You are no good, you are weak, no good, my child, my son, my firstborn, my hope, my precious one, no good — there is no vengeance in you. Your grandfather, my father Ishkhan, had a little blood-coloured horse, so small they had not taken it for the army. They say it would burst with rage if another horse got ahead of it. It panted, its lungs rattled, fire flew from its nostrils; little as it was, it exploded with fury. The dog your grandfather kept had to be like that too, and his child, and the greens by the fence, and the snake in the wall. You are no good. Everyone who knows you, everyone I ask, praises you and laughs: you are good, they say, you have a conscience. And that laughter becomes a knife in my heart, my child, my child. My father, your grandfather Ishkhan, neither said wise things nor had time to think them; he was a man of action, the ground burned beneath his feet. But once he tossed a few words over his shoulder to my stepmother, as though tossing her money for bread, and I say to you: a person must not be so sweet that they swallow him, nor so bitter that they spit him out. They have swallowed you and praise you, my child; they are swallowing you. You say conscience, but do you know when conscience is beautiful? When it is in a beast. Yours is not conscience, it is weakness. All of Vanker was grateful to Ishkhan as to God, and do you know why? He could harm everyone. Could! The danger of him, like sheet lightning, like sheet lightning, played and flashed over everyone from Vanker to Borchalu, from Borchalu to Kazakh, and at any minute could turn into a lightning bolt and burst upon the head of any wretch you chose. His kindness to everyone was that it did not burst; he did no other good for anyone. Your grandfather, my father-in-law Avetik, did good for everyone. Bees, a graft, an axe handle for one; a cart for another; into the army in place of his married brother, into forced labour for the estate manager for his brother’s imprisoned son. He was God’s goodness to this whole village. And do you know what his little brother Gikor said? “How come he went into bondage for Sargis, but for me his hands and feet are tied — he won’t make a cart?” The forester had demanded an ox cart from Gikor in exchange for permission to fell one oak. That is the proper answer to your grandfather, my father-in-law Avetik; do not think his conduct has any other answer. Who thanked his horse? No one. They unloaded it and at once whipped its backside: the load for themselves, the smell of sweat for the owner — go! Conscience, conscience piled on conscience, more conscience, conscience inside, conscience outside — is that conscience or a rag doll, my child, my child, my care, my torment, my worry, my suffering, my burden? You see a girl, stand and look, and your eyes fill; you see a boy, stare with your mouths open; you cry for a sick lamb, cry for a pretty calf. Is there a man’s heart inside you or an ashugh with a saz in his hands? How could that sleeping, slow, kind — and how am I to know whether kind or merely cowardly — nonexistent drop of your grandfather Avetik’s blood curdle, like a starter, that raging, overflowing blood Ishkhan gave you? How did that restless, deceitful, flattering, bold, sleepless, vengeful, ringing, merry, brigand’s Arnaut blood curdle in you from one sleeping drop of Avetik’s? Or is it so pleasant to set your knees against the hearth, doze smiling, hope and believe that the world is kind? The goat eats the bush; the wolf eats the goat. Are you the goat or the bush, the wolf or the goat — which are you? Either-or. Oh yes, wait for your paradise: for the monastery bells to ring in the evening, the monastery spring to sing in the evening, for them to bring you laden through the weary evening, take your burden in Christ’s evening, and for gratitude to swell in their throats and choke them: “Thank you, horse, from Borchalu, ah, you brought a winter’s bread for my children; we are indebted to you, horse.”
Human beings and animals are distinguished by memory. Memory stands between the animal and the human being. You are within memory, and so you burn, you are human, you have accounts to settle, you are restless. You are not within memory — there, in the open field, the cow grazes without memories, and her calf was slaughtered yesterday…
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