The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life). Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

      In Stepanakert, I am not to be seen a day or two before my birthday and about as long after it because for that period I enjoy the freedom of hiking.

      My local relatives have already given up to be surprised or get angry. They concluded that it’s an old, odd but firmly established, Ukrainian tradition—to go away for your birthday and just walk following a random look of your eyes. And so it was in August (I don’t remember the exact year) end nineties’. Yes, no later, because of this here tent was bought in the last year of the last millennium.

      That August I went north thru the woods over toombs where there were no villages but the views of enthralling beauty. Exactly as in the age-old warning by Mom, “You’ll be there alone.”

      After a day-long climbing up to ascend a toomb-ridge where the woods got replaced by the alpine meadows, I came across some soot-black pieces of slate and a bunch of charred poles. Apparently, before the war shepherds were coming there with their flocks, and they brought the construction materials to build a hovel. And who burned it? Well, you never know… why always to find fault with humans? could be a random lightning after all… Anyway, nothing of my business.

      So, I passed and went on, higher, and in a saddle bridging two toombs I discovered an ancient toomb. How did I guess at its antiquity? An easy question… It was excavated, unearthed by scavengers greedy for a buried treasure who left a hole in the ground and 4 to 5 roughly-hewn stone slabs, half-ton each. People weren’t buried that way under socialism, nor in the capitalist epoch. The nearby ridges were not rocky so the slabs had to be transported from afar. But what for?

      Well, one look around would remove the question— What a sweep of incredible beauty! The sky without any limit, the placid wavy chines of toomb-chains all around, the distant ones covered with dark woods, and those nearby with Alpine meadows… Now, bringing the slabs from as far as I could not suppose where would call for a plum sum of money, or real power, or both. Which made more than enough of clues for the unbeatable guess: it was one of the Karabakh melique-princes who one day rode out hunting, reached that place and fell in love with it, and didn’t want to get parted from it even after his demise. The only nagging flaw in his calculations— the greed of ashes desecraters was not taken into account.

      See? No historical enigma can escape its ultimate solution when we apply to it our tall tales in the absence of any opponent…

      I passed over to the next toomb and, on its summit, got under the rain. Not a big deal though, because for such occasions, I’ve got a thoroughly worked-out and pretty practical technique.

      So, as usual, I took off all of my clothes, packed them into a cellophane bag and started dancing in the altogether under the downpour. Those dances, actually, were never meant as some pagan ritual, they're intended to keep me warm, in the mountains up there without the sun and under the rain it’s really chilly, let me assure you. But still some tinge of witching paganism is also there or else where those primeval yells come from to accompany the free nude dances? Anyway, solitude does have certain advantages— you’re not likely to be arrested for violation of public order and morals.

      And, after the rain is over, I simply rub-dry myself with the sweater and put on the dry clothes from the bag, ain’t I a smart guy?

      But that time after one rain there came another, and my second dancing was not as enthusiastic as the previous. The additional rain also let up after all, and I prepared to stay overnight in a shallow hollow to hide from the cold night wind.

      About midnight the drops of one more rain tap-tapped on my sleeping bag and made me realize that I was kaput. A raging stream of rainwater ran down the hollow, I struggled out of the sleeping bag put it on my back and stood with my legs wide apart giving way to the running spate. That’s when I guessed that my sleepover spot was just a gulch, but I could not leave it either because of the squally wind joining the fun. There was nothing to do but wait for the dawn in the posture of the letter Z, clutching my knees with my hands, under the sleeping bag on my back, drenched thru and thru, and the rivulet running between my feet. The uncontrollable inside shudder mingled with the lashing by outside chilly rains, which that night I lost count of…

      The morning started thru a thick mist, yet with no rain, except for random drizzling, and the wind also began to abate… Jerking like an epileptic, I squeezed the water out of my clothes and the sleeping bag, as much as my cold-stiffened hands could manage to. I had not the slightest desire to go any farther, hearth and home were all I craved for. So, I went back, yet even walking did not warm me up, I was too busy being trembling all the time.

      Normally, going downhill is easier than going uphill, but for me that difference was somehow gone and at times I was sort of floating, while to the hearths of civilization there still remained at least a day of normal walking. That’s when I remembered the slate— it was much closer if only I could find it. It’s somewhere along the edge of the wood. For which reason, down that toomb, I was descending in zigzags so as not miss the slate pieces in the tall grass.

      And I did find the place.

      Seized by the sticky shivering tremor on one hand and overwhelming stiffness on the other, I started to restore the shed and the work warmed me better than walking… The thing I accomplished looked like a crude tent of fire-smeared slate pieces. Inside, it was tall enough for sitting on the ground and more than enough to stretch for the whole body length.

      Then I built a fire at the entrance with the wreckage of poles and deadwood which I dragged from the nearby coppice. I warmed my sides by the fire and began to dry up the sleeping bag. When the color of its fabric turned lighter and stopped issuing any steam, I believed in the probable survival.

      All next day the sun was glaring blindingly, but I had a slanted roof of slates over my head supported by the charred poles—used as the promenade by the soundless lizards as lazy as I was, because in all that day I went out just once— to collect an armful of grass and spread it under the sleeping bag on the ground…

      And so it went on, day after day, without any changes, if not for the growing company—cautious dormice joined me and the lizards. They did not dare step over the fire ashes, so I left a piece of baked potato outside, but the rest, together with bread and cheese, hung in the haversack up the rafter poles under the slate.

      At nights, the full moon rose to fill the world with clear-cut shadows. On one of those well-illuminated nights, I went out to take a leak, and on the way thru the tall grass, from under my feet there burst a brood of quail with the loud flutter of wings and shrill outcry, “Damn sleepwalker! Watch your step! We’re sleeping here!” As if I was not scared stiff by them!

      In the light of day, over the wide expanse of the valleys, the vultures glided without ever moving their wings. Watching them from the depths of valleys you turn your face up to see their circling so high above, but now, lying on my sleeping bag, I didn’t even have to stick my head out of the slate tent.

      When one of them trespassed the invisible borderline between their hunting grounds, the skylord soared higher and, folding his wings, fell down upon the brazen prowler like a stone. I heard the wheezing sound of the air cut by his dive next to the slate tent entrance. He missed, however, or maybe was not keen on hitting but only wanted to warn and shoo off the sneaking bastard. All of us are blood kin, after all.

      And so it went on…

      All my business was to roll over from one side to the other, from the belly to the back, having no desires, neither ambitions nor plans. Sometimes, I was falling asleep with no regard to the time of day because it made no difference…

      Well, and I also