In 1945, our village received seven noble zombies and a wild stallion to thicken the herd thinned during the war. I don't remember what happened to them (I was ten at the time), but one remained, an orange one with a stallion that was also orange. That stallion was believed to be the son of that stallion, and this was confirmed by the fact that the stallion did not give birth.
Mesrop returned from exile in 1946.
"What is exile?" I asked my great uncle.
- There are forests, barren snow, a bear and a bear.
I thought, I thought and because I had already asked others and I knew what exile was, I said:
- Woe to the fortress.
- Yes, it is something like a fortress.
- What does the fortress look like?
- The fortress... the fortress is like your cousin? Go home.
- Wow! - I was annoyed.
He was carrying a cart, - Don't disturb, he said, grow up, you will know everything.
In 1947, Mesrop was taken away again.
- They were going to take it, and why did they let it go? - I said to my great uncle.
- Well, take it away, again. Oh bitch, he called my mother, call your puppy.
That night my great uncle was also taken away. The division, my uncle in the division, was not armed yet, the Germans surrounded. "You were captured without firing a single shot," my great uncle was told in the regional center before being deported. He is a slow-talking man until he said "I didn't have a gun" when the train had reached Makhachkala. It came after three years. They were exiled by mistake. They said sorry at the regional center, until he said "nothing, everything will happen" - he was already in the village, carrying a cart, plowing, smoothing.
- There won't be a rifle in the army, I said.
- When you grow up, you will know.
- Why don't they apologize to Mesrop?
"Do I know, Hranto?" said my great uncle.
Now I am thirty years old. Mesrop's father killed someone in 1988. That place is called Killed by the Turk. Three of them came to kill Mesrop's father in 1918. That place is now called Hayi Killed. Then the twenty-five-year-old Mesrop wanted to take revenge: the party secretary Levon sent him to prison. Nineteen fifty-six Mesrop came from exile. He came into the office, collected Levon's collar and shook it.
- You were not in an innocent place, huh! Bringing me to my house, at three o'clock in the morning, huh...
Levon didn't flinch. He also grabbed it by the collar and started shaking it.
- During the Soviet era, you practiced nationalism, huh... The party took pity on you and let you go because you didn't think you were fair, that's why they let you go. Siberia is deep, yes!
- Don't look at this, don't look at this, - grinned Mesrop, - I come from Russia, this is speaking on behalf of the party.
"The party will not be sorry," Levon shouted.
- Are you the party?- Mesrop measured him from head to toe.
There was a hole in Levon's crotch, under the crotch there was a hole in the sock, and the big head was sticking out of the joint hole of the crotch and the sock. One of Levon's eyes was blind, Levon was bald, it was cracked, "I am not the party," said Levon, pitifully. "What kind of party am I?"
- Why are you talking about the name?
- Why were you reading Leo?
At that time, the chairman of the collective farm, the honorable Sanasar, got angry.
"Don't talk too much," said Sanasar. "You, Lavan, go to the farm, don't forget the farm, don't enter the village, gather your nomads from the mountain and go wherever you want." Mesrop, you," said Sanasar, "welcome. We miss you a lot. Go hold a horse, Mesrop.
Only an hour or two after becoming a stallion, he insisted that the stallion was the stallion's son until another stallion sired this stallion. Many believed it, many did not believe it, and Levon, who was standing in another group of people talking, asked: "What is it? Has he already started pounding his head?"
As long as there was that orange stallion in that herd, another stallion, no, he wouldn't dare to show up near the herd. It was bad. From this mountain to that mountain he saw a wild horse, flying to gallop. The cheering orange, burning under the great sun of that green world, was flying towards that poor pack-horse as if the wind was blowing fire, and the copper-colored tail could hardly be torn off, could hardly catch up after him. And the front white leg was seen-disappeared, seen-disappeared in the intersections that were being dismantled and constructed. And the flaming bash was raging at him. From one mountain to the other, you could hear the mighty lungs knocking against the ribs. From such a distance, its shell was hauntingly beautiful. But if you were the owner of a pack horse, you'd want to rub its throbbing udder into a heated stall. You wanted the wolf to collapse on itself and the spine to crumble under the skin.
