Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Ficuses in the Open
(Alyosha, the Hoouse Manager, urged me to keep it latched when alone in the building: there are typewriters in the rooms, you know.)
I thought it was Lenic with his competitional coat of arms but it turned out to be Rita. I, conversationally, told her about my mistake and she instantly burst out, 'Idiots! The coat of arms! What for? The communal tomb?'
She leaned against the wooden partition put along the first flight of stairs, half of her face hidden behind the partion edge, and gazed at me with her left eye full of sorrow or pain or something of the sort.
'Are you alive?' she asked wearily. Then, she broke the news, "There is no town. It doesn't exist any more. Why do they keep me here?'
And, after a pause, she added almost in whisper, 'I've seen them. The wounded.'
She asked if anyone else was in, and if Boss had returned.
My answers were in the negative. She went away.
Five minutes later Aida, a typist, came. They told her the Editorial House had been set ablaze. It, actually, was not, but she, all the same, decided to take home her slippers and the box of tea she was keeping at her work place.
Arcadic appeared and then Guegham, a journalist. For an entire half-hour, the Renderers' turned into a chatter room with four of us talking about nothing in particular. Then Rafic, one more journalist, joined in and finally—once again—Rita.
Arcadic asked her if the windows in her flat were still broken and letting the wind in. Her answer was in the affirmative.
Then, he gave an account of his talk on her behalf with some big-shot from the new Government.
'I could give her an official pass-bill, but all the same they wouldn't take her on the helicopter.' confessed the big-(but powerless)-shot.
'Why?' looking at Arcadic asked she—a small irreversibly aging girl without any close relative in this extinct town awfully far away from her Ma and with the cold winter wind sweeping over her one-room flat.
She was not crying but the tears rang all too distinctly in her voice. 'Why—they—I—why—…'
It was almost 12 am and I remembered those two sizable sheets of vinyl I had hammered from inside to the two non-communicational windows in our one-but-spacious-room flat and proposed them to her.
All of us left, and I locked the Club. Together with Rita, I went uphill towards our place.
Suddenly, she baulked and announced it unseemly to go there without being acquainted with my wife. So, I promised her to bring the vinyl tomorrow to the Club, forgetful that tomorrow was Saturday—a day-off.
At lunch there came a canon bang from the Soviet Army garrison, and Sahtik, taking it for a signal of a nearing missile attack, rushed off with the children to the Underground.
Sashic appeared hurriedly and drove away having left a halfsackful of flour.
A page-and-a-half from Joyce translated.
At three pm I went to the downhill town to see Sashic and Valyo and discuss Sashic's proposal to evacuate our women and kids.
Sashic said he had a loft-house in the Siznic village with a supply of fire-wood there. Together we went to Valyo and on our way met Edo—Valyo's cousin—who also hankered to find a quiet place for his family and was also going to Valyo to discuss the matter.
However, Valyo was not fit for talking business. Shortly before our arrival, he battered his twelve-year-old son, Sego. The boy had been out with his friends for too long. His father got too worked up with anxiety about his dear son and beat him on his return. He beat him in the underground, severely as if fighting an adult, using the boy as an outlet to dump this constant nervous tension; and during our visit he was in profound prostration, hardly speaking a word, shocked by his own deed.
Our unstarted discussion was interrupted by a prolonged GRAD hail. All ran downstairs. I lingered behind to make a piss (I noticed more than once that sudden volleys loosen my bladder) and to switch off the gas in the kitchen (Orliana was making tea for us).
Valyo came back, somewhat ashamed, to switch off the gas already switched off.
I was heading home up Kirov Street. At some places the sidewalks were totally covered with the rubble and debris. A desultory shelling was going on.
Along the entire street, I encountered no more than a dozen people—three of them astray soldiers from the local garrison roaming midst the dead town with no comprehensible aim: one more species of poor boys. What for?
I came back too late for my yoga.
Supper.
Then, I washed the plates they left behind scared by the GRAD bursts.
Another hail of missiles hit the destroyed town.
Now, it's calm. Twenty-past-nine pm.
The water-walk is ahead after which I'll have the privilege to call it a day.
Good night.
February 22
At 9 am I was at the Club. An hour later somebody pulled at the entrance door latched from within. I went to open it. Today, on a Saturday, no one from the staff was supposed to come; so it could be only Rita after the vinyl I had promised to give her.
