I
The bucket was not where the family of deer had dozed: father, mother, and their little fawn of a son. The bucket was not there. You cannot call it a pen, because a pen means a crowd of dirty sheep and a tasteless joke. A patch the size of a rug, where the deer family had dozed before the boy arrived, cannot be called a pen; nor can it be called the deer’s resting place, their seat, their sanctuary, because people will come armed with guns. You must swallow your saliva and keep this place inside you just as it is, nameless, where a family of father-mother-fawn deer dozed a little while ago: a flat patch the size of a rug, three red deer, a raspberry bush yellow-green in a shaft of light, and the silent forest. Below the raspberry bush, in the raspberry thicket, in the silence, the boy gathers raspberries. They come away easily, because the boy found the thicket on the very day they should be picked, and not a berry falls to the ground, because every bush in this thicket belongs to the boy alone. The deer belong to the boy alone; the deer’s sanctuary belongs to the boy alone, and his full bucket is there. One, two, three places where the deer lay, and a little way from the flattened raspberry bushes is the boy’s bucket. The bucket is full already, but you cannot tell anyone where this thicket is, because they will come in a gang. They will come and pick, trample, eat their fill or not eat their fill, wrestle, roll about, say stupid things about the teacher’s dress and go down to the village drumming on their buckets. And since they will take no raspberries, they will take the good news of the deer. The grown-ups will tease them: really? Really, really? The grown-ups will not listen, but suddenly, quietly, as if stepping off the road to urinate, they will enter the forest. There will be no shot, no smoke will rise, they will say nothing to each other; they will only look and blink with a villager’s calm. But the deer will be there no longer.
Holding a burdock leaf full of raspberries against his belly, the boy did not see the bucket beside the deer’s throne, where he himself had put it and felt in his mind: here I am picking my raspberries in my raspberry thicket, near my deer. Nor did the boy find the yellow-green raspberry bush, and he thought he had mistaken the place. There was a solitary raspberry bush, but it was not yellow-green. A little way off, a solitary nettle was yellow-green. So the shaft of light had slipped off the raspberry bush, gone over to the nettle and made it yellow-green. No, the boy had not mistaken the place: it was the very place where he had put the bucket.
The boy saw that he was being emptied of himself, growing deaf, and disgust was swelling inside him against whoever had been here and moved the bucket. Inside himself he heard that person’s furtive chuckle, saw his face, the face of an intimate conspirator, sensed the thief awakening in him, who might suddenly turn a friendly joke into earnest. The boy was disgusted by his joke, disgusted by his intimacy, disgusted with him for coming and planting himself right above this raspberry thicket. The back of the boy’s head felt his gaze; the boy was disgusted by his gaze. The boy’s back felt his breath—he had held his breath—and the boy hated his breath. The boy turned to see him behind him, saw him, but then he was not there, and the boy’s belly was wet. The raspberries had been crushed in the burdock leaf, juice was seeping between his fingers, and the shirt over his belly had turned ink-coloured.
The bucket was beside the yellow-green nettle. So that his human scent, his mother’s scent on the bucket and the scent of their whole house would not fall upon the deer’s throne and remain there, and so that in the boy’s thoughts the father-mother-fawn deer would always be there and he would be gathering his raspberries near them, the boy had put the bucket away from their sleeping place, beside the nettle. Yet he still hated whoever had almost been here a moment ago, whoever had caused the raspberries to be crushed in the burdock leaf against his belly. The bucket was a little short of full, a finger’s breadth, as though someone had sat beside it and eaten the top layer berry by berry. You could lean over the fragrance, hands on your knees, look, grow deaf, and see with what whisper the fragrance parted in time, how the raspberries settled, how the bucket became less full and looked as though someone had sat there, pulled it between his feet and eaten the top layer... The boy hated whoever could put the raspberries he had picked between his feet like that and eat, a little in jest, a little in contempt, but on the whole indifferently, as an ox steps on your foot.
