The Ficuses in the Open
December 29
No gas, no electricity… Once upon a time in my heady youth, I was ardently revealing to what-was-his-name that no life is possible without playing the guitar three evenings a week at the dance-floor. However, in my later curriculum vitae, I did manage to survive without so an indispensable necessity sometimes for years at a stretch. How long can one last out without gas and electricity?
Missile attacks and artillery shelling raged all the day. Random shell bursts are most unnerving. Scattered glass splinters spread the sidewalks; walls of the buildings cracked open with meter-wide holes. Axes sound all over the town. People fell trees in the streets to get fuel for their tin woodburners.
From the morning and till four pm, I shoveled clay planing the Site's layout. When I came back, the mother-in-law was baking breads on a round sheet of iron put over the open fire in the yard.
Sahtik and the kids spent all the day in the Underground. It's dark and dusty down there. Galloping rats. Smoking lamps.
Perversely, I felt some kind of smug satisfaction out of the thought that our kids had seen not only all that but also the glimmer of a Christmas Tree lights.
The mother-in-law trusted me with the delivery of hot bread to Carina and Orliana. I ran the errand willingly and gladly. Desolate streets. Din of bursts. A cloth placard 'All to vote!' wired over the street trembling in the sharp wind. The gaudy slippers in the much too wide Department Store windows looked ridiculously defenseless.
Sashic responded to the delivered bread by sending over a baton of sausage and a jar of bland.
On my way back, I caught up with Valeric, a worker from the pipeline construction firm. Stately strutted we uphill together, talking of things through the peals of thundering cannonade. He narrated how the day before yesterday a couple of local cops were beating inside their windowless mini-bus two Azeri prisoners of war bleeding with wounds, freshly captured by phedayees in Krkjan.
'Well,' commented I, 'the policemen don't take part in combat actions, but they also hanker to be heroes.'
He also related of six Armenian youths killed yesterday by a shell exploding in a house next to his.
Entering our yard, I saw my mother-in-law helping Mrs. Nvard, the paper's queen in disguise, to bake her breads on the mother-in-law's sheet of iron. The world is a small place indeed—their compartments in the Underground are opposite to each other.
Slavic the Moscovite was inside our one-but-spacious-room flat waiting for me. He started to complain of his unhappy family life and begged vodka.
Instead of spirits he got a piece of reasoning that I had no desire to become an accomplice in killing him. Under the circumstances you have to keep your eye both peeled and off booze. I really didn't want him to walk into a bullet or a suchlike impediment. So I wouldn't put his dear life at risk by helping him get drunk. Then, I saw him out of the yard.
After yoga, supper and bringing water, I visited the Underground. Ahshaut and my mother-in-law were asleep. Roozahna rabbiting on from the bed. Sahtik complained of aching feet.
It's eleven-to-ten pm. Fog reinforced darkness outdoors.
P.S.: About a minute ago cracks of shooting started up in the street. I went out. It was a nearby house on fire. Now I know that the roof-slates breaking up in flames produce shot-like cracks.
Let's call it a day.
December 30
All the night through and till one pm, missiles and artillery shells kept crushing the town. A shell hit the Urology Ward at the Hospital to perform a wondrously radical treatment. Eleven patients were killed and rid of their urinary problems.
At nine in the morning, I was met by a huge padlock on the front door in the Editorial House and no one in sight both up and down the street. A classic lockout.
Sahtik sent me to Lydia with her share of sugar and matches ration coupons distributed at their school. Lydia showed me a bullet she had picked up in their street and announced her intention to collect a necklace of them.
I ferried Ahshaut's cot to the Underground. To retain his chances of sleeping home at least sometimes, I went to the Carina's to bring the discarded and stripped down cot of her son Tiggo.
Cutting of trees in the streets carries on. In Kirov Street an old man—a bashful wrongdoer with an ax in his hand—was closing in on a tree in many a circle mumbling scruple-mollifying arguments to himself, 'So many dry branches in it, who'd call it a tree, eh?'
(…you can't survive without killing others…)
People stop glassless windows with sheets of vinyl nailed from within.
In the afternoon the electricity came in. Thanks to I don't know whom.
When the cannonade subsides, fleeting nomadic groups pass the streets. Their tiny convoys are usually headed by a pair of parents burdened with bulging bags and an enveloped babe close to the chest. Two or three bigger kids keep a-trotting in the rear. Fleeing to villages. You can't but think of ants rescuing their eggs: we all are alike and akin on this planet.
Good night to each and every creature.
December 31
In the morning the electricity was cut off before I reached the Editorial House. I spent one freezing, no-work, hour walking to-and-fro in the dark corridor.
Four more apparition-like figures appeared there and faded into the wood. Then an old Russian woman in red dropped in the corridor with her Armenian escort lad. They had a round of friendly hand shaking with half-a-dozen of the paper's employees that emerged from their respective doors. The escort lad even kissed one of our men before the visitors took off.
She was one of them those self-appointed monitors, I guess, that now and then fly in down here to stay for a day so as to amass the political capital for promoting their careers in the Empire's Capital. You're so brave Ms. Red Watcher!
