It was as though we were acting out an old story: my father in his sheepskin hat, a saddlebag over his shoulder, the dog and I following, entered the teacher-training college. My father was a shepherd, his hat was sheepskin, the saddlebag patterned, Bob the dog a wolfhound, a shaggy gampr, and I was red-cheeked, fourteen years old from head to toe. We were poorly received. First by the headmaster’s little dog: it began to yap in little bursts beside my father’s boots, then, with a subtle sense of its own stature, decided our Bob was its match and began to whine beneath his folded jaw. Bob looked at the little dog, then at me, and I thought Bob smiled. Yes, he certainly smiled. The little dog bit Bob’s leg and ran away squealing, as though it had not bitten him but had been bitten itself. Bob sprang after it, but my father said:
“Now!” Bob looked at my father. “You mustn’t!” my father said.
Bob lay down and licked his leg. The little dog crept up and bit him again. Bob flew into a rage, but my father said again:
“You mustn’t, Bob!”
And the angry Bob stopped licking and let the blood flow.
“Ah, you’d have a hard time here, my brother,” the old algebra teacher said to Bob.
And the headmaster made fun of my father:
“What good timing!”
My father was pleased.
“Yes, I thought I mustn’t let the boy be late, so I left my work and brought him.”
“What good timing, bringing him now!”
“Well, of course. Let the boy become somebody. To hell with work, there’s always work.”
The headmaster sized me up. Sized me up is too much; there was too little of me to size up: he looked for a second. Truly, I was not yet somebody; somebody was only going to be made of me.
“What can I say? You’re late. Classes have begun, and you’re only arriving now.”
“What?” My father seemed not to have heard.
“Late, late,” the headmaster said loudly, as to a deaf man.
“What do you mean, late?”
“I mean this: what’s today’s date?”
“By my reckoning, the first.”
“By mine too, well done. Admissions closed on the twenty-eighth. That is how you’re late,” the headmaster explained, quietly mocking my father.
“But the boy’s a top pupil. How can that be?”
Now the headmaster assumed the face of a philosopher worn out by explaining the world. They explain and explain and explain, but these uncomprehending people do not understand, and one is forced to give up explaining and content oneself with irony.
“Did he earn those top marks himself, or did your headmaster give them to him?”
“I earned them, the headmaster gave them,” I said.
“Yes, he earned them, Gerasim gave them,” my father said.
“Gerasim, meaning the headmaster?” asked the headmaster.
“The headmaster,” said my father.
“He’s your cousin, isn’t he?” The headmaster stirred in his armchair.
“No, a little more distant. We’re related.”
“So Gerasim gave them, you say?”
“He gave them.”
“I earned them, he gave them,” I said.
“Shh!” My father pinched my back, a little below my back.
“How is his Armenian, for instance?”
“You hear him speaking, and his handwritin’s good too.”
“Good handwritin’, you say?” The headmaster brightened.
My father grew suspicious.
“Handwritin’s what matters,” the headmaster said, narrowing his eyes.
“Not handwritin’. Handwriting,” I corrected him calmly.
My father realised the headmaster had been mocking us and grew sad.
“So we’re late...” my father said, with no hope left.
“No, why? Come next year.”
“Let others come next year. I’ve come now,” I said.
“You mustn’t, Bab!” my father said.
My father exists precisely to restrain Bob when some little dog bites his leg, and to restrain Bab when some little dog’s owner mocks his father.
“Well, now you tell me what to do,” my father said helplessly, but the headmaster did not hear; he had put on his hat and was going home.
My father looked helplessly about. Bob was weeping over there, I stood beside my father blinking calmly, and beside Bob stood the teacher, smoke clinging to his moustache. The teacher winked at my father and said:
“Comrade Chaloyan!” the teacher called. “Varag... Comrade Chaloyan,” he said, coming over, “take the fledgling in.”
The headmaster looked at us hesitantly. “But they’re late, Comrade Hakhumyan.”
