Through the window glass I am looking at the car in front of me. At the windshield wipers and the side mirror. Only they are in view. The snow has generously covered the rest of the car, and the car has become a horned tetrapeak snow-white mountain. There is no driver inside. The owner most probably left his car here after fruitless efforts to climb the slope and continued his way in a taxi or marshrutka.

The right thing to do is to follow him, to leave the car here till evening when tractors will clean the street. But the perspective of remaining without the car the whole day does not attract me. Besides, it is very important for me to get to my destination with my car, as soon as I imagine the face of the grandmother, my neighbor, when I return. "Didn't I tell you not to take the car, the roads are closed!"

One more attempt to move the car and I turn off the engine.

There are too many cars on the street. Where the hell are they rushing to on Saturday, in this snowstorm? But one could ask me the same question. Well, I am going downtown on very important and urgent business.

Yesterday I paid an unexpectedly huge amount for my phone bill and all throughout the evening kept thinking to myself, "But it's impossible-I could not have talked so much, I was almost never home all day. The only answer is someone is using my line." And to clarify this I am going to Armentel office at the Republic Square.

I am on the way from Avan to Zeytun, because the road near the Zoo is closed.

It is morning. The snowplows have already cleaned another lane but my line has a five-centimeter layer of snow, under which black mirror-like ice can be seen in places.

The street has become a skating rink and cars are sliding on their wheel-skates.

I am near the Zeytun Bridge. A trolleybus tried to turn around, did not succeed and has remained vertical to the street, closing the traffic on both sides.

Jigulis are gathered around the trolleybus at different angles. The drivers behind me are honking stunningly with hope of I do not know what.

The world is divided into two parts, our motionless world and the unknown world on that side of the trolleybus.

The stillness is destroyed by a girl with a cap and boots on very high heels, who, sunk in 20 centimeters of snow on the pavement, is running to the bridge. And smiling. Perhaps at the snowflakes.

Several Nivas have intruded into our world through a narrow slit left by the trolleybus. As if to stress the pettiness of the cars with only two pulling wheels stuck in the middle of the road, they leave the rails drawn by the cars and move into the snow right next to the girl and spatter her with muddy snow-clods.

The drivers of Ladas look at each other melancholically.

Around 20 meters are left to the bridge. Then a slope down begins. If the car drivers pushed each other's cars that 50 meters, after that they would move down easily. But no one makes a move. Some young men are standing on the pavement staring at the cars and expressing opinions that they need to be pushed a bit. An old man passes the cars and gives the same advice. But no one makes a move.

"If I were a man I would get out and push," I think to myself. I wonder how the men excuse themselves.

Big snowflakes fall down on Yerevan.

Small silver butterflies...

A bit further two men are standing on opposite pavements and throwing snowballs at each other.

On the radio a female DJ and a boy who has called her program are discussing the rumors about love affairs between the DJ and a famous Armenian pop star. They do it too long and boringly. I change the channel and Freddie Mercury sings that nothing really matters to him.

I wonder if I can prove that I did not make those calls, will they return my money? Will I manage to get there before they close?

After an hour and a half, when I am all frozen, I try to call a taxi. But they aren't working. It is a real white hell here. But so beautiful.

They must have already cleaned the road below to the city center. I ask the guys on the pavement to help me push the car, turn around and slowly, dancing on the ice, move down.

Everybody cleaned the ground and their houses, garages, and shops and dumped the snow on the streets, on the pavements. Occasionally passers-by walk right down the middle of a street paying no attention to the honks and the fact that cars slide and are almost out of control. People are so tired that they have become indifferent even to themselves.

I carefully pass a blue van that is trying to turn right. The car cannot climb the slope and two men standing on the beam on the back of the car are hopping on it with serious faces.

A young woman with a boy on a sled is running back and forth in the middle of the street under the deafening car horns.

A guy is standing helplessly with a mountain bike. Only he was left to complete the picture.

I finally get downtown. It has been two hours since I left home.

In the city center the situation is not that bad. The plows are cleaning the streets. The maximum speed of the cars is 25km/h but it is ok, what is really important is that I have finally arrived.

I am very proud of myself. With just a year of driving experience in this snow I've managed to get to Republic Square.

I stop the car and go upstairs into the black building. As I move toward a lady with bright red lipstick and shining smile at the end of a long row of tables, I am preparing a speech in case they do not believe my story of not having made those calls.

"Hello," I say to the woman, "Will you please give me a list of my calls?"

"I can't," she says and laughs.

"Why not?"

"The printer doesn't work," she explains.

"If I come on Monday will it be working?" I ask in a broken voice.

The woman replies with a new splash of laughter. Her two front teeth are spotted with lipstick, I notice with irritation.

"The printer hasn't worked since last November," she says.

Armentel's printer does not work.

I do not know what to say. I turn around and go out. It is muddy snow outside. There is a car stopped behind mine and the driver is not in it and I don't know how I will get out of here.