ARCHITECT ABEL ARTSATBANYAN, researcher of building art. FATHER MIKAYEL, abbot of the Great Cathedral monastery in the ruined city of Ani, the architect’s friend. SIMON, monastery servant. SHOGHER, Simon’s wife. ABEL, their son. A wandering blind ASHUGH and his GRANDSON. PEASANTS, ASATUR, MAGTAGH: it is unclear whether they have come for the hayfield auction, a pilgrimage to the Great Cathedral, or, in peasant fashion, both at once. A GROUP OF BOYS, a LITTLE GIRL. A PEASANT LIQUOR SELLER. A BORDER TROOPS OFFICER. ALEKSANDR BAHATRYAN and ALEKSANDR TER-SARGSYANTS, young architects, members of a commission interested in Abel Artsatbanyan’s work. NIKOLAY VASILYEVICH SHVEDOV, Orientalist and scholar of Armenian studies. SEMYON ARGHUTYAN-ARGUTINSKY, head of the commission. VARVARA TUMANOVA, noblewoman, Bahatryan’s fiancée, patron of the arts; she may be called MISS COMPASSION. ANTON ATABEKOV, a rich Tiflis man’s heir, half patriot, half drunkard. A GROUP OF ARMED YOUNG MEN DRESSED IN RED.
Ani, 1914, a day in early July.
The armed young men in red came at night, lit candles here, kissed the abbot’s right hand, sang their song of vengeance and hope in restrained voices. Then each separately and all together uttered the oath’s “I swear”, and disappeared into the night’s darkness. The candles burned; then dawn came. Architect and abbot were in the basilica’s narthex, their dwelling. The architect was copying a sketch, the abbot watching his work. Simon, Shogher and the boy were at the narthex door: Simon copying a khachkar, Shogher knitting a stocking, the child cleaning an old sword with pumice.
The narthex-dwelling, the Great Cathedral monastery, the courtyard between them, where the khachkar being copied stands.
ARCHITECT. How that Turkish woman sang, holy father! That daughter of a dog’s voice will not leave my ears. What beauty: the cloth, her husband reclining like a prince, the horses, herself. And how she sang, how the daughter of a dog sang!
ABBOT. Of course she saw she had listeners and sang well.
ARCHITECT. No, holy father, she was singing for her husband.
ABBOT. A woman, isn’t she? Gifted, isn’t she? Out of the corner of her eye she saw we were listening.
ARCHITECT. Ah, out of the corner of her eye. Husband, horses, song, herself. Holy father, with your crow’s voice, can you remember what she sang?
ABBOT. The song was good, of course, the horses, willow and cloth too. But more important, it is time to marry you off.
ARCHITECT. A little early, holy father. And whom are we talking to, anyway? Beyond the song, the bread, the beauty of that whole day, something chokes a man: recognising your enemy’s superiority, your enemy’s murderous superiority. Put the rope around your neck then, since melancholy and madness will choke you anyway. Look at a Turkish man’s wife! A caravan passes, a train passes, and she sits singing, concerned with none of the rest of the world. As their bread is before them, so their share of beauty is within them; the rest of the world is none of their business. An illiterate Turkish woman. And I am an architect, have stuffed cotton in my ears and consciously—consciously—do my work: this is what there is, there is nothing better elsewhere, this is all there is. Yet at every train whistle my heart leaps like a fifteen-year-old girl’s: life is passing in the distance, and I have been flung into a corner. That is me.
ABBOT. A fluttering heart is good; it means your wedding days are approaching.
ARCHITECT. You speak for the sake of speaking.
ABBOT. What was there to say that I have not said?
ARCHITECT. Say: husband and wife were going to the mountains, sat down to eat, the wife sang—and the husband was beautiful, the horses beautiful, the passing train beautiful; we, standing in the field, were beautiful, and thanks to one song we have been beautiful for a month.
ABBOT. Beautiful from a distance, architect. Had we approached and asked, had they told us, underneath would be a discontented, heavily breathing story. Like a lamp wandering in the night: it approaches, withdraws, rises, so it is on a hill; disappears, so it has descended into a gorge; appears again, wandering through the night, beautiful. Then it comes closer: the tired peasant has lost his wretched goats.
ARCHITECT. Yes.
ABBOT. That is, the tiger has raised its paw.
ARCHITECT. Yes, back to our stone. The Bagratid tiger has raised its paw. Tiger: subject; has raised: predicate; paw: object. Tiger: problem; paw: problem; Bagratids: problem. The tiger has raised its paw; the tiger has not raised its paw. It has raised its paw—why? What is beneath the paw? Our wretchedness. The Bagratid tiger has raised its paw; beneath it a sphere. What sphere? The earth. Good. Holy father, has the tiger raised its paw?
