Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Ficuses in the Open
Another of the missile attacks tried to precipitate us but in vain. We cum in a dignified manner and with the maximum pleasure attainable, adding our concluding grunts to the hilarious yells of the folks pouring into to shelter in the underfloor cellar beneath our bed.
Half an hour later, fixing up the door in the Underground compartment and then the live wires for the heater, I was as sloppy as never before.
Now it's five to eleven with an antiphony of Alazans and cannon bangs measuring the time outdoors.
When coming back from the Underground, I met Sahtik's brother in the street. Aram was making for his mother's house he currently lives in. A solitary pedestrian through the darkness and cannonade.
We shook hands as Brethren of the Order of Lonely Hearts. He also sleeps at home alone having left his wife and children someplace amid the town in her father's shelter.
Good night, Aram, my brother-in-law.
December 12
An exemplary calm night was followed by a no worse day. The machine-gun shooting has turned already into one of nagging yet petty trifles of no account.
At 9 am, I visited the TMC where they glibly clapped the missing stamp-smear of theirs into my military identification card.
Maiden day at a new job. The Renderers' is a chilly corner room with three windows in two walls and three office desks. At times a pack of idling men assemble in it, one after another, to wag their jaws and to offset the air chillness with rough smoke from their cigarettes. Still and all it's a good thing to have a work place! And I tried to make a good beginning:
in the room I borrowed from Wagrum the key to duplicate it;
in the corridor I made friends with Ahlya (really, it's her first day too? well I never! a typist? wow!);
from the Typing Pool I collected carbon copies of my four renderings to proofread them before submitting to the Head of Russian Section.
About 3 pm, I was told I might leave: there was no more work for today.
A nice and cozy family evening at home. Sahtik was playing with Ahshaut, Roozahna reading in undertone, the mother-in-law sleeping, I shaping and filing the duplicate key clutched with the pliers.
At 8 pm, the mother-in-law commenced to bake breads in the gas oven. I saw Sahtik and the kids to the Underground. There, Sahtik complained of unbearably cold droughts breaking in to the compartment from behind the hanging rags.
After a long and winding way meandering between and over the heaps, stacks and hills of boxes, pipes, bottles and sundry jetsam jumble, I reached the deepest, dustiest and darkest corner in the room. A pitch black hole—two by two feet—gaped there letting in a uninterrupted icy breeze. I stopped the hole with a piece of cardboard.
No sooner had I climbed out of that dust abyss through the sideway and a minor corridor than a tall gaffer rigged out in a stylish overcoat and expensive fur affair on his head confronted me in the main tunnel. He demanded my explanations as to what right I had to cut off the air coming in for all the Underground. I let the sleeping dogs lie and told him I hadn't seal it up completely, so some air was still getting in.
(…all things considered, my statement was true… well, to some extent. You bet he'd never dive in that dust maze to check if I was lying…)
At home, my mother-in-law surprised me by asking pensively if I trusted in God after all. I guess her queer query was prompted by some priest's visit to the Underground where he distributed leaflets of a printed prayer and books for kids, short stories from the bible with gaudy pictures.
I answered there were too many of Them, the immoderate number postponing my choice as of yet.
It's half an hour to the midnight. The mother-in-law has just finished baking bread and ventured to the Underground. I saw her to the crossroads.
The biting cold wind outdoors sweeps snow dust along the street. At times a random cannon shell spices the setting by its burst.
Fiat nox.
December 13
Both the night and the day were quite quiet. Had a dream of
…dwarf Santas in red coats lined-up in close rows to form alive maze in a tremendous hall with mirror walls where a plushy pop-singer with his sugary hit was sticking out from among the narrow lanes in their dwarfish labyrinth until the gaudy number got swept away by a black-leathered angel of hell riding like hell for leather and finally coasting at 2 or 3 meters above the ground as if arisen by the teeth of wind…
At the work place, I rendered one article and gave the final cut to my duplicate key before returning the original back to Wagrum.
After the midday break, they summoned me to a general meeting in the Boss' office. It was a solemn thank-you-and-good-bye affair to fling the gates wide open before a resigning veteran journalist.
Boss, Arcadic and one more member of the editorial upper circles took the floor, respectively, with their tribute speeches varying only in the thickness of orators' glasses. They squeezed themselves out dry to put across one and the same idea of impossibility to list the grand qualities of the departing vet who all his life kept moving in the wrong direction deceived by them those commies—not his fault, see?—yet our paper's door shall all the same be kept open for him forever and a day… In the end Ms. Stella presented him with a bunch of creamy rich carnations.
