August

Andro is making a cart: once he has shaped the axle, he must scorch the yoke; boring the holes in the yoke is a minute’s work, but a few spokes are still missing. The good souls use it as though it falls from heaven afresh each time. To tell the truth, they are right: a workday credit is a workday credit, while others toil in the open sun. In the evening he must go down to the village square and ask Sanasar for an ox; the firewood up in the mountains must have run out. He will go, see the cows, Ashkhen will have good matsun, he will eat some...
All that is very good, but Andro did not like the shaft. He had not liked it even when he was cutting down the tree. The head was all right, compact and round, even handsome as far as the axle, but beyond the axle, however Andro shaped it, it remained crooked outwards. He must put a chain round it, draw it taut and leave it under tension for a couple of days.
From time to time Ashkhen suddenly seems another man’s wife. A young girl, another man’s wife—now and then Ashkhen grows sweet; you cannot tell where she hides her long tongue, and she looks at you like a quiet fire. Ah yes, that is how we will deal with your tongue. Ashkhen had come down from the mountains, and he went up from the village to Raspberry Clearing: there was hay to gather. Ashkhen had come down early, milked the cows early in the morning, strained the milk and come down. He arrived and saw some of the hay gathered; saw a woman lying on her side under a tree. From a distance he first thought it was the late Hamo’s Sirush, then laughed at himself: what would Sirush be doing here? But if... if it had been Sirush, it would have been better. Yet it was Ashkhen, then: she had milked the cows early, strained the milk and come down. The clearing was hot, Ashkhen a little sweaty. He looked at her flushed face, then at her eyes. Ashkhen was asleep, and honestly, asleep she did not resemble herself at all, seemed someone else. Her hip was high, as though it were the late Hamo’s Sirush’s hip. He played with her neck with a blade of grass and laughed. She did not wake; her eyelids trembled, she said “lazy lout,” but did not wake, and still asleep put her arms round his neck. She seemed asleep and was smiling, and never quite woke all the way. Afterwards she lay with her eyes open, looking at the sky until lunchtime. But when she rose noiselessly, she was the same flat-bottomed Ashkhen again, the same old scold:
“Others have gathered theirs, carried it off, stacked it at their doors, and now they’re stealing from others, stealing from the collective farm, while this one sleeps in a donkey’s ear... Now he’s come to work too... There’s no rain for him, no sun, no winter ahead, slow, half-done, lazy... Looking for a dressed stone to lie under...”
At first he wanted to lay the pitchfork handle across her back, then did not strike. The poor woman was working and talking without cease. She was not wicked, it was a habit: she talked. And if she was wicked, she had reason: the world was hard, and he truly was sleepy. Gikor, for instance: he had been chairman, brigade leader, storekeeper, shop assistant, farm manager. They detached him from one thing and he fastened onto another. You say: there, it’s temporary, a mistake has happened, tomorrow it will be put right. You say: they’ve appointed him manager, tomorrow they’ll remove him, and indeed they remove him, but he attaches himself to the shop. You say he won’t stay there either, and he doesn’t, but he won’t stay, won’t stay, won’t stay—and suddenly our Gikor is sixty, they have awarded him a pension for his service. His life is behind him, and like that, temporary by temporary, mistake by mistake, little by little, he has been in a fat post all along. And you go on shaping your axle, saying it is temporary. When they married and Ashkhen quarrelled with him a month later, he saw that no, he could not live with her. He is still throwing her out. This winter, very angry, he struck her lightly and told her to go to her father’s house. Ashkhen put her shawl over her shoulders and went, her skirts swaying. Went, and came back in the evening with their son-in-law and eldest daughter, the grandchildren in their arms too. Grand-pa... And all along his spine to the nape of his neck rolled satisfaction with the firm Ashkhen of that very first month, the incomplete half-satisfaction of all the other times, and the confident hope that life was long and women many. Grand-pa... Damn you!.. Yerevan, they were serving in the four-hundredth regiment and had been taken to a concert. The ensemble sang, “Maral, Maral, you walk like a deer...” In the row ahead, a little to one side, sat girls with sun-browned faces, probably from nearby villages in the Ararat valley; they tossed their red-ribboned hair and looked back every minute. Martin... a broad-faced lad from Ijevan, killed near Kerch, poor Martin. A sergeant, surname Sahakyan... poor Martin Sahakyan... He said: Andre, let’s go up to them, the freckled one for me, the other for you. He looked at the other, wanted to and felt shy. Her breasts were high. He looked at Martin and saw that the uniform fitted him perfectly. His parade belt drew his belly in tight. His own belt was canvas, and his boots were too big, his feet went back and forth inside them, back and forth. He said: no, Martin, I have business. He turned aside and decided to quarrel with the sergeant-major about the boots and get himself an officer’s belt as well. Martin came back tired that evening, smiling all the time. His eyes had grown sweet, so sweet. He kept humming, “Maral, Maral, you walk like a deer...” He said: little donkey, why didn’t you come? He answered sulkily: you went, what did you do? But Martin sang again, lying on his belly, then looked at him with moist eyes: “Little donkey...”
