And once again, the Grounds became the arena for my daily brainwashing-thru-ass, alternating with nighttime rest in an overcrowded ward…

Of my acquaintances, in all categories who hadn't achieved absolute freedom, I only saw Sasha, who knew my brother Sasha, but he was no longer waking up.

As a veteran and in the name of humanity, I appealed to the Head Physician to substitute my Aminazine injections with Aminazine pills. She promised to consider it and (ten days before my gate time) the third, final injection for good night was canceled. And for that, just now, her name surfaced in my grateful memory—she was christened Nina.

Nothing else of note happened, except that I learned how to administer first aid in the event of an epileptic seizure.

-.-

The epileptic must be grabbed by the legs and dragged from the Grounds into the shade under the canopy. There, too, he’ll go on thrashing his back against the earth, however, gradually the pace will slow, the excitement loosing its intensity until it stops completely.

Some half-wits consider necessary to swat flies traversing his pan with their dirty paws. However, this has little, if any, effect on the course of the fit…

~ ~ ~

The only thing Petukhov didn't tell me on that narrow path under the high railway embankment was why I got under such close surveillance. However, there was no need; I knew the reason as well as any other CAT-615 employee.

All the story was flagged off by the renovation of the maternity hospital—a long, two-story building at the intersection of Lenin Street and the slope down from the department store. Each Konotop construction company was doing its share of the work. CAT-615’s share embraced the partitions and a couple of bathrooms on the first floor in the right wing. Four plasterers and I got assigned there. We finished the job in one week.

-.-

When the women were already plastering the partitions I'd laid, a man in a clean suit and tie appeared in the corridor. At the sight of four yummy females, the visitor began to show off, both against the backdrop and at the expense of the wretch shoveling their mortar.

Politely, I asked him to tone it down and stop coughing everywhere.

'Do you know who you're talking to? I'm the First Secretary of the City Party Committee!'

'And I'm a fourth-class bricklayer.'

'Well, you'll get it!'

He left, and half an hour later, our chief engineer, dripping foam, burst into the same corridor—because he's also the chairman of the party committee of CAT-615—'How dare you curse the First Secretary of the City Party Committee?!'

The plasterers unanimously and loudly affirmed that there had been no swearing. This didn't console the chief engineer, but he left.

-.-

That's it. It couldn't be simpler—a male рфмштп the levers of power, against a male in mortar-splashed overalls.

But what's offensive, painfully offensive, is the false accusation of using foul language. Throughout my career at CAT-615, I righteously refrained from 2-, and 3-, and 5-letter words—even in my heart of hearts!

Experienced loaders marveled at my ability to unload a carload of lumber, meaning, tack the stubborn slings suspended from a crane hook, without ever uttering a single 'oh, fuck!'…

~ ~ ~

Autumn arrived, and while lathering up in the bathhouse, I suddenly noticed that my belly had become as bulging as the hard superior wings of a May beetle and, like those, wouldn’t pull the outward curvature back.

Soon, my mother also noticed that I was developing a double chin. After one of our late dinners on Decemberists 13, she put her hand on my shoulder and joyfully announced, 'You're getting fat, Brother Rabbit! And there's no escape—you're one of our kind!'

I didn't return the smile on her round face, beneath which—I knew it without a checking glimpse—an even rounder figure was expanding, and I stayed mum. Nonetheless, I absolutely didn't want to become one of those round creatures and turn into a fat man. I wouldn't give in to their Aminazine!

There felt urgent need for drastic measures.

To start with those same evening lunches and dinners on Decemberists 13, where my mother skillfully piled two servings of rice or potatoes on one plate. And everything was so delicious that, without even noticing, you'd gobble it all up.

-.-

Giving up bread was the first step in my fight for a slim build. Okay, I'll eat as much as you want, but I didn’t sign up for eating bread, and I won’t, ‘cause I don't want to. So I cut it off from my diet. Even in the canteens.

Although the 'I don't want to' part is a complete bullshit. I've always loved bread, especially of rye, and even more so when it's warm. I could devour a whole loaf at one sitting without anything else, under replaying in my mind my father's saying:

'The bread is soft, the mouth is big, you take a bite, and the heart rejoices.'

A month later, convinced that the bread-free diet was a bullshit accomplished, I simply dropped out of going to the canteen at lunch breaks. This restored the imbalance. Breakfast in the canteen, plus two late lunches are equal to the traditional three meals a day.

