The Dark Valley (17 page)

Sakan was playing with the tassels of the carpet by the fireplace with his ear turned to what is wife was saying. And when his wife finished, Sakan got up from his place, asked where the barn lamp was, scratched his shoulder, and went to the barn.

The fuzzy calf was lying on the hay and licking its lips with its tongue. The cow sometimes ate fresh grass and sometimes turned her head toward the calf and moaned. Sakan filled the stall with hay and stood next to the cow a little longer with the lamp in his hand.

Asya was already in bed when he came home. Next to the bed were her clothes, among which her white dress that looked like a mound of snow. When he moved past her bed to go to the other side of the room where his bed and the child’s crib were, a pleasant fragrance reached his nose, as if someone had plucked flowers from the mountain, squeezed them, extracted the fluid, and sprinkled it like water on the sheets, the floor, the charred ceiling. But when he sat on his bed, took off his moccasins, the pungent stench of the barn, the dirt stuck on his moccasins, and the blades of hay hit his nose. In this corner of the room hung the smell of an unclean bedspread, a sweat-drenched shirt, a sunburned overcoat, and an unwashed body.

When his wife raised one end of the bedspread and turned toward Sakan, Sakan squinted his eyes and saw that the light had already been turned off. He quietly asked his wife why there was a rug under her head instead of a pillow.

“I gave our pillow to her,” his wife said and moved closer to him. Sakan’s nose was struck by the strong smell that came out of his wife’s mouth, as if her teeth had corroded and rotted. He turned to his other side and faced the wall, amazed that until then he had never noticed the smell of his wife’s breath.

* * *

The morning sunbeam dropped through the skylight and produced a milky circle on the rug. Sakan put on his moccasins as soon as he woke up.

When he walked past Asya he saw her white dress, her neck, her shoulder, and on her shoulder a thin strap of white cloth. He quickly moved to the door, picked up his sickle, and went out.

He washed his face in the stream in front of the house and wiped it with the fringe of his overcoat. After that he descended to the valley to pluck grass from the garden. On his way there Sakan wondered about something. Did Asya sleep naked or was she wearing a blouse? If she was wearing a blouse, then why was her shoulder bare? Or perhaps the white dress next to her was her blouse…

The cow looked at the barn door frequently as she licked her calf and rubbed her neck against the wooden planks of the stall, scratching herself. Meanwhile, everyone at home had already woken up. When Sakan returned to the barn carrying two bales of fresh grass on his back, the beds had been tidied at home and his wife had turned on the fire to make tea.

Asya was standing next to Sakan when he dropped the grass in front of the cow. She laughed when the calf turned its face to the green grass, sniffed it, staggered to its feet, and hid, burying its head in its mother’s bosom.

Asya discerned a few flowers in the grass, picked them up, and brought them closer to the calf. The cow saw that, swished her tail, and briskly turned her head. If she hadn’t been tied to the stall, she might have butted her. Asya recoiled and the flowers fell from her hand.

After she had made the tea, Sakan’s wife brought a basin of water to wash Asya’s face. Even when Asya refused and took the basin to pour water on her own hands, his wife rejected the idea.

Sakan was standing by the barn door. He saw how Asya washed herself. She put water in her mouth a few times, puffed up her cheeks, rubbed her finger against her teeth, gargled, and spat the water out. Sakan recalled how bad his wife’s breath smelled.

“Well, everything comes out of habit, from what we see our mothers do…”

Asya once again ate very little at breakfast. On the one hand it was his mother who was urging her on and, on the other, it was his wife.

“Eat, you’re going on the road, you’ll be hungry…”

Asya laughed and said:

“What I ate will last me three days.”

Nana was puzzled and concluded in her mind that Asya was not healthy, that she was hollow inside, that she must have some sort of disease that is preventing her from eating much.

And then Sakan got up to get Asya’s horse from the neighbor’s barn. A few women had gathered on the rooftop. Asya was saying something or other to them and Sakan was saddling the horse when he overheard Asya promising to visit the village again.