Poor Martin Sahakyan... Broad-faced, thick-browed, a lad whose laughter was like weeping... He lay on the stretcher with one leg over the other, unrestrained, at ease and heavy, and seemed again to weep a little.
Old Basar barked at the younger brother’s door, and at once Mother’s alarm hung over the neighbourhood, the bean beds, the old heaps of manure and the old apple trees:
“Kite-kite-kite, shoo!..”
The white sky is half-dark to the old woman, and across it circle the kites, all those she saw when the light was white, together.
“Shoo-shoo!..”
In her thoughts, rain will come any minute and spoil the dry hay, the geese will eat the beans, the dog is old and will wander off and die in the fields, the kite will carry off a hen, her daughters-in-law will quarrel with her sons, and from time to time she says:
“Geese, geese, geese, geese, may you be left without a master! Girls, gather that hay. Girls, have you gathered it? May your tongues wither, your tongues, for eating up my children like that! Ba-sar!..”
The old gampr comes over lazily and looks at the old woman.
“Are you here, Basar?..”
The fruit was drying, the old gampr still waited for what the old woman would say. The hives worked furiously, their humming hung hot and heavy above the apiary; at the elder son’s door the axe was not knocking, and somewhere nearby a girl laughed ringingly.
“You trouble, shame on you! Mani-shak!..” the old woman called. “Girl, Manush, have you come down from the mountains?..”
But there was no answer; someone laughed ringingly again in the distance. And it was not a girl-child’s laugh, but a woman’s.
“Andra-nik!” the old woman called. “Andranik...”
“Hey, what is it, Mother?..”
“Dear, why have you gone quiet?..”
They laughed again, and this time the old woman did not like it at all.
“Andra-nik!.. Who’s laughing?”
“How should I know who’s laughing, Mother?”
“What, dear?..”
“I don’t know!”
“Andra-nik!”
“Hey!”
“Have you moved the horse’s tether?”
“Yes!”
The hives’ dense hum hung above the apiary. Then Sahak’s summer visitors came down the ravine road towards the river, and a woman in their group laughed warmly and low. There were four of them: two girls, almost still children, an enormous young woman with a camel’s gait—well, now... The fourth was the girls’ mother.
They say a queen, in Persia or somewhere, lined up her soldiers and walked among them; whoever pleased her she took to her at night. Then she had his head cut off so the news would not spread. Heartless, heartless woman... If there had been a clever fellow, he could have gone to her at night and somehow slipped away afterwards. Jumped out of the window. Of course, there was a window, wasn’t there...
“Andra-nik...”
“What is it, Mother?..”
“The bees may be swarming.”
Andro listened, noticed that his own hives were humming louder too, looked at the sky and said:
“It’s the heat, the heat. The sun bites.”
It would not be amiss to go down to the river and move the horse’s tether. Poor Alkho has been tied in the same place for a day and may have tangled the rope too. They say the enormous one has left her husband; they say the school head has sounded her out and she does not seem against working here for a year. Tell him: Ruben, keep your nose over your own meal; someone else is looking at your wife, while you have your eye on another’s...
Andro threw the axe into the shade, brushed his knees and, his cap over his eyes, went down the ravine. The horse had grazed the whole radius of its rope bare to the black earth, simply shaved the ground, and stood in the centre of the circle in the sun, drumming on its belly.
“What are you doing?” Andro smiled. “It’s wrong: if you’ve made him a packhorse, you must geld him; if you haven’t, it’s a sin, you must let him stay with the herd.” “Tomorrow I’ll take you to the mountains.”
