The Ficuses in the Open

You can whip anyone. Just find out your strong point. I, for one, have by far outdone the great Michelangelo. You bet, I have!

The guy was well over fifty when in one of his verses likened his teeth to the piano's keys. I am considerably younger (at the moment) than him at that reverend age, but one of my incisors is dangling even now all over the mouth like a harness bell.

(…naturally, for giving out such a passage the electricity has to be on and so it is since half-past-five pm…)

But in the morning it was so cold in the Renderers' that I never had got the nerve to take my coat off.

The paper's big cheeses sallied out to the Printing House because the last issue had not been released. Yes, blackouts, bombardments but—among other reasons—the workforce feels dissatisfaction with their wages. Who could ever have imagined we would live to witness such issues being settled by negotiations?

Historically, the Editorial leaders' strolling to the Printing House more forcibly signals the end of the Soviet Empire than its subjects cutting the throats of each other while the Soviet Army troops just keep ticking over.

Ahlya the Typist, came to the Renderers' to pick up her staple topic: why us? Today, she prayed to tell her why on Earth one has to suffer horrors at a nationalistic war without even knowing their own nationality. Her progenitor grandpa was a foundling of undiscovered origin.

At that point, Rita, the Secretary, entered the room and responded to the cue by the declaration that nationality is a toy for fools, while all sage men choose to become shoemakers. Even if in somewhat obscured way, her statement, on the whole, did sound profound, I can tell you.

Another Rita, of indistinct position among the staff but of homely-abundant proportions, joined our half-frozen company and, while her nickname stepped out for a second, she dropped her finger-ring on the floor. Was it a test of my gallantry or some esoteric sign for the enlightened?

One hour of the verbal 'amour de quatrein' in that ice-cold fridge of a room followed. I was delivered from my mixing services by Arcadic's return from the Printing House to announce a layoff till Monday.

After lunch, so as to avoid staying in the cold house, we took the kids and their sledge and went out. Sahtik, in a newly knitted white hat, looked a teenager.

The street got turned into a merrymaking hillside. Joyous yells from turbulent strings of kids bob-sleighing in helter-skelter past the Twin Bakeries between the sparse posts of their too bashful parents.

After an hour of that Bruegel-wise winter frolicking, all were shooed off by a succession of missile blasts. They sounded somehow strange and distanced, as if exploding beyond the town though not too far. Sahtik took the kids to the Underground.

Yoga. Supper. Water-bringing.

Now, I am alone.

Icy roads and the domesticated noise of machine-guns outdoors.

Half-past-nine pm is a bit too early, yet… Good night to all.

Month two

December 4

The local radio announced thirteen missiles hit the town tonight.

I can neither back nor refute the dope because I was asleep and heard nothing.

Before the war some of Underground compartments were a night bar basement premises. The owner had even installed a mighty electrical oven there. Today in the morning my mother-in-law in a group of other shelterers baked bread in that oven. Then I was sent to Carina and Orliana with their families' bread shares.

At noon the electricity was cut off. It's cold in the house. It's cold in the Underground. Ahshaut began to cough. Sahtik's troubled.

After the lunch Roozahna's aunt came to take her to her grandparents' place.

From the Underground I brought home our old heater in need of repair. I fixed it but couldn't check up – no live mains around.

Yoga. Supper. Water bringing.

When it got dark in the room I made a Ukrainian folk device – plaushquah to do for the lighting. You pour some vegetable oil in a saucer and insert the wicker of tightly twisted cotton wool from the oil pool in the middle up to the saucer brim . The upturned tip of the wicker burns with a sooty flame.

It was my mother-in-law's turn to get her goat. Vegetable oil running to waste! Yet, not a sound from her pouted lips.

It's ten past nine pm. Starry night outdoors.

Good night, by the way.

December 5

Yesterday at eleven pm the electricity came in. I checked the heater. It worked all right and I took it over to the Underground.

And this night's bombardment did wake me up.

In the morning I went to the Site and brought a sack of firewood and some tools to tinker up a tin woodburner. Aram, my brother-in-law, generously allowed me to pick up the remnants of a household electric oven made in Germany about 20 years ago and now kicking about in a junk heap in the corner of his mother's yard.

All I had to do to accomplish the project was adding two more holes to the rusty oven box. One at the bottom of its door to let the air flow in and the other on the box top at the opposite end for fixing the smoke pipe.

The conversion took all of the day with a break for lunch with Sashic and Carina on a visit with their children.

Manufacturing of this quick-and-dirty woodburner left no time for Joyce but the contraption works OK. I installed it side by side with the presently mum gas heater.

At the final stage—adjusting smoke pipes to the burner and out through the window—Armo, the landlord, lent a helping hand.

It's ten pm. I'm alone. The household noise of machine-guns outdoors. Eager squeaks and galloping of mice under the floorboards.

Good night to all.

December 6

Twenty-four hours without the electricity but with a good deal of shelling instead.

Eeooouuaa! Right now the gas has come in! Unbelievable!

But let's keep to order in this here chronicle.

It was a standard working day, yet the daily won't see tomorrow—the release was canceled as the Printing House workers downed their tools and went home. The wages dispute has not been settled yet.