However, my guess was not correct. There stood Arcadic. We had a beard-to-beard talk on the broad one-step porch: he—spectacled, making leather-gloved gestures in front of me; and I—bareheaded, holding the solid pad-lock in my hand.
He said that his pal, an MP, agreed to sign a passbill for Rita's departure, only she had to have a certificate signed by a physician (say, by the Boss' wife) about her being subject to some urgent medical treatment unavailable in this here Republic.
The right eye of this Arcadic boy looked quite good, perhaps, a bit shifty yet good.
(…I don't care to look into people's sinister one, except when I'm left with no other choice…)
He went away. There was another pull at the door. This time it was Rafic, the consort of the paper's queen in disguise. He left in less than five minutes without mentioning a reason for his turning up. Did he come to check if I keep promises?
Then, finally, Rita came in (I, at long last, was smart enough to leave the entrance door open).
On seeing me in the Renderers' alone, she was obviously disappointed. 'Nobody's here?' asked she. (A good question on a Saturday!)
She tried to ask it in a smarter way, 'Has anyone been here?'
I knew she meant Arcadic and answered, 'Yeah, there was,' I made a sadistic pause and ended, 'Rafic was here and he's just left.'
Then, I gave her those sheets of vinyl and a handful of wrapped up nails, apologizing that they were second-hand ones. I made it a special point to inquire if she had a reliable neighbor to drive them in.
And, after all this procrastination when she collected and absently put the things into her bag, I dropped playing suspension games and broke the news she was so eager to know about the pass-bill promised for her.
She happily rushed out of the Renderers' and down the corridor, and down the half-dozen worn-out wooden stairs, but was stopped by the metal entrance door, and—forgetful to turn its handle down—she was only squeaking and ramming at the door with all her light body, vainly and desperately, like a caged bird…
After lunch I went to the downhill town with two additional loaves of breads the mother-in-law had baked in the morning.
Carina pensively sat next to her children doing their nap time in the underground.
She said that Sashic went to Valyo at ten am, but the latter was not home and now Sashic also was somewhere in the town.
I went to Valyo. Near their block-of-flats I met his father—vet Simon— making for his son's.
Orliana repeated Carina's account that Valyo left early in the morning. She gave us the key of their flat to wait for Valyo up there… We were sitting and waiting. At times just sitting.
Simon complained of the hard times we were having and related about his mode of survival. Then, he retold me the joke he made in the late thirties. Valyo never came. When Simon stretched out on the sofa, I left.
Down in the underground, Orliana said Valyo had not told her a word about moving to Sashic's village.
I went uphill and near the Bus Station visited Ruben, a driver from that pipeline constructing firm. He said his truck-bus was out of order after an accident.
Sashic was knocking around their apartment block. We had a talk sitting in his car. He outlined his plan to use an ambulance. At the moment the roads outside the town are impassable for an ordinary car – only an ambulance can get through. He could fuel an ambulance vehicle—all of them stopped operating long ago because of petrol absence.
When I came back, Roozahna was not at home. Her aunt Susanna suggested taking her to their village, not far from the Sashic's one, and they had already taken off.
Then, Sashic and Carina came without their children (a good neighbor was asked to look after them in their underground), and we planned details of the would-be evacuation and discussed what things were to be taken to the village.
When the assembly was over, they went home. My mother-in-law stepped out and I dived into the ULYSSES translation until Sahtik asked how much was left of the today's portion.
' Half a page. Why?'
' Mother went to her place for an hour or so.'
' Really?'
' Exactly!'
Well, it was a grand one—a piece of pride for any male. If not only for the carping thought at the back of my mind: so what? gonna apply for the Noble’s Prize? But it came afterwards.
Ahshaut got up at five pm. An hour later a shell burst sent them to the Underground.
No yoga. (The Omni-monitoring Parathma knows better if that was because of my sloth or the aching knee.)
At supper Sahtik related about sixty traitors arrested for espionage and signaling for the enemy artillery. Reiterating of the stale news clearly indicated tendencies of stagnation in the underground mass media.
The water-walk is ahead and then a try at having a – good night.
February 23
(I was on the brink of writing 'December' once again.)
Two missile-volleys at night: of forty-rockets each. They, reportedly, hit Sashic-Carina's quarter.
After breakfast, I went down there. At times I was walking along stretches of sidewalks not covered with crashed rubble and boughs hacked by explosions off the trees in the streets. In one of the trees—some thirty-feet above the ground—there hung out a yellow half-burned armchair.
