Our Clan of Clowns

Dedicated to Gurgen Mahari:
the author has nothing else good.

With the quietness of water rolling over dust, something creeps inside me, infecting my whole body. My cells give way. Perhaps cancer, perhaps a secret memory of some past unpleasantness; perhaps, unknowingly, I have obstructed a powerful person, and my heart secretly awaits a beating. Or perhaps my being is filling with some witticism that must be born through a chance occurrence, suddenly, like a sneeze. I do not know. Until I know, it is cancer lurking like a spider, an expectation of punishment, a speck of dust in the nose awaiting a ray of sunlight—achoo…
We are in the village, among our clan. Our clansmen are clowns: each could make a village laugh. When we all gather, our power to amuse increases in the same ratio as the striking power of a company of a hundred soldiers to that of a hundred separate soldiers. Clearly our whole clan could make all the world’s villages laugh. Clearly our laughter should now be bouncing from wall to wall in the village like thunder’s echo. In the clan there is a Matsak, twenty-five, newly married, a great sleeper. There is also a rooster; he must have a name, the children will have given him one, I cannot remember. Let us call him Sultan. As soon as Matsak married and began rising late, Sultan took to flying onto the balcony railing: cock-a-doodle-doo, Matsak is asleep!… He crowed until Matsak answered from inside: drop dead!… Then Matsak began convincing Grandmother he was ill and would not recover until he ate rooster meat. Grandmother answered:
“Boys your age govern villages.”
“As you wish.”
Matsak kept waking late, Sultan kept announcing to the whole village that Matsak, cock-a-doodle-doo, had only one wife but slept, while he, cock-a-doodle-doo, had thirty wives but woke ea-arly… That was where Matsak caught him. In his underpants, hair tangled, one eye stuck shut, he came out and caught him.
“I’ll slaughter him, dear Matsak,” Grandmother fussed. “When summer work is over, I’ll slaughter him.”
“As you wish,” Matsak said. It turned out that, despite his purple robes, ruby crown and other royal attributes, besides his holy-mosque beak Sultan had another opening, covered with cloth, and Matsak knew approximately where it was. Matsak spent a long time drawing back the folds, while Sultan shrieked something in royal rage. Had the clan’s children been there, they would have translated his Moorish precisely; we grown-ups understood this, then that. Perhaps he ordered a beheading, perhaps announced his inviolability for general information; once he seemed distinctly to say, “Do not dare!” I do not know, but the “not” and commanding stress were there. Various things. Who knows, those kings speak in anger as though they were bellowing and had never learned speech at all. Matsak attended to his business: the giants’ king examined in every detail the king given them by the dwarfs.
“Here!” Matsak smiled an investigator’s smile at discovering a carefully concealed theft.
Now Sultan begged for peace: he would leave Matsak the harem, not blow his cartilage trumpet within the bedroom’s bounds, become a vassal king, cluck, clu-uck, clkk; if other sultans tried to disturb Matsak’s royal sleep with unpleasant sounds, Sultan would smash their crowns and tear their purple robes. Clu-uck!…
“You should have thought of that sooner,” Matsak said.
It turned out that besides his beak Sultan had another opening, and a machine oilcan could lubricate that opening too, though it was no machine’s opening. Fancy that! Long live Matsak!
“Cluck, clu-uck, clkk…” Sultan now complained so dejectedly that one could see he would do nothing, complain at most.
“Now crow all you like…” Matsak flung him down from the balcony and went to sleep.
Shifting his feet, Sultan pondered for a long time what had happened to him, stretched his neck, looked around for an explanation from others. Those kings are weak at thinking; without an adviser they cannot think. Sultan never understood what had been done to him, and was so spoiled he learned no lesson. He flew onto the railing, rustled his wings and meant to crow, cock-a-doodle-doo! Probably also: Matsak is asle-eep!… But the air came out not through his beak but through the other, lubricated place, and not with trills at all, but pff… He was such a fool he still thought he was crowing cock-a-doodle-doo, while Matsak inside covered his ears and would say: drop dead!…
…With the quietness of water rolling over dust, something swells inside me, infecting my whole body. My cells give way. Perhaps cancer, perhaps a secret memory of some past unpleasantness; perhaps, unknowingly, I have obstructed a powerful person, and my heart secretly awaits a beating. Or perhaps my being is filling with some witticism that must be born through a chance occurrence, suddenly, like a sneeze. I do not know. Until I know, it is cancer lurking like a spider, an expectation of punishment, a speck of dust in the nose awaiting a ray of sunlight—achoo…
There! Matsak has made a joke, but Grandmother’s lips do not wrinkle with suppressed laughter. On the contrary, she says:
“May the earth swallow you, swallow you… Boys your age run villages.”
