Sehrguey Ogoltsoff
The Blog
The young man to succeed me on the post of the MUfH system administrator came up with both generous and confidential offer to go on with doing my sysadmin’s job for 50% of his salary, which I declined for the sake of patriotism. The independent state needed young cadres of its own, forged locally. And whenever he got stuck at complex questions in the IT field, I did not send him to read manuals (RTFM!)—as is the habit of too many cocky geeks—but explained patiently…
No job brings less satisfaction than that of a teacher.
A House Manager can, after his working day, look proudly back at the glass he has inserted replacing a smashed window pane—the lambent proof that one more day has been lived thru not in vain.
A teacher is deprived of so consummate a happiness, he cannot say, “Look! when I came here, there was an arid wasteland, I have erected these here walls and had this garden grown. Here you are! Chomp this sweet cherry off the tree planted by my industrious labor-loving hands!”. Alas, it's not a teacher's share, except if only metaphorically.
However, when they are a teacher of Physics, then they do not even have what to distinguish metaphor from hyperbole with nor anything to gauge and prove that on this particular day they did manage to hammer ‘Pi * r squared’ into these boobies’ noggins. Ha! Attaboy!.
But still and yet, what is the effing point, huh? If after the graduation bell (much earlier, of course, but let them play with the comforting thought that at least up to then) there won’t be a smidgen left of their gruesome pointless work. As for the cherry jam, forget that ruby in the sky…
Thanks to the Internet, my daughter from my second marriage, Liliana, located me and, when Ruzanna and Satenic went about setting up their business—selling yarn and knitted products of their own manufacture—and sent me to Moscow after a knitting machine “Brother” (everything on credit! both yarn, and the machine, and renting a room. Everything’s on credit, except for their toil), then I dropped on the way in to Kyiv (the machine tool was not found there) and had an encounter with my daughter and her family…
Internet-bro! To you am I obliged forever!.
However, the 23-ruble side income from the MUfH (15 for Latin, 7 for regular repair of chairs and torn lino in the classrooms) dried up, since the RMK President, who stepped into Arcadic's shoes, dictated to close that educational branch whose students were transferred to the State University, the ArSU.
At first, it seemed to me that the logistics of the reformist move sprang from the desire for increase in income from the ArSU farm, aimed at the growth of gross harvest from the parents bent on their children’s education. But then on the territory of the MUfH branch (a former kindergarten, cozy and spacious), there grew up a compact block of moderately tall buildings for the semi-elite nomenclature of the middle level, and the reformer President turned out to be the owner of the tenement houses.
Of course, the local TV night news never zeroed on the subject, yet everybody down here does know everything about everyone else without television channels too.
Still and yet, I do not rule out that in this particular case they resort to 2-in-1 scheme—liberation of the acreage for the projected construction and multiplying the livestock ear-marked for fleecing…
As for the work at the ArSU, where I had already grown up to the position of a Senior Lecturer, it turned out even funnier there and in the morning, when I went out to copy the timetable for the upcoming academic year, I had no idea it was my last day in the sphere of higher education.
On coming to the English Department, sez I a gentlemanly "hello" to everyone, take a look at the sheet of Whatman paper spread out atop the desk of the Head of the English Department, all those makeshift marks penciled in the timetable grid, and see clearly – that’s it. No more. I am done.
And somehow absently proceed I to the personnel department office and write the application to please kick me out.
Nonetheless, that whole development in no way had anything to do with the collective subconscious, as in the case of Sevak's eclipse.
No psychology's fault when I've run out of gas. Completely. Not just empty but dry too, the tank.
Later, I got, of course, lectured properly, like, before such quirks you should secure a place to go on with your career. Look at the conductor Mahler, the shrewd schemer would sign a contract on the side, secretly, and off he goes to disclose to his present management (who still got no slightest whiff what the heck) everything he ever thought of their mismanagerial stupidity and—see?—both relieved he is of his current duties in, practically, no time and his chest unburdened. A clear-cut 2-in-1.
Unfortunately, I had never got any regular musical education, but still it didn’t take long to find a fit soft landing – the warehouses of the trading enterprise “Mirage”. Much closer from home and the duties way simpler too: you just picked up and carried so as to put it down there or set it up, or drop it—depending on what you were dragging before: iron rebars, cement in 50 kg sacks or timber sold to the clients of the aforementioned warehouses.
