Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Ficuses in the Open
After lunch one page from ULYSSES. Then, on Roozahna's request, I taught her playing "The Sea Battle".
After today's yoga I had a rare and delightful feeling of well oiled joints and cartilages in my lower extremities.
Supper.
Sahtik and the kids went over to the Underground. The mother-in-law stayed to bake bread.
I have already brought water from the nearby Three Taps. No one there. Every fifteen-twenty minutes, missiles are coming in twos or threes to hit the town with crashing bangs. It is cloudy today, no fanciful views.
The mother-in-law finished baking and I accompanied her to the Underground's entrance.
At home I heated half a bucket of water and washed up all the parts of mine within my reach.
It's high time (11 pm) to say – Good night.
December 22
And even in dreams
…missile attacks went on though with much gaudier rainbow colors until an Azeri paratrooper entered the room and put a razor against my beard…
Deafening silence and feeling that something was fatally wrong awakened me.
At the Club only Veelen, a reporter, dropped in. We had a small talk about the local parliament.
I finished reading of THE BHAGAVAT-GITA. The real thing.
At home Ahshaut was sleeping, the mother-in-law and Roozahna gone to some close relatives in the downhill town. Sahtik was on top of the situation and really perfect in performing. I, for my part, rather dutiful than ravished.
Then I took THE BHAGAVAT-GITA back to Lydia and exemplary paid for it by playing along with her twenty minutes' monologue on the local politics. After unfurling her opinions as to who was guilty of bringing the current situation down here and whose faults and mistakes still hamper the proper handling of it, she produced and read to me her letter to the three Presidents—Armenian, Azeri, and Russian—asking why they're doing nothing about it.
(…thanks to yoga, I haven't got a crick in the neck after half an hour of nodding along sympathetically…)
One page from ULYSSES. Yoga. The pencil game (I was humiliatingly defeated). Supper.
Now all are safely over in the Underground. The water-walk is ahead.
It might seem a dull routine but these water-walks are virtually filled to the brim by confluent stream of fantasies. For instance, the day before yesterday while taking water, in proud solitude, from a spring almost beyond the town I was shot dead by a sharp-shooter from the nearby hill and collapsed into the mud on the brooklet bank mingling my blood with its running waters. And quite often in the course of fantasies at my water-walks, I bury one or another member of my family before fleeing with all of them alive to a secure place in some peaceful state.
By THE BHAGAVAT-GITA's caste classification, Samvel, the head of that firm, is a Kshatri (knight). What right did he have to look at me from a Sudra's (Valyo's) eyes?
Anyway, I wish good night to all the members of any caste.
December 23
The din in the second half of the night grew rather fretting. And those two close explosions at breakfast time were not a fair play at all. However, the day was calm.
At the Club (in the Renderers') Arcadic made an invective speech before the audience of two (Rita and me) in detail disparaging the dirty tricks his rival referred to during the elections. Then Ahlya came in and took the floor to share her hopes to escape from here by a chopper. The audience shrunk to one (me). She also departed.
Lenic arrived with a story fit to beat all anti-smoking campaigns: one man got up in the dead of night and walked out onto his balcony to have a smoke—and that very moment an Alazan ripped through his bedstead.
Then he (Lenic) asked me about the paper slip kept by me on my desk with hieroglyphs written in it. I explained that this quotation in Sanskrit was copied from THE BHAGAVAT-GITA: "Koorah karmah somahchahrah", which means, 'Do whatever you do properly'.
To fill up my empty hours at the Club I settled on rendering of Azimov's FOUNDATION AND EARTH there.
After lunch, one page from ULYSSES. Then I went to the Underground.
The constant out-flow of the townsfolk fleeing from the bombardments to far-off villages has put the number of the Underground inhabitants on a noticeable decrease. The mother-in-law found vacant places in a more rat-proof compartment. I moved their beds over to the new location.
Yoga. Supper.
