December 6

Twenty-four hours without the electricity but with a good deal of shelling instead.

Eeooouuaa! Right now the gas has come in! Unbelievable!

But let's keep to order in this here chronicle.

It was a standard working day, yet the daily won't see tomorrow—the release was canceled as the Printing House workers downed their tools and went home. The wages dispute has not been settled yet.

Yoga. Supper. Water. ULYSSES translation.

The importance of being calm.

About two hours ago cold it was in our one-but-spacious-room flat. And even more so was it in our hall-aka-kitchen.

The mentioned two-in-one invention—our hall-aka-kitchen—is the project I am fondly proud of. Just before the war I partitioned a rectangular area (2m by 3m) about the entrance door to our one-but-spacious-room flat from the rest of the inner yard with an additional door and black walls patched together from the pipeline isolating tape ("Made in Canada"). The landlord's wood balcony floor serves the ceiling for the hall-aka-kitchen.

The clumsy robust structure heaves and quakes in a strong wind yet effectively keeps out all the atmospheric calamities. Our landlady was not too happy with that architectural innovation in her yard but—as I figure it—she entertains a relieving supposition that anything clapped up in space of one day could be pulled down equally soon.

Anyway, today I was in the hall-aka-kitchen cobbling at something in murky twilight and craving for the moment when I finish the job and enter the room where it, hopefully, had to be warmer a couple of degrees Celsius.

That daydream of mine grew bleaker and my temper tenser because my mother-in-law kept commuting between the room and the hall-aka-kitchen on some or another petty business and obviously did not know if she was going or coming (only much later I guessed that her purpose could be to warm herself up) and each time she left the door ajar behind herself letting the last drops of warmth leak out of the room.

At my appeals to keep the door shut she would refer to her forgetfulness and in a minute repeat the performance again in a ridiculously same manner.

The colder it got in the room the hotter got I under the collar. When she repeated the trick for the hundredth time I had a flashing temptation to madly slam the door behind her but fought the impulse down and closed the damn thing in an ostentatiously delicate way. In the final stage of this restrained closing I felt some hindrance.

Ahshaut, on his way out, had clutched the doorframe with his hand. I was just crushed by the mortifying thought what might have happened to his tiny fingers had I not suppressed that violent impulse. O, dear!

I do admire his way of putting an end to the sobs—an abrupt stop and his face is all smiles again with the last drops of tears draining down his cheeks.

And now: what was the underlying cause of such a wild impulse? The nagging thought that at three in the morning I have to get up and bring lots of water? Maybe, but I had a substantial supper eaten for the purpose.

Or was I driven by jealousy at that local guy interpreting for a British baroness, the supervisor of a humanitarian aid shipment?

(...the poor ignoramus could not interpret even such a term as "medical supplies" for her radio interview...)

Or else, was this dangling tooth of mine—making a problem not only of eating any meal but even of speaking—the main culprit responsible for my seeing red?

Whatever be it, control yourself, buddy.

And, like a good boy, say "Good night" to all.