The boy put the burdock leaf with the crushed raspberries on the bucket, opened the leaf, spread it over the whole surface and spread the crushed berries over it, so that if people he met stopped him, they would eat a berry or two of the crushed ones. They would eat the crushed ones, praise cross-eyed Yeghish’s darling son, and wipe their fingers in his hair as though stroking his head. Beneath the layer of crushed raspberries the burdock leaf’s green edges showed, showing that the darling son was carrying very good raspberries for the big rabbit and the little bunnies, but the boy left the green edges exposed.
Then the boy sat beside the bucket, murmuring and swaying. He did not want to go home, did not want to remain in the forest. If he wished, he heard the village voices; if he wished, the village was gone and there was only the forest’s silence. If there were no people, the world would be sad. There would be much grass, the river would flow through the grass, a white butterfly would be driven this way and that above it... It would be sad and beautiful. Now it is neither sad nor beautiful, nor do you know what to do. Why does the falcon circle? Why do the trees stand? They stand and only stand. It circled and circled and, say, swooped and struck a quail; then what? Then it circles again. When it circles, it is beautiful and sad; you do not know what meaning there is, but there is a beautiful, sad meaning. How did the earth come into being? Where do the rivers go? What does a horse think when it neither grazes nor moves, but stands thinking for hours? From which sea, over what forests do the clouds come? Why are evenings so sad, thoughtful and heavy, and mornings so clean and foolish? Why did our Armenian people, when the steppes were free, not go and go and go until the great sea blocked their way, but remain in this ravine? Where does the world end? Why does our heart flutter, what does it want? Then you look at that falcon close up and your hands withdraw into your sleeves: its beak, talons and eyes scratch.
In the sky over distant seas the clouds open their wings and set out to rain upon our forest in our ravine. The rain rustles peacefully among the leaves. And thus a beech grove lives, a couple of deer, a couple of oaks, a few springs and a stream. Why cannot the scorched steppes along the way draw down and rob our clouds, bring them out of the sky, wring them dry and rob them? Perhaps our clouds pass very high over the scorched deserts, beyond the reach of the deserts’ breath. No, heavy clouds cannot pass high over the deserts; heavy clouds move licking the earth. The clouds have their own special way into our ravine: they leave the sea and come upstream, upstream through the gorges. They take water from the river too, not too much, lest they burst on the spot, and not too little, so they will be heavy and the wind will not carry them out of the gorge. They cross the mountain at night; you can hear them rustling through the sheep’s wool, and they descend along the little gullies into our gorge. From the mountaintop the shepherd looks and sees that the yellow desert has remained a yellow desert, while the cloud has dampened the sheep’s wool a little and is departing down the gorge. The shepherd spits and curses after the cloud. What does he say? I do not know Turkish. The cloud has crossed the desert; our cloud is coming towards our forest, while the shepherd remains thirsty on the mountaintop. His sheep lick one another’s damp wool. The sheep eat wool, and the shepherd goes mad because the whole flock will perish. The shepherd wants to frighten and scatter the flock; he gives a particular Turkish shriek, the flock scatters, then stops, bleats, and the sheep come together bleating. The shepherd’s cloak is damp. He shouts, but the sheep do not run; they gather and gnaw his cloak, his hands, lick his eyes. What can I do, the boy said. Move to town yourself.
The boy pulled his hands into his sleeves, and he was not the shepherd, but something like that was happening somewhere at that moment. The boy groaned and heard his own groan. And his father’s groan. And his family’s groan. And the whole school laughing at his groan. And the grown-ups’ fleeting, silent look at his father: “Yeghish is thinking,” and their look is full of stifled mockery. Nothing is written in their look about devouring deer, nor even anything to the contrary; all that is written there is that cross-eyed Yeghish has twelve bunnies and the twelve bunnies sit beneath twelve trees, thinking about the Turk in the desert and groaning.
The boy rose, stood and saw the village between the trees. The boy picked up the bucket, the bucket was heavy, and he stood facing the entire village with his burden in his hand.
II
“Kite, kite, kite, shoo! Shoo-shoo!” Grandmother was working: every minute she warned the neighbourhood’s hens about the kite and thought she was working.