That is true. One of his contemporaries recently became farm manager. Matsak and that boy were born on the same day, entered school together. They studied well, both excellent pupils. Outwardly they were not alike, yet somewhere there seemed a trick, and they were sons of one father, so alike were they in appearance. The difference then was only that Matsak suddenly changed a word in an assigned poem, bread into sausage, say, or changed a line, reciting “uncle and father-in-law gathered” instead of “how happy is our life”. The other boy listened, then seriously objected: “You’re saying it wrong. It isn’t sausage, it’s bread.” They advanced together until algebra. In the algebra class that boy stayed behind. The first term, not yet knowing the subject’s seriousness, he learned fairly well, his mark four. In the second he said, “It’s a powerful science, isn’t it?” and, plugging his ears with his forefingers, stared at a sign in the textbook:
“Plus. Look, interesting, isn’t it, plus…”
In the second term his mark was three, in the third two, in the fourth one. He spent two years in seventh grade, three in eighth, and in ninth told younger pupils quarrelling with him:
“Reach ninth grade, then wag your tongue. ‘The causes of war. One must distinguish effect from cause.’”
He studied in tenth grade until his classmates went to college, returned to school and taught him.
He raised his hand to question the teachers who were now his contemporaries:
“Comrade Hakobyan, why is the word for a participle derbay, not bayder? ‘Derbay—bayder,’” he said anxiously.
Sometimes friends told a joke; he listened seriously and finally nodded assent: “Ye-es…”
But Matsak took algebra in seventh grade as easily as a relay baton, grabbed on the run. He finished school so quickly that people had no time to see which grade’s textbook he held. They had no time to notice his intelligence.
A problem solved quickly, Matsak’s; a flawless dictation, Matsak’s; war analysed from every angle, cause, consequence, pretext, Matsak’s; the class saved when the inspector came, Matsak’s. But he did it all too lightly, not seriously, as though everything lay on his tongue and he simply let it out, did not think. Besides, one eye squinted markedly outwards.
The other boy thought. His face was serious, so serious, his thinking such that it seemed he had saved the class before the inspector, analysed the war, solved Matsak’s problems, helped his friend, and purposely confused his own to rescue him. He wrote, erased, drew a human head underneath as though following a thought, and handed it to the examining teachers. Looking at his face’s seriousness, one confidently concluded:
“You’ll go into philosophy, won’t you?”
Looking at Matsak’s face, one said:
“Schooling is compulsory now. Why haven’t you been to school?”
Later both worked on the livestock farm. Every day the milk storekeeper told that boy:
“There’s little milk from your herd today. What happened, are you ill?” Every day the storekeeper thought that yesterday the boy’s herd had yielded a record amount and would do so tomorrow. To Matsak he said:
“You must be mixing in water.” He shook the instrument measuring fat content, examined its bottom and top, disbelieved it. “You must have added water,” he told Matsak.
They came from the centre to take Matsak to an exhibition in Moscow. They did not know his face, had searched the lists for the highest result, found the figures and the name Matsak opposite them. In the office the district committee’s representative addressed the other boy:
“Well, Comrade Matsak, prepare to fly tomorrow.”
“I’m Matsak,” Matsak said.
“Oh…” the comrade smiled kindly. “I know that one: every village has its clown.”
Though the boy was not Matsak at all, he went to the exhibition. Not only that: his papers were sent to a correspondence institute. Along with that he became farm manager, sat on the presidium at ceremonial meetings. You will see: there at the institute, looking at his seriousness, the lecturers will transfer him to full-time study; its administration will retain him as a postgraduate. He is a doctoral candidate already.
It all happens of itself. No official is his uncle, he flatters no one. He simply exists seriously. Something Matsak lacks. Matsak is not to blame, his eye squints outwards. But consider: had that eye belonged to the other boy, seriousness in our minds would be cross-eyed. One must simply lift everything with a groan, lower it with a groan, have nothing to do with it, not touch it, and groan again, groan over nothing too.
