The Dark Valley

by Aksel Bakunts

  “Once she looked at me from behind the fence and smiled. It was as if she had dropped the bread on purpose so that she could pick it up and stand there a little longer. Perhaps it wasn’t so. Perhaps the bread really did slip and fall. Even now I can clearly see her face through the gaps of the fence. The eyes were the same as those I had seen on the rooftop during the Carnival festivities. There was a childlike expression in her eyes, even though she was fifteen and her developed bosom was apparent under her tight clothes.”

  My friend fell silent. He rubbed his brow and eyes with his hand and said he wanted to distance himself from the face that smiled so brightly all those years ago.

  Across the clear spring sky a white cloud drifted proudly as if it wanted to boast to the whole world that it was swimming at an unreachable height in the rays of the sun.

  “The last day came. I had already closed the school, distributed the old notebooks among the students, and I was preparing to leave. Brother Ohan no longer read psalms in the morning. He would go to the garden at the crack of dawn or sow and mow.

  “Parting was hard. At home they had become used to my presence, and I had become a close acquaintance of brother Ohan, Ashot, and old nana. Outside, the coachman was loading my belongings, and nana was putting sweet cake and supplies for the road in my bag.

  “I had not seen Khonarh for a few days. I thought I’d never see her again. The urge to see her just one more time drove me to run quickly through the streets of the village, stand in front of her house for one more second, and look into the courtyard through the open door.

  “I did not see Khonarh in the courtyard. There was no one on the street. Everyone was working. The weeding season had started in the fields, and the sound of plows echoed here and there from the mountain slopes. In one place there were autumnal dark-green fields, and in another place there was the black soil of spring.

  “Brother Ohan gave me a few pieces of advice. When he leaned over to kiss my forehead, I saw tears in his kind eyes. Nana ordered the coachman to bring me home safe and watch for the bag not to fall as she wiped her rolling tears with her apron.

  “We passed by the small dale, the spring, and the thick willow trough where cattle drank water in the winter. And there was brother Ohan’s low garden door. I quickly went up the dale, opened the door, and walked to the blue rock in the garden, but there was no one on the other side of the fence. The garden was peaceful and the trees had lost their flowers—in place of buds, small green fruits were beginning to appear.

  “The children had gathered in front of the school. They saw me and came down the hillock to wish me bon voyage in full awareness. A few had brought flowers. As soon as one of them offered me flowers, the rest followed suit.

  “Some of the girls cried. They were both smiling and wiping their tears, which streamed down like springs. Khonarh’s sister was also crying.

  “One of the students said: ‘Master, don’t forget us.’ I remember Chutik very well. He would always come to school wearing his father’s big woolen hat and long, worn-out moccasins. Chutik was an orphan, a quiet and timid child that everyone loved. Chutik was among the others in the group. Like the others, he too approached to shake my hand—with the tips of his moccasins sliding on top of each other, he could have easily tripped. Chutik wrapped himself around my knees. I saw his sensible eyes under his big hat. And there was so much sorrow in Chutik’s eyes.

  “The coachman’s call reminded me that it was time to leave. The children shook my hand one more time. I bent over and kissed Chutik’s forehead in the same way that brother Ohan had kissed mine. My eyes started to water and through the tears I looked at the low garden door and the painted sheet metal of the school one more time. And then the trees buried it all.

  “I was walking behind the coachman. The road passed through the small plateau before getting to the bottom of the slope. The villagers were weeding the green fields. A little higher up the mountain slope, oxen slowly pulled a plow and turned over the rested soil in furrows. In the green of the fields one could see red and blue flowers. The tulip was blooming.

  “Near the white rock, in the long concave fields, I saw Khonarh among the female weeders. Our eyes met and I saw a smile in her eyes. What was she saying? Was it difficult for her that I was leaving Dzoragyugh? As if she had ever said anything, anything, that modest girl. She was wearing the same gray outer garment that she had worn the first time I saw her in the forest. She stood in the field holding a weeder’s tool, a red tulip, and a bunch of weed in her hand.

  “I didn’t say anything and moved on. As we went up the path, I kept looking back. The crouching women looked like birds in the green field. One of the birds in the flock was a girl with a gray garment who stood up more often than the others, put her hand to her forehead so that the sunrays would not prevent her from seeing the path that was melting into the forest together with the lonely traveler. I stopped at the top of the valley and waved. Khonarh instantly crouched over the field. I quickened my pace to catch up with the coachman.”

  When my friend stopped talking, it seemed to me as if the rivulet was speaking with the same rhyme and in the same manner as he who was lying on his back with his eyes closed toward the sky telling by heart a familiar story written in one of brother Ohan’s old books.

  I got up and loosened the knots on the horses’ saddles. The horses had grazed lavishly and were basking in the spring sun like us.

  “Then twelve years… And what years! War, famine, countries and cities, thousands of faces from different places, and events: one sweet and the other bound to bitter memories… And among those memories is Khonarh’s face: two small eyes like black olives and thin red lips through the gaps of a fence.” All of a sudden my friend turned on his side and extended his neck toward me. His eyes widened.

