An Armenian Sketchbook (16 page)

I have experienced horror and terror more than once in my life, not to mention fear and confusion. I took part in the war. I crossed the Volga under German fire, several times. I have experienced both massive bombing raids and barrages of mortar and artillery fire.

And yet, even though both during the war and at other times I have experienced my fill of fear, I have never—strange as this may seem—felt such utter horror as on that wedding coach. Dear God—and all to the accompaniment of continual music! And in the company of dozens of kind, friendly, respectable people, all so very proud that the Moscow friend of Martirosyan the writer was attending this wedding. If only I’d had a gun. . . . But no. In spite of everything, I probably wouldn’t have shot myself. I would have gone on living with the burning, unprecedented shame of it all. I would have become a figure of fun, a hero of the folklore of filth—but I wouldn’t have shot myself. Years later, a decrepit and gray-haired old man, remembering the horrible, pathetic, humiliating details of that day, I would have cried out in shame. In the middle of the night I would once again have been drenched in cold sweat; I would have groaned; I would have clutched my head in my hands. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have killed myself. Dear God, and all to the sound of wedding drums and ancient flutes, and at the foot of the biblical Mount Ararat! Could I have ever imagined such torment?

My companions evidently noticed my tense face. I had probably gone deathly pale; probably they could see the sweat on my forehead and cheeks. Someone asked me in broken Russian: Was I comfortable? Was it too hot for me? Would I prefer to sit in front? In reply, I mumbled something inarticulate—I don’t remember what.

And then, turning to the passengers, Volodya the driver said something in Armenian. Someone interpreted: We would have to turn off the road for a moment. We needed to stop at a garage for oil. How we reached the gates of this garage I do not remember. I got out of the coach and the first thing I saw was a little building, a tin shack—a cubicle, a water closet, a WC, a lavatory, a latrine, my sweet savior, my sunshine. And I managed to make my way to this booth with a slow and stately gait.

It was, of course, all rather unfortunate. No one got out except me. Volodya’s mates brought him his can of oil with lightning speed —he was, after all, getting married, and he was a driver, one of
them
. Then, mischievously, Volodya twice sounded his horn. What on earth could have happened to me? Had I fallen into a swoon? Had I even died there in the tin palace? Martirosyan got off the coach and set off in search of me. Just as he reached the palace with a single seat, I emerged. Both of us rather embarrassed, we made our way quietly and thoughtfully back to the coach.

My respectable fellow passengers—the chairman of the collective farm, a dear, rather stout old pensioner who was a Party member, two supervisors from the district centers and their intelligent and elderly wives—greeted me with compassionate silence. When I disappeared into the little palace, they had, no doubt, joked, laughed, and exchanged knowing looks. But never mind—things could have been a great deal worse.

I did not feel the happiness I had felt after my troubles that first day in Yerevan. My ordeal had left me exhausted. Damp with sweat, barely breathing, I was like someone who has just been carried out of an operating room. I had no thoughts, no feelings, only a vague consciousness of having been saved.

We were back on the main road, halfway between the two villages. I had been lucky, very lucky indeed. Glancing shyly at my companions, listening to their quiet conversations, I realized that I had managed to avoid disgrace.

I remembered a Moscow writer who disliked me. He had once said that he thought losers were a pathetic breed and that, in his opinion, I was a typical loser—a typical example of the eternal literary loser. He must have been wrong, I thought. After all, what had just saved me from catastrophe was a stroke of extraordinary good fortune. This was true, of course. But then, if each of us is allotted a limited quantity of luck and good fortune, could it not be said that I had squandered my share in the most pitiful of ways? Today’s success, after all, had hardly brought me wealth and glitter; it had hardly brought me worldwide fame. . . .

We drive into the bride’s village. Little boys straight from the paintings of Murillo—little boys with black eyes and black curls—are running after our vehicles. The young men and women in the trucks behind us are now making more noise than ever. This is a ritual wedding merriment, the counterpart of the ritual tears at a funeral. There are moments when the merry faces look gloomy and preoccupied. These people’s merriment, like their daily labor, is excessive; it is an effort for them.

