Our mothers were harvesting and crying. The horses were taken to the war - they were talking and crying with the oxen. They were doing socks and crying. Then they cried silently, then they cried singing. They cried while singing and said "Shakroo!" while crying. "Martiros!", "Shakro!", "Pion!", "Gikor!" We hadn't seen them well, we didn't remember them, our mothers were saying "Shakroo!" in the middle of their crying song, and our hearts were filled with a kind of sad joy, a kind of sad strength, a kind of heavy hope. The chubby, naked boys had been reaped in the yellow, mustard fields, they had been taken to war, against the German tanks. Bare herds of soft mountains had driven to war against German tanks. Not a single horse came back from that naked herd. One or two of the boys came, and our mothers were crying and saying through their tears: "The first one has arrived, Shakrooo!"
But... Tee Zaven couldn't laugh, instead of laughing, he was making tee, "tee... tee-tee-tee!" Danelan's uncle Artem had a dog. He played before the war, he didn't play now, but there was that schwi, naked and beautiful, there was that schwi, and we knew it was there. Sometimes there was oil and a bright light of oil, sometimes there was a piece of bread... Yes, the war was over, and for the bones that were already rotting in the distant unknowns of Russia and Germany, already becoming memorials, soil and flowers, it was no longer possible to cry and cry again from the tears, and a new smile was being woven thread by thread, thread by thread in our green, clean mountains. As flowers become a bouquet - that joy was woven from a veil of aroma of bread, a grain of plum, a piece of stone, a bright oil lamp and the reminder that the good had died and that the good had returned and that the good had not gone to war again. A bit lame, a bit blonde, a bit clumsy, open mouth with a shrill laugh, like a khashili, always full, a bit fsfsan, a bit clownish, white-eyed Van...
I won't give any advice, read it, don't be afraid. Klyas Van was winking and mouth twitching. Standing at the edge of the flock in the twilight,
"Vaska, hach-chi," Klyas Vani chirped, and the long-haired herd moved in the herd, the herd moved in itself, got out of the herd and slowly dragged the herd behind him to Garnakar. The shepherds said so. They said: "It smells." They said: "Pull", and they pulled the heavy herd of sheep slowly, heavily, solemnly, as they pull a full sheaf.
"Vanka, hach-chi," squealed Klyas Vani and looked at the darkness with narrowed eyes. "He played with fire-colored balls in the twilight, jumped and danced out of the herd towards Shishtap, Armenian Sur-blur." The smell drifted after him.
Neri, yes, is the leader goat. Male, boy, male goat. When they are young, they castrate them, that is, they bend them, so that the boy and the goat do not wake up in them, but the leader, the puller, the slow one become heavy in them, then with very hot bread, their poses are softened, raised and twisted up, and they pull the herd. Yes, very hot bread existed before us and the war, and they had long been leaders of two different herds. The shepherds were taken to war, against German tanks, the herds were confused, and Klyas Vani now shifted from foot to foot in the twilight, his dark eye blinked and squealed. "Vaska, pull... Vanka, pull," and the herd was divided, and they took their herds to their old Shishtap and Garnakar.
In the twilight, the old dog glided to Shishtap, but the herd of Garnakar remained there without an owner. in the twilight the old dog got lost, stayed and dragged himself to Vanu's feet. She was so old that she did not give birth. He had no teeth. He could not see well. He was such a shepherd that he did not give birth for a long time. He was dragging behind the herd, around the herd, in the herd. When the existence of the flock faded for a moment under his dark eyes, his dry sense of smell, his dying hearing in his inner folds of a sheep-dog, he howled and complained, deaf as he is in thought, and it was a salt wind of his death and lost flock. Then he would find the smell, and his joy of living again would be muffled and silent again, within himself. He was going to lose the flock really or from his secret folds of a sheepdog, he was going to see his existence as pointless, and he was going to take it, he was going to disappear himself, he was going to die like that. She rubbed herself on Vanu's feet and wept for the shared smell and her loneliness.
"What is it," said Vani, "why are you crying?" "Asatur has come," said Vani, "your major has come," Vani laughed, "he has brought you to Berlin, what are you doing?" "Major!" called Vani.
"Go," said Vani, "where is the sheep? Go to Garnakar." You're not dead yet, go find a sheep.
Why am I telling? I read in the newspaper that the average age of shepherds in Dsegh village of Tumanyan region is seventy. This means that if one of the shepherds happens to be twenty years old, then there is also an old man of one hundred and twenty years old among the shepherds. If there was such an old man, the whole world would know that there was such an old man. There is none. So the twenty-year-old is gone. So all of them are seventy years old or about seventy. Their body is already a burden for them, but they still drag after the sheep. They are still dragging. They can't tomorrow.
"It's okay," said the chief specialist, "the old men are tough old men, they'll get by for another five or ten years before we think of something."
"And the young people?" I asked, and he adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and said.
— Young people look into space.
- But they like barbecue.
"Yes, they like barbecue," said the Chief Specialist. "You also like barbecue." I also like barbecue. That is why we will use the experience of England...