The Dark Valley

by Aksel Bakunts

  “It’s spring again, it’s spring again,

  And again there is news of love”

  Instead of the inhabitants of Tlkuran, however, it was Father Maruk who thought about what a soft skin Gyulbahar had. The priest grew fatter, the blood in his veins began to boil, and at Easter, he gave her a relic and discreetly stroked her cheek.

  One year passed. Two years passed. It was Gyulbahar who washed the priest’s undergarments and sewed patches on his cassock. The priest would wait until it was dark—until the night was moonless—to go to Gyulbahar’s carrying his undergarments under his arm.

  One, two: the mental urge becomes physical and every time on his way home from Gyulbahar’s Father Maruk would stroke his beard, which was specked with white streaks, with more delight as he smacked his lips. Flies calm down in a similar way after they have licked a forgotten grain of sugar on a table.

  * * *

  One day a member of the Komsomol{3} came to Drmbon. He spoke, said a few words, and a group of youth in Drmbon saw him off. The following day a chapter of the Komsomol was established in Drmbon.

  The village had been unhappy with Father Maruk’s visits to Gyulbahar for quite some time. The unhappiness had reached considerable heights. Drmbon could not believe that a priest, aside from knowing the taste of the fields he had blessed, knew the taste of Gyulbahar.

  Drmbon—without having seen the face of the patriarchal carriage. Drmbon—without holding an iron plow. And the chapter of the Komsomol—with old traditions and ancestral honor. One problem, like a pillar, stood in front of the youth.

  “Shall we let the immigrant priest crush the honor of our village in this way? Shame on him!”

  The Komsomol roared, and the Illuminated elderly echoed back. Yakhshi, the head of Drmbon, set to work to arrange the capture of Father Maruk.

  Father Maruk was careful and discreet, but in the darkness of his room his pleasant desires “awoke, rose, and descended, became a field…”

  It was not working. He could not take it. And then one night, “in the heat of the moment,” he sent his neighbor’s child to call for Gyulbahar to fire cup his back in order to cure his cold. The child called on Gyulbahar and stole away to inform Yakhshi.

  The clay lamp was burning in the priest’s house and Gyulbahar hung the rug out of the window with her own hands. And when she blew out the clay lamp, Yakhshi put a lock on the door.

  It was as if a bear had stuck its paw in a beehive in the hollow of a tree. That’s how loud the noise was that Drmbon made in the middle of the night. Women stood on rooftops pointing their fingers at Gyulbahar, and a hundred eyes glimmered under leather hats as clubs were swung in the dark.

  Father Maruk growled like a trapped bear and crossed himself in the dark of his room. Outside, Drmbon flushed like wild spring floods, causing the valleys to roar at the sound…

  “Oh people, respect his rank as a priest…” Mukhsi, one of the respectful, honorable village elderly, called out.

  Yakhshi pushed back the noisy throng and guarded the priest’s door until morning. And until morning, the youth talked near the house, making plans as to what to do with Father Maruk.

  In the morning, in the village square, under the shade of the oak tree where calves rest after returning with the cattle from the fields in the summer heat, a decision was made in a village meeting to remove Father Maruk from the village.

  For three days what had happened that night was spread by word of mouth like an echo in the valleys. Close and distant neighbors spoke with each other:

  “I went to cover the skylight and I saw that the priest’s lights were out. I leaned out of the skylight and heard whispers. I knew that the priest was prostituting Gyulbahar. At that instant, Yakhshi put a lock on his door.”

  Another embellished the story even more:

  “I ran over to the priest’s house and saw from a distance that she was knocking on the priest’s door. Then I saw a shadow move up from the right side of the house…”

  * * *

  And then one day a note arrived addressed to Yakhshi calling him to court. Who had been taught the possibility of taking Father Maruk’s case to court?

  Again there were meetings and again there was noise, like that coming from a kite’s nest on the edge of a cliff, in Drmbon.