And Mesrop was chirping after him.
- Oh, a man eats a horse...
A year later, the crimson herd was speckled with fiery restless foals that broke off from the edge of the plateau and spewed orange flames across the green plain. Their howling mothers were humming, calling to them from afar, from the other end of the plain, and these, flying from the right nose of the stallion, did not put their mothers in a place, they snorted from the stallion and hey, now the shoulder of the mountain.
"Fly, of course fly," said my uncle, "I am patching Alkho's blanket for you."
Alkho was our horse. Age was counted as twenty-twenty-three. Before reaching us, he had four owners and so many names. the new owner was branding him with the previous owner's name. One eye was ruined, half of the teeth were missing, a thousand sores on the back, the ribs were worn out from the braces. But he was a solid horse. That day, we took thirteen loads of wood from the forests of the valley with him. The back was hit again, and my Great Uncle freed him from the saddle and bridle, kicked him to go, mix, rustle, run with the herd.
- Let it fill up for a couple of months, I will sell it instead of a five-year-old horse.
And he didn't care about the herd. He looked a little, grunted a little and started to graze. It grazed round and round, with a radius the size of a rope, as when tied. Then, when he was satisfied and relaxed, he slowly moved towards the zombies, covering his ears. That was all that was missing. The stallion broke away from the herd and came roaring like a demon.
- Andre! - called Mesrop to my great uncle - I am not responsible.
Poor Alho, he had no legs to run away, no teeth and hooves left to wait. He was shaking like a rat. With rain in hand, my uncle stood on the stallion's path. And called Mesrop.
- Mesrop! I am not responsible, Mesrop!...
- Don't be stupid, go on your way, Andre! - called Mesrop.
At that time, Levon came out carrying back the tents.
"Hren, hren, hren, what are they doing, what is happening," he repeated confusedly and then, coming to his senses, he pushed all forty dogs towards the stallion. Amidst the scramble and scramble, the stallion lost Alkho and returned to the herd.
"What should I do with this?" asked my great uncle.
- Let's move to the village.
- I want to get fat and sell.
We tied him close to the herd, away from the herd. But that fool had cut the connection and gone to the zombies. Hovatak crushed him, made him a corpse.
Shepherds stood near him talking and waiting for him to die to feed the farm dogs. They boasted that he was a good horse, that he carried eight and ten pounds, but they did not know about the twelve of Gikhor.
It was a really good horse. They carried and drove to hot Kazakh villages. Wrinkles scratched him, the bone was sticking out of his body. From the hot Kazakh villages, a hundred kilometers away, they loaded him with fourteen putts and lied to my great uncle that they loaded him with a little more than eight putts. "It's barley as light as cotton, again," they laughed at my Great Uncle. They unloaded the cargo and drove it to the station by beating it. they were late for the train and beaten again.
"It does not give birth, it does not give milk, it does not carry a burden," said my uncle.
- Hovataki? A little slow.
"Zambiki," said my uncle to Mesrop, "Orange zambiki." A stallion is a stallion, we understand, why do you keep the basket? Neither gives birth nor carries a burden.
Then, the farm got three trucks and two tractors. One of them was attached to the baler, and the other finished the harvester in a week and, out of idleness, began to carry fuel from the forest. Oxen and horses grew fat and burst. The lever was driven to the butcher's shop. Then they sent worn-out zombies, some tempting, some low, some high, some cold or cold zombies to the grocery store. But there was still a large herd under it, which would eat several tons of barley in the winter, - it was written in the article of the regional newspaper about the economic calculation. The price of a horse became the price of a sheep. They started selling this and that.
The dentist bought the orange basket. He climbed our mountains from his city of Yerevan that summer, covered the teeth of shepherds and milkmen with butter, cheese, and money, and they smiled with a crooked smile. He had collected thousands in a month by scamming, now he was having fun. He had to go from his home to the medical center in an orange basket, from Yerevan to Etchmiadzin, from the theater to a restaurant. He gave Zambik one thousand two hundred rubles.
"Plus," said Mesropi, "if you have a broken tooth, bring me a cap."
