A man-high wall begins by the cowshed, descends towards the ravine, reaches its lip, runs alongside it, then curves back to the shed. Blackthorn and rosehip bushes have been carefully laid along its top. There is no hanging branch or crooked stone in that wall. Every spring and autumn a pair of trembling hands goes round its full circuit, setting it right. The finest orchard and vegetable garden are within that wall. And the finest cowshed, with a red roof, oak floor, dry. The shed and the buffaloes are under the same hands too, an old woman’s, whose head rocks slightly and whose eyes often fill with water. Her head does not rock when her mind strains, or when the shining, plump buffaloes separate from the great herd churning the road with its hooves and stop at that door: an immense pride comes from the fields and stands at her door. It does not flow past the house into the village’s depths; it separates and stands at her door. Inside the old copper milking pail rang, and her head stops rocking.
Her grandson came home from the army.
She was gathering fallen apple leaves when they told her. Her head spun, and she did not know whether it was joy or working bent over.
Following the news, her grandson burst into the garden, tumbling stones from the fence. From years of habit he offered his cheeks to be kissed, then saw that the old woman was very small, her faded blue eyes watery, and she was trembling. A dear, kind granny.
“My granny, granny... my little granny... When I left you were working, I come back and you’re working. I bet in three years you haven’t even been inside the house. What a good orchard we have, Granny... Isn’t the state farm taking it?..”
His grandmother wanted to hear mockery of the state farm in his words and a determination not to give up the orchard.
“Of course it is, it has to take it...”
“Well yes, you know the law better than I do: everything over six hundred goes to the state, my granny, granny...”
She took her grandson into the house and came back to replace the fallen stones on the wall.
They killed chickens, set wine and good things on the table; after years of silence the old gramophone sang again, and Granny wanted this to continue those days when her son was alive and empty wine bottles piled up in the cellar.
“My dear soldier, will you really give up the orchard?” Granny asked, hurt.
Talking of this and that, her grandson wanted to pretend he had not heard, but his grandmother waited.
“I’ve only just come back, Granny; I don’t know what’s happening here now.”
“For the toothless, everything over six hundred goes to the state,” Granny said.
“For those with teeth.” Her grandson smiled. “Don’t be afraid, say it: your grandson has teeth.”
“Six thousand.”
“Who needs it?”
“Well, yes, my child, you’re right. After all, it happens that people have neither six thousand nor a buffalo, yet the buffalo owner has to smash his head against a rock before them.”
“I’m a tractor driver, Granny. I was a tank driver, now I’ll drive a tractor.”
“A tractor is better than mowing, better than tending livestock, but there’s being a brigade leader too. There were tractors in your father’s time, but he was a brigade leader or chairman.”
“You want me to keep pace with your son?”
“What makes you any less?” Granny encouraged him. “He’s flighty, he’ll give it away,” she thought anxiously, and again remembered her son with a sharp longing. At twenty-five he ran the village; he ran the village and kept his household. Kept it, kept it well.
Her grandson and daughter-in-law laughed, did not notice the record ending, did not change it until Granny told them.
It was a Turkish song; she did not understand the words. Once her son wanted to translate it for his mother, said a word or two, stopped halfway and, tipping his grilled meat onto the plate before her, held the plate by his ear and sang with the gramophone. He finished with it, then kissed his mother and removed the record: “Let’s live, dear Granny; we’ve made it to this day, what we’ve endured!”
“Father fought the kulaks,” her grandson had said seriously, faithfully, without reservation before going into the army. Said it as he spoke of Shchors and Chapayev in history lessons.
“Father fought the kulaks for collectivisation and had a good time,” he said now, winking at his mother.
Granny was hurt. “What do you know, what are you aware of...”
...It was summer, the threshing floor rustled with dryness, the horses went round the same track; for the thousandth time she turned a floorful of ears of grain, and in her slightly spinning head the one thought turned yet again: when would she wear a silver belt over flowered silk once more? The circling of horses and thought broke off at noon when the owner of the stallion harnessed with their horse appeared at the threshing floor. “You don’t pity that stallion, do you? Put him on the outside... Drive him, drive him, it’s someone else’s property.” Ato had an evil eye; let nothing happen...
Her husband fretted, angry and helpless, stopped the horses to move the stallion to the inside. Fastening the collar, he looked at his wife from beneath the tall, alert horse’s neck. There were drops of sweat on his wife’s forehead, her face burned red, moisture shone beneath her eyes. Tears! Her husband smiled, “Well, what happened, it will be all right,” and turned away. It seemed he would now pour every curse he knew onto Ato’s horse, onto Ato, onto the world, but he only drove the horses with a whistle and cracked his whip in the air. At the crack, looking sideways from beneath the collar, the black stallion gave her husband a soft, heavy kick in the chest. Stumbling this way and that, mouth open, he begged air from his wife, the horses, the threshing floor, the sky... It did not come, was not there.
