His great predecessor — the great predecessor of us all — had marked out the path for him and for all of us: the escape route for all us hapless souls before the brazen hoofbeats of empire, violence, and iron will. And of course he was bound to come here: who are we, what are we doing, how much do we remain ourselves beneath the relentless press of past and present, how much do we become tainted and distorted — or remain unblemished?
And of course our Armenian woman poet would be standing in his path with her friends, and of course it would be a warm Yerevan evening: who is this man who has come, by what right does he regard our pain as his own, and even taste his own flesh in our wound?
Our poet: “Well, I do not believe that 1915 truly tastes of your own flesh in your mouth.”
Andrei: “As much as that is possible.”
I, thirty years later: “It is a question of one's capacity. I am glad that my fellow writer, my generational peer, my friend was that tireless traveller for whom neither the path nor the discovery had been found by chance: he had searched persistently for them — Humanity and Armenia.”