Some forty meters up the street, there was a house on fire. Clinking of splintering glass and squeals of squaws in the crowd of by-standers mixed up with angry demands from non-interfering men to equip them with fire extinguishers, all that being out-noised by the businesslike crunch of the fire devouring the house in high, about 2 or 3 meter tall, tongues of flame. I recollected the red-clad Santa Clauses from my dream.
Then there arrived a team of firefighters (undreamed of) and in a couple minutes put the fire out. My mother-in-law was in the throng partaking in subsiding lamentations. (Her house is only ten meters away from the damaged one). Among the onlookers I also made out Sahtik, took her aside and expressly asked to go back to the children.
In absence of further entertainment, the crowd started to disperse. I spotted Nerses walking away and took him over to arrange a visit to his place tomorrow at 3.30 pm. (The fortnight about St. Yuri's Day when serfs are free to seek another master is not over yet.)
It's quarter past eleven. Desultory shooting of no account in the thick fog outside.
December 14
At night, the cannon bangs woke me up. Then I slept again. No dreams remembered.
It is a day-off today. Roozahna was taken by her biological father's sister to her grandparents. Sahtik, Ahshaut and I had a downhill walk to the Department Store. On the way we met Garric, a worker of Sashic's, who eagerly shared the latest gossip about a missile fragment they found marked 'Made in Turkey'. Presently, they seek means of shipping it to the Soviet Empire's capital as the corroborative evidence of exterior forces involvement in our sovereign scramble.
(…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.
