We sat on the big sofa silent, heeding the to-and-fro racing in the corridor, uninterrupted swish of water from the tap in the kitchen, the stray exclamations of the women. What now?

Then the noise little by little abated, the hallway door clicked behind departing auntie Paulyna. From the parents’ bedroom there came the sound of mop taps as at the floor washing, from time to time the splash of water poured down into the bowl was heard from the toilet room.

The door opened. Mom stood there with a wide seaman belt in her hand. “Come here!” she called without giving any name, but the 3 of us knew perfectly well who was summoned.

And then there reigned silence—some complete, suspended, silence… I stood up and went to catch hell… We met in the middle of the room, under the silk shade from the ceiling. “Don’t you ever dare, you, piece of a rascal!” she said and swayed the belt.

I cringed. The slap fell on the shoulder. It was just a slap, not a blow – no pain at all. Mom turned around and left. I was stunned by so light a punishment. It’s nothing compared to what I’d be surely shown by Dad when he comes home from work and sees the bandaged hands of Grandma after applying vegetable oil to the burns…

When the door clicked in the hallway and Dad’s voice said, “What the… er… What happened here?”, Mom hurried over there from the kitchen. All that she said was not heard but I made out these words, “I’ve already punished him, Kolya.”

Dad went into the parents’ bedroom to estimate the damage and very soon entered our room. “Ew, you!” was all he told me.

For a few days, the apartment had a strong smell of smoke. The runner from the parents’ bedroom was cut up into smaller pieces. The remnants of the tulle curtain and burned bed were taken out to the garbage enclosure across the road. A couple of years later I could read already and whenever coming across a matchbox with the warning sticker: “Keep matches away from children!”, I knew that it was about me too…

~ ~ ~

This question puzzles me till now: what at that tender age made me so cocksure that in future they would be writing books about me. The certainty was spiced by a pepper-hot pinch of shame that set my cheeks a-glow at the thought that future writers when touching my childhood years would have to admit frankly that, yes, even being a big boy, a first-grader actually, I sometimes peed in bed at night, though Dad just couldn’t hold back his exasperation because at my age he no longer made puddles in his bed. Never!

Or take that terrible occurrence when on the way from school my tummy got squeezed by unbearable colic which made me run home to the toilet room, but there everything stopped halfway, in spite of all my straining, until Grandma, terrified by my heartrending howls, rushed from the kitchen to the toilet and, snatching a piece of newspaper from the bag on the wall, ripped the stubborn turd out.

Who would ever dare write things like that in a book?!..

(…already in another—my present—life the current wife of mine, Sahtic, went to a fortune teller in the war-destroyed city of Shushi when our son Ahshaut fled the local army because of harassment by his company commander and regular beating up at the guardhouse.

In the year of Ahshaut’s birth, the USSR was ripping apart at all seams, some new life was promising to start, instilling hope that before he grew of age there would be no army drafts but only contract enrollment of volunteers. And why not? “You never know the Devils’ next joke,” quoting a Russian byword. Well, in my dream’s case, the SOB was not in the mood for joking.

The commander of the company, handled Chokha, picked on Ahshaut because of his own dissatisfaction with the unfair arrangement of life—after the Karabakh war his combat bros became generals with hanging stomachs and personal Jeeps equipped with drivers while he, Chokha, was still rotting at the front line.

After Ahshaut was missing for eight days, Sahtic went to Shushi, to the popular fortune-teller who assured her that everything would be alright. And so it happened. Ahshaut came home, we took him back to the place of his service, to higher ranked officers in the chain of command than Captain Chokha, and our boy was transferred to another regiment, in a hotter spot, where he served the remaining year, though already without the sergeant stripes in his shoulder straps…

So then, in the process of seeing the future, the seer shared additional information, kinda a bonus for turning to her, that my Grandma, though in the other world already, was ill at ease on my behalf and lighting up a candle on her behalf in this here world would relieve her over there. My Grandma’s name (so the fortune teller) was almost like that of Maria, only a little different…

I was utterly flabbergasted by the accuracy of the extrasensory guess. Maria and Martha are indeed very similar names of the two sisters from the Gospel. Leo Taxil assures that even Jesus Himself sometimes confused the chicks…

And when my Grandma turned 98, she also began to forget her own name. On such days she sought her daughter’s help, “Lyaksandra, I keep wondering lately—what could my name be?”

Well, yes, Aunt Alexandra was also a good sort, “Oy, Mom! But I can't recollect either! May it be, Anyuta?”