Andro led the horse upstream, stepped into the water at the crossing and smiled, and when he had to cross the river again he heard that same laugh through the water’s faint murmur. Andro grew angry with the horse and, head lowered, cap over his eyes, passed them and wished them good day. The mother, sitting on the bank with her feet in the water, answered kindly; the girls, dark and slender, stood laughing on the slippery, polished basalt in red briefs narrow as ribbons. It was one of the girls who laughed so warmly and low. But Andro did not have time to notice what the enormous woman was doing, and was somehow annoyed that he had not seen her.
“Ah, you damned thing!..” Andro turned to strike the horse: the enormous woman lay at an angle, naked, hands beneath her head, one leg bent, glasses on her eyes... How Andro struck the horse’s head with the gathered rope! The horse backed away and sank onto its haunches, then suddenly sprang up and stumbled again. It kept tossing its head up. Then it stood quietly and sighed. And now Andro saw that the poor creature had sweated in a minute, and said pityingly, just for the sake of it:
“Poor old fellow, poor beast...”
The girls laughed again over there, while the other woman rested heavily on the polished basalt, soft, every detail of her still. As he drove the stake into the ground, Andro saw again: the enormous woman wore narrow red briefs and a bra, had turned on her side, and her leg was thick, so thick. Andro said with a laugh:
“Why have you put on so much, anyway?”
And, glancing down lightly once more from the top of the ravine, Andro suddenly remembered his father, sitting beneath that same rock and cutting thongs for his rawhide shoes; his mother washing wool in the water, her legs white and thin; and himself, sitting on that basalt and singing with the water. For a minute it seemed very funny: his father raising his head from the leather and knife and seeing that woman on the rock in narrow red briefs. Whoa!.. For a minute Andro wanted to laugh, but grew sad because he had seen his father cutting thongs, his hair and beard white; sad for his father’s mute grave and the cemetery’s silent green, and because those dark girls had sprouted so slenderly upon the polished basalt.
His father had shaped the axe handle. He stood on an old black heap of manure, a handleless axe in his hand, playing with a pumpkin with his foot. His father sat among the hives listening, and he suddenly said:
“Father, my axe has no handle...”
“Yes, dear?..” And his father looked at him from amid his white hair and beard, mouth open.
He came heavily closer, rested his elbows on the apiary wall and smiled at his father.
“What am I to do? My axe has no handle.”
“I’ll make one, my dearest.”
In little strokes, tenderly, feebly, he smoothed and smoothed and smoothed it with glass, rough cloth, his palm, then looked at his son, mouth open. And boasted too: “I’ve made it!”
“It was old ash,” he said. “I cut it when I was your age.” And looked to see what Andranik would say, while he himself groped with certainty for a great meaning in it that seemed to be there and seemed not to be. Only an ash handle, but it had been cut so long ago. “I’ve looked,” he said. “The tree I cut it from is gone...” And again he looked at his son with his mouth open.
Then he rose and went towards the privy. He lost the narrow path, came up against the haybarn and, hunched over, began searching for his trouser buttons.
“Ah, dear father, ah...” Andro groaned, straightening his back.
Those were the poor blacksmith’s words: ah, dear mother, ah. The poor blacksmith was to hammer the axe’s edge; he glanced at it and understood that the handle was his father’s work. “Care is the habit of us elders, Andranik. Because we have lost so much. Ah, tomorrow I’ll be gone, and you’ll know I was good too, like your father, Andranik. Ah,” he said with a sad smile, “being good is the habit of us elders.” May you rest in light. “Say Sebastia. Don’t you understand? Say Svas, our home. Don’t you understand? What sort of man is this, lad, is he a tractor or a man?”
“Andranik...”
“Hey!”
“Why aren’t you working?”
“Mother, are you my chairman?”
“What, dear?”
“I’m working, working!”
“Ah, my dearest.”
The sunflowers silently made their turn, the soil drank the water in the tomato bed, the pear tree dropped a pear, and the thick buzz of a honey-stealing hornet scored the hives’ monotone concert. The headmaster’s Margo appeared round the bend in the path with buckets in her hands and swayed slowly towards the spring. The hem of her thick robe covered her knee, uncovered it, covered it, uncovered it. She spread into two halves inside the robe and drew water from the well. She stood with hands on hips and blew out a breath, pulled and released the elastic underneath through her robe, stayed a little, then broadened again, divided in the robe and gathered herself together. And when she turned with the bucket in her hand, she saw Andro standing beneath the linden.
