Selected Essays

ALAGEZ

What tense do you want to live in?

“I want to live in the imperative of the future passive participle, in the what ought to be.’”

That’s the way I’d like to breathe. That’s what pleases me. There is such a thing as mounted, bandit-band, equestrian honor. That is why I like the splendid Latin “gerundive”—that verb on horseback.

Yes, the Latin genius, when it was young and greedy, created that form of imperative verbal traction as the prototype of our whole culture, and it was not merely “that which ought to be,” but “that which ought to be praised”—laudatura est—that which pleases . . .

Such was the talk I carried on with myself as I rode horseback among the natural boundaries, the nomads’ territories and the gigantic pastures of Alagez.

In Erevan, Alagez had stuck out in front of my eyes like “hello” or “goodbye.” I saw how its snowy crown melted from one day to the next and how in good weather, especially in the morning, its tinted cliffs crunched like dry toast.

And I felt drawn to it, over the mulberry trees and the earthen roofs of the houses.

A piece of Alagez lived right there with me in the hotel. For some reason, a heavy specimen of the black volcanic glasslike mineral called “obsidian” lay on the window sill. A fifty-pound calling card left behind by some geological expedition.

The approaches to Alagez are not fatiguing, and it is no trouble at all on horseback, in spite of its fourteen thousand feet above sea level. The lava is contained in earthen blisters, along which one rides easily.

From the window of my fifth-floor room in the Erevan hotel, I had formed a completely wrong notion of Alagez. I thought it was a monolithic ridge. Actually, it is a system of folds and develops gradually—proportionately to the rise, the accordion of diorite rock uncoiled itself like an alpine waltz.

And a spacious day it was that fell to my lot!

Even now, as I think back on it, my heart skips a beat. I got tangled up in it as in a long shirt extracted from one of the suitcases of my ancestor Jacob.

The village of Biurakan is known for its baby-chick hunt. They rolled about the floor like little yellow balls, doomed to be sacrificed to our cannibal appetite.

We were joined in the school by a wandering carpenter, an experienced and adroit man. Taking a swig of cognac, he told us he had no use for either artels or labor unions. He said his hands were made of gold, and he was respected and could find a place anywhere. He needed no labor exchange to find a customer: by smell and by rumor he could guess where his work was needed.

Seems he was Czech by birth, and the Pied Piper.

In Biurakan I bought a large clay saltcellar, on account of which I had a lot of trouble later.

Imagine a crude Easter-cake mold—a peasant woman in farthingale or hoop skirt, with a feline head and a big round mouth right in the middle of her robe into which you could easily thrust your whole hand.

It was a lucky find from what was, by the way, a rich family of such objects. But the symbolic power with which some primitive imagination had invested it had not escaped even the casual attention of the townsmen.

Everywhere there were peasant women with weeping faces, shuffling movements, red eyelids, and cracked lips. They had an ugly way of walking, as if they had the dropsy or had strained a tendon. They moved like hills of weary rags, stirring up the dust with their hems.

The flies eat the children, gathering in clusters at the corners of their eyes.

The smile of an elderly Armenian peasant woman is inexplicably fine—there is so much nobility in it, exhausted dignity, and a kind of solemn, married charm.

The horses walk among divans, step on the pillows, wear out the shafts. You ride along feeling you have an invitation from Tamerlane in your pocket.

I saw the tomb of a giant Kurd of fabulous dimensions and accepted it as normal.

The lead horse minted rubles with her hoofs and her prodigality knew no bounds.

From the pommel of my saddle dangled an unplucked chicken, killed that morning in Biurakan.

Once in a while my horse would bend down to the grass, and its neck expressed its allegiance to the Standpats, a people older than the Romans.

A milky quietude ensued. The whey of silence curdled. The curds of the bells and the cranberries of the harness bells of various calibers muttered and clashed. Near every wellyard the karakul committee proceeded with its meeting. It seemed as if dozens of small circus owners had pitched their tents and show booths on the louse-bitten hill and, unprepared for the full house, taken unawares, swarmed about in their camps, clattering their dairy dishes, cramming the lambs into their lair, and rushing to lock up for their night in oxrealm the world-weary, steaming damp heads of cattle, distributing them among their stalls in Bay City.

Armenian and Kurdish camps do not differ in their arrangements. They are cattle-breeders’ settlements on the terraces of Alagez, stopovers for villas, laid out in carefully chosen places.

Stone markers indicate the floor plan of the tent and the small adjoining yard with its heaped wall of dung. Abandoned or unoccupied camps look as if they had been burnt out.

The guides from Biurakan were glad to stop overnight in Kamarlu: they had relatives there.

A childless old couple received us for the night into the bosom of their tent.

The old woman moved and worked with weepy, withdrawing, blessing motions as she prepared a smoky supper and some felt strips for bedding.

“Here, take the felt! Grab a blanket . . . Tell us something about Moscow.”

Our hosts got ready for bed. An oil wick lit up the tent, making it seem high as a railroad station. The wife took out a coarse army nightshirt and put it on her husband.

I felt as shy as if I were in a palace.

1. The body of Arshak¹⁹ is unwashed and his beard has run wild.

2. The king’s fingernails are broken, and the wood lice crawl over his face.

3. His ears have grown dull with silence, but once they listened to Greek music.

4. His tongue is scabby from jailers’ food, but there was a time when it pressed grapes against the roof of his mouth and was adroit as the tip of a flutist’s tongue.

5. The seed of Arshak has withered in his scrotum and his voice is as sparse as the bleating of a sheep.

6. King Shapukh²⁰—thinks Arshak—has got the better of me, and, worse than that, he has taken my air²¹ for himself.

7. The Assyrian grips my heart.

8. He is the commander of my hair and my fingernails. He grows me my beard and swallows me my spit, so accustomed has he grown to the thought that I am here, in the fortress of Aniush.

9. The Kushan people rebelled against Shapukh.

10. They broke through the border at an undefended place, as through a silken cord.

11. The Kushan attack pricked and disturbed King Shapukh, like an eyelash in his eye.

12. Both the sides (enemies) squinted, so as not to see each other.

13. A certain Darmastat, the most gracious and best-educated of the eunuchs, was in the center of Shapukh’s army, encouraged the commander of the cavalry, wormed his way into his master’s favor, snatched him, like a chessman, out of danger, and all the while remained in full view.

14. He was governor of the province of Andekh in the days when Arshak, in his velvet voice, used to give orders.

15. Yesterday he was king but today he has fallen into a fissure, has scrunched himself into a belly like a baby, and he warms himself with lice, enjoying the itch.

16. When the time came for his reward Darmastat inserted into the Assyrian’s ears a request that tickled like a feather:

17. Give me a pass to Aniush Fortress. I would like Arshak to spend one additional day, full of hearing, taste, and smell, as it was before, when he amused himself at the hunt or busied himself with the planting of trees.

Sleep is easy in nomad camps. The body, exhausted by space, grows warm, stretches out, recalls the length of the road. The paths of the mountain ridges run like shivers along the spine. The velvet meadows burden and tickle the eyelids. Bedsores of the ravines hollow out the sides. Sleep immures, walls you in. Last thought: have to ride around some ridge.