1
This village is connected to the world by a thousand threads. by phone, wireline, mail, wool, meat, oil procurement, cooperative store, training programs. the club school gives this village graduates who understand the theater and books, this village sends to the villages near and far, lovable brides, who do not let go of their hands until they give birth, and it has not yet happened that at least one of them is even a little lirb. this village gives capable students to the universities, cheerful and disciplined warriors to the army; the film buying office sends films here, newspapers send correspondents, etc. And the people at the points of contact with the world, who, apart from their work, have voluntarily assumed the responsibility of evaluating the environment, these people always describe the people of this village as modest.
A fifth-grade child fills a children's magazine crossword puzzle with Beethoven, Cervantes, Lenz, Hippocrates, Bruno, Komitas, Sahara, Euphrates and a kangaroo and does not send the answer to the editor because he does not understand the meaning of sending. He fills the crossword puzzle with his knowledge, puts aside the magazine and goes to get a book from the library, helps the repairman driver, shoots sparrows in the barn, twirls his nose in the forge, blows his whistle, eyes on the hammered iron.
In the summer months, the children of the village come from the city, from the place of study. They come directly. Fathers, great friends tell them.
- Did you come? You are welcome, your friend is waiting for you.
The village provided generals to the army. It happens that once every ten years they come to the village for one summer month.
- Comrade general, - they say to them, - take the axe, order the soldiers.
- How did you accumulate so much without an order? - smiles the general.
- You are very late, - the general was upset, - no, you are welcome, no, we congratulate you. "Comrade General, the corn is spoiling, take the corn."
"What should we congratulate for?" they asked the general on a rainy day.
- Here... you don't even know that... Akhar became a general two months ago.
- And what happened before that?
- It's clear, colonel.
- Well, - without a smile, confidently and seriously said the reapers, the reapers, the ploughmen, - after the colonel, they become generals.
Antaramej did not have a permanent foreign language teacher. The sent girls practiced for several months, forgot to apply lipstick, felt disgusted with themselves in the mirror and went to town crying. In the city, disgusted, they told their girlfriends: - What was that? They rush to the cinema and smoke. "Wisdom: you're a smart girl, eat some bread, get your body in order, this guy is coming from the army."
The head of the school went to the financial report.
- You were at the front, right?
- I left my foot there.
- I'm not saying that. You know German, right?
- Of course. I was a prisoner for two years.
- Can you teach a lesson?
- I forgot the letters.
- I will teach you, come on.
Genose Manukyan memorized the letters, and after that the graduates of the school received excellent grades in German when entering the university.
The post of accountant was occupied by the guard of the calery, who was also one-legged. The following conversation took place between him and the president.
- Can you report?
- I'm a guard again.
- We need an accountant.
- It's work, we'll do it again.
- Come on.
Abgar, the first president of the economy, who was putting his grandson to sleep at home, playing with the old woman's soul, became a guard, the old woman was furious, and the first president said: "Don't shout, the child is sleeping" and came to the village. He used to say to the president.
- Give me a job.
- Go put your grandson to sleep.
- I fell asleep.
- Go play a game with your old lady.
- He has grown up and doesn't want to play with me.
- Go... - thought the president - go, your pension is written off, go buy a cake for your grandson from the store.
- My grandson is toothless.
- For your old lady.
- Both are toothless.
And the president and the first president Abgar were thoughtfully silent.
"I don't know," said the president. "Don't disturb me, I'm busy."
- Do you remember, - said the president, - you were a little boy, the size of my boots, he used to bring you to the village, that big nose of yours at that time was a nose, your nose would be puffy, I would take out my handkerchief and wipe it.
- Then what should we do, - the president said, - you can't mow fields, you can't keep cattle, you can't eat honey because you were working in the apiary. You know what, come bend an oak branch for cattle.
- You have found a child, are you adopting?
- No, I'm serious.
- Iron ties, well, you got them.
