by Robert Adams
Harold had thought on the matter and had decided that quite probably the answer to this man's easygoing nature and willingness to try new and different things, to do things in novel ways, or to rearrange his thinking modes to consider the possibility of the once-impossible derived of his background rather than of formal education, of which he had partaken but little.
Rupen had been born in Damascus, Syria, in 1920, of parents who had been prosperous farmers before Turks and Kurds butchered most of their kin, took their land and all that was on it, and transported them and millions more to Syria, then—in 1916—a Turkish province. That fraction of those who had been torn from out Armenia strong enough or lucky enough to make it to Syria alive had been simply abandoned there with only the pitiful bits and pieces of their previous lives to sustain them.
In 1923, Rupen's family enjoyed the extreme good fortune of being one of the families chosen to go to America, sponsored and provided tickets by Armenians already resident in that Land of Promise. Arrived in New York, however, with almost no English or money, only train tickets, they had somehow wound up in Orange, Virginia, rather than the Midwest location to which they had been bound.
But it worked out well for the immigrants who had suffered so much for so long. Orange County, Virginia, breeds some of the finest horseflesh in the nation if not the world, and in addition to being an expert farrier, Rupen's father knew horses and had a God-given "way" with them. So, once more, the little family began to prosper and grow in size, now safe from Turks and Kurds. They never grew wealthy, even after the family farrier supply and hardware business in Fredericksburg, Virginia, began to do as well as the horse-trading sideline, for Rupen's parents squirreled away every spare dollar to bring over those relatives and friends who had survived the atrocious treatment to which the Armenians had been subjected.
In the depths of the Great Depression, Rupen's father had mortgaged his business and even the small truck farm on which they then resided in order to invest in and keep operating a small local factory that just then gave employment to many of the selfsame immigrants his hard-earned dollars had brought to Virginia.
As the nation girded itself for the certain onslaught of a second worldwide war, that little factory, which had been making brass curtain rods, lamps, and the like, was visited by government men; shortly, adjoining land had been purchased with low-interest government loans which also were funding a rapid expansion and modernization of existing facilities, the road was widened and resurfaced to take frequent and very weighty traffic, and the railroad built a spur from the main line to the factory. Half a year before the Japanese, in support of their so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, tried to destroy the United States' Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Fredericksburg Factory #1 of Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, was already turning out brass shell casings under contract to the Department of Defense.
Rupen had not had much childhood; he had grown up working. All of the Ademian family worked and, regardless of their actual ages, were expected to be as responsible as adults. Rupen had operated the roadside stand at which vegetables and eggs from the Ademian family farm were sold until the twins—Haigh and Mariya—were old enough to take his place. Then he had gone to work in the factory. Rupen's father did not believe in coddling anything except eggs and sick horses. Therefore, neither his eldest nor Haigh, who later joined him, received any preference in their employment; they started at rock bottom, drawing no more wage than did any other beginner—two dollars a day for eleven and a half hours of work, when Rupen started, though it had increased to almost three dollars by the time Haigh came.
The Armenian employees afforded the brothers a measure of respect initially simply because they were the sons of Der Vasil Ademian, but the two soon enough earned respect and friendship on their own. As the plant grew in size, however, the workers of Armenian antecedents became a smaller and even smaller percentage of the total workforce and Rupen began to make friends not related to him by ethnic background or race, just as he had in the public schools; he made friends easily, always had, fighting only when he had to do so as a last resort, but then hard, to win.
At the time of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Rupen was twenty-one years of age and Haigh had just turned nineteen. Due to the nature of their employment—in a vital defense industry—neither expected to be drafted, and they possibly would not have been, at least not until much later in the war, but war fever was gripping the nation, government and citizenry as well. And on a snowy day in January 1942, Rupen's father summoned him and his brother to the executive offices, newly refurbished, refurnished, and extensively modernized, in the older part of the plant.
