The Ficuses in the Open

On finishing lunch I went uphill to help Aram in screening the windows in my mother-in-law's and his dwelling. He explained to me the trick by which the local detachment of the Soviet Army profits in the current war.

They are milking both sides: Armenians pay the regiment artillery to silence Azeri artillery while Azeries pay the regiment artillery to miss the targets. Aram steamed with indignation while exposing the unsavory cheat.

To change the subject too painful for my brother-in-law, I mentioned those poor plants—defenseless ficuses in the open.

'Man,' said he wryly, 'why to worry about them ficuses? They ain't laying no eggs neither for you nor for anybody else.'

The indisputable truth of his words left me dumbfounded. I shut up, we finished the repair-work, and I withdrew.

One page from Joyce translated.

During my yoga there was a GRAD hail, not too close though.

Supper.

The juggernaut's wheels are too small for so deep snow. Today, I'll just walk after water with a pair of pails to the "Suicide's Spring".

Just a thought: When you are not too delighted with some of your fellow human-beings, it does not necessarily mean you are a total misanthrope. I definitely like the drawing painted by Aram's daughter, Hasmic, as well as the way Ahshaut is handling his rubber ball.

In a word – Good night.

February 25

It's flaking off, it's snowing…

One massive hail of the GRAD missiles in the morning, followed up by a desultory firing random singles. But, after the first attack, my family was in the Underground, and I at the Club.

All the same over and over again: jiggling walls and quaking vinyl sheets in the windows of the Renderers' with the usual diuretic effect afterwards. ("Pissing when scared, ain't you?" was a cod-saying among my classmates at high school. Many a truth is said in jest. Close explosions do tell a number on my bladder.)

At eleven am Lenic dropped in on his way to the downhill town dragging along things from his flat to his father-in-law's. And he had decided to leave his draft coat of arms in the Renderers' room: the competition jury chairman was too busy to arrange an appointment.

Half-an-hour later Rita came in. That big shot of an Arcadic's pal pronounced the papers she had provided not valid enough to give her the evacuation pass-bill. There were explosions outdoors so she lingered until 12 o'clock to go out together with me. I saw her to the crossing by the Theater.

Then, I was engaged in shipping of cutlery and the warmed-up dinner to the Underground.

After lunch, one page from Joyce.

By the by, in the previous night's dream, I was reading a page from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. The text, just as in this here reality, was printed in Armenian. It was one of the erotic fairy-tales wherein the protagonist, when emphatically depicting his sensations at the ejaculation, uses a purely Joycean antic—coining up a word of four doubled Armenian"Ձ"[dz]. It looked something like this: 'And then I felt ՁձՁձՁձՁձ'

After the aforesaid page from ULYSSES, I—a weak and sinful being—had a nap.

Getting up, I cooked the supper of unpeeled boiled potatoes, boiled a kettle of water, and took all that over to the Underground.

Yoga. Supper.

The water-walk's ahead.

Thanks to the outflux of the townsfolk, there are no constant queues at the most inconvenient water-heads (the "Suicide's Spring" with its 65 ice-coated steep steps is one of the kind).

The pawn-queue at the Three Taps was scrapped altogether and replaced with an alive one. Which is much shorter.

To make the long story short – Good night.

February 26

You get up in the morning feeling persistent pressure, knowing it will happen only that you can't tell when and where. And when the missiles commence to explode, you feel relieved: you can hear them, you've survived this time, and they will need about half-an-hour to recharge their Grad-installation. That's your measured ration of security.

Such a long preface instead of a short and clear-cut confession that today I quaked with my entire chest to a close explosion when sitting at ULYSSES translation. I wonder whether I would have jumped if standing.

Three massive volleys today and a good deal of shelling by singles—all unanswered.

At the Club only Lenic appeared to take away his draft coat-of-arms.

After the lunch I was sent to the downhill town with bread.

A pair of heavy trucks was passing the Upper-Round-Road by the Main Square, their dumps packed with bearded men. Everybody had a strip of dressing band tied up on the sleeve. Since the both warring sides use uniform of the same Soviet Army, they need some invention to distinguish "theirs" from "theirs."

