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 asanaseven after such a pauseremained 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.
The intensity of bombardment grew until it forced my mother-in-law to leave for the Underground and trust me handling the last batch of bread put in the oven before I saw her over.
Today at 9 am, I was at my work place to find nobody in the whole Editorial House. For a couple of hours I fiddled about the locked up drawer in my desk. All my attempts at making a skeleton key fell flat. Full of the shame and sadness, I gave up on the undertaking and just raped the lock open with a screwdriver.
From eleven till twelve am, Wagrum, Lenic and Arcadic peeped in, respectively. Lenic asked if I would like to visit a room down the corridor to watch a game of chess. Most politely, I reclined.
(why on Earth does Sahtik say I am an outright disaster in terms of sociability? I'm politeness itself)
At noon I left a note on the desk for all who might be concerned about my pending return at one pm Sashic and Carina with their children were at our one-but-spacious-room flat, having lunch. I presented Sahtik with the paper issue containing three voluminous renderings of mine. Sashic promptly toasted the event but, not wanting to be back to work with vodka on my breath, I abstained.
I wolfed down my lunch and went to the Underground to fetch our heater. Yesterday, down there they forked out a brand new, mighty looking, heater per a compartment. I planned to take our old one to my work place but changed my mind when Sahtik reminded of the blackout we had been having since midnight.
At a stone throw off the Editorial House, I met Arcadic strolling away with an unknown youth. Arcadic told me to go home as there was no work that day. I nodded most humbly and slowed down as if pondering about alternative things to do, which maneuver was followed by stealthy penetration the Editorial House smuggling THE BHAGAVAT-GITA under my coat breast.
In the Renderers' I found my note on the desk turned over and used for the unsigned communication dashed off across the backside 'We are not working today'.
What a smart thing this BHAGAVAT-GITA is! And so mightily moving! It cut the anchorage and put to motion the very corner stones in my concept of the origins of modern civilization sending them to much more eastern quarters.
Now, I know where the Greeks ferreted out the ideas about innumerability of universes and tininess of atoms from.
And the digits that I was taught to think of as Arabic turned out to be born millennia before any of Arab mathematicians came to existence.
And would not the Fathers of Church be delighted by the definition of Trinity as exposed in the GITA? They could only dream of so refined subtleties!
Yet as usual, after my initial admiration there pops up one or another bitchy bitter word of 'but' At being told for the first time that the human soul is an immeasurably wee spark residing in the heart of each and every individual, I just shrug my shoulders and say 'Okay, maybe'. (I can trust anything when I am not hungry.) I wince at the brow-beating reiteration of the same suggestion. However, when the idea is blared out for the third time, I feel I'd like to know how it conforms to the organ transplantation, eh?
Suppose, a saint's heart is inserted into a sinner's body (or vice versa), where should the migrant soul be sent after the receiver's death? To hell or higher planets?
Still and yet, the supplementary discourse on impossibility to kill one's soul is an awesomely rewarding stuff in the present situation At this point, I looked out of the window to the right from my desk to behold this here current situation and saw: