The Blog

Rivers, in whose rare backwater stretches it’s impossible to make out that border where the air ends and starts the water, and you have to guess that, aha! – those stones over there are already the bottom, overgrown with algae of semi-precious flowers, and the opposite riverbank is so temptingly close, but still unattainable – the glacially cold gushing current will topple you and drag away together with your alpenstock…

And everything around is overflowing with life, over the brim, it buzzes, whistles, rustles, rumbles in the peals of thunder somewhere in the clouds below your boots, plays with the sunlight and gusts of the wind…

Unknown roads, not too difficult, it’s just that at times you have to bypass hefty boulders… and you walk for a kilometer, and one more and… it cut off without a trace, any advance farther only by a chopper—caravan routes from millennia back…

A 3D replica of the Vereshchagin's masterpiece "The Apotheosis of War" – the heap of rounded bleached skulls of boulders as tall as a 12-story building…

And those faces, muzzles, snouts stuck out from inside the rocks? Gigantic forms on thrones?.

I was not drunk and I remember everything seen in the parallel, unlike the one which they had been staffing, cramming, ramming into me…

But the main difference between a parallel and the inoculated world is the immeasurable boundlessness of the first, the infinitude which you will find neither among the tombs of Egypt, nor along the musty Venice canals, not even above the abyss of the Grand Canyon, and not at any other well-promoted tourist route equipped with hot-dog booths at convenient joints, and warning signs, and guides wearing smiles wider than natural.

Billy…

The dog is man's friend? Bosh!. The dog is a part of you, that most faithful part, remaining full of trust when even you already have betrayed yourself…

They presented Emma with a small silly puppy, Billy, and when he grew too big to suit the backyard by the house of Emma's age, she asked to move the hiddy mongrel to the village.

To meet her request I hired Karen with his "Niva" vehicle, he’s my neighbor in Yezznaggomer.

On the way back, we stop in Lachin City to buy provender as there are no shops in our village.

The dog leaps out of the car after me.

I fasten his leash at the iron pipes in a road-side contraption, a kinda fence. Okay, wait, buddy, it won’t take long.

With full bags in both hands leave I the supermarket to be met by his delighted lezghinka-dance on all sides of me.

The brand-new leash from a specialized store keeps a-swish-a-swinging, torn in two by this son of a bitch…

Another passage.

Winter, dead night dark around. I leave the village to be in time for the bus, from Moshatagh Village.

It’s 5.30 am, the bus starts at 9 am, and it’s a 15-km leg to get there.

The sky is overcast, zero visibility, I walk on and kinda feel, at times, something shoots past rustling over the snow rind in the darkness.

Only nearby Mekyand Village, after the eight most wolf-dangerous kilometers, he shows up, but keeps off, never coming closer. The SOB damn well knows his wrongdoing because I did have told him to stay home, look after the order! And he kinda obeyed and jumped over the hedge back into the courtyard.

And now what?! I need to urgently visit Stepanakert (100 km off).

A pack of cookies bought from Susanna’s shop in Moshatagh Village for the parting treat, spilled on the roadside, the bus door slams – fare thee well, fucking moron!

Three days later I’m coming back to Moshatagh by hitch-hiking. A lucky strike – Armen from our village is there too by his "Zhiguli" vehicle!

Susanna, the shopkeeper, says, there’s a stray dog about here, I rush out from the shop.

And there he is!. You're a fucking bitch, Billy, though being a male dog!

No room in the car ‘cause Armen has come down after provender. We load the dog into the trunk, there’s an hour drive to Yezznaggomer along the make-believe road, seriously – no way to go on until you believe this here thing is a road.

Whine, Billy-boy, in the dark trunk, complain to the spare tire, be sorry for your misdeed…

Billy, I am guilty of my dead stupid attempts at weaning you off kleptomania. My bad. Unforgivable.

I was not able to get it in time that you were not stealing, that you’re a hunter by your nature. And, yes, I beat you twice (or thrice?) over the loot you had brought home—the slippers or things from the neighbors’ porches—your game, your prey, your hunting trophy which I had to take back with the most embarrassed apologies. The fucking dumb-ass master of the fucking hunter dog…

The village kids are coming, pleading:

"Let Billy go."

"He’s punished."

"Come on, set him free, he’s good, he won’t never more again."

"He’s punished."

The kids all loved him because he endured anything from them, not a bark, not a growl to shoo them off. And a picture of the kid hugging Billy would score at least 20 likes on Facebook *.

(*In 2022 the organization was found guilty of terrorism and their activities banned on the territory of the Russian Federation.)

"The only dog in the village that no one is afraid of," says Gaiane, Edik’s wife.

The rest of the dogs were jealous, they always attacked him, in packs, and though being the size of a mature shepherd dog, he looked so small against the background of those wolfhound-gumprs.

He quickly ran away. At times they caught on. He came home oozing blood, barely moving his paws, bitten in the stomach.

He would keep to his kennel for a week and again go out to the road to meet me from school.

Wolfhounds, damned impostors to the title. At night, as the wolves closed in, they would hide in their household yards and bark in three-four-five voices all night long. Every night…

Then Anna, Armen’s wife, came to school to my class.

"They killed Billy in our yard."

I went on till the break bell. What’s the use of hurrying. Or doubting Anna’s words.

In their yard Billy’s lying on the trampled snow. The fangs bared, no look in his eyes.

"They were two," reported Anna. "Ambo’s Pitbool and one more."

Pitbool, the champion of the village in dog fights, when mujiks from the fucking nothing better to do pit their wolfhounds. Pitbool, who even Ambo, his "master", is afraid of, that Pitbool attacked not alone but together with a sidekick sixlet.

A no-man's dog entered Anna's yard, sniffed the body, commenced the wailing requiem:

"Open, o, the Gates of Valhalla! He fought bravely to the very end!"