At home, I wallowed in our happy family life till 10 pm, and then saw everybody to the Underground. When I was back and scribbling these notes, two powerful but mute flashes ripped up the darkness outside our communicational window. I had the usual fit of heat fizzling up my chest. The heart went pit-a-pat. Beastly female shrieks sounded in the street and I went out.
Some forty meters up the street, there was a house on fire. Clinking of splintering glass and squeals of squaws in the crowd of by-standers mixed up with angry demands from non-interfering men to equip them with fire extinguishers, all that being out-noised by the businesslike crunch of the fire devouring the house in high, about 2 or 3 meter tall, tongues of flame. I recollected the red-clad Santa Clauses from my dream.
Then there arrived a team of firefighters (undreamed of) and in a couple minutes put the fire out. My mother-in-law was in the throng partaking in subsiding lamentations. (Her house is only ten meters away from the damaged one). Among the onlookers I also made out Sahtik, took her aside and expressly asked to go back to the children.
In absence of further entertainment, the crowd started to disperse. I spotted Nerses walking away and took him over to arrange a visit to his place tomorrow at 3.30 pm. (The fortnight about St. Yuri's Day when serfs are free to seek another master is not over yet.)
It's quarter past eleven. Desultory shooting of no account in the thick fog outside.
December 14
At night, the cannon bangs woke me up. Then I slept again. No dreams remembered.
It is a day-off today. Roozahna was taken by her biological father's sister to her grandparents. Sahtik, Ahshaut and I had a downhill walk to the Department Store. On the way we met Garric, a worker of Sashic's, who eagerly shared the latest gossip about a missile fragment they found marked 'Made in Turkey'. Presently, they seek means of shipping it to the Soviet Empire's capital as the corroborative evidence of exterior forces involvement in our sovereign scramble.
(…they pin too much hope on the dead horse, I think. Moscow will give no more ear to this case than Ankara…)
In the Department Store they extravagantly put up for sale the goods normally kept for shadow transactions. I bought a kit of household hand tools. A lucky strike.
Stepping outside into the sunlit Kirov Street, we met Carina with her children. She frisked the innards of her bag and presented Ahshaut with a pair of mittens grown too tight for her son Tiggo and then she added also two buns.
We returned to our place. After lunch my mother-in-law left for her home and, with Ahshaut having his day nap, Sahtik and I were given free rein to make love.
Yes, ours was a commonplace marriage of convenience for both the man nearing his fourties who drifted from a strange land in our mutual USSR and the local woman ten years younger, divorced, having a pre-school daughter to raise. However, as usual, I was in luck to meet such a partner in life, as well as in sex. At my point in lifespan, the grounds for romantic feelings are scarce and dwindling, yet, by heaven, I believe it's not a made-up trash to say that I love her. Sure, I do. And even if not madly, I love her properly and deeply and with real vigor – yep! – when needed.
Historically, there are no records of a female making a good wife as well as being a superb sex partner. It's either one or the other. You just can't have this 2 in 1. I am a lucky dog to find in Sahtik both qualities.
At half past 3 pm, I visited Nerses. He gave me the latest address of Larissa and Vanya, his daughter and his son-in-law, respectively. They were our dear weekend friends before their flight to Vanya's Cossack fatherland at the outbreak of armed confrontation down here.
However, my main objective was to borrow THE BHAGAVAT-GITA to which request Nerses immediately consented. In the follow-up chat, he outlined his current venture at selling grapes from his garden at Bazaar. The basement in the TMC Building, just opposite his house, served him the nighttime hideout.
About 4 pm Roozahna came back followed at once by my mother-in-law. We had a peaceful family evening. Sahtik, Roozahna and I played a pencil game, then all five of us had supper after which I made a fresh start with two pails for the round of water bringing.
It's ten past ten pm. By now, they're in the Underground now. All's calm outdoors.
December 15
This night's dream was a slow zoom-in to
…vast emptiness in a colossal military tent of slowly quaking smeared walls, no action at all just the scrolling close-up of the greenish sagged-in tarpaulin walls until...
shellbursts of a bombardment brought me back to the reality inside our room as dark as the thunder or even blacker.
