The October day glowed with warmth and generosity, but it only an-
gered Vasak. Soft, silk autumn seemed to tease, ridicule him, spitting
into his soul…
He stopped near the tennis courts opposite the university. Cars
were parked on each side of the narrow tree lined street. Vasak’s glance
slid absently across them, across fountains, benches, students scurry-
ing back and forth.
A gust of cool breeze swirled the light air, already touched with
gold leaves.
Two slender girls passed by showering upon him their inviting per-
fume. He could not desire such girls, and had not even when he was
young and had just returned from the army. For him it was as if they
were from another world. His wife Manik had grown up in an orphan-
age, and his father believed himself very lucky with his daughter in law.
And yet now, quietly and subtly, Manik slipped away. She snarled,
wailing and complaining, complaining, even in bed, and he desired
her less and less, that inflated body of hers, now unrecognizably skinny
as if all that air had been released from it. Vasak remembered the anec-
dote that he had heard in the army. Two friends meet, and one says he
married Sarochka. “The Sarochka, whose breasts are like pillows?“ the
other one asks. “Were. All she’s got left are the pillowcases,” the first
guy sighs.
Vasak remembered and smiled wryly. And then he felt remorse,
as if he had somehow hurt his wife. Together they survived the death
of their firstborn and now together they were raising a daughter, and
who could say what awaited her in this hopeless life? And Manik had
contrived to take a fall: her arm had swollen up; it hurts; perhaps it was
broken, and X-rays and treatment cost money…
A wave of despair fell on Vasak. Here he wandered the city in
search of work, but every minute cost him dear!
He had happened in the past upon work as a labourer. He dragged
and dragged and piled up a hernia. That too would cost if it was to be
cured!
Vasak sighed: now he is not able to do any hard work…
From the tennis court a noisy group of students came running.
Why he often wanders around the university? ‘Learn,’ mother
used to say. ‘You will become a successful man.’ He loved to learn, but
university had remained a dream for him. Father fell ill, mother died.
After the army, he went to work and got married…
The cool breeze returned, shaking the heads of yellow flowers, a
bed of identical asters. Their colour in the green grass and beneath the
shady trees brought to Vasak memories of his childhood. Then they
had lived almost in the centre of the city, but their house was later de-
molished, and with the meager amount that they were given in return
they went wandering from place to place, and in the end found them-
selves on the outskirts of things. And below the poverty line. Who
came up with this line? Who defined it? He tried to keep at least on the
dash… HUH?
Vasak swore under his breath. Yes, he had loved to study; he was
not that Meruzh, with whom he had shared a desk at school. Meruzh,
who was now rich…
A woman in a green cloak lightly brushed past Vasak and went
along the pavement and crossed between cars and hurried towards the
far side of the street. Vasak glanced at her. She was also from another
world. He became distracted. Then suddenly he startled by the sharp
rattle and a cry full of terror. The woman in green lay motionless now
near the wheels of a Yeraz. Even before the driver had jumped out from
the cab and the passengers scared half to death had spilled in panic
into the road a girl in the street had run to the woman, quickly and
deftly removed the earrings from her ears that flashed under the sun
and thrown them into her jacket pocket and yelled:
“Help! Help!”
Vasak, who saw it all as if through a magnifying glass, gasped:
“Bitch! She stole the woman’s earrings! Opportunist!”
On the street the number of curious onlookers and rubberneckers
increased.
“Moonlighters!” burst a man’s voice next to Vasak. “He rents the
car, fills it with people and drives like crazy. Number sixty-six doesn’t
go this way…”
Vasak turned to the man, but he got in his Opel and drove off. The
space around Vasak was clear now and his eyes suddenly seized on
something green lying away on his left, about ten or twenty yards from
him. Vasak peered closer. It looked like a woman’s handbag, complete-
ly new, elegant in design. Most likely it belonged to the injured woman.
Vasak’s attention strained between the handbag and the woman.
People lifted her up by grabbing her shoulders and setting their hands
beneath her knees. The woman’s head was swinging; her legs were
loose under her cloak. The ambulance approached, men in white coats
rushed out, two men jumped from a BMW – one rushed to the woman,
who was now laid on a stretcher, and the other one swung at the driver
of the Yeraz as others hauled him back into the car.
The handbag lay where it was, half hidden in the green bushes.
The woman was placed in the back of the ambulance. It drove away,
followed by BMW, then the Yeraz.
Vasak was waiting.
The bystanders had begun to disperse when the road inspection
officials arrived. Witnesses were questioned, the officials measured
something and then they too left. All that remained of the scene was a
dark stain of blood.
The sun fell on the handbag, glinting on the lock and chain. A
beautiful handbag! It was hurled at Vasak by a miracle, only some ten
or twenty steps away…
Vasak, tense and breathing hard took two rigid steps to the left,
towards the purse, stopped, heart pounding, waited for the footsteps
to subside behind him, and he just could not resist, and he looked back
towards the purse and watched in horror as a heavy middle-aged man
with a briefcase in one hand, twisting his knees, as if dancing, went
to the purse and grabbed it, and then went on with the same nimble
pirouette as if nothing had happened.
Vasak was dumbfounded. There was sweat on his forehead. He felt
as if he had been robbed.
The fat man had already disappeared from the scene, and Vasak
stood there numb, staring blankly into space.
After a while, quite suddenly he felt relief, as if a great weight had
fallen from his shoulders. The silk autumn gently touched his face with
a cool breeze. To breathe became easier.
“The devil’s job!” he muttered in confusion. “The devil beguiled
me…”
He trudged aimlessly, alone, without purpose. And finding himself
at the construction site of the mansion his former classmate Meruzh
was building he realized that his feet had led him to the right place.
“Spit on a hernia!” Vasak thought. “What will happen will happen!”
Behind the bright blue tarpaulins fencing the building site Vasak
noticed the familiar silhouette of Meruzh talking to a foreman. Vasak
went lumbering towards him. And later, swinging upon his back the
first bag of cement, Vasak said in a strangled whisper to himself, “God
help me,” whether he spoke mechanically, out of pure habit, or whether
in the depths of his soul he still cherished the hope that God would
finally turn and face him and help him survive without straying from
the path of goodness.