At eleven am the electricity came on, but I was already home busy at mending the playing-up zipper on my boot.
After lunch, Sahtik and Roozahna and the mother-in-law stayed home to bake the New Year pastry and stuff. I was charged with guarding Ahshaut at his daytime nap in the Underground. Two hours later Sahtik and Roozahna released me.
From five till six pm, I barbecued in the yard. Two hours later, we got seated around the New Year table in the Underground. There were our family and the three women with their children sheltering in the same compartment.
All went along so nicely. I dished out flowery toasts then sniffed at my wineglass and put it down untouched. How long can you hold out as a total abstainer, I wonder?
It's nine in the evening. All this last day and night of the departing year was filled with missile and artillery bombardment except for an incomprehensible pause between 9 am and 4 pm.
Good-bye, Old Year.
My most sober wishes of good luck to all in the upcoming one.
January 1
All this night the missiles and shells of bombardment were stabbing and slashing and crushing the town's organism like that machine-executioner from the Kafka's story. Yet, in the daytime there was not a single explosion. A miracle.
In the morning I was sent with breads to the Orliana's. Their little Anna speaks astoundingly much. Shame on Ahshaut, who, being only a fortnight younger, can't say more than "pa", "ma", "ba" and, when asked what Alazans do, he answers, "boom!"
Valyo's father was also on a visit there. He used to have the looks of a retired celebrity but now the image is spoiled by his uncontrollably trembling hands. He didn't have this tremor before.
Valyo, with zealously bulging sinew strings on his throat, harped on—over and over again—about ugly customs and low morale of some inmates in their underground. Frankly, he saw no future in this country and one of these days (with a giggle) would move to West Berlin, Germany.
On my way back, I bought two-kilos of apples at the self-established bazaar by the Downhill Round Road where I also had a handshake and small talk with Goorgan. He was seeking some fuel for his heavy truck to evacuate his family to their native village.
Carina visited our place with her children and lots of presents. Three yellow balloons lasted for a whole half-hour.
When they left and Sahtik took Ahshaut to the Underground for his day nap, the mother-in-law ventured to the Orliana's. Roozahna and her girl-friend Anichka, a seven-year-old heiress to the landlordhood, and me stayed at our place. We whiled the time away as mannerly and urbanely as you can only wish. No talking off no one's head. No trouble at all.
At something past three pm, Sahtik returned and sent me to wake and bring Ahshaut from the Underground.
Walking back hand-in-hand with the kid, I was sissily chewing over whether that bitty hand of his would get chance to grow and become a man's one.
Yoga. Bathing myself in the tub.
It's ten in the evening. I'm home alone.
The machine-gun shooting up there somehow acquired a tinge of a mere domestic thing, kinda ticking clock.
It's wet and chilly outdoors, inhumanely cold indoors.
Good night, the world of warring Maya.
December 2
The first snow has come. The nature's old show is going on. As well as on is going the miraculous lull—no shelling, neither at night nor in the daytime.
In the morning representatives of the stronger sex in the Editorial House got together to have a symposium in one of the rooms downstair. I was not aware of the happening till a messenger dropped in the Renderers' to say that Boss wanted to see me in a neighboring room. On entering the room where a group of men huddled around a chessboard on a desktop next to a cognac bottle with a tray of filled up sniffers, I made a mute U-turn and doubled back avoiding eye contact with Boss.
(…maybe, Sahtik really has some grounds for criticizing my mixing abilities…)
Arcadic visited the Renderers' to bemoan his defeat in the elections—unshaven and mumbling about some dirty fraud.
Lenic designed a new heading for this paper. Henceforth, it is read THE FREE ARTSAKH.
Araic, an apprentice renderer, presently on his leave, dropped in in quest for his salary.
After the midday break, the usual "no-work" was announced.
I took the heating block-stone home and knocked up another one (though not so powerful) to substitute it at the work place.
Yoga. Supper.
The mother-in-law has gone over to the Underground. Sahtik and the kids are watching a film on TV.
I have just finished reading the bible in Western Armenian. Somehow, I couldn't locate the story of Judith, and I also failed to find the place where He, the Carpenter, says: "Not peace, but sword I have brought unto you."
Anyway, I'm too fed up with it and not ready for a repeat perusal. I'll just put it aside altogether.
Yet, finishing is the start for something else. Whither shall we sail? I opted for restarting the translation of Joyce's ULYSSES—my fits and starts affair for three or four years already.
It's nine in the evening. The electricity has just been cut off. I finish these lines not seeing them—just as the hand goes.
We are setting off for the Underground.
Then I'll be back and alone.
So long, the best of worlds.
January 3
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.
In the morning I went to the work place. It was open but in complete "no-work" conditions—neither electricity, nor warmth, nor materials (as they call there the articles to render).
For a nice starter I had a small talk with Ms. Stella. She narrated about five Armenian policemen from Hadroot burned alive. Later, with the mediation of the Russian border guards their corpses were transferred to the relatives.
Then Ahlya, the cautious typist, embarked upon a discourse that there existed some righter practices for keeping your family as well as more promising principles for trusting in God. At half past eleven am I felt I was fed up and went home.
