The Ficuses in the Open - страница 8

Then Sahtik took me for a little walk to find out the current whereabouts of Arega, the Senior Librarian at School 8. The lady was in charge of the key to the school library where Sahtik, a Librarian, had our electric heater installed under her work-seat.

On the way, Robic, an Arega's lover and her husband's bosom friend, cut short our quest and fetched the aforesaid heater out from his house's basement. In the ensuing shoptalk about their school and schooling in general, Robic and Sahtik looked noticeably sad. I stood by wondering if it was caused by the unconscious libido field between the two. Desire's sad by definition.

Then the three of us—Sahtik, I and the recovered heating device—returned home and (borrowing a trite expression from poets in days of yore) 'veiled the Olympus' summit with a golden cloud'. Scholarly speaking, one may with sufficient accuracy state, that in the case of perfect sexual adjustment even wartime conditions cannot impair the performance.

Another of the missile attacks tried to precipitate us but in vain. We cum in a dignified manner and with the maximum pleasure attainable, adding our concluding grunts to the hilarious yells of the folks pouring into to shelter in the underfloor cellar beneath our bed.

Half an hour later, fixing up the door in the Underground compartment and then the live wires for the heater, I was as sloppy as never before.

Now it's five to eleven with an antiphony of Alazans and cannon bangs measuring the time outdoors.

When coming back from the Underground, I met Sahtik's brother in the street. Aram was making for his mother's house he currently lives in. A solitary pedestrian through the darkness and cannonade.

We shook hands as Brethren of the Order of Lonely Hearts. He also sleeps at home alone having left his wife and children someplace amid the town in her father's shelter.

Good night, Aram, my brother-in-law.

December 12

An exemplary calm night was followed by a no worse day. The machine-gun shooting has turned already into one of nagging yet petty trifles of no account.

At 9 am, I visited the TMC where they glibly clapped the missing stamp-smear of theirs into my military identification card.

Maiden day at a new job. The Renderers' is a chilly corner room with three windows in two walls and three office desks. At times a pack of idling men assemble in it, one after another, to wag their jaws and to offset the air chillness with rough smoke from their cigarettes. Still and all it's a good thing to have a work place! And I tried to make a good beginning:

in the room I borrowed from Wagrum the key to duplicate it;

in the corridor I made friends with Ahlya (really, it's her first day too? well I never! a typist? wow!);

from the Typing Pool I collected carbon copies of my four renderings to proofread them before submitting to the Head of Russian Section.

About 3 pm, I was told I might leave: there was no more work for today.

A nice and cozy family evening at home. Sahtik was playing with Ahshaut, Roozahna reading in undertone, the mother-in-law sleeping, I shaping and filing the duplicate key clutched with the pliers.

At 8 pm, the mother-in-law commenced to bake breads in the gas oven. I saw Sahtik and the kids to the Underground. There, Sahtik complained of unbearably cold droughts breaking in to the compartment from behind the hanging rags.

After a long and winding way meandering between and over the heaps, stacks and hills of boxes, pipes, bottles and sundry jetsam jumble, I reached the deepest, dustiest and darkest corner in the room. A pitch black hole—two by two feet—gaped there letting in a uninterrupted icy breeze. I stopped the hole with a piece of cardboard.

No sooner had I climbed out of that dust abyss through the sideway and a minor corridor than a tall gaffer rigged out in a stylish overcoat and expensive fur affair on his head confronted me in the main tunnel. He demanded my explanations as to what right I had to cut off the air coming in for all the Underground. I let the sleeping dogs lie and told him I hadn't seal it up completely, so some air was still getting in.