Mesrop told him it's not worth it, the zambik is not his, he is only riding, then he turned and fought with Levon.
- You didn't come to my house at night, huh...
It was in the office. The accountant raised his eyebrows.
- What! Are you selling oranges? Are you giving your heads to a stone? - the accountant bubbled up, - we give two to two and a half million rubles a year only to the poor, who cares if they don't give birth to a zombie? Who gave birth to the zombie? The world is full of sterile people, the slaughterhouses would drown, they wouldn't make it...
"Quiet, quiet," said the old president Abgar, who pretended to be reading a newspaper, but behind the newspaper he was just smoking.
The cashier counted the money with difficulty, he could not open the door of the cash box. - Call the blacksmith, come and break it... what kind of box is this, what lock and key are these...
The orange zombie didn't let him get caught, he had seen a saddle and knew the price of freedom. We went with about twenty people, and he felt that they wouldn't go that many for a colt. And because we constantly drove him into the herd, he smelled bad and trembled. And he did not allow himself to appear pressed to the horses. was pulling on the outside. We would press him against the wall of thick bars and he would become a quivering coil of nerves. He was circling the herd and still didn't know who he was going to trample. Sideways, its steel neck arched, it spun against the plaster walls and grunted lowly. His copper tail swung down in an arc, and his bass beat his neck with a small rustle. And the spinning ears on our heads caught the intentions of all of us. The forelegs scuttled from side to side underneath, and the evergreen cover crunched underfoot. He tied a noose around the herd like that, and all of it turned black with his turns, the way of years. It went on like that for ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, then we got close, he pulled himself together, we got close, he cowered. Strained, strained and opened! He broke away from the herd and left. His escape hardened in us a desire to catch him. And in all of our minds we were the catcher and he was the escapee. And all the faults in the world were that he was not caught.
The herd followed him, and as it happened, he found himself pressed between heavy gorse. The herd was his enemy. the lifeless wall of stakes was crushing him. Biting, he got out of them and went down the street. The herd was streaming after him, and he was running away from the herd, and the feet began to multiply beneath him. The legs under him multiplied, multiplied, multiplied, until no more legs were visible, no movement was visible, whatever, the movement was not with legs; a yellow flame was sliding across the face of the earth. It's just a pity that it was not cut off from the country. it went down with the valleys, went up with the hills and turned with the road. And with the vanishing dimension, vanished from our sight.
Mesrop bet that he would not be caught. "I will cut my neck," he said, mocking the dentist.
- Wait, wait, leave your neck alone, said the dentist. He took his wallet out of his pocket.
- So, here's what - he counted money, - take this money. hold it, hold it - he pretended that he could not fold and close the wallet with one hand and for that the other hand needs to be freed - hold it, now I will say... So, man with man, we agreed, that money is yours, put it in your pocket. You have to catch the orange.
"Okay," said Mesrop, "but without money." He was crushing the money in his hand, pulling away or holding out his hand regretfully.
Two days after that I was sent to the city for classes. The dentist had things to do, left to collect and came to town in mid-September. Then the mountaineers migrated to the warm valleys of the village. Mesrop remained in the mountains with the herd for another twenty days. The orange zombie was zooming in and Mesrop's heart was pounding. The mountains were turning green in the last green under the cool-hot autumn sun. There was no smoke in the mountains, and it was sad. The sun was rolling in absolute silence. Mesrop missed the sounds of summer, missed cursing his landing on the neighboring heather and the twirl of their warden's club above his head.
"Come on, Orange Zombie, come on," he called to the horse standing in the distance, "I'm the only one, everyone's gone." Also from Yerevan. Everyone is gone, you and I are left...
Mesrop wanted very much that the one giving black in the distance would be a horseman and come to his side.
- You are a horseman, - said Mesrop, - you are straining your horse's load, should I come to help... - but minutes passed, and he still only gave to the black one. It was evening, and he was still rocking in the dark. "You're a stone, you're a stone," said Mesrop, "what's the matter with me? I'll go down to the house, and you'll stay in your place." Poor rider! Ahchi, I'm telling you something," Mesrop turned to Narinj Zambik, who was standing motionless on the edge of the plateau, head held high, ears pointed, and at that moment he looked very much like a textbook horse, "come on, I swear to you, believe me, I won't catch him. The dentist is gone! There is no, there is no, - and Mesrop was beating his palms together from top to bottom, - escape, go...