When I entered the underground in Sashic-Carina's apartment block (there are no compartments there, just two huge halls in the basement), someone near the door recognized me in the flickering of the gas jet and called out for Sashic.
'There will be no trip to the village,' announced Sashic. The evacuation plans were canceled because Valyo had promised him places on board of a helicopter to Yerevan within a couple of days.
Their apartment block was not damaged in the last night bombardment except for lots of shattered windowpanes.
As for my family, there is no prospect of getting them on that helicopter. Valyo has got numerous and much closer relatives. Besides, with Roozahna packed off to her aunt's village, moving anywhere beyond this Republic is out of question.
And, it's a good luck she was not in the town when three GRAD volleys hit our block today.
The first hail exploded when I was on my way back from the downhill town and at a five-minute walk from our flat. Actually, I was passing by the Club and—when the volley was over—used my key to drop in for a piss. Then, I went to the epicenter.
The former Military Commissioner Building, now the phedayee headquarters, had lost half of its roof and two or three office rooms in the upper floor of its left wing. Two ambulances parked at the entrance turned into useless riddled tins—all chips and holes.
Phedayees were carrying armfuls of AK assault rifles from the damaged wing of the building to a nearby cottage. Obviously, no-one was killed. I caught a glimpse of a shell-shocked civilian youth rinsing his pallid face with the white snow, his thick-lipped mouth agape. All the street was littered with branches and twigs slashed off from the trees.
Lydia's house, opposite to the MC Building, was intact behind its locked gate. But the one-storied houses leaned against each other in a cluster down the street were almost falling apart, their walls furrowed with cracks and fissures.
Armen, my mate on the pipe insulation team of 5 at the gas pipeline construction firm, called out my name. He was in the khaki uniform now.
We entered the yard of the cracked up houses to shut the vent-cocks on the riddled gas pipes hissing with the leaking gas. Then, we went away.
Walking along the street, he picked up from the ground a huge pipe-like fragment of an exploded missile and asked me what it was made of. Then, probingly, he tap-tapped with the fragment on his hatless head. I asked him not to.
The second volley thundered an hour later. It hit the phedayee barracks (a former kindergarten) and the row of houses along the long and winding road I tread at my water-walks.
The third one exploded in the evening and caught me literally pants down, even more than that—stark naked—when I was taking a tub in the washing outhouse in the yard of our flat. The thin brick walls jiggled and quaked from the close explosions. The nearest one had blown up a house some twenty-meters from the washing hut. The furthest swept away the house wall-to-wall with the mother-in-law's one.
After rinsing the suds off and putting on my clothes (observing closely if the fingers were not trembling), I went up there to see whether Aram, my brother-in-law, was OK. The house door locked, all the panes smashed; Aram obviously was out at the time of the bombardment.
The Soviet regiment answered with their artillery. They say, there were casualties among the soldiers. Twenty-year-old boys not even being paid for getting killed.
All day long my family kept to the Underground. I shipped there both lunch and supper, ferried a mattress with a pillow, cut up and brought some wood for the tin stove from the supply stored at the mother-in-law's.
One page from Joyce translated. Yoga. (The slipped knee still pains, but what else do I have to do to pass the time?)
The water-walk is ahead after which this day-off will be over and succeeded by a (hopefully) good night.
February 24
Yesterday's water-walk turned into something weird and uncanny.
In all the streets and lanes along my water-trail there disappeared even those scanty windows lit with the ghostly shimmer of gas jet torches. The thickest fog imaginable and solid opaque darkness turned the way just invisible. I—with my eyes full open but seeing nothing—instinctively navigated amidst the familiar ruts, puddles and holes in the road and was gradually loosing touch with the reality and at some moment trespassed the borderline of an anti-Utopian dream where I plodded on along an endless way from nowhere-to-nowhere pulling at a juggernaut growlingly rolling after me. My "I" grew smaller and smaller in its dimensions and functions engulfed by this all-embracing darkness, and that diminished "i" was only feeling mechanical efforts of my body engaged in that plodding and hauling. I was taken out of myself, and it was strangely pleasant too. All thoughts and desires dried up. I didn't even want that endless road to be over or that going-pulling to be ended. It was like dissolution in Silence, Solitude, Freedom.
After breakfast the mother-in-law sent me to Carina with two breads she had baked the day before yesterday and with the oral message that both she and her house were all right with only window panes broken up.
