At this moment a young man began to sing “Ramona” on a phonograph record.
The mother gently tugged her daughter away from Gaspar, who was taken away by the father saying, “Gaspar, my boy, I have never seen a swifter flowering of love,” to which Gaspar, now off cue, replied, “Charmed, I’m sure.”
“How about it?” I said. Gaspar glanced at me out of dazed eyes and very swiftly said, “You must read Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata.”
“Ramona,” the phonograph-record singer sang, “I hear the murmurs in the hall.”
He heard the what in the where? But it really didn’t matter. We all knew what was going on. Ramona had looked at him, and that was it, he was there at last, and wanted to know of himself, “What took you so long?”
“What did the singer say?” Gaspar said.
“‘Ramona,’” I said.
“I’m sure somebody told me,” Gaspar said to the girl’s father, “but in the confusing events of the last few minutes, it has slipped my mind—what is your daughter’s name?”
“Araxie. But everybody calls her Roxie. When is the wedding to be, my boy? Next Saturday?”
“What’s he saying now—that singer?” Gaspar said to me.
“‘Ramona, Ramona.’ What do you care what he’s saying? What are you saying?”
But now we were back in the room where the party was going on. Gaspar was handed a small tumbler full of the white firewater of our people, made by Apkar himself out of his own muscat raisins, with his own still, a hundred or more gallons a year, enough for everybody, raki, unlicensed, tax-free, one hundred proof, and other proof as well, proof of being there, for instance, thick in the fight, nobody will ever see youth again, except in the faces of his own kids, “Drink, Gaspar, everybody drink to Gaspar.” But a man of the opposition called back, “Why should we drink to him, cleaned and pressed? We drink to our girl, Roxie Apkarian, the dark Rose of Gultik.” Was somebody being insulted already, long before the wedding?
“Be careful, please,” somebody unseen on our side said. “We drink to our boy, Gaspar, also of Gultik. There are many Roses of Gultik for Gaspar to pluck, remember that, friends, and be careful.”
“By turns let us drink to each other,” Apkar roared. “There is plenty to drink. By turns to each, and soon enough we’ll all be drunk. We are all from Gultik, in our beloved Hayastan. Everybody drink to Gaspar.”
“Wrong, entirely wrong, the girl comes first. Everybody drink to Roxie.”
“Are we being insulted?”
“Take it as you like, the girl comes first. Since when are rules to be broken?”
“Careful, please.”
All of the men and the boys who weren’t already standing got to their feet, all fists that weren’t clenched became clenched, all except Gaspar’s. He looked around at the men of the opposition, and then at the men on his side, and then, again off cue, said, “It is indeed an honor.”
“Bet your life it is,” somebody growled. “Where do you come from to take the hand of our beautiful girl, Roxie?”
“2832 Ventura Avenue,” Gaspar said.
“Not far enough away. Who cares about your broken-down house at 2832 Ventura Avenue? Is that a suitable place to take our Roxie?”
The sides, with lifted glasses in one hand, fists raised slightly, began to move toward each other, and then Gaspar said, “I deem it a privilege and an honor to drink to Miss Araxie Apkarian.”
Whereupon he gulped down the contents of his glass, impelling everybody else to do the same, each drinker cheering or breaking into song.
Thus, the fight, the inevitable fight, was postponed—but for how long? That was the question.
Somebody put needle to disk, the singer took off about Ramona again, and although the phonograph was in the corner of the room, and loud, everybody who had anything to say was heard by everybody else, and almost immediately the fight began to shape up again. One of the Roxie boys said to one of the Gaspar boys, “And just who do you think you are?”
“Trigus Trolley.”
“Who?”
“You heard me.”
“There’s no such name.”
“There is now.”
“You’re one of the Bashmanians, that’s who you are.”
“You asked me who I am and I told you. If you want to fight, fight, don’t argue.”
“The Apkarians don’t fight in the parlor, the way the Bashmanians do.”
“If they don’t fight in the parlor, they’d better not ask for a fight in the parlor.”