The horse was saddled when the women came down from the rooftop. Asya shook nana’s hand, stooped to kiss the child’s cheek, and walked to the horse to mount it. Sakan was holding the reins. Asya extended her hand toward the saddle and tried to mount the horse, but her foot almost slipped out of the stirrup. Sakan held her foot and helped her get on the horse.

Asya said goodbye to Sakan, shook his hand, and departed. The women accompanied her to the border of the village and separated, spreading out in the village streets to find their homes. Asya clutched the reins tightly and kicked the horse’s flanks with her heels to speed up the horse’s pace.

Sakan stood frozen for a moment and then walked over to the barn door, but remembered that he was meant to go to the garden. He turned around and went down to the valley.

When he helped Asya mount the horse by holding her foot, it was as if his fingers had sunk into something soft. When he bent over to put her foot in the stirrup, the tail of Asya’s coat rose and Sakan saw her white dress.

Sakan watered the garden all day.

The stream of water slowed down under the trees and, until it reached where he was, Sakan lay on his back and partly closed his eyes.

The trees knocked the branches together and the leaves rubbed against each other. Whenever the branches separated a little and Sakan could see the blue sky through the gap, it was as if the cloud he was looking at took the shape of the white dress that had been in his house by the bed the night before.

It was already dark when he returned to the village. He threw his shovel aside and went to look at the cow. He went home to his wife who grumbled that he had left the cow thirsty. His wife wanted to tell him that she had weeded the vegetable garden, that she had been out, but she kept it to herself, laid out the cloth, and placed bread, cheese, and yoghurt on it.

Sakan ate until he was full. He didn’t make a sound and kept his head lowered. After he swallowed his last bite, he muttered under his breath:

“Make my bed and put this whetstone by the door so that I don’t forget to take it with me in the morning.”

He said that and loosened his belt.

When he laid his head on the pillow, Sakan once again smelled the fragrance that had emanated from Asya’s clothes. That same pillow had been under her head the night before.

Sakan buried his face in the pillow, flared his nostrils, and started to breathe deeply. He saw before him swaying shoulders, a white dress, and soft feet.

His wife turned off the light and quietly wrapped herself under the sheets. Sakan felt his back warming up and he turned to face his wife. There was a pleasant scent under the sheets, and when Sakan held his wife, it was as if his wife’s shoulder was also bare and that she too was wearing a snow-white dress. His wife did not understand why Sakan was so aroused that night, but in her mind she forgave him for what he had done the night before when he turned to the wall.

His wife had softly fallen asleep and, in another corner of the house, nana was sleeping. In the dead of the night, Sakan was listening to the cows chewing in the barn through a crack in the wall.

He recalled how the cow had wanted to butt Asya when she brought a flower close to the calf’s face. Sakan also remembered the first day when he was sitting on the rooftop. The old man was telling a story of how on a moonlit night the “demon” had appeared in the Dark Valley and followed him.

“I was running, and he was running after me. When I stopped, he also stopped…”

It was right when he had said that that Asya had appeared.

All night Sakan was half asleep and half awake. The moon had cast a shade from the skylight and was playing on the rug. Sakan fell asleep close to dawn.

In his dream he saw the Dark Valley. A woman wearing a white dress was running after him in the valley. He moved closer to catch her. The woman stopped for a moment, and then ran off laughing in the valley again.

The spring morning promised a bright and sunny day. Our well-fed horses trotted up the stony path and puffed out air with every step. The horses’ dark-blue necks had become damp with sweat.

The path was tortuous. The farther we traveled from the village, the denser the forest became. We met with thick-trunked trees whose branches had wound around each other and hung above the path. We often had to bend forward and embrace the horses’ necks to protect our faces from being scratched by the overhanging branches or pricked by their thorns.

We were silent. I was striking the leaves on the trees with the tip of my horsewhip, pulling them off or shaking the overhanging branches, causing the night dew to sprinkle on the horse and on me like rain.

My friend was softly whistling a song and rocking in his saddle to the pace of the horse’s steps.