Her son was six months old then.
The world full of bread, and they longing for bread; half the world men, and not even a scarecrow at their door.
She asked Ato’s son to bring wood; they had none. He brought it without a word. She invited him in for food. He came. Sat looking at the table a long time, did not eat. The widow understood. “Eat,” she said fearfully. “Eat, you say?” and suddenly put his hand round her waist. She bit hard on the hand that slipped inside her bodice. “I’ll tell your father, shameless thing.” Rubbing the bite, he drew back, his smile holding the expectation of a day when it would be willing, willing. Then the wood ran out, and Ato’s son brought more. Waited to be invited inside for food. She did not invite him. He shouldered the carrying yoke to leave and dropped the words with a sigh: “A pity, a pity.”
Bringing the sheep back from the fields, he left a bag stuffed with wool by the house. The widow furtively took it inside, poured out the wool, white, strand upon strand... Put it back in the bag, tied the mouth with the same goat hair and carried it out, but the child cried, and she hurried back, dragging the bag behind her. The child buried nose and mouth in her full breast and murmured, looking only into his mother’s eyes. She wanted to lose herself in the child and forget the wool, but the child fed and slept. She took the bag outside; she wanted, very much wanted, the child to cry so she could come back again.
“You’re foolish, foolish,” Ato’s son said as he passed the next day. “Not foolish, you’re a child, an innocent lamb of God.”
Then, at the Vardavar festival, the lads mounted their horses. The camp stood watching. A festival of cotton print, silk, silver belts and eyes. And you wanted to be in love and weep. And you wanted to be wanton and beautiful. To deceive and laugh. Hands on hips, to mock and quarrel.
The widow stood to one side; to a widow it was all the same who won the race... Suddenly she felt that Ato’s son and their black stallion were missing from the line. And there he appeared opposite, on the stallion, his felt cloak flying. “Wait! Me too!..” He brought the horse clattering up, held him rearing and, unfastening his cloak, looked to see whom to throw it to. “Catch,” and the cloak fell over the widow’s head. A moment’s warmth struck and passed. The cloak enveloped her in a man’s scent. Now their stallion’s headlong speed pleased her. Came, came, came and—sharp—cut off his run. A man, yes...
The widow felt he was hers. But the women looked enviously at Ato’s daughter-in-law, dressed up and proud, her folded arms clasping her breast, standing there bursting with haughtiness.
“Curse you,” the widow said. “You are to enjoy yourself and I to mourn? For what sin of mine?”
That same night Ato’s Sako pushed aside the tent felt. The widow received him and kept him until morning. The next night she would not admit him: “You’ve found a woman with no one to protect her,” but then she begged that even if she refused, he should come in by force; let them keep their wood and their wool, she was his slave, let him use her like a slave. But when he left at dawn she said she would like a shawl like the one on his wife’s shoulders, said her wedding’s silver belt was in their house.
“You’re lovely, but don’t say it,” Ato’s Sako bowed his head. “We understand all that.”
Her son grew. “Will he forgive me?” his mother wondered. He was a sharp-eyed, thoughtful child. He grew and saw that their field was a patch beside the broad, boundless sweep of other fields, that their buffalo in spring, when brought out of the shed, was not as full and glossy as Ato’s buffaloes. One thing the widow never quite understood: did her son know of his mother’s bond with him, or had he innocently praised Ato’s son? He said, “Actually, he’s the foremost man in the village.” Said, “When the horse kicked him, you were beautiful, weren’t you?” Then one day also said, “Mother, you’re still very beautiful.”
Her son was the first in the village to join the Komsomol. He was the first they sent on courses. That was how he had planned it. Plans turned into action, thoughts into a livelihood. Only one thing was unforeseen: he fell in love.
One day he came from the small town where the courses were held with a girl.
“Here is our house.”
The girl was supposed to smile, and the widow saw her white teeth. But it was not a smile.
Her son had lost his head; his mother had never seen him like this.
“Here is our house. You wanted so much to see it, here is our house.” He kicked the dog winding round his legs.
“Don’t you pity it?.. What a lovely dog you have,” the girl said. The door too was kicked open. The girl stood bewildered in the middle of the room.
“Sit down.”
The girl looked around for a chair.
“Sit on the divan.”
The ceiling, soot-blackened beams; the walls unplastered; the sole decoration, a poster two or three years old: “Long live...”