With the team of the “Mirage” loaders I was on quite friendly terms for, as a matter of fact, a hell of a lot of things we saw eye to eye, and when the warehouses—trading in carpets, chandeliers, and kitchen utensils as well—were visited by persons in the know of my past merits and regalia, they were anxious to mostly emphasize their seeing me for the first time ever, while the rare exceptions stayed somehow at a loss to find a common subject for discussion with a dry-land stevedore.
All that was met with understanding empathy, on my part, since I never seek to cross class boundaries seeing the amount of careful effort and stuff invested by a person into putting the barrier up. More than that – I'm ready to travel a couple of additional meters off his/her rampant, given they do not open the window from their "personal space" in my direction…
Three months later, my senior brother-in-law, Valeric, invited me to embrace the position of a warehouse manager at the large dairy plant, where he worked as the Chief Engineer, because of my kinda being a family clan member, although certain Armenian sounds still elude my phonetic capacities…
By that time, phedai Valyo had ceased to be a phedai and became Valera. Besides, he perfectly mastered the Russian language marked by that characteristic stumble (not stutter!) inherent in the communication of the Orenburg Region peasantry.
The foundation for his linguistic achievements served his move to the Orenburg Region for more than one decade (subsequently, the families of his two sisters settled in the same region too).
He got married there. His wife is a beauty, indisputably, yet 10 cm taller than him, so in the photographic session at their wedding party she had to stand with her knees half-bent within in her long bridal gown. She later bore him a daughter.
Valera tried a hand at business (the trade in jeans and building materials), but eventually became a self-employed construction contractor. His specialty are plasterboard ceilings, although his partitions are impeccable too, as evidenced by the Internet site presenting pictures of his works.
For performing repairs, reconstruction, etc., he often sub-contracts a mate.
Once it happened to be the ceiling in the apartment of an army ensign, a Tatar by his nationality. While executing the order agreed upon, Valera cooperated with an Azerbaijani helper. It was easy to work with such an assistant – both communicated in the language they learned first-hand in their early childhood…
The thrice cursed labor it was – my monthly reports to the plant accountancy on the movement of goods thru the warehouse under my supervision!
The enterprise was undergoing a dynamic period sizzling hot with the reconstruction of facilities destroyed in the war for independence, characterized by dismantling and taking to Armenia the assets survived, on the one hand, combined with the restorative efforts at repairing a couple of shop floors employing the workforce of variously specialized construction teams, both local and from the Republic of Armenia, on the other; alongside the adjustive tries to start up production lines based on the raw-stuff obtained locally from the farmers most reluctant to sell milk at the state-set prices and packaging materials brought from Yerevan factories.
There kept rotating such multi-million sums that giving accounts on all of them, at times, set my head a-spinning too, especially because of the supply-getter Hayk, who daily brought a lot of tools, spare parts and materials from different shops in the city, yet kept forgetting to tell me to who namely and what exactly he had distributed, and end-of-month bills from the mentioned shops did not match my notes compiled from his words.
Three years of that ordeal. Without a computer, I would have been imprisoned for systematic large-scale embezzlement long ago.
No, I bypassed correctional incarceration due to the understanding demonstrated by the dairy management (which enterprise in the old-timers' parlance still remained “the milk complex” even when it was sold to an advanced in his years representative of the Californian Diaspora, whose tries at introduction and improvement of something here went on for one whole year).
And what else can you expect of Americans? It took the geezer a fiscal year to realize the hapless futility of his second childhood undertaking midst the worldviews and habits rooted in seven decades of the Soviet voluntarism multiplied by the East subtleties.
After the exhaustive 12 months, Sisyphus from the Diaspora kissed good-bye the too-fucking-complex whole thing, resold the business back to the independent state and flew back home to Glendale, State California.
Such were the most difficult conditions when the diary management benevolently (as was recently mentioned above) met me halfway and, agreeing that a computer is the most necessary attribute in a warehouse economy supervision, forked out a PC, which box, bubbling with the enthusiastic delight, piggybacked I from the second floor of the diary Management Building to the warehouse, the see of my eight-to-five.