The men seemed to be in high spirits issuing indiscernible yells from their rushing trucks. Are today's rumors about the capture of Hojalu true to life? Perhaps, here lies the explanation for so enraged bombardments of the last two days?

(…two or three victories more and nothing'll be left of this town…)

Sashic had a dressing on his finger. He and Carina were indirectly justifying his denouncement of his own proposal on evacuation by a detailed description of the hardships of village life. The labor lost. I am not blaming them nor anyone else, not even at the back of my mind.

Valyo was intact. A banquet of five males was in progress in their underground compartment brightly lit with a merry gas jet.

I sat at the table on his invitation but only drank a cup of tea. When going to leave I threw my coat over my shoulders, the supply of pens from the inside pocket spilled out onto the shingled ground. Sego, Valyo's sun, picked up and gave them back to me.

'So many!' remarked Valyo in surprise.

'Eight of them,' replied I, 'want some or any?'

He rejected and went out to see me off. Out in the yard, he asked if I/we/ours needed any food or money. I said nothing was needed but then asked him to find me a guitar if possible.

He looked a little baffled then started to explain me his standpoint concerning the evacuation. Either all or nobody should be saved. Consequently, one of these days he's gonna get a helicopter for all of his fifty-sixty kinsmen to fly away from down here and get at least a month's rest.

On my way back the first barrage of missiles exploded. The second one occurred when I was home at ULYSSES. It was followed up with beastly shrieks of a female in the street. However, it was not her who got wounded but her husband and fairly slightly too.

The third volley of the day took place during my yoga. This one set ablaze a number of two-storied wooden lodges for the regiment officers just outside the garrison wall.

On the women's prompting I found and fixed up an additional section to the outer part in the smoke-pipe from the Underground's woodburner.

Supper.

Once in a story by W. S. Maugham I ran across Joyce's collocation "infinite varieties". The fact doesn't exclude the possibility of Joyce borrowing it from Shakespeare who—in his turn—stole it from another guy.

My point is – Maugham angled the phrase bit from ULYSSES, you can bet on it.

The water-walk's ahead – Good night.

February 27

Yesterday, Orliana sent her mother a pint of cream. I did not know what was in the bag she asked me to deliver to my mother-in-law.

(…in Armenian, the word for cream has two meanings: firstly, "cream" and, secondly, "love" or, maybe, vice-versa…)

Uninformed about the contents of the bag, I hung the unknown love on a nail in the wall of our hall-aka-kitchen. Perhaps, that hanged love influenced my dreams and tonight I saw the girl who I had my first necking sessions with.

At the Club, Arcadic came to the Renderers' room. I asked for news, and he said that there was a cease-fire declared because Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs is coming to the region on a peace-making mission. About 12 am there also appeared Guegham, and I left them to each other.

At noon, on the basis of the news from Arcadic, I persuaded Sahtik to leave the Underground.

Lunch for two, because the mother-in-law went to the downhill town to see her daughters-with-their-families.

One page.

A walk with Sahtik and Ahshaut through a slow, serene, snowfall.

Yoga. Supper. Water-walk.

In times of peace there is almost nothing to write about, so – Good night.

February 28

In the morning I went to Rooshtic, Valyo's brother-in-law, who, according to the lead from Valyo, had a guitar.

Aye, the information was true to life but Rooshtic plays his guitar 25 hours a day. However, he promised to find some other one for me no later than March 4.

At the Club a minor VIP from the paper's staff paid a flying visit – the situation is surely getting better. Soon after, Arcadic appeared and asked about Rita.

One page after lunch.

Then Sahtik came home from the Underground (she doesn't trust in no truce), and took me over there to participate in providing their room with a gas jet. At that moment the gas pressure was frightfully weak, and I got scared that it would be cut off. So, on coming back home from the Underground, I boiled some water and washed up the dishes and then myself.

Scarcely had I commenced my yoga, when Sahtik came in with Ahshaut declaring that we had not had supper together for ages. Thus, today's yoga was sacrificed to the family gods.

Among the civilian Azeri prisoners captured in Hojalu, there was a pregnant woman. They brought her to the Hospital (presently in the basement of the Government Block—the former CPSU DC Building next to the Editorial House) where she gave birth to a twin of boys.

