’m coming back to Moshatagh by hitch-hiking. A lucky strike – Armen from our village is there too by his "Zhiguli" vehicle!

Susanna, the shopkeeper, says, there’s a stray dog about here, I rush out from the shop.

And there he is!. You're a fucking bitch, Billy, though being a male dog!

No room in the car ‘cause Armen has come down after provender. We load the dog into the trunk, there’s an hour drive to Yezznaggomer along the make-believe road, seriously – no way to go on until you believe this here thing is a road.

Whine, Billy-boy, in the dark trunk, complain to the spare tire, be sorry for your misdeed…

Billy, I am guilty of my dead stupid attempts at weaning you off kleptomania. My bad. Unforgivable.

I was not able to get it in time that you were not stealing, that you’re a hunter by your nature. And, yes, I beat you twice (or thrice?) over the loot you had brought home—the slippers or things from the neighbors’ porches—your game, your prey, your hunting trophy which I had to take back with the most embarrassed apologies. The fucking dumb-ass master of the fucking hunter dog…

The village kids are coming, pleading:

"Let Billy go."

"He’s punished."

"Come on, set him free, he’s good, he won’t never more again."

"He’s punished."

The kids all loved him because he endured anything from them, not a bark, not a growl to shoo them off. And a picture of the kid hugging Billy would score at least 20 likes on Facebook *.

(*In 2022 the organization was found guilty of terrorism and their activities banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.)

"The only dog in the village that no one is afraid of," says Gaiane, Edik’s wife.

The rest of the dogs were jealous, they always attacked him, in packs, and though being the size of a mature shepherd dog, he looked so small against the background of those wolfhound-gumprs.

He quickly ran away. At times they caught on. He came home oozing blood, barely moving his paws, bitten in the stomach.

He would keep to his kennel for a week and again go out to the road to meet me from school.

Wolfhounds, damned impostors to the title. At night, as the wolves closed in, they would hide in their household yards and bark in three-four-five voices all night long. Every night…

Then Anna, Armen’s wife, came to school to my class.

"They killed Billy in our yard."

I went on till the break bell. What’s the use of hurrying. Or doubting Anna’s words.

In their yard Billy’s lying on the trampled snow. The fangs bared, no look in his eyes.

"They were two," reported Anna. "Ambo’s Pitbool and one more."

Pitbool, the champion of the village in dog fights, when mujiks from the fucking nothing better to do pit their wolfhounds. Pitbool, who even Ambo, his "master", is afraid of, that Pitbool attacked not alone but together with a sidekick sixlet.

A no-man's dog entered Anna's yard, sniffed the body, commenced the wailing requiem:

"Open, o, the Gates of Valhalla! He fought bravely to the very end!"

Two empty cement bags took Billy's body in.

I corded the yielding coffin with a length of rope and dragged it along through the snowfall.

When we reached the water spring, the dogs from the nearby yards set on a mournful howl.

"He died young, but free! And you, dogs you have always been and that's what you’ll remain!"

Our procession left the village, then I dragged on for another hundred meters, down the slope.

In between the stone walls of a ruin dropped was it – no iron breaker could crash the ground in the wintertime Yezznaggomer.

See you, Billy!

I am guilty before you which is dead sure.

So intelligent I am when it’s too late, when all the smarts are of no use, when you will not run up, clapping your ears, will never lean your paws on my shoulders, and never will you rub your forehead against my palm to get a pat…

Yet all that comes later, but at first…

No, not now… I cannot today.

Eehh, Billy…

* * *

Bottle #32: ~ O, Sport! You Be Life’s Ought! ~

The breath shoots out in sharp whizzes in time with the crazed breakneck run.

The mind is turned off, not needed, nothin' to do for it right now, the receptors-muscles-body act-react faster than the speed of thought in this mad dash through the jungle’s thickets – dodging a branch popped athwart the way here, jumping over the trunk of a rotten windbreak there, hopping up past a treacherous bump.