The winter is still here. It snowed all night, and in the morning people were gathering the newly fallen snow from the streets into washing-tubs and pails to melt it and dodge their daily water-walks. The raw smell of pine tar from the hacked off branches hung all along Kirov Street.
Passing by the caved-in glass walls in the halls of the saving bank branch office and the nearby drug store, I spotted and pitied their interior pot-plants—the poor frost-bitten ficuses with their fleshy leaves turned brown, withered and warped.
Carina sent her old spare glasses for my mother-in-law who had lost hers.
At the Club two more women from the staff made flying visits to take home their belongings.
At five-minutes-to-twelve, Lenic dropped in on his way to the uphill town with the drawing of the coat-of-arms he had designed for the competition in progress. The creation presented a gloomy eagle with the sword and shield (the KGB motif?) and mountains in the background encircled by filleted wheat and grapes.
(…a real thing to be tattooed on any mobster's forearm…)
The picture was accomplished in an astoundingly meticulous and fine technique.
Nay, smoking is not so healthy a preoccupation as Lenic once happened to advertise it. Two-weeks ago, half a dozen men were killed when a missile exploded in a line of smokers queuing after raw tobacco leaves.
On finishing lunch I went uphill to help Aram in screening the windows in my mother-in-law's and his dwelling. He explained to me the trick by which the local detachment of the Soviet Army profits in the current war.
They are milking both sides: Armenians pay the regiment artillery to silence Azeri artillery while Azeries pay the regiment artillery to miss the targets. Aram steamed with indignation while exposing the unsavory cheat.
To change the subject too painful for my brother-in-law, I mentioned those poor plants—defenseless ficuses in the open.
'Man,' said he wryly, 'why to worry about them ficuses? They ain't laying no eggs neither for you nor for anybody else.'
The indisputable truth of his words left me dumbfounded. I shut up, we finished the repair-work, and I withdrew.
One page from Joyce translated.
During my yoga there was a GRAD hail, not too close though.
Supper.
The juggernaut's wheels are too small for so deep snow. Today, I'll just walk after water with a pair of pails to the "Suicide's Spring".
Just a thought: When you are not too delighted with some of your fellow human-beings, it does not necessarily mean you are a total misanthrope. I definitely like the drawing painted by Aram's daughter, Hasmic, as well as the way Ahshaut is handling his rubber ball.
In a word – Good night.
February 25
It's flaking off, it's snowing…
One massive hail of the GRAD missiles in the morning, followed up by a desultory firing random singles. But, after the first attack, my family was in the Underground, and I at the Club.
All the same over and over again: jiggling walls and quaking vinyl sheets in the windows of the Renderers' with the usual diuretic effect afterwards. ("Pissing when scared, ain't you?" was a cod-saying among my classmates at high school. Many a truth is said in jest. Close explosions do tell a number on my bladder.)
At eleven am Lenic dropped in on his way to the downhill town dragging along things from his flat to his father-in-law's. And he had decided to leave his draft coat of arms in the Renderers' room: the competition jury chairman was too busy to arrange an appointment.
Half-an-hour later Rita came in. That big shot of an Arcadic's pal pronounced the papers she had provided not valid enough to give her the evacuation pass-bill. There were explosions outdoors so she lingered until 12 o'clock to go out together with me. I saw her to the crossing by the Theater.
Then, I was engaged in shipping of cutlery and the warmed-up dinner to the Underground.
After lunch, one page from Joyce.
By the by, in the previous night's dream, I was reading a page from THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. The text, just as in this here reality, was printed in Armenian. It was one of the erotic fairy-tales wherein the protagonist, when emphatically depicting his sensations at the ejaculation, uses a purely Joycean antic—coining up a word of four doubled Armenian"Ձ"[dz]. It looked something like this: 'And then I felt ՁձՁձՁձՁձ'
After the aforesaid page from ULYSSES, I—a weak and sinful being—had a nap.
Getting up, I cooked the supper of unpeeled boiled potatoes, boiled a kettle of water, and took all that over to the Underground.
Yoga. Supper.
The water-walk's ahead.
Thanks to the outflux of the townsfolk, there are no constant queues at the most inconvenient water-heads (the "Suicide's Spring" with its 65 ice-coated steep steps is one of the kind).
The pawn-queue at the Three Taps was scrapped altogether and replaced with an alive one. Which is much shorter.
