The Candidate

by Zareh Vorpouni

  It was on that evening, during that lively conversation with Ziya, that Vahakn was plunged into a peculiar state of mind for the first time. It can’t be said that his mind was elsewhere, although he did look absent. He didn’t seem to be following what Ziya was saying, even though he was transfixed by his enthusiasm. The truth was that in his state of near self-abandon, his attention was drawn to Ziya’s neck. The intensity of his stare made his eyes grow so narrow that they couldn’t see anything beyond his neck. Even if he had found the strength to pull his gaze away, it would have returned once again to settle on that dark spot, which was nothing more than the tint of his skin.

  It was there that Ziya’s protruding Adam’s apple undulated with the rhythm of his enthusiasm. The darkness of his skin had a charm of its own, but this wasn’t what made him so tense. What he saw couldn’t be seen. It was the part of the neck that was right under the knot of his tie. It was what couldn’t be seen that stirred murky turmoil in him. Vahakn’s face expressed such amazement that Ziya couldn’t possibly have sensed the hidden, stubborn, insidious chase inside him that would cost him his life. But there was a moment when Ziya felt an involuntary shock from Vahakn’s fierce, prying gaze. This was the moment after Ziya said, “I envy that you’re staying in this country.” Vahakn’s hand rose slowly and hesitantly. His index finger—extended as he clasped his other fingers into his palm—landed on the smooth skin of Ziya’s neck. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just some cigarette ash.”

  Suddenly there was a sound of something shattering. It was Apkar, who had broken yet another glass. Minas realized that, like him, Apkar was also in an agitated state. Everything had been turned upside down.

  “You know,” Minas said. “I wrote to his fiancée. She lives in Lancet and works at the paper factory.”

  “What fiancée?” Apkar said, surprised. “She’s his wife. They were married. Didn’t you know? He left on their wedding day.”

  “Damn it,” said Minas, thinking of the letter. “I wrote ‘mademoiselle’ on the envelope.”

  He had barely finished his thought when a sense of delight came over him.

  Here was his chance to write a new letter and change the familiar tone of the last one. Fortunately, life always comes to the rescue, though we rarely know how to make use of its goodness. He wasted no time. He drafted the letter in his head, so he would be ready to entrust it to paper once he left work.

  “Dear Madame Arshalouys.”

  Here he was making the same mistake again. Yes, that was the mistake. It wasn’t the content of the letter. The mistake slipped out in the salutation. It was the salutation that contained the familiar tone that brings two heads close together and makes a pair of hearts beat in time, their sounds mingling until they become indistinguishable. Wasn’t this his goal? His goal was just to do his duty. And so he wrote without wasting any time. Of course, it was all in his imagination, but even there, he heard the rustling of the paper under his fingers. On this imaginary sheet of paper, he wrote:

  Dear Madame,

  Please excuse the ignorance of my mistake. Today, by chance, I heard from a friend that you are, in fact, Vahakn’s wife. Believe me, when I learned this, my sorrow grew even deeper. I am sure you will not deny forgiveness to someone who has made an honest mistake.

  So, dear Madame, etcetera, etcetera . . .

  He left work. On the metro, despite the crowd, or perhaps because of it, the wheels of his mind kept turning like the blades of a windmill. He sealed, opened, and rewrote the letter several times with a stubborn fastidiousness that ruthlessly tried to drive away any hidden emotion that might sneak into his words and end up becoming an endless source of trouble in the future. He figured it out as he got off at Odéon. For a moment, his inner voice was forced to give in and fall silent, only because he was busy searching for a place for his feet in the dense crowd leaving the metro. An old man staggered up the steps in front of him. He grew irritated by his useless attempts to get around him—stepping to the right and then to the left—but when he finally got out of the metro station near the statue of Danton, he regained his train of thought. Truthfully, it must be said that his train of thought regained him. Like a hailstorm, thoughts pelted his mind, where a sense of confusion took hold. Fortunately, at that moment, his imagination came to the rescue, scattering the onslaught of thoughts. He took a deep breath and with it a certain joy crept into his heart as he ruminated on the fragility of thought. Seeing the bustling crowd coming out of the metro was enough to make him remember that boy who one day told Vahakn why he had quit his job. He used to wash dishes at a restaurant. On his way to and from work, the metro was at its busiest and it was a nightmare for him. He was desperate to find a job that would let him take the metro when it wasn’t as crowded. “Do you understand, Vahakn?” he would say. “The metro is packed. There’s not even room to drop a needle. You’re surrounded by women on all sides. It’s horrible. Horrible. You feel so lecherous. It’s as if you’re holding the women in your arms as you’re riding.”