Until then the widow had thought herself decently provided for. People grew rich, one by bullying, another by theft; she too, well, somehow... Whoever was neither was swept away by the flood. She had something, was not utterly cast aside. Now she broke. For the first time the copper utensils, when she went to prepare food, seemed black and pitiful. This time she handled them ruthlessly. Her son came out at all that clattering, and when his mother straightened from bending over the tripod he saw tears in her eyes.
“It’s the smoke. Why did you come out? Go inside.”
“The smo-oke...”
The buffalo lowed in the yard.
This time she milked without singing. The buffalo turned her neck and sniffed the milker a long time. When she came inside, the bride-to-be and her son sat facing each other in the silent darkness.
“Well, this is how we are.”
“How do you mean?..”
And they fell silent. Even if he had wanted to, her son could not have spoken. His jaws clenched, and beneath the skin his cheek muscle tightened and slackened. Then he took the table knife and struck the tablecloth, cut the cloth. He drank home-distilled vodka, pushed the chicken away, drank again. The girl firmly refused the meal, ate only half an apple.
“Will you drink milk? Freshly milked, good milk,” his mother said. The girl smiled: “I will.” The widow brought it. “Buffalo milk?” the girl asked. “I don’t drink buffalo milk, I simply don’t like it.” And the mother saw the enamel chipped on the cup in her hand. Then they sat in silence.
The dog gave a familiar bark and wound whining round someone’s legs. Someone’s steps stopped behind the window. With his eyes her son made his mother understand what it meant and that she must go out. But she was frozen, stuck to the divan. “Go,” her son growled. “He’s waiting, go, this world is a thief’s world. Why are you frozen, you poor woman lost in the woods, whom are you ashamed of? Come in!” her son shouted. “Welcome!” And he hurled his glass at the window.
“Don’t act like a savage,” the girl said.
“Go to your aunt’s.”
“Have the courtesy to see me there.”
“Of course.” Her son stood up.
The aunt was Ato’s wife: their house had separate cups for milk, carpets on the walls, a gramophone; Ato had brought an armchair from Tiflis.
“Sit down; later.” The girl peeled an egg, drank the milk from the chipped enamel cup. “Come on, eat,” she said. “Am I the only hungry one? Eat, what are you bewildered for, eat, you savage...”
“You will stay here,” her son said.
“That comes later, eat now, later.” The girl chewed her bread thoughtfully, then said to the widow: “But you were a beauty, weren’t you.”
Then the girl asked for a bed to be made, and as his mother unfolded the bedding she said:
“You have very good bedding, Mother.”
Her son sat down to write a speech for the formal meeting on November twenty-ninth. For a long time nothing came. He flung the pen aside and swore. But then both the speech and a position in the office came through. Collectivisation began.
In the village centre her son laughed at those giving up their ox amid collective weeping, and at home wept for the buffaloes. With God’s help the collective failed to establish a buffalo herd, and their buffaloes were returned: buffaloes needed much tending, and tending earned workday credits. The village cream separator went first into the storehouse, then into their home; the honey extractor first into their home, then the collective farm’s storehouse; the sewing machine into their home, never the storehouse; then whatever her son saw, whatever came to hand. Right beside Ato’s house he built a cowshed like Ato’s old-fashioned house, laid red brick on it, put in an oak floor.
“You say my father didn’t pity the stallion... Served him right, the heartless son of a bitch, Uncle Ato... You ask how things are... Your pack saddle has slipped under your belly, eh!..” He was laying tiles on the cowshed roof and carefully mocking the old rich man. “You meant to make me a hired hand, didn’t you, Uncle... But I’ll do you a kindness: your house is old, it’ll collapse, and when it does, welcome to my cowshed. Dry, boarded, a shed like a house.”
Outside, her son made others live the collective life; at home he changed clothes and became a diligent property owner.
“Not bad, is it?” his mother said doubtfully.
“Not bad,” her son said.
“Not so good,” his mother said.
“Good, good.”
“And how much did Ato have?..”
“That much wasn’t allowed.”
The war began. Her son was at the apiary when the village council messenger called him.
He hurried home. A bee had stung his face, his eye swollen shut. He changed clothes, cursing the living and dead kin of those who had started the war.
“Arrr...” The grandson cried breathlessly in the cradle. Her son kept swearing even as he kissed his mother, patted his wife’s back:
“Rock him, rock him...” He stopped by the cradle, thought of saying, “Will he turn into a man, or...” Did not say it: the thing in the cradle would take no words upon itself, a red ball with an open mouth and—arrr... Then breath stopped and saliva bubbled.