Now, from a distance, we see a large crowd blocking the street; we are approaching the bride’s home. Music is playing. All we need are cameramen and press photographers—then we would look like a delegation from a friendly country arriving in Moscow by plane. Old men greet us warmly; they seize us by the hand, clasping our hands between their own. The tom-toms beat on.

And now we enter the bride’s home. It is a very poor house. Walls, windows, everything here bears the signature of poverty. It is a particular kind of poverty—a village poverty, an Armenian poverty, a pure mountain poverty. And this background of poverty lends a particularly festive look to the tables placed along the walls and zigzagging out into the spacious room. On the tables are dozens of bottles and decanters full of cloudy white wine and yellowish grape vodka. On the tables are vegetables, fish, roast lamb, spicy breads, and nuts.

But here, in the bride’s home, I break with custom—I do not eat or drink. The respectable people sitting next to me look at me with sad surprise and mild reproach: Everyone is drinking to the health of the bride’s mother, to the health of the bride’s father, to the young couple—and I am not. I am not drinking because I have known a greater fear than that of violating customs and rituals. I do not want to approach the edge of the abyss a second time.

The bride and groom are sitting side by side. They rise to their feet for every toast. The groom is wearing a new checkered coat and checkered cap. He has a large nose and his face is red and weather-beaten, rather coarse. On one sleeve he has the red armband of a volunteer assistant policeman.

The bride is very pretty. Her long eyelashes half cover her eyes, which are looking down at the ground. When someone addresses her, she says nothing and continues to look down at the ground. On her head sits a crown with a white veil. Like the groom, she is wearing a coat. Her coat is new and light blue, and she is holding a light-blue handbag.

After each toast, the guests casually throw ruble notes into a dish beside the musicians. Some throw green or blue notes; I even saw a few red tens. And all this at a time of what is being called “a reorganization of prices.”[
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] Such competitive generosity allows musicians to earn thousands of rubles. There have been articles in Yerevan newspapers about villagers falling deep into debt as a result of these musical extravaganzas. The musicians try not to look at the growing pile of notes. But this isn’t easy for them, and from time to time the flutes and the drum dart alert, lively glances at the precious dish.

A wedding feast clearly shows us the relationships between people, their professional and other hierarchies, their family ties.

There are men in their nineties, drinking and laughing like youngsters. They are from the village of Sasun, famous for its dancers and singers; they are descendants of David of Sasun.[
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] There are peasants in soldiers’ tunics, in jackets of all kinds; their wives are all wearing black calico. There are two district bosses, red-faced and confident, wearing suits from the Moscow Tailoring Combine;[
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] their buxom wives are wearing identical bright-blue dresses. There are Yerevan dandies in drainpipe trousers and slim, fashionable young girls in coats of artificial fur; they too are from Yerevan, and they are students, postgraduates, and members of staff at scientific research institutes. There is an official from the Party Central Committee; he has broad shoulders and he wears a blue jacket and a red tie. There is Martirosyan, the famous Armenian writer, together with his wife. There are mechanics, drivers, tractor drivers, stonemasons, and carpenters from state farms; most of them are young and powerfully built.

All these people are closely and durably linked by ties of kinship and community. These ties are eternal; their strength has been tested over millennia. Not even the wrath of Stalin could destroy them.

The celebration was not free of anxiety and tension. The best man was constantly getting to his feet and crossly, almost rudely, demanding that the bride be allowed to leave the house and set off for the groom’s village; she should have been there long ago. The bride’s relatives would then shout angry retorts. To some extent, this dispute was part of the ritual. But everything was taking a lot longer than it should have, and so the best man—the commander in chief of the wedding—really did have something to be angry about.

Like the groom, the best man is wearing a broad red band on his sleeve. He has many difficult and complex responsibilities, and it is no wonder that he doesn’t look much like a guest at a wedding. On his face lies an anxious frown, and he has the air of a factory director who is failing to fulfill the plan. He doesn’t feel like joking. Only now and again does he remember the nature of the occasion. Then he smiles hurriedly, downs a glass—and returns to his duties.