  “The entire village is a witness. Let’s remove Father Maruk from our village!”

  And the caravan moved forth to the court, clamoring arm in arm and swinging clubs the whole way.

  Drmbon was not yet familiar with the status of the court. And after the caravan had entered the court, Mukhsi, who had called out that night to respect the rank of a priest, saw Father Maruk hunched over on a bench in one of the corners of the court. And Mukhsi asked: “Is this your seat, Father?” and began to look at the pictures on the walls. An assortment of pictures hung on the walls of the lighted courtroom. There was a poster announcing the distribution of dairy products and one with a winged camel flying in the air with the caption “Vanish Imperialist War.” That is how it had been printed, but the court’s messenger had glued the word “court” on the word “war” so that it now read “Vanish Imperialist Court.”

  The inhabitants of Drmbon looked at the decorations on the walls. Mukhsi poked Yakhshi: “Look at what a pretty cow it is…”

  The judge read out the indictment, and when Yakhshi complained that they did not understand what was meant by it, the judge explained that the council was accused of self-willed and illegal imprisonment. It was as if a jug of cold water had been poured on Mukhsi’s head and he stared dumbstruck at the walls and then at the judge. He clutched his hat with his dry fingers and asked himself:

  “How is it that Father Maruk breached the honor of the entire village, but now Yakhshi is found guilty?”

  When the judge asked Yakhshi whether he considered himself guilty, Mukhsi stepped forward:

  “The guilty one is the priest…”

  Yakhshi, Mukhsi, and the inhabitants of Drmbon all spoke. One of them said that it was the women of the village who had persuaded the rest to do something about Gyulbahar, because otherwise:

  “We, too, will learn from her…”

  That is how the women of Drmbon had said it.

  “What sort of a woman is Gyulbahar? Is she clean aside from her behavior, or not?” the judge asked.

  An inhabitant from Drmbon with an aquiline nose and a nasal voice called out from his place:

  “Can we even keep Gyulbahar from that path, let alone turn her away from it?”

  Another one, a true inhabitant of Drmbon, who crossed his chest as he spoke and meekly bowed his head, answered the judge’s question as to whether he had seen Gyulbahar with the priest before:

  “I saw her one time.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “I can’t say. My tongue won’t let me speak.”

  “You haven’t told anyone else about it, have you?” “Well, I have a soul to give. I told three people in secret. If they spread it to the rest of the village, then let the guilt be on their heads.”

  Then the village shepherd was asked—an ignorant, foolish man with his hat in his hands; basically nothing more than a rock with two legs.

  “What’s your name?” the judge asked.

  “Me?” he answered, drawing out the vowel and stretching time.

  “How many children do you have?”

  “Me?” he said, gathering his thoughts, as if he were counting his children for the first time.

  “What do you know?”

  “Me?” he replied, and said that Father Maruk had entreated the people, “Oh people, let it be, I’m an old clergyman, spare my white beard,” after he had been caught.

  The judge asked Yakhshi why he had put a lock on the door. Mukhsi called out from his place:

  “Were we to let him continue acting like a dog and contaminating the entire village in the future?”

  Yakhshi answered that the people had their say in the locking of the door. A member of the
Komsomol added that people in Drmbon were not familiar with the laws of the government.

  “That kind of behavior is considered to be very bad in our village, and if the law of the government condemns our reaction, then we won’t do it again…”

  Father Maruk spoke. Gyulbahar is a poor woman and the priest has at times given a portion of his income to her. She does his laundry, and whatever the people say is false, a lie, a game invented by the youth.

  “If the Armenian synod were to find out, what would they do to me?” he said, looking at the inhabitants of Drmbon with the air of a “parish” clergyman.

  * * *

  The court found Yakhshi guilty, but, taking into account the conditions of Drmbon, forgave him.

  The inhabitants of Drmbon left the court with so much clamor, it was as if they were an army returning from a victorious war.

