The Ficuses in the Open

(…the greater harm you inflict to someone, the bitterer is your hatred towards them…)

Lenic's attitude indicated there really had been a bloodbath in the captured Hojalu and the rumors of slaughtering war prisoners with knives must be true.

Phedayees will stop at nothing to drag all the Armenians into their boat. The image of eternal victims entertained by generations of Armenians has started to rub off revealing that of a pack of savage scalp-hunters—the very image they used to label Turks/Azeries with.

No wonder Lenic got baffled, and shocked, and horrified being pulled into an upside-down world he's not accustomed to. He has to provide a justification for Armenians. He has to find faults with Azeries, something like: "Those animals have made us turn brutes after all!"

He doesn't want to see that all of us are made of the same stuff and we differ only in family names.

(…by the way, I can't recollect a passage where Christ preaches patriotism of any kind.

Ergo: sing-a-song about one's holy native land is not Christian, neither in style nor in spirit…)

After lunch, the three of us took a walk for about an hour.

Then I did one page from Joyce.

Two hours of picking out old tunes on the guitar.

Yoga. Supper.

At our evening walk to the Underground, Ahshaut asked me where Roozahna was. Actually, he was repeating this very question every night on our way over there, but only today I—at long last—stumbled on the meaning of this particular piece in his prattling.

How could I possibly explain to a two-year-old kid his sister's evacuation?

The water walk is ahead.

Good night.

March 6

In the morning a roll of toilet paper slipped out of my hands and spun away unwinding its white band over the worn-out floorboards of our one-but-spacious-room flat.

Moxie voices and eager door claps sounded in the Club corridor: the commotion brought about by sugar- and flour-coupon distribution among the paper staff.

Lenic came at eleven more calm and restrained than yesterday. We just smalltalked.

In the afternoon, after Sahtik's tip that Nerses had come from the village, I visited him to ask for instructions about the two grape saplings I planted on the Site last autumn.

He shared his knowledge and wanted me to take from him one more vine shoot for planting. I declined, yet promised to come after it this very day next year.

'If only,' intervened Lydia, 'when speaking of the future never miss out on these words – "if only".'

I asked from her THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO. The abridged one-volume edition of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS I am in now is at its end.

One page from Joyce.

Recently, our intercourses with Sahtik have obtained, to my mind, some tinge of anti-war struggle. Well, today's action of protest was in the missionary position with Sahtik having the lead, which she does so nicely.

One hour of strumming the guitar—NORWEGIAN WOOD by John and Paul.

And, once again, returned the winter with an endlessly unwinding snowfall. The trees in the streets look like those in fairy-tale woods where even the tiniest twigs are dolled up in fluffy snowcoats of their own. Many of wounded limbs in the trees cannot withstand the slow flow of flakes unrolling from the low sky—they break off under the weight, drop down and get buried in the white expanses of snow, which is already no less than five inches deep.

Yoga. Supper. Water-walk.

From the north-eastern valley came sounds of the cannonade.

I saw the family over to the Underground.

One thing is ahead (if only) and it is a – Good night.

March 7

In the morning I went to the Site.

The White Silence. Das veschneit Märchenland.

Until twelve am, I was constructing a chute on the gorge slope for clay-tipping in the planned on lay-out toil.

The snow was falling all the day onto the slushy sidewalks and the streams of dirty water running down the roads.

And, all the day, a heavy cannonade was thundering in the direction of Askeran producing the all too well-known sickening feeling inside my belly.

After lunch, I did one page from Joyce.

Two hours of guitar-playing.

Ahshaut awoke after his day nap and played it too in a style of the future.

At six pm, instead of Yoga, I went uphill to Aram, my brother-in-law.

His mother, worried by his constant loneliness after his wife and children had flown to Yerevan, suggested me to invite him to our place. The invitation he declined expressly; so, to soften his solitude, I stayed with him playing backgammon for more than two hours.

Supper.

Escorted the family over to the Underground.

The water-walk is ahead and then the two-word prayer – "Good night".

March 8

Yesterday during my visit to Aram, our game was interrupted for a while by a visiting client who asked him to make a stock for his shotgun. Aram refused on the grounds of electricity absence.