…With the quietness of water rolling over dust, something swells inside me, infecting my whole body. My cells give way. Perhaps cancer, perhaps a secret memory of some past unpleasantness; perhaps, unknowingly, I am obstructing a powerful person, and my heart secretly awaits a beating.
We are in the village, among our clan. Our clansmen are clowns, each could make a village laugh. When we all gather, our power to amuse increases in the same ratio as the striking power of a company of a hundred soldiers to that of a hundred separate soldiers.
The trouble is that the world is serious, thinks, has developed its thinking muscle like a wrestler’s back, while its laughter muscle has become a hermit’s arm. Brides from wealthy homes feel comfortable here at first: in the evenings the clan sits on the sofa, divan, around the table and caricatures the village. It pulls one man’s nose down, tears another’s mouth to his ears, stretches ears until they rise beside the cap far above the head and move in the air. It makes someone speak so fast the words stick together without gaps, sometimes a letter jumps from one word into another. The bride thinks she has entered a royal court. Later she sees the fast talker muddles his words but is chairman; the other has ears swaying in the air but is no donkey, simply moves those ears while carrying goods home. The drooping-nosed one chairs the auditing commission: finds short measures and complains, takes bribes and complains, laughing at everyone while complaining. The bride waits for our people to sit on sofa, divan, around the table to caricature the village, and cries nervously:
“And what are you? They’re plundering the world and carrying it off, while these sit here: his nose, his mouth, his ears… Look at your own ears, your own! You were the long-eared ones, and I the fool…”
Brides from wealthy homes grow old from bile in two years, become the village’s most quarrelsome women and die at thirty-seven or forty of gallbladder disease, goitre, nervous itching. In their own opinion, our clan’s stone face before the world being stripped kills them.
But if a bride is a shepherd’s daughter, a pipe-smoking miller’s, a pointsman’s watching the express rush past indifferently, or a peaceful hunter’s, she sits on the divan among the clan, laughs and says, “Oh, we’ve died laughing!”
Thus the pointsman’s or peaceful hunter’s daughter enriches our clan. They enrich it with laughing children.
Do not think the brides from wealthy homes vanish without trace, leaving only a mound gradually levelled with the earth. Their children are a little bilious, a little clownish, sometimes swear, sometimes laugh. Generally they resemble someone whose hands itch for a fight but who never joins it. One is now imprisoned for theft. Before that he laughed at theft, pursuit, interrogation, the tracking dog. He broke through the shop’s back wall, entered and took whatever he found in the dark: a crate of black laundry soap, a crate of cognac, about a kilogram of small change and a jacket four or five sizes too big. That was all. At least that was found in the manure. The shopkeeper said fourteen or fifteen thousand’s worth had been taken. Theft is theft. Many steal much but appear among people as though their medal ceremony has just ended. Our clansman’s clownish vein seized him the very next day. He drank one bottle of cognac, put on the jacket and vanished inside it, filled a pocket with so many coins that side dragged along the ground, took his child’s hand and went to the shop: “Which sweets do you want? Daddy isn’t poor.” At the interrogation he tore himself apart saying there had been only soap, coins, jacket and cognac. The son of a bitch would not reveal the main stash. Then he pointed at the shopkeeper’s belly. The man sat grieving for the state’s loss, for scoundrels, nodding to the accuser’s words, stressing the words of justice. Our clansman saw him differently, understood him mocking: “What kind of thief are you, brother? A kilogram of kopecks at once, of course you’re caught. Take a few kopecks each day, little by little. A kilogram in the end too, but unseen. Fifteen thousand in the end. Ah, brother…” He could not convince them there was no main stash, raged, swore, dropped wearily onto a chair and then laughed, spoke the investigator’s questions before him and roared, then said he would not reveal the stash without a tracking dog. “Am I such an ordinary thief that you came without a dog?” Then he caught the moment patience ran out and forestalled it: “What do you think, isn’t it time to beat me?”
The clan judged the shopkeeper as its member did, wanted to throw a vice in his face, sometimes break the judge’s uncomprehending head, but could do nothing and paid the stolen fifteen thousand: all the clan’s cows, the brides’ rings, the Sona, 1905 and Pakhra carpets, the Peacock rug, samovar, sewing machine and a couple of pillows. Against that plunder it set its laughter.