“Just wait until the fight starts, I’ll get you.”
“You’ll get me the way the cat gets the dog that chases her up the tree.”
“Who do you think you are to call me a cat?”
“Fight, or go back where you came from.”
Roxie’s mother went to the boys and said, “Don’t fight, we are all in the same burning house.” Another proverb, or saying of the people of Gultik.
And then she went around among all of the men and said something to each of them, so that all we did for the next couple of hours was eat and drink and sing and dance, and then suddenly Gaspar was hit in the nose. He in turn instantly knocked down the man who had hit him, and I ran across the room to a boy who was ready and waiting, who knocked me down—a terrible surprise and insult.
I leaped to my feet, but already the whole fight was over. Apologies were made, admiration was expressed by each side for the other, wounds were treated, drinks were poured and handed around, broken glass was picked up, the needle was put to disk, and the singer began to sing “Ramona” again.
On our way home, zigzagging in the Overland down the empty country road—going in the wrong direction—Gaspar said, “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
“What about it?”
“I must read it again as soon as possible—tonight, perhaps.”
“Why?”
“It is a story by Tolstoy about marriage.”
“What happens in the story?”
“Everything, and all wrong,” Gaspar groaned.
The wedding had been scheduled for four weeks later, another Saturday night, but the Saturday before the wedding, Gaspar took Roxie to a movie in Reedley, and then to an ice cream parlor, and the next day he said, “My God.”
“She’s the most beautiful girl in the world,” I said.
“Beautiful, yes,” Gaspar said. “Just like in The Kreutzer Sonata, but beauty, real beauty, must come from inside, from the heart, from the mind, from the spirit.”
“Her beauty comes from all over.”
“I wish it did, but it doesn’t.”
“Something happened,” I said. “What happened?”
“She lives on a material plane,” Gaspar said. “She thinks only of material things. She wants to know what kind of a house are we going to have. How are we going to save money to get a better house? What kind of car? What kind of furniture? What kind of clothes? If that’s the way she is now, how is she going to be after she becomes my wife?”
“She’ll be just fine,” I said. “You’re one of the luckiest men in the world.”
“If only she lived on a spiritual plane, too,” Gaspar said.
“Teach her to live on a spiritual plane. That’s your territory.”
“I am trying,” Gaspar said. “Two weeks ago I gave her a copy of The Kreutzer Sonata, inscribed from me to her.”
“Did she read it?”
“She says she read it, but it doesn’t seem to have had any effect on her at all.”
“Maybe it’s not the right kind of book for her.”
“She asked me to buy her a wristwatch. Asked me.”
“Buy her one.”
“I must think about this. Very carefully.”
The wedding was postponed three times, and then Roxie Apkarian became engaged to a dentist who had just come out to California from Boston, and Gaspar said, “There, you see. It wasn’t love. She never loved me.”
He got into his Overland.
&n
bsp; “Where to?” I said, jumping in.
“I’m going out there to kill the dentist.”
He went out there.
Roxie cried and ran away from a face-to-face confrontation with him and refused to come out of her room, and her father said, “Gaspor, my boy, she does not love the dentist, she loves you.”
Two weeks later her engagement to the dentist was broken, the engagement to Gaspar was on again, the wedding was scheduled for a month later, and this time it took place on schedule.
The men of the opposition at the wedding party jeered, saying, “Gaspar, oh, Gaspar, how about tonight?” And Roxie’s women cursed their men and said, “How about right now if Roxie feels like it? Right here in the parlor?”
“A man’s world, to be sure,” one of the prettier women said, “and a rather spiritual sort of world at that, too, but just let Roxie tug at the top of her silk stocking and whose world would it be then?”
As it is in this world and life, for the people of Gultik as well as most others, in almost no time at all they were the parents of four boys and three girls, it had been a rough fight all the way, Roxie herself broke the “Ramona” phonograph record. And into every fight came the inscribed copy of The Kreutzer Sonata, first as a guide to silly sorrow, and then as a weapon thrown by Roxie Apkarian straight at the head of the philosophical, spiritual inscriber, Gaspar Bashmanian, “May we always live on a high Tolstoyan plateau of deep socialistic truth and humanitarian beauty.”