"Sit down, my sons," he said in his heavily accented English. When they were seated, he set a small glass before each of them and himself and filled all three from a bottle of fiery arrack. He offered the dark, strong Egyptian cigarettes he preferred, lit Rupen's and his own, then spoke again.
"It is time that we speak now of debts and of the repayment of debts."
Rupen had squirmed and forced a straight face, wondering just how in hell the old man had found out about his highly profitable small-scale gambling enterprises.
After a long drag on his cigarette, Vasil Ademian said, "My sons, the accursed Turks and the Kurds, they took all that we had, your mother and me, they tore the girl child, the infant, who was our firstborn, from your mother's arms and threw her tiny body high into the air, catching it on their sharp bayonets. They drove us all like cattle from off our land to the deserts of Syria, where you two and your sister, Mariya, were born, given to your mother and me in the mercy of God that our family and race live on and become again strong. It was also through divine mercy that we were able to leave Syria and come to America."
"As you both know of old tellings, when we came first to Orange County, I had in my pockets less than six dollars and your mother had ten dollars in gold hidden on her person. But the country was good to us all, the people and the land, they gave us all we now have, and now the time comes to repay that debt, that just debt."
"These Nazis and Japs, my sons, they are evil, evil people. They are just like the Turks and the Kurds, and they must be both stopped before we find them trying to drive us from America, too. These Nazis may even have learned their evil from the Turks, for I am told that these Nazis are mostly Germans and I remember that the Kaiser of Germany was a friend and ally of the sultan in the last war. From all that I am told of the brutalnesses of these Nazis, they sound very Turkish to me."
"I have but just this morning earlier returned from the place where they take men for soldiers to fight these Nazis and Japs and keep their evil from out of this fine country that has been so very good to us all. But they will not have me, my sons, they say that I am too old for their use, even though I am more man at my age than many they said they would have for soldiers."
"And so, my dear sons, since I cannot go to repay the debt that the Ademians owe to this great and generous United States of America, you must go in my place."
There was never any questioning the dictates of Vasil Ademian, not by his progeny; they went—Rupen into the Army, Haigh into the Marine Corps—and by the time that Corporal Ademian, Rupen S., landed in North Africa, Marine Private Ademian, Haigh R., was already dead at Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal.
By the time of the Sicilian invasion, Rupen was a platoon sergeant. His sister, Mariya, having completed her nurse training at the Medical College of Virginia, had been ordered by their father into the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, and seventeen-year-old Kogh Ademian had forged his father's signature and followed his dead brother into the Marine Corps before Vasil knew anything about it all. In the fierce fighting on the drive from Palermo to Messina, Rupen became by attrition first platoon leader, then company commander, was awarded a battlefield commission of second lieutenant by his own army and a 7.9mm rifle bullet by some rifleman of the Hermann Goring Division, but had recovered in time to lead his platoon ashore into the hell that th
ey called Anzio. More than half his platoon were killed or wounded, but Rupen lived to see Rome.
Commanding a company of infantry in the bitter, muddy, rainy mountain campaign that followed the fall of Rome, First Lieutenant Ademian, Rupen S., received another German gift, this one so meaningful that he was shipped back to a hospital in the United States. By the time they were ready to release him from that facility, the war for Europe was ended and that against Japan on its last legs, and the United States Army seemed not at all anxious to retain the services of one slightly battered citizen-soldier who still was more or less convalescent and consequently in no shape to be considered for the upcoming invasion of the Japanese homeland.
A week after he arrived back home, his sister's ship docked at Norfolk, Virginia, and Lieutenant J.G. Ademian, Mariya Z., came up to Fredericksburg with her friend, Lieutenant J.G. Bedrosian, Margaret L., the first blond Armenian woman Rupen had ever seen. She was not pure Armenian, of course, only a quarter Armenian, in fact; her father's father's family had come to America in the nineteenth century and she did not even speak Armenian, but she was beautiful, charming, and vivacious, and Rupen had made up his mind less than a full day after he first met her.