  “I have a friend who’s a poet,” Vahakn said, glancing at Minas out of the corner of his eye. “He says that if you want to relive the feeling of life in utero, take the metro. It’s like being in your mother’s womb all over again. It’s a safe place with no responsibilities. My God, how pathetic people are.”

  Then, as now, Minas felt intense heat at his temples and his forehead grew moist as sweat tried to burst out of his pores. At that point, he almost returned to his old concerns in a frenzy and mechanically erased the “etcetera, etcetera,” replacing it with “please accept my deepest condolences.” Of course, this formality did not have a particular goal. “Please then, dear Madame, accept my sincerest condolences.” “No,” he said, silently, of course, since he had not yet reached his room. There he could speak to himself out loud, even to his reflection in the mirror. But on the street? Now he was walking up Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, which leads directly to the Jardin du Luxembourg and rises slightly before reaching the park. “My condolences,” he muttered and stopped. He stopped and his train of thought, quite literally, did too. When he started walking again, his thoughts followed. What link was there between walking and thinking? He didn’t know. All he knew was that every time he stopped, his thoughts would flee, chased by an unfamiliar force. It reminded him of how shadows would suddenly scatter, pushing one another and cowering behind furniture when light suddenly illuminated a dark room. This is why he would stop after taking only a few steps whenever his thoughts were bothering him. As soon as he stopped, the view of the street would fill his eyes and create a kind of barrier between him and his thoughts. When he walked, the street seemed to flow and slide past his eyes. The street became unreal and dreamlike. Thoughts stormed in, occupied abandoned territory, and did their bidding freely and boldly, like kids racing out of school to play, causing chaos in the empty town square. When Minas stopped walking, the street became ordinary in its familiar details. There was the British restaurant, with its low balcony, and the Armenian tailor. The tailor would raise his head and lift his needle whenever anyone passed. The Viennese pastry shop, which looked half-buried in the ground, always had dark Linzer tortes behind a glass display case. Then the bookstore with its green façade, the Romanian restaurant, and here, stretching lengthwise, the immense mansion that housed Lycée Saint-Louis. Everything else, all of it, was so mundane and commonplace that he preferred to walk. It allowed him to create a dream world where he could clear a path through the images in his mind and walk all the way to the entrance of the hotel. That day, Minas stopped often. He still hadn’t gotten very far from the metro. Usually, it was the exact opposite. Usually, the thoughts locked in a dance inside his head would be sweet. They would be about Nicole. But not today.

  In the end, why did he insist on seeing a hidden agenda in his letter? The words meant exactly what was written. It was as simple as, say, the street sign that he had stopped in front of, which read Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. At that, his fear receded. “My con
dolences”—even “my sincerest condolences”—seemed conventional and formal, something that would be in all letters like this. But when he started walking again, an inner voice got the better of him. “Don’t fool yourself,” it said. “What convention was it that told you to add the word ‘sincere?’” The inner voice was right about the word “sincere.” Where did it come from? Why did it want to disturb him? What were its intentions? He also had an issue with the word “sorrow.” “My sorrow grew even deeper.” The letter should clarify, not show emotion, which, like all displays of emotion, was just an invitation. And so the sincere transformed into the hypocritical. It seemed that he had set a trap for Arshalouys and it was the fear of her falling into it that tormented him the most about his letter to her, though, as you will see, the torment came from elsewhere. The truth was that he was the one who had set the trap near that poor, lonely, grief-stricken, bewildered woman by stubbornly forcing her to express her emotions, whether they were “sincere” or not. Feeling disarmed, he decided to surrender everything to chance with the hope that once he was in his room, in front of the desk, he would be able to approach the issue with composure.