“Who are you laughing at? Yourselves!”
Who was that? A bride rubbing where her ring had been. Her father was a pointsman, she herself could stretch ears, but why she turned bitter God knows. She said it was a herd of gorillas, not a clan. All he needed at interrogation, what were two hours, was to look serious for two hours, so the damage would be repaid by the one who caused it, not this, this… soap, donkey, soap thief. She was right. Yet those clowns are funny when they try to grieve, grow serious, look thoughtful, hurry like businessmen, do what serious people do. That clown thinks, hurries, and not badly; in haste he keeps up with a businessman. But a boyish wish arises to knock on his temple with a bent forefinger: eh, thinking? Think, think! Or run along the street after him crying, clown, clown!…
Vakhtang’s child was gravely ill. Vakhtang howled, his reddened eyes bulged, and the foreman came saying:
“Been drinking again…”
Someone is born in our clan, someone dies, and no one knows. Perhaps they know but do not take it seriously, think it something like theatre. Only we notice our child’s babbling, walking, cleverness, beauty; the outside world registers only the birth, to take him into military service twenty years later. It deals with our people only ready-made. It comes, says, go to work, and gives a name not in the birth certificate: Nazar, Matso, something never a police officer’s or revolutionary committee chairman’s name, not a name of today’s important people, but a blacksmith’s, miller’s, people drowning all the world’s invitations to plunder in their mill’s clatter, keeping their heads down at their work. Water and clatter are not enough: they are half-deaf; deafness is not enough: they stuff cotton into their ears. No tempting impulse reaches the depths of consciousness. They are the finest storytellers. They must have invented the tale where wolf and ewe graze together and there is no dog in the flock. If the name is Tigran, the world says Tigo; Matsak, Matso. However short the name, it discards something: before running to plunder, the world itself lost certain things and wants everyone in its image, like the bad woman whose palate dislikes purity.
This is not new; it has a history reaching Tigran the Great’s days, his palace. The palace had a tightrope walker and a clown, I invent. The clown was our ancestor. The tightrope walker crossed seriously, tense, sweat on his forehead, carrying a pole. They gave him gold. Then the clown skipped along without a pole, amusing them, sometimes pretending to fall, perhaps falling to amuse, running again above the rope or below it. But because he wore a goat’s beard and soot on his nose, they threw him a rotten pineapple. The first drop of poison fell into our ancestor’s smile. The smile flows through our veins like clean, warm, abundant blood; one drop cannot poison us. But the world’s diseased gallbladder has dripped poison into our blood every time for two thousand years. Now a generation laughs whose eyes do not laugh. Teeth are plentiful when they part in laughter, the voice breaks ringing, but bitterness looks from the eyes.
What immunity we are losing! Without laughter, life will devour us in two days like cancer.

2
I want to tell how Vakhtang opposed failure with laughter. But first let us agree that in 1950 we lived badly, even though 1950 admittedly came after 1917.
Vakhtang finished secondary school precisely in 1950. Always praised at school, he thought of university. He came for us to fetch his certificate. My father, our clan of clowns’ merriest man, teased him:
“Learned anything, or just receiving another piece of paper?”
“I have learned,” Vakhtang said.
Father looked with a special doubt. That look meant: if you haven’t, you haven’t; why deceive me?
“Shall I prove it?” Vakhtang asked.
I was in seventh grade, studying geometry. I said:
“Axioms need no proof.”
“True,” Vakhtang said, “let’s not prove it.”
But at that very moment his eyes blinked: an unused joke had been found, a splendid thing lying and rusting in some corner, who knew where.
“Let’s prove it to Father.”
Beside my two-year-old brother we splashed a glass of water onto the floor. The child contracted, then cried. Father, Vakhtang and I saw he had wet himself: beneath him, between his feet, his water had made a small lake.
“Well, there it is.” Father looked at Grandfather and winked at us. Grandfather sat there with spectacles, occupied seriously. We lifted the jug above our heads and poured all the water with a proper rain’s sound. Grandfather searched for his stick, became confused, missed it beside his foot and did not wait for us to give it: he went stumbling, all bent. He hurried so much, lost himself so completely, that afterwards he spent half an hour recalling his task, sometimes looking towards us with a distant suspicion.
