In the history of any family arrives the point when everything nose-dives into snafu even in the absence of a French governess, as it was the case at the Oblonskys' house by Leo Tolstoi…

In ours, for instance, all got messed up for the more inevitable reason which unavoidably catches on any family: the children had grown up.

Ruzanna wedded a citizen of Greece and moved over to her husband’s country, Ashot got married at the place of residence and started paying off the mortgage for a two-room apartment on the second floor – the life trail for the coming couple decades got clearly determined.

Emma, having just graduated from school, still lived in the house no older than her and, with the principle functions and purposes for our individual cell of society accomplished, it was time to check a little closer who exactly the life was spent with.

The worst property of mine disclosed in the course of check-up was my catastrophic discordance with normal people (damn no! because of my innate perfect politeness, I don’t even give a fuck about their normality! Ever!)

‘Not guilty’ pledge I. Tolerance to the bypassed preterite is my life motto because they are the most challenged segment in the population of this here planet and the most—alas!—numerous.

Nonetheless, such was the deduced reason for my being unable to secure a decent income and stable support for the family, and all I was good at was my willing attitude to reproductive labor (okay, fine, the quality of final products stays undeniable as well, but why don’t I care a bean? After?).

Now, to avoid a possible exposure of my other, equally negative, but undetected, as of yet, shortcomings immorally tucked away, all the time... (No! the basic motive was my desire to keep the beloved off further disappointments, were all of my hidden faults to pop in their shocking pack up suddenly!)

That’s why, to move the object of too close scrutiny out of sight, end August 2013, I put myself forth before the unsuspecting observation by Karina, the Head of People Education of Lachin City and the same-named District, and proposed my pedagogical services to her.

The skin-deep scan was rather hasty and I obtained the post of a teacher at the village school in Yezznaggomer—50 km off the customs on the border with Armenia by the make-believe road which climbed along the Zabukh River valley and, when up there, the right turn for a steeper ascend to 2.5 km above mean sea level…

The following seven years became the most amazing adventure of my life. And anyone familiar, more or less, with parallel worlds will understand me here…

You’ll never find a parallel world on any map, be it even a contour map, which we were tortured with at school.

There is no parallel world whatsoever because it doesn't exist until you get there.

At school, everything is quite simple – you flick the ball of globe to spin: see? Asuncion! and here we have New Guinea, and this is Greenland for you – just a cinch, easy as pie!.

Reality tumbles the seeming simplicity…

I happened to wade through the grasses, which in the world left behind would hardly be knee-deep, but—lo!—they sway their unreachable tops way above my head.

Been choosing my way across mountain landslides that looked like momentarily stopped waterfalls of multi-ton boulders.

If watching yourself through the eyes of hawks hung hovering in the sky – you’ll see an ant who pries for her way over a pile of sand grits – hey! beware! some of those move under your feet with hollow taps and the dickens only knows what damn Ant Lion (preying on ants only?) harbor the depths under…

Flowers... Fields of unknown, unseen colors, and even if they did have been met sometime back, somewhere, still it never were fields deluged with the bloom of that stunning hue.

Hornets... Well, okay, let's call them hornets... the size of a grown-up fella's fist…

Or else. Here’s a plain for you. Yes, I know it’s in the mountains, the altitude of 2.5+ km, but I am smack bang in the middle of a plain which has no end, and the mountains are far off, over there, and I walk for a half-day, and fall, dead tired, face up to the sky, where there are no mountains, nor plains, but just one blazing sun and a pair of hawks waltzing, wingtip to wingtip, synchronously…

And how about a summertime snowdrift?

End June, you are beastly dying of thirst, it’s a one-day walk off the village, the plastic bottle is crackling-empty, and all of a sudden, in a deep pothole with green grass on steep walls, a snowdrift is waiting for you. Yes, darkened by the dust spilt over it, loose, but from under its bottom a tiny brooklet gurgles full of coolness, which will not let you die…

Rivers, in whose rare backwater stretches it’s impossible to make out that border where the air ends and starts the water, and you have to guess that, aha! – those stones over there are already the bottom, overgrown with algae of semi-precious flowers, and the opposite riverbank is so temptingly close, but still unattainable – the glacially cold gushing current will topple you and drag away together with your alpenstock…

And everything around is overflowing with life, over the brim, it buzzes, whistles, rustles, rumbles in the peals of thunder somewhere in the clouds below your boots, plays with the sunlight and gusts of the wind…

Unknown roads, not too difficult, it’s just that at times you have to bypass hefty boulders... and you walk for a kilometer, and one more and... it cut off without a trace, any advance farther only by a chopper—caravan routes from millennia back…

A 3D replica of the Vereshchagin's masterpiece "The Apotheosis of War" – the heap of rounded bleached skulls of boulders as tall as a 12-story building…

And those faces, muzzles, snouts stuck out from inside the rocks? Gigantic forms on thrones?.

I was not drunk and I remember everything seen in the parallel, unlike the one which they had been staffing, cramming, ramming into me…

But the main difference between a parallel and the inoculated world is the immeasurable boundlessness of the first, the infinitude which you will find neither among the tombs of Egypt, nor along the musty Venice canals, not even above the abyss of the Grand Canyon, and not at any other well-promoted tourist route equipped with hot-dog booths at convenient joints, and warning signs, and guides wearing smiles wider than natural.

