Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Ficuses in the Open
They presented both candidates. Arcadic's sitting modestly, like a well-bred bridegroom, while his silver-tongued sidekick pours forth about the exellent unsurpassable qualities of everyone's dearest friend – Arcadic. It's the uniquest opportunity to vote for the best of best!
The fine oration over, the brazen yokel of Arcadic's rival gets on his feet to declares 'Well, bros, you know as well as I do, so just for the record, all you've heard now is the very picture of me.'
At that tea party, I had an acute stretch of the second sight feeling as they call it in the Highlands… Then, I rendered three articles, mended Ms. Stella's heater and attended a general meeting at the Boss'. According to Boss:
the Soviet Army's troops (except for the primordial regiment) got orders to pull out from the region;
our self-proclaimed Republic starts general mobilization (men up to forty);
the day before phedayees unexpectedly laid hands on the armory of the withdrawing troops;
our paper changes its name to The Free Artsakh.
At home I whetted the hand saw from the tool-kit recently bought at the Department Store for the tomorrow's manufacturing of X-Tree.
Sashic brought a sack of flour to our place. Soon, Valyo followed the suit with four bottles of milk.
It's a quarter-to-eleven pm. The females of the family gone to the Underground. Ahshaut is sleeping home.
The hangfire shooting outdoors ticks over in the ominously raw moonlight.
December 24
The sable dark of the night speckled randomly with the warm glitter of bulbs in the houses climbing the steep hillsides… all that background charged with a clothes-line tout 'a bend' (though sagging a bit under the gross weight of the hung out washing)… The view is available at nights from the queue at the "Suicide's Waterhead", looks like the most fit coat of arms for this here town.
About ten in the morning, the homely glow from the blockstone heater next to my desk in the Renderer's was cut off by another blackout. Poor me, cold is a thing I fear most badly. Rendering of an article full of heated patrioticy made me no warmer.
During the break, to start my spree of X-shopping I bought a book of science fiction for Sahtik.
A small crowd gathered near the Mayor Hall to admire a light tank manned with a native crew loading up an oblong box with, presumably, ammunition. Someone in the crowd called me by my name. It was Gago of the Sarushen village. Surprised to see me. He thought I had left long ago.
'Are you a resident spy, after all?' asked he with a grin.
I updated him on my getting a job and inquired if he had risen to the rank of Major among phedayees . We parted with a handshake.
At the Renderers', Ahlya the Typist came to share her bleakest, terror-dripping, apprehensions. She had never sinned, nor breached any law, nor participated in the movement for Karabakh independence. And now, irrespective of so cautious a lifestyle, both she and her children were gravely endangered. Deadly. Constantly. What a horrible nondiscrimination! It's so unfair. Who would defend them now without the Soviet Army down here?
I tried to comfort her with a piece of Persian history.
At four pm the personnel was sent home and the Editorial House locked. My intention to go on with the X-mas shopping fell short in view of huge padlocks on all of the shops. Yet, the tiny shop next door to our place happened to be open. There I bought a black belt for Roozahna, which luxiery item knocked me back for 27 monets.
The evening was spent assembling the X-mass tree. The pine limb I picked up yesterday yielded enough spare parts for the construction. Now it's decorated and placed upon the bookcase partitioning our one-but-spacious room into two.
There are two socks under the the tree left by Roozahna and Ahshaut. The sock from Ahshaut contains three walnuts wrapped in silver paper while he himself sleeps in his cot.
The other sock is crammed with the black belt for Roozahna to find it in the morning when she comes back from the Underground.
It's ten past ten pm. An artillery blast banged in the upper part of the town.
Merry Christmas to all.
December 25
No electricity. One article rendered. While at it, I had a theosophical talk with Wagrum and Lenic.
(…the Master I've lately subscribed to should be pleased with me duly following His instructions – discuss such things whenever and whoever with it's possible…)
It sounded more like a sermon though than a trilateral talk. All they did was just listening to my palaver and making no comment because such subjects had been completely absent from the ideas-inoculation-kit used throughout our mutually vast SOVIET HOMELAND. In the end something started to dawn upon them and Lenic asked cautiously if I was a God believer.
'No fear,' said I, 'my believing faculty is gone for good like the chopped off appendix.'
At home Valyo was awaiting for me to start drinking the X-mass in. Then, he left taking home his family's share of bread baked by our mutual mother-in-law.
Soon after Valyo's departure, Slavic, a Muscovite compo, knocked on the door and the alcoholiday flowed on under the yarn of his front-line stories.
(A jobless ex-sportsman without what you call 'immaculate records' he joined a phedayee group as a sharpshooter).
After a while my mother-in-law and Roozahna left for the Underground giving the opportunity for Sahtik and me to have it. However, we were still at the table when a massive missile round hit the town. The moment the last bangs' echo died away, Ahshaut woke up crying.
(…I had a strong suspicion though that Sahtik did the trick to shun an unremitting sex with the drunken pig of me…)
Under the circumstances I only had to take crying Ahshaut and taciturn Sahtik over to the Underground.
Then, I returned and saw Slavic off. He was quite tight.
At a quarter-past-ten pm, the electricity came on in. I'm alone.