- Oak is good.
- Well, I made it. Do you have two thousand?
- I don't know, I don't know. You are retired, rest in peace, what do you want from me?
And the place of the guard was opened.
"Don't give it to anyone else," the old man interjected, "keep it until I get my gun."
The old man even bit Sam. Old people usually don't bite. They walk with the experience of an adult and the caution of a child. Seduced by him, the jelly of time separated from eternity and the strong, beautiful, solid stature of our living time stood like a shepherd in the office.
The village is old. The village monastery is one thousand five hundred years old. The heathen furnace of Vanahimk is eight thousand five hundred years old. They don't know whether the monastery nested in the village or the village wrapped around the monastery, they don't know the age of the village. People from the city consider the monastery a wealth. "There are nations that don't have at least a two-century-old building." This is what historians say. If, they say, the Turks, with the blessing of God and the tsar, would exterminate Armenia completely, and we would be left with this village and this monastery, we would again have the right to be called a highly civilized nation. On Gerand's shoulder, Pavle listens to them and cannot be proud, because Zaven of that shanor said for an hour: wait, I'm coming, and for an hour he's gone, and clouds are rising over the Zardakar mountain from the Sevan side and it will rain around lunchtime. The monastery is also valued by architects. the windows are so narrow that only a ray and a dove will get in, a cat cannot get in, but the inside is as bright as clear day.
And that architect and historian, and the general's wife, and the agent of the Finnish department, and the telephone, which has only thirty years of history in the life of this village, and all the newspapers, motion pictures, circulars, tours, praises, instructions, reproaches and threats do not affect the village. A newspaper is a newspaper, an admonition is an admonition, but the sun will dry the grass and not the admonition, and they keep their faces to the sun, and therefore the rebuke does not affect them. Once it so happened that the lecturer from the center was left alone because the bear had entered the pigsties in the stables of the mountain. Once it happened that the president was told from the center to be here tomorrow, the president said he can't, and they couldn't answer from the center because the lightning struck and shattered the telegraph pole. And developing, well, it is a village, of course it has developed.
He took a phone to his ear, he was reading a newspaper, he used a rag to clean the fuel oil after throwing the car into the device. Today, the relationship between the woodsman and the telephone is not the same as that of the thirty-somethings. There is no longer the skepticism and reverence for the phone. in the thirties, it was something they used to give each other orders and make demands, then hang up the receiver and thoughtfully tap the glass of the desk with a pencil. At that moment, the president seemed as mysterious and powerful as the cloistered magician to today's backwoods pastor. Then once what was supposed to happen happened. they asked the president for a horse to follow the doctor to the neighboring village, the president laughed.
- Do you need a horse? Call and he will come.
- Isn't the phone only for the district center?
- Call, call.
- Shall I call, what should I say?
- Tell doctor Astabatsyan to send it to Antaramez, there is a sick child.
- If you don't take it, you call.
After that, the president was often given such small services and they were never able to repay the good he did. Until one day he was not in the office and the phone rang. The shepherds passed each other, then they fell apart. And that embarrassing phone was definitely calling one of them and calling. The shepherds looked at each other, then put forward the one whom they were most fond of in the mountains.
- Sako, you are the one who understands me...
- Sako, let's see you...
- Sako's will not die, once...
- Long live Sakon!
And Sako said on the phone:
- Huh?
Then he remembered and corrected.
- Hello!
The friends roared. "Did you see how Sako developed all of a sudden? Oh, he speaks aloe!" Poor Saco was named Telephone Saco.
Sako on the phone was saying to the phone.
- How... Yes, Antaramez... No, it's Sako...
The caller was from Getamej, he said there are goods for Antaramej in Getamej: soap, matches, chit, oil, galette, gerandi, let them go and bring them. The phone was not so mysterious, his voice was so human, as if the store manager Khecho was next to him, and the phone became so familiar to Sacco that Sacco said:
- Whoa!...