A talk with Sahtik. She said she was tired. (Which is quite understandable when you are constantly worked up and waiting for those damned bangs to start their bloody din. It can't but wear you out.) And, to her mind, Montaigne was right in saying that death is not the worst thing in the world.
I answered that, to my mind, she's too young to meddle with all those damn philosophizings. And, to reduce the inner tension the righteous thing to do is just not to want too much.
(I, for one, had only one desire: let the shelling begin no sooner as all they are in the relative safety of the Underground.)
Well, right now they are over there, I am here, and the explosions – outdoors.
High time for the water-walk.
Good night.
December 24
Morning at the Club. Araic, Rita, Arcadic, Lenic, respectively, peeped in, at intervals, not meeting each other.
That dentist was killed by his own wife – hacked nine times with a meat ax. An act of jealousy. Life is running high even here and now.
(…or else the investigation was done by the gold-seeking killer's pal…)
Lenic, to my request, made a drawing of an oil lamp do-it-yourself chimney receptacle. For which project you can use tin from any canned food. I was beyond myself with gratitude and shook his hand two times. He left and I went on with the rendering from Azimov.
Lunch. One page. "Sea Battle" with Roozahna and Sahtik.
A nice snowfall of magnificent fluffy flakes soft, and meek, and blurring, made me take the kids for a walk.
On coming back I was sent to the Underground to stop rat holes in the compartment my family recently moved to. Practically, sealing the holes up would make the place more habitable. Politically, it'll consolidate the rights of the immigrant family to their places in the room.
Yoga. Supper.
When I saw them to the Underground, the mother-in-law suggested me to take home from there a baby high chair belonging to no one. It was discovered when in preparation for the exodus from the previous compartment, she took down the rags screening off the realm of dust.
I defied outright. (Ahshaut has a chair of that very make.)
Today's water-walk got snowed in. The drifts are too deep to slog through far enough. Anyway, the flask I brought yesterday remains intact (three pails) so I am enjoying a night off.
There was a separate explosion at three pm and till now (twenty to ten pm) calm reigns outdoors.
Wishes of a good night to all, both out- and insiders.
December 25
The night was quite calm. Only in the morning there started an artillery duel making people keep to the shelters.
Till ten am, when the banging stopped, I was working at the oil lamp sconce following the blue-print by Lenic. Then I went over to the Underground and took Ahshaut for a walk. (Roozahna had been taken by her aunt.)
Lunch.
One page.
The mother-in-law left us on our own, so (with Ahshaut on his sleep) it was a scheduled and matter-of-routine one made somewhat flat by the predestinatedness of delectabilities. The sweat smell of our bodies had a depressing effect on me at the initial stages, nonetheless, we managed to get into our stride, then classical full swing was reached and, in due course, the swoony coda.
Yoga. Supper.
Sahtik and the children have been seen over to the Underground. The mother-in-law is still here baking breads. I am going out for the water-walk.
Good night to all.
December 26
Dreams awash with
soldiers garlanded with batches of pails, canisters, buckets, flasks and suchlike water containers
In the morning I went to the Site. Someone had slewed the scaffold boxes between the walls. There was a huge dog's body half buried in a snowdrift outside the doorway. The baling wire balls (that I had extracted from the tangled up coils of the barbed wire around the CPSU Block) were stolen from behind the Tool Booth.
After restoring the order, I descended to the bottom of the gorge and cut down fifteen saplings to make stakes for the retaining wall of the projected terraced kitchen garden on our Site's slope to the gorge.
(…I'll show to the converted-wire thief that he's not the only guy about here going to survive!.)
Under the thundering cracks of another bombardment, I cut stairs in the frozen clay of the steep slope and hauled the stakes up there to our Site.
At one pm I returned to our one-but-spacious-room flat. All, of course, were in the Underground. Carina and her kids, having come on a visit, got also jailed there by the fierce shelling and rocketing outside.
When there happened a lengthy lull in the bombardment, I saw the guests to their place pulling the sledge with Tiggo and Rita in it. A downhill job.
