It’s a bivalve, as the majority of its fresh-water counterparts which, as an inquisitive kid, you scraped out in the shallows of ponds and rivers, but the selfish shellfish latch themselves from inside and there are no means to break in until you let them bask for some time in the fire embers.
But this here mollusk beats them all, some overseas wonder, you can’t grab it – whew! caliber 1.5 meters, and the corresponding weight of over 500 pounds. However, the valves are rounded, not oval as by their tribe in the fresh water. And watch this exotic finishing, both luxurious and equatorial, fanning off from the hinges that connect the two half-spheres, running all the way to the rounded edges in a kinda basso-rilievo of cable-thick gimp trimming worked over with the finest polish, as if Ural serf artisans were sharing the know-how of malachite processing based on the local raw materials.
Deep in myself, I’ve baptized this ogres with the name of Pec-tin-din and it baffles me to guess why. The scallop-like bottom of this huge cauldron has half-buried in the sand, sunk as deep as the Peccy’s weight forces it to enter, and the lid remains somewhat raised, like for airing.
But there’s nothing inside to air. Peccy had passed away to better world before my getting to Isle of No Time, not a shred of her mantle stayed behind in between the valves, all's shell-lifted, looted, scraped, gnawed, swept up and taken away, and only this bare calcium structure still tarries in the sand of the beach…
Of dust art thou knocked together and dust art thou to become…
Well, not quite Friday thoughts rolled up and, in unison to them, some wind began to whine in gusts whose unevenness furnished those wails a certain emotional curve, like, say, grief lamentations, “O, woe! Peccy! Why have you left me!”
Besides, with a noteworthy brashness, the wind blew radically athwart the direction of monsoon winds that on Friday, in a stably predictable manner, blow either to the shore or off it. But no! This bitchy one pulls alongside the shoreline! Some crying anomaly, this hydra of counter-hydrometeorology!
A split-moment before shining radiantly, the azure of the sky went out, squeezed by the cephalopod mollusk of the heavy black cloud unwinding, spreading its distorted tentacle-protuberances all over the firmament.
The waves dropped out of caressing languidly the shore in the habitual foreplay and, all of a sudden, sprung erect and wheeling, their tips amok foaming at the mouth, and rushed to crash their whole mass against the beach spread out in the boot-licking kowtow.
The darkness condensed in the blink of an eye and reigned all around, thru which, like whitish ghosts, there flashed foamy fragments of water sheets torn by the gnarly squall off the shore-lashing waves.
And now the torrential tropical rain joined the cluster pandemonium fucking with dogs and cats the surface of the flattened sand, spilling about splashy streams and violent rivulets.
Everything awaited for the thunder, everything, out of their mind, implored in crazy urge: do it! O, do it! And the thunderclap—KRGAHDAHDAN!!—burst out twined with the lightning that sliced the world by its crackle-and-hiss into two, horizontally, passed its blinding shot from a knobby tentacle to the suckers in that at the opposite end of the world—SHUHHK-NNBA-CHUHKZZ!!
Bet your farm, I was up already full-length and hugging the palm pillar bent after the fringe of its long drenched fronds jitter-bagging impetuously at the waving tree top.
I clenched to the trunk horrified by the might of the drumming rain ready to wash me off into the berserk serf any next moment.
I clenched immobilized by the mortifying fear that the very next lightning wouldn’t miss this one and only tree in the beach.
Clung to the dribbling tree, I just waited to see: which of my fears was the first to come true? And all of a sudden, against the deathlike backdrop of enraged foamy waves, I made out the shadowy half-sphere of Peccy’s lid.
What followed came off all by itself—a desperate dash… couldn’t you keep your gap wider, fucking slut?. the head is thru the rest will follow…
And tearing off me all that could be peeled by the sharp edges of the two valves, I squeezed into the Peccy’s nest, half-meter deep.
Burst another discharge of the deafening yet belated thunderclap. Eff you, bitch! You can’t reach me in here!.
I’m drenched thru and thru and it is so narrow a nook I am in, but the rain is not molesting me any further… I cuddle into the favorite posture of intrauterine babies. Good news the walls here lack any nasty lips.
The noise of rain splashes outside subsides, gets gently muffled, little by little…
Wait-wait-wait! But how come that I cannot hear the surf any more?
In answer, there sounds a dry short click, the tooth in the upper valve locked into the dimple of recess in the bottom one…
Thick silence pervaded the narrow darkness. The deafening silence of a sound chamber and pitch-black impenetrability, copulated, engulfed all the world…
* * *
Bottle #5: ~ The Ways We Are Chosen By ~
29 years is a serious stretch, in the Soviet Union because of the deep humanism inbred in the very foundation of the Communist regime, you'd never meet a person been sentenced to longer than 15 years in prison/camps. No use trying. 15 constituted the ceiling, above that limit you straight off plopped to face the firing squad at ready for the sentence execution. Each one had their job to do for the state well-being, you know.
In 29 years Nikita Khrushchev, who ruled USSR Empire 1953-1964, would have built in the Soviet Union 1.45 Communisms (no, yeah, that is almost one and a half of them) if not for the palace coup in the Central Committee of the CPSU. He got life within his personal dacha walls and the throne of the General Secretary went under the Leonid Brezhnev's ass who ran the farm till 1982.
Which exculpatory circumstances—if any, when compared to so loft background—would mitigate my slowness to a fault about the production of RR (The Rascally Romance) procrastinated for so serious a stretch?
To put my best foot forward, I won't ask how long a piece of string is and answer with my usual openness.
The confluence and most perplexing entanglement of differently varying yet similarly unfavorable exigencies determined dawdling away those years.
To begin with, I okayed a war…
The choice was not invitingly wide at that period with the USSR engaged in just one war – Afghanistan (1979 – 1989), however, its undisguised Communist-imperialistic nature ran counter to my beliefs and I subscribed to a pending war flagged off with my participation.
The first war for independence of Mountainous Karabakh…
On entering the village club—a serviceable edification of raw stone used, a certain period back, to be the village church before the cross was brought down and rows of plywood seats went in together with the sturdy stage—dropped in at night by, basically, a dozen of mujiks to tarry over a couple of boards of chess and backgammon, and to chat of I had no idea what because my too insignificant command of Armenian, and where to, about once a month, they brought an Indian movie of 2 series—I got puzzled to see a crowd thrice thicker than had ever gathered for any Indian movie. Which was there not at all on that night.
The Chairman of the Village Council, delivering a speech from behind the breastwork of the on-stage lectern, was ofttimes interrupted by vehement orators from the audience who just stood up from their respective seats so as to become seen and heard and who, in their turn, got interrupted by other orators up-springing from other seats… The common meeting of the villagers revved on at full swing.
Pargev, a ten-grader from the right seat next to me and, simultaneously, the Chairman’s son, updated me thru the mutual buzz that the rally was convened for collecting the folks' signatures and Grisha, the school Principal's husband