Yesterday during my visit to Aram, our game was interrupted for a while by a visiting client who asked him to make a stock for his shotgun. Aram refused on the grounds of electricity absence.
This night in my dreams there was a
distribution of shotguns among the civilians yet no ammunition was handed out the distributors instructed the recipients to make the charges by themselves
(Maybe, this can account for those occasional shots in the streets every night? Are folks trying their home-made charges?)
then I was briskly striding along my childhood's backstreet—only the houses had become bigger—and a girl of ten was jogging behind me trying to keep up to my pace and at times she even managed to take over in short spurts and go ahead of me just to fall behind the next moment and each time when passing by she would look up at me but I couldn't make out her face
(…was that Liliana, my daughter by the second marriage?..)
In the morning the non-stop snowfall was still there. I cleaned the yard—half of it. Then Armo, the landlord, came downstairs demanding his share of the work.
I went uphill to Aram for another try at bringing him for lunch with us or at least to continue our game. The first item in the list of proposals was abruptly turned down, the second one magnanimously accepted.
After lunch, Sahtik, Ahshaut and I went out to loaf about in the park. The sun was peeping through the gaps in the clouds. Deep snow everywhere, about dozen inches deep, no less. Lots of branches got broken under the snow weight, some trees bent down submerging their tops in the snowbanks.
We met Samvel, the noble (i.e. non-looting) phedayee
, who said his wife Mila and the daughters had flown by a helicopter to MinVody.
By the way, I was informed that Valyo's cousin, Edo, had taken on that business trip to Moscow all of his family.
(…I'd better not keep my breath till he's back with the promised battery pack…)
One page from Joyce. The routine guitar-playing.
In the washing-hut I rinsed myself squatting in front of a pail on the floor and splashing handfuls of water up over me.
Yoga. Supper.
Now, Sahtik and Ahshaut went over to the Underground, however, just to visit her roommates down there.
She's going to stay home this night.
The water-walk is ahead and then, hopefully, a – Good night.
March 9
The night indeed turned out to be a really good one in its initial part unanimously dedicated to the anti-war action.
She is a superb first rater of this land, to pet her cuddliness even post-coitally is highly pleasurable and gratifying undertaking.
As for the dreams, they unfurled in a
...spacey gymnasium with polished floor neared in a smooth close-up bringing in view a row of hard chairs for the twenty accused among whom was also I and grown-up Chief and everybody knew there was just one punishment for those found guilty – decapitation… the case was tried and only two of us were acquitted – Chief and some unknown youth…
Perhaps, the grave dream was a reflection of Solzhenitsyn's ARCHIPELAGO in my dormant mind.
A lot of the staff members gathered at the Club. First, the coupon distribution is not over, besides, they hoped to get their salaries for the three concluding months of last year.
Rita came from a village, ten miles away from the town, where she lives by some remote relative of her relatives of her relatives.
Arcadic, Veelen and some others bobbed in and out of the Renderers'.
I lunched alone, Sahtik and Ahshaut on a visit to Carina, from where Ahshaut returned with three toys and two pairs of hand-me-down slippers too small already for his cousin Tiggo.
It was a day of flakes downing from the morning till night, melting in the way.
One page from Joyce. Guitar.
At supper Sahtik announced her intention to sleep in the Underground tonight because there she and Ahshaut share one bed and she has no problems with reaching for the kid when he wakes up.
I commended the current war for Hellenizing us: we live like in ancient Sparta where husbands and wives dwelt in separate barracks. So the war brings us to deeper comprehension of what is good and really convenient—a cellar is the most blissful place on Earth.
Yet, no sarcasm prevailed on her to change her mind—I had to see them to the Underground.
It's ten past nine pm.
Today's water-walk is feasible only with pails; however, one go would be enough – we're not short of water thanks to constant snowmelting and intense meltwater-trickling from all the housetops.
Good night.
March 10
"All we are saying is to give to peace a chance."
Sometime, somewhere we kept silent, and the chance was snatched by the war. Today, it had its say.
In the morning the mother-in-law was the first to come from the Underground. And she quite rightly criticized me for not covering the drinking-water pails with lids. So, I started for an early water-walk.
At the Club, a half-hour talk of purely literary nature with Lenic. Then, a medley talk with Rita.
When I came back home, barrage of GRAD bursts went pop somewhere out of the town.
Sahtik took it for phedayees' shelling of Shushi and in fear of Azeri retaliation she grabbed Ahshaut and set off for the Underground.
Soup for two, for the mother-in-law and me.
Sahtik, at her mother's suggestion, wrote a note to Orliana inviting her with the children to spend a couple of days in the Underground near our flat, which is safer than theirs. Being "Mr. Postman", I ran into Orliana by the Lower-Round-Road, a couple of hundred meters from her place. She was going to the uphill town to pay the last tribute to the deceased father-in-law of her brother-in-law.
(…in Armenian there are specific terms to cover any degree and shade of kinsmanship, each of those terms accounts even for the line and depth of interpersonal affinity…)
On reading the note, Orliana shook her head and said "no". These days wouldn't be too awful, intimated she, as long as phedayees' offensive at Shushi deferred for a month or so. Besides, the tendency for settling this here conflict by peaceful means grew quite prominent in the latest developments.
At that point a spray of GRAD missiles crashed smack in the middle of town and put emphatic period to her piece of oratory.
She ran back—down, I walked back—up the hill.
After the mother-in-law had baked breads, one more GRAD volley hit the town. I went downtown with the breads.
Again, desolate streets echoing to separate blasts. When I neared the Upper-Round-Road commonly named Piatachok, a random blast blew up a tree some thirty meters ahead of me.
Sashic was standing at the entrance door of their apartment block together with two other men. The Trinity was haloed with the common stink of mulberry hooch.
'Here comes my bajanagh (wife's sister's husband)!' announced he my coming to his partners. His finger was already clear of the dressing.
Then, I went to the Orliana's. When my mission was over, and I started back, Valyo solicitously called after me to be careful.
Yoga. Lonely supper. Water-walk.
The heavy snowfall going on and on all this day and night looked like Destiny's demand not loose the chance, take the ax and sledge, and go after that GRAD-felled tree in the round Piatachok square. The tin woodburner in the Underground needs firewood.
I did three treks.
Now, at these small hours, ain't it too late for "Good Night"?
March 11
Why did I do it? Well, as a rank-and-file-existentialist, I should (and did) conceive the shell cutting that tree in front of me as a test: How would I act under the circumstances? Would I just pass by or take part in the happening?
Exactly like ten years ago I had to make and made my choice and was arrested by the KGB for staging a wildcat sit-in at a state construction firm.