  His room was on the first floor. They felt proud when they decided to rent it—proud to be living on the first floor. Only later did they realize that they were able to rent that particular room because no one else had wanted it. The first day they walked in, elated, and immediately opened the window. A stench rushed inside. “It smells like shit,” Vahakn grumbled, quickly pulling his head back inside and scrunching up his nose and mouth. Minas stuck his own head out the window, looked up, pinched his nose, and looked down. There was a space as long and narrow as a pipe, which the agency referred to as sur la cour. That was it. Above them, far above them, beyond the fifth floor, a dark sky looked about the size of a sheet of paper. Minas closed the window and they never opened it again. “It’s a food smell,” he said. “It must be coming from the kitchen at The Ani.” He thought for a while about The Ani, the restaurant downstairs. Even in that putrid smell, he found something pleasant. Whenever he gave his address, he would say he was “right above The Ani” and would be surprised if the person didn’t look at him with wonder. The Ani had a certain charm for him, but seemingly not for anyone else. The restaurant was one of the most ordinary in the neighborhood. For Minas, its charm stemmed from the fact that it was where Armenian artists and writers met. Even Tekeyan would sometimes go there for lunch.6 Once he bumped into an old classmate as they were both walking into the restaurant.

  “Vanadour!” Minas called out.

  “Oh,” Vanadour sighed from atop his tall, thin frame. “You’re here, too?”

  And that was it. Vanadour went inside and the door slammed shut behind him. Minas stayed outside on the sidewalk. He forgot what he was doing. Why had he gone out? Was he going somewhere? He suddenly felt wounded. The chance encounter with Vanadour had been an intense thrill, but now, as he stood in front of the closed door to the restaurant, he was like a bird with its wings clipped. Vanadour’s words refused to leave his ear. They were grating and sticky, and though he couldn’t tell why, they had a repellent quality to them at the same time. It was the tone that had hurt him. He had expected an invitation. He had imagined that Vanadour would have turned to him and said, “Well, what are you waiting for? Come on in!” In these words, he had wanted to see the compassion of someone who shared his fate, when in fact, to his ear, Vanadour’s surprise in seeing him and his tone of voice contained something accusatory, raising a barrier between them. “You’re here, too?” meant “You don’t belong here.” As he walked into the restaurant, Vanadour didn’t look back. Minas, standing dazed on the sidewalk, stared at the back of his old friend as he disappeared behind the closing door. Between the opening and closing of the door, a voice reached Minas that scattered his unpleasant thoughts.

  “Antranig, quick! Some fasouliayi pilaki.”7

  They all knew that fasoulia just meant beans, but they preferred to trick themselves with words. How comforting it must be to call a dish by its old name and feel that they had never been separated from their mothers, that life had continued with their families, as if nothing had changed, as if nothing had happened in their lives. But Minas remembered his mother and forgot the rest. Thank God she was still alive. A heart attack—that was it. Stupid! Why had he gotten scared and left, leaving his mother, sister, and brother alone? Now he trembled at the thought of going back. It was as though a permanent barrier had been built between them after one grave, irreparable misdeed. His mother would write to him, “Be careful, son. Don’t catch a cold. They say Paris is a very cold city.” He kept her letters like relics there in his bag. She would also write, “Don’t go catching any kind of disease.” Of course, he knew what she meant. But he wasn’t like Apkar. If he ever went to those neighborhoods, it was just to keep Apkar company.