“Good day, Comrade Margo,” said Andro.
“Hello, Andro.”
“How are you, Comrade Margo?”
“Thank you, Andro.”
“And how is Comrade Ruben?”
“Comrade Ruben is well, of course,” the headmaster’s wife said, holding a hairpin between her lips and gathering her hair at the nape of her neck.
“Indeed...” Andro said with concern. “Then why do you fetch the water?”
“Why not? What of it?”
“Well, it’s hot, and they say your heart isn’t working well.”
“Kite-kite-kite, shoo!..”
“Good grief,” Andro laughed, “that old woman is a factory, the Kirovakan chemical factory. Comrade Margo, I said factory and remembered: what are you going to do with those pups?”
The headmaster’s wife did not understand.
“Sako’s boy and your Martiros’s boy.”
“What for?”
“Don’t you know?” Andro laughed. “Good grief,” Andro laughed, “those rotten ones... You really don’t know, Comrade Margo?”
The woman fastened a button on her robe and looked blankly at Andro. He saw that she had gum in her mouth, was chewing. Slowly, soundlessly, her soft lips apart, she chewed and looked at Andro with honey-coloured eyes.
“On the mountain road those underage brats, may the earth swallow them,” Andro said grimly, “caught the blacksmith’s grandchild and wanted to do indecent things. First they tried to trick the child with an apple, promised apples, then tore the clothes by force, those rotten ones.”
“Well, well,” said the headmaster’s wife.
“What class are they in?” Andro asked sadly.
The woman picked up her buckets and went. “The eighth.”
“What will you do with them now, Comrade Margo?”
“Andra-nik...”
“How should I know?” the woman said. “Ruben hasn’t heard.”
“Andra-nik!”
“What is it, Mother?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Our Margo!”
“What, dear?”
“Ah,” Andro said irritably, “why do you need to know? Ruben’s Margo!”
“Ah, my dear.”
“There, you’ve entered it in the record,” Andro muttered.
The thick robe rippled at the backs of her knees, and above her knees her body rippled under the robe too. Their house is cool, heavy, dark from thick green curtains; there are rugs and a bearskin on the floor, a refrigerator too, and Ruben, the fox of August, reads magazines on the sofa.
“What kind of teacher are you?” Andro said, leaning back where he sat. “What kind of teachers are you?” he said, sitting up and rising. “You’ve got your diplomas and descended upon the village.” He shaped the spokes, thinking bitterly: you keep cows, keep sheep. Draw salaries. Kill a bear and pay no fine. Go to Yevpatoria: “My heart’s ill, it’s dropped.” Let me raise it, raise it so high it won’t budge again.
“Andra-nik...”
Andro was pulling back the hive cover: the cloth had stuck to the frames, came away with a soft resistance, and the jolt sent bees flying out in swarms. One nervous bee climbed the back of his hand and tangled in his sleeve. Andro blew with the smoker; it broke free from his arm and struck his forehead.
“That old woman’s lost her mind, yes!”
Out of the sparse woodland above came a donkey loaded with hay, swaying slowly onto the path.
The frames were heavy, warm honey shone in the full cells, but they were not yet capped. In two days they would cap them; in two days he must extract it. He must take out a couple of the lower frames too and put in empty ones. They would fill them. If the weather interfered, he would give them back the lower frames. His temple burned sharply, another bee tangled in his hair, then buzzed beneath his ear and vanished.
“Andra-nik...”
“Woman, what do you want?” Andro said angrily. His temple burned sharply, his neck had begun to hurt too.
The hill of hay and donkey had turned off the path and was descending along the track to Andro’s house. The donkey’s owner was not visible yet: an old man or a child, probably. “Stepan knows how to dodge work: ten years of ‘I’m ill, I’m ill,’ and his cow never lacks hay.” Andro replaced the frame, took the partly filled one beside it and leaned it against the hive, made room for it in the centre and put it in; as he spread the cloth a bee stung the back of his hand. Andro smiled: he would extract ten or fifteen kilos from this hive. More precisely, a pood. It had been a good year. He put the roof on and tried to pull the sting out of his hand, but his fingers could not grasp it. “The man really is ill, after all. Must he die before we believe him? What is one cow’s feed? A man gets a good sleep, gets up and can mow it in a day.”
The hay passed behind the fence, behind the cowshed, turned towards Andro’s house at the pear tree, and there Andro saw it was no donkey.