  Only Father Maruk was pensive, contemplating where else there is a Drmbon where hourly bells are rung, hymns are sung, rites are performed, and Gyulbahar, Gyulbahar…

  Aunt Mina

  Aunt Mina had been told that her son and daughter-in-law would reach the village by evening. It was not evening yet, but she refused to come down from the rooftop.

  She stood on the rooftop with one hand on her brow to protect her eyes from the rays of the setting sun and looked in the distance at the turns of the winding path waiting for their appearance.

  Her son was coming from a foreign city. It had been more than ten years that he had been to the village and that his mother had seen him. He had gone to the city as a young man when his hair was fluffy like velvet, and now he was returning with his wife and daughter.

  “Oh, old woman, isn’t anyone coming?” Uncle Avan called from below. He was in his room waiting impatiently and calling up regularly to the old woman with his ears perked, ready to hear the lightest footstep.

  “I can see two horses by the Zingila rock and one person on foot,” Aunt Mina answered from the rooftop as she sharpened her eyesight some more. She squinted, stretched her body, and stood on her toes to get a better view.

  For a moment she fixed her squinted gaze on the Zingila rock and tried to determine who was coming. She waited a little longer and suddenly Aunt Mina felt weak at the knees and her heart fluttered like a fish that has been washed up on a shore. Her excitement rose inside of her like a wave and cut her breath short.

  “They’re coming! There they are!”

  * * *

  The next day Aunt Mina got up earlier than usual. She had not been able to sleep that night.

  She had woken up a few times in the middle of the night, sat on her bed, and listened intently to hear who was awake and who was sleeping. One time she got out of bed, turned on the light, looked again, and could not believe what she saw. She approached the bed and gently straightened the hanging edges of the bed sheet.

  She had wanted to wake the old man to tell him what was on her mind, but hadn’t dared. Before turning off the light, she looked around the room once more, said something sweet, and wrapped herself in her sheets.

  Fetching water early in the morning and milking the cows seemed easier than usual to Aunt Mina. The happiness she felt made her feel younger—a few times she entered a room, forgot what she wanted, and walked out again. Or when she lit the fire in the house and her eye caught a fan or some other object that her son had brought with him, she examined it carefully and put it back in its place.

  She was washing up in front of the house when the teapot clanged against a plate. Uncle Avan got annoyed and told her to be quiet or she’d wake them, and Aunt Mina replied:

  “Let my hands turn to dust, indeed.”

  She said that and got so confused that she did not notice the milk boiling over and the white froth spilling on the smoking cow dung.

  Uncle Avan was standing on his porch with a broad smile on his face saying “good morning” to neighbors who passed by, approached him, and blessed him.

  “Let fortune be with you too, for your migrant child to return home as well.”

  Uncle Avan was offering those who came a glass of brandy and snacks to go with it: either dried fruit or some bread and cheese.

  It was only a year ago that he decided to sacrifice an ox to celebrate his son’s arrival. And when he asked the old woman whether it would make a difference if he sacrificed a fat sheep instead of an ox, Aunt Mina complained. It is only once in a million that there is such bliss under their roof, so the sacrifice must be done as promised.

  And then Uncle Avan went into the barn. He had forgotten to give the cattle hay earlier. That morning he felt an unusual amount of strength in his arms: he swept the barn much faster and he gave more grass and fodder to the cattle.

  It seemed to him as if the cattle too were aware of the fact that there were dear people in the house. The cows ate the grass in the warm barn with relish as Uncle Avan stroked their backs with his hardened hands, whose swollen veins resembled ropes, and said endearing words.

  “You didn’t torment yourself, did you, father?”

  It was his son, Tigran, who had woken up and followed his father into the barn.

  “Don’t come in here! Go! Go home! You’ll soil your boots, my son. This is our trade and, yes, we need to torment ourselves. We couldn’t do without it.”