Marge seemed to like Rupen, too, and she wrote often to him during the five months that she and Mariya nursed aboard ship ferrying ill and wounded servicemen home from the European Theater of Operations.
Meanwhile, Japan had surrendered and Vasil informed Rupen that for all that he fully approved of the proposed union, no marriage could or would take place until the younger Ademians, Kogh and Bagrat, had returned to witness the ceremony, and that was that.
It was during the preparations for his wedding, which finally was celebrated in the summer of 1946, that Rupen first got the idea of organizing and forming talented and musically minded local Armenians into an ethnic-type band; his father had had to pay to bring one down from Massachusetts. But it was years before Rupen did any more than think or occasionally talk about that idea.
It was at the wedding itself that Vasil, chock full of arrak, vodka, and old-country spirit, made an announcement to his three sons who had managed to survive the war that was to have considerable influence on the future of Rupen's marriage and life.
"My sons, my brave sons, you don't know it, of course, and that's why I tell you now, but Ademian Enterprises is worth ten million dollars, the lawyers tell me. And I told the lawyers and now it's down in writing with them and I've signed it that the whole damn business will go to the first one of you who gives me a grandson and names him Haigh, in memory of not only your brother what the Japs killed but my brother, your uncle, what was murdered by the damned Turks."
"Goddamn it all, Papa," Kogh had burst out, momentarily forgetting just to whom he spoke, "that ain't fair! Rupen, here, you're giving him the fucking edge on us both, me and Bagrat . . . and Mariya, too, we ain't even married yet!"
Vasil allowed the red-faced young man to get all of two sentences out before his still-hard fists clubbed him down. "This is a day for joy, Kogh," he addressed the stunned, dazed man where he half sat, half lay getting grass stains on his flashy dress uniform, "so you should not have made me to do such a thing on this day. Perhaps it is because you have been long away in the company of men who had no respect for their elders, but your people, the Armenians, and especially the Ademians, do and have always done and you will do as long as there is strength in my right arm. Do you understand me?"
Rupen had pulled his brother to his feet while Vasil was speaking, and while Bagrat's khaki muslin handkerchief absorbed the blood that trickled from the corner of Kogh's mouth, the old man went on in jovial tones such as he had used before their sibling's exercise in insubordination.
"What I've said, my sons, is the way it's going to be. As for Rupen having a what you say edge, maybe so, maybe not. If the girl he was married to was pure Armenian, yes he would, but this new daughter of mine, she's only one part Armenian to three parts English, and you know these English, they don't get kids very fast, mostly. So you two look around here today, find yourself a good, strong, healthy Armenian girl, and bring her to me. Don't worry none about a dowry, us Ademians don't need one anymore."
"Your sister, Mariya, she's already brought a medical doctor over to meet me, earlier today. She met him when the both of them were learning at the Medical College of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in Richmond, and he will live and work there now that the war is over. He is of the Panoshians, his father and mother came to America from Van in 1917, and he is their oldest son. He will make a good brother to you all, I think, and it will be good to have a medical doctor in the family."
Vasil Ademian's pronouncement at Rupen's wedding festival made the year that followed a very bad one for sheep, lamb being the meat of choice for Armenian festivities; there were three Ademian weddings within eleven months. But the Massachusetts-based Armenian musicians and the railroad that shuttled them back and forth had reason to rejoice. So did the employees of the Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, Plant #1 and Plant #1 Annex, as they all were given a paid day off in order that they might attend the huge, raucous outdoor wedding receptions and gorge on Armenian foods, American barbecue, and Brunswick stew, with unnumbered gallons of draft beer to wash it all down.
Rupen and Marge tried their damnedest to produce a grandchild for Vasil, but fourteen months of more than merely frequent sexual athletics left them exactly where they had started. So Rupen made an appointment, then he and his wife drove down to Richmond and availed themselves of the services of their new brother-in-law, Boghos Panoshian. He examined them both thoroughly, took some assorted specimens, and said he would be in touch. A week later, he telephoned Rupen and suggested that he come back down to Richmond.
