The Dark Valley (21 page)

Sabu avoids desiring girls from other villages. Only very rarely do others agree to give a girl to Sabu, because the sect has a secret ritual about which the neighboring villages have concocted a thousand stories. And since they only perform the ritual when there are no outsiders in the village, only very few actually know what that ritual entails, even if there are some who assert having witnessed it.

In the beginning it was customary for a woman to live with several men, but one day the leader of the sect came from Iran and announced that the oracle no longer accepted that custom. This happened a long time ago, but even today many claim that in the village of Sabu that custom still smokes under the ashes like smolder.

There is a night when neither moon nor stars are visible. A cloud descends on the forest and drifts across the dales to the village, enveloping home and hay barn like smoke. On that night, together with the cloud, beasts roam the village streets. Bears dig their paws in clay jugs and lick the honey inside, wolves lap up the warm blood of lambs, and dogs howl in vain as they hide behind haystacks.

That night the children of the village of Sabu bury their heads under pillows. Some of them start crying. If it had been light out, one could have seen the village girls and women huddled on the rooftop of the house of prayer like a frightened flock of sheep before a wolf.

Inside, in the dark, a few people weep plaintively like lamenting women and say words of prayer in Arabic. After every song, hundreds of hairy hands stretch upwards in the dark, and from the skylight the women drop their colorful belts in turn. Someone in the crowd of the house of prayer catches one of the belts. And after the last girl has timidly untied her thin belt, the praying crowd charges into the forest, dragging along the women and girls whom they hold captive with those same belts.

On that night there is neither moon, nor the twinkle of stars…

In the old house of prayer, the elderly weep and pray until dawn.

* * *

A sayyid appeared one night on the other side of the Arax wearing a green mantle from head to toe. He was the ancient sect’s prophet who would sometimes cross the border in disguise from remote Iran and travel all the way to Sabu.

As the sayyid crossed the border, the water of the Arax spattered turbid drops on the silk tail of his mantle whenever his horse gashed the river.

That night a young girl in the village of Sabu was weaving a carpet on a loom. The girl had thin tresses, and at the tip of her tresses hung little metal bells. The girl turned her head left and right, picking the colorful yarn with her yellowed fingers, placing one thread over another and then packing the weft with a heavy comb. The rows of knots grew one on top of the other and designs were born: pomegranate branches, leaves, and two wings in the leaves that looked like songbirds to the girl. Each time the girl packed the weft with the comb, the colorful knots moved, and the bells in her tresses tinkled.

When the horsemen passed that street, the dogs barked at the green aba. The girl turned her head and the sayyid saw both the carpet in the lamp light and the girl sitting in front of the loom. To him it seemed as if the girl herself was a colorful design on the carpet.

That year, too, had a dark night. When the first song ended in the dark house of prayer, the two arms of the green aba-wearing man stretched upwards, toward the skylight. The women on the rooftop pushed the young girl forward, and several women’s hands untied the girl’s innocent belt in the dark, which she then tied with her slender fingers to the skylight. The bells in her tresses tinkled timidly. That night a wolf would lick the blood of an immaculate lamb. And when the girl shrieked in fear in the forest, a pheasant that was asleep in its nest awoke and moved to another nest.

In the morning, the sayyid read out new decrees. His every word was taken as sacred law in Sabu. And that which he announced to the girl’s parents was received like the word of a prophet.

It was necessary for the carpet to be finished, because it was to hang on the wall of the sayyid’s house and the girl was to sweeten his bitter senescence. The incomplete designs came out tangled. In some places the colors were bright, as if they were on fire, and in other places they were dull, ruined. The girl’s fingers trembled whenever she held the colorful yarns.

The dogs barked one more time when the horses turned their heads toward the south. The carpet was spread on a horse and on it sat the girl. The girl looked once more at her abandoned loom and at her mother. She saw her native forest and a tear dropped on the designs of the carpet.

