in Krkjan.
'Well,' commented I, 'the policemen don't take part in combat actions, but they also hanker to be heroes.'
He also related of six Armenian youths killed yesterday by a shell exploding in a house next to his.
Entering our yard, I saw my mother-in-law helping Mrs. Nvard, the paper's queen in disguise, to bake her breads on the mother-in-law's sheet of iron. The world is a small place indeed—their compartments in the Underground are opposite to each other.
Slavic the Moscovite was inside our one-but-spacious-room flat waiting for me. He started to complain of his unhappy family life and begged vodka.
Instead of spirits he got a piece of reasoning that I had no desire to become an accomplice in killing him. Under the circumstances you have to keep your eye both peeled and off booze. I really didn't want him to walk into a bullet or a suchlike impediment. So I wouldn't put his dear life at risk by helping him get drunk. Then, I saw him out of the yard.
After yoga, supper and bringing water, I visited the Underground. Ahshaut and my mother-in-law were asleep. Roozahna rabbiting on from the bed. Sahtik complained of aching feet.
It's eleven-to-ten pm. Fog reinforced darkness outdoors.
P.S.: About a minute ago cracks of shooting started up in the street. I went out. It was a nearby house on fire. Now I know that the roof-slates breaking up in flames produce shot-like cracks.
Let's call it a day.
December 30
All the night through and till one pm, missiles and artillery shells kept crushing the town. A shell hit the Urology Ward at the Hospital to perform a wondrously radical treatment. Eleven patients were killed and rid of their urinary problems.
At nine in the morning, I was met by a huge padlock on the front door in the Editorial House and no one in sight both up and down the street. A classic lockout.
Sahtik sent me to Lydia with her share of sugar and matches ration coupons distributed at their school. Lydia showed me a bullet she had picked up in their street and announced her intention to collect a necklace of them.
I ferried Ahshaut's cot to the Underground. To retain his chances of sleeping home at least sometimes, I went to the Carina's to bring the discarded and stripped down cot of her son Tiggo.
Cutting of trees in the streets carries on. In Kirov Street an old man—a bashful wrongdoer with an ax in his hand—was closing in on a tree in many a circle mumbling scruple-mollifying arguments to himself, 'So many dry branches in it, who'd call it a tree, eh?'
