THE BEAUTIFUL COINCIDENCE

YESTERDAY I began to work on the background
of a fictitious character
for this new story of mine
which I am writing in French

HE was to be the descendant of a French officer
who had been captured by the Russians
when Bonaparte ignominiously
retreated from Moscow, in 1812

you see, I have been reading Tolstoy's
WAR AND PEACE
and I watched the magnificent, Soviet-made,
1968 film adaptation of that great story

well, it's been a week since
the weather here has been extremely hot
and this morning the fridge's electric cable
just BURNED

so the old repairman came by with his tool box
he changed the cable in no time
then (for no obvious reason)
he told me the story of his family

"It all started with Napoleon,"
he said,
his great, great, great grand-father
was this French general
who had been captured by the Russians
when Bonaparte ignominiously
retreated from Moscow, in 1812

later the Frenchman
was deported to Tbilisi,
in Georgia
where he married an Armenian girl

and some two hundred years later
one of his descendants
was this old Armenian repairman
who charged me $6 for his trouble.

::: ::: :::

Picture: Winds 

Seen in Yerevan, a few days ago.

Slight editing made on August 28, 2012