- They ask you.
- Thank you.
With my hand in my pocket, tall, handsome, clean, I take the receiver and draw in a French accent. "Hello!" And I'm happy with myself, because here I am yesterday's peasant, now completely freed from the danger of becoming a shepherd, beaten by hail and crushed by arthritis, I sit in a safe place, I'm important enough to have a phone, my friends are famous and so I am famous. "Hello!"
- You once wanted to go to Ani.
- Ah, I wanted a lot.
- It's me, it's you, it's Minas, you, a couple of architects.
It's hot, the Massey snows are melting, the grapes are splashing with sweetness, it's a little like fifty grams of brandy, he's wearing a light nylon scarf, he's perfumed so he doesn't get black, the smoky glasses are foreign and very good, you need to drink some coffee. "That García Lorca is the Spanish version of our Isahakyan." "Yes, we have great poetry."
- But why are you laughing?
- I'm doing well.
- Say, let's laugh too.
- Shall I tell you?
I'm not a driver and my ox's leg didn't break on the long roads, the brigadier won't fight with me, instead of the word architect, I relate to real architects, some works of artist Minas are very good, some I don't accept, when talking to artist Minas, the world with the best part of its civilization comes and kneads in our language. There is Cezanne, there is Manet, I think there is Monet, I should say rake, I say Cézanne, I should say tanner, I say "what Czechs were in your studio yesterday", the howl of a wolf and the alarm of dogs and a shepherd in the dark fields is a distant dream for me, predicting rain with arthritis is lyrical, like medieval grasshopper clouds for today's peasant. A caring hand picked me up from the field and put me in an armchair in the city. And out of joy that I am no longer a reaper, I sometimes criticize reapers. Pastors too. Management too. Also, Mao Zedong. "This bridge," said Mao, and the word was gilded on the bridge, "connects this side of the river to the other side of the river." I, a shepherd's boy, remember the Chinese god with a smile. I, a peasant son of a peasant, have completely mastered the asphalt and I say that the asphalt will not have potholes. Mine is this "Volga" car, this speed of 100, this nylon headscarf, flower-decorated thermos and medium coffee, the lushness of these gardens, the city-like villages and the picture of Aragats, the spring on the road, the old-fashioned inn, the smells spread like clouds and the wind blowing with the scent of flowers. And the sea of fields and the city of Gyumri. And the commander of border guards from Rostov and his discreet willingness to accompany him to the border. And the feeling that my country starts from Masis and ends with Chukotka. I sometimes mix Shirak and Kuban together, like a Russian mixes Crimean and Ararat grapes.
And here, so happy, so powerful, I stand among my equally happy and powerful friends at the head of the observatory, behind the telescope, and in the green wasteland the headless stilts sway. I have seen better ones in movies and in more detail. And Yerevan is also worth seven Ani, and I am a resident of Yerevan.
- Why are you crying?
In our mountains there were Turk's urts. They came from their yellow valleys, reddened, cracked in our mountains, loaded their camels on their oxen and ho ha ho, their yellow valleys again.
Now, my great uncle and I went to buy oil from them, for the first time in my life I hear a conversation in another language and I am afraid. Lively, cursing, secretly kicking and openly smiling, they are a child of the devil, kind of with non-thinking eyes. I saw them in a dream after another twenty years. It was like the Karno fortress, clay walls and that child, and at the age of thirty, I was scared even in a dream.
There was one of them, he was sitting on his knees and he was looking at us with big stupid eyes, as if he was not looking at anything. A woman called to him, he moved as if to leave, but another woman called again, so he had not gone. The woman moved her skirts and came to beat him, he stood up sharply, as if he ran away a couple of steps, but then did he get excited or did he forget that he was going to run away?
My half-bald, triangular-eyed high-nosed uncle was bargaining there. The price they set him didn't give up, as if annoyed by their rudeness, he pulled back to leave and, as if it was the final refusal, he told me, "let's get up, boy" and winked. He boasted to us in the village and to me on the road: "You will see how your uncle cheats the Turks", and now he was showing me and himself how he cheated here and there. They were going down to my uncle's price, one of them got nervous from bargaining or forgot that he had to cheat, "Okay, he said, give me how much you give me." They sold at the price they wanted, they mixed cow's butter with sheep just like they wanted, and the daughters-in-law fought with him separately at home, but that was no longer his concern, his attention was now on something else. He noticed the boy hugging his knees, watching. He left the scales, forgot his work and called the boy.
- Come here, Armenian boy.
Listening to the morning sounds, the child was looking at the gorge, his eyes were wide open and he seemed a little cold, he was sitting motionless, unresponsive.
"Isn't it Armenian?" my uncle was confused.
"It's Armenian, Armenian," they said, "watch your face so you don't say later that we cheated."
- Huh! - boasted my uncle, - throw it in the lettuce, I'll pick my blood.
The boy now took the stick and was beating the bull. He hit the muzzle, eyes, poses and hardly hurt. The bull would have taken a step forward and crushed that calf, but he had entered under the muzzle and was hitting up and down, jerky, falling and rising unevenly, it seemed that every minute he regretted hitting. The bull turned to run, the other children followed with the dogs, and the boy sat on his knees again, looking out into the dark ravines.
"I will recognize my blood in a thousand," muttered my uncle again, as if this recognition was a big thing.
- I will choose from a thousand, he said when he put me in the saddle, in the luggage.