  Before going to the barn, Tigran had looked at the village from their garden: at the darkened haystack and the pyramid of dung heap. He had inhaled the air of the village, the gardens, the garbage on the streets, the burning dung, the rotting grass, the air coming out of barns, and the heavy pungent urine-scented air of the village.

  How poor his native village seemed! How backward!

  His first impression was not attractive. After having lived in the city for many years, his memory had only retained the attractive aspects of the village: the flowery mountains, the clear water sources, the green pastures where the grass reaches the far edges of cliffs here and there.

  He had forgotten how much dirt there was in the village: how they don’t wash their faces with soap and how they only have a handful of clothes that they wear until they’re completely worn-out and black, which they then patch up in a thousand places and wear again.

  Tigran was standing by the barn door watching how his father carried a basket full of garbage on his shoulders, slushing his feet in and out of fresh muck, as he cleaned the barn.

  His eyes caught the tight tendons in his father’s neck that expanded like wires when his father’s neck stretched under the heavyweight of the basket.

  “Go! Go home! Your mother will have made tea by now…”

  Years later, when Tigran would bring back to mind his native village and his aging father, he would see him with a stretched neck, swollen tendons like tight wires, and his eyes bulging out even more…

  * * *

  Neighbors and acquaintances came and went unceasingly the first few days, and they all expressed their happiness in the same way: kissing the cheeks and the eyes, the eyebrows and the brows with the firm kiss of a villager.

  One time, after Anzhik had been kissed, she wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief and frowned in such a way as if to say that the kiss of a villager was repulsive.

  Aunt Mina noticed it. She did not approve of the fact that Anzhik had a clean white handkerchief. A handkerchief does not suit a young girl and it is not good for her to become attached to one.

  Aunt Mina thought and was saddened. She realized that her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild will not live in the village; that they are used to the city and will leave the village again, while she is tied to the village, to Uncle Avan, to the churn and the old spinning wheel over which she cried many winters as she sat by the warm fire and the black petrol lamp.

  Another time Anzhik wiped her spoon with her handkerchief. She noticed and Aunt Sharmagh, who smiled at Anzhik, said:

  “Mina, did you see that? Your grandchild doesn’t approve of you.”

  Tigran attempted to cover up that impression and said that she d
id the same in the city. But Aunt Mina was saddened once more. She was as upset as that time when she saw Anzhik wipe her face with her handkerchief.

  For Anzhik many things in the village were new. She asked her father many questions, such as why there are no forks in the village and why grandma wraps sugar in cloth and keeps it in a basket. With the fascination of a child who has never experienced village life, Anzhik examined all the work that was done in the village and asked why the villagers did things the way they did.

  And then one day, one of the neighbors came and asked Tigran to write a few words for him. The man laughed when he had to sign. Anzhik noticed his white teeth and the way the man held the pen in the same way that Anzhik would hold a shovel in the barn.

  “We write better than that in our first grade, father.”

  * * *

  The first two weeks went by very quickly and gradually things settled down. The villagers adopted the newcomers as their own and discussions about them calmed down, as did good wishes and blessings.

  Only sometimes would the brides and daughters of the village look at Elia’s dress, shoes, and hat with curiosity. Some of them laughed, comparing the hat to a bird’s nest; others said it was better that way—that is was more liberating and pleasant to look at.

  Tigran attended village meetings and talked with both the elderly and the youth about what was going on in distant countries.

  The villagers were interested. They asked him questions and told him about their toils and troubles.

  And all too often a thick shroud of despair wrapped itself around Tigran: this is how deficient the village was and how hard the work was. But then a powerful surge would rise in him, and he would instinctively tighten his fist and squint, as if he was seeing the village from a distance.

  Elia helped Aunt Mina with housework. As they worked, Elia, with a trembling heart, listened attentively to everything Aunt Mina told her about life in the village, what a young woman has to endure when she is forced into marriage with an older man and becomes his property, how they cure people in the village, and how great the pains are of a young bride suffering a miscarriage as she holds a young baby in her arms.