The Dark Valley (22 page)

This time, the one riding ahead of the two others was the third horseman. If Prince Bakur and the parchment were on the archeologist’s mind, and the artist thought back to the violets and heard the Basuta’s deafening roar, the third horseman was looking at freshly baked lavash, cheese, and yoghurt.

He stopped the horses in front of the very first tent, tied their legs with their reins, and entered the narrow entrance of the tent. The hungry horses eagerly projected their heads into the fresh grass.

By the entrance of the tent, next to the fireplace, a small boy was roasting mushrooms over ashes. The arrival of strangers took him by surprise and he didn’t know whether to leave the mushrooms on the fire, run after his mother, or take the mushrooms with him. When he heard his mother’s barefooted steps and the rustling of her garment near the tent, he took heart and picked one mushroom out of the ashes and placed it on the stone fire ring.

His mother stepped inside, lowered her kerchief closer to her eyes, moved to the nook of the tent and extended two pillows from a stack of folded bedding to the guests.

The third horseman took a can out of the archeologist’s bag.

“We are hungry, sister. If you have any yoghurt, please share, and also make some tea. Do you have any sugar?” he said.

The woman approached the fireplace, put aside her son’s mushrooms, squatted, and blew at the smoking dung. Her kerchief slipped back a little, and the man in the felt hat caught the woman’s white forehead, black hair, and eyes as dark as her hair.

Her gaze was fixed on getting the fireplace to smoke as she squatted by the ashes. Where had he seen a similar face? Long face, white forehead, and dark purple eyes? The woman got up, fetched a tripod with a grate and put it in the fireplace. She took off the charred kettle, and the artist got a close-up view of her eyes and the flakes of ash on her eyebrows and hair.

So much time had passed since that day! Was it possible for two faces to be so alike, even have the same lips? The face of the woman of Kakavaberd was a little sunburned, but the shape of her eyes was exactly like the other woman’s, who was also tall and had a lean back.

The woman was preparing the food with swift movements without talking. Each time she bent over, got up, or walked with her bare feet on the mat, the silver coins on her sleeves tinkled like small bells. Her garment, which came down to her bare feet, rustled.

The other woman, too, had rustling clothes on. She wore a gray coat and a black velvet hat whose long feather was orange. She was far away, very far away. Maybe the Basuta merges with another river that reaches the sea on whose shore, on whose sand, the woman and the artist had sat one day.

The sentinel opened a second can. The archeologist did not raise his head from the cloth on the floor and the copper plates on it. The boy ate his mushrooms and stared at the shiny can, waiting for it to be emptied. The man saw his gaze and offered the can to the boy.

The boy shook the can, and the dog that was lying in front of the tent swallowed a few pieces of the meat and licked its palate. Then the boy ran toward the other children to show them the white tin can, which was an exciting novelty on those cliffs.

The woman was sitting in front of the fireplace and frequently raised the lid of the kettle and looked at the heating water. She stirred the fire and brought together the pieces of dung. When the smoke billowed like a cloud and escaped through the cracks of the tent’s reed walls, the woman put her hand to her forehead to protect her eyes from the smoke.

To the man in the felt hat, the woman sitting in front of the fireplace with knees clearly visible under her dress seemed like a priestess sitting in front of a tripod predicting the smoke’s movements.

The other woman had never walked on her bare feet and had never sat in front of burning dung. That morning, the sea had rolled like melting bronze and had licked the limestone on the shore. On the beach, a woman wearing a black velvet hat was drawing signs in the sand with the tip of her parasol and erasing them. He, on the other hand, was breaking a dry twig in his hand, crushing it, and when a wave spattered drops on their feet and receded, it took the bits of dry twig with it. The woman made promises, the world seemed like one big sea and his heart became one with it.

And then other days came. Their paths parted so unexpectedly and so distinctly. In his memory were etched a pair of purple eyes, a gray coat, and the tip of a parasol with which the woman had drawn and erased promises on the sand.

The water in the kettle came to a boil and the lid whistled. The woman took out plates and glasses with floral patterns and put them on the cloth on the floor. When she bent down, a tress on her back slipped and hung down her shoulder. The woman on the beach had short hair and a white neck, and blue veins were visible through her thin skin. The boy ran inside with the empty can in his hand. A group of children were standing by the entrance of the tent looking with great wonder at the guests sitting on the mat. The boy’s delight at receiving the second can was immense. This time he did not run out, but sat on the mat. His mother poured some tea for him and the man in the felt hat dropped a big chunk of sugar in the boy’s cup.

The boy was amazed, and when bubbles rose to the surface of the tea, he dipped his finger in the cup and put the piece of sugar in his mouth. Even if the hot tea had burned his fingers, he did not utter a sound. That’s how tasty the semi-dissolved piece of sugar was. The archeologist laughed under his breath as he was reminded of something or other from man’s prehistoric days. The woman filled the kettle with water again and smiled brightly at the child’s naughtiness.

The man in the felt hat saw that smile and thought about how familiar it was… Perhaps people with similar faces smiled similarly. The woman’s upper lip quivered unnoticeably; her smile made her eyes sparkle and her lips turn red like blood-colored carnation petals.