“It’s time now, it’s time we were off!” he shouts and points at his watch. I’ve heard that he bought seventy kilos of chocolates for the wedding table, out of his own pocket. His full, swarthy face looks determined. It would clearly take a great deal to make him give way; he is a man who finishes what he has begun.

The wedding was so complex and polyphonic, so full of different people and voices, that the young couple in their new coats, the young man and woman who had decided to get married, seemed almost forgotten. Later in the day, when we had at last got back to the groom’s village, I would feel this even more strongly.

But before this, when the bride began to say goodbye to her father’s house, there were a few minutes when the sadness of the day became apparent to everyone. The bride was crying—and this was not part of the ritual. Her tears were tears of true feeling.

Everything at this point was deeply touching and full of meaning. The girl was leaving the poor home of her parents, and she was going to the poor home of the groom. I had seen her future home—a cramped little stone room with a low ceiling and one little window, on the side of a mountain. This was her lot, her fate, her entire life. Stone and more stone, day in, day out—and never a drop of rain.

And then the human soul, with all its agitation and sorrow, was again eclipsed by ritual. For some time, the bride was not allowed to leave. The groom’s agents and representatives had to bribe the young lads surrounding the young woman, who was still wearing her light-blue coat and white satin slippers and still clasping her light-blue bag. Then these young lads, closing their fists around three- and five-ruble notes—I even saw one with a ten-ruble note—moved aside and allowed the bride to make her way towards the glassy coach. How little this light-blue vision, with her pretty slippers and handbag—how little she had in common with the poor, harsh life that awaited her.

As a parting gift, her mother gave her a little white hen, a white dish, and a rosy red apple.

Meanwhile, to the thunder of drums and the piercing sound of the flutes, people began loading the dowry onto one of the trucks. The truck had stopped not directly outside the house but a little way off: Everyone, after all, had to admire the dowry.

Leading the procession were the old men, the tipsy ninety-year-olds; they were singing, jigging up and down, and on their heads they bore the bride’s suitcases. Next came a group of strong young men, holding high in the air a table, a sewing machine, and a new wardrobe with mirror doors. Then came the women and children, carrying chairs. And then the orchestra thundered still louder: The best man and his friends were carrying a nickel-plated bed with a sprung mattress. The villagers’ jokes must have been risqué; the male listeners laughed and shook their heads, while the women and girls looked down at the ground.

As the bride, surrounded by a crowd of women from the groom’s party, walked up to the coach, a boy of about fifteen ran up to one of these women, hugged her and kissed her. Several men pounced on him furiously. In a moment the boy’s face was covered with blood. I assumed that the boy was blind drunk, and I felt he had been punished much too harshly. Then I was told that this too was part of the ceremony—the boy was the bride’s brother, and he had to kiss one of the women from the groom’s village in revenge for their taking away his sister. It was a ritual, a tradition—though to me it seemed a coarse and brutal tradition.

But then I saw something deeply moving: Through her tear-stained eyes, the bride looked up at her brother, and at the very same moment, this boy with a bloody face and eyes wet with tears looked at his sister. Through their tear-stained eyes they smiled at each other, with a smile of love. My heart filled with joy, warmth, and sorrow.

Again we boarded our glassy coach. The bride and groom were sitting beside each other. They sat there like strangers, their faces frozen, not once even looking at each other, neither of them saying a single word during the entire journey.

The sun was now setting behind the stone bones of the mountains. Turbid, full of wan fire, this sun seemed to come from some abyss of geological time. A smoky red light bathed the mountain’s red stone. At this moment, the biblical myth of Mount Ararat seemed entirely contemporary.

It was dark by the time we got back to the bridegroom’s village. The stars were shining up above us—southern, Armenian stars, the stars that looked down long ago on high, snowy mountains that are now only fragments of impotent bone, the stars that shone above Mount Ararat before the Bible even existed, the stars that will still be shining when Ararat and Aragats, too, are no more than dead bones.