To make the long story short – Good night.
February 26
You get up in the morning feeling persistent pressure, knowing it will happen only that you can't tell when and where. And when the missiles commence to explode, you feel relieved: you can hear them, you've survived this time, and they will need about half-an-hour to recharge their Grad-installation. That's your measured ration of security.
Such a long preface instead of a short and clear-cut confession that today I quaked with my entire chest to a close explosion when sitting at ULYSSES translation. I wonder whether I would have jumped if standing.
Three massive volleys today and a good deal of shelling by singles—all unanswered.
At the Club only Lenic appeared to take away his draft coat-of-arms.
After the lunch I was sent to the downhill town with bread.
A pair of heavy trucks was passing the Upper-Round-Road by the Main Square, their dumps packed with bearded men. Everybody had a strip of dressing band tied up on the sleeve. Since the both warring sides use uniform of the same Soviet Army, they need some invention to distinguish "theirs" from "theirs."
The men seemed to be in high spirits issuing indiscernible yells from their rushing trucks. Are today's rumors about the capture of Hojalu true to life? Perhaps, here lies the explanation for so enraged bombardments of the last two days?
(…two or three victories more and nothing'll be left of this town…)
Sashic had a dressing on his finger. He and Carina were indirectly justifying his denouncement of his own proposal on evacuation by a detailed description of the hardships of village life. The labor lost. I am not blaming them nor anyone else, not even at the back of my mind.
Valyo was intact. A banquet of five males was in progress in their underground compartment brightly lit with a merry gas jet.
I sat at the table on his invitation but only drank a cup of tea. When going to leave I threw my coat over my shoulders, the supply of pens from the inside pocket spilled out onto the shingled ground. Sego, Valyo's sun, picked up and gave them back to me.
'So many!' remarked Valyo in surprise.
'Eight of them,' replied I, 'want some or any?'
He rejected and went out to see me off. Out in the yard, he asked if I/we/ours needed any food or money. I said nothing was needed but then asked him to find me a guitar if possible.
He looked a little baffled then started to explain me his standpoint concerning the evacuation. Either all or nobody should be saved. Consequently, one of these days he's gonna get a helicopter for all of his fifty-sixty kinsmen to fly away from down here and get at least a month's rest.
On my way back the first barrage of missiles exploded. The second one occurred when I was home at ULYSSES. It was followed up with beastly shrieks of a female in the street. However, it was not her who got wounded but her husband and fairly slightly too.
The third volley of the day took place during my yoga. This one set ablaze a number of two-storied wooden lodges for the regiment officers just outside the garrison wall.
On the women's prompting I found and fixed up an additional section to the outer part in the smoke-pipe from the Underground's woodburner.
Supper.
Once in a story by W. S. Maugham I ran across Joyce's collocation "infinite varieties". The fact doesn't exclude the possibility of Joyce borrowing it from Shakespeare who—in his turn—stole it from another guy.
My point is – Maugham angled the phrase bit from ULYSSES, you can bet on it.
The water-walk's ahead – Good night.
February 27
Yesterday, Orliana sent her mother a pint of cream. I did not know what was in the bag she asked me to deliver to my mother-in-law.
(…in Armenian, the word for cream has two meanings: firstly, "cream" and, secondly, "love" or, maybe, vice-versa…)
Uninformed about the contents of the bag, I hung the unknown love on a nail in the wall of our hall-aka-kitchen. Perhaps, that hanged love influenced my dreams and tonight I saw the girl who I had my first necking sessions with.
At the Club, Arcadic came to the Renderers' room. I asked for news, and he said that there was a cease-fire declared because Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs is coming to the region on a peace-making mission. About 12 am there also appeared Guegham, and I left them to each other.
At noon, on the basis of the news from Arcadic, I persuaded Sahtik to leave the Underground.
Lunch for two, because the mother-in-law went to the downhill town to see her daughters-with-their-families.
One page.
A walk with Sahtik and Ahshaut through a slow, serene, snowfall.
Yoga. Supper. Water-walk.
In times of peace there is almost nothing to write about, so – Good night.
February 28
In the morning I went to Rooshtic, Valyo's brother-in-law, who, according to the lead from Valyo, had a guitar.
Aye, the information was true to life but Rooshtic plays his guitar 25 hours a day. However, he promised to find some other one for me no later than March 4.
