The Ficuses in the Open. Сергей Николаевич Оголцов

out a relatively habitable place in that 6 by 6 meter room filled up to the ceiling with heaps of discarded ventilation fragments, boxes, tins, bottles, bits and pieces of all descriptions, earth, masonry blocks, worn-out tires and suchlike whatnots.

      The fluffy layers of black dust coated the landscape, cobweb festoons sagged copiously, criss-cross, to bring the picture to utmost perfection… So it was the only compartment to choose from.

      (…poor Robinson Crusoe! How could you possibly come to this!…)

      After two hours of concentrated efforts all of the sizable objects and things were copulated into each other and stacked up into one half of the room. At that point arrived the reinforcement – our landlord Armo together with his son Arthur, a boy in his late teens, and Romah, the adopted son of a single mother living next door to Armo's house. Normally, they all took refuge in the cellar under the floor in our one-but-spacious room, descending there by steep flight of stairs directly from the yard.

      Sahtik rallied them by advertising the advantages of an underground basement shelter where the din of explosions is almost inaudible and where the ceiling is made of reinforced concrete slabs and not of inch-thick planks.

      Armo took to shoveling the earth and litter into pails, the rest of us—the two boys and I—were taking it out. By our concentrated shock-work, we freed a place enough for half a dozen cots and a table. Then the women came and swept the concrete floor, hung some blankets and old rags to screen off the trash-store in the other half of the room and it acquired a look of a sufficient war-time shelter.

      It's half past 10 pm, all of my family are over there now.

      Armo, the landlord, ducked out of moving to the block's basement room because his wife, on her second thoughts, balked at the idea and lined him up into sticking to their accustomed place. Yes, a cellar under the floorboards is not as safe as a shelter in the basement, yet down here she queens over those of her neighbors who, having no cellars of their own, seek refuge in hers. Locking them out altogether is inconceivable in the present situation and equally unthinkable to leave the cellar with her jams and pickles entirely to the neighbors' mercy.

      It is a still and starry night outdoors. The muffled chitchat of the shelterers preparing for their night repose is heard from under the scraped floorboards in our one-but-spacious room.

      Good night, everybody.

      December 11

      The night turned out not too good for me, instead of sound sleep canceling all the troubles, I got stuck in oozy insomnia.

      At 6 in the morning, a major missile attack broke loose from all the quarters. Severe bombardments were repeated each two-three hours today.

      At 9 sharp I was in the Editorial House to fill in the forms for my employment. There chanced to be only Ms. Rita, the Secretary of Chief Editor. Her another position is that of Acting Personnel Manager when not making coffee for Boss and his visitors.

      Hardly had we started the action when a close round of Alazan blasts prompted her to apologize and take a hasty leave. I stayed alone in the whole building and, because the Renderers' Room was locked, I kept sitting next to the Boss' office door in Rita's office-kitchen-anteroom.

      At twenty-past-ten, Wagrum triumphantly pranced in. Know what? An videocassette sprang out of his pocket. See, eh? The interview he recorded the day before with a Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet on a visit down here. Max in his office? (Let him know what a champ of a reporter works for this paper!)

      A sad pity. No fanfare to blare out of the hero's arrival. Alazan bursts made Boss sit home tight.

      Such a trifle as the key to the Renderers' doorlock was missing from Wagrum's pocket. Very likely, left home. (A rising star of journalism has more important things to think of, right?)

      He zipped out, and I—fed up with idling in the frigid anteroom—set off for the Town Military Commissar's to report a missing stamp in my military papers, the gap spotted by Ms. Rita's trained eye when looking through.

      At the TMC I was met by Oleg Pronchenko in full uniform with major's insignia. The stink of the perfumes he wore reminded me of that yesterday's military broad-wife boldly painted and ready to agree. He chose not to recollect our fleeting acquaintance and just abruptly indicated there was no one there. Okay, I ain't in no hurry, tomorrow's as good a day for me as this one.

      On coming home, I asked our neighbor lads, Romah and Arthur, for help and ferried a door from our Site to fix it up in the underground shelter for my family. The raw doorway did bestow the compartment the looks of a primeval cave.

      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