Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 3)

The sacrifice flesh, after cooking, should be shared with relatives and neighbors, to which they will all respond with the traditional incantation: ընտունելի ընի ("let it be accepted"), otherwise it's not a matagh, but free food for parasites.

By the way, the edibility of a matagh isn't mandatory; give some worn-out but still-sturdy jeans to a drifter and—you've accomplished a matagh!

The essence of any matagh is to give gifts, to bribe the unknown forces at the fate’s rudder, steering chance, aka fortune…

No exorbitant IQ is needed to figure out how these bribes—who knows to who exactly!—scratch and withers the scruff of servants of any Almighty God officially registered in this best of all possible worlds, which He created (as the servants of Everyone tirelessly repeat).

However, those cults that weren't born yesterday have learned (from bitter prolonged experience) the utter futility of pushing against customs that have taken root deep in the unconscious part of believers—(poor cleric’s toiling like a soft in prison, and it's no use at all!)—that's why clergy have learned blinking at the ritual leaps and bounds over bonfires on the shortest summer night, the Pancake Week round dances, the mataghs, and other pagan obscenities.

"Even a stake through their heads would be of no use! Fuck! Forgive me, Lord…"

Religions grumble, but still keep countenance…)

. .. .

And even the most poetic words will become dull from using them just so, like empty figures of speech:

‘Tsavid tanim (I will carry your pain), why aren't you paying for the potatoes? Got forgotten?!’

‘Matag anim (I swear to make a sacrifice), I’ve just given you six 100-dram coins! Check them in your pocket!‘

‘Tsavid tanim (I will carry your pain), I've been here since morning, there’s quite a bunch of those 100-dram coins in my pocket.‘

‘Matag anim (I swear to make a sacrifice), I won't pay twice for the same potatoes. Don’t wet your whistle too often!…‘

At the bazaar of Stepanakert, the capital of the Mountainous Karabakh Republic, people bargain with polite understanding and deep poetic meaning…)

. .. .

As I've already said, I wasn't predestined, that day before yesterday, to drink from the spring that lured me so, babbling, with its imaginary coolness, in my dreams (my innocent dreams couldn't even imagine that he was a leftist deviationist, pervert, in a word).

Bummer! All in vain! – because, in the patriarchally dense shade beneath his giant neighbor, a festive group of folks (yep, no less than a hundred invited well-wishers!) enjoyed a matagh, and while I was removing my backpack and making eyes at the babbling stream (from left to right, ara! Have you ever seen such a thing?!), a loud cry rang out from the thick of the celebration: ‘Mr. Ogoltsov!‘

I didn't have to look around for long; a friendly, warm (yet irresistible) grip encircled my left bicep, and a gray-haired big man pulled me toward the women's table, where a plump young woman sat at the head of it.

‘You taught us, didn't you? Remember me? What's my name?‘

(… well, at least I taught them "Mister," but what about her name?…)

‘May it be… “Anush“?‘

The wild, random guess hit the mark, evoking general delight and tender pride for "our Anush" who still manages linger in the memories of the teaching staff at the local State University. And her father, the host of the matagh, without relenting his gentle squeeze, led the identified man to the now-vacant seat at the end of the men's table, where a fresh plate and fork, a clean glass, and an unopened bottle of mulberry vodka instantly appeared, while the toastmaster was already rising with another toast about parental love and university diplomas…

Karabakhi “tutovka” (moonshine distilled from mulberries) is as potent as "ruff" (a 50/50 mixture of vodka and beer) and "northern lights" (a mixture of 200-proof alcohol and champagne, and—yes, of course—the mixture contains equal amount of each ingredient).

What I'm saying is that the rocket fuel from the aforementioned product line requires a substantial snack, incompatible with the principles of veganism, whereas at the festive feast, only bread and skewered potatoes would pass the test for veganism, and, of course, thick slices of cut watermelon. But in a stubborn show of defiance, as if even vegans were brutal machos, I gulped down the potion—with every toast—while my neighbor to the right, Nelson Stepanyan (incidentally, a double namesake of a World War II ace fighter pilot), immediately lowered the bottle into a dive over the empty glass, hiding a mischievous grin in his sky-blue eyes…

And then, somehow… well, completely… I couldn't care less about the Platanovs…

I silently picked up my backpack, with the tent and sleeping bag tied to it, and made a slow turn across the slope, seeking solitude, and there, where… well… yep, I found… swaying, but clearly controlling the process, I set up my one-person Made-in-China tent.