“Andra-nik...”
“Hey!”
“Who’s bringing hay?”
“Mariam.”
“Tell her: can’t you carry a little less?”
“You’re telling her yourself.”
She came up, bumped her load against the tree and swayed; wanted to lean against the log and rest, but could not. The hay would not fit against the log. Under her load she sat on the ground and gave a faded smile.
“When did you get back, city lady?”
“Saw me coming and you’re taking out honey?”
“Yes, a minister is coming,” Andro said. “Welcome. ‘Brother Andranik, my fuel has run out, bless you.’”
She shifted the ropes on her shoulders, shifted them again and said:
“How am I any less than a minister?”
“On the contrary,” Andro laughed, “with your load you’re more.”
“Curse the thing, it’s torn my arms off.”
“Couldn’t you have tied it a little looser?”
“The mowers tied it.”
“Woman, are you bringing it from the mountains?” Andro asked in surprise.
“Where is there hay in the village now?”
“Well done. When did you come back from town?”
“Yesterday.”
“Was the cheese selling?”
“There’s heaps of it.”
“How many days did you stay?”
“Four.”
“It shows,” Andro said.
“Have I grown prettier?”
“Very.”
“No, not like your wife.”
“You’re not to be compared. Are your eyes sharp? I’ve been stung.”
“Are you going to turn into a bull?”
“Depends. Sometimes it swells, sometimes not.”
“Bend down, bend down. It’s buried, I can’t see it.”
“Are you happy with your son-in-law?”
“He’s a hard-working lad, after all.”
“When are you marrying off the younger one?”
The sting would not come out: her fingers were rough and the ropes got in the way. Andro had leaned his bony weight upon her leg, presenting his thick head. And a piece of wood or a stone had grown hard beneath her foot.
“Bless you,” Mariam said irritably, “at least take these damned ropes off my neck.”
“If you understand that much, take them off yourself.”
She came out from under the load and stood straight, dry and hard: a pole dressed in clothes.
“She has a suitor, finished the ninth year this year. I’m marrying her off, Andro.”
“You’ll be left alone.”
“What am I now, if not alone?”
“Woman,” Andro laughed, “woman, marry yourself off too and have done with it.”
“You laugh, laugh...”
Andro drove in the last spoke, and now that the cart looked like a cart, he saw that the carters would curse him. The back was too wide. However they loaded it, it would tip and choke the oxen.
“All right, go while you’re still warm,” Andro said.
“You’ve really made something, haven’t you!”
“Don’t talk my head off,” Andro said. “Get under your load.”
But when Andro came out of the cowshed with the chain in his hand, she was still standing there, her damp clothes stuck to her back, flat-bottomed, men’s shoes too big on her feet, her breasts worn, worn, and probably without a bra. He had helped as he could, concealed Vasil’s death, lent the horse when it was needed, mown hay when he had time, hauled a log without a special request, but this was Mariam.
Mariam drank water and threw the rest into Andro’s face. “You laugh, laugh...” She tried to pinch the clothes free from her back, then reached behind and wiped her shoulder. “I can’t be bothered,” she said. “I’ve cooled down already,” and sat on the cart.
“You’re breaking it, get up! Woman!” Andro clapped his hands. “If you knew what I saw today, what I saw: a white buffalo in the water! If you want to help, bring the crowbar. You’re not blind, it’s under your feet.” He passed the crowbar through the chain, turned it with a creak and set its end against the ground. “Bring the rope. In the stall. The thick one, silly! Well done. A buffalo, what a buffalo! A good tailor could cut out three Mariams, and an Ashkhen from the remnants.”
“Did you have a good look?”
“Woman!..”
And there Mariam said:
“Damn you!.. Leave your own women, look at buffaloes.”
Now Andro became embarrassed and sad. Here she had married off a daughter, seemed to have a grandchild already, yet she was only forty.
“Mariam,” Andro said.
“What?”
“Mariam, how old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Mariam said. “I’m a young girl.”
“Are you forty?”
“Thirty-six. I’m thirty-six, Andro.”
“Well, well, well, well. Fourteen.”
“Donkey-head,” Mariam said sadly. “Donkey-head.”
“Nothing new in that,” Andro laughed.
“I was twenty when he went away, donkey-head.”
“Mariam.”
“What?”
“How many years have you been without a husband?”