* * *

The Arax now no longer spatters drops on green aba mantles. The forest of Sabu is still where it was. Black-bearded men continue to axe boughs and pluck wild pears.

On the other side of the river there are Iran’s bare cliffs and sun-scorched plains. The villages are like green oases with hanging gardens through which narrow streams flow and mix soil with the muddy waters of the Arax.

In the village on the other side of the river there is an old lady who puts a hand to her forehead whenever she washes a worn-out carpet in the stream and looks in the distance where the forests keep her native Sabu.

The faded designs on the carpet sometimes suddenly light up in the water and, for a moment, it seems to the old woman as if she can hear the tinkling of those melancholy bells that had once hung from the tips of her youthful tresses.

To the memory of Arpenik Charents
{8}

All year round a cloud perches on Kakavaberd
{9}
—the toothlike battlement disappears in the white cloud, leaving only the tall towers to catch rays of sun. The ruins are not visible from a distance and it looks as if there is a guard above the towers. The iron doors of the castle are closed and it seems as though someone at the top of the tower is ready to call whoever ascends the cliff.

And when the wind disperses the cloud, and the scraps of cloud dissolve above the valleys, the thorny shrubs on the walls become visible along with the tower’s inclined head and the battlement that is sunken halfway into the ground.

There is silence around the ruins of Kakavaberd. The only sound there comes from the Basuta River in the valley, which scrapes its banks and polishes the blue quartz on its riverbed. The Basuta writhes on its riverbed as if a thousand hounds were howling under its white foam and biting the rocky chains.

At the top of the battlement, kites and griffons have built their nests. As soon as footsteps are heard below the battlement, they squawk, fly out of their nests, and dreadfully circle above the fortress. Then the eagle with a beak like a crooked saber, talons like sharp spears, and feathers like steel armor soars.

The only flower that grows at the height of Kakavaberd is the Alpine violet. Its dew is as red as the claw of a partridge and its flower is the color of apricot. The Alpine violet grows by the stones under the battlement. The stones warm up in the sun and when the clouds cover both rocks and battlement, the Alpine violet turns and leans its head against the stones. To the iridescent beetle that has plunged into the pollen, the flower is a cradle, and the world, one big apricot-colored flower garden.

On the other side of the Basuta, on the cliffs in the valley below, there are several houses. Smoke rises out of skylights in the morning, twirling like blue ribbons and dissolving in the clouds. The cock crows in the warm afternoon, and with that crow the old inhabitants of the village yawn in the shades of their houses and draw patterns on the sand with their canes, and with those patterns they excavate past memories in their minds.

And both in the village and at the top of the fortress time goes by slowly. The same leaves grow on the same trees from year to year. That is also why the old men’s memories get mixed up. The river roars the same as always, the stones are the same, and so is the eagle.

So many generations have lived by the Basuta, have laid thick patched-up felt on firewood, have enclosed tents with reeds, and every spring when the Alpine violet blooms below Kakavaberd, have driven goats and sheep to the slopes of the fortress, filled their bags with cheese and bit on millet bread and goat cheese in the winter.

* * *

One sunny afternoon three horsemen climbed up the cliff of Kakavaberd. Not only their clothes, but also their manner of straddling the horses gave away that the first two horsemen were from the city and had neither seen Kakavaberd, nor its cliff.

The third horseman was their escort, and while the ones ahead tightly held onto their horses’ manes, practically bending over to keep their balance, the last horseman softly crooned a song, melancholy and doleful, like the desolate valley, the wretched cliff, and the remote village.

The cloud perched on top of the fortress sometimes opened like a curtain, making the battlement visible, and sometimes closed, covering the top. The first horseman could not take his eyes off the battlement. In his mind raced the history of the fortress and the words written in manuscripts about the days of reign when armored horses clattered their hooves in front of the iron entrance and the adjutants returning from war and destruction waved their spears. Through his glasses his learned eyes saw the iron-clad soldiers and the parchment, whose reed pen concocted their glorification, and he listened to the ancient clatter of horses. How harsh the cliff seemed to him, the cliff over which the previous owners had clambered like chamois!

