The Blog

"Again? The Third? Or you’ll share the last name too after all?"

"There’s nothing to share. I know nothing."

He got up on his feet and in few steps reached the glass door to the balcony, leaned his forehead on the transparent hardness. Keeping her eyes on him, Maya downed onto the couch.

"Look, if you're on the run, speak openly."

Still with his back to her, the still silhouette against the backdrop of the dim light of the waning day answered:

"Told you already, I know nothing… Sorry for Chris. He plays was writing."

"Good, at least?"

"As if I’ve read… Don came up. Blah-blah-blah. Went away. In a moment – bang! bang! above my head."

He started pacing the room from the balcony door up to that to the hallway and back, his freshly shaven chin sunk in the cup of his left palm, the blank gaze straggling along the floor under his feet.

Then, to shed off the gloomy recollections, he asked:

"And what’s your last name?"

"Waringova."

He stood as if rooted to the spot, smack bang in the middle of the room:

‘WARRING MAYA?!.’

"Yeah. Close enough."

"Fu… eff me…" his voice trailed off and he picked pacing up. After a couple of to-and-fros the question was readied:

"And what did you need Chris for?"

"There's a delay by me, and he knows folks anyplace."

"What do you mean delay?"

"What a fool you are, Nobodya."

"I’m Inokenty."

"Makes no difference. You both are fools… Come on here, damn you!."

* * *

Bottle #27: ~ People Got Killed For A Base Metal’s Shine ~

In 1997 I visited Ukraine as the stipulated stretch of my keeping Ulysses, the work by James Joyce farmed out to me by my Teacher, was over.

A year later in the seasonal summertime session of writing articles for the local newspaper Azat Artsakh, the travel turned into a serial of seven chapters named The Way of Return. Some shitty name, undeniably, but then the job of a writing beast of burden was paid for with beggarly kopecks.

My grabbing any job at all was motivated by the chronic absence of the needful. In fact, we were paupers with a house of their own, not dying of famine but having no money for an in-city bus. A healthy life-style, if you think deep enough, on the whole…

As a teacher at the State University, I got 15 000 AMD a month (except for the 3-month unpaid summertime). The zeroes looked cool yet remained just zeroes as long as the plum-looking sum equaled 15 rubles in the Soviet Union. Hence my return to the position of a translator in The Soviet Karabakh paper renamed already into Free Artsakh, and loss of the sight over its smudgy signal prints.

Cooperation with the independent monthly Demo, published on grants from the Great Britain, lasted much shorter (I was fired for being insufficiently democratic).

Producing Internet sites from scratch (there were no handy templates and platforms yet). The ordered site remained my one and only side product in that line, as a matter of fact. The hotel owner understood the profitability of his enterprise’s presence in the Net when ordering the site and pretty soon he had to construct a couple of additional two story buildings for his business. The rest of the public was either as needy as me or seeing the Internet as a means of private entertainment.

Tutoring at the branch of the Modern University for Humanities headquartered in Moscow (later on MUfH was renamed into the Modern Academy), specialized on selling their diplomas printed in line with the internationally accepted forms. It was kinda education by correspondence, the students studied from their hometowns for passing the tests online. The job they gave me at the branch yielded additional 15 rubles for each non-summer month.

It's only that school graduates stubbornly bypassed me and looked for private lessons of English elsewhere.

And I fully got it – what’s the use of being prepared by me if they had no chance of seeing my face among the exterminators when enrolling the ArSU?

But I still cannot get it – why paying to a private tutor when anyone is welcome to the all-out fleecing? If only for vanity’s sake? To flash up before their herd-mates the phrase ‘London is the capital of Great Britain’?

Naively open coverage of the events in the internal political life of the RMK at the pivotal period of the millennia switch put an end to a couple of months of my remote collaboration with a Russian-language newspaper in Yerevan.

Why?

Because of the base shiny metal…

At times you start, like, thinking: Where do them those lucky ones come from? At all, huh?

The question's asked not to emphasize or show off my personal qualities over again, but from the pure curiosity.

Seems like in their previous life they, those fortune's favorites, behaved with proper circumspection and managed to avoid denting their karma. Right?

Let's consider me, for instance…

Although, on the second thought, let’s not. I'd better be set aside, mine is a special case. The prodigy is a prodigy and accepting the one in million for a standard would be an incorrect approach in a discourse on fundamental matters, wouldn't it?

So, to put it accurately: Where all them ordinary lucky ones come from, eh?.

A rather interesting question. Worth of applying my scientifically shrewd mind to. When at leisure…

The presence of gold in the Karabakh toombs (‘toomb’ is a mountain of not standardized length and/or height, which does not turn yet into a monstrosity propping glaciers and eternal snow deposits upon its top) was brought to my attention soon after I arrived for settling quietly in the village of Seidishen.

The tip leaked Gypsies or rather it was proposed by Rafic Shakarian, the Biology teacher at the village school. He pointed at the two pedestrians in the road bend on the nearby slope who schlepped an obviously bulky load, but still of not too big weight to tell on their hang loose gaits.

A man and a woman under a burden of something indiscernible at such a distance.

"See those Gypsies?" asked Rafic. "Peddling their goods to villages."

"What goods?" not over enthusiastically offered I my cue for the conversation.

"Sieves," was his answer, "they manufacture and use these utensils for trade."