Yoga. Supper. Water. ULYSSES translation.

The importance of being calm

About two hours ago cold it was in our one-but-spacious-room flat. And even more so was it in our hall-aka-kitchen.

The mentioned two-in-one invention—our hall-aka-kitchen—is the project I am fondly proud of. Just before the war I partitioned a rectangular area (2m by 3m) about the entrance door to our one-but-spacious-room flat from the rest of the inner yard with an additional door and black walls patched together from the pipeline isolating tape ("Made in Canada"). The landlord's wood balcony floor serves the ceiling for the hall-aka-kitchen.

The clumsy robust structure heaves and quakes in a strong wind yet effectively keeps out all the atmospheric calamities. Our landlady was not too happy with that architectural innovation in her yard but—as I figure it—she entertains a relieving supposition that anything clapped up in space of one day could be pulled down equally soon.

Anyway, today I was in the hall-aka-kitchen cobbling at something in murky twilight and craving for the moment when I finish the job and enter the room where it, hopefully, had to be warmer a couple of degrees Celsius.

That daydream of mine grew bleaker and my temper tenser because my mother-in-law kept commuting between the room and the hall-aka-kitchen on some or another petty business and obviously did not know if she was going or coming (only much later I guessed that her purpose could be to warm herself up) and each time she left the door ajar behind herself letting the last drops of warmth leak out of the room.

At my appeals to keep the door shut she would refer to her forgetfulness and in a minute repeat the performance again in a ridiculously same manner.

The colder it got in the room the hotter got I under the collar. When she repeated the trick for the hundredth time I had a flashing temptation to madly slam the door behind her but fought the impulse down and closed the damn thing in an ostentatiously delicate way. In the final stage of this restrained closing I felt some hindrance.

Ahshaut, on his way out, had clutched the doorframe with his hand. I was just crushed by the mortifying thought what might have happened to his tiny fingers had I not suppressed that violent impulse. O, dear!

I do admire his way of putting an end to the sobs—an abrupt stop and his face is all smiles again with the last drops of tears draining down his cheeks.

And now: what was the underlying cause of such a wild impulse? The nagging thought that at three in the morning I have to get up and bring lots of water? Maybe, but I had a substantial supper eaten for the purpose.

Or was I driven by jealousy at that local guy interpreting for a British baroness, the supervisor of a humanitarian aid shipment?

(…the poor ignoramus could not interpret even such a term as "medical supplies" for her radio interview…)

Or else, was this dangling tooth of mine—making a problem not only of eating any meal but even of speaking—the main culprit responsible for my seeing red?

Whatever be it, control yourself, buddy.

And, like a good boy, say "Good night" to all.

December 7

No electricity all day long.

To make this entry I had to lie down on the floor and write by the light from the gas heater's furnace orifice.

Ahshaut sleeps home.

The mother-in-law has taken the oil lamp to the kitchen-aka-hall to bake bread in the gas range there. Then I will see her over to the Underground.

Good night, everybody.

December 8

No electricity. Lockout at my work place.

Carina with her children visited our place.

Valyo dropped in to take breads for his family.

One page from ULYSSES. Then I switched over to reading Montaigne's works.

Sahtik preferred to sleep home this night. The cold is stronger than the fear of missiles.

I've finished my yoga.

The mother-in-law has just stepped out for her place. When she's back we'll have an all-in family supper. Then I'll have to go out after water.

So, I wish good night to all in advance.

December 9

Philosophy also can be an in-bed activity.

Waving away my curt declaring her an excellent lover, she demanded a more deliberate definition. I tried and—lo!—having a perfect body and making skillful use of it for the purposes of the simplest game on Earth makes an excellent lover.

And then I had a blasphemous dream where

…in the dark of the open-air park cinema where I used to go as a boy I met alive V. I. Lenin and slapped him on his belly with a stick, twice…

In the morning I hit the tail of a water queue. One hour waiting to get two pails.

When I came to the Editorial House the same hugely indifferent padlock hung on the front door. I returned home and took the kids for a walk. However, on our way to the Central Park I saw the Editorial House door was open. We double backed home again.

At the work place I rendered one article. Then Wagrum told me about the three Armenians (one female) of the Karin-Tak village caught in an ambush and butchered with knives.

(…even possession of firearms cannot civilize the brute of Man…)

With the gas being supplied, the air in the town turned breathable again. A week ago all these streets were drawning in the smarting bluish haze of smoke from the innumerable woodburner pipes stuck out from each and every window and hole in basements' walls.

At home half a page from ULYSSES.

Instead of yoga I tried to cut off the bottom of a milk bottle and convert it into an oil lamp chimney. The fragile spare part of our lamp crashed one day ago when in the Underground they were chasing an arrogant rat away.

The project turned out to be a hard nut to crack, I only spoiled two milk bottles at no avail. It's just a 'no go'. I'd better think of something else.

It's ten past nine pm. All are in bed; the candle next to my blocknote is almost burnt up.

Good night to all, be they of wealth or misery.

December 10

And this night too the two of us were making love, not war.