Lunch. One page.
Then I again visited the Underground and was suggested to manufacture a woodburner for the room down there. They introduced me to the husband of one of the room's inmates to team up in the undertaking. Husbands to the rest of the sheltererixes are of no use for the purpose – they are representatives of soft-ware castes.
Arto and I undid a huge rectangular ventilation tube from those left in the realm of dust. That way we got tin sheets necessary for the project. We also started to bore the outer wall of the basement with a bar-pick to make a hole for letting the projected woodburner's pipe out. However, the final break-through was postponed till the woodburner be ready, so as not to let the cold in ahead of time.
About noon, a missile or a shell hit a house in this street, just opposite the mother-in-law's. The explosion killed an old woman and wounded her daughter-in-law; while a half-year-old baby didn't get a single scratch.
The inner town telephone communication is restored.
At the Three Taps, alive water-queue transformed into that of pawns. People—reluctant to leave their pails as the markers—put sundry things to secure their place in the queue. You come to the line of flower-pots, used tires, chipped cups, mere stones, thrown away boots and other whatnots to add your marker in the end.
For nearly a week I was following the slow progress of the cone of a red bucket from a firefighting emergency stand. Today it was at only a meter and a half from the Right Tap. Tomorrow, on reaching the water squirt, the pawn-owner (if neither killed nor gone to a village) will bring and fill up all his and his relatives' buckets, pails, canisters and other vessels.
It's twenty past ten pm.
No water-walk today. Just – goodnight to each and everyone.
Dece…
Holy shit!! Just this very moment I got it that quite for a while I kept to false dating. Nah! It is –
January 27
Dreams also full of war. This night
...ten-year-old fourth-graders from the Hndzristan Village School were keeping the front-line against the Vermacht troops…
Morning at the Club. Ahlya described how her five year old boy didn't want to understand that one piece of bread is enough for one person.
Araic related about their training squad. They have only two guns for forty would-be phedayees and no maps of this country. For map-reading classes they use an odd map of some Belorussian region in it.
Rita asked me for a book to read. She'd rather have a love story.
After lunch, I was Arto's hand in the woodburner manufacture. However, perforation of the basement wall was mainly my concern.
By the combined efforts of the skilled (Arto) and unskilled (me) workforce the woodburner got duly produced and installed. Arto furnished the pipe-passage with a wooden frame and partly glazed it leaving a gap for the pipe only. Now they don't have to use an oillamp in the daytime down there.
Presently, the number of shelterers in this Underground is estimated at about three hundred people. May easily be so. They dwell in segregated compartments. Just like in ancient Sparta – barracks for males and barracks for females and kids.
Supper. One page.
The water-walk was stupendously short today; when passing the neighbor quarter—the starting leg in my long and winding rout to the far-off water-head—I saw there was no queue at their street water-hose.
So, let's call it a day and wish good night to all good, and evil, and those in-between, ones.
January 28
Dreams bring no relief.
...war and pitch black darkness full of stampeding crowds and endless water-carrying…
At times it's hard to say dreaming from reality to discern their border-line and see where I am at a given moment.
In the morning I went to the Club. The red cone of the firefighting-bucket has commenced another slug journey from the end in the pawn line towards the Three Taps.
The diesel fuel—solarka—effectually competes with cash now. Sahtik told a story of a woman wanting abortion. "OK," said they, "bring three liters of solarka to put the power generator in action." For three days she couldn't manage to find it even for ready money.
At the Club I had a chat with Araic only. The rest of the clubmen played truant, presumably, because of the three missile series at about 10 am.
However, after an hour of calm they gathered and opted for immediate closing the Club and leaving. I had to scrape up my Azimov-job because a minor boss was all too eager to lock the entrance door of the Editorial House.
On coming out into the street, I saw Rita standing among the others on the sidewalk. Taking risks to arouse choler of the minor boss with the key, I double backed to the Renderers' and brought out THE LOVER OF LADY CHATTERLY for her in Russian.
