The herdsman in the mountains brings the mower matsun; the mower brings the herdsman potatoes. The herdsman is up above, the mower in the valley. Bringing things down from the mountain is easy. Coming up from the valley, the horse drips foam. Carrying a load on foot is madness. The load would be potatoes, and there are potatoes at the top of the steep climb. They belong to the farm; you must not take them. But they are at the top of the climb, close to the summer camp. There is a watchman, but the potatoes are good, white and large as piglets. Besides, that climb, with a load on your back… Even the horse drips foam.
You go without a load. There is a potato field at the top of the climb; from there you continue with your load. The watchman is Uncle Adam.
And from early August, as soon as the potatoes became fit to eat, the field began to blacken at one end: that was repayment for the matsun.
They tell Uncle Adam, the watchman, that he does not keep a good watch. He agrees. They oblige him to be vigilant. He undertakes to be. But the black patch continues to grow and, before the herds come down from their summer pasture, covers half the field.
They decide not to plant potatoes by the road, below the summer camp, any more. But you would feel sorry for the man going up to the mountains: to carry potatoes all the way from the village on his back, and have them be small, useless, watery potatoes. It would be heartless. They plant them again and, because the field is beside the road, appoint a watchman. The watchman is Uncle Adam again. And it is the story of last year, the year before, of decades.
This time they give Uncle Adam a very serious warning, threatening dismissal. Before the managers, he admits his fault. In his own mind he admits it too, because the good fellows both take the potatoes and laugh at the watchman. Not a single potato plant! With this resolve Uncle Adam leaves the office and sets off for his post, but as he climbs, the farther he goes, the more his determination weakens. The cursed slope is so steep and so long; it wrings you dry, leaves not a drop of water in you. Well, it is the chairman’s duty to warn the brigadier, the brigadier’s duty to remind him, Uncle Adam, and his duty to give an undertaking. Just as it is the mower’s duty to take potatoes to the herdsman. Surely he is not supposed to carry them on his back; surely the chairman and brigadier are not fools. Even the horse drips foam…
And how many nectar-bearing flowers there are at the top of the climb!.. A valley no bigger than a palm, but so many flowers. The moment you arrive, their fragrance threads itself into your nostrils.
Uncle Adam leaves the little valley with his soul at peace, carrying its scent in his moustache and nostrils. A little farther on is the White Spring, bubbling from beneath a stone in a single stream, cold, blue-tinged from its coldness, and tumbling into the gorge. Its banks are softly, uniformly green. In the utter stillness, the spring rings as in a child’s fairy tale.
A little beyond the spring is the watchman’s hut, covered in green grass, merged with and lost in the green world. Even close up you cannot see it. As though there were no hut at all, no watchman. The potatoes have no watchman.
There certainly was a watchman: word went around the village that Uncle Adam Danielyan had shoved someone!.. The man had been digging potatoes; he had stopped him, pushed him, and said, “Man of God, these are public potatoes, and I am the watchman, not a scarecrow standing here…” Yes, Uncle Adam had beaten someone… They wanted to know where and how he had hit him. But he had helped; they had dug the potatoes together and invented the story together that Uncle Adam had shoved someone, and that the man was terribly offended with Uncle Adam…