Mariam looked at the pear tree, looked at the hives, then at Andro:
“You’re laughing.”
Andro played with the axe with his foot.
“Mariam... Mariam, is it very hard without a husband? Hard? I’m not asking about firewood and hay. I know about firewood and hay. Like that, without a man, is it very hard?”
Her dry lips half-open, Mariam looked at him.
“Mariam... Mariam... In all that time, don’t be offended, have you had a man?”
Scorched and dried-out, Mariam looked silently at the pear tree.
“Mariam,” Andro said, “Mariam, what do you need a cow for, why do you keep a cow, Mariam? Sell her, get married. Go and live with your daughter at your son-in-law’s house. Why torment yourself, Mariam? How many times will you live, foolish woman? What business have you keeping a cow, Mariam? Mariam,” Andro said with his head lowered, “don’t carry hay on your back any more. Don’t kill yourself, Mariam.”
And because she was light as a dry branch and the divan’s boards did not bend beneath her, Andro remembered her load and the rough ropes. And because it was now hard to draw back, Andro thought that life was short. And because her breasts were withered, Andro cursed the enormous woman lying by the water. And because her shoulders had been blackened by the ropes, Andro remembered Comrade Margo’s gum-chewing mouth. And because she was weak as a killed bird and tears ran from her eyes, Andro pitied her. Andro loved her because she was helpless, trembling, hot, burning. Burning like an oven.
Against the white window a bee struggled to get out; from the wall looked Andro in a tie and Ashkhen with painted lips, and the deer on the carpet. Then the clock’s yellow foot glinted in the half-dark; Ashkhen’s thick checked shawl hung on the hook beside the door. Somewhere far away a cock crowed and was answered from beneath the window: cock-a-doodle-doo...
“Kite-kite-kite, shoo!..”
“Ashkhen will kill me.”
The cuts left by the ropes showed, her neck black, black, her body white, and on the white the bruises of the rough load.
“Woman, wasn’t there any soft hay?” Andro said angrily.
“Woman,” Andro said irritably, “why do you wear these thick things in this summer heat?”
“There are narrow, thin ones, red,” Andro thought. “When I go to Kirovakan I’ll buy you some.”
“Tell the truth,” Andro laughed. “Was I better, or Sahak?”
“Woman, you shameless one,” Andro said angrily, “who was Sahak that you wouldn’t refuse him?”
“Another time,” Andro ordered, “I don’t want to hear of it! As long as I’m here.”
“I understood too late,” Andro said sadly. “A pity I understood too late. You’re to blame,” Andro smiled. “You should have come and told me. Have you asked about hay? Asked for the horse? You should have come and said. How is it in Russia?”
“You’re laughing,” Mariam smiled sadly. “You’re all the same. He pestered me so much I could no longer say no, and then stood there with his mouth open while that mule of his held my hair and drew back her fist. They might at least have felt shame before my grown daughters. Pah, curse Vasil’s buried head, leaving me in this fire while he took care of himself...”
“All right,” Andro said. “Don’t talk my head off.”
Andro came out of the house: Gikor the fox sat beneath the pear tree, pretending he had not yet seen Andro.
“I must keep a dog,” Andro thought, and remembered that he had a dog, up in the mountains.
“Were you asleep, Andre?”
“Yes,” Andro said, “asleep. Our Mariam came and woke me.” Andro yawned and said, “What’s new?”
“Your pears are ripe.”
“Yes,” Andro said. “Try them.”
“No teeth left. Your bees are working well, Andre,” Gikor praised him. “Half of mine didn’t want an upper storey. There was a good colony, good last year, but this year it’s swarmed twice. Gone mad. Will you distil liquor, Andre?”
“We’ll see.”
“Where will all this fruit go? Distil it, it’s a shame to waste it. Andre,” Gikor looked sharply at him, “I’ve come with a request. Ask me what request.”
“My bees have swarmed, I have no hive... Either you’ll have one ready-made, or make one today or tomorrow. You’re certainly thriving.” “Why,” Andro said suddenly, “how old are you that you have no teeth?”
“Sixty-seven.”
“My friend!” Andro laughed and was annoyed at once. “Why lie to me? I’m not the pension commission!”
Mariam came noiselessly out of the house and stood beside the post, her hands held over her lap.
