Well, all right, let us assume that the adult seekers of a secluded place, at the sight of these foul constructions that have stiffened at the doors of the four toilets, will suppress their need for several hours. But the children? After all, young children … have to. This two-year-old girl has to, and even this five-year-old boy, although he’s already so big, has to. So is there any sense in the commander of the airport, who walks around and fumes at the children for relieving themselves, without any great shame, in the corners?
Some of the people are running here and there trying to find out about a flight. Will there be one? When will there be one? And so on. As to whether or not there are seats available they do not ask, for everyone knows that there never are any seats available. Those who run around like crazy trying to find out something are novices, naive and inexperienced; they have probably spent only one, perhaps two, nights here thus far. The veterans do not go anywhere. They know that there is no point to it and prefer to guard their places on the benches. They sit on them motionless, as though autistic, without any connection to their surroundings, like people in institutions for the mentally ill.
• • •
SHALL I DESCRIBE the scenes in the small, crowded room in which complaints are heard? The Armenian who is on duty here, judging by his appearance, must have been some kind of boxer, a circus strongman, a wrestler. But only such a gladiator could physically restrain the pushing, cursing, threatening crowd, whose raised fists are ever rolling toward him, like a torrent of lethal stones. How many misfortunes, how many dramas, in this crowd. This woman must make it to the Urals today, for the funeral of her son, who died in the army. I will not attempt to describe her shouts, her face, her fingers clutching her hair. This man has suddenly lost his eyesight. He must fly to Kiev, for an operation. It is his only chance to avoid becoming blind forever. Along the wall of the room stands a quiet line of women, who also should, somehow, fly out. They stand calmly; they cannot become tense. Their stomachs are bulging, labor could start at any moment.
Guren and I forced our way through the human thicket — through the crowd obstinately, rabidly pushing at something (at someone?) — and reached the pilots’ room. At the sight of us one of them rose in greeting. He was thin, slightly taller than me. His name was Suren. He told me to follow him and led me to the parking lot, to his car. In the trunk he had a uniform — a jacket and pants. “I was ironing all night,” he said with pride. “We still have to get you epaulets and a cap,” he added. I changed in the car and we stuffed my own clothes into a plastic bag. We returned to the building. Suren found a stewardess, I could see him telling her something. She disappeared, and we waited for her, talking about the weather. Finally she returned and nodded her head to indicate that I should follow her. She had the key to the pilots’ locker room. There she picked out for me the appropriate epaulets and cap. I was to fly as the captain of the plane. She led me out into the corridor and said: “I will stay in the locker room — you go by yourself back to Suren.” She didn’t want us to be seen together.
I went, but was immediately confronted by an unexpected situation. For I had barely shown myself in the hall of the airport when people, spotting a pilot, threw themselves upon me with questions — where are we flying to, would we take them and when?
I would have somehow handled this, but now, jostling aside the passengers, two men — or, as it quickly became apparent, two competitors — forced their way over to me and in an imperious tone almost simultaneously announced to me: “All tickets for the plane through me only!” (In short, possessing an officially purchased ticket was barely a preliminary or even a prepreliminary step on the thorny road of securing a piece of paper that would have the actual value of a valid ticket. Whether someone would take off or not depended on a bribe given to one of the mafias, whose leaders I now had before me. Here is precisely the kind of situation in which many Westerners lose themselves, inclined as they are to treat all reality just as it usually presents itself to them: limpid, legible, and logical. With such a philosophy, the man of the West thrown into the Soviet world has the rug pulled out from beneath his feet at every moment, until someone explains to him that the reality that he knows is not the only one and — most certainly — not the most important one, and that a plurality of the most diverse realities exists here, interlaced into a monstrous knot that cannot be untied and whose essence is multilogicality: a bizarre confusion of the most contradictory logical systems, now and then erroneously called illogicality or alogicality by those who assume that there exists only one system of logic.)
Conscious of the fact that the slightest misstep might now, in my situation, have disastrous consequences, I was forced into decisive action. I pushed everyone aside vigorously and walked to the pilots’ room. Suren introduced me to the second pilot with whom we were to fly. He was called Averik. We immediately liked each other. Averik knew that this entire operation entailed a great risk, but something about it all fascinated him, and from the very first moment he was prepared for everything. He knew that if they caught me, he too would go to prison. But at the time I met him he was cheerful and full of energy. The complete opposite of Suren — who was always composed, closed, taciturn.
• • •
THE AIRPLANE that Suren and Averik were piloting was a small jet, JAK-40, intended for twenty-six passengers. In Yerevan, during takeoff, there were no problems. A bus drove us together with the passengers to the plane, which stood far from the terminal. Among the passengers I saw Starovoytova and Guren (he was flying as her assistant). The rest were exhausted Armenians, already so worn out that they weren’t even able to look joyful about the prospect of finally going home. Suren, Averik, and I entered the cockpit and shut the door. Suren started to activate the engines. The atmosphere in the cockpit was good, for the whole plan of my expedition rested upon rather solid foundations. An eminent Soviet personage, a very well-known and popular deputy to the Supreme Soviet, is visiting her electoral district. She is bringing gifts for the schools and wants to meet with those who voted for her. It is therefore only natural that she will be received with joy and respect, and I, in this atmosphere of general hospitality and cordiality, will be appearing as — perhaps — her personal pilot. (If this part proves for some reason unsuccessful, I am to pretend that I do not know Starovoytova.)
Our small jet covers the distance from Yerevan to Stepanakert in three-quarters of an hour. One flies between two mountain ranges of Nagorno-Karabakh (also called Upper Karabakh, for there is also a Lower Karabakh). Upper and Lower Karabakh form the eastern spur of the Caucasus, which, in ever gentler declivities, as if gradually losing its vigor and impetus, metamorphoses into the valley of the Kura River. Another two, three, hundred kilometers farther west and the clear waters of this river will flow into the dark, oil-polluted Caspian Sea.
Suren and Averik at the controls. We sit in the cockpit as if in a theater box suspended in air, from which one watches an extraordinary pantomime — dancing mountains. This dance is slow, somnambulistic, almost motionless, and yet these silent, petrified shapes are moving, are changing their position, are turning around, are leaning low to the ground or straightening up high — to the clouds. Couples, groups, processions, ever new ones. All around — Switzerland. Here herds of grazing sheep, there rushing streams, over there green forests and clearings.