She grabbed the book with both hands and catching the word LOVER in the title spasmodically pressed the volume to her raincoat's breast to conceal it from the colleagues (there were only males around).
One page from ULYSSES after lunch.
Then I went over to the Underground. Arto and I collected about a dozen of maverick block stones in and around Underground. I borrowed a sack from him and went to our Site. There I poured two pailfuls of cement into the sack, put it on the sledge, and shipped the cement to the Underground.
When leaving the Site, I had a talk with Goorgan, the neighbor. Phedayees had taken his KRAZ-truck from the state-owned firm.
(…who is in power here and now?.)
Back in the Underground, I laid the collected block stones to stop two huge openings in the room's partitions dividing it from the trunk corridor and the next door compartment. The operation drastically improved thermo- and sonic isolation of the room. Sahtik helped me wash my head afterwards and then I talked to her pleading not to yell so much at Roozahna. After all it was not the girl to start this fire and making her an outlet for one's bitter feelings wasn't a fair play at all.
Yoga.
Then I accompanied Sahtik and the kids to the Underground. The mother-in-law was already there.
They say, phedayees have shot down a helicopter with a pack of Azeri and Russian big shots on board. All feel scared at the prospect of possible retaliation by rocketing and shelling at the town. The Underground is filled up.
The door of the shelter room down there stood ajar – to let out the excessive heat from the woodburner.
Supper.
Now I'm leaving for the water-walk. So – Good night.
January 29
In dreams
…on a visit to Africa I saw half-naked brawny natives adorned with feather sprays and watched a close-up of a newly-born elephant in its scrotum-like skin with sparse sticky hairs and had a sex with some black beauty fortunately with no Nature-polluting ejaculation…
Two attacks in the morning, starting at 9 am, then I sat at the Club till noon.
Nowadays, with all the other doors in the Editorial House locked, the most persistent visitors eventually drop into the Renderers'. Today it was a Major in urgent need of seeing Boss and an aged maniacal scribbler with some "material" in a thick folder of an old newspaper.
Araic came and inquired what I was scribbling all the time. After my explanation, he asked if he could read the first dozen pages of my rendering of Azimov.
Lenic dropped in on his way home from the upper town where he stays for nights at his father-in-law's. He put his water canister by the door, made a phone call and then left.
At lunch my mother-in-law just so gently broke the news that the pram used by me for bringing water was taken away. The dump heap where I had exhumed it from was, actually, its storage place and they had never intended to throw the pram away.
(…well, by the Roman Law codes their claim has sufficiently firm grounds. Dura lex, sed lex…)
Till six pm I was assembling another pullcart out of two small plastic wheels and remnants of one more pram exhumed from the same realm of dust in the Underground. The project was completed but not tried in the field.
Yoga. Supper.
I saw all of the family to the Underground. For the third time since morning.
No James Joyce on this day.
The water-walk's ahead. Let's check the new cart.
Wishes of Good night to all, naturally.
January 30
What does a man need for an all-round happiness? Just a couple of wheels for a handcart. That yesterday's project turned out a disgraceful failure.
In the morning I entered the Club a quarter of an hour later because I was helping the porter (alias security guard) to fix up the entrance door. Vibrations from close explosions warped it out of order. Now it functions OK.
The first to visit the Renderers' today was Lenic bringing home in the downhill town two canisters of water and his mom. He introduced us to each other. Her name's Elena. Yet their visit was fairly short – the telephone doesn't work again.
I idled about with the Azimov's padded masterpiece. Araic came. Then Ahlya.
At eleven a pair of minor bosses popped up and promptly decided to close the hangout. I had only to pack off.
Ahlya was going in my direction to look something up in the MAYAC Shop. On the way, I urbanely small-talked to her about water-bringing (when passing by the Three Taps).
The lunch was somehow superfluous.
One page from ULYSSES.