This night in my dreams there was a

distribution of shotguns among the civilians yet no ammunition was handed out the distributors instructed the recipients to make the charges by themselves

(Maybe, this can account for those occasional shots in the streets every night? Are folks trying their home-made charges?)

then I was briskly striding along my childhood's backstreet—only the houses had become bigger—and a girl of ten was jogging behind me trying to keep up to my pace and at times she even managed to take over in short spurts and go ahead of me just to fall behind the next moment and each time when passing by she would look up at me but I couldn't make out her face

(…was that Liliana, my daughter by the second marriage?..)

In the morning the non-stop snowfall was still there. I cleaned the yard—half of it. Then Armo, the landlord, came downstairs demanding his share of the work.

I went uphill to Aram for another try at bringing him for lunch with us or at least to continue our game. The first item in the list of proposals was abruptly turned down, the second one magnanimously accepted.

After lunch, Sahtik, Ahshaut and I went out to loaf about in the park. The sun was peeping through the gaps in the clouds. Deep snow everywhere, about dozen inches deep, no less. Lots of branches got broken under the snow weight, some trees bent down submerging their tops in the snowbanks.

We met Samvel, the noble (i.e. non-looting) phedayee

, who said his wife Mila and the daughters had flown by a helicopter to MinVody.

By the way, I was informed that Valyo's cousin, Edo, had taken on that business trip to Moscow all of his family.

(…I'd better not keep my breath till he's back with the promised battery pack…)

One page from Joyce. The routine guitar-playing.

In the washing-hut I rinsed myself squatting in front of a pail on the floor and splashing handfuls of water up over me.

Yoga. Supper.

Now, Sahtik and Ahshaut went over to the Underground, however, just to visit her roommates down there.

She's going to stay home this night.

The water-walk is ahead and then, hopefully, a – Good night.

March 9

The night indeed turned out to be a really good one in its initial part unanimously dedicated to the anti-war action.

She is a superb first rater of this land, to pet her cuddliness even post-coitally is highly pleasurable and gratifying undertaking.

As for the dreams, they unfurled in a

...spacey gymnasium with polished floor neared in a smooth close-up bringing in view a row of hard chairs for the twenty accused among whom was also I and grown-up Chief and everybody knew there was just one punishment for those found guilty – decapitation… the case was tried and only two of us were acquitted – Chief and some unknown youth…

Perhaps, the grave dream was a reflection of Solzhenitsyn's ARCHIPELAGO in my dormant mind.

A lot of the staff members gathered at the Club. First, the coupon distribution is not over, besides, they hoped to get their salaries for the three concluding months of last year.

Rita came from a village, ten miles away from the town, where she lives by some remote relative of her relatives of her relatives.

Arcadic, Veelen and some others bobbed in and out of the Renderers'.

I lunched alone, Sahtik and Ahshaut on a visit to Carina, from where Ahshaut returned with three toys and two pairs of hand-me-down slippers too small already for his cousin Tiggo.

It was a day of flakes downing from the morning till night, melting in the way.

One page from Joyce. Guitar.

At supper Sahtik announced her intention to sleep in the Underground tonight because there she and Ahshaut share one bed and she has no problems with reaching for the kid when he wakes up.

I commended the current war for Hellenizing us: we live like in ancient Sparta where husbands and wives dwelt in separate barracks. So the war brings us to deeper comprehension of what is good and really convenient—a cellar is the most blissful place on Earth.

Yet, no sarcasm prevailed on her to change her mind—I had to see them to the Underground.

It's ten past nine pm.

Today's water-walk is feasible only with pails; however, one go would be enough – we're not short of water thanks to constant snowmelting and intense meltwater-trickling from all the housetops.

Good night.

March 10

"All we are saying is to give to peace a chance."

Sometime, somewhere we kept silent, and the chance was snatched by the war. Today, it had its say.

In the morning the mother-in-law was the first to come from the Underground. And she quite rightly criticized me for not covering the drinking-water pails with lids. So, I started for an early water-walk.