Arthur, the landlord's son, became an errand boy at the phedayee

headquarters; he told that today Hojalu was bombed with the GRAD missiles from the Azeri controlled Janhassan village – to spoil the lost. He also said that no looting was allowed in Hojalu so as to distribute houses there to those whose flats and belongings were destroyed by the bombardments.

(…"Hey, Robin Hood! Not only you were full of noble intentions!"..)

A few minutes ago, Sahtik brought Ahshaut home to wash up his bottom, today seems to be an all-out washing day. However, by now it is over.

The water-walk's ahead. Then there will be one more Good night.

P.S.: The truce, in fact, is over: right now I can hear din of a distant Grad bombardment of villages. The war goes on.

February 29

A day-off. In the morning one page from Joyce.

The mother-in-law baked breads and sent me to the downhill town. I made only a quarter of the way and then was stopped by Sashic honking from his car. He took responsibility for the bread delivery to both his wife and Orliana.

I took Sahtik and Ahshaut from the Underground for a walk. At the crossroads of Martuni Street and Upper Park Street, we had a quarrel. I proposed walking a few hundred meters farther up Martuni Street to have a wider view of the mountains, but Sahtik baulked fearing to get too far from the Underground. We bantered silly words back at each other. Then I stubbornly led Ahshaut on, she stayed behind.

On our way uphill, Ahshaut was delighted with a flock of white doves on the sidewalk. The keeper, a man in his prime, was feeding them on the sun-flooded sidewalk next to the columbary thrown together of roof-tin sheets. Ahshaut took to the birds at the first sight, calling them with the same word he uses to name the hens in the landlady's yard: "Coh-coh!"

The sun shone brightly making the road issue faint vapors thinning away in the dazzle. However, on the roadside there still remained patches of hard, granulated, snow. Ahshaut started to avidly scoop it and load—handful after handful—into the right pocket of his red coat (an unthinkable pleasure were his Ma nearby at the moment).

On our way back, I spotted Sahtik chatting with Lydia at the latter's gate. Getting a fresh audience in my person, Lydia once again mustered inventory of the things in their verandah perforated by fragments from a close Grad explosion. Then, she brought out from that same verandah a handful of candies for Ahshaut.

Her generosity brought to light the fact of his pocket being already filled up to the brim. The snow was thrown out. Ahshaut's protesting howl was pleasantly silenced with a piece of candy. I got it in the neck for standing by when he risked his dear health in that dirty awful snow.

(…real stoics are hammered out in marriage, you know…)

After lunch we had a nap: all three of us. There was no gas. Its absence gives me creepers of mortifying terror. All were trying to comfort and convince everybody else that the cut was caused by some maintenance work in the gas system. Well, this time it turned out to be something of the kind.

Sashic visited our place with his family, bringing fifty-kilos of potatoes as well. The local regiment of the Soviet Army was ordered to withdraw from the region. One of the officers—packing up for the pull-out—sold Sashic all his food supply and some pieces of furniture.

No yoga.

I played some of backgammon with Sahtik.

At supper there were four of us. Then I escorted them to the Underground. The gas jet down there lightens the room OK.

It was an absolutely peaceful day (except for our quarrel at the crossroads).

The water-walk's ahead.

I can think of nothing else to do but write – Good night.

Februa..

– No! March: it is now! So –

March 1

In the morning with the clumsy but robust wheelbarrow, I started from the Site to the woods and there cut out ten more poles for the Site fencing. Hauling the poles to the Site was a deadly toil. I got worn-out indeed: the sweat oozing through all the four layers of my clothing.

Valyo jumps to conclusions way too hurriedly because, returning from the Site, I saw in the street Edic the Plumber, a reputed cannabissmoker. He was neatly khakied and carried an AK, and a sheathed knife dangling from his leather belt. He was obviously as respectable a phedayee as one could wish and nothing of a burglar!

After lunch, the mother-in-law sent me to Carina with a cut-up hen from Carina's flock kept in her mother's yard. Recently, the fowl looked suspiciously sad and dull. They opted for slaying the bird before it would die on her own accord and be of no use. When it was safely slaughtered and ripped up, it came to light that the cause for her fatal listlessness was a choked intestine and not the pest. The creature's end was brought on by the incorrect diet.