“Twelve years ago I went to Dzoragyugh
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on this path,” my friend said. It was as if he were speaking to himself.

I looked at him. He was smiling as if a fortunate event had entered his memory to which the path and the old forest had been witnesses.

I asked him which wind had hurled him to the village that lay in the remote valleys.

“It was on the same day that I got out of prison. I was a youth of around seventeen or eighteen. I was full of energy to work and had so much vigor… If only that youth had lasted.”

The path ended and merged into a broader and softer path that came from the valley rivers in the depth of the forest. The horses stopped, took a deep breath, and resumed their trot.

“You know, sometimes a face fixes itself in a person’s memory in such a way that decades later you remember it just as distinctly as if you had seen it the day before. We forget the name, the location, the year, or when we saw that face, those eyes: we forget the details, but we remember the face and the eyes, as if that first impression must remain indelible to the grave.”

He didn’t give me a chance to ask him about the event and his indelible impression, which was illuminating light on his memory at that moment in the same way the sun shines its golden rays on shady trees.

“I remember those days when I decided to go to Dzoragyugh very clearly. It was necessary for me to leave the city and not show my face there for a while. I kindly accepted my acquaintance’s suggestion: to be a teacher in that remote village. Two thoughts stimulated me: first, that no one would follow me or look for my traces and, second, that I would get to work in a village.

“When the head of schools told me about Dzoragyugh and the fact that the place was inaccessible, that the air was clean, and that there were dense forests nearby with abundant game, I instantly agreed. I think I went on the road the same day.

“…It was the beginning of winter. Snow had just fallen. We got to this exact same path at night and separated from the forest’s main track. The snow glowed under the moon, resembling white marble on which black tree trunks were reflected. The Dzoragyugh coachman pointed out the beginning of the path that led to the valley below.

“‘There it is. Our village.’

“I saw tiny black specks strewn all over the white carpet of snow. These were village dwellings, bales of hay, and stacks of dung. In one of the windows I discerned the white light of a lamp, which looked like a little star that had gone astray in the dark heights of the universe. We descended a little along the slope and heard the distinct bark of a dog, which echoed in the forest like the strikes of an axe.

“‘That is the sound of our Boghar,’ the coachman said. The horse, too, seemed to know that the village was near and that it was Boghar that was barking, and so it stepped up its pace.

“To me it was like going to a very distant land of which the geography teacher had told about like a fairy tale. Children are often fascinated by distant lands where red-skinned people live and colorful birds perch on trees. And when they leave their homes, the land they imagined suddenly seems very close.

“I, too, thought like that, even though I was already a young man. Perhaps it was the forest that affected my thoughts—the grandeur of the winter night, the unmatched presence of the cliffs, and those mysterious sounds coming from the valleys and forests. Perhaps it was fatigue that had fogged my consciousness. I don’t remember. I only know that the first time I came to Dzoragyugh became one of the best nights of my life.

“The coachman brought me to his house. How sweetly I slumbered next to the fireplace under the blanket! It was quite a bit later that I opened my eyes a little and looked up at the skylight. There was still a bit of winter night left. I wrapped myself in my blanket and moved my feet closer to the warm ashes as the imaginary world of the night swayed on the threshold between sleep and dream.

“I felt ashamed when I opened my eyes. It had been some time since the others had woken up and were waiting for me to light the fireplace.

“I went outside. From the garden I could see the village and the road we had been on the night before. Boghar barked at me near the henhouse. His bark no longer had a terrifying echo and the steep cliffs no longer appeared shapeless. The orange winter sun shone on the snow and on the jugs on the rooftops as smoke rose out of chimneys.

“On the same day I was taken to the house where I was to live. The landlord, brother Ohan, was a man with a patriarchal demeanor. People like him no longer exist in our villages. In the winter, he would sit by the fireplace and stack wood next to him. One by one he would throw the wood in the fire and tell stories from the time of the Shah, from long ago, and about hunting game in the forest. And if no one listened to him, either out of boredom or loneliness, he would open his Book of Psalms in front of the fireplace.