At the Club, a half-hour talk of purely literary nature with Lenic. Then, a medley talk with Rita.

When I came back home, barrage of GRAD bursts went pop somewhere out of the town.

Sahtik took it for phedayees' shelling of Shushi and in fear of Azeri retaliation she grabbed Ahshaut and set off for the Underground.

Soup for two, for the mother-in-law and me.

Sahtik, at her mother's suggestion, wrote a note to Orliana inviting her with the children to spend a couple of days in the Underground near our flat, which is safer than theirs. Being "Mr. Postman", I ran into Orliana by the Lower-Round-Road, a couple of hundred meters from her place. She was going to the uphill town to pay the last tribute to the deceased father-in-law of her brother-in-law.

(…in Armenian there are specific terms to cover any degree and shade of kinsmanship, each of those terms accounts even for the line and depth of interpersonal affinity…)

On reading the note, Orliana shook her head and said "no". These days wouldn't be too awful, intimated she, as long as phedayees' offensive at Shushi deferred for a month or so. Besides, the tendency for settling this here conflict by peaceful means grew quite prominent in the latest developments.

At that point a spray of GRAD missiles crashed smack in the middle of town and put emphatic period to her piece of oratory.

She ran back—down, I walked back—up the hill.

After the mother-in-law had baked breads, one more GRAD volley hit the town. I went downtown with the breads.

Again, desolate streets echoing to separate blasts. When I neared the Upper-Round-Road commonly named Piatachok, a random blast blew up a tree some thirty meters ahead of me.

Sashic was standing at the entrance door of their apartment block together with two other men. The Trinity was haloed with the common stink of mulberry hooch.

'Here comes my bajanagh (wife's sister's husband)!' announced he my coming to his partners. His finger was already clear of the dressing.

Then, I went to the Orliana's. When my mission was over, and I started back, Valyo solicitously called after me to be careful.

Yoga. Lonely supper. Water-walk.

The heavy snowfall going on and on all this day and night looked like Destiny's demand not loose the chance, take the ax and sledge, and go after that GRAD-felled tree in the round Piatachok square. The tin woodburner in the Underground needs firewood.

I did three treks.

Now, at these small hours, ain't it too late for "Good Night"?

March 11

Why did I do it? Well, as a rank-and-file-existentialist, I should (and did) conceive the shell cutting that tree in front of me as a test: How would I act under the circumstances? Would I just pass by or take part in the happening?

Exactly like ten years ago I had to make and made my choice and was arrested by the KGB for staging a wildcat sit-in at a state construction firm.

A workmen going on strike in a land ruled by the working class is an instance of sheer inconsistency. So, my case was an unquestionably medical one, and—perfectly logically—they locked me up in the madhouse.

Day after day I was lying on my back, stretched out in the shaded part of the walking-ground enclosure at the 5th Unit of the District Mental Hospital, with my eyes shut, trying not to think that an hour later they would come back with their syringe needles to make me wiser through my ass already turned into one bleeding sore by pricking it week after week no less than three times a day.

One day, I suddenly felt something dropped onto my stomach; I opened my eyes—it was a candy-kiss and no one nearby except for a couple of permanent inmates, of those submersed, past recall and return, into their respective inexplicable parallel worlds.

That also was an existentialistic test: what would I do to the untraceable candy? Well, I did just what you would do to any explicable sweets—I ate that candy from the blue.

(…yesterday's incident demanded my reaction, and I answered the challenge. But what if the shell-felled tree was a bribe from the war? And—accepting it—am I not a rotten collaborationist?

To hell! Whatever happens just has to happen; what's done has to have been done. And, as a reward, I received one more apocalyptic visual impression for my collection: that of the glassless blast-ridden rows of school-house windows stretching out in despare their slim white frames lashed by a ghostly pale blizzard piercing the pitch-black night....)

But, today, it was sunny: merry melting everywhere and glaring streams.

At the Club there was a usual exchange of casual remarks with the staff-members dropping into my room. (Gee! I called it 'my'!)

About twelve am, a phedayee-looking visitor appeared in search of paper to roll up a cigarette.