At the lunch break time, as our team aptly put it, I munched 'VSESVIT', brought to the bricklayers' trailer once a month, to fill the break with reading. So, just before New Year's, in that same city bathhouse across Konotop Divisions Square, I proudly surveyed my belly, sunken like that of a healthy wolf. I'd always liked that particular shape…

Damn Narcissus with his concave belly…

~ ~ ~

(… there are a ton of words you kind of know—you've heard them, read them, and even uttered them more than once. But it's best not to be asked about their meaning. However, it's not every day that you encounter particularly picky bastards, so you interpret familiar (a kinda sort of) words based on your own vague notions…

The word 'asceticism' is one of the most curious examples of how people don't understand what they're saying when they speak out.

90% of the population, for whom the word 'ascetic' is, well, sort of clear, imagine a man worn out by self-torture, with wisps of unkempt beard around his glaring eyes. This is as wrong as using the word 'athlete' to refer only to sumo wrestlers.

In fact, the meaning of the root word 'asceticism' is nothing other than 'training'.

If, cherishing ambitious dreams of winning a beer tournament, you down three liters of beer every day—with the goal of training and maintaining proper fitness, then you're an ascetic.

Same as the girl next door who scribbles violin scales every single evening behind your wall. Damn your asceticism with all those goddamn G-flat… I mean… B-bonking-sharps!

So, the ascetic hermit, preparing himself for the life to come in heaven, is just a special case among other ascetics.

Asceticism can be protracted or short-termed, depending on its purpose…)

And what—please tell me—were the purposes compelling me to zealously keep myself as skinny as a mop and copy unfamiliar words from the Morning Star each weekday?

As I've already tried to explain a little, I'm a bit hazy when it comes to specific details and general plans—I just feel it's necessary, that's why I do it…

-.-

The Morning Star extracts called for keeping both a close eye and tight rein on sly sloppy slacks inherent to me no less than to any human bro.

Whenever I encountered an unfamiliar word of which I was absolutely certain we’ve had encountered before, I was tempted to skip it—yeah, I’ve met it, faith!

Ok. Tell me the meaning then, you backstreet boy!

Digging through a heap of scribbled notebooks is tedious; much easier is to look it up in the dictionary and write out what it means. Once again.

That's why I even came across words whose page number in Chamber's Dictionary I knew by heart, but not their forgotten meaning.

And that goes for memory by you, huh?… A kinda clogged sieve—I remember here, there but not everywhere. That's what asceticism can lead a person to, when you have no idea why you even need it. Like a robot, you repeat a certain set of actions, unaware why…

~ ~ ~

The incident of that evening didn't tempt me in the least, although it pretty stunned me. And on her part, it was sooner a try at manipulation than seduction; she was simply demanding that I fulfill my parental duty…

I was in Lenochka's debt, deeply: I’ve never scooped her up, never seated her on my lap, never ruffled her hair gently, never stroked her cheek, not to mention all the other 'never'.

I owed her. We just lived in the same khatta, where she was once told I was her dad, but what kind of father was I, really? Just a dry formula. A non-contact symbol.

Of course, I didn't push her away, and sometimes I could even get carried away by our talk, but for a child, that's probably not enough; and for a father, it's certainly not enough either…

However, that's just what my relationships with each one of my five children have developed into…

-.-

When Lenochka was born, I simply wasn't ready for the role of father yet. A dad at eighteen? With all due respect to the Swan of Avon, it's outright ridiculous.

Then the construction battalion and the institute separated us. When you were born, I was already old enough to be a father and loved you selflessly, but not for long—my reputation divided us.

I met Ruzanna when she was six years old. She always called me 'Daddy', and I loved her like a daughter, but it wasn't until she was leaving for Greece to be with her husband, Apostolos, that Ruzanna and I hugged for the first time, to the envy of the Stepanakert-Yerevan minibus driver:

'Բոլ ա ձեզ, լի! Ուշանում ընք!'

The consequences of that same chronic, damned lack of contact…

I couldn't hug and caress Ashaut and Emma, who was born after him, because Ruzanna was there, my daughter who’s received nothing of the kind from me; so it would have been unjust. Thus, the father to five children remained only a nominal dad. Poor children!

But to pity them alone is unfair! What about me, who lived a life deprived of a child's warmth and affection?…

Except for that one time, when four-year-old Emma cut her scalp in the courtyard of our unfinished house, trying to imitate a Chinese circus act she'd seen on TV.

-.-

Blood soaked her hair and stained the shoulder of my shirt as I carried her in my arms to the former regional, now republican, hospital, next to the maternity one.

A weightless, frightened chick, pressed against my chest, awaiting something terrible, she didn't cry at all, believing that with her daddy by her side, everything would be alright.

(… children that age look up to their father as if he were God, and then grow up and become atheists, because the Almighty, it turns out, is just a stubborn, wrinkled little morsel, and, what's more, doesn't understand a thing about life…)

The trauma nurse treated the wound, and the doctor on duty prescribed antibiotics. Two days later, when I brought Emma in for a follow-up checkup, he yelled at me for being a cheapskate—saving on medicine for my own child!