The second day-off. In the morning I took Ahshaut for a walk to the Main Post to send a birthday postcard to Nerses and Lydia's granddaughter who was Ahshaut's play-mate at weekend bouts of our and Larissa-Vanya's families. Today she becomes two-year-old.
In the evening, a tin tub was placed in the middle of our one-but-spacious room for the kids to bathe in turn. Soaping their sides, Sahtik remarked pensively that the simplest and most routine things seem weirdly odd amid the war raging around.
I concurred, admitting that some TV programs do seem absurd to me when it shells outdoors.
Seems as my back starts to behave, I decided to resume my yoga exercises. Some asanas—even after such a pause—remained as feasible as they used to be.
It's half past nine pm. The family went to the Underground, but my mother-in-law is to come back for bread baking.
Uproar of dogged shooting out surges up in Krkjan.
December 16
A pretty gross bombardment they kicked up yesterday while I was bringing water to spend the time before my mother-in-law finished baking bread. A couple of times while shuttling with the pails along the sidewalk, I heard quite close whistles overhead. Bullets or missile fragments?
I soothed myself by the speculation that no matter of which kind they were there was my name on neither one. What's the use of getting uptight after the threat is over? And I beseech you, Mars, O, God of War, if one of those be more accurately addressed then let me get killed at once and clear. No silly tricks with curability, regenerating, reanimation and suchlike blithering drivel. One through my head would perfectly suffice, methinks.
The intensity of bombardment grew until it forced my mother-in-law to leave for the Underground and trust me handling the last batch of bread put in the oven before I saw her over.
Today at 9 am, I was at my work place to find nobody in the whole Editorial House. For a couple of hours I fiddled about the locked up drawer in my desk. All my attempts at making a skeleton key fell flat. Full of the shame and sadness, I gave up on the undertaking and just raped the lock open with a screwdriver.
From eleven till twelve am, Wagrum, Lenic and Arcadic peeped in, respectively. Lenic asked if I would like to visit a room down the corridor to watch a game of chess. Most politely, I reclined.
(…why on Earth does Sahtik say I am an outright disaster in terms of sociability? I'm politeness itself…)
At noon I left a note on the desk for all who might be concerned about my pending return at one pm… Sashic and Carina with their children were at our one-but-spacious-room flat, having lunch. I presented Sahtik with the paper issue containing three voluminous renderings of mine. Sashic promptly toasted the event but, not wanting to be back to work with vodka on my breath, I abstained.
I wolfed down my lunch and went to the Underground to fetch our heater. Yesterday, down there they forked out a brand new, mighty looking, heater per a compartment. I planned to take our old one to my work place but changed my mind when Sahtik reminded of the blackout we had been having since midnight.
At a stone throw off the Editorial House, I met Arcadic strolling away with an unknown youth. Arcadic told me to go home as there was no work that day. I nodded most humbly and slowed down as if pondering about alternative things to do, which maneuver was followed by stealthy penetration the Editorial House smuggling THE BHAGAVAT-GITA under my coat breast.
In the Renderers' I found my note on the desk turned over and used for the unsigned communication dashed off across the backside —'We are not working today'.
What a smart thing this BHAGAVAT-GITA is! And so mightily moving! It cut the anchorage and put to motion the very corner stones in my concept of the origins of modern civilization sending them to much more eastern quarters.
Now, I know where the Greeks ferreted out the ideas about innumerability of universes and tininess of atoms from.
And the digits that I was taught to think of as Arabic turned out to be born millennia before any of Arab mathematicians came to existence.
And would not the Fathers of Church be delighted by the definition of Trinity as exposed in the GITA? They could only dream of so refined subtleties!
Yet as usual, after my initial admiration there pops up one or another bitchy bitter word of 'but'… At being told for the first time that the human soul is an immeasurably wee spark residing in the heart of each and every individual, I just shrug my shoulders and say 'Okay, maybe'. (I can trust anything when I am not hungry.) I wince at the brow-beating reiteration of the same suggestion. However, when the idea is blared out for the third time, I feel I'd like to know how it conforms to the organ transplantation, eh?
Suppose, a saint's heart is inserted into a sinner's body (or vice versa), where should the migrant soul be sent after the receiver's death? To hell or higher planets?
