The Dark Valley (12 page)

The judge asked Yakhshi why he had put a lock on the door. Mukhsi called out from his place:

“Were we to let him continue acting like a dog and contaminating the entire village in the future?”

Yakhshi answered that the people had their say in the locking of the door. A member of the Komsomol added that people in Drmbon were not familiar with the laws of the government.

“That kind of behavior is considered to be very bad in our village, and if the law of the government condemns our reaction, then we won’t do it again…”

Father Maruk spoke. Gyulbahar is a poor woman and the priest has at times given a portion of his income to her. She does his laundry, and whatever the people say is false, a lie, a game invented by the youth.

“If the Armenian synod were to find out, what would they do to me?” he said, looking at the inhabitants of Drmbon with the air of a “parish” clergyman.

* * *

The court found Yakhshi guilty, but, taking into account the conditions of Drmbon, forgave him.

The inhabitants of Drmbon left the court with so much clamor, it was as if they were an army returning from a victorious war.

Only Father Maruk was pensive, contemplating where else there is a Drmbon where hourly bells are rung, hymns are sung, rites are performed, and Gyulbahar, Gyulbahar…

Aunt Mina had been told that her son and daughter-in-law would reach the village by evening. It was not evening yet, but she refused to come down from the rooftop.

She stood on the rooftop with one hand on her brow to protect her eyes from the rays of the setting sun and looked in the distance at the turns of the winding path waiting for their appearance.

Her son was coming from a foreign city. It had been more than ten years that he had been to the village and that his mother had seen him. He had gone to the city as a young man when his hair was fluffy like velvet, and now he was returning with his wife and daughter.

“Oh, old woman, isn’t anyone coming?” Uncle Avan called from below. He was in his room waiting impatiently and calling up regularly to the old woman with his ears perked, ready to hear the lightest footstep.

“I can see two horses by the Zingila rock and one person on foot,” Aunt Mina answered from the rooftop as she sharpened her eyesight some more. She squinted, stretched her body, and stood on her toes to get a better view.

For a moment she fixed her squinted gaze on the Zingila rock and tried to determine who was coming. She waited a little longer and suddenly Aunt Mina felt weak at the knees and her heart fluttered like a fish that has been washed up on a shore. Her excitement rose inside of her like a wave and cut her breath short.

“They’re coming! There they are!”

* * *

The next day Aunt Mina got up earlier than usual. She had not been able to sleep that night.

She had woken up a few times in the middle of the night, sat on her bed, and listened intently to hear who was awake and who was sleeping. One time she got out of bed, turned on the light, looked again, and could not believe what she saw. She approached the bed and gently straightened the hanging edges of the bed sheet.

She had wanted to wake the old man to tell him what was on her mind, but hadn’t dared. Before turning off the light, she looked around the room once more, said something sweet, and wrapped herself in her sheets.

Fetching water early in the morning and milking the cows seemed easier than usual to Aunt Mina. The happiness she felt made her feel younger—a few times she entered a room, forgot what she wanted, and walked out again. Or when she lit the fire in the house and her eye caught a fan or some other object that her son had brought with him, she examined it carefully and put it back in its place.

She was washing up in front of the house when the teapot clanged against a plate. Uncle Avan got annoyed and told her to be quiet or she’d wake them, and Aunt Mina replied:

“Let my hands turn to dust, indeed.”

She said that and got so confused that she did not notice the milk boiling over and the white froth spilling on the smoking cow dung.

Uncle Avan was standing on his porch with a broad smile on his face saying “good morning” to neighbors who passed by, approached him, and blessed him.

“Let fortune be with you too, for your migrant child to return home as well.”

Uncle Avan was offering those who came a glass of brandy and snacks to go with it: either dried fruit or some bread and cheese.

It was only a year ago that he decided to sacrifice an ox to celebrate his son’s arrival. And when he asked the old woman whether it would make a difference if he sacrificed a fat sheep instead of an ox, Aunt Mina complained. It is only once in a million that there is such bliss under their roof, so the sacrifice must be done as promised.