In those old years, someone well-known in his Zangezur, beaten and beaten in inter-ethnic and civil wars, in the center of events, unable to cope with the events of this country, crosses Araks, goes down to Tabriz. Tabriz settles down to his trade, and the soft life brings the ninja, and the stench of gunpowder lingers in the rungs, like a bitterly hot and bitterly cold yesterday down memory lane. This is my gate, this is my house, this is my pillow, this is my wife and children.
- Does Armenia still exist, is it in its place?
Armenia existed, it had to exist, because the son fell ill with patriotism. Lord God, Lord God... there are a thousand kinds of pain in the world and a thousand more medicines, and here the puppy got sick with patriotism. The doctor said that it is an animal disease, not a human disease, a Persian tiger for example will not live in, say, Germany, etc. The doctor gave medicine and said that these are false things, the child will be treated by his motherland.
"Where was he born?" asked the doctor.
- What's wrong, Ghapan?
"Where is it?" asked the doctor.
- It's Araks, what's next, Russia?
"I don't know," said the doctor, "is your child precious to you? Will you take it, or can't you? Medicine is powerless here."
Lord god, lord god... this is how there was one Persian hashish in the old tales, ten thousand years ago, and another one happened in Tabriz, Gerasim Atajanyan's family, in 1927.
Former anti-communist Gerasim Atajanyan tied the mouser, threw the boy behind him, Araks passed the night, climbed the mountains.
There was a morning of blue canyons and yellow mountains with the ringing of the sun - there were the smoke of Artsvanik's urt, there Geghanush's, there Davit Bek's, there Tsavi's urt. The distant forests, the valleys of the valleys smoked blue mist, the tops of the peaks evaporated into golden dust. And Gerasim saw that, no, not only the child was sick with the plague.
It was morning - the red militia squad lined up at the door of the Goris Executive Committee and marched to arrest the trespasser Gerasim Atajanyan.
- Simon of Gyanjunts, - Gerasim Atajanyan called, hiding in the old age, - Simon of Gyanjunts, be a man, don't be an old man, the child is sick.
- Gerasim of Atajanants, - called the red milpet, - did you think you would be freed by fleeing to Tabriz? Come out and surrender.
- Gyanjunts Simon, go to work as long as your blood is in you.
His reputation as a good shooter, the child, the successful hiding and the idea that these mountains are also Gerasimin's, forced the red squad to turn back without Atajanyan, peacefully talking to descend the mountains, climb the mountains, descend to Goris and report that there are no trespassers. And the trespasser went up the paths of his childhood days, thirsty, he drank water from the old cold springs and said to his son:
- This is the Cold Spring, this is the Blind Spring, remember, this is Arjut Dzor. This is oak. There is no gold, the land is full of oak, but this is a special tree. this is the tree that was next to our grandfather and is now next to us. If you go to Egypt and America from Tabriz, this is your tree, it will come with you. You will get sick, they will say what do you want, you will say: that oak that lived next to our grandfathers.
And Gerasim looked and saw his grandfather with the ax in his belt, and he was slowly going down the hill and his old dog was slowly going after him. Gerasim knew the dog, it was the two hundred and twentieth of the seven hundred bogars of his lineage, which carried on the instincts and intelligence of its sheep-herding ancestors to its descendants.
And Gerasim looked and saw a red-faced baby Gerasim, a sweaty youth Gerasim with a mustache, a young Gerasim with a furrowed brow, going back and forth from the valley to the spring. And Gerasim kept an ear and heard the voices of all his heights eternally on the same slopes and the voices he heard while telling. It was a sea of red poppies, fields greener than green, a concert of larks, and all of them were multiplying, because for him the tulips, larks and fields of all their heights were turning red, green and rustling.
That summer until autumn and again for two full summers until deep autumn, when the coolness of the mountains becomes cold and the urns are empty, the hearths do not smoke and the mountains turn green in the wilderness with the last green of autumn, so Gerasim Atajanyan lived in the mountains with his son, then looking back he went down to Tabriz. The son got well, he got sick. He needed his mountains, which were this side of Araks, and this side of Araks was also his past.
The writer Anton Chekhov got bored of his Moscow, left and went across the Volga to his Urals, through the Urals to Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia, his Irkutia, his Yakutia, his Far East, his Amur, his Sakhalin. It turned around, the book of travel notes "Sakhalin" came under his arm to his Moscow.
The writer Derenik Demirchyan got bored of his Yerevan, went to travel to his Sakhalin, it was a two-hour drive. He passed the Sevan mountain, went down to the Dilijan gorge, went through the valley and where the gorge became a valley, Demirchyan said:
- Vardan fought a short fight here. - And the Azerbaijani bostanchu said: - Ne? var ne yokh, a kirva, kep, hal...
And the car's head turned to Armenia on the other side of the world - the other side was the end of the four-hour journey. "Ne var ne yokh, a kirva?" In four hours, a student who studies poorly can get four unsatisfactory grades, a good student can get four excellent grades, the rocket will get a little closer to the moon, the sea will turn a little more into itself, the blue quartz of Matenadaran will change a few more colors, but the four hours will not become a grade book.
Six hours later, Derenik Demirchyan came home.
- Let's put the world under Armenia's feet. We have been to Armenia in the Gugark world, Kotayk in the world, Tsaghkot province, Airarat in the Greater world, Syunik in the world, Sisakan province, Shirak in the world.
If Napoleon's actions were successful - Russia was not his goal, he would go down to India through the Caucasus, destroying the Ottoman Empire on the way, and creating an Armenian kingdom. And he would say to the Armenian general of his army, Ioakin Murat, Hovakim Muradyan. "Receive, Murat, your lost homeland." Only Napoleon's efforts at Borodino failed, according to some researchers, because of the fire.
Simple, dear, weak, faithful...
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