  “Did you know that I saw Khonarh?”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. In the above village. You were sleeping. The villagers had gathered in the schoolyard. They were talking about the fields, complaining that the soil is not producing the same crops as before. They were talking about this year’s plague. Many cows died and many have no ox to plow the land. And then a woman approached me, in rags, with bare legs and cracks in the skin of her feet. Three half-naked children hung from her clothes. They looked at me and then at their mother.

  “With tears in her eyes the woman begged for two bushels of wheat until the next harvest.

  “‘Then we will find another solution,’ she said.

  “Her husband had died the year before. Their only cow had died as a result of the plague, and there was no other breadwinner at home.

  “I recognized Khonarh… Her eyes were the same as before, but without the sparkle. I recognized Khonarh, but I don’t know if she recognized me.”

  …We sat silently on our horses and passed the rivulet. The sun had already arched toward the West.

  Tall Margar

  1

  His greatest joy was in watering the gardens and the fields. Whenever he walked along the edge of the stream with his bare, sun-scorched feet, brushing aside excess soil to ease the flow of the water, it seemed to Tall Margar as if the parched fields and the thirsty gardens were waiting for him.

  He walked along the stream, changing its course until the water reached the gardens. The sun-dried ground, cracked here and there, sucked the water voraciously, smacking as if it had a thousand lips and was unquenchably thirsty.

  After blocking the watercourse under the trees, Tall Margar would lie in their shade, his long shovel beside him, squint his eyes and doze off until the water reached him. Then he would get up, change the course of the stream into a different direction and walk along it again.

  In the summer heat, when the sun was at its strongest and the temperature was high, when dogs would lie in the shade of houses from the heat, panting with their tongues sticking out, one could always see Tall Margar on the edge of the stream, his legs bare up to his knees, a white cloth around his head, and
a shovel on his shoulder.

  “Tall Margar, like a stork, can’t stay away from the waters,” the villagers would say. And it is true that Tall Margar somewhat resembled a stork: his legs were thin and long, and it looked as if he had two knees on each leg.

  Many people were unable to cross a wide stream, but Tall Margar could take one big step and be on the other side. The sharp nose on his sunburned face would have resembled a long bill had it not been for his long moustache.

  He was the village waterer. Day and night he was on top of the streams, watching over them, distributing water, and looking after their sanitation.

  “Tall Margar, my field has dried out. Take water there,” people sometimes complained.

  “Be patient, it’s not on fire, your turn is on Friday,” Tall Margar would say.

  Tall Margar was not a native there. Like a sliver lying in the mouth of a turbid flood, Tall Margar had crashed against many shores. Finally the wave had broken and flung Tall Margar and his grandchild onto this village.

  That happened last spring. The villagers hired him as a waterer.

  “He’s a wanderer. He has no kith and kin. He’ll distribute the water fairly.”

  The first time he changed the course of the stream, walking along it with his trousers rolled up to his knees and a shovel on his shoulders, a jester in the village said:

  “Hey, look! The migrant uncle looks like a tall stork!”

  The villagers also gave the newcomer a nickname: Tall Margar. Only few tried to cheat the waterer by stealing water out of turn. If only Tall Margar found out! He would growl, bellow, and stomp the ground with his shovel.

  “Your tree won’t grow any fruit, my boy. Don’t get it used to theft!”

  That was Tall Margar’s conviction. Whenever he got angry, he would say those words. And if anyone doubted his words, he would add:

  “At my age, you expect me to lie?”

  After saying that Tall Margar would suddenly become upset. You could tell from his voice. He would leave his interlocutor, pick up his shovel, and walk along the stream, even if his walking along the stream had no purpose.

  He wouldn’t go far. He would sit by the stream and look at the water’s quiet current and the dry straws that came from remote places and moved on with the water. He would also look at the grass that had grown on the banks of the stream, and in his mind he would calm down again.

  2

  On moonlit nights, when the village was asleep exhausted in a deep slumber, when the breeze carried freshness onto the fields that had been scorched in the heat of the day, when the stork rested in its nest on the poplar tree so that it could descend on the morass with its long, long wings, Tall Margar worked until dawn.

  On those watering nights, the moon would cast a ray on the stream, the quince leaves would twinkle with a silver glow on the steel shovel of the waterer, and the breeze would make the wheat ears rub against each other, rustling. Tall Margar would walk in the deserted fields giving water to the thirsty wheat.

  At sunrise, the owner of the field would see his field watered, he would smile, squat, and rub the wet soil between his fingers to see how deep the soil had absorbed the water and whether Tall Margar had not cut the water short.

  At sunrise, the stars melt like snowballs, the sun reddens, and the first rays of sun play with the clouds, as if an invisible hand was drawing patterns with countless rays on the white puffs of cloud to erase it all a little later with the same rays, draw another, endlessly, until the sun would set.

  With the first rays of sun, vapor also rises, from leaves, from colorful petals, from the fields and the gardens—it is the dampness of the night that evaporates. Inclined flowers lift their heads and look at the sun until the afternoon when the sun is at its strongest and bow their heads again.

