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

time, I hugged her when she was departing to Greece, to her husband Apostolos. The consequences of that same chronic, cursed, contactlessness…

Cuddling of both Ahshaut and Emma, born after him, was impossible before Ruzanna, their elder sister, because she'd seen from me nothing of the kind, so caressing them in front of her wasn't right, it would be a glaring iniquity. That’s how the father of five children remained just a formal dad. Poor kids!. Yet, taking pity on them only is not just, what about me, who lived a life devoid of children's warmth and fondness?

Except for that occurrence, when four-year-old Emma busted her head in the courtyard of our unfinished house when trying to repeat the number of Chinese circus actors seen on the TV. The oozing blood soaked her hair and stained my shirt sleeve when I was carrying her in my arms to the former regional, and now republican, hospital. A weightless, frightened birdie clinging to my chest in anticipation of something terrible, unknown, she didn’t cry at all, believing everything would be fine since Dad was by her side.

(…children at that age look up to their father as to God, and later they grow up and become atheists because the Almighty, as it turns out, is just a stubborn wrinkled curmudgeon who does not understand a thing…)

The nurse at the traumatic unit treated the wound, the on-duty doctor prescribed antibiotics and 2 days later, when I brought Emma for a second inspection, he yelled at me for being a penny pincher saving on medicine for my own child! Stupidity is incurable, even a diploma is of no help here…

At the end of the month in the end of the 90s, one week and a half before the salary, I was borrowing bread from the nearest shop and the seller, Razmik was his name, did not even write me into his ledger of misery debtors. In the pharmacies though the drugs were released only for ready money…

On the payday, straight from the line to the university cashier window, I walked off to pay for that beggarly bread, and then handed the rest of my salary to Sahtic. It doesn't not work to make a private “stash” if in the month end you're begging bread from Razmik…

For the record, there is nothing easier than creating a university. You take Stepanakert Pedagogical Institute and call it State University – enjoy!.

I got a job there when they kicked me out of the Supreme Council. And rightly so, with the officially ended war, the management had all the reasons to find out: who it was that analyst of theirs wearing such a brazen mug.

But that was just an outward appearance, because inside I was afraid like everybody else, only that I restrained myself and didn’t race down to the basement used as the bomb shelter, but kept to the corner of my office room, away from the window, and at 18:00 sharp I left the building of the former regional party committee and walked along the empty streets midst the crushing roar of the cannonade. First, what's the difference? And secondly, it’s quite impossible to predict where the next shell, missile, or bomb would burst up…

Arthur Mkrtchian, the first Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh, gave me the job of an analyst before they killed him under the guise of suicide so that no one would ever dare disobey Big Brother.

Well, yes, like, after putting a bullet thru my head, I removed the cartridge case and accurately cleaned the pistol. However, a more authoritative investigator flew in from Yerevan and explained how all that was possible, and Arthur’s wife withdrew her testimony about the dark-haired guest who knocked to their apartment door a couple of minutes before the tragedy because she had to raise their son as a single mother…

Now, following his updated version, all that day she spent in the bedroom because of the temperature and didn't hear anything at all. Yes, people from the nearby five-story blocks saw her rushing to the apartment balcony to scream "murderers!" after a KAMAZ truck without the license number which was leaving the common yard, yet the investigation filed no such testimonies because no one bothered to ask people. So, her son will grow up and get the diploma from the local university, and find a quiet nine-to-six in a quiet institution, like, Protection of Monuments or something. He'll get married and then his wife will bear a boy and they'll christen the baby Arthur to commemorate his grandpa, you know. So is my prognostication…

I did not mix with Arthur Mkrtchian in private because all happened way too fast. He called me, a jobless employee of the defunct The Soviet Karabakh (presently Free Artsakh) to his office and gave the position of an analyst-translator at the Press-Center by the Supreme Council of RMK. At second hand, I learned that he was a blithe person and somewhat strange, you know, he could laugh quite unexpectedly when no one had shared a fresh joke.

Stepanakert besieged, half of the city turned to ruins, people live in the basements, Karabakh blockaded and he, all of a sudden, laughs!

Well, whatever, I'm still in debt to him and I keep on analyzing. Free of charge…

Who Killed Arthur Mkrtchian?

The dark-haired assassin from the KAMAZ truck does not count that way you'll end by laying the blame on the metal in the bullet. No, the murderer is the one who points the victim out and puts the weapon into the executioner's hands.

Version 1:

Before the war, in the village where Arthur worked as a school teacher, he displeased someone and, taking advantage of the confused muddle around, that someone settles scores. Squaring up on a district level.

(Falls thru because of the suicide staging.)

Version 2.

The displeased is a big shot in Yerevan who has connections in the local Committee of National Security. Squaring up on a republican level.

(Not impossible.)

Version 3.

The displeased puts to use the Federal Security