- The summer has passed, - Mesrop immediately felt sad. - You are a horse, you won't understand... - He and the horses were on the bare mountains, and Mesrop was correcting the speech, - You won't understand very well. You understand the most among animals, that's true, but humans are different...
The zombie did not leave the herd, it circled around. At the beginning of October, he came down from the side of the herd to the village. the mountains were frozen. He grazed on the sides of the herd in the valleys of the village. It snowed in December, the herd was driven to the barn. Give grass, give barley. In short... And he wandered around the village and gnawed bushes. On the seventeenth of December, wolves ate Levon's cow on the water, on the night of the nineteenth they entered Artem's barn. They were shot from behind, they did not enter the village for twenty days. But they were threshing around the village, spinning and howling all night long. Mesrop woke up, saw Narinj pressed against the wall of the house and shivering. Approached, ran away. Four days later, around twelve o'clock in the morning, Mesrop came out of the office, and the orange basket was visible for a moment in the light. Saved. That night, Mesrop's dog knocked on the door. by the time he came out, there was no dog, no wolves, only a faint rustling in the distance. On the night of the twenty-ninth of the month, Mesrop was in the stable, and a noise came from outside. Orange came out. He didn't even let them invite him in. He pushed Mesrop aside with his chest and went to his place with a loud clatter on the floor. He bit the colt that took his place and stood on his barley. The barn is warm, there is plenty of barley, the neighing of horses in the barn. As for how many wolves are out there, no one needs a full manger and a warm place.
A year ago, I was at the circus with my child, and suddenly I saw Naranji. All ten minutes of the program were given to him. The head was clipped, the tail was clipped, Orange was trimmed. It is true that he was a bit too fat, but no horse in the village would have lost the delicacy of his movements. He waltzed, and every part of his fat body obeyed him; legs, ears, head, back, everything obeyed him. All this time I was wondering if the leg would suddenly turn into a hoof, would it suddenly throw kicks? No. He waltzed, was applauded, danced again, then stood right in the center of the arena and thanked the public on all sides. They clapped for him to dance again, but he did not turn his back. leaving them no room for anything else, he was kneeling the orchestra, and the orchestra kneeling him, and the conductor was nodding at him from the arena, and that conductor was made of Turkish lokham and a book of politeness, and I suddenly wanted an Orange to slap him in the stomach.
I left the hall, went backstage. From behind the curtains came the warm laughter of the crowd. And it was kind of slimy and heavy like a hippopotamus that they couldn't drive out of the arena. he had opened his mouth there, the conductor had put his anointed head in his mouth and taken it out, he should have closed his mouth, but he didn't. It was hot, rustling, sweat, mascara, colors and hundred-candle lamps. Everything seemed to smell and steam. I was opening doors and saw our horse again.
- Orange?
He didn't even look at me. His back line was bronzed, the white of his leg was painted his own color and his corrected bash was green.
"Orange," I said and brought the chocolate to his muzzle. He didn't eat, he didn't even smell. And for a moment it seemed to me that he is not eating the candy because only the shell is chocolate, and inside is some kind of sweet dough mixture. And I took my palm back and I don't know where I hid the candy so that he wouldn't see. And I felt that I was also feeding that horse. And seeing his fat, daily scratched, washed, oiled mane, I felt that I hated him, and that in me was a hard pack-horse, a pack-horse torn by wrinkles, beaten by children, scorned by a stallion, the stallion's terror in his sinews and straw in the front.
"Donkey," I kicked his belly, "you didn't give birth, you didn't give birth, you didn't give birth and you're still alive." The fox farm was your place, huh?
The hippopotamus had already been taken out, and in its place the clown was now shaking his head, as if he wanted to take off his hat, he was tearing off his beard, he wanted to put his beard on his jaw, he was putting it on his chin.