  After watering, Tall Margar would lie under the poplars, exhausted, and sprawl his arms and legs wide and comfortable. Last year’s dry, hollow boughs lay next to the poplars.

  And when Tall Margar lay next to the boughs, under the poplars, it was as if he too were a dry, hollow poplar bough.

  There were days when Tall Margar would distribute water according to whose turn it was, but he would not water himself.

  “It’s my mood,” he would say and order that they water in turn until he came.

  He would walk along the stream to the closest dale where there were apricot trees. He would lie under an apricot tree or sleep in the shade of a cliff, or lie on his back and stretch his legs like a giant pair of scissors. It was as if someone had marked a cross under the apricot tree.

  Tall Margar would look up at the bright blue sky through the branches of the tree. A white cloud, transparent and unique, would softly drift across the sky. To Tall Margar it was as if the sky was one large laundry basin with blue water, and the cloud an item of forgotten laundry in the basin’s water. Tall Margar would look at the puff of cloud: how softly it drifts, changes its shape, pouts its lips and then draws them back again.

  If he could climb up the cloud, Tall Margar would be able to see his village hidden behind the distant mountains. He would be able to see the rooftops covered with reed, the poplars near the village, his apricot grove, and the low door of his house next to which there was a pitcher with water for the chickens.

  Early each morning Tall Margar’s wife would open the small door of the henhouse and the chickens would run about cackling to the pitcher where the old woman would give them feed.

  One of the chickens flew up and circled the air. When Tall Margar looked up through the gaps of the branches of the apricot tree it seemed to his aging eyes as if the chicken was in the sky playing with the solitary puff of drifting cloud.

  …The flax had blossomed blue flowers and the apricot had yellowed. He was plowing, and the plow was forming furrows on the arable land. When he turned around, his eyes fell on the track. The old woman was standing by the rosehip bush beckoning with her hand.

  “There’s been an upheaval in the village, man,” the old woman was calling out.

  He untied the oxen and left the plow in the ground. In the evening, the oxen, exhausted from plowing, were pulling a cart loaded with household belongings to unknown places.

  These were the days of eviction. The oxcart creaked day and night. There was dust on the road and puzzled faces. The villages had been thrown upside down. New groups joined the caravan along the way. The newcomers asked about relatives that were left behind and about the road they were on, but no one said anything definite. People felt even more puzzled by the uncertainty.

  “I forgot to put out the fireplace, man,” the old woman said from the top of the oxcart.

  Tall Margar thought about the present each time he saw his wife on the oxcart holding their grandchild.

  “Sit tight, keep your eyes open, don’t let Torosik catch cold…”

  Sometimes Torosik slept in his grandmother’s lap, and at other times he woke up asking confused:

  “Grandpa, we’re still moving? What country are we going to, grandpa?”

  And when he did not receive a reply from his grandfather, Torosik sulked, drooped his lip, and looked at the chickens dangling from the oxcart with their heads down.

  The oxcart creaked for weeks. The dust on the road was endless day and night. The waters were different and so were the countries. No matter how much Margar drank, his thirst could not be quenched.

  When they stopped to catch their breaths in a desolate desert, there was neither oxcart, nor twin oxen. Only small parcels remained. The sun had burned Torosik’s face and his skin was peeling.

  The dust on the road had settled on the old woman’s hair, turning it yellow and dun. Margar noticed that the disaster had plowed new furrows on her face.

  …Whenever Tall Margar said “It’s my mood” and lay under the apricot tree during the day looking through the gaps of the branches at the blue sky, at the white puff of cloud that submerged like a white cloth and pouted its lips, and at the birds visible only as tiny black dots
circling the heights, he would remember the southern desert, the rows of tents, and the colorful shreds of cloth on the tents that the exiles had brought with them from remote villages. To Tall Margar, the few scattered trees in the desert looked like big brooms stuck in the sand.

  “There are not even any stones here. Where have they brought us?” Margar’s wife moaned and regretted leaving behind the chickens and household belongings when she looked at the house keys every evening.

  “If I had known, I would have taken them with me,” she would say.

  One time Margar tried to talk about their child, but the old woman burst into tears, swallowed her sobs, wiped her tears firmly with her apron, and hugged Torosik very tightly. Margar did not say another word about their child.

  Winter passed, but no one noticed the coming of spring. Stiff, dusty plants blossomed and then dried out. And with them the short-lived southern spring passed. The desert became bare again in the hot, fiery sun.

  The people were gathered in groups and the hands that had pitched up the tents were taken away to build a new road. Margar, too, had to go. They worked all day, carrying back rocks and sand from long distances. Thousands of spades and pickaxes dug the ground every day to build the road. Margar worked alongside the others. There were familiar people from the village. They were preparing road metal, and when the sun slinked behind the mounds and the trees extended their long shadows, they returned to their tents to be back at the break of dawn.

  Then one evening the old woman didn’t feel well and complained about something pricking in her heart. Margar got up to look for stones in front of the tent to warm them up and put them on the old woman’s chest. That is how they did it in their village. He looked and looked, but came back empty-handed.