“A good fledgling. And they have a good dog. Remember the red guard dog at Varagavank? When we went there together. When I took you with me...”
He was reminding him that they had uttered their first curse and made their first declaration of love in the same dialect. He was simply reminding him of his birthplace, that they came from the same homeland, and that he was asking.
“But will he be able to learn?..”
Now all of us said together, “He will!” as though we were second-year schoolchildren.
“All right. His handwritin’s good.”
My father smiled humbly, perhaps wanting to promise like a pupil that he would say “handwriting” from now on.
Then we went to buy me shoes and came back to the college. My father entered the classroom, looked at my desk, compared my shoes with the others’, went out through the gate, called the dog and left. I went into the classroom for algebra. Five minutes into the lesson, Bob yelped at the classroom door, then the headmaster’s dog squealed nervously. I raised my hand, explained, asked permission and went out; all that time Bob was shaking the little dog.
“Bob, go,” I said.
He wagged his tail. I explained that he could not stay here all year until summer, without sheep. He was doubtful. I wanted to explain clearly once more, from the beginning, why he must not stay, when the teacher came out of the classroom.
“Hovivyan, where have you got to?..”
“Just a moment, Comrade Hakhumyan. I’ll make him understand something and come in.”
“Make him understand, then. Let’s see.”
I explained again. But he wagged his tail. I had to remind him of his duty.
“Where are your sheep? Go!”
He went.
“Ah, algebra will be hard for you.”
“I had a five at school.”
“A real one?”
“No,” I said. “But I like literature. Geography too. Those are real fives. Algebra was given to me. A good dog, wasn’t he? There are four brothers, all alike. A nomadic caravan was passing through our mountains; I stole them from it. They were tiny, each the size of a big potato. Then the owner came and wanted them back; we gave him a sheep and he went away. The farm manager asked about the sheep; we brought one of our own and put it in its place. My mother made a separate quarrel about that too; we said the wolf had eaten it.”
“Ah, Hovivyan, life will be hard for you.”
I do not know about life, but learning algebra was hard for me. For a while Comrade Hakhumyan called on me and explained, starting with the most elementary things; those I understood. Then we went on to how those elementary things worked together. We were almost at algebra when he broke off and smiled. From this I understood that neither the working together nor the elementary things had come anywhere near my head. He did not reproach me, and it did not occur to me to feel ashamed. Then he stopped calling me to the blackboard. Each time he paused for a moment at my name and, shaking his head, entered a failing mark.
But in my mind were the mountains, the dogs, when thunder cracks in the dark and they pursue the wolf, yelping.
At the end of the third term, when the third failing mark in algebra had been entered, the headmaster said with a smirk:
“You earned it, he gave it, you say? It has become a principle with you: you earn, they give. Go home. You’re staying for nothing.”
And Comrade Hakhumyan simply changed the failing mark to a pass, right in front of him. He looked at me for a long time over his glasses, like a grandfather, like a father. But I did not think to thank him like a grandson or a son. In my mind were the mountains, when the full moon rises to my father’s pipe, the dogs half-dozing with heads on paws listen to the stillness, and my nine brothers sleep on one divan, all with large front teeth and half-open mouths.
He gave me a pass for the fourth term, but was criticised for it, and on the written promotion examination he gave me a failing mark. A failing mark is given for a wrong solution, but I had not solved anything wrongly: I had simply copied out the questions neatly and gone to the mountains. The headmaster brought me back from there. Solve them, he said. In his view, life was questions and their correct solutions.
“My handwriting’s good, isn’t it?” I said, and went back to the mountains. Gevorg, who sat beside me, took my paper, thought a little, said it was easy and solved it.
“This isn’t your handwriting,” said the headmaster.
“What does it matter?” I said. “The questions have been answered. Are there any problems left unsolved?..”
Comrade Hakhumyan agreed with me entirely, but had given me a failing mark.
“You’ll study over the summer,” he said, and it was plain he was repeating someone else’s words.