He’s darting for his dear life.

Who’s he? Forget! Only his instincts matter right now – to flee, get away, escape.

Well-trained they are, the instincts, the relay baton gift from his forerunners in the endlessly rotating generations of ancestors for millions upon millions years.

Those too clumsy for the race did not add to the heirloom – squashed, torn, killed, blocked off from adding to the gene pool…

So, run, Nobody, run!

Shshihk!. And the trees around went rolling topsy-turvily. BUT?. Wha-at?.

Thundering pulse-throbs, harsh wheeze-groans, the sinews strained to hop up for running on…

But what's this thick net? Unbreakable wrap all around? What the…?

A scolding heat-splash in the surge of panic and the sound of one more run, not his, scurrying ever closer, clapping moistly at the drenched jungle soil of the rain season…

A pair of legs pop up in his vision field. Barefoot. Brown. He’s arching his neck to see what’s above those knees…

With a thundering discharge, the blindingly black lightning crackles across the crown of his skull…

Run over…

A creepy rumble from the invisible, distant horizon rolls nearer in stirred indistinct clusters of sound rotating tardily… some croaking of a pterodactyl… no… human speech, reaching over-slowly, the syllables drag on for years through the darkness in the closed eyes, through this pain in the crown but, strangely, not in its usual spot—the back of the head…

"Wwrreerr… aamm… I-i?"

"Coming to senses, Kenty? Attaboy! Come on! Wake up! We don't have no time."

Thru the gap in the squint of the too heavy eyelids, a blur of a face cranes over, vaguely. Incipient heat in the cheeks from the restrained regular slaps in the face…

"An’… you… who… are?"

"Much closer to the matter in hand. Well done." The naked torso turns sideways to present the forearm, where, spurning any snazzy vignettes, full of calm self-confident simplicity, stands: “UF-1”.

"Athos? But you’re swallowed by the greenshit… UF-2 told me."

"Firstly, no shit but slime and, secondly, that has not happened yet, so take my friendly advice – no frigging flashforwards. Mind firmly, since I'm still alive – you haven't met Chris yet, don't count on no virtuality, bro. Any try to buck a wall and you’ll adorn it like a sloppily clapped sticker until they scrape you off."

"Ouch… My head's a-crack already."

"Because the habit is not there yet. It’ll develop. Just no fucking up with the back of your head again, it's against the rules. When caught, you’ll get it from Them in full. Inexorably."

"They again? And where is our Parthos?"

"But where else could he be? On the Champs-Élysées, our Parthos-boy… Have a look!" The UltraFucker Number One nodded over his shoulder at the full naked, if not for the loincloth, body stretched out in serene prostration on the sand of the floor by the blank wall in a spacious cell if not a cavern.

"He also fucked up the back of his head?"

"Nopes. The guy’s got high with lilies. Right now, he's in the middle of his interview with Bolon Yokte or, if lucky enough, with Awilix herself."

"What FUCKING… (ouch, my head!.)… LILIES?!."

"Stop yelling, I can hear… Water lilies, when applied properly, take you on high cooler than peyote, you know.

Welcome to Mesoamerica, dude! Okay, we’re cutting out the official inauguration… They’ll presently bring us equipment and stuff. When it is full moon these here Mayas have an olamalistli match, never called off nor postponed. The main thing about the event is to avoid losing."

"Why us?"

"We are prisoners of war, haven’t you guessed yet? A kinda guest team.

The locals are all pros, hefty bulls and well trained for the game. The rules are simple – never let the ball touch the ground, same as in volleyball, however, no net. Besides, no touching the ball with your hand, neither is kicking allowed…"

"What the fu… what then to play with?"

"Use anything that remains there – a hip, a shoulder, may be your head, which is strongly inadvisable though because the balls are up to 7 kilos.

It’s only I can’t figure out who we are to represent – the gods or the underworld?.