“Well, they’re children, it happens,” Father said, and plainly wanted us to try the experiment on him.
“All right,” we said, “as you wish, whoever regrets it…” Looking into his eyes, we reached for the big pitcher.
“Get lost, sons of a fool!” Father stamped.
“Never mind,” I told him, “you can forbid the pitcher. But one day it’ll rain, start all at once; we’ll see you running along Grandfather’s path…”
On the way there we were happy to have amused Father; coming back, happy because the teachers insisted unanimously that any university’s doors stood open to Vakhtang. University, then, marble stairs, professors in gold-rimmed spectacles, Vakhtang in a clean shirt. Shining black shoes too. Shoes because we wore trekh shoes; one was holed and a stone scraped Vakhtang’s foot. Since in our minds he already wore shoes and a white shirt, we laughed at the trekh. It was full of holes, had no sole, yet turned its nose up as though it were not the holed one. University, then university. When Vakhtang reached third year I would enter. Together we would sit at the student scientific council’s meeting, throw sharp words at someone saying wrong things. The professor would smile: “Correct and apt.”
We opened the door: his father, my uncle, sat scraping leather with broken glass. His mother carded wool. The walls unplastered, ceiling unboarded, floor earth. A byre, not a house. The deer on the rug was no ornament but cattle: put hay before it and it would be a real byre. My God… You are no shepherd of old days, living with tales and cows, a warm byre seeming a kingdom, no dream, a cow all you have seen and cows filling your dreams. Imagining the king in a fur hat, setting milk with crumbled bread before him, instinctively feeling milk insufficient, saying: “Milk with lavash and other royal things.”
You have read books, know names, the earth’s approximate size, hear daily of the atom bomb whose power pleases you, see films with colours so bright your eyes dazzle. Your mind can draw distant Mars’s lamp near, suppose seas, fields, mountains in reddish mist. It turns out those were dreams, you are not among them. Yours is a soot-walled house, leather: scrape with glass, shed the hair, krr, krr, krr, to wear trekh shoes and go herd calves, to make Mars a distant lamp again.
“There, the oxherd’s star is rising…”
“My child got his certificate,” his mother said.
“I’m going to study,” Vakhtang said.
“Got it?” his father said.
“I’m going to study.”
“Let me take your foot’s measure,” his father said.
“I’m going to study.”
“Let me measure your foot,” his father said.
“I don’t need it. I’ll wear proper shoes. Measure whoever’s going to wear them.”
“Very good leather,” his father said. “The strip from the back, it’ll last two months.”
“I’m going to study.”
“Your foot!”
Vakhtang did not offer it.
“Your foot!” His father spread the leather before him. “Put your foot down. Good leather.”
Vakhtang did not. His father looked about, at his wife, me, the walls, then again at his wife, me, the walls.
“Good leather,” he said bewildered, bowed his head and never raised it again. Nothing firm around him to grasp: the walls were soot-black walls, his wife looked with the same drowning gaze. As for me, now ten or twelve years later I suppose pity must have come, hatred of his helplessness, disgust for it, like a giant eaten by lice. He had trodden all Europe in the war, argued with us schoolchildren and textbooks over Germany’s defeat, brought a handful of medals and orders; punch an ox and it knelt. Now he crouched over shoe leather, krr, krr, krr. His hands shook, he pricked a finger. Sucking blood, he counted: sell the cow, get three thousand roubles, fifteen hundred for Vakhtang’s shoes and jacket, fifteen hundred for food until January. Sell it for six thousand, twenty-five hundred for shoes, jacket, coat, thirty-five hundred for food, one year. The other four? Sell it for ten thousand, train fare, clothes, bread, three years’ life. The other two?… Sold the cow, very good, got one million eight hundred and forty thousand six hundred and ninety-four roubles, good, enough for all five years, Vakhtang argued with professors and won. But home? A child at home, a nursing mother, too few potatoes for them…
“Your foot!” my uncle shouted. “Whelp!”
Vakhtang gave his foot. His father measured, cut the leather, began piercing it, always looking down. Vakhtang went out. I stood watching. Now, ten or twelve years later, I suppose my uncle grew immense, became bronze, walked over Europe’s countries, stood in Berlin, tall, great, proud, shone with dark bronze’s gleam, and the sculptor carved his name on the pedestal.