He tried to rock it with his foot; it did not move. His wife had fallen heavily against the cradle and sobbed, clawing its crossbar. “Rock him, rock him,” and he went out.
“Lad, but...”
Her son stopped for his mother to say what she meant, but she:
“I don’t know...” She moved her hands.
“What?..” Her son wanted to wait a little longer, but his mother could not find the words.
“That cursed water has washed out the bed now, how long has it been, eh...” She opened the garden gate and went. Forgot why she had gone, bent to pick cress.
“As if we had anything,” she heard her son’s voice, then the crack of a whip and the rustling of apricot leaves.
“Granny, where’s the teat?” her daughter-in-law asked.
“The teat?..” She raised her head, looked: the tree’s branches swayed, the branches that had rustled when her son passed. “The teat... Rock him, rock him...” And she heard her son’s voice, “Rock him, rock him,” as if we had anything... Crack... “The teat?.. That cursed water has washed out the bed, how long has it been, eh...”
“Rock him, rock him...”
And the gramophone sang no more; the records no longer turned, their black lacquer gleaming in the light. And one of them no longer sang with her son:
Your cheeks, my li-ips,
Aman, aman,
Pretty girl, don’t leave me...
Until this evening... And an inexpressible joy overwhelmed Granny when her grandson in the next room, trying on his father’s boots, repeated his father’s song:
Aman, aman,
Pretty girl, don’t leave me...
For a moment Granny thought her son was singing in the next room; then thought he had just sung and gone out, was no longer in the room but the song still rang. And her head stopped trembling for a moment.
“Aman, aman, pretty girl...” He stood in the doorway in his father’s clothes. “So, Father wore red boots, a leather jacket, a Nagant revolver on his belt and fought the kulaks... Your cheeks, my li-i-ips... A girl has a cheek with a mole, a lad lips with a moustache; the lad smooths his moustache and—smack—the mole... No, no envy for them.”
The dog barked in broken bursts. Her grandson went out. Came back a little later:
“The buffalo. Thinks she watered it herself: she’s got into the garden and is grinding up cabbage with an appetite. Your cheeks... Yes, Granny, perhaps we don’t need the buffaloes. Where am I to mow all that hay? There’ll be plenty of money from the tractor; we’ll live. Five tons of hay for twenty kilos of butter. I’m going to the village centre.”
He sold the buffaloes three days later.
“A buffalo in a dream means pain, comes true that very day,” Ephrem’s son says... Her grandson laughed at the buffalo, Ephrem’s son, the dream and the buyer all at once. “If I were you I wouldn’t buy...”
He talked so much of this and that that the buyer thought, a mere brat, knows nothing about livestock, and offered half the price.
Her grandson understood:
“Don’t play the rogue. Give what they’re worth, what you’ve brought with you.”
“How much do you want?” the buyer tried.
“What you and your wife have been deciding for a year, at night, till morning.”
He paid the price and made a fatherly prediction:
“You’re a practical lad, my son; you’ll have a fine farm.”
Her grandson, as though flattered, took on a good farmer’s tone:
“I’ll add a little to that money, buy three cows, ten or fifteen sheep. Why are you laughing?.. Ten or fifteen sheep, two breeding sows; don’t you know anyone selling?..”
He saw the buyer as far as the village centre; on the way back he brought an expensive and dubious radio from the cooperative shop, gave the remaining money to a friend building a house, needing a roof over his head.
“Don’t think about paying it back, you’re one of us; when you have it, you’ll give it... One moment. Can’t you write? Give me your finger, put it here. How is it you can’t write?.. Done! Don’t think about paying it back; I charge the lowest interest in our district, one abaz on the rouble... Listen, Barsegh... er... what was I going to say, I forgot. Yes, we’ve no wood, wood, no winter supply of wood... Is your donkey free? You say he’s stepped on a nail, eh? Never mind, bring it yourself; you’re a young, strong lad...”
And how the two of them laughed!
But Granny came home from the garden only in the evening.
“I will die.”
The next day she was in the garden again.
Along the wall stand apple trees, all of one height, planted on one day.
She remembered: her son had gone to the district centre on collective-farm business. He was a day late and brought those apple trees. Hurried to the village centre and came back. “Dear Granny, if you knew what apples they give... yes... red-striped, good keepers. Take them to market in May.” He stretched a string, set them in two lines...
“Red-striped, good keepers...” She heard her son’s voice, smiled, then remembered the buffaloes were sold and for a moment stopped living. “Red-striped, good keepers...” her son said again, and Granny went on gathering fallen leaves.
On the third day after the sale the one-armed village council chairman jumped the fence into the garden.