The adze or the axe gave a dull knock against the wood, knocked, knocked, clinked and rang sharply: the axe, then; the iron wedge had sprung out. Uncle was making a cart and was now splitting a shaft; the iron wedge tilted and flew out. Uncle did not swear. Uncle is not a man who swears. He looks silently after the wedge, then goes swaying over, stands beside it for a minute, and suddenly bends as though breaking in two, picks it up and returns. He sways not from side to side but back and forth, like the head of a walking horse. The axe and wedge, or the sledgehammer and wedge, clinked, clattered and suddenly gave a heavy whine. Whined again. Again. The last sound was short and muffled. The wedge had sunk all the way into the wood over there, while the boy in the forest waited with clenched teeth to hear the splitting wood crack. The wood was silent and deaf, the wedge was suffocating in the wood, and with the wedge the boy was suffocating. And Uncle was not helping the wedge. Uncle stood with the sledgehammer in his hand, waiting for the wood to split now, searching with his eyes for another wedge, but mostly waiting for the wood to split.
“Dear Arayik, Ara-yik... Arayik, Ara...”
The boy grimaced and shook the call from his ears, and understood that Uncle had picked up the wedge from beside the wall and was bringing it, swaying. Now he had arrived, now he stood beside the wood listening to its muffled groan; now he had suddenly bent as though breaking in two and set the wedge’s point at the place where the split had already passed but was not visible. Uncle had now raised the axe and would fix the wedge in place.
The axe did not come down. It was quiet. The single wedge was suffocating in the wood, and Uncle was not helping. Or had the wood already opened its white heart in the sun and was already growing dim in the sun, while Uncle blinked and tried to think of some meaning for that white heart and could not? The boy understood that he would be there at Uncle’s door, reaching raspberries in a burdock leaf to Uncle across the split ash; his hand would remain extended to Uncle like that for a moment, and it would be in the fresh smell of wood. And thus, silently, they would look at one another: the white heart—himself—Uncle. And the sunflower.
You cannot ask Uncle foolish questions. Does a horse think or not? When mist creeps up the ravines towards the camp and you sit watching, why is it somehow frightening, why does your back prickle? Why are a Mongol’s eyes narrow? Let them be narrow, they see, that is enough, but you cannot understand what the Mongol intends towards you behind those narrow eyes: does he think of killing you or greeting you? Are Turks Mongols? Do Turks cry? Do Turks laugh? Is their laughter like ours, or of another kind, so you do not know whether it is laughter or an evil thought? Does a sheep really go mad with thirst? Could it be that a mad sheep was drawn on the old Turks’ flag and our Armenians fled in fear? You can sit at Uncle’s door, groan and forget your old questions, because Uncle is there, and the apiary and the pear tree. And the sunflower. The boy sowed a sunflower at their door. That was long ago, when he was little; the boy sat at Uncle’s door for several days, but Uncle did not think to give him his adze. And just as the boy’s sunflower wanted to grow bright, the bunnies made it vanish. And it was good that Uncle did not understand that as the boy sat groaning beside the pear tree in the smell of wood, he wanted Uncle’s adze in his thoughts. Among so many bunnies it is impossible to have anything. What belongs to the boy and the bunnies cannot take and devour is sitting at Uncle’s door. In a day and a summer the boy goes to a hundred places, but afterwards remembers only that he sat at Uncle’s door in the smell of wood.
He ought to go down to the village, go home, but the boy did not want to go. He felt that he did not want to go and thought it was because at least his bucket, before being swallowed up by the heap of bunnies, should remain beside him a little longer, under the beech, in the silence. Then the boy saw that he and Uncle’s name had long been side by side in the silence.