He opened the notebook in his lap at once, leafed through the sketches of stones and sculptures, leafed through the eagle’s nest on top of the battlement, and with a swift hand began to draw the woman on a blank page as she sat by the fireplace, her eyes cast on the stone fire ring. Her features were very familiar—his mind had worked so hard on them years before. He could see the woman’s profile with his eyes closed.

Only the boy saw his mother’s portrait on the paper. To him it seemed as if the blank pages in the man’s notebook could pour out anything, just like a source pours out clear water.

Soon after the horses were brought to the front of the tent. The third horseman bridled the horses and tightened the saddle girths. And after he had tied the bags onto the saddles, he approached the woman sitting by the fireplace to wish her well. The woman got up, quickly lowered her kerchief to her forehead, and touched the third horseman’s extended hand with the tips of her fingers. The other two followed suit. This time, however, the woman pressed her hand against her heart and bowed her head. The man in the felt hat gave the boy a few silver coins and stroked his hair.

The horses descended the cliffs of Kakavaberd toward the valley of the Basuta. As they held the horses’ reins, all three men weaved a different pattern in their heads. On both sides of the path the Alpine violet had bloomed. The man in the felt hat bent over, picked one of them, and placed it on the same page in his notebook on which he had drawn the tripod and the woman with the lean back.

Under the horses’ saddles pebbles ricocheted and rolled down the valley noisily. In his mind was a sea, and that sea sometimes rolled forth a woman with short hair and a velvet hat, sometimes a woman with tresses down her spine wearing a long garment, and sometimes stone sculptures, half-buried battlements, and Alpine violets the color of apricots…

* * *

Evening fell.

On the same road, a man with a steel sickle in his belt was ascending toward the tents. The man was exhausted. He had reaped the short stems of millet all day and his back was hurting. That’s why he was moving up slowly, leaning his crook against rocks, and sometimes even stopping to catch his breath. Whenever he stopped, his bow legs shook.

The reaper was the same man as the one in the morning to whom the third horseman had told about the treasures in the fortress. He had seen the horsemen from his field and had thought that the bags hanging from their saddles contained those treasures that had been under that same stone for hundreds of years on which he had sat regularly while he herded goats and sheep among the ruins of the fortress. Was it this thought that made him so angry, or his fatigue? The man was as depressed as a hungry bear that comes out to hunt in the forest in the evening.

He reached the first tent, kicked the dog, which had run over wagging its tail to greet its boss, took the sickle out of his belt, threw it in a corner, put wood in the fireplace, and sat silently on the mat.

The fireplace was smoking. Hot water was boiling in the kettle. There were two pieces of sugar on a pillow on the stack of folded bedding. The reaper had not yet taken off his moccasins or tapped the wisps of millet out of his socks when the coins on his wife’s garment tinkled and the folds rubbed against each other as she entered. Hanging from her garment was the boy, with two empty cans in his hands.

The boy ran to his father to show him the cans. The father gathered that the horsemen had sat on his mat. The boy also showed his father the silver coins that the avuncular man in the felt hat had given him.

The father pushed away the empty cans and his son with his foot. The cans rolled on the floor, and so did the boy. The boy jumped up and ran after the cans. Holding the two cans in his hands, he wrapped himself around his mother’s garment and began to cry. The father softened his voice, called the boy over, and asked to see his silver coins. The boy approached his father with a smile through his tears and showed him the coins in his hand. Then he told his father about the shiny object with blank pages that was in the lap of one of the guests. The man who had given the silver coins had drawn his mother’s portrait on one of the blank pages and placed it in his lap.

Jealousy struck like a bolt of lightning in the depressed reaper’s heart. His eyes widened and he became pale. The mother looked at the boy and blushed, and the father saw his wife’s red face. All of this happened in a split second. The next minute the man was leaping forward like an enraged bear, grabbing hold of his heavy sickle with his hairy hands, and letting it fall with a terrible blow on his wife’s back.

The coins tinkled and the wife’s long tresses shuddered. The kettle on the tripod tipped over. The broken tip of the sickle ricocheted on the stack of folded bedding. The woman did not make a loud noise. Instead she curled up in pain. She pressed her hand against her back and went out of the tent to cry quietly.

The boy followed his mother with the empty cans in his hand and buried his head in her garment. The man felt miserable for a little while longer, then ate the millet bread and, with his hat under his head, lay on his side on the mat.

And then silence fell over Kakavaberd. The fire was put out in the fireplace and it turned into a peaceful night. The dogs curled up in front of the tents for fear of beasts. The sheep lay on the grass. The wife turned on the mat to cover the boy with thick felt.

From the top of Kakavaberd, a cloud glided toward the tents like a giant snail. The night dew covered rocks, moss, and the wool of the flock of sheep. Dew also covered the petals of the Alpine violet.

The beetle, intoxicated by the fragrance, slept among the stamens and it seemed to it as if the world was one big scented flower garden, one big Alpine violet…

{1}
A tonir is an underground oven especially designed to bake lavash, a type of flat bread.

{2}
Lavash is a type of thin, flat bread baked in a tonir.

{3}
All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth, the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

{4}
A zurna is type ofwoodwind instrument.

{5}
A dhol is a type of double-sided barrel drum.

{6}
Dzoragyugh literally means
Valley Village
or
village in the valley.

{7}
Khonarh means
modest.

{8}
Wife ofYeghishe Charents, a prolific Armenian author and poet.

{9}
Kakavaberd literally means Partridge Fortress.