Seeing them both on the same veranda and noticing Andro’s black hair and beard, Gikor decided they had been involved a very long time: “a woman alone, it would be hard without that.” So it was Andro who had brought the log at her door the winter before last. A good dry log, the standing dead tree on the mountain road. He himself had meant to cut it, but whoever cut it had already cut and carried it off.
“I was born in ninety. Ten from then, fifty-seven from now: sixty-seven. I remember you as a child as though it were today.”
“I’m joking, joking,” Andro laughed. “Don’t be offended.”
“Even if it isn’t a joke, why should I be offended with you?”
Mariam passed noiselessly by Andro, by Gikor, stopped for a moment beside the hay, then put her arms into the ropes, sat down at once and went on all fours. As she passed him, Andro saw again that she was flat-bottomed. She stayed quiet there beneath the hay, gathering strength to rise.
“Shall I come and help, woman?” Gikor said, even taking a step.
She did not answer, then lifted a hand and knee from the ground, spread herself and rose slowly. Before she had lifted the other hand from the earth, Andro saw her darkened face and swollen neck.
“Well, you’re still strong!” Andro said as she rose.
She rose, shook the load into place on her back, and before she turned Andro saw her faded smile again. He heard her words from the path, beside the pear tree:
“Of course I’m strong.”
The load of hay struck the pear branches; she tilted, almost fell, then backed away and pushed forwards. The branches sprang free and ripe pears fell.
“May I take some pears?” Already beneath her load she was half-squatting, half-bending.
“Silly woman!” Andro shouted. “They’re right there going into your mouth. Pick them from above!”
Somehow she picked up the fallen ones, plucked some from above and even laughed.
“A very good woman,” said Gikor the fox. “A young, strong woman, after all.”
So Gikor wanted the horse. He had a few poods of wheat in Kazakh, five or so; it was impossible with his own horse. The roads were bad, he would go at night, and his horse was stupid. Strong, certainly, but stupid, easily frightened; the other day it had thrown the old woman. The roads were bad; it would smash everything to pieces. Nor was there much: five poods, six? He would go at night so the horse would not be hot, give it a quiet day with barley before it, return at night so the horse would not be hot.

Ashkhen finished milking before everyone else and handed in her milk; she handed in the most. She scratched the cows, polished them, loved and caressed them, cleaned the calf shed—hers was the cleanest calf shed—handed the fat, lively calves over to the calf-herder, put her tent in order and made it pretty, washed with coarse soap separately and scented soap separately, combed her hair and tied on her headscarf. Others, if they comb their hair, do not wear a scarf; if they wear a scarf, they do not comb their hair. But she is clean underneath and on top. She put on her gold ring—she is a married woman, after all—and fastened her gold watch. And so clean, so exemplary, so honest, so punctual, so beautiful, she stood before Levon, the farm manager.
And so humble, modest, so meek, so Armenian, so much of the village, she did not speak; with such respect she waited for Uncle Levon to speak.
“What is it, Ashkhen?”
“Uncle Levon...” And so shy, so far from the city’s shameless women and the village’s sharp tongues, she waited for Uncle Levon to understand for himself what Ashkhen, the exemplary worker, wanted.
“Are you going somewhere, Ashkhen?”
Ashkhen nodded.
“If you’ll be back for the evening milking, why ask? It’s your free time, do what you please.”
That is Ashkhen: she will not take a step without permission. And Ashkhen understands everything: she knows the mower working in the valley below will want matsun. And Ashkhen is generous: she will take matsun from her own cows. And Ashkhen is caring: she will carry it herself, straining her arm to the point of pain. And Ashkhen is considerate: she will give them food, while she, modest, meek, humble, waits with her eyes on the ground and plays with the earth with a blade of grass. And she will go with Mariam to the spring for water; they are old friends from girlhood, understand each other without words, and understand that the women must bring the mower’s water.
Ashkhen washed the bucket well, placed it beneath the reed spout and checked that it would not tip over when full. She took Mariam aside so grass and earth would not fall into the bucket, removed Mariam’s headscarf so it would not tear, seized all her hair at once so the handful would not be small and the hairs would not be torn out, and struck her shoulders, breasts, belly, back, buttocks, then again her shoulders, breasts, belly, back, buttocks. Then she bent her head down and struck only her back, her back, her back, so there would be pain but no bruises. Then Ashkhen gave Mariam water to drink, gave her her own comb to arrange her hair, tied her headscarf and took the buckets herself, because Mariam could hardly stay on her feet.