December 12.
An exemplary calm night was followed by a no worse day. The machine-gun shooting and the like petty trifles are of no account.
At 9 a.m., 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-by-one to wag their jaws and to offset the air chillness with rough smoke from their cigarettes. Still 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 Alya
(so, it's her first day too! well I never! a typist? wow!); - from the Typists' I collected four typed renderings of mine to proofread them before submitting the stuff to Head of Russian Section.
About three p.m., 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.
At 8 p.m., the mother-in-law commenced to bake breads in the gas oven. I saw Sahtik and the kids to the Underground.
Sahtik complained of unbearable cold droughts breaking in 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 jumble of suchlike jetsam, I reached the deepest, dustiest and darkest corner in the room.
A pitch black hole—two by two feet—gaped there letting in a constant icy breeze.
I stopped the hole with a piece of cardboard.
No sooner had I climbed out of that dust abyss through the other doorway in the compartment than a tall guy 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 it was not a complete closure and some air was still getting in.
<!-- All things considered, my statement was true to some extent. You bet he'd never dive in that dust maze to validate my report. -->
At home, my mother-in-law surprised me with a pensive question whether I trusted in God after all.
I guess her queer query was prompted by a priest's visit to Underground who handed out throwaways with printed prayers and bibles for kids.
I answered there were so too many of Them and I had not made my final choice yet.
It's half an hour before midnight. The mother-in-law has just finished bread baking and gone to Underground.
A freezing wind outdoors sweeps snow dust along the street.
At times a cannon shell adds its bang.
Fiat nox.
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