The spring that followed helpfully presented me with a job at the Supreme Council of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh and again, by the bye, by protection. You swiftly get used to putting up with things being conveniently arranged by your mother-in-law or thru some other channels.

This time it was Guegham, who I’d seen a couple of times at all-out briefing-meetings in the office of the Head Editor of the paper where Guegham had the job of a journalist. He came to our rented apartment in between bombardments, when Satenic was there, and said I had to visit the Reception Room of the Chairman of the Supreme Council on the second floor in the White House (which previously accommodated the Regional Executive Committee). Of course and sure enough, I went there, you just can’t spurn such openings.

In the ante-room to the Reception Room there was sitting Vera, the Chairman's Secretary, well advanced in her years yet the vestiges of her former beauty still traceable, who told me to wait because Arthur was busy at the moment.

And at the long desk next to hers there sat two phedais, opposite each other, playing Scrabble with a pencil in a ruled sheet because of having neither board nor letter chips. They also had to kill time in any way till Arthur become available.

But what I was shocked with, personally, was their sloppiness regarding the fair sex. Now, he’s taken his AK from his shoulder and put in on the desk by his side, so as to sharpen his skills at Scramble, but remains inattentive that the weapon’s barrel got directed exactly at Vera’s belly. Some tactless jerk, I swear.

So, I got up and that AK quite unobtrusively turned 90 degrees for the barrel to watch the view thru the window. Well, all the present played along as if nobody saw nothing. Except for Vera because, when some geezer left Arthur’s Room, she dropped in, went out and invited me to enter although those two phedais had been sittings there before I came.

Arthur, a squat guy in his glasses asked if I would like to pick up the position of a translator-analytic at the Press-Center by the Supreme Council of the RMK headed by Guegham, who had visited our rented apartment. How could I turn down the proposal when having a Teacher of English diploma from Nezhin Pedagogical Institute? Letting down the people who had wasted their time and energy on me 4 years at a stretch? I'm not that kind of a guy.

Thus we came to a consensus and Arthur undertook to carry out all the formalities...

I parted the paper with no regrets, almost, moreover that Isaac Asimov’s grand nothing was over and I felt kinda hurt by the attitude I had met from the staff of the editorial office. Well, from a certain fraction of them...

The matter is that after the fall of Khojalu the airport started to operate and JAK-40 jets began landing there. 150 rubles for a ticket and you become unreachable by the theater of militarized hostilities.

And one morning I indicated some unaccustomed vivacity and noise outside the translators room, in the corridor, and quite naturally I went out to see what’s up.

As it turned out the reason for the paper’s staff get-together was their not being paid their salary for two months and, in the same breath, they knew about presence of some money in the editorial office’s safe although not aware how much exactly.

In the wake of the mutual elation I also visited the room where it was installed, the safe. Well, as expected, there was one in the corner by the window.

Well, yes, naming the item a safe would call for a certain stretch of imagination. Just a wardrobe of sheet iron, but the padlock was a really weighty thing. Also of iron.

The only hindrance for going over to a payday routine was the absence of the Head Editor, Maxim, who more than a month ago went to Yerevan to participate in all kinds of meetings and TV interviews about the ill luck of Mountainous Karabakh and the bad break for its Armenian population.

Yet The Soviet Karabakh newspaper staff did know a trick or two. And before you say knife they procured a long iron breaker, some really mighty tool in my professional estimation, and did not miss on bringing along the head accountant too. Breaking that wardrobe with that breaker was a matter of a couple of moments without turning for my help although I wielded the tool for 2 years at a construction battalion in the Soviet Army.

Of course I felt offended.

The head accountant, surrounded by half a dozen of eager witnesses, counted the burglarized sum and gauged without any calculator and – guess what? – it turned exactly 150 rubles per a paper staff member!

But she only warned me beforehand to bridle my expectations because my name was not listed in the payroll, and the Head Editor was not around but in Yerevan.

The whole state of affairs seemed kinda sad but I kept myself in hands thanked her for the information and went out retaining the overall composure and make-believe indifference.

Later on, Rashid, the Watchman, came to the translators’ room to express his disagreement with the occurrence, unjust from his standpoint, which did not console me too much though...

So, without any scruples I crossed the main square named after V. I. Lenin and entered the White House, second floor, the first door in the corridor to the right – the Press-Center by the Supreme Council of the RMK where there was a pretty long desk and one window behind Guegham’s, the PC boss’, back and along each wall (except for those with the door and the window) lined up a row of chairs (backs to the wall) – all their seats cloth-lined, grab any one to your liking, move closer to the long desk and break in the critter.