The last of my verticality and fading self-control went into making my way to the nearest oak tree, pressing my temple against its trunk, and peeing on the other side of its mighty girth…

A turn around and the very first step toward the tent roughly pushed me back to slam against the lumpy trunk…

Not opposing, with meek listlessness, my back crawled down the ragged bark to the bulging roots, where I curled into a spent donut…

Submurging into pitch black, the twilight of consciousness thickened ahead of the darkness of the approaching night… The tiny circle of the closing in horizon rocked and swirled cruelly, an irresistible tsunami of vomit splashed up… but I still managed to roll onto my side and, bracing myself on a shaky elbow, puked over a gnarled root… and only then I collapsed back onto the sharp edges of the bark, which dug into my nape…

Do fish get seasick?

~ ~ ~

Amidst the cold and darkness, I, stiff and numb, was awakened by an uncontrollable shudder of chills.

It took me a while to regain my ability to walk upright. But gradually, I hobbled back to the tent itself, adding deeply felt groans along the way into the eerie howls and satanic laughter of the jackal packs, in their unleashed cacophony on the nearby slopes.

That night was the first to rub my nose in the distinct possibility of not making it to the coming morning. Overwhelmed by terror, tormented by sharp claws (which my ribs couldn't ward off), I hid, waiting for the dawn—as if it were salvation…

It finally came, but no relief arrived, nor did my whimpering, puppyish and pitiful, help in the least. However, I had nothing left in me to hold it back; to counter the feel of being turned inside out, drained by soul-withering nausea.

But then, if I've somehow survived a night like this (my mind was beginning to form a shaky blueprint), means the local Oecumene of the adjoining Cosmos must still need me for something… First, I have to come to my senses, gather myself back together, at least with what's left…

Inventory revealed the absence of upper denture.

I made my way to the Oak, squatted down, and stupidly poked a twig into the caked puddle of vomit in the fork of the roots. Nope… not here, the try missed… I need to keep my eyes open… come on, you must be able! I believe in you!…

My gaze crept, with effort, up and forward. Aha!

Yesterday, the onslaught of the farewell nocturne potpourri was so strong that the plate leaped over the puddle and spent a peaceful night half a meter further on—on a moss bedding: jackals don't need it, equipped with their own teeth, and the other gluttonous riffraff of woods would but go without a piece of plastic worth 20,000 AMD…

~ ~ ~

The rest of the day I spent flat as a pancake, under an Elm tree nearby the tent. I could barely crawl along, following the shadow of the tree's crown—like that woodlouse hiding behind a gnomon stuck up from the sundial's disk…

Ah, how truly it's said: "You should drink less!" However—and I've already tried to explain this to someone, I don't remember who namely—my braking system has its own views on the golden mean concept, which makes me gulp down as much as they fill…

Besides, on that languid yesterday, it dawned on me with rigid clarity that the proximity of the long-lived dendrorelic is anything but conducive to serene, gentle contemplations of mind filled with peace… not a scrape of the thing…

The distant hubbub of mataghs, taking shifts under the Sycamore (though not each one accompanied by a KAMAZ truck loaded with a stack of tables), as well as cows strolling to and fro the trough under the perverted spring, under the watchful eye of underage shepherds, disgustedly eager to converse with the stranger sprawled exhausted beneath the Elm Tree; as well as random passersby, as well as those riding horseback along the path (which turned out to be slightly higher, but too close to the same Elm), glancing back in amazement at the alien-purple hue of the Chinese-made synthetics, and to top it all off, crowning this entire pyramid of inconveniences, a hangover of the utmost severity, single-mandate voted for a radical change in the location of my annual breakout to freedom…