“Tell me, old woman, which row of trees do you want left to you, how shall I measure?”
“Measure however you like,” her grandson rumbled from under the tractor, tightening a bolt. “I need a spanner, a spanner; haven’t you one at home?”
“No, what would a spanner be doing at my house?”
“Who knows, you might have taken it from a tractor...”
“Why would I take it?..”
Her grandson came out from beneath the tractor.
“So you’d have it at home. It’s good to have things at home, Uncle Nikol... Right?”
“Right,” the chairman agreed, smiling.
“Measure, measure,” and her grandson went towards the cellar.
“How shall I measure?”
“Measure how you want, why ask me?”
The cellar was full of bottles.
There was everything imaginable in the cellar. A saddle, another saddle. A third saddle.
“What did he need three saddles for?” Her grandson knew nothing of farming; if he had, he would have seen one saddle was for a harnessed horse, another for loads, a third for riding. A hammer for shoes, a hammer for nails, another hammer for nails, but large; a pickaxe, a crowbar, a Cossack horseshoe and one for a packhorse... A plough chain, a cream separator’s basin, a ploughshare, a piece of rail... Rubbish, pah... A plough wheel... a spanner...
“Father foresaw his son would become a tractor driver,” her grandson sneered.
When he came out, Nikol and Granny stood talking. Then Nikol, like a kind, understanding father, advised him:
“Come, listen to me, I’m telling you something: separate from your mother and grandmother, formally, just formally, understand? Separate, let one household take half the garden and the other half. Marry soon and separate.”
“Will you give me your daughter?”
“Donkey’s head,” Nikol said in a fatherly tone, “the division is formal; the garden stays undivided, in one piece.”
If the garden had been Nikol’s, he would never have given it up; he would have divorced his wife—“formally, just formally”—and the garden would have been considered divided but stayed inside one fence. It was not his garden, someone else’s, yet he still could not bring himself to do it. Meanwhile he pretended not to care how it was divided; he simply wanted to do this one kindness.
“It’s in my hands, I’m doing you this kindness. On condition of half a litre, but it must be cornel-cherry liquor. If it isn’t, I’ll divide it...”
“And a spanner?..”
“Ah, donkey’s head. You didn’t plant the garden; your heart doesn’t ache.” Her grandson measured the garden with his eyes. Not a bad garden: rows of apple trees that blossom in spring, fill their fruit with juice in summer, drop fruit in autumn, whistle through winter keeping the seed to blossom again in spring... A garden, that’s all... His gaze stopped on the pair of pear trees at the lower end, fountaining like yellow flames. “What lovely things,” he thought, and remembered their large, juicy fruit. “If only they stayed ours...” he thought. “Leave those to us,” he thought of saying, but said:
“You know what, Uncle Nikol, I don’t think there’s any liquor left; I finished it. As for the garden, measure however you like; if you can’t bring yourself to, leave it to the commission...”
In the evening Granny was confused, forgot what she meant to say; she seemed to listen attentively to her grandson and daughter-in-law but forgot both what she heard and the answer. At night she turned restlessly, and in the morning, when they went to call her for tea, she was not in the garden, not in the shed. She was in bed, dead.
At the cemetery Nikol spoke. He said, “We will keep her memory bright,” then sought a stronger expression and said, “We will keep her memory traditional; she raised such a son, cared for such a daughter-in-law, brought up such a grandson,” “we will keep her memory traditional.” Nikol had come to the cemetery from measuring the garden; Nikol was drunk.
Her grandson remembered the pear trees at the lower end of the garden. Two yellow flames... “If only the pear trees stayed ours...” he thought and suddenly understood that Granny would still be alive if the buffaloes and garden had remained.
“The garden and buffaloes were her life,” her grandson thought. “Granny was an old woman with a petty soul,” came a second thought, and he was disgusted by his own cruelty: they were lowering the coffin, his weakened mother had fallen into people’s arms, while he... But he did not renounce that thought. “She sold her love: she loved him but pretended she loved him for wool. A petty old woman.”
“If only the pear trees stayed ours...” he thought on the way back from the cemetery.
“If only the pear trees stayed ours,” he told Nikol as they parted.
“And the garden?..”
“The garden, as you wish; if only the pear trees stayed ours.”
He entered the garden to look at the pear trees once more. They had had a splendid garden. He remembered not even a hailstone fell in their garden; the ravine would not allow it.
“Our land is the best,” his mother said. “The best cabbage grows on our land.”
“It’s too late now; you can’t separate, it would be too false and obvious,” Nikol said the next day, sticking the measuring rod into the soft earth.
Her grandson was lost in thought, then came to himself:
“Ah, divide it however you like.”