My boundless gratitude found an appropriate form in the combining of the rest of computers of the diary management into a unified local network (LAN) with the Internet access and direct connection to the related accounting departments in Armenia, in which undertaking I was assisted by the fitters from the Arminco, the Internet provider company.
The rest would have become the shining history but here comes the bitter word of “but”…
But to the post of Director of the once-again-state-owned enterprise ("the milk complex"), the respective ministry in the government (I'm at a loss which one from the bunch of their lot) invited a specialist from the dairy industry of Armenia (RA) on which nominee they pinned their hope of riddance of the deplorable unprofitability.
Such an illusion was inspired by his business acumen in breeding ostriches on a farm successfully privatized by him near Yerevan, and his unwavering determination in the matters that matter (unlike the guy, you’re not able to eat the lasagna of just one ostrich egg in two days, and on the third one you, of your own accord, will willingly drop out of so a hopeless undertaking).
The accountancy ladies no longer knew where else to stick them those ostrich feathers in, brought by the ambitious gigantomaniac from his still private household…
Yes, vivid negotiations were already underway on the subsidized transfer of ostriches to the Academy of Sciences of Armenia (ASRA), where a scientific research institute was being fervently created for crossing flightless giants with utterly prolific quails.
Also from private farms…
Unfortunately, all the positive features in the director Khachik got annulled by just one wretched limitation, which was his unpredictable insanity—a fly in the ointment, so to speak.
The fits grabbed him several times a day, when he began to choke and yell at the same time.
A terrible sight of a man on the verge of apoplexy but, from my layman observations, he would also get high from the happening…
Given my unwavering inclination to the wholesome protection of the rights of homo sapiens, I can't but support the inalienability of catching buzz along the lines of personal preferences, up to the hardcore masochism – when they get high from self-suffocating.
Well, yes, will I say, since you like it – full speed ahead, provided that your partner does not mind!
However, Khachik was divulging these intimacies of his nature at the shop floor level too, without ever asking the employees whether they liked his at death’s door wheezing.
And outside of the seizures, he was quite normal. Seemingly…
The foreman at the construction of the milk collecting point in the village of Tandzut came with a complaint about the two-ton short supply of cement to the project.
The internal investigation brought to light that Hayk, the supply-getter, got drunk in the building materials store on the day of the cement shipment and flagged the truck off without counting the cement sacks in the dump. The picture cleared up, but the bitchy foreman went and complained to Khachik.
The director called all those involved into his office, threw two fits in a row and barked at me to write the resignation application.
Then he summoned the electrician and right away appointed him the acting system administrator (the connection between the accounting department and the suppliers of foil and other packaging stuff in Yerevan was via the Internet) declaring that "whether electrical or Internetal, they all are just wires – you'll figure it out!."
The electrician Lyova came to the warehouse, where I was already collecting things and he tearfully begged to explain, at least briefly, what was there into where.
And then, already as a geek with experience, irreparably exhausted by the stupidity of dummies, I sent him to read the fucking manuals (RTFM!). Because for anything besides there was no time left…
The issue of my further employment got somewhat delayed. Satenic thought it's a disgrace if her husband joins the crowd of jobless workforce of brawny bums by the Kaltsevoy roundabout awaiting to be hired for an urgent loading-unloading job at an agreed payment. She minded it, and she put her foot down.
For that reason, I became a regular at the Arminco Communications. Which is not the Arminco in Yerevan, but its branch in Stepanakert…
The head of the branch, Sam (that very cat whom years ago I stunned with an illiterate question from the beginnings of computer science) short-sightedly missed telling me “no” at once. Probably the factor of my work, in the previous millennium, together with his parents in the editorial office of the newspaper The Soviet Karabakh had its malicious say.
At 9.00 sharp, I sillily came to the still locked door of the Arminco (knowing that for some time it still would be locked), and when it got unlocked, I entered and sillily sat in the corner of the reception room.
After lunch, the procedure was rerun.
The room was long but not especially wide, which factor diminished its size, but I knew how to take a neat position on a low windowsill, out of anyone’s way, and sat there quiet-silently, except for rarely made old-fashioned compliments to the accountant Irina as the attention sign.
However, today's girls are unaccustomed to such signs and do not know where to stick those fuc… well, I mean, what to do of them at all.