“It’s impossible to solve problems in the mountains,” I said.
The headmaster was about to laugh, but Hakhumyan said:
“That’s true, my boy. The mountains don’t like problems.” And the headmaster waited. “What do mountains need to solve problems for? They exist precisely to be beaten by hail, to grow green again without even thinking that their green will be beaten by hail again,” Comrade Hakhumyan continued.
“I don’t know about that, but you can’t solve a single problem in the mountains.”
The headmaster decided privately that teacher Hakhumyan’s soundness of mind was questionable, and said to me:
“If you can’t solve problems in the mountains, you’ll be out... If being beaten by hail means nothing to them and they don’t think about it, I hope they won’t reproach you for being thrown out. You’ll go and become a herdsman.”
I said goodbye and went to the mountains. At home I said I had failed subjects to make up, and if I did not pass I would be out. While they looked at me with eyes full of longing, they did not understand. Then, when I had mingled and disappeared among the nine children, my mother nudged my side:
“Study!”
In the pen the shepherds were shaping the lead goat’s horns. He, this billy goat, had thought it suitable to grow his horns as his wild ancestors had, in a broad circle round the ear. The shepherds considered it ugly, unbecoming to the flock and to themselves. They took hot lavash from the tonir, wrapped it round the horns, warmed them and straightened them.
“What business is it of yours? Let them grow as they please,” I said.
“It’s not as he pleases!” the shepherds grunted as they straightened the horns.
They straightened them and set them upright side by side on his head.
Then they cut his beard.
“Perhaps you could give him a moustache too,” I said.
“Would it suit him?..” the shepherds wondered.
In the evening, as they brought the flock down to the camp, the goat stood a long time on the hilltop, looking at the darkening distances filling with thought. He pretended to be pondering. In truth he stood there only so the rising full moon could sit upon his horns. At first the moon enclosed the whole goat in a halo, only the horns outside it; then the moon rose and rose but could not reach the tips of his horns. The goat took pity on the moon and jumped down from the rock, and the moon sprang at once to the tips of the horns.
“Come inside and study while the children are asleep,” my mother said.
“The moon’s climbing onto the goat’s horns.”
“It’ll climb without you. Come inside and study.”
“It can’t climb without me.”
Then, as the slow-witted moon considered rising above the horn tips to show that it needed no support, the goat pulled his horns away from it and used them to scratch his tail, beneath his tail.
“Come inside and study,” my mother said.
“Wait, the moon’s blushed.”
“You should blush. You’ve got subjects to make up.”
“Nobody’s made fun of me.”
“Study, Babik,” my mother said. “I’ll beat you.”
Beating was not in her nature. Weeping was more her way. She had come weeping from a township near the city to be a bride in the mountains, with soft-eyed city boys in her thoughts, and had never reconciled herself to my father’s sheepskin hat, his hairy face, the existence of sheep, milking, dogs. My studies would dry her eyes. But since I had failed subjects, she waited: should she lift her apron to her eyes, or would I study and she could leave it down? And my mother wept. That was the next day. I had sat down and wanted to do exercises when Bob yelped on the opposite mountainside. The camp’s forty dogs went alert. Then a little puff of smoke appeared and a shot was heard. The dogs tore away from the camp! In the very first half-minute, Fleetfoot appeared. On either side, a little behind, went his two brothers. All three black and long-bodied. The other dogs, all white, streamed after the leader. Last came a cluster of little puppies and the ten of us children, all of us red. I sprang onto the farm manager’s horse and passed the puppies. At first all ten of us wanted to get on, but we could not fit; there was not that much room. Bob was after the wolf; when we arrived he left the pursuit to us and returned to the sheep. We ranged over the mountains almost until evening. Then we lost the wolf. We were bewildered and did not know what to do when Bob yelped beside the flock again. We sprang away... This time he himself led us, His Majesty Bob. He caught it, we strangled it. My father slaughtered the injured sheep and gave it to the dogs. When we returned, my mother was weeping.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“Why aren’t you studying?”
