( Cont’d from parts I and II .) After a year in town the sounds of the street which I once thought sensuous became nothing more than endless streams of noise. Once again I couldn’t manage to fall asleep. Rhappy, V. E. and Co. were at it right outside my bedroom window. I considered getting up and roaring from the balcony, fist pumping like Il Duce, but finally could not bring myself to do it. It will only make things worse, I decided, because then they will start to take pleasure in annoying me in subsequent 3:30 am sessions, talking even louder to mock my fury. Better to let them remain oblivious to my suffering, to do it in silence. At length I became so tired that their voices seemed sufficiently muffled to act as a white-noise machine . When I got up later that morning I took a closer look at the pine tree whose branches shaded my window. It reminded me of a tree I had seen near a chapel at Kodjori, a town in the foothills above Tbilisi with a ruined fortress that
Excerpts from bygone days abroad