ABBOT. Has it?
ARCHITECT. The line says yes.
ABBOT. The line says yes, so the tiger has raised its paw; the line does not say yes, the tiger has still raised its paw. Carry on. The people of Lori say: I stand trembling beside you like a willow; do not fear.
ARCHITECT. Holy father, in your humble opinion, has the earth ever been a sphere for us Armenians?
ABBOT. My humble opinion, meaning my ignorant opinion.
ARCHITECT. That will not do. In all these years of friendship, when have I told you the truth?
ABBOT. Never mind, keep drawing. First a sphere, then flat; then a sphere again, then flat again. The Bagratids’ earth in the tenth century was a sphere; by the fifteenth, the opposite, flat. Now it is a sphere. Carry on.
ARCHITECT. Simon! Simon, what do you say: is the earth a sphere or flat?
SIMON. A sphere in the vardapet’s opinion, architect. But I fear it may be something like a pit, a tonir oven.
ARCHITECT. Well done. Light some tobacco from your tonir.
ABBOT. The Bagratids were not joking.
ARCHITECT. Neither are we. We are drawing the globe beneath the Bagratid tiger’s paw, from Uchkilise to Karakilise. Simon, have you seen a tiger, a tiger?
SIMON. Our eldest uncle said Kurdish shepherds have seen them in the Tigris gorges.
ARCHITECT. I am drawing, holy father, but it does not come out Armenian.
ABBOT. It comes out Turkish.
ARCHITECT. Perhaps Turkish.
ABBOT. That stone emblem was carved in the country of tigers and brought to the country of sheep.
ARCHITECT. I do not know. (The child brings the architect the cigarette Simon has rolled.) Simon! Your cigarette is coming apart.
SIMON. Spit and stick it, architect, spit and stick it.
ARCHITECT. Our spit does not stick, Simon.
SIMON. Give it to the holy father, architect. The holy father sticks things well.
ABBOT. Beside a buffalo the tiger is a cat, architect, yet it kills a buffalo. Weak, lifeless, dead, it lies for weeks. In its leap it gathers the strength of its weak, lifeless time, strikes, kills the buffalo, then is weak and lifeless again. I say the leaping tiger also hurls its future strength at the buffalo; after defeating it, it remains weak and lifeless. It was demanded, and the Bagratids spent our strength for future centuries too.
The sun rises in the east and hastens west. The truths of Ecclesiastes exist under the sun; sleeping peoples awaken beneath it, and wakeful peoples beneath it return to slumber.
ARCHITECT. I shall draw a tiger with its paw raised, beneath it a sphere, the earth. From Karakilise to Uchkilise.
ABBOT. (Before the map.) From Karakilise all the way to Uchkilise: as far as Russia today. From Tashir in Gugark, through Varazhnunik, Nig, through Aragatsotn, they went down to the Ararat land. The Bagratids’ earth was a sphere; ours is flat. Say their tiger is a cat, and it will become a cat. Do not say it. Say the Bagratid tiger is a tiger, holding the globe beneath its paw, and it will become a tiger. Thought is not nothing, not nonexistence. Set thought beside stone and weigh it: thought is born, exists and dies like stone or a person. The people’s language says: what you think, you find. Do not think what is ugly.
ARCHITECT. I do not think; I draw what others have thought. If a photographic machine took my place, it would do this better.
ABBOT. I would seize that machine of yours by the throat and choke it into drawing in Armenian. Whom are you raging against, what do you want? This is what there is.
SHOGHER (to Simon). You sit there: click, click, click, click. (A locomotive whistle.) The train has come.
SIMON. Architect! (To his son.) Tell the architect the train has come. Architect, the train has come. The train has come. What news will it bring us, I wonder?
SHOGHER. The train has come. When will you put me on a train? Let us take a train and go, go, go… Simon, how far does it take you? (A locomotive whistle.) The train has passed. It came, it passed, and you sit: click, click, click. Your cross will never become a cross, and the hay is still uncut.
SIMON. My herd will starve to death in winter.
SHOGHER. We could cut the grass, gather and stack it, sell it in the lean spring, buy ourselves a cow… Simon… Take a train and go, go, go… Simon, I am not saying let us live in Paris. Let us go and see Paris, then come back.
SIMON. Yes, Paris has heard what a kind, caring, understanding, generous girl you are and wants to have seen you. Delicate, womanly, understanding… You made yourself a candle, burned before others…
Published in part. The complete version is available to download as a PDF.