ANDRANIK KARR
1916
I was tending pigs
it was a cloudy day
The boy subtracted Uncle’s time from his own time, and it was so little, forty-one years, yet he was afraid to descend into Uncle’s time. And the boy did not understand: that time gone by, when the Turks had killed Grandfather Mesrop Ghazaryan’s father and secretly killed two others as well, and the beech had stood just so, the writing had been incised just so on the silent bark and the heartwood had been just so inside, inside the inside, deaf, silent, dark... Was all that so much time or little, or was it not time, but something else? Perhaps it was beech time, horse time: when the horse stands thinking, your lessons are over, you have been sent to the shop and have gone and come back, now it is twilight, you have crossed the stream, the stream sparkles and murmurs, you are going to fetch the kid, your time and voices pass over the horse’s ears, but the horse stands somehow inside itself, its time too is inside it, and it thinks.
The boy sat under the tree beside the trunk, rubbed his hand against it, held it there and looked up the height of the tree. The trunk went up and up, the boy’s breath caught, and still the trunk went up until it divided and became two trunks. His head thrown back, groaning painfully, the boy took a breath, waited a little and went up along the trunks to the crowns. Above them was only the white sky, with nowhere to hold on. The crowns swayed. They went and came. The crowns went away, went slowly and stubbornly, could have gone and gone, but at a certain moment stood still; the tree groaned, the boy groaned with the tree, and the crowns began to come back. They came back unwillingly, and the moment they stood directly above the trunk, the tree shook itself and rose higher, a little higher. The tree had grown that way, swaying and swaying. Gripping the knife handle tightly, his head thrown back until his neck hurt, the boy began to descend along the twin trunks, came down and wedged himself between them. The rest, all the way to the ground, was entirely smooth and thick. The boy understood that the twin trunks did not sway together but approached, pressed together and drew apart, and the tree groaned when they drew apart and groaned when they pressed together. With an inanimate force the twin trunks came towards one another and the gap narrowed, but the trunk was smooth and thick. You could cling to it like a cat and remain pressed against it, but it was impossible to climb down that trunk. The boy came out of the gap and, not as quickly as things happen in thought and not as slowly as they happen in reality, climbed towards the crown, afraid to look down at the narrow gap. Beyond the crowns was the dizzying sky, there was nothing to hold, the branches were thin, and beneath a dense cloud an eagle soared freely. “It’s not my affair. You climbed up; you climb down,” said the boy, and saw that his hand was on the tree’s trunk, the trunk and his hand were together, his hand was there temporarily and could part from the trunk at any moment, and the tree lived within itself and groaned within itself, and Uncle’s name lived with the tree. The tree had taken the letters into itself, widened them as it widened, stretched them as it stretched; the letters had spread through the bark.
KARR meant Karryan. ANDRANIK KARRYAN—ARAYIK KARRYAN. It was strange that Uncle was there, “tending pigs,” and here at the same time, making a cart. A kind of horse time. Where Uncle had sat, the boy sat exactly as Uncle had, his legs spread wide; his groin ached as Uncle’s groin had ached, but he did not change position because that was the most convenient position for writing anything on this tree. Uncle was a Karryan, and he too was a Karryan; Uncle’s groin had ached, and his groin ached, and he was with Uncle in the old tree time, “tending pigs.” The boy rose, his groin ached, he stood with his feet wide apart and looked:
ANDRANIK KARR
1916
I was tending pigs
it was a cloudy day
ARAYIK KARR
“Arayik, Ara-yik... However much you’ve picked, you’ve picked. Come, come...”
The boy understood that he had been in the forest a very long time, that his mother’s voice had been passing over his ears all along, that Grandmother too had called like that, and in his ears, in distant times, was Grandmother’s call to Uncle: Andranik, Andra-nik... Leave the pigs, come... Leave the pigs, come... “I’ll come now,” the boy answered in his thoughts, moved away from the tree and stopped.
He stopped, put his hands in his pockets, looked another way and became an innocent passer-by from the village, going about his business. A passer-by who thinks... who is going, like this, to fetch their kid, not searching on the beech trunk for the names of Andranik of the Karrs and Arayik of the Karrs. Thinking of the kid, the boy went; thinking of the kid, he stole a sideways glance, wished not to see, thought he had managed not to see, but saw, and it was unpleasant: in the old tree time the tree and Andranik were tending pigs, “it was a cloudy day”...
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