When they reached the tents, the first horseman continued up the road. He was looking for the old path and neither saw the half-naked children playing in the ashes in front of the tents, nor the puzzled goats bobbing their heads.

The second horseman, who wore a felt hat, was not looking for old artifacts in Kakavaberd. His entire wealth consisted of the thick notebook and the sharp pencil in his lap. His eyes only needed to catch a face, see a beautiful corner or a mossy stone, and he would sketch with his pencil on a sheet of paper what his eyes had discerned.

The first horseman was an archeologist; the second, an artist.

When they reached the tents, the dogs attacked the horsemen. Several people came out of the tents at the sound of the dogs and looked in their direction. The children playing in the ashes saw how the dogs barked and jumped on the horsemen. The third horseman was vainly trying to drive away the dogs with his whip. The barking dogs pushed the horsemen toward the battlement of the fortress and capered back to the tents.

To the archeologist it was as if the stones of Kakavaberd had come alive and were talking to him. He moved toward a random stone, squatted, observed, measured, wrote down something or other, dug the ground around it with his foot, and excavated a cut stone sunken to its corner into the ground. He climbed up the battlement, stuck his head out of the tower’s lookout, and called down loudly after seeing words engraved on a stone in one of the corners of the tower.

The third horseman, who had untied the horses’ bridles and was sitting under one of the fortress walls smoking, started at the archeologist’s call. He thought that the bespectacled man had been bitten by a snake.

The man in the felt hat noticed the ruins of the battlement, the pointed roof of the tower, and the marks on the walls. He was drawing the entrance of the fortress when his pencil froze in his hand for an instant when several griffons flew out of their nests squawking and circling above the fortress at the sound of his footsteps. The noise made the others look up as well.

The squawking of the griffons frightened the horses, who pricked up their ears and moved closer together. And when the archeologist called down from the top of the tower to say that he had found the tomb of Prince Bakur, the artist could not catch what he had said. His eyes were on the circling griffons, on the mighty flaps of their wings, and on their curved and blood-red beaks. What terrifying force there was in their circles! For an instant the pencil in his hand froze and he didn’t even notice his hat slip and fall on a stone.

From one of the tents a man emerged with a sickle in his belt and a dirty cloth around his head. He climbed up the cliff of the fortress leaning on his crook and approached the sentinel sitting by the horses. The man had watched the bespectacled man move a stone. He approached the sentinel and asked who these visitors were and what they were looking for in the ruins of the fortress. The sentinel was taken aback and replied that it was written in manuscripts that at the top of Kakavaberd there is an urn in which golden treasures are buried.

The reaper thought, scratched his shoulder, and turned toward the valley to reap the millet field. And as he went, he talked to himself. What would have happened if he had found the trove? How many times had he not sat exactly on that same stone that the bespectacled man had moved? If he had known, the treasures would have been in the pocket of his overcoat now. The number of cows he could have bought!

The reaper was thinking when he realized that he was next to the millet field. He threw aside his overcoat, and with that his useless thoughts, struck a bunch of stems and cut them.

The Alpine violet, with petals the color of apricots, had bloomed by the stones of the fortress. The archeologist saw neither violets, nor grass. His shoes trampled both grass and flower.

To him, the world was one vast museum where nothing was alive and where there were no beetles. He pulled out the ivy wrapped around the stones, uprooted the bloomed violets with a wooden stick, stroked the stone with his hand, and brushed away the soil in the engraving.

When the man in the felt hat saw what was important to the archeologist, he opened a new page in his notebook and sketched part of the battlement, the eagle’s nest in the crenel between the merlons and, at the base of the wall, the Alpine violets.

* * *

It was already afternoon when they came down from the fortress. The archeologist looked around the fortress one more time, made a note in his notebook, and walked with quick steps to the horses.