And then Uncle Avan went into the barn. He had forgotten to give the cattle hay earlier. That morning he felt an unusual amount of strength in his arms: he swept the barn much faster and he gave more grass and fodder to the cattle.

It seemed to him as if the cattle too were aware of the fact that there were dear people in the house. The cows ate the grass in the warm barn with relish as Uncle Avan stroked their backs with his hardened hands, whose swollen veins resembled ropes, and said endearing words.

“You didn’t torment yourself, did you, father?”

It was his son, Tigran, who had woken up and followed his father into the barn.

“Don’t come in here! Go! Go home! You’ll soil your boots, my son. This is our trade and, yes, we need to torment ourselves. We couldn’t do without it.”

Before going to the barn, Tigran had looked at the village from their garden: at the darkened haystack and the pyramid of dung heap. He had inhaled the air of the village, the gardens, the garbage on the streets, the burning dung, the rotting grass, the air coming out of barns, and the heavy pungent urine-scented air of the village.

How poor his native village seemed! How backward!

His first impression was not attractive. After having lived in the city for many years, his memory had only retained the attractive aspects of the village: the flowery mountains, the clear water sources, the green pastures where the grass reaches the far edges of cliffs here and there.

He had forgotten how much dirt there was in the village: how they don’t wash their faces with soap and how they only have a handful of clothes that they wear until they’re completely worn-out and black, which they then patch up in a thousand places and wear again.

Tigran was standing by the barn door watching how his father carried a basket full of garbage on his shoulders, slushing his feet in and out of fresh muck, as he cleaned the barn.

His eyes caught the tight tendons in his father’s neck that expanded like wires when his father’s neck stretched under the heavyweight of the basket.

“Go! Go home! Your mother will have made tea by now…”

Years later, when Tigran would bring back to mind his native village and his aging father, he would see him with a stretched neck, swollen tendons like tight wires, and his eyes bulging out even more…

* * *

Neighbors and acquaintances came and went unceasingly the first few days, and they all expressed their happiness in the same way: kissing the cheeks and the eyes, the eyebrows and the brows with the firm kiss of a villager.

One time, after Anzhik had been kissed, she wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief and frowned in such a way as if to say that the kiss of a villager was repulsive.

Aunt Mina noticed it. She did not approve of the fact that Anzhik had a clean white handkerchief. A handkerchief does not suit a young girl and it is not good for her to become attached to one.

Aunt Mina thought and was saddened. She realized that her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild will not live in the village; that they are used to the city and will leave the village again, while she is tied to the village, to Uncle Avan, to the churn and the old spinning wheel over which she cried many winters as she sat by the warm fire and the black petrol lamp.

Another time Anzhik wiped her spoon with her handkerchief. She noticed and Aunt Sharmagh, who smiled at Anzhik, said:

“Mina, did you see that? Your grandchild doesn’t approve of you.”

Tigran attempted to cover up that impression and said that she did the same in the city. But Aunt Mina was saddened once more. She was as upset as that time when she saw Anzhik wipe her face with her handkerchief.

For Anzhik many things in the village were new. She asked her father many questions, such as why there are no forks in the village and why grandma wraps sugar in cloth and keeps it in a basket. With the fascination of a child who has never experienced village life, Anzhik examined all the work that was done in the village and asked why the villagers did things the way they did.

And then one day, one of the neighbors came and asked Tigran to write a few words for him. The man laughed when he had to sign. Anzhik noticed his white teeth and the way the man held the pen in the same way that Anzhik would hold a shovel in the barn.

“We write better than that in our first grade, father.”

* * *

The first two weeks went by very quickly and gradually things settled down. The villagers adopted the newcomers as their own and discussions about them calmed down, as did good wishes and blessings.