“We strangled it,” I said.
“It isn’t only wolves you strangle. You strangle people too, you and your father.”
There were only a few white hairs on her head, but her face said my mother’s hair would turn entirely white now. And she was only thirty-seven. I understood that I must study. But I had lost the book. I could not remember where I had flung it in the shouting and commotion.
“My boy strangled a wolf,” my father said that evening.
“It isn’t only wolves. I strangle people too.”
“If you hadn’t gone with the dogs, they wouldn’t have caught it,” my father said. “They don’t dare catch it. You’ve spoilt the skin badly, a pity, but how can you strangle it without spoiling the skin?”
“I’ve lost my book,” I said. “You can’t study here. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
I told Hakhumyan that you could not study in the mountains, but I absolutely had to learn algebra; my mother was thirty-seven but going grey, and if I studied well she would not go grey.
“How are the dogs?” he asked.
“To hell with the dogs,” I said. “I must learn algebra. My mother’s going grey.”
“Yes, those mothers...” he sighed.
“Did you have a mother?”
“Yes. I studied for her.”
“And where is she now?”
“In Van, in the cemetery.”
“Is Van in Turkey?”
“No, Hovivyan, no. Turkey is in Van.”
“You studied for her, and then...”
“I studied for her, then she was killed, then I was left for myself alone.”
“And is it good like that, just for yourself?” I asked.
“You soon tire of living.”
“You have time to grow tired?”
“Oh, Hovivyan, very soon. In a year.”
“And the other years?”
“If the remaining years were taken away, you wouldn’t protest.”
“That’s bad,” I said. “Would you study with me?”
“Bad and good, who knows. You grow tired either way. In one case you run after wolves with the dogs; that is how you grow tired, very soon. In the other they drag you into the kitchen to peel potatoes, as though you have work to do and must do it. But what work is that? Was it worth being born for?..”
At first I seemed to understand our conversation, then it was like learning algebra: I did not understand how the thoughts worked together.
“Whatever the case,” I went back to the beginning, “if my mother wants it, I must study. And how long will the headmaster keep laughing at me? I must learn and settle accounts with him...”
“He isn’t a bad man, Hovivyan... Life needs him. Without him we would die of laziness. We are terribly lazy, you know...”
Then we studied: he explained, I understood. In the breaks we talked, he of Van, I of the mountains. A month like that. I had told him about the goat a hundred times. At the end of the month, when I was entirely buried in algebra and he wanted me to tell him about the goat again, I began to doubt his soundness of mind.
I made up my failed subject with a top mark. The headmaster was delighted. From then on, at meetings, I was always the example of someone reformed.
“Take Hovivyan Babik as an example: prodigious abilities and prodigious laziness. We countered laziness with strictness, and that same Hovivyan Babik became a top pupil.”
I assumed a meek expression. I thought there was someone else inside me besides that meek one, a great fighter, sharp-tongued, who had not yet forgotten “handwritin’.” Then I felt he would not wake, perhaps had never existed at all, and meekness was the best thing in the world.
Soon Hakhumyan was sent into retirement. At first I visited now and then: he told me about Van, I about the mountains. He knew our mountains by heart. He was growing bored with the goat and the wolves.
“Something else, Hovivyan, something else.”
I had nothing else to tell. The something else was now algebra.
“Ah!” He would wave his hand. Then he would say, “When your mother grows old and it is all the same to her whether you are a teacher or a shepherd, get up and go to the mountains, let the dogs loose after the wolf and run... run... run... run so far!..”
He died, and I was kept on at the college as an algebra teacher. Bob often yelped in my thoughts. I would ask people who came down from the mountains:
“How was Bob?”
“Bob?” they laughed. “Bob was well. He said: send shoes for your brothers, sizes thirty-three to forty-one. They want shoes!”
And Bob shrank and went inside a shoe.