The Blog

Little by little, the dust began to dissipate but high above it there for a long time coasted a throwaway piece of a newspaper, and it even glided over to our side of the ravine to land somewhere in the bush.

Later I wanted to find it and see which language it was printed in because The Soviet Karabakh was a bilingual paper. A sepia-yellowed Saturday digest in Russian it was…

Vanik put onto his head his wide ‘airfield’ cap to announce that he would not work on that day any more, and went away despite the heap of mortar we had just readied. He, probably, went to get drunk, I would, in his place, but couldn't do it in mine, being myself abstainer for three years already and the following five.

A year later, taking advantage of a certain lull in the situation (shootouts at posts did not grow over into large-scale offensives), Satenic gave birth to one more daughter, Emma and, when the restoration and finishing works of the apartment block we lived in were over, and the independent authorities sent their law-enforcing representatives to expel the unauthorized invaders from the two sections, because in two years our number grew there notably (one especially extended family of squatters lived in two apartments on different floors), then, at a five-minute walk from the illegitimately grabbed lodging, there was already a house for our family of 5.

True, the evictors came not in the police uniform, which they did not have got yet, but in the habitual phedai fatigue – trench coats and Kalashnikov assault rifles that rather scared Ashot, our pre-school son, while they announced politely enough that we had 48 hours to move fucking away. However, the set period allowed for both moving, and disassembling the stove of the refractory bricks, and transporting the materials to our plot.

Since then it’s become very easy to remember the age of our house – it’s as old as Emma and vice versa because everything always happens for the better, as a rule, surpassing any optimistic expectations…

* * *

Bottle #24: ~ The Iron Lady ~

"Can I help you?"

He redirected his stare from the yellow-red waves in the motionless surf squeezed with the geometrical rigidity of the frame keeping at bay the verism of surrounding wall – onto the two strands of hyper-large pearl beads dangling the apex of their quadratic function parabola graph over the wrinkles in the cream vicuna below the waste, rubbing the hem of the flared blouse extended below by a narrower skirt of trapezoid cut, down to the mid-calves, in the blissful style of early Tutankhamen-and-all-that-jazz… Ah! The free of cares belle epoch of Charlestons and Foxtrots – the Great War's left behind already, the Great Depression's not there yet…

"Eh?. W-well…"

"Oh, yes! And I do understand you! Righter than anything I've heard, ever! Impeccable taste and errorless choice! It's one of the finest paintings by La Jue, from his late period. “Playful jerk La Jue” as he was lovingly named in Mont-Mart. At times, I also just stand and watch, and watch, and… As if under some magic spell. The picture is called «The concierge outside her dishabille."

"S-so, it's not the sea then?"

"O? You mean his «Sails near the Fort Bayard», of course? Painted on the back. The artist not always had means to purchase canvas and, when under some unrestrainable afflatus, you know, too uptight with the surge of inspiration, he pulled them backside front. We'll gladly turn it about for you. I felt it at first sight, you are a connoisseur and true aesthete."

"I ain't into pics, you know…"

"Unbelievable! You also read books live? No iPhones, no applications?

Sure enough, we keep quite a few copies for adept gourmets of bibliophily. “The Golden Key”, for instance, “The Golden Rooster” certainly we have. “The Gold Bug”, “The Gold of Kolyma”. "The Empress of Gold", "Golden Gulag for Goldsmiths"…

"Ahem!. Ho… hum… looking for the girl that works here. Name’s Maya…"

"O fuc… ficus' facsimile!". The bob-cut strands of straightened platinum-dyed hair run in ripples over the thick layer of pink plaster in her cheeks. "You should have told at once. A boy-friend, huh?"

"Well, a kinda sort of."

"Okay, cool it. Having a day-off, your Maya. Check her diggings."

"I went there. Locked."

"Use yours, lover boy."

"Well, I'm back from a kinda business trip. Urgent suddenness and stuff. No time to grab the key when departing."

"Save your whoppers, sudden tripper! Wanna take me for a ride? My old man's also havin' the like trips and first thing out of thee can he visits a barber shop to learn his map, where they sprayed it with as shitty cologne as you're wearing now. What's your goes whole, love?"

"Two."

"A greenhorn yet. No holding a candle to my old man. Nabbed again. Okay, I'll lend you his wonder-skeleton-key that'll take less than two secs to open the President's Button box. Then you're bringing it back with a big-big "thank you", eh? The hungered stallions are my best-loved".

. . . . .

Seeing off the client in a blue frock coat, officer's fatigue in British Navy end XVIII century, she took off the wall by the entrance the elegant miniature by Antоnio de Hollanda "View of Lisbon in 1530" painted collaboratively with Simon Bening for the "Genealogy of Don Fernando" and clapped it over the tablet “Open” hanging against the glass in the door, face to face.

The size matched perfectly and thru the door now was seen the miniature's backside promising in the manner of apian pointillism, "Gone after goods, soon to be back".

Bypassing an eclectically retrograde collection of paintings in the degenerate cubomorphism style distributed wantonly on nickel-plated openwork stands interspersed with figurines of late ozone anomalistic nudes, the owner of “Salon-Exhibition The Easter Eggs" strolled over to a chrome-synthane leather armchair with kirza inserts, in the corner of the hall and slammed open the black square in the wall.

Inside the shallow niche behind the hinged square, she removed the ebony, dildo-shaped powder microphone of the Lorenz system from the mahogany box and flipped the call-speaker switch (two-in-one). Under the melodically elongated beeps, she sank into the gleaming seat.

The vermilion ovals of manicured nails kept playfully filliping the pearls in that rosary of a necklace about the level of her gallbladder concealed under the layers of her blouse and the black silk corset of Secretly Screwed Victoria.

"Yeah", sounded a male voice from inside the well-polished mahogany.

"Hi, Don… How's your priceless vigor and stuff?"

"What's up?"

"Wanna play Fish and Fisherman? Standin' up in the raft, thrusting you pole thru the mossy water weed at the river bed, eh?"

"Having nothing to busy yourself with?"

"O-okay, don't tick off at Ann-Granny. Better tell me, DonKEY, who's popped up in my dream right now?"

"Get to the point, Anna Serafimovna."

"Wow! Our Donkey has turned so businesslike! So seasoned and mature, and even dry behind his long ears…

Hark, bustler! A visitor I had, that same quickie customer who whipped two of your slobs in one go. One's turned a cross-eyed lobotomy victim, the other gives daily interviews to the head doctor at the funny farm about greenish men and how softly them those aliens enter the landing mode, thanks to Vaseline.

However, the verbal description matches not – freshly shaved and wearing The Triple Cologne."

"Then, maybe, it's not him?"

"Maybe not him, then, was looking for Maya".

"And you?"

"Presented him with the golden key to any hindrance in life".

"Now, it's you who's a bustler. Better leave him in the street. Check his connections."

"Don't you ever lecture me, mudak! Even Dented Denny, my old man, is most wary to teach me. Have you forgotten who in the can took Donkey under his wing? Who promoted that go-getter, you, to a business-doer? Who watered your rose with solicitous regularity, huh?! We kinda wives from the same harem, you and I, if you got it, asshole!"

"Whoa! Slow down, lady. I didn't mean nothing."