(Or did the wrinkles in the libertine’s mug put them at a loss?)
Sam quite correctly reckoned that such a wrinkled employee would not add to the presentability of his Internet providing branch, yet, because of being stubborn, he obstinately did not want to say “no” to me, but only shrugged his shoulders in unequivocal silence, when passing by my windowsill on the way to his office, in the hope that I myself would get it at last.
These young people are so naive…
Besides filling out accounting forms, Irina also signed contracts with the clients eager of the Internet access at various speed/costs or else she would take coffee to the next room, where Sam's office, for she was his sister-in-law as well.
It was almost a family business and inter-personal relations there had a touch of genuine warmth and returned attention.
And just that family format made their business doomed, although they continued to still buck up each other.
The local arena of the Internet providing was entered by the semi-state company “Karabakh Telekom” (yes! Tommy, yes! KarTel!!) but so as not to let Tommy blow his lid, they shortened the name to merely “KT”.
The production facilities, inherited by the telephone service of the RMK from the times of the Indestructible Soviet Union, were fleshed out with generous financial injections from a Lebanese Arab, who had made his fortune by way of utilizing the means of mobile communications.
He himself did not appear in Stepanakert, but acted through Beirut Armenian shift workers, who monitored the amount of deductions to the state (?) budget of the self-proclaimed and partly independent RMK, which is why residents of Karabakh paid 4.5 times more for the mobile connection of their phones than citizens of neighboring Armenia to the respective telephone companies of their choice. For more than 20 years…
And I did hatch out the moment when Sam had no one to send to an urgent business task along with a fitter named Ararat, because the fitters work in pairs.
Ararat and I went out together, I proved my skill and from that day on, instead of a regular, I became an Internet connection fitter at the Arminco, which Sam did never have a reason to regret.
Firstly, instead of a trash bin devoid of living space by heaps of boxes, and multi-annual offal piles and deposits of UTP wires, of fiber optics, and of all those out of order and (hopefully) still alive devices and connections used in the Internet providing business, as well as everything else (up to machine tools) sunk and lost in those layers and thickets, there appeared a full-sized fitters’ room, as it was designed in the blueprints of the construction project.
It took two and a half months of painstaking sorting during the lulls between connection trips. But I did straighten the mess up!
Not to mention the annoying cases when a box with routers in the stair-case of this or that apartment block in the city, casting to the winds the last shreds of decency, ceases to respond to the most sugary-becoming-brutally-quick-tempered poking of the key in its keyhole.
That is, here is the key, but there is no Internet in the apartments up and down the whole stair-case section.
Sometimes a locksmith is needed more than a fitter.
In that way I learned Stepanakert from above—98.8% of the apartment blocks’ attics served the field for the activities of Internet fitters, it was from there, from under the roofs, that individual UTP cables dangled down to the windows of each and every individual client—and from below: laying many kilometers of fiber optics through the wells and underground pipes for the communicational connections…
* * *
Bottle #30: ~ For The Benefit Of France ~
The jerks, abrupt and hasty, the not over rhythmic sways were made up of, grew less impetuous…
The consummating pull broke off with the final splash-slap of legs at the flagstones in the apparently drenched pavement—the motion ceased completely.
The claps of well-trained, full of rigorous vigor, heels neared the right door in the sedan chair. The skin hanging in the pleats of blinds quivered and slipped to sides yielding to the onward ram, firm and determined, by the bared head of long, salt-and-pepper hair with a parting along the middle of the pate, penetrating not violently yet deeply, with the ears and all.
"This is the place, Your Eminence."
"Very well, yet beware of breaking my incognitos."
"Beg your pardon, Your Eminence."
"Fuc… putain d'idiot!"
"It’s on the upper floor, Your… Monsieur."
The dark long cloak under the large cape, whose shade engulfed the whole face down to the very tip in the silver glimmer of the nail-beard styled à la Richelieu, followed the sword belt, glossy and wide, on the even wider back of the loutish cicerone leading, with clumsy slyness, the way.
Two jumbos were trooping the procession’s rear. In the silence of both, the accent of the Swiss Guard mercenaries was felt, palpably apparent and clear…
Behind the too wide open, however, still hanging on one hinge, door, an oil lantern, positioned by the wall, poured out thru its grated mica scanty light over the nearby slits and gaps in the floor boarding.