“What does this blood want from me?” my uncle said, sucking his finger. His wife brought kerosene and stopped the blood with it. “Why are you looking, son? No trekh shoes, eh?… Envy Vakhtang, eh?… I’ll make you some too. Very good leather, if you can wear it out! You won’t. The child’ll grow and wear them, he won’t either…”
I went out. Vakhtang was in the garden, his eyes wet.
“Why are you crying?” he asked me.
“And you?”
“Mine’s from the cress.”
“Where’s the cress? There is none, it’s only going to sprout. If there were some, I’d eat it, mine would be from cress too!”
“Go on, philosopher…”
Vakhtang’s eyes blinked: “When you cry, you’re like a foal braying.” He showed a little donkey’s size, small, shaggy, white muzzle. How funny and dear that foal is trying to bray! It cannot at all, mangles it utterly, as my brother mangles “counter-revolutionary”: “Hapahaka…”
Then we went to steal apples from Grandmother. The cellar door was open, but to make it real theft we entered by the window. Took three apples each, hid them inside our shirts, meant to leave by the window to make it real theft. Vakhtang drew half his body out and stayed. “Go!” I said. A kick told me not to speak. I went out the door to see: Grandmother stood there, they watched each other like the lurking boy and field-trampling horse in a tale, admiring each other. Then she smiled her toothless smile. “Give me a stick,” she told me. I laughed because she held her stick while asking for one.
“Caught the thieving cat! Give me a stick, I tell you!” She searched and found it in her hand. Entered the cellar and beat Vakhtang’s armless, headless trousers: his head and cap, arms and sleeves were outside, only below the waist remained inside.
“Take that, take that, take that!” Grandmother struck, while I grew serious. “So you don’t come thieving without head or hands next time, don’t come without head or hands, without head or hands…”
Vakhtang strained, unable to get out. When Grandmother was tiring, he pulled himself through, thudded outside and fled laughing.
“Thieving dog!”
Then she turned to me. It emerged there was one owner, one thief, one door, a stick in the owner’s hand; the thief a timid hare, the only door occupied by the owner.
“What are you doing here?” She swung the stick, I threw myself right, it broke the pot at the left wall. She swung, I left, it broke the pot at the right. She swung, I fell forward, it broke the pot at the back. She swung, I jumped back, it broke the pot by the door. All the pots broke. When the left one broke, she said: never mind, I’ll mend it with clips, it’ll be the old pot again. When the second broke: never mind, I’ll mend it, the same pot. When all had broken, she cried: “Where will I get so many mending clips? I haven’t that many, haven’t that many, haven’t that many…”
“Grandma…”
In the war she lost her brother’s seven sons, one brother, four sons and eleven grandchildren. In 1943 she brought her youngest son’s body herself from a Tiflis hospital, murmured consolation to his fiancée and stirred the funeral meal on the fire. Later she remembered him with piercing longing, knelt before the drawer for his photograph; there were twenty-three photographs of the lost. She never reached his, took any of the twenty-three and rocked, murmuring.
“Grandma…”
“I haven’t that many clips, haven’t that many… Can all this be mended?”
She held a fragment of the pot broken by the door and rocked, murmuring.
“Oh, Grandma…”
. . . . .. .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Then I wanted to go out and find Vakhtang. I reached the door; Grandmother barred it with her stick.
“Through the window. You’re no dearer than Vakhtang. Through the window. I’ll tell them to expel you from school, thieving cat…”
Then, twelve years ago, in 1950, the year Vakhtang did not go on studying, we made our dogs fight. They growled with bared teeth but would not attack, so we pushed them onto each other. They tangled into a ball; no telling whose foot, tail, head, who underneath, who above. Such a yelping arose that the whole neighbourhood came to watch.
He did not go to university, of course. Some go, some do not. Those who go put on proper shoes for good; those who do not, if it is 1950, make do with trekh shoes. No great misfortune. People lose twenty-three relatives yet hold themselves firm so the memories of twenty-three have a shelter. One simply must make dogs fight, play at stealing, test conditioned reflexes on people young and old, and trekh shoes seem proper shoes, proper shoes trekh. It does not even seem unimportant whether the leather is from the belly and will last little, or a strip from the back. In any case we were content with ours. We wore them three months without holes, another three with patches. About seven months.