At the Club a minor VIP from the paper's staff paid a flying visit – the situation is surely getting better. Soon after, Arcadic appeared and asked about Rita.
One page after lunch.
Then Sahtik came home from the Underground (she doesn't trust in no truce), and took me over there to participate in providing their room with a gas jet. At that moment the gas pressure was frightfully weak, and I got scared that it would be cut off. So, on coming back home from the Underground, I boiled some water and washed up the dishes and then myself.
Scarcely had I commenced my yoga, when Sahtik came in with Ahshaut declaring that we had not had supper together for ages. Thus, today's yoga was sacrificed to the family gods.
Among the civilian Azeri prisoners captured in Hojalu, there was a pregnant woman. They brought her to the Hospital (presently in the basement of the Government Block—the former CPSU DC Building next to the Editorial House) where she gave birth to a twin of boys.
Arthur, the landlord's son, became an errand boy at the phedayee
headquarters; he told that today Hojalu was bombed with the GRAD missiles from the Azeri controlled Janhassan village – to spoil the lost. He also said that no looting was allowed in Hojalu so as to distribute houses there to those whose flats and belongings were destroyed by the bombardments.
(…"Hey, Robin Hood! Not only you were full of noble intentions!"..)
A few minutes ago, Sahtik brought Ahshaut home to wash up his bottom, today seems to be an all-out washing day. However, by now it is over.
The water-walk's ahead. Then there will be one more Good night.
P.S.: The truce, in fact, is over: right now I can hear din of a distant Grad bombardment of villages. The war goes on.
February 29
A day-off. In the morning one page from Joyce.
The mother-in-law baked breads and sent me to the downhill town. I made only a quarter of the way and then was stopped by Sashic honking from his car. He took responsibility for the bread delivery to both his wife and Orliana.
I took Sahtik and Ahshaut from the Underground for a walk. At the crossroads of Martuni Street and Upper Park Street, we had a quarrel. I proposed walking a few hundred meters farther up Martuni Street to have a wider view of the mountains, but Sahtik baulked fearing to get too far from the Underground. We bantered silly words back at each other. Then I stubbornly led Ahshaut on, she stayed behind.
On our way uphill, Ahshaut was delighted with a flock of white doves on the sidewalk. The keeper, a man in his prime, was feeding them on the sun-flooded sidewalk next to the columbary thrown together of roof-tin sheets. Ahshaut took to the birds at the first sight, calling them with the same word he uses to name the hens in the landlady's yard: "Coh-coh!"
The sun shone brightly making the road issue faint vapors thinning away in the dazzle. However, on the roadside there still remained patches of hard, granulated, snow. Ahshaut started to avidly scoop it and load—handful after handful—into the right pocket of his red coat (an unthinkable pleasure were his Ma nearby at the moment).
On our way back, I spotted Sahtik chatting with Lydia at the latter's gate. Getting a fresh audience in my person, Lydia once again mustered inventory of the things in their verandah perforated by fragments from a close Grad explosion. Then, she brought out from that same verandah a handful of candies for Ahshaut.
Her generosity brought to light the fact of his pocket being already filled up to the brim. The snow was thrown out. Ahshaut's protesting howl was pleasantly silenced with a piece of candy. I got it in the neck for standing by when he risked his dear health in that dirty awful snow.
(…real stoics are hammered out in marriage, you know…)
After lunch we had a nap: all three of us. There was no gas. Its absence gives me creepers of mortifying terror. All were trying to comfort and convince everybody else that the cut was caused by some maintenance work in the gas system. Well, this time it turned out to be something of the kind.
Sashic visited our place with his family, bringing fifty-kilos of potatoes as well. The local regiment of the Soviet Army was ordered to withdraw from the region. One of the officers—packing up for the pull-out—sold Sashic all his food supply and some pieces of furniture.
No yoga.
I played some of backgammon with Sahtik.
At supper there were four of us. Then I escorted them to the Underground. The gas jet down there lightens the room OK.
It was an absolutely peaceful day (except for our quarrel at the crossroads).
The water-walk's ahead.
I can think of nothing else to do but write – Good night.
Februa..
– No! March: it is now! So –
March 1
In the morning with the clumsy but robust wheelbarrow, I started from the Site to the woods and there cut out ten more poles for the Site fencing. Hauling the poles to the Site was a deadly toil. I got worn-out indeed: the sweat oozing through all the four layers of my clothing.