"Did the neighbors in the house notice anything?"
"Losses among the civilian population 7.05%, Your… Monsieur. 0.75% below the average… Monsieur."
"Très bien, très bien."
The cordon of the guide and the Swiss seal off the entrance, the sub rosa visitor enters the room of the similar illumination, where two men with feathers on their wide-brim hats and in black camisoles of the Cardinal Guard present their swords unsheathed.
A seasoned stool pigeon with the seal of obvious obsequiousness in the vicious features of his vile visage expressing zealous readiness for any base malice, clamps the right forearm of a woman, young, disheveled, frightened.
In the half-lit corner one can discern a male form donned in only a blue frock coat over his undoubtedly naked body.
The pretty crumpled bed—beneath a shabby canopy by the wall—stays empty.
"Fetch two chairs from the kitchen, I am having a brief tête-à-tête with this here Chevalier. And take the slut away…"
"Be kind to observe your manners, Monsieur!” cried Aramis. "This lady is an honest…"
"… seamstress from Toulouse or Pas de Calais," butted in his ardent proclamation the interlocutor from under the hood, "perhaps even from Portsmouth over the Channel, freshly from under the Duke of Buckingham’s protection, which doesn’t matter much because, at present, fake pendants of Chinese rhinestones are as cheep as horseshit on a market day… Out with her."
"So, my dear Aramis, please relax, let's talk like men of business."
"So, thrice dearest Dick-only-knows who," retorted Aramis in the equally nonchalant style of deportment, however, bordering in his interpretation on a scornful disdain, "what is the footing for your claim of belonging to the venerable circle? How many domes are tattooed on your back? Who of the thieves-in-law has crowned you?"
Sinking with a gently slow-downed wag of his hindquarters onto the oak chair hastily delivered and timely thrust under his butt, the intruder raised his hood and let it fall behind, over his back.
The austere light seemed to gain intensity glinting in the scarlet skullcap over the pomaded hair of artful, finely crispy, curls.
"Your Eminence!" strained yet courteous regards by Aramis proved his awareness of the regulations at the French Royal court concerning the high rank of the unexpected visitor.
"Sit down, Chevalier."
"Thanks, I’d better keep standing."
Inokenty's fingers went on struggling with the brass button in the lap of his double-breasted frock coat.
"I cannot help noting the frivolity of cut in the camisole you wear. A new collection by Verzacci?"
"No! What fuc… I mean it’s from a galleon…" still trying to force thru, answered he.
"So you’re also engaged in a part-time privateering? Commendable preoccupation. Making hay while the sun's up… And stop this fuss, please. We, thank heavens, have seen the views. It’s 17th century already, you know… The accomplished tolerance of all sorts of manners."
Aramis played along with the sacerdotal wish and let his hands hang by his hips, respectively. The skirts of the frock coat slid open…
"Holy Cow! He has risen, amen!" exclaimed the prelate in sheer bewilderment. "Yes, you are right, Aramis, such a center piece would better be buttoned up. It’s hard to concentrate on what we are about… distracts, you know…"
After a brief rummaging through the innards of his cassock (scarlet as well), the cardinal took out a tight roll of the pencil-shaped stick of a cigar.
Creaked the iron door of the lantern picked hastily up from the floor as one of the black-camisolemen flicked open this 17th-century lighter at ready for His Eminence.
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu entered his nose and the cigar sticking out beneath it into the narrow rectangle of light shed by the oil-smoking wick thru the unclosed lid.
With slow twirls of the cigar end in between his caressing lips, he carefully lit it up, raising his eyebrows, in stages, higher and higher, and finalized the drag with a couple of catching-on shallow inhales thru his closed teeth, a kinda cork to keep the in-take in his up-risen lungs then, issuing a long moan, emitted the rarefied smoky mixture within the surrounding atmosphere.
The Guardsman click-closed the lighter and put the lantern back from where it had been grabbed.
Aramis's Adam's apple hopped spasmodically, he licked his lips with fleeting shoot of his tongue, sank onto the chair rejected by himself just a moment back, and slightly dragged it closer to the conversationalist.