  He stretched out on the iron-framed bed. From his vantage point, the room felt narrower, like a long intestine. He had a hard time figuring out the color of the wallpaper. The flowers must have been blue at one time. Now they had no color at all. The dampness had turned the walls a pale yellow with open wounds here and there. Leprous walls. An armoire that had lost one of its legs, which was replaced by a piece of wood. A desk so worn that it looked filthy. A crippled chair. They had lived in that room for more than a year.

  Now and then, he glanced over at the spot where Vahakn still seemed to be sprawled, his eyes wide open and a profound sense of calm on his face. The envelope from the office was still in his hand—a summons from the police station. Minas had no energy to get up from where he was. Fatigue came over him, pulling his body down and making it feel heavier. This is why his thoughts were disobeying him. They were like retreating soldiers who would no longer take orders from above. Perfect anarchy. His mind couldn’t concentrate on one thought and let it run its course. He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. He had to get up. He had to write the letter. He had left the door ajar to let in fresh air from the hallway. He got up and closed it carefully, afraid that the past might wake up and charge into the present. With the door closed, the present slipped into the room, and little by little, the shadow on the other side of the bed gradually became a desk. He approached it, sat on the crippled chair, and didn’t move again. He took out a piece of paper and an envelope from the drawer. Suddenly, his gaze fell on the alarm clock. It was past seven. It was too late. The post office would be closed. He decided he could write the letter later and drop it in a mailbox on his way to work in the morning. With that idea, he felt lighter, as if a piece of rope binding his arms had loosened and come undone. He let out a sigh of relief as he did every time something saved him from an unpleasant obligation. He was almost content. There was plenty of time to work on the letter with his mind at rest. He already saw it finished exactly the way he wanted, freed from the fictional nightmare he had woven around Arshalouys. He noticed a book on the desk. It was Tristan Corbière’s Les Amours jaunes, which he hadn’t touched in two days. The loves of a kindred spirit. “My God,” he exclaimed, holding the book and caressing it with trembling fingers. Perhaps not realizing what he was saying or why, he continued, “What is this disease you’ve infected this poor heart with?” No, his exclamation was not without reason. Something had dawned on him the moment he saw the book that made him stare in awe. He understood why his mother loved him with a kind of painful anguish, as though she were always at the bedside of someone gravely ill. The secret of her consoling words, her advice, was kept hidden: it was because he was the lost son, fallen into obscurity, whose penchant for drifting crushed her. He stood up and paced the narrow room. Once again, he had found a means of escape: reading to ignore life’s imperatives. He hesitated for a moment before picking up the book. If he started reading, the whole night would rush past like a river and he would sail into the distance, always far away from life. But it was intoxicating, my God, so intoxicating. And as he passed the desk, he couldn’t resist. He was like an alcoholic grabbing a
bottle of exquisite wine and finishing it in one gulp. He opened the book. He was taken aback, and for a moment, looked at it, still and entranced. Tucked into the pages of the book was an envelope. On it was Vahakn’s handwriting. He tore open the envelope, his hands shaking, and started to read:

  Dear Minas,

  Don’t think that I’m writing out of a burning desire to write. It’s common practice among those who die before their time to leave a note. I see a kind of vanity in this. People who voluntarily enter the infinity of the great beyond also try to secure for themselves some kind of immortality on this side. I would have liked to leave quietly on my tiptoes, but that’s not why I’m writing to you. The idea first came to me in front of Ziya’s body. You know, when they pulled his body out of the water two days later and called us both in, I figured there must have been people who had seen us together almost every day. So I decided to write this while I was standing in front of his body. If they hadn’t called us in, I wouldn’t have written anything, because I’d already decided to kill myself that day. For a month now, I’ve been struggling to decide whether or not to write. But I’ll do it. Not for my sake, Minas, but for yours. Pay close attention to the words of this dead man. Yes, these are the words of a dead man, words from the dead. I was already dead when I stood in front of Ziya’s body.