An Armenian Sketchbook (17 page)

I remember this night clearly. We walked slowly through the village in the dark. In the middle of the street I glimpsed something white—a table covered by a white cloth. As we came up to this table, it was suddenly illuminated, from the roof of a house opposite, by car headlamps—the groom’s uncle lived here and we had to sample the food and drink he had prepared for us. His sons were drivers and it was they who had installed the lamps. In the dazzling white light, we clinked glasses noisily, laughed, and wished the young couple happiness. Then, back in the deep-blue darkness, we walked down the village street to another white table; on this table the best man had had more food and drink laid out for us.

Eventually, we entered the village club. It was a poor club in a poor mountain village, nothing like the glittering palaces of culture, built from pink tufa, in Hrazdan, in the region of Lake Sevan, and in the Ararat valley. It was simply a stone barrack with a dark timbered ceiling. There were two long rows of tables parallel to the walls, and sitting at these tables were around two hundred people. Here was none of the urban colorfulness I had seen in the home of the bride; here were only peasants.

In a whisper, my companions told me who everyone was: carpenters, shepherds, stonemasons, mothers who had given birth to ten or twelve children. I might have been at an embassy reception, with someone telling me about some figure in a red beret now talking to the Spanish ambassador.

The bride and groom were seated on chairs, while everyone else sat on boards laid on top of empty crates. But the bride and groom were not allowed to remain seated for long; during the toasts they had to stand, and the toasts were extremely long—not toasts but whole speeches. The young couple stood side by side—he in his checkered coat, checkered cap, and red armband, she still wearing her light-blue coat and clasping her light-blue handbag. He was looking sullenly straight in front of him, while she still stared down at the ground, her tear-stained eyes covered by her long lashes.

Everyone ate and drank a great deal. The room was full of steam and tobacco smoke. The general hubbub was getting louder and louder. This was true peasant merriment.

But every time some gray-bearded or black-mustached man stood up and began to speak, the whole of this large stone barn fell silent. The wedding guests knew how to listen. Martirosyan would whisper a commentary: “A brigade leader from a poultry farm. . . . In his ninety-second year. . . . A former head of the land department, an old Party member. He’s retired now, he lives in a village.”

The speakers said little about the newlyweds and their future happy life. They spoke instead about good and evil, about honorable labor, about the bitter fate of the Armenian nation, about the nation’s past and its hopes for the future, about the fertile Armenian lands to the west where so much innocent blood was spilt, about how the Armenian nation has been scattered throughout the world, about how labor and true kindness will always be stronger than any lie.

Everyone listened to these speeches in a kind of prayerful silence. There was no clinking of cutlery, no sound of drinking or chewing; everyone was listening attentively.

The former head of the land department said that he now reads the Bible and understands its wisdom. It was strange to hear this from an old Party member, but then—as he himself mentioned—he lived very close to Mount Ararat.

Then it was the turn of a thin gray-haired old man in an old soldier’s tunic. His dark face might have been carved from stone; rarely have I seen a face so severe. Martirosyan whispered to me, “He’s the collective-farm carpenter, and it’s you he’s addressing.”

There was something wonderful about the silence in the barn. Many pairs of eyes were looking at me. I did not understand the speaker’s words, but I was moved by the gentle, intent expression on the faces of the many people now looking at me. Martirosyan interpreted. The carpenter was talking about the Jews, saying that when he was taken prisoner during the war he had seen all the Jews being taken away somewhere separate. All his Jewish comrades had been killed. He spoke of the compassion and love he felt for the Jewish women and children who had perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. He said how he had read articles of mine about the war, with portrayals of Armenians, and had thought how this man writing about Armenians was from a nation that had also suffered a great deal. He hoped that it would not be long before a son of the much-suffering Armenian nation wrote about the Jews. To this he now raised his glass.

Everyone—both men and women—rose from their seats. Long, thunderous applause confirmed that the Armenian peasantry did indeed feel compassion for the Jewish nation.

Other people—old and young—got to their feet to address me. All spoke about the Jews and the Armenians, about how blood and suffering had brought them together.

I heard both old and young speak with respect for and admiration of the intelligence of the Jews and their love of labor. Old men repeated with conviction that the Jewish nation was a great nation.

I have more than once heard Russians—both intellectuals and simple people—speak with compassion of the horrors that befell the Jews during the Nazi occupation.

But I have also encountered the vicious mentality of the Black Hundreds.[
57
] I have felt this hatred on my own skin. From drunks on buses, from people eating in canteens or standing in queues, I have heard black words about the nation martyred by Hitler. And it has always pained me that our Soviet lecturers, propagandists, and ideological workers do not speak out against anti-Semitism—as did Korolenko, as did Gorky, as did Lenin.

Never in my life have I bowed to the ground; I have never prostrated myself before anyone. Now, however, I bow to the ground before the Armenian peasants who, during the merriment of a village wedding, spoke publicly about the agony of the Jewish nation under Hitler, about the death camps where Nazis murdered Jewish women and children. I bow to everyone who, silently, sadly, and solemnly, listened to these speeches. Their eyes and faces told me a great deal. I bow down in honor of their words about those who perished in clay ditches, earthen pits, and gas chambers, and on behalf of all those among the living in whose faces today’s nationalists have contemptuously flung the words “It’s a pity Hitler didn’t finish off the lot of you.”

To the end of my life I will remember the speeches I heard in this village club.

As for the wedding, it continued on its course.

Each of the guests was given a thin wax candle, and holding hands, we began to dance a slow and solemn round dance. Two hundred people—old men and old women, young boys and girls—all holding lighted candles, moved slowly and solemnly the length of the rough stone walls; the little lights swayed in their hands. I saw interlaced fingers; I saw a chain that would never rust or break—a chain of dark-brown laboring hands; I saw many little lights. It was a joy to look at people’s faces: The soft sweet flames seemed to be coming not from the candles but from people’s eyes. What kindness, purity, merriment, and sadness there was in these eyes. There were old men saying goodbye to a life now slipping away from them. There were old women in whose crafty eyes I saw a defiant joy. The faces of the young women were full of shy charm. There was a quiet seriousness in the eyes of the young boys and girls.

This chain, the life of the nation, was unbreakable. It brought together youth and maturity, and the sadness of those who would soon be leaving life. This chain seemed eternal; neither sorrow, nor death, nor invasions, nor slavery could break it.

The bride and groom were dancing. The groom’s serious face with its large nose was directed straight ahead, as if he were driving a car; he wasn’t even glancing at his young bride. Once or twice she lifted her eyelashes, and in the light of the wax candles I saw her eyes. I could see that she was afraid the wax might drip on her blue coat. I understood that all the wise speeches—speeches that had seemed to have so little to do with this wedding—did in fact have everything to do with this wedding and this young couple.

Though mountains be reduced to mere skeletons, may mankind endure forever.

Accept these lines from a translator from Armenian who knows no Armenian.

Probably I have said much that is clumsy and wrong. But all I have said, clumsy or not, I have said with love.

Barev dzez—All good to you, Armenians and non-Armenians!

Grossman by a grave on the grounds of the monastery at Tsakhkadzor

Grossman with children from the village of Tsakhkadzor

“And then the translator conversed with a mule and a sheep.” (
See chapter 6
.)

Grossman with men from the village of Tsakhkadzor

Grossman and “Hortensia” on the grounds of the monastery at Tsakhkadzor