March 3

At the Club I was met by Shamir, the porter, who resumed attending his work place. About eleven pm, two or three members of the newspaper staff came to gossip and play chess.

My mother-in-law strongly doubts that the current bubble of peace will last long and uses the lull for bread baking. After lunch and a page from Joyce, I was sent to the downhill town.

Carina asked if in her mother's opinion they had nothing else to do but chew bread all day long. Orliana accepted it without comments.

Valyo informed me that his cousin Edo had left for Moscow.

The glass splinters from the smashed window-walls in the Department Store, that had been carpeting the adjacent sidewalk, are now accurately swept up into small hillocks. Gun-carrying men in the streets became more mature in age than a few months ago. In the garrison quarters of the withdrawn Soviet Army regiment, one more barrack was set on fire without a bombardment.

(...idiocy or pyromania?..)

I met Sashic, at the Lower-Round-Road. We had a maimed small talk of two male relatives having absolutely nothing to say to each other.

On my way back uphill, I shook hands with Mishic, nodded to Maxim, halloed Gago.

I returned just in time—it was the mother-in-law's turn to take water from a not too remote waterhead. (Sahtik and she were doing a general washing today.) For nearly two hours, I was bringing water, pails of it. The undertaking provided me an excuse for skipping my yoga today.

Awaiting bombardments grates on people much stronger than actual bombardments. The upsurge in the emigration eloquently proves the fact. The Underground became half-empty, and in their room down there Sahtik, Ahshaut and the mother-in-law are left to themselves.

Nasic, the landlady, attempted to send her three children to her native village. They went to an out-going road on the outskirts in the hope to flag down a passing vehicle. They saw not a single one and came back after a day of vain waiting on the roadside.

No water-walk today. Just – Good night.