I gave him the paper issue dropped on the Wagrum's desk, dated last October, and then remembered that Wagrum was keeping it as his diploma piece, his masterpiece—a mock program of Azeri television.

After lunch, the mother-in-law sent me to see if they were selling the coupon-due flour at the Corner Shop.

The flour was on sale indeed though not in the shop but in the back yard providing the lee from a possible shelling. Some sixty men (elderly for the most part) and a dozen women crowded about. The feminine queue was much shorter.

(…all the queues down here except for those to water-heads are traditionally segregated according to queuers gender…)

The mother-in-law brought ten kilos of flour.

One page from Joyce.

Guitar-playing coincided with a prolonged GRAD volley detonating in the town. My mother-in-law was at that moment baking bread.

Yoga: my knee seems to be rebounding after the slip—the pain is not too acute, and the poses are nearing the norm.

The water-walk is ahead. Good night.

March 12

…I looked into the mirror-like glass and met a stare from the reflected young face of a longhaired gent with sleepswollen eyelids—should be me, eh?—the glass slided by and on entering the reception hall I was given the key to a fivestar suite which I found in a disgusting mess but I knew all too well it was me who had left it that way…

In the morning I went to the downhill town on the round of bread-calls with two loaf-tout cloth-bags.

On the way back, walking with a deliberate retardation (there was a whole hour until the Club opening time), I met Vladic, Valyo's brother. The first handshake of the day.

Idling on, I tried to find a peripatetic solution to that soul-in-transplanted-heart problem from THE BHAGAVAT-GITA's perspective.

Conclusions were grim enough: the donor's death empties his/her heart of both the soul and the Parathma while the recipient's soul/Parathma system is thrown away with the invalid heart. The operation results in a soulless being made up of flesh only—a kinda wholly organic robot.

(…if only THE BHAGAVAT-GITA was correct as to the location of soul in the human body. Or, if there does exist a thing conventionally called 'soul'…)

In the Main Square I entered the rounded terrace opposite the former CPSU DC Building and watched the distant snowclad mountains and the high pillar of smoke in the direction of Askeran. At night and all the morning, cannonade noise was rolling from down there.

The Club was locked. Shamir gone. I drew the duplicate key from my pocket and with calm pride opened the door. The staff members kept out of my room today, gossiping in the corridor.

I lunched alone and then went over to the Underground and brought Sahtik and Ahshaut home. I'd like them also see this sun shining gaily.

For Ahshaut's day nap, Sahtik took him back to the Underground under the mother's-in-law surveillance. Sahtik planned to visit the Main Post and get the allowance for Roozahna. I was to keep her company and meanwhile hanged on at the Underground's entrance. From that place I spotted Valyo who walked along the opposite sidewalk, obviously heading to our flat. I called out for him.

He crossed over and wished to have a look at this Underground. I served as a silent guide while he was sharing his impressions. (The place too crowded and dark and cold when compared to theirs, was his final conclusion).

Proceeding from the main corridor into the room he broke an encouraging news: the Azeri offensive against Askeran was repelled; phedayees captured four Azeri tanks and a GRAD installation.

Then we went out. Valyo parted with us at the nearest street-crossing. After receiving Roozahna's money Sahtik returned to the Underground.

One page from Joyce.

Sashic brought a sack of flour by his car. Gavo, a good neighbor of Sashic's, was helping to haul the sack from the car trunk to our hall-aka-kitchen.

Speaking to me on the present situation, Gavo explained that we live in a time of anarchy when there is no state protection—the former Big Brother provides us with nothing but lip-service TV news programs reporting how many GRAD missiles hit this town on the day.

So, to be on the safe side, Gavo calmly reasoned on, Armenians had to win this war, and they would.

During the hour of guitar playing there started a GRAD bombardment. The volleys were not full-charged, from five to ten missiles at a time, yet with a stepped up frequency.

I counted six such sprays to say nothing of single blasts and those by twos and threes.

The booming drumbeat continued well into the Yoga.

Supper.

Now, it's reletively calm except for occasional gunshots in the town.

The water-walk's ahead. Good night.