In his deserted office, after his normal hours, Boghos had Rupen strip for a second examination. "These scars in the neck of your scrotum, Rupen—do you know what might have caused them and when?"
"Shrapnel," said Rupen casually. "In Italy, back in '44. Most of it got me in the ass and the backs of my legs, but a couple of little bitty pieces did have to be taken out of my scrotum, too, as I recall. Why? I can tell you plain, it never affected my performance in bed or anywhere else, that's for damn sure."
"Get dressed." Boghos sidestepped the question. "I'd rather look at your ugly face than your hairy ass. Did you ever consider applying to replace Gargantua? You've got as much body hair as any ape I've ever seen. Come to my office when you're dressed and we can have a drink or three."
A quarter hour later, Rupen swirled the ice cubes in his vodka and asked, "And just what the hell do you do if you have this a-zoo-spermia, Boghos?"
The doctor shook his head slowly. "To be truthful, Rupen, I may not be able to do anything. You may just have to live with the knowledge that you're sterile, to all intents and purposes, that you and Marge are out of the running in your father's silly little race. Of course, the only way I can tell for sure is to get a good look at the inside of your scrotum, and that means some exploratory surgery. It's entirely up to you."
"So far as Papa's baby derby is concerned, Boghos, you may consider ten million plus dollars silly, but damned few other folks do. Not that any of us, baby or no baby, is going to get it anytime soon; the old man comes of folks who always lived a good, long time if somebody didn't kill them first, and just look at the little guy: he's nearly twice my age and still strong as a fucking ox. Why, at my wedding feast, Kogh gave him some lip and the old man just reached up and knocked that kid silly and flat on his back. No, anybody who is crazy enough to sit around waiting for the old man's pile to drop into his lap will die of starvation long before Vasil Ademian kicks off."
"Mariya and I do worry about him, though, Rupen. He drinks far too much alcohol and he smokes those foul, stinking Egyptian cigarettes at such a rate you'd think he owned stock in the Egyptian monarchy." The doctor's real concern was evident.
"Knowing the old man, he just may own that stock, Boghos." Rupen grinned. "But back to me,
when do you want to cut?"
Boghos shrugged. "Whenever you're ready, let me know and you can drive down here and check into a hospital; almost any of them, take your pick—MCV, Grace, Johnston-Willis."
Rupen did and Boghos did but none of it did any good; Rupen simply would never be able to sire children. The first person Rupen told was, of course, Marge. The second person he told was Vasil. It was the first time that he could remember having seen his father cry, and Rupen could have wished to be almost anywhere other than in that room on that day, watching the tears streaming between the fingers of the thick, scarred, hairy hands that covered Vasil's face, seeing the massive, corded shoulders heave and shake spasmodically, hearing the whipped-child sobs tearing up from out that horse-like chest. In that terrible time, he came to the full realization of just how intensely he loved his father.
A few days later, Vasil sought out his eldest son and led him to the little tramway which bore them to the new executive office building in the annex section of the plant. Seated once more in his father's new office, which reeked of strong, acrid tobacco smoke and anise, just as had all his earlier offices, Rupen was apprised of Vasil's decision.
"My son, it was not really the Turks . . . ahem, the Nazis who did this maiming to you, no, it was me, Vasil Ademian. No, no." He held up a broad hand, palm outward. "You will please to let me to finish before you speak, Rupen."
"It is true, what I just said. The life of your brother, Haigh, and this thing that has been done to you, they are the price that was given to repay all the good things that America gave to me and your mother and your brothers and sisters. Because you have given so much to America and to me, my debt, it is not right that I should not give to you something in return, something more than I would give Kogh and Bagrat and Mariya, who came from out of the war whole."
"My offer still stands . . . so far as the others are concerned, but them only, Rupen. I have this morning had transferred to your name a substantial amount of Ademian Enterprises stock, enough of it to pay you a minimum of six thousand dollars a year, so that no matter what you do, Margaret will not have to work and can stay at home and rear your children properly."