Still and yet, the supplementary discourse on impossibility to kill one's soul is an awesomely rewarding stuff in the present situation… At this point, I looked out of the window to the right from my desk to behold this here current situation and saw:
a provincial hotel in ages-long need of repair;
an elderly squat woman idling on the steep porch stairs;
a girl of ten piggybacking her thrice younger brat of a brotherlet;
a fuzzy cur limping across the lane that separates the hotel from the Editorial House.
All in all, a classical backwater town landscape in the frame of a rambling clip-long rounds by AKs.
At half past three pm, the vet, warmly sent home two days ago to enjoy his wrongly deserved rest, came back on a visit. Of all the doors in the Editorial House, only mine happened to be open. Surprised, he asked if I had nothing to lock it up with. I proudly had… At half past four, I went home.
Sahtik had taken kids to the Underground, scared by the increasing frenzy of shooting out in Krkjan. I came to visit them. A feeble candle was oozing gruesome light to our meeting. We could hardly find a thing to say to each other.
Suddenly, the all-out gasp of cheer echoed throughout the Underground. The electricity appeared! Thanks be to Edison and his bulbs!.
I was doing yoga at home when Sahtik and Ahshaut came back. He inquenchably disagrees to keep to the Underground longer than it can't be helped…
Earlier in the day, the Twin Bakeries offered their dough for sale (their electrical ovens are useless during blackouts). My mother-in-law didn't miss out on the opportunity.
In the evening she started bread baking but felt all in and repaired to the Underground to keep Roozahna's company. Sahtik continued the baking.
It's half-past-ten pm, I'm alone. The relative calmness outside couldn't sway Sahtik to staying home.
December 17
Just a model day. At the work place, I knocked off two renderings and had a talk with my roommates.
Lenic was keen on my background and professional preferences. Then even Wagrum had for a while to keep his volatility in check and perch up surprised by a proposed short discussion of a Hellenistic subject.
I wouldn't call Wagrum a dream gossip—rejecting any novel thought, too ready to substitute chords for brains, chanting the corny parrot-cries from the inbred set of ideas they had formatted his mind with (as well as anybody else's among us for that matter). True, the guy is fairly young, yet his hustle and bustle won't let him grow wiser when older.
At home, I basked in as happy family life as any wise man could reasonably expect. The life of down-to-earth problems when finishing the repair of the favorite tumble-toy of your kids you are sent to the Underground where the shelter door needs a finer adjustment.
Today I plan to do my yoga about six pm. And then I'll have a supper and a shot of vodka and go to bed at once because I have to get up at 2 am and bring water for the washing scheduled by Sahtik for tomorrow… Right now, the waterqueue at the Three Taps is way too long, and the needed lots of water can't be fetched at one go.
On the whole, the war wasn't too butting in today. Thank you, December 17!
December 18
The alarm clock awoke me at 2 am. I dressed and went out for water. Dash it! I am not the only wise guy in this here neck of the woods. However, two or three water-carriers cannot be called 'a queue'.
On route in my pendular to-and-fros I watched a night missile attack—the languid flaming streaks of yellow gliding silently overhead to crash someplace in the town. In the heights beyond Armenavan, half of the night sky shimmered with ghostly crimson radiance of the giant gas torch there, the main pipeline set ablaze.
At twenty-to-four in the morning my water-carrying was done.
From 9 to 12 am I rendered one article at work. Lenic came after the midday break. He narrated of his vigil in the Bread Factory, queuing for three-and-half night hours just to buy the regular quota of three loaves.
Arcadic, the Head of Russian Section, asked me—just as a personal favor, you know—to render the manifesto of a newly stewed political party. Sure, I was only happy to oblige my immediate boss but…
Oh, brother! What a mess! The toil of making some sense from burbling gibberish of ultra-patriotic students tripping up at pompous words without rhyme or reason in their mental diarrhea!
And only the concluding paragraph in the manifesto was a plain and clear threat of ruthless punishment to any would-be dissents as well as doing away with all the members lacking in strength.
(…a promise to purge the infiltrated impotents?…)
The local radio announced the gas supplying would be stopped to repair the blown up pipeline. After the work, I collected our heater from under my desk in the Renderers'. I took it over to the Underground because, according to Sahtik, the heater from the recent distribution belied its mighty looks by poor performance.
In the Underground, I picked and brought home a masonry block-stone to make a substitute heater for my work place. Fortunately, I happened to have a second-hand heating element.
Until my supper at seven pm, I was carving ruts in the stone to insert the glow spiral. The job gave me an excuse for not having yoga today but, to tell the truth, I skipped it too readily. My eternal sloth.