During Ahshaut's day nap there occurred two missile attacks. I said to him "there-there" and "all's OK" and he slept off again. Sahtik and Roozahna at once shot off and out of the room to lean against the yard walls for a shelter.
I puzzled out an oillamp going by Lenic's instructions. It is furnished with a rotating mini-spindle (made of a hair pin) that propels the wick up and down. At the moment the project lacks only a chimney. Glassblowing is beyond my scope.
I'm out of sorts today – having a fever that at times swells up to a delightful feel of the marrows simmering inside my bones. The state brought to mind a line of mine from the times past which runs like:
"even in dying there is some pleasure"
Though the myness of the line is rather dubious. With multitudinous myriads of human beings that were and are and will be on this world, you never can tell for sure whose thoughts you are munching at any given moment.
The only bitter note in this blissful biting the dust is the throaty cough—dry and suffocating. Last time that I felt this way was full three years ago during my pre-wedding good-bye trip to the Ukraine.
At today's yoga I felt as if submerged in a warm soothing bath. However the joints' flexibility kept falling short of their normal capacity.
In the water queue they were bemoaning a girl of nine and her father, a man in his prime, killed by a shell hitting their house. Some other people got wounded by that explosion too, poor things.
In the afternoon, my mother-in-law called me out to fetch two pails of water. She somehow managed to jump the queue at the nearby street water-hose.
On my way I caught myself drooling over a kid tricycle kicking about in another one's yard. Three sturdy wheels!
Late in the evening after kneading the dough, the mother-in-law left for the Underground to join the rest of our family while the dough was getting ripe. An hour later a stout errand boy from the Twin Bakeries brought to our place a sizable portion of dough sent by his master as was arranged with my mother-in-law a week ago. I had to go over to the Underground to inform on this overproduction crisis.
Right now Sahtik has arrived home together with her mom to handle the problem. High time for me to end this entry.
Good night.
January 31
Severe bombardments all day long. They say the Azeri president declared 'ghazavat'—the holy war—on this self-proclaimed Republic. So Sahtik with the kids and my mother-in-law kept to the Underground all day.
In the morning I went to the barber's to have my hair cut. From there I came to the Club but at 11 am was strongly recommended to leave.
At a news-stand in Kirov Street I bought nine ball-pens of the cheapest sort – one monet each.
At home I was called over to the Underground to dismantle Ahshaut's cot and take it out of there to make more room for the room's population. From now on he is to sleep there in one bed with Sahtik.
Then I took breads to the Carina's and the Orliana's, respectively.
When back home again I tinkered at one more contrivance in the way of a handcart.
No Yoga (I'm still unwell). No Joyce.
The home made oillamp needs improving – the wick tractor would pack up at times.
One more visit to the Underground and the water-walk are ahead.
The shelling goes on, unceasingly and unilaterally.
No answering from this side except for my "Good night".
February 1
Yesterday—so the local radio—eighty missiles and forty shells hit the town. And today till half past one pm I was again busy modeling a handcart. I tried to use the wheels from a toy truck but their axis made of wire couldn't bear the weight of 40-liter flask filled with water.
Rather calm a day it was – only one attack.
They say (the Underground mass media) Azeri tanks had captured the Hramort village setting a lot of houses on fire. Yet, the attackers were fought back and fled sustaining heavy casualties.
Sashic dropped in when I was lunching alone to ask how we were getting on.
I paid to Nasic, the landlady, fifty-monet of rent for this month.
One page from ULYSSES. No Yoga.
A rare treat – all the family had a supper together. Then I went for the water-walk. On the way back home there occurred a minor break down.
(…well, the first American space shuttle also lost fifteen thermo-scales in its maiden flight…)
However, I managed to bring water home without so crushing a strain as the day before. On the way I saw a great fire in the downhill town outskirts.
Washing the reachable parts of mine in the tub is the last item on my agenda.
So I have the right to say "Good night".
February 2
COLUMBIA was the first shuttle's name.