Only sometimes would the brides and daughters of the village look at Elia’s dress, shoes, and hat with curiosity. Some of them laughed, comparing the hat to a bird’s nest; others said it was better that way—that is was more liberating and pleasant to look at.

Tigran attended village meetings and talked with both the elderly and the youth about what was going on in distant countries.

The villagers were interested. They asked him questions and told him about their toils and troubles.

And all too often a thick shroud of despair wrapped itself around Tigran: this is how deficient the village was and how hard the work was. But then a powerful surge would rise in him, and he would instinctively tighten his fist and squint, as if he was seeing the village from a distance.

Elia helped Aunt Mina with housework. As they worked, Elia, with a trembling heart, listened attentively to everything Aunt Mina told her about life in the village, what a young woman has to endure when she is forced into marriage with an older man and becomes his property, how they cure people in the village, and how great the pains are of a young bride suffering a miscarriage as she holds a young baby in her arms.

As they worked together, churning butter or spinning wool, Aunt Mina would open the thousand-year-old book of the village in front of Elia’s eyes. And on each page there was the martyrology of a hapless victim, or the description of a bride who lived under the terror of her mother-in-law, or a wife who had been tortured under the feet of her tyrannical husband, or the story of children who had been murdered in secret by strangulation. One by one Aunt Mina told of these incidents and lightly shook her head.

Elia was horrified by these stories and it seemed to her as if these century-old miseries and evil spirits still hovered over the gloomy nooks of the houses in the village.

Anzhik sometimes spent time with her grandfather and sometimes with the neighborhood children. Children of the same age would gather around her and curiously look at her beautifully combed hair, the tiny clip in her hair, and her shoes with eyelets. The children of the village looked at her and in each one of their little hearts a very big wish was born: to have that which Anzhik had, to wear a black leather belt like hers. All of the children worked on becoming Anzhik’s friend and be closest to her.

Almost every night, before going to bed, Aunt Mina would ask Anzhik to sleep in the same bed with her. The old woman wanted to cuddle her grandchild and warm up her young body with the weak temperature of her wizened body, as she reassured herself that this young girl was not the last offspring, that the kernel of a rotten root still grows many shoots.

But Anzhik always refused:

“It’s not nice with you. I don’t want to leave my bed.”

Anzhik wanted to say more. She wanted to tell her grandmother that a heavy scent emanates from her shirt and that she walks with bare feet all day and goes to bed at night without washing them.

Before falling asleep, as she lay under a blue blanket that she had brought with her from the city, Anzhik would think about the city, her school, the rows of pioneers, the movie theater, the tram, and a thousand other things like that. Under her blue blanket Anzhik felt as though she were in the city again, and that pleased her.

The spring sun made its presence felt again. The vibrancy in the village was gradually rising.

The village was like a deep rumble in the distance that begins to move at the beginning of spring. The spring sun decomposed the garbage that had been thrown in the gardens faster, and the smell of putrefaction seemed heavier and more irritating to the mucous membranes in the nose, which caused the eyes to water.

The cattle in the barns were restless and the villagers talked in the open air about the mountain where fresh grass was already begin to grow.

Like the others, Aunt Mina too was preparing to go to the mountain. Before going to the mountain, however, she set her mind on taking Anzhik to the chapel first. Like a weak light, she had a wish in her mind to teach Anzhik to pray.

Why had that wish been born inside of her? She did not know either. The old woman wanted to tie them to the village and turn Anzhik into a modest girl, undoing everything the city had given her all those years.

How wonderful it would be if they stayed in the village! But Tigran was always saying that they have to return to the city soon, that the holiday will soon be over. But will they ever come to the village again? And will she be alive when they do?

* * *

It was on one of those lovely spring mornings when everything seemed lively and pleasant, when one thought the least about everyday problems and felt closest to nature that Anzhik and Aunt Mina went to the brooklet. Aunt Mina had not said that they were going to the chapel at home. She was afraid that Tigran would not let Anzhik go.