It's ten past ten pm, Ahshaut sleeps at home.
The complete quietude outdoors lit by the giant gas torch mutely flaring in the distant hills over Armenavan.
December 19
Inexplicably peaceful night it was and the hush extended till noon.
Before the midday break, I finished rendering the Declaration of the Anti-Impotent Party (AIP). Wagrum remarked, whenever three Armenians settle down somewhere the place sees a political bum and creation of at least seven parties. Well, that was a good one from his kit.
Boss and his Secretary Rita dropped in, in turn, and were obviously impressed by my block-stone heating device. I dared a slight dispute with Boss when he proclaimed laziness as a distinctive feature of oriental man while I argued that the quality in question belongs to all of the human race.
In the morning Sahtik with our children and Carina with hers went to the Orliana's. So, I had a lunch all by my own.
After the break two missile attacks hit the town. Lenic, sheltering in the doorway of the Renderers', tried to talk me into leaving the room: what if a missile bursts in right through the window opposite my desk, eh?
'I'll never be aware of the fact', was my reply.
His advise to at least move over into the corner was also turned down—should a missile dash in I am rather for instant death than any wounds.
About four pm, I finished a rendering and phoned to the Orliana's. Sahtik was just setting off back home. I waited for her and the kids in the desolate emptiness of the Editorial House.
When on our last leg towards the Underground we were passing the Three Taps (Sahtik rather wound-up by the earlier attacks in the day), I detected the pale flame of Alazans
flying on our left.
'Now it'll …' I thought just that much before off went the crash of blasts.
Roozahna—all mad shrieks—bolted towards the flock of water-queuers that froze like a line of wax figures next to the Three Taps. Sahtik followed the suit.
(…it's just so human – to seek safety in a thicker mass of fellow beings: let someone else from the herd be snatched, not me!.)
Ahshaut and I were walking on, hand in hand. Lagging, in fact. He was fairly tired after doing it all the way uphill from the Orliana's.
The crowd shouted at me to grab the child and hare off, lest it got frightened. Defiantly, I kept walking on. In my opinion, Ahshaut would sure get scared if I followed the advise.
Still, I'm not a daredevil—far from it!—that funny feeling of mine never fades away and most of my waking hours I'm busy fighting the willies down. That tiny tearful whimper squeezed in my throat behind the Adam's apple.
At today's yoga my left knee protested painfully when in the Lotus.
Sahtik, on a flying visit from the Underground announced proudly that by Orliana's scales, she's three kilos lighter than before… O, women, not frailty, but vanity is your name. Even the war can't straighten them out.
It's half-past-nine pm, I am alone.
A tranquil night smirks outdoors.
December 20
A nasty night it was, but I stubbornly slept it through. In dreams
…I tilled a kitchen garden on a too boggy mountain slope and then rode a bicycle along a wide path of sand getting finer and deeper and turning the trail into a hopelessly impassable dusthole…
At the workplace I toiled at rendering four articles distracted shortly by a small talk with Rita on her visit to the Renderers' to get warm at the block-stone heater partly jutting from under my desk.
After the final period, I sat back and suggested Wagrum to write an article with practical instructions what to do when a missile attack catches you on the street. Nope. He found the subject too shallow when compared to the life in shelters which he was going to describe in a masterpiece of an article one of these days.
Arcadic also dropped in. Running for an MP in the upcoming parliamentary elections, he could speak only about his chances—too slim in his opinion because his rival's too mighty popular with all the criminals and gamblers in their constituency.
Sahtik had visitors today. Yana, a friend of hers, came to share most sad accounts of her maimed married life with a KGB officer.
(…men are pigs, all of us, as W. S. Maugham vividly exposed in his masterpiece story, and a pig invested with power is the most horrid beast of all…)
In the afternoon, Robic, a PE teacher at School 8, brought Sahtik's salary for last September paid only now. So, even among the pigs you can occasionally stumble on a suave knight.
After the working day was over, I went to the Printing House, three blocks southward. Once a month as any other employee at the editorial staff I have to oversee the paper through the press. Arcadic, whose turn it was today, explained me the supervisor's duties and moves before you give the go-ahead for printing it. After two hours of step-by-step instructing, we parted with a handshake, the first one since we had met.
When I came home, it was too late for yoga. I suppered and then took a bath in the washing-tub.