In short, don’t count on being terribly spiritual unless you are also always slightly sick.
A proverb overlooked by Gultik, but seized upon eagerly by Fresno.
A FRESNO FABLE
KEROPE ANTOYAN, the grocer, ran into Aram Bashmanian, the lawyer, in the street one day and said, “Aram, you are the very man I have been looking for. It is a miracle that I find you this way at this time, because there is only one man in this world I want to talk to, and you are that man, Aram.”
“Very well, Kerope,” the lawyer said. “Here I am.”
“This morning,” the grocer said, “when I got up I said to myself, ‘If there is anybody in this whole world I can trust, it is Aram,’ and here you are before my eyes—my salvation, the restorer of peace to my soul. If I had hoped to see an angel in the street, I would not have been half so pleased as I am to see you, Aram.”
“Well, of course I can always be found in my office,” Aram said, “but I’m glad we have met in the street. What is it, Kerope?”
“Aram, we are from Biltis. We understand all too well that before one speaks one thinks. Before the cat tastes the fish, his whiskers must feel the head. A prudent man does not open an umbrella for one drop of rain. Caution with strangers, care with friends, trust in one’s very own—as you are my very own, Aram. I thank God for bringing you to me at this moment of crisis.”
“What is it, Kerope?”
“Aram, every eye has a brow, every lip a mustache, the foot wants its shoe, the hand its glove, what is a tailor without his needle, even a lost dog remembers having had a bone, until a candle is lighted a prayer for a friend cannot be said, one man’s ruin is another man’s reward.”
“Yes, of course, but what is the crisis, Kerope?”
“A good song in the mouth of a bad singer is more painful to the ear than a small man’s sneeze,” the grocer said.
“Kerope,” the lawyer said. “How can I help you?”
“You are like a brother to me, Aram—a younger brother whose wisdom is far greater than my own, far greater than any man’s.”
“Well, thank you, Kerope,” Aram said, “but please tell me what’s the matter, so I can try to help you.”
In the end, though, Kerope refused to tell Aram his problem
Moral: If you’re really smart, you won’t trust even an angel.
COWARDS
COWARDS ARE THE NICEST PEOPLE, the most interesting, the gentlest, the most refined, the least likely to commit crimes. They wouldn’t think of robbing a bank. They have no wish to assassinate a President. If a ditchdigger calls him a bastard for accidentally kicking dirt into his eyes, a coward doesn’t feel his honor has been sullied and he must therefore fight the ditchdigger and take an awful beating. He says, “I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to do that,” and goes about his business.
Cowards are decent. They are thoughtful.
When the Selective Service Act reached into Armenian Town in Fresno in 1917, the eligible sons of the various families making their homes there presented themselves to the draft board in the hall of Emerson School and were soon in training camp at Camp Curry in Yosemite National Park. The government wanted them, who were they to argue with the government?
At this time, however, a man of twenty-four named Kristofor Agbadashian, who lived with his mother and three unmarried sisters in the house at number 123 M Street, who for three years had been employed at Cooper’s Department Store in the menswear department, disappeared.
Suddenly it was noticed that he did not leave his house precisely at 8:15 every morning and walk to work, easily the best-dressed man in the whole neighborhood, right down to the pearl stickpin in his tie and the red rosebud in his lapel. Well, of course, a lot of young men in the neighborhood had been drafted and had disappeared, so there was no reason for anybody to wonder about the actual whereabouts of Kristofor. Inquiries about him at Cooper’s were answered by the remark that he was away, which, of course, was true.
As for his mother, whenever one of the mothers of the neighborhood who had had one or two sons drafted discreetly, cautiously, and even sympathetically asked about the whereabouts and well-being of Kristofor, saying perhaps, “Ahkh, my dear Aylizabet, I miss seeing handsome Kristofor on his way to work every morning, has the poor boy been drawn into the war by the government, as my Simon and Vask have been?” Kristofor’s mother said, “Yes, Kristofor has been taken also. God protect him, and your sons as well.”
