The horse keeper knew Armenian history well and was the only man in the mountains who felt his Armenianness. The others knew that they tended lambs and calves, mowed, milked and sheared; that with the cold they would descend into the valley, to Tsmakut, and ahead of the heat would go up into the mountains with the cool. That seemed too little to the horse keeper, and he told Armenian history, which he knew well. If he had a listener, he invented a little too, considered yesterday’s account a lie today, drove the beginning of Armenian history down into a depth of four thousand years or made it sprout out of yesterday, depending on his attitude that day towards the neighbouring summer camp.
“Leo invented the Armenians. Before Leo—it’s a lie—there were no Armenians. It was in Leo’s time: a man like a mountain was struck down before my eyes, and nobody made a sound. Were there Armenians to speak up for an Armenian? Milk, sheep, how should I know what else? Leo put in the starter. How do you make matsun? Put starter in milk, and it becomes matsun. That’s how Leo invented the Armenians. Hovhannes Tumanyan’s ‘The Dog and the Cat’: the cat wasn’t a craftsman, nor the dog without a hat—what does a dog need a hat for, lad? Hovhannes Tumanyan sat down and invented it for the children. They read it. And at the other table Leo sat down and invented the history of us Armenians. Patriarch Zarmayr—oh yes, Patriarch Plague-take-you!”
The mountain people tended lambs and cattle and did not argue. Their business was shearing and milking, so they sheared and milked. All those things—Leo, Zarmayr, before Christ’s birth, Hovhannes Tumanyan—were the horse keeper’s household furnishings, which he arranged as he pleased. The mountain people thought he ought not to be a horse keeper but a teacher somewhere in Yerevan and such places.
“Vahan the Wolf. They came—he smashed them; they came—he smashed them; they came again. He smashed those who came; they counted and counted—he’d swept Persia clean, not a soul left in Persia. There’s no Persia in the world now either; our Armenian wolf swept it clean. Vahan the Wolf—oh yes, Brave Nazar.”
Then he would say the opposite: we must have been men, to endure the Turk sitting on our throats for a thousand years. “Something to be proud of,” he said. “We should be proud.”
His words made them neither happy nor sad. They simply went about their work: milked, sheared, got wet and dried; spoke to the others in Turkish, repeated their own words and a thing or two the others had said to you in Turkish, translating into Armenian, and it was beautiful; laughed at those who knew Turkish poorly; received workday credits, received money—lived. And this was the impression: a man of fifty-five to fifty-eight, named Mesrop Ghazaryan, talking to himself, circling among horse herds, flocks and clouds in the green mountains, from where only a part of a part of Gugark could be seen out of this infinitely great world. He did not speak Turkish, nor did he want them to speak Armenian. He called them Turks to offend them, but they were not offended because they were not Turks at all. That was not their occupation; being Turkish was not their occupation, but, like our people, keeping sheep, shearing, getting wet, drying, cursing the rain and the world. And our elders would tell Mesrop, “All right now, be quiet.”
But there was a point where Mesrop seemed to reach his aim. They came up into the mountains from their distant yellow valleys; our village was close to the mountains, and the mountains were ours, almost all year—autumn, winter, spring. In summer they kept coming with their migrating households, and our home became someone else’s home. Artin of Artin’s family had installed the spring trough, and suddenly their sheep crowded at it. A hundred years before, Avet, Ghazar’s son, had buried salt stones in the pastures for the sheep, and suddenly their sheep came in heaps to the salt stones. In our forest in the valley we had written our names on our beech trees, thinking the tree would keep our name long after us, and suddenly their shepherd loaded that tree bearing our writing onto buffalo and, “ho, ha, ho,” dragged the tree with our name on it to their camp.
“The Turks have come!” said the horse keeper. “They didn’t exist, they didn’t. They were created in 1920. Sergei Mironovich Kirov,” said the horse keeper. “How they became a people in thirty years! May socialism’s mother live—now that’s socialism! Socialism created them; they didn’t exist, they didn’t. Created them, drove them to Artin’s spring: drink water as brothers. May you turn to light, Artin—without you, where would their sheep drink? I say let’s write a complaint to Moscow: give our pasturelands to us, eh?”
Our flock brushed the edge of their hayfield, or their flock trampled our pasture, and a stick-fight broke out on the spot. A head was split, an arm broken, a shirt torn. They cursed our people in Armenian to make us sick, and ours cursed them in Turkish; the dogs rushed each other and piled up, and so on. Then they sat down to eat. They drank toasts and, mellowed, wondered why the other man’s head was bandaged, his shirt torn, his arm hanging from his neck. There was no talk of the fight, as if the arms had been broken while eating. In the evening the horse keeper spat and cursed our people.
“So you’d missed them and went to speak a little Persian? You were speaking Greek, and the strain split your head, eh, you empty fellow of Mukel’s family? You’re shameless, shameless, like a shameless woman: whoever puts out a hand, you can’t say no.”
The mountain people were silent.
“Here!” the horse keeper strained. “Moscow—Kremlin, to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.”
That made an impression. The mountain people said:
“Of the USSR, then what?”
“We propose removing the Turks from our hayfields.”
The mountain people were silent.
“Well?” shouted the horse keeper.
“It’s shameful,” the mountain people said uneasily. “We’ve just eaten with them.”
“May that bread come out through your nose!” cursed the horse keeper. “May the bread you’ve eaten come through your nose, the bread your child will not have to eat.”
Then someone said very casually:
“All right, Mesrop, they’re mountains, we’ll live. Why take offence and give offence for nothing?”
“Armenian!” the horse keeper raged. “You need something decisive! The plain is theirs, and they’re taking your mountains too, Armenian! Your sheep have no pasture; you’ve given them half your mountain.”
The mountain people grew vexed with themselves and laughed:
“Well, we couldn’t leave them to keep their sheep down on that hot plain in this sizzling heat.”
The horse keeper went mad:
“You, you, you! So the plain is hot—tomorrow let them break your neck too.”
Then a voice came from the darkness of the camp:
“Well, if you’re such a good man and don’t want my neck broken, don’t let your horse onto their hayfield…”
Published in part. You can download the complete version (PDF).