Billy…

The dog is man's friend? Bosh!. The dog is a part of you, that most faithful part, remaining full of trust when even you already have betrayed yourself…

They presented Emma with a small silly puppy, Billy, and when he grew too big to suit the backyard by the house of Emma's age, she asked to move the hiddy mongrel to the village.

To meet her request I hired Karen with his "Niva" vehicle, he’s my neighbor in Yezznaggomer.

On the way back, we stop in Lachin City to buy provender as there are no shops in our village.

The dog leaps out of the car after me.

I fasten his leash at the iron pipes in a road-side contraption, a kinda fence. Okay, wait, buddy, it won’t take long.

With full bags in both hands leave I the supermarket to be met by his delighted lezghinka-dance on all sides of me.

The brand-new leash from a specialized store keeps a-swish-a-swinging, torn in two by this son of a bitch…

Another passage.

Winter, dead night dark around. I leave the village to be in time for the bus, from Moshatagh Village.

It’s 5.30 am, the bus starts at 9 am, and it’s a 15-km leg to get there.

The sky is overcast, zero visibility, I walk on and kinda feel, at times, something shoots past rustling over the snow rind in the darkness.

Only nearby Mekyand Village, after the eight most wolf-dangerous kilometers, he shows up, but keeps off, never coming closer. The SOB damn well knows his wrongdoing because I did have told him to stay home, look after the order! And he kinda obeyed and jumped over the hedge back into the courtyard.

And now what?! I need to urgently visit Stepanakert (100 km off).

A pack of cookies bought from Susanna’s shop in Moshatagh Village for the parting treat, spilled on the roadside, the bus door slams – fare thee well, fucking moron!

Three days later I’m coming back to Moshatagh by hitch-hiking. A lucky strike – Armen from our village is there too by his "Zhiguli" vehicle!

Susanna, the shopkeeper, says, there’s a stray dog about here, I rush out from the shop.

And there he is!. You're a fucking bitch, Billy, though being a male dog!

No room in the car ‘cause Armen has come down after provender. We load the dog into the trunk, there’s an hour drive to Yezznaggomer along the make-believe road, seriously – no way to go on until you believe this here thing is a road.

Whine, Billy-boy, in the dark trunk, complain to the spare tire, be sorry for your misdeed…

Billy, I am guilty of my dead stupid attempts at weaning you off kleptomania. My bad. Unforgivable.

I was not able to get it in time that you were not stealing, that you’re a hunter by your nature. And, yes, I beat you twice (or thrice?) over the loot you had brought home—the slippers or things from the neighbors’ porches—your game, your prey, your hunting trophy which I had to take back with the most embarrassed apologies. The fucking dumb-ass master of the fucking hunter dog…

The village kids are coming, pleading:

"Let Billy go."

"He’s punished."

"Come on, set him free, he’s good, he won’t never more again."

"He’s punished."

The kids all loved him because he endured anything from them, not a bark, not a growl to shoo them off. And a picture of the kid hugging Billy would score at least 20 likes on Facebook *.

(* In 2022, the organization was pronounced terroristic, its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation banned.)

"The only dog in the village that no one is afraid of," says Gaiane, Edik’s wife.

The rest of the dogs were jealous, they always attacked him, in packs, and though being the size of a mature shepherd dog, he looked so small against the background of those wolfhound-gumprs.

He quickly ran away. At times they caught on. He came home oozing blood, barely moving his paws, bitten in the stomach.

He would keep to his kennel for a week and again go out to the road to meet me from school.

Wolfhounds, damned impostors to the title. At night, as the wolves closed in, they would hide in their household yards and bark in three-four-five voices all night long. Every night…

Then Anna, Armen’s wife, came to school to my class.

"They killed Billy in our yard."

I went on till the break bell. What’s the use of hurrying. Or doubting Anna’s words.

In their yard Billy’s lying on the trampled snow. The fangs bared, no look in his eyes.

"They were two," reported Anna. "Ambo’s Pitbool and one more."

Pitbool, the champion of the village in dog fights, when mujiks from the fucking nothing better to do pit their wolfhounds. Pitbool, who even Ambo, his "master", is afraid of, that Pitbool attacked not alone but together with a sidekick sixlet.

A no-man's dog entered Anna's yard, sniffed the body, commenced the wailing requiem:

"Open, o, the Gates of Valhalla! He fought bravely to the very end!"

Two empty cement bags took Billy's body in.

I corded the yielding coffin with a length of rope and dragged it along through the snowfall.

When we reached the water spring, the dogs from the nearby yards set on a mournful howl.

"He died young, but free! And you, dogs you have always been and that's what you’ll remain!"

Our procession left the village, then I dragged on for another hundred meters, down the slope.

In between the stone walls of a ruin dropped was it – no iron breaker could crash the ground in the wintertime Yezznaggomer.

See you, Billy!

I am guilty before you which is dead sure.

So intelligent I am when it’s too late, when all the smarts are of no use, when you will not run up, clapping your ears, will never lean your paws on my shoulders, and never will you rub your forehead against my palm to get a pat…

Yet all that comes later, but at first...

No, not now... I cannot today.

Eehh, Billy...

* * *