In Carina-Sashic's underground there was a feast-in-progress. I sat at their table but drank only a cup of tea, in spite of Sashic's oration declaring spirits consumption the must in war times. However, in difference to the like affair in Valyo's underground, I partook of a blade of prickled herb followed by a piece of sugar.

On my way back, I met Edo, Valyo's cousin, the Director of the Computer Center, and asked him for a battery pack for my receiver.

(…I'm obviously turning into a brazen beggar…)

He promised to bring six batteries for me if his business trip to Moscow planned on for the end of this month goes without a hitch.

Then I met and had a talk with Mishic, the phedayee husband of Gaiana. He has evacuated her to the village together with their two-year-old daughter, and the unborn baby Gaiana is presently pregnant with. They live there in an old school house swarming with other refugees. Their apartment block here in the town was hit in a bombardment, but their flat, fortunately, survived.

At home I settled up with Nasic, the landlady, giving her the last twenty-fiver I possessed. It is only half-the-sum we pay monthly, but I've got no more money except three-monet-and-a-few-kopeck.

One page from Joyce. Yoga. Supper.

The day was sunny, at times a bit windy, under the feather-like streaks of high transparent clouds. Now, this first day of spring is over.

Sahtik, while washing Ahshaut in his plastic tub, wondered if we were to see the last day of this same spring. As far as I am concerned—come what may—death is by far more preferable than wounds, and if it is to happen, I insistently want to be the first from the family.

Till then – Good night.

March 2

During the night the local regiment of the Soviet Army fled from the town with their tanks, and odds and ends, setting, for a good-bye, the garrison barracks on fire. As the result, all the day fearful rumors were circulating among the undergrounders about Azeri paratroopers coming by helicopters and attacking the nearby villages.

At four am the mother-in-law came to knead the dough (bread baking is her personal medicine to suppress fears, I guess).

In the morning I went out after water. Where is the outward migration of the population I had been talking about? There were queues at every springhead.

The Club saw a flying visit of one more minor VIP in the newspaper staff. By the way, of all the enterprises in the town only the barber's near the Picture Gallery is presently working.

After lunch, the mother-in-law was not there, gone with breads to the downhill town; the three of us also went out and headed to the Orliana's.

Sahtik, for the first time, saw the destroyed Kirov Street, and said it was not as horrible as one could expect after her mother's accounts. Ahshaut thoughtfully gazed at the ruins of the photo-pavilion by the Central Park.

At the Lower-Round-Road, we met my mother-in-law coming back from her visitations to her daughters with a load of sugar and meat in her bag, as she proudly informed us.

In the basement corridor the two sisters kissed each other. There was a drinking dinner for males in progress. I sat at the table but ate nothing and drunk even less.

Leva, Valyo's loyal buddy, told a story about some youth who went to Hojalu for looting and brought back a pair of 16-kilogram weights for bodybuilding exercises.

(…a culturally promising looter!..)

Valyo and Sego went out to see us off. Valyo felt like fortune telling; his parting words were: "There are horrid things to come, I anticipate it." And he gave Ahshaut a good-bye kiss on his hand. Seems, like there's such a custom in these here latitudes.

When back at home, I carried the potatoes brought by Sashic to the mother-in-law's cellar. At our place the rats are too active by her estimation.

Then Leva, Valyo's pal, came by a Volga driven by the constant third participant in their drinking bouts. The driver, Leva and I hauled two milk-flasks full of water out from the Volga's trunk and took them over to our hall-aka-kitchen. One of the flasks was left there as a present for us from the generous Director of Milk Factory (Valyo) the second was to be emptied and taken back. The mother-in-law sent with them one more loaf of bread for Orliana.

One page from Joyce. Yoga.

I'm feeling not so well, seized by some inner chill.

After supper, I accompanied our family to the Underground.

They are real treats—these evening walks towards the Underground when Ahshaut is waddling along with his hand in mine, prattling, now and then, nobody knows what.

In the Underground's dark anteroom, an enthusiastic woman is every night performing a mutual prayer around a feeble candle. The congregation consists of a little and steadily diminishing flock of kid girls.