Idiocy has no cure, and no diploma will ever help.

The end of the month in the late 90s. A week and a half until payday. The bread, which I brought home from the nearest small shop, was given on my word of honor, and its owner, Razmik, didn't even list me in his notebook for indigent debtors. While pharmacies didn’t sell medicine on credit at all…

.-.-

After standing in line at the university cashier's desk, I'd first return my debt of honor, and the rest, every last cent, to Satik. What 'private stash' are you about, bro? By the end of month, I'd have to beg Razmik for bread, inevitably…

By the way, there's nothing easier than having a university. You take the Stepanakert Pedagogical Institute and name it State University, that's all…

I got a job there after I was kicked out of the Supreme Council. And rightly so, the war—officially speaking—was over, and the State Government had every right to find out who the hell was hanging about at the official position of analyst, with so insolent a pan.

But that was only on the surface. Inside, I was as scared as anyone else. I simply held back, and at bombardments, I didn't scurry to the basement shelter, but instead huddled in the corner of my office, far from the window. And at precisely 6:00 PM, I'd leave the former regional party committee building to stomp home along the empty streets, accompanied by the thunder of the cannonade and roaring explosions in the city.

Firstly, what difference did it make? And secondly, it's impossible to guess where the next shell, rocket, or bomb would hit…

~ ~ ~

I was hired as the analyst by Artur Mkrtchyan, the first Chairman of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh Supreme Council, before he was executed under the guise of suicide, so that whoever else disobeying Big Brother would learn a lesson.

Well, yes, it's like putting a bullet in your forehead, then hiding the shell casing and carefully cleaning the gun.

However, a more senior investigator flew in from Yerevan and explained how such a thing was possible. And Artur's wife retracted her testimony about the dark-haired guest who knocked on their apartment door two minutes before the tragedy, because she still had a son to raise, and that's difficult for a single mother.

Now, by the version revised from Yerevan, she claimed spending the entire day in her bedroom with a high fever, where she didn't hear a thing. Not at all.

Yes, residents in the surrounding five-story buildings saw her run out onto the balcony of her apartment screaming 'bloody murder!' after a KAMAZ truck, without the bed or license plates, leaving the common courtyard. However, there's nothing of the sort in the investigation file, because no one questioned the neighbors…

So, her son will grow up, get a degree from the local university, and then a cushy job at a quiet institution, like, 'Republican Department for the Protection of Monuments', or something. And then he gets married, and when his wife gives birth to a son, they'll name him Arthur, after his grandfather.

I think so…

~ ~ ~

I hardly had a chance to interact with Arthur Mkrtchyan; everything happened too quickly. He called me, an unemployed employee of the defunct newspaper Soviet Karabakh (later AZAT ARTSAKH), and gave me a job as an analyst-translator at the Press Center by the Supreme Council of the RMK.

From second-hand sources, I learned that he was a cheerful and slightly odd man; you know. He could burst into laughter out of nowhere, even without a fresh joke about Vartanik and Teacher Margo.

Stepanakert is surrounded, half the city laid in ruins, people are living in basements, Karabakh is under siege, and he's laughing out loud!

But still, I'm in his debt and still continue to analyze. For free…

Who Killed Artur Mkrtchyan?

The dark-haired guy from the KAMAZ doesn't count, otherwise we could end up blaming the alloy the bullet is cast from. No, the killer is the one who decides who to kill and puts the gun in the executioner's hands.

Version 1:

Before the war, in the village where Artur worked as a schoolteacher, he offended someone and, taking advantage of the chaos of the war of independence, the offended party settled the score. A showdown at district level.

(This is completely out of the question, given the efforts to make his death look like a suicide.)

Version 2:

The offended is a bigwig in Yerevan, with connections in the local National Security Service. A showdown at republican level.

(Not impossible.)

Version 3:

The offended has leverage in the Russian Federal Security Service, to which the Armenian National Security Service is not subordinate, but both are the same KGB under different guises. A showdown at federal level.

(Not impossible.)

-.-

At that stage in the struggle for Mountainous Karabakh's independence, which had its origins in the generous gift of this Armenian-populated part of Transcaucasia to Soviet Azerbaijan by I. V. Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Supreme Council of the self-proclaimed Republic of Mountainous Karabakh was housed in the building of the former regional executive committee, next to the circular '5-Kopeck Coin' square.

The Press Center of the RMK Supreme Council occupied a single room with one window, one door, and two hefty desks (yes, arranged in a 'T'), on the second floor to the right of the stairs.