It's half-past-ten pm. Routine shooting outdoors.
Ahshaut's fast asleep.
December 21
This goodly day-off Ahshaut became two years old. What a tall guy: 92 cm!
In the morning he and I jaunted to the Site to collect the last bagful of apples from the cellar. On our way back I bought three bottles of wine at the shop by the Shooshva Corner.
Carina and Sashic, with their children, came to congratulate.
After lunch, the scheduled sexual intercourse (the only suitable time during the whole week while Roozahna is on a visit to her relatives, Ahshaut napping, the mother-in-law tactfully gone to her place: all fixed and fitted).
(…frankly, I am anything but fond of fucking with your eye on the ticking clock and no matter if it's before, at, or after the action…)
Past 4 pm, Lydia came to our place bringing some grapes and roses. The feast got a fresh start.
It's ten past ten pm.
Five minutes ago I saw Sahtik and Roozahna off. Ahshaut sleeps home.
The full moon outdoors and the first shell-burst of the day, I wish it were also the last.
December 22
The second day-off. Till four pm I was doing my hard labors time on our Site.
The layout improvement is a choice pastime; breaking up frost-tightened clay and shoveling it down into the bottomless gorge that serves the natural border to the Site.
On my way home I stopped for a chat with Goorgan, the only neighbor we have on our side of the gorge. He shared that all the truck-drivers at their state-owned firm work for phedayees now. He also has to transport the arms flown in from Armenia to the Kolatac village.
Going under the pine trees that line the sidewalk opposite the Children Hospital, I picked up a big bough chopped off by a shell fragment. There's enough material to make a decent X-mass tree.
At supper Roozahna went off her rocker. To restrain my choler, I left the table and munched the meal sitting at the sideboard.
Nine pm.
After Roozahna and my mother-in-law left for the Underground, Sahtik stayed home knitting yet five-minutes ago a solitary shell-blast made her flee.
Now, only Ahshaut and I am here. He sleeps undisturbed.
Outdoors all is quiet again.
December 23
The pallid moon up in the morning sky resembles a fugitive piece of dull, ungleaming, snow over the distant mountains…
Wagrum came dolled up in a spiffy outfit with a red-and-white scarf loosely thrown around his neck, smart gray suit and a pair of black gloves.
'The reds are on the run' declared he resting his buttocks on his desktop with we'll-beat-everybody puffs at his cigarette.
Soviet Army soldiers were leaving the gray huge Block of the CPSU District Committee—cheek by jowl with the drab Editorial House. On the wide square in front of the CPSU Block loomed a phedayee
CAMAZ-truck with no number plates, as is their custom. A pensive lad in a black sheepskin coat hanged around with a sub-machine gun in his arms. Three more phedayees, unarmed but in combat fatigues, stood apart in a businesslike jaw-jaw. Beno, a crony of Sashic's, was among them looking very brave in his khaki cap.
A cagey drove of old women and shifty youngsters neared the District Committee Block from the rear. They penetrated it through a ground floor window and embarked on looting the quarters left by the troops stationed there since spring.
A dozen iron cots floated out of the window and up the lane – one wooden chair and three empty cognac bottles diversified the spoil.
A small group of Soviet Army soldiers did their best to look another way, waiting, between the Block's and Editorial House' corners, for a vehicle to pick them up. At last an army jeep pulled up in the lane separating the Editorial House from the Hotel. A helmeted officer got out and staggered to the awaiting group strangely resembling by his motions a khakied automaton, inhumane and eyeless.
Becoming aware of the civilian looters, he leveled at them his sub-machine gun, clicked it and, slightly rolling from his toes to heels, barked out, 'Get away with you!'
At this point a squad of native policemen arrived to the scene wearing black sheepskin coats, armed with Kalashnikov guns, and only their commander in the uniform greatcoat carried no visible weapon. The looting dried up, a policeman posted at the broken window. The army jeep whizzed away.
A couple of minutes later the unarmed police officer came to the Renderers', took off his greatcoat and got seated at Lenic's desk (who was out dictating his renderings at the Typing Pool).
The man drank tea with jam laid on by Ms. Stella both for him and Arcadic and Wagrum (I, as a shitty mixer, declined the treat).
And he heartily laughed flashing the rows of gold teeth in his mouth at Arcadic's story about his and his contender's joint meeting with the electorate of their constituency.
