March 16

In the morning a young giant visited me in the Club. He opened the door of my room, and had to bow when thrusting his head in to ask if it was the office of some unknown-to-me firm.

The paper folks recollected that there was some money (about three-thousand rubles) stashed in the editorial safe. The amount was too little to pay one-month salaries to all of the staff yet they quickly found a smart decision to divide the money into equal small sums of one-hundred-and-fifty each and distribute them among those members who would turn in time with the understanding that these sums would later be withhold from their regular payment.

The safe (kinda wardrobe made of sheet iron) today was cracked open with a bar-pick and they started the distribution.

Rita prompted me to go after my share. I obediently went to the indicated room and saw a woman in gray doling the money out. I had never seen her before. How many colleagues I don't know yet!

The cashier eyed me and said she was afraid it would be against the regulations to give me the money. Who knows how much I earned during these months?

I begged her pardon (bewildering her with so unpredictable a reaction) and left the room extremely proud with myself.

Rita was waiting in my room for Arcadic, who went to his big-shot buddy about the pass-bill for her to depart. Shamir, who had witnessed my encounter with the woman in gray, came into the Renderers' to express his consolation and to say that she was not right in his opinion.

A stout girl—just a match for that early basketball visitor—brought in the parliament decision typewritten in Armenian, declaring this newspaper from now on to be the government official organ called THE FREE ARTSAKH. A new newspaper for a newly independent state. However, they retained the old editor.

(...Boss! Where are you?.)

After lunch, I went to the Underground.

Rafic, the consort of the paper's queen in disguise, and his spouse herself, who was laid up in in the compartment after she had burned her leg with boiling water, were down there. I shared to them the smashing news.

One page from Joyce. Guitar playing.

Sometime after five pm, there were several separate bursts in the town. Cannon shell explosions.

Yoga. Supper.

The water-walk of two goes is ahead. Good night.