- Say, I hear.
- Whoa!...
- Hello, say, Sako, Khecho is listening.
- Whoa!...
- Yes, tell me!
- Khecho, you say it's galet, oil, one more...
- Fuel oil, soap, nail, glue.
- Khecho, are you sure it's you?
- Of course, it's me, I'm Khecho.
- You have become a man, you are talking on the phone, but, Khecho, as if you could not send a child.
At the other junction, Khecho laughed out loud.
"Khecho," said Sako, "you are a son of a dog."
With that, Sacco wanted to say that if needed, he would call himself and not send a child.
Then the shepherds took the receiver from Sako's hand and told who knew what about Khecho, his thief father, thief grandfather, Khecho's thief grandfather's grandfather. With that, the shepherds wanted to praise the inventor of the telephone, the inventor's father, the grandfather's grandfather. And the shop manager Khachik Poghosyan understood exactly that.
Thus, the phone entered everyday life, became something like a club, a cheese, a cart. Then electricity, radio and others. Among other things, electricity symbolized all kinds of news in the days of entry and for another couple of years. So much so that Sako couldn't just call a metal bed an iron bed, he called it an electric bed. Or maybe they tricked Sacco so that Sacco wouldn't trick them.
This unity of electrical and non-electrical news was quickly mastered by the village and, enriched by it, it continued to dig the area allotted to Ataramez from planet Earth. And the site is beautiful. A monastery with pigeons on it, a cemetery, where it is not visible which of the deceased's descendants were poor and which were rich, because the village stonecutters and stonecutters inherited only one size and one shape of stone from their grandfathers, - then, away from the graves, fields that grow in waves up the skirts of the mountain and where the waves of the fields fall back from the steepness of the hillside, beyond that. grazes sheep with white and black flocks. And in the valley, down the banks of the river to the gardens of the village below, and up the banks to where the sweetening heat reaches, Antarameji Park goes in a narrow strip. There, at the border of cold and heat, the river bends. That knee is a plain and high as a table, called Atorik, full and luxuriantly green on the black soil, in which the blue beehives of the beehive are arranged in a checkerboard pattern, numbered from one to five hundred and thirty. In a radius of seven versts stands the dense hive of the apiary, in a radius of one verst stands the warm aroma of honey. Perhaps the bears under the rock, on the other side of the river, are panting and looking up, and perhaps the old beekeeper is smiling at the top of the rock with his glasses on his nose: - Come on, come on...
- Of course, you will make Antaramez a law, - the leaders of other villages mutter in district meetings. - Antaramez was my village... Their apiary... God gave and did not spare.
An honest word, God gave it to everyone. Only God, giving Atorik stuck in the river, did not arrange the apiary in a checkerboard pattern. That much left people. If people are not inclined to turn their part of the planet Earth into a garden, then either they will not find the taparak, or they will find it, there will be no black soil on top of it, or, who knows, something else will be missing.
I already told about the monastery. Despite the great value of the monastery, for me the monastery is nothing here. For me, the monastery is a clear evidence that the friendship between land and man has a thousand-year history on this small piece of land.
2
The predecessor Hovhannes gave birth to the predecessor Yesayu, the predecessor Yesa gave birth to the predecessor Haykaz, the predecessor Haykaz gave birth to Stepan, who is no longer a predecessor, he is the second secretary of the regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth Union. He is a leader and says: "We must respect the laborer of the land." And for those words he is loved.
I have not seen Hovhannes, I have only heard that he lived for one hundred and twenty-seven years and for the last two years he complained about the weakness of his eyes. I only remember Esayu's death ("Esayu drowned in the water?" "How?" "He wanted to cross on a horse, he drove away?" "Did they take it out?" "They haven't found it yet?" "Wow..."). I don't remember the funeral. It's just a myth that the spitting man was changing his pants, his leg got tangled in the street, he was jumping on a grass and cursing the wealthy woman...
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