Good night.
December 26
In the morning I decided to give up spirits for good, be it even the consumption of beer…
One missile attack in the morning didn't shoo the electricity out. The Renderers' was warm and teeming with guests and visitors, even Boss among the others.
I rendered two articles, then Arcadic sent me upstairs to ask Mrs. Nvard, the paper's queen in disguise, if she had any remarks about my one-week-old rendering of her mawkish essay on the life in basement shelters.
She was in her office room shedding tears and complaints over the phone about her younger son enlisting a phedayee group. She rang off and bestowed my rendering with the highest appraisal.
On coming back to the Renderers', I started one more spiritual talk with Wagrum. He retaliated it with a political one.
Veelen, a reporter, presented me with two booklets he had picked up from the floor in the CPSU District Committee Block after it was left by the Soviet troops. The glossy artifact produced in the Azeri capital presented the Karabakh conflict and the snakes in the grass nation of Armenians in terms of hate conforming to the international standards of printability.
At home I was again visited by Slavic. We had a supper for two, however, drinking was exclusively his concern. Meanwhile, a water-tank truck pulled up in the street bringing water to the Twin Bakeries. People from the immediate neighborhood instantly swarmed around. My mother-in-law was not among the last in the queue filling up all the flask-and-cask from our household. Slavic helped me to drag them in. At that point the electricity was cut off anew.
It's half-past-nine pm, I'm writing by a candle because the oil lamp was taken over to the Underground. Ahshaut sleeps home.
Placid darkness outdoors. Good night to all.
December 27
A day in a cold room and no work at all is surely a dismal day. Lenic is definitely a guy you can rub along. Linguistic niceties are quite exceptable for an esoteric shoptalk.
The 20-meter-long queue of empty pails waiting for their turn to get filled up by a small-finger-thick dribble of water from any of the Three Taps is clearly a somber view.
The folks marauding the grounds by the CPSU Block and taking home the coils of barber-wire left behind by the pulled out Soviet troops are far and away constructive-minded people.
At home the gas-heater was giving out its final sighs. The mother-in-law ordered construction of an ojakh in the yard.
Firstly, put a pair of stones on the ground.
Secondly, make sure the stones are not too wide apart and the bottom of your casserole rests on each of the two.
Thirdly, build a fire between the stones.
She started cooking on the open fire in the newly erected ojakh in the yard. I retired to our one-but-spacious-room flat to lick the wounds in my male pride pricked by the excessiveness of her instructions. At times, her aspirations to have her finger in every pie on earth do exasperate me. I closely control myself but she is too shrewd not to smell a rat.
Actually, I am vexed not so much by my mother-in-law as by this here situation. So my gravest objective is not to let her feel nor even suspect herself an outlet for my irritation which would mean the direst collapse of my self-esteem.
After a missile attack, I helped Sahtik to take the kids over to the Underground. She also transferred the oil lamp there. Half an hour later the electricity appeared! All of them came back together. A very pleasant family evening evolved.
It's ten-to-ten in the evening. Ahshaut is sleeping in his cot. The mother-in-law and Roozahna are in the Underground. Sahtik stayed home knitting.
I am freshly washed in the tub and utterly hurt by the fact that watching TV (the popular quiz 'The Field of Miracles') was preferred to my most natural suggestion.
December 28
From 6.30 till 8.30 am, massive missile attacks and artillery shelling raged all over the town. I was ordered to take Ahshaut to the Underground. So as to keep me down there, they found some pressing maintenance work.
While going to and fro (ferrying tools, hot water, clothes etc.), I saw a missile blast some 100-meters away – like a jet of pale brown smoke leaped from a building's wall. Did not look like Alazan explosions. Till now thick black smoke hovers over the houses on fire in Krkjan.
Missile salvos kept hitting the town all day long. In a bubble of calm around the noon, Sahtik and I went out to the Theater to vote in the local parliamentary elections. Normally, I keep away from politics, but after such a massive pressure to bulldoze me out of participation, I could do nothing else but go out and vote.
The weather was mild and warm. However, its meekness could not bribe me into assuming a less rigorous attitude and I crossed out all the candidates in my vote slip because I didn't know a single one of them.
Roozahna's aunt took the girl but very soon had to bring her back—Roozahna got too hysterical after one more missile attack.
Most reluctantly, Sahtik conceded to my plea for Ahshaut to have his day nap at home while she, Roozahna and my mother-in-law kept to the Underground. At something past 4 pm, another missile attack made me take even him over there – by the compromise agreement between Sahtik and me he might stay home only as long as it's calm and the very first explosion be the signal for taking him over to the Underground.
I was doing my yoga when the last gas in the heater gave out. Yet, like a real yogi, I kept my cool and pretended being too much taken up with asanas to let so earthly trifles impair my listless tranquility. And the trick worked! For a few blissful moments, I felt a complete indifference to anything. However, the chill in the room grew too nasty and my make-believe bliss evaporated. Besides, it's not an easy task to see the Parathma inside your heart when they kick up such a hell of noise outdoors.
It's five-to-ten pm. Thick fog outside mixed with oppressive silence.
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.