In all the audience that followed, he kept breathing exclusively through his nose, as any Ministry of Health would advise upholding the advocacy of Master Denis, the founder of blood transfusion from ram to man.
"Yes, Chevalier, our tireless explorer, Monsieur Tavernier, did manage to establish connection with the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia where he’s brought samples of the native variety of tobacco from, for the benefit of France."
The cardinal's eyelids drifted halfway down his eyeballs filled already with that oily luster so characteristic of the organs of vision, which happened to inadvertently catch the "welder’s bunny" from the wick directly, without the protective mica.
"I have no intention to conceal the fact of looking through your dossier presented by the State Chancellery on my demand. A seminarian picks the career of a Musketeer? Ha! This speaks volumes.
However, mon ami, why under the command of that martinet de Treville?
Though being a Captain, deep in his heart that war-horse still remains a salabon, a bugged-eyed rookie, as presented in his psychical portrait, compiled by that doctor from Vienna, what’s his name again?
It's time to think about your future. Submit a report for transfer to the Cardinal's Guard. The uniform of the bravest cut, not to mention the rations and high boots of tanned goatskin.
Besides, there are the most magnificent openings on our side after two of the best Guardsmen, de Kauzak and his provincial cousin from Provence, were put out of action with a boarding pistol, which one has been already attached to the investigation materials. Finger-prints and stuff, you know…
Do we understand each other correctly now? On the same wave-length, eh?"
Inokenty choked on the aroma of the cigar from Hong Kong—he suddenly remembered where the pistol had gone—but chose to offer no comment.
The cardinal took his silence for the confession and signing of Inokenty’s own accord the honest-to-God protocol stating his perpetration of the unlawful act…
"Fine. Now, let's turn to the defense of French interests.
You know as well as I do, that the king is still too young to be the Sun. And his widowed mother, Queen Anne of Austria, a juicy woman…
(Aramis, in a spontaneous body-language response, crossed his legs alertly and pressed across the lap the double-layer lid of his hands—right palm put firmly upon the left hand back)
…yes, sure… but more on that later…
so, she’s too weak to look after the state.
My biggest worry is the British MI6, that baked by the late Sir Walsington layer-cake where a James Bond’s overlying another and so all the way from bottom up.
Yes, of course, raw sodomy, but the smart asses do know the trade. And, take my word, quite penetrating bastards they are.
To out-smart them, we will offer Chamberlain the French fig version in the form of our secret weapon.
MWWTW: em-dub-dub-tee-dub : Man Who Walks Through Walls!
How about that? And Batman’s ass got kicked around!
The man who slips into the safe of the King of England containing the accountancy report for the fiscal year!
Who visits the Escurial vault full of the Aztec gold nuggets…
A flying excursion to the Pomegranate Chamber in the Kremlin—damn it! Can you keep up with those shifty Russians?.
A call to the Vatican's collection of paintings…
Do you follow the alluring nature of perspectives, mon cher?"
"Well, I dunno… need to consult with my friends… what will Athos say? and Parthos too…"
"Stop making monkey out of you, citizen suspect. You do know, Count De la Fere got gulped by the green shit, and Parthos has become a wheeled gimp under the investigation by Down Syndrome Scrutinizers.
To put it curtly, you’re allowed 48 hours to think, for the sake of humanism and all that jazz."
"But what about Maya, citizen cardinal?"
"The chick will be returned for the period specified and, as a former straight man, I advise you to purchase un preservatif.
The cutie’s just crossed the English Channel, but those British bulls are so too stupid—not realizing that Covid is an STD, they hook the masks onto the wrong piece in their anatomy…"
His Eminence approached the window and, like the most low-grade son-of-a-motherfucking-bitch and sadist, threw the unfinished Hong Kong fag end—at least of a couple of full drags yet—into the rainy dark night.
"Keep in touch, Aramis. And don't you try at getting lost, no use – the cardinal's spies know their stuff."
Slamming his brown hood back over his red skull-cap, accompanied by the pair of Guardsmen with drawn swords, the Duke du Plessis de Richelieu left the room with the obscenely lax gait of a gouty courtier and behind-the-scenes sneak..
* * *
Bottle #31: ~ To Struggle And Search, To Find And Not Surrender It ~