As for my prayer, it remains concise and clear – Good Night To All.

March 3

At the Club I was met by Shamir, the porter, who resumed attending his work place. About eleven pm, two or three members of the newspaper staff came to gossip and play chess.

My mother-in-law strongly doubts that the current bubble of peace will last long and uses the lull for bread baking. After lunch and a page from Joyce, I was sent to the downhill town.

Carina asked if in her mother's opinion they had nothing else to do but chew bread all day long. Orliana accepted it without comments.

Valyo informed me that his cousin Edo had left for Moscow.

The glass splinters from the smashed window-walls in the Department Store, that had been carpeting the adjacent sidewalk, are now accurately swept up into small hillocks. Gun-carrying men in the streets became more mature in age than a few months ago. In the garrison quarters of the withdrawn Soviet Army regiment, one more barrack was set on fire without a bombardment.

(…idiocy or pyromania?..)

I met Sashic, at the Lower-Round-Road. We had a maimed small talk of two male relatives having absolutely nothing to say to each other.

On my way back uphill, I shook hands with Mishic, nodded to Maxim, halloed Gago.

I returned just in time—it was the mother-in-law's turn to take water from a not too remote waterhead. (Sahtik and she were doing a general washing today.) For nearly two hours, I was bringing water, pails of it. The undertaking provided me an excuse for skipping my yoga today.

Awaiting bombardments grates on people much stronger than actual bombardments. The upsurge in the emigration eloquently proves the fact. The Underground became half-empty, and in their room down there Sahtik, Ahshaut and the mother-in-law are left to themselves.

Nasic, the landlady, attempted to send her three children to her native village. They went to an out-going road on the outskirts in the hope to flag down a passing vehicle. They saw not a single one and came back after a day of vain waiting on the roadside.

No water-walk today. Just – Good night.

March 4

In place of any guitar, Rooshtic presented me with another tall story about three strings torn off his guitar by his younger brother at a heated merrymaking. I humbly begged him to pardon me for the disturbance.

At the Club, the veteran—for whom all the doors in the Editorial House were to be kept permanently wide open—visited the former Renderers' (me). For a good half-hour, I listened to exposition of his views, complaints and criticisms—both global and private.

Near twelve am, Wagrum fluttered into the Renderers,' crisply-neat and freshly-shaven and powdered. He asked if I could provide him with a piece of paper to make a cigarette and matches to light it. The latter I had not. He shared his optimistic military-political forecast.

After lunch, one page from Joyce.

Sashic tapped at our communicational window to ask how we were doing. I complained of my futile efforts to find a guitar and asked for the address of his aunts who, as rumors had it, possessed one. Sashic promised to negotiate with them personally. An hour later, he triumphantly honked for me to go out and take "the gypsy toy".

For more than two hour, I was reconstructing it from being a Russian guitar of 7 strings into the international (Spanish) type. Finally, I went upstairs to tune it up by the dischordered piano of Nuneh, the landlady's elder daughter. Ahshaut was beside himself, hitting the roof and yelling at the top of his lungs, demanding the instrument into his possession.

No yoga.

After supper, I accompanied the three of them over to the Underground.

The water-walk is ahead. Reportedly, at the Three Taps nobody is allowed to fill more than six pails at a time.

(…rather a reasonable decision to my mind…)

A real springtime day it was—warm and sunny. And a good day deserves a Good night.

A fortnight more

March 5

In tonight dreams I wrestled with a student from that provincial Pedagogical Institute where I spent four years gambling and smoking cannabis. The bugger had been, as I later figured it out, a grass-root KGB informer just like any other mother's son, including me.

Dreams went on, and in the sequence parts I resisted three temptations: to steal a pile of nice flag-stones, to drink a glass of gin and to make love, that doesn't dare to call its name, with Armo, the landlord.

At the Club the chess-players from the editorial stuff gathered for their subtle preoccupation, but Lenic chose to visit me in the Renderers'. We had a long talk.

He hotly mustered the list of the offenses and injuries Azeries had inflicted to his compatriots since the Sumgait tragedy. In his harangue he freely used his store of printable curses.

I had to point out the importance of self control, especially for a representative of one's native intelligentsia.