the most final
concluding work

This empyrean grabbed my attention six years ago when the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh—newly independent, self-proclaimed, and never recognized by the world at large avoiding pain in the ass except for this or that Mayor Hall scattered in different states and hemispheres—arranged sort of a Pioneer tent camp in this spot for school kids of Stepanakert.

That time Sahtic worked there thru all the camp sessions, back-to-back. My modest proposal to leave our dearest scions to my fatherly care and custody was, quite predictably, scoffed at… not that I pressed for it too much, just making the suggestion was a self-evident token of my good will, right? That’s why Ahshaut and Emma had to while away the whole summer by their mother’s side, all the three sessions, back-to-back, in the camp platoons befitting their respective age and gender.

The eldest child in the family, Ruzanna, after passing the university exams for her sophomore year, joined them there and picked up the job of self-styled Pioneer Leader. Which position, of course, was made obsolete by the collapse of the Soviet Union leaving alive pioneers only in old movies produced by the Soviet cinematography, but… well, yes, if Ruzanna wants something, I am ready to impart my solace to the relatives of any force major inadvertently popping up in her way… So, she became the Pioneer Leader for everybody at the camp, never paid for doing the job but she didn’t care.

After a couple of weeks spent home alone, I got bored stiff by the goddamn mum evenings about our house, and one late afternoon I left the city in the direction of the Sarushen village. On the way, I bought a pack of cookies and some candies from a petty shop in the town outskirts. (By that time in my life I grew wise enough to realize that the joy of seeing Daddy needs a proper follow-up, the sweeter the better.) Hitchhiking, I traveled 20+ km to the village and at dark reached the camp.

Just about the same spot where I am lying now, there stood the folding canvas stool of Camp Director, Shahvarsh, on which no one ever dared get seated except him, kinda local species of the frigging Coronation Boulder in Scotland. And on the broad trunk of this Walnut tree, even then lightning-split already, there hung a single bright lamp, fed by the generator whirring softly from behind the trunk, the light spilled into the black darkness revealed two long tables of sheet-iron lined head-to-head by the field edge, long narrow benches of the same chilly material were dug in the ground on both sides of each table. Solid black silhouettes of two squat pyramids of army squad-tents bulked in the dark field: one for all the girls at the camp, the other for the boys and Gym Teacher. A little to the left there stood a six-person tent of Caretakers. The formation was concluded by a two-person tent for Camp Director Shahvarsh and his wife, who also embraced the positions of Cook and Paramedic. Deeper in the field, some thirty meters to the right from the tents, a tame campfire was licking lazily with quiet tongues of flame the end of a sizable log—a tree-trunk, actually—cleared of boughs and propelled, as needed, into the gleaming embers of the burned down wood…

All of Camp Caretakers were, naturally, teachers from the city schools, for whom the solitary lamp light was enough to identify me and call Sahtic. Ruzanna came running after. They both were glad to see me, though with a trace of inner strain in Sahtic, prepared to knock off any funny stuff of mine were it not in line with the local customs conceived, shaped and ground for survival ends by quite a few millennia of use.

It was a hard day’s night so I didn’t feel like horsing about any fundamental values and just behaved. Obediently sat I down onto the cold iron by the iron table hosting the camp dinner in progress, humbly and appreciatively accepted a plate of gruel, a spoon, a slice of bread. And I even ventured a bite off that bread though it certainly was no match for plastic teeth, concealing the rock-hard piece beneath the plate rim, I concentrated on the oatmeal.

The progress of the started report to hypothetical donors from presumed grant-rippers was cut short by the happy tweets of Emma snuggling to my side.

I fondly stroke her straight hair and the narrow back of a preschool child, asked empty questions which she responded and asked me back. “And where’s Ahshaut? D’you know?”

She pointed at the far end of the following table where the light from the lamp dissolved and mingled with the night around. Ahshaut sat there, forgetful of the meal, in gaping admiration at the high school teenagers who towered about him in raucous cackling of their nonstop rookery… I took the package out from the pocket of my summer jacket and passed it to Emma asking to share the sweets with her brother. She wary moseyed off fading in the dark around the hotly racketing diner at the cold iron table…

Then there was a dinner for adults. Camp Caretakers, all of them females recruited from among the city school teachers, decorously drank wine. Gym Teacher, Camp Director, the precinct policeman from a nearby village, and I kept manly guzzling shots of the traditional tutovka hooch. For a snack, we had some small fry, banged in the river with an electric discharge from the power generator borrowed for the purpose from the camp by the precinct policeman earlier in the day. The electrocuted catch was fried then by Cook, aka Paramedic, aka Camp Director’s wife…

A group of teenagers approached the table to petition Shahvarsh for his permission to have some dancing that night to which he graciously decreed a half-hour delay for the lights-out in the camp. Meanwhile, I asked Ruzanna about Ahshaut. She answered that he was already sleeping in the boys' tent and volunteered to fetch him, but I said, “No, don’t disturb.”

The teenagers gathered by the campfire and danced to the music from the loudspeaker box hanging from the tree next to the lamppost Walnut. At first, it seemed rather strange that all of them danced with their backs to the feast of seniors at the sheet-iron table, but then I cracked it: everyone danced with their personal shadow cast off, immense and springy, by the lamplight into the night field. Then Camp Director announced it was enough, switched the generator off, and retired to his royal double tent…

Some of the camping teenagers sneaked, in twos and threes, to squat by the quietly glowing log to tickle each other to uncontrollable grunts, and cackles, and fits of laughter by the invariable jests stuck on top of hit lists since the Stone Age or get scared dead with spooky stories as old as the hills, deep into small hours, under kindly supervision of Caretakers—their school teachers—taking turns in the night shift.

I stayed there till one o’clock before agreeing to go and sleep on a vacant camp-cot in the boys’ tent, leaving Sahtic to do her turn by the fire, because I had to walk away at six in the morning so as to catch the bus to Stepanakert…

Years later, I asked Ahshaut why he never came up to me that night. He answered that about my visit he was told only the following day after I had already left the camp. To my question about the biscuits and candies, he responded with an uninformed shrug… I don’t blame Emma. At the age of six, to nip on the sly a pack of biscuits which turned up amid that camp rations is the most normal manifestation of healthy selfishness. Yet poor Ahshaut! How does it feel to grow up knowing—even though that knowledge since long has been buried away and securely forgotten it still remains there—that your father did not want to come up to you? From all of the family, it’s only you that your father did not want to come up to…

Well, let bygones be bygones or, quoting the byword voiced daily by the latest of my mothers-in-law, Emma Arshakovna, “That’s life, man…”

~ ~ ~