The Ficuses in the Open - страница 10

(…they pin too much hope on the dead horse, I think. Moscow will give no more ear to this case than Ankara…)

In the Department Store they extravagantly put up for sale the goods normally kept for shadow transactions. I bought a kit of household hand tools. A lucky strike.

Stepping outside into the sunlit Kirov Street, we met Carina with her children. She frisked the innards of her bag and presented Ahshaut with a pair of mittens grown too tight for her son Tiggo and then she added also two buns.

We returned to our place. After lunch my mother-in-law left for her home and, with Ahshaut having his day nap, Sahtik and I were given free rein to make love.

Yes, ours was a commonplace marriage of convenience for both the man nearing his fourties who drifted from a strange land in our mutual USSR and the local woman ten years younger, divorced, having a pre-school daughter to raise. However, as usual, I was in luck to meet such a partner in life, as well as in sex. At my point in lifespan, the grounds for romantic feelings are scarce and dwindling, yet, by heaven, I believe it's not a made-up trash to say that I love her. Sure, I do. And even if not madly, I love her properly and deeply and with real vigor – yep! – when needed.

Historically, there are no records of a female making a good wife as well as being a superb sex partner. It's either one or the other. You just can't have this 2 in 1. I am a lucky dog to find in Sahtik both qualities.

At half past 3 pm, I visited Nerses. He gave me the latest address of Larissa and Vanya, his daughter and his son-in-law, respectively. They were our dear weekend friends before their flight to Vanya's Cossack fatherland at the outbreak of armed confrontation down here.

However, my main objective was to borrow THE BHAGAVAT-GITA to which request Nerses immediately consented. In the follow-up chat, he outlined his current venture at selling grapes from his garden at Bazaar. The basement in the TMC Building, just opposite his house, served him the nighttime hideout.

About 4 pm Roozahna came back followed at once by my mother-in-law. We had a peaceful family evening. Sahtik, Roozahna and I played a pencil game, then all five of us had supper after which I made a fresh start with two pails for the round of water bringing.

It's ten past ten pm. By now, they're in the Underground now. All's calm outdoors.

December 15

This night's dream was a slow zoom-in to

…vast emptiness in a colossal military tent of slowly quaking smeared walls, no action at all just the scrolling close-up of the greenish sagged-in tarpaulin walls until...

shellbursts of a bombardment brought me back to the reality inside our room as dark as the thunder or even blacker.

The second day-off. In the morning I took Ahshaut for a walk to the Main Post to send a birthday postcard to Nerses and Lydia's granddaughter who was Ahshaut's play-mate at weekend bouts of our and Larissa-Vanya's families. Today she becomes two-year-old.

In the evening, a tin tub was placed in the middle of our one-but-spacious room for the kids to bathe in turn. Soaping their sides, Sahtik remarked pensively that the simplest and most routine things seem weirdly odd amid the war raging around.

I concurred, admitting that some TV programs do seem absurd to me when it shells outdoors.

Seems as my back starts to behave, I decided to resume my yoga exercises. Some asanas—even after such a pause—remained as feasible as they used to be.

It's half past nine pm. The family went to the Underground, but my mother-in-law is to come back for bread baking.

Uproar of dogged shooting out surges up in Krkjan.

December 16

A pretty gross bombardment they kicked up yesterday while I was bringing water to spend the time before my mother-in-law finished baking bread. A couple of times while shuttling with the pails along the sidewalk, I heard quite close whistles overhead. Bullets or missile fragments?

I soothed myself by the speculation that no matter of which kind they were there was my name on neither one. What's the use of getting uptight after the threat is over? And I beseech you, Mars, O, God of War, if one of those be more accurately addressed then let me get killed at once and clear. No silly tricks with curability, regenerating, reanimation and suchlike blithering drivel. One through my head would perfectly suffice, methinks.