And of course there was no reason for anybody to disbelieve this reply, or to look into the matter further. However, when official-looking Fords and Chevrolets stopped in front of the neat white little house at 123 M Street, and important-looking Americans stepped out of these automobiles and went up to the front door, and then on into the house, everybody in the neighborhood began to wonder what was going on. Was it possible that Kristofor had already lost his life, and the important-looking Americans, surely employed by the government, were calling on the boy’s mother and sisters to break the word gently, and to pay homage to Kristofor for being the first in Armenian Town to give his life for the government? But when a month later three cars stopped in front of the house and more important-looking people than ever stepped out of the cars, including a man wearing a sheriff’s badge and a revolver in holster, the people of the neighborhood began to suspect that something might be not quite right.
Packing figs at Guggenheim’s, the mother Aylizabet one day said to her best friend, Arshaluce Ganjakian, “Please try to understand my nervousness. I can’t sleep, I can’t rest, for anxiety about my son. We believed he had been taken into the Army, the same as all of our other boys, but they tell us no, he isn’t in the Army, so then, my dear Arshaluce, where is he? It would be a thousand times better if he were in the Army, and sent me a letter once a month. Six months now, and not one word. I can only pray that nothing terrible has happened to him.”
“Ah, he’s a good boy,” the friend said. “God will look after him, although I hope he hasn’t gone somewhere and lost himself in a life of sin. In a big city like San Francisco perhaps, or Chicago, or even New York. I will light a candle for him at church this Sunday and say a prayer, for he is a good boy.” And then, after working swiftly in silence for half an hour or more, to earn perhaps as much as two dollars for a ten-hour day, the friend said, “Or, what’s worse even than a life of sin somewhere, I pray to God he hasn’t gone to a river and drowned himself, as other young men have done, because they do not believe in war and refuse to be soldiers. Only night before last m
y youngest, Yedvard, read about such a boy in The Evening Herald.”
“Drowned himself?” Aylizabet said.
“In Kings River,” the friend said. “Wrote his note, took off his clothes, and drowned himself.”
“Poor boy, whoever he was.”
“A German boy. There are many of them in Kingsburg.”
“Poor dear German boy, how can the government ask him to kill his own brothers?”
“Nobody can help him,” the friend said. “He’s gone. The police suspected a trick, dragged the river, found his body, and so his people buried him, but nobody went to the funeral except his own father and mother and brothers and sisters. It was all in the paper, which said friends of the family were afraid to go to the funeral, since they are all Germans.”
“The poor father, the poor mother, the poor little brothers and sisters,” Aylizabet said. “I love them all, whoever they are.”
“Germans,” Arshaluce said. “Enemies. All of a sudden they are enemies, but after the war will they still be enemies? The boy will still be drowned. Even a life of sin in a big city is better than to be drowned, because after the war the sinner will still be alive, at any rate. There is always such a thing as redemption. He can start all over again. He can speak to the Holy Father at the Holy Church and be born again. He can take a nice Armenian girl for his wife and start a family of his own. A life of sin, any life at all, is better than to be drowned, because the war will end, every war ends, and he will still be only a young man. I will light a candle and say a prayer for Kristofor. Do not be nervous about your son, Aylizabet, there is a God in Heaven.”
And so the new word in the neighborhood about Kristofor was, “He is gone, he has disappeared, he has written his mother no letter in six months, he may be living a life of sin in San Francisco, or he may have drowned himself, remember him in your prayers.”
And there the matter stood for many months.
Haigus Baboyan mailed postcards from Paris of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Tuileries to the nine members of the Sunday School class he had taught at the First Armenian Presbyterian Church, saying uplifting things like, “The streets of Paris are full of men born crippled because of syphilis in their fathers.” And so on.
Fresno Stories Page 5