Guegham forked me out a tiny black receiver capable of catching short waves too and explained my official duties: listening and taking notes of everything blurted out by the BBC about the Karabakh conflict or by any other radio station for that matter, if they choose to pop up in any range, and, then on the basis of whatever was angled out by the receiver, I had to roll out a monthly analytical report for the Supreme Council's consideration, beside my responsibility for the synchronous translation of the visitors who knew neither Armenian nor Russian.

On the PC of the SC of the RMK payroll, beside me and Guegham, there was also Benic the operator of his professional video camera (he liked to take the panoramic views of the fields filled with ripening wheat ears but the must was filming the busted military equipment and other war-time horrors), as well as the “niva” vehicle driver Rafic, and Aghavni, Guegham’s secretary.

I’ve never chanced to cooperate with Arthur Mkrtchian because in a week he was killed in disguise of a suicide.

Well, show me a suicide who puts a bullet thru his head then cleans his handpiece and hides the shot cartridge too cunningly for the investigator to find it. Not even under the bed.

Was I born a day ago or what?.

For me it was clear at once who did the job, yet in my monthly report for the Acting Chairman of the Supreme Council (some Zhoric it was, right? They were so too many to step into each other’s shoes there) I didn’t not expostulate my interpretations that only Big Brother could be so annoyed by the Arthur’s plan of opening the Road of Life from the blockade via Iran.

Don’t you ever dare to even think in that direction! Russia's for centuries been tearing the Caucasus from the Persian domination.

The job exhausted me by regular nicotine OD’s. The PC room was pretty small and all those representatives of foreign mass-media, who arrived by the nigh choppers because JAK-40’s had enough load to bring in besides them, were producing a real smoke screen to wrap into and faint notwithstanding the 12 years of non-stop smoking before giving it up.

And then taking advantage of my official position I decided to evacuate my family from this war because I stopped liking the look in Satenic's eyes. The eyes themselves were as beautiful as ever yet that expression of staring at something at a thousand miles away was not quite the thing. Although what else could be expected after the months in the basement and more than a couple bombardments per day, on the average?

Guegham took me to the room of Marcel, the head of some committee or another, on the same floor, who produced the needed paper. He only warned that in the airport they might pay no attention to a paper from the SC of the RMK albeit signed and stamped.

Rafic took us in the PC’s “niva” to the airport, 15 km in the direction of Askeran, right before the Khojalu Village, where there was a kilometer-long line but no one to show the paper from the Supreme Council to. The gate was locked, the jet engines buzz coming over the one-story airport building but no way to get in because of the crowd.

That’s how we spent the whole day there. Satenic was looking after the kids while I kept looking for who to show the paper to. Good news in the evening one of my brother's-in-law, Sashic, came by his “Volga” and brought us back to Stepanakert.

Next morning my leave was over so no way to count on Rafic’s “niva” and we started off to the airport on foot. At least Ruzanna was walking herself but Ashot had to be carried and piggybacked all the way, in turn.

And along the broken road tramped the crowd of fellow travelers like at some Soviet holiday demonstration. On reaching the airport the same rigmarole started anew. At times random GRAD missiles flew in without hitting the takeoff run though because of being fired at a big distance. It would burst in Khojalu, for the crowd to disperse and then collect back into the line. And so until dark.

Satenic decided to spent the night at the airport because carrying Ashot up-hill for 15 km was a long haul indeed.

So, early in the morning I iterated to Stepanakert and back alone – the kids had to eat something, we were not prepared for so lengthy a delay.

Then, gradually, I wore a path for infiltration the airport field thru the gate and when some or another phedai started to kick up surplus dust I surprised them with the paper from Marcel and tried to establish favorable relations with any one around.

And then I saw a JAK-40 coming in to land and some geezer, not a phedai but seeing to the refueling and stuff, said, “It’s Murad, he takes out more people than foreseen by the jet’s technical characteristics”.

I rushed back through the gate to gather Satenic and kids, and bags, and on the way I saw some “niva” at the entrance with a woman sitting inside in a state of complete indifference to the surroundings.

To make it short, I brought the family in by the flank maneuver and next to the run there's a crowd already screaming agitatedly but no one being let any farther and we too were cordoned off. The phedai commander, about thirty years old, tried to calm everybody down by the announcement that it was Murad who had just arrived and he would surely take away every one present, filtered thru the airport building.

The jet ran nearer and dropped stairs from under its tail for a couple of men in khaki to descend. A khakied jeep took them away and the phedai commander looked intently toward the gate until from there at last appeared that woman from the “niva” looking neither to the left nor to the right and walked to the jet with her companion. Some elite, to be sure, yet not in the SC line, otherwise I would recognize them.