Twilights beyond the dull-glassed panes in our immensely wide windows condensed into the darkness echoing at times to a rare pedestrian's footsteps along the hollow street.
Traditionally, silence in the streets is a sign of some holiday in progress with all the folks gathered to watch an autodafe, guillotining, hanging, quartering or some other popular entertainment of human nature. But why does this night sound so holidaylike?
The only explanation I can put my hand on – today is the birthday of that woman whose daughter brought a baby in the Ukraine—making me a grandfather—six months ago. Up till now I have no notion about my grandchild's gender. Communications with the outer world are rather limited down here.
In the morning I practiced auguring: suppose today we'd have as many shell-bursts as she—born this day so-and-so many years ago—had lovers besides me. Astoundingly, the count stopped at a pretty low number – just a couple of dozens. But then, perhaps, the number only reflected her achievements during the three years of our marriage?
However, the blasted bangers were exploding at most unsuitable and sensitive points of time. Some thundered when we were at our dinner.
Sahtik dropped her spoon, huddled Ahshaut up in her arms and rushed out calling to me to leave everything and see them to the Underground.
(…indisputably natural behavior pattern…)
That Underground shelter helps me to keep afloat too. I am much braver knowing they are down there… Then I returned and finished my dinner and took theirs over there in a bag.
All the day I was busy being ill. Sahtik and Ahshaut joined me in the business; but he obviously got over it by the evening.
I repaired the handcart and remade the do-it-yourself oillamp. Right now I am writing by its light (an up-hill job though).
No Site. No Yoga. No water-walk. The water supply we have right now will hold out for a couple of days.
A week ago the nearby village of Karin-Tak was attacked by Azeri forces. Fifteen villagers were killed and many more wounded.
Recently, they found out who'd shown to Azeries the passage over mine fields surrounding the village.
The traitor together with his two adult sons and his son-in-law were staked out in front of the Pedagogical Institute. Anyone swept up with patriotic emotions or just indignation was allowed to beat them up or spit on them at one's heart content, they say.
I, for one, wouldn't take their guilt for granted. "Alles ist Luge, Herr Offizier" were the last words of a Jew hanged for treason of a state at war. That was another war, of course, but all the wars seem to have a good deal in common. Witch-hunting, for instance.
It's twenty past eight pm; all the family are gone. Now and here I have neither needs nor desires—the classical definition of a happy man.
So, I'll just be lying and sweating the fever off and wishing all and everyone – Good Night.
February 3
An extraordinary calm day—not a single blast. The Underground people wondered if they had run out of rockets up there. One more duck cooked by the underground media: this Republic got recognized by Czech-Slovakia.
At the Main Post they've put up a letter-box – one for all the letterwriters in the town. The correspondence to be shipped by helicopters. I definitely suspect it would be a one-way communication. But Sahtik, who was terribly ill all the day, had, nevertheless, written a letter to my sister in Ukraine.
In the morning I attended the Club. Araic tried to explain to me some elementary features of Arab lettering.
Rita (under influence from the novel by Lawrence) pitied there were no foresters here.
After lunch, making an excuse of my illness, I allowed myself to have a nap in bed.
One page from ULYSSES. No Yoga.
A family supper around one candle. It looked like a mellowly lit Dickensian affair. I gave Sahtik free hand in convincing me that the water-walk was not necessary today. Her argumentation was supported by the fifth column – the sloth feeling down my chest.
In the Underground, under the close supervision from my mother-in-law, I replaced Sahtik-and-Ahshaut's folding bed with the wide wooden door leaf that I pillaged off the staircase entrance in the rundown 2-storied apartment block.
The door, put horizontally upon block-stones, became a sturdy support for the mesh-frame from an iron spring bedstead.
The town idiot, Zazé girl, was wounded two days ago; yesterday an old woman was torn apart by an explosion right in front of her house. Her sister (also an oldie) having no phedayee relative cannot find boards to order a coffin.
To wind up the current digest of news I, full of hope and optimism, say – 'Good night.'