March 13

At yesterday's bombardment, seven people were killed in town, and I don't know how many wounded.

This morning in the Club I had to listen to a presentation on the current military-political situation in the region delivered by Arcadic in my (former Renderers') room.

'We are fighting harder than the enemy,' stated he, 'for we have no place to retreat.' Then, he dove into a potpourri from the history of the Armenian question and criticism of Azeri propaganda tricks.

(…if my approbation did not live up to his expectations let him next time look for a more responsive audience for his verbal diarrhea…)

After lunch, I went uphill to the mother-in-law's where I had transferred that blasted tree from the Upper-Round-Road. In her yard I sawed and chopped two thirds of the brought wood. The day was so bright and warm that I doffed to my shirt.

One page from Joyce.

Guitar. Ahshaut awoke and played it too. And he also participated in my Yoga making me a target for hurling his toys at. Equal levels (I was sitting on the floor then) widens communicational opportunities.

After they went over to the Underground, I had a supper and then Sahtik came back to wash the plates, but first we passionately protested against this here war.

She, by the way, wanted to know how to name the reverse of the missionary position.

Alas! There is a shameful gap in my education. Might it be—if one is allowed to make a guess—"the unconverted rider"?

And it's also a pity that the anti-war actions we are engaged in have to be mute – with Nasic/Armo's family and half a dozen of cellarless neighbors hanging on under our bed. The worn-out floorboards are too poor a soundproof. Poor us.

Then Sahtik washed up the dishes, I helped her drying them with a kitchen towel.

The water-walk looms ahead. Good night.

March 14

In the morning I went to the Site and till noon was fixing the chute for clay-tipping on the gorge's steep slope.

When going to the Site, I met another of my former colleagues from the gas pipeline firm—Camo, alias One-Monet-Per-Joke. Camo asked if I knew English well enough to explain the essence of the Armenian question to visitors from abroad.

'I could if properly paid for the job,' said I.

Then, he asked for how long I had been keeping my beard already and if I'd like him to present me with a razor. I thankfully declined his generous offer.

'But,' he said, 'if Azeries caught you they would surely take you for a phedayee and pluck off your beard hair-by-hair.'

'In such a case,' said I, 'let you give me your razor the moment they catch me.'

He contemplated the idea for a sec and refused.

When I was on my way back from the Site, GRAD shelling commenced. Now, bombardments are being performed another way, turned into a kind of suspended torture. Previously, when they were shooting by volleys, there was an interval of relaxation after each round of explosions—they need some time to recharge, reasoned I. But presently they shoot no more than half-dozen missiles at a time. Then, the launcher's leveling is readjusted and you know not how soon or where the next portion would explode.

Under such unpredictable conditions running is simply senseless—one may run right into being on target for the follow-up blasts. These reasons make my gait so stately slow when not carrying the bread. Yet, when the explosions are too close, I'm ducking like any unreasonable runner.

After lunch, I went to the downhill town with the bread.

Sashic was unshaven and annoyed at me arrogantly walking the streets during bombardments.

Valyo was not at home – mobilized to the Republican Army as a skilled specialist; he had served in the Soviet Army artillery.

His buddy, Leva, went to have a word with the authorities. In his opinion this particular segment of population (the directors) should have nothing to do with the combat service. Leva himself is a deputy-director and utterly indignant about the precedent.

During one page from Joyce, the shelling renewed.

Guitar-playing.

I chopped and took to the Underground an armful of firewood for the tin stove.

Then, I played backgammon with Aram at his place and lost three monets to him.

Supper.

The water-walk's ahead.

The day was sunny and really pleasant. Good night.

March 15

In the morning, I paid Nasic, the landlady, our rent for the second-half of the month. That was Sahtik's or rather Roozahna's money; the last three monets I possessed were lost in the gambling with Aram.

I went to Lydia's after the subsequent volumes of ARCHIPELAGO. Yet, her subscription was cut off by the war. I thanked her and returned the initial volume.

Then I went to Aram to continue our game. I told him that I was flat broke and only had a handful of kopecks – he magnanimously decreased the stakes. After dramatic oscillations in luck we finished our game at noon almost in drought.