The commander started to let people to the field in small groups to board the aircraft. One group. Another. The rest could not restrain themselves any more, they broke the cordon line and ran out into the field.

The pilot waving hotly from the window in his cabin, some guy who had seen his passengers off in the previous groups tried to defend their departure and stop the stream of the running crowd by his demonstration of postures from this or that Eastern martial-arts exercises. The phedais raced to help him out and pushed the elements back. The jet slammed its stairs up and escaped to the takeoff run while the phedai commander was yelling, "What a bad lot you are! Even Murad did not want to take you away!"

And I grew sad that we were so wicked people, but then that geezer neared me and told under his breath that Murad had brought some phedais’ big shot and there’s going to be another jet to take him back later in the day.

Everybody were pressed out again into the airport building to the rest of the crowd there. And I was stalking about and worrying how to stake off a place in the pending jet. The phedais got accustomed to my mug and did not paid much attention but I could not even look at them anymore, at their dummy visages. The snotty teenagers were handed assault-rifles to and—here you are!—meet another bunch of phedais! Phooey!

Yet I still tried to find a way to reach that big shot. Deputy of the Defense Minister of Armenia or something. But they explained to me that he was dead drunk with Karabakh tutovka in the meteorologists hut and it’s hard to tell whether he’d be in the condition for flying back at all. The flight after him might very easily be canceled too...

And again the night twilight was gathering with Satenic planning to spent another night at the airport and sending me to Stepanakert after these or those things. And I started off although not as briskly as in the morning.

After plodding for a kilometer, I came up to the crossroads where there were people standing in hope for a chance vehicle to the city and somebody from among them called out, ‘Look! What a pretty aircraft!’. I turned around and saw a tiny JAK-40 jet mutely coming in to land in the parting rays of the day.

O boy, some dash it was in the counter direction!

As it turned out during my absence the jet got landed, the crowd stirred up but the phedai commander had kept the door to the airfield wisely shut, the Deputy Minister slept off his drunkenness and stood aloof in the middle of the airport hall within the thick circle of the phedai cordon being overwhelmed pitifully by the severest hangover imaginable, him, not the phedai kids.

However, I still managed to reach near the sufferer and, waving the paper, started chanting that by the International Law families should not be separated.

Fortunately, he had certain command of Russian, "And what’s all that about?"

And I claimed that my not being a native here fixed my family up with the right of migration to my place of birth, to Ukraine outside.

He beaconed to the commander who opened the door and phedais took those bags with Satenic and kid’s things to the jet. I also saw them off into the overcrowded aircraft, yet they found vacant laps for our kids and I moved to the exit, running into the Deputy Minister. And I watched him – buddies, but it's one of us! Hair as long as was sported by Nestor Makhno, the leader of the Peasant Army in the Civil War times. He’s still unsteady on his pins after the tutovka OD but makes by his own for the pilots’ cabin thru the crowd in the aisle.

"Where to?" says he.

"Well, still have some unfinished business around here."

I climbed down the stairs and ran off. The jet roared up and moved to the takeoff run. Some of the phedais nearby plucked their ears, turned their backs to the machine and sat on their haunches kinda it’s an American aircraft carrier deck around here, others confronted the gusts from the jets turbines with their faces of squinted eyes and jitterbugging hair above their foreheads…

And I watched and saw—wow!—how beautiful was each and every form in that sculptured group portrait of the Hellos young demigods!.

The very moment off the run, the jet turned on its side along the invisible banking so as not to fly over the ridge by the Noragiugh Village where from they could launch a thermal rocket.

While I had stomped to Stepanakert it got completely dark. Nearing our rented one-room apartment I heard some toddler kids twittered in the darkness of a nearby yard. And it shot thru me somehow too sharply that merely a couple of hours since we had parted but I was missing them already...

"Where to?" says he.

"Well, still have some unfinished business around here."

I climbed down the stairs and ran off. The jet roared up and moved to the takeoff run. Some of the phedais nearby plucked their ears, turned their backs to the machine and sat on their haunches kinda it’s an American aircraft carrier deck around here, others confronted the gusts from the jets turbines with their faces of squinted eyes and jitterbugging hair above their foreheads…

And I watched and saw—wow!—how beautiful was each and every form in that sculptured group portrait of the Hellos young demigods!.

The very moment off the run, the jet turned on its side along the invisible banking so as not to fly over the ridge by the Noragiugh Village where from they could launch a thermal rocket.

While I had stomped to Stepanakert it got completely dark. Nearing our rented one-room apartment I heard some toddler kids twittered in the darkness of a nearby yard. And it shot thru me somehow too sharply that merely a couple of hours since we had parted but I was missing them already...

* * *