Translated from Armenian by Artsvi Bakhchinyan

The scream

The October after-noon sun painted the sky in saffron yellow, the
clouds coming down from the Ararat were dressed in violet, and the
ivy climbing the balconies and fences which were still green not a long
time ago, had turned earth red, burning so bright that it was impos-
sible to remain indifferent or spellbound by its beauty.
The ochre, apricot and emerald colors of the Hrazdan gorge
plunged into the saffron violet, and the woman, looking out from the
closed balcony and stretching slightly her tired back emerged from the
hot and multi colored weather, wishing not to think about anything,
not about the potatoes on the stove, the raised dough, the soaked laun-
dry or the unfinished report…
She wanted to remain standing for a while next to the window,
breath quietly, as if there was no need to hurry in this world. Those
three to four minutes rest was turning her off her constant worries,
bringing in serenity… But the sound of a telephone ring reached her
ear. Reluctantly leaving the window side, she went through the kitch-
en, turned off the gas with her hand and while she was getting near the
telephone, her grandchild was already handing her the receiver that
the other grandchildren were trying to pull away from him.
– Is he crazy? He is screaming: “Is it Satik? if not, call Satik!”– said
the grandchild disappointed. And the woman understood that there
he was the caller. She understood immediately, at that same minute.
Something took fire and burned her heart.
She grabbed the receiver. A male familiar voice loudly, loudly, in a
strange and monotonous way, like a robot, was repeating.
“Satik! Call Satik! Satik, can you hear me?”
“It is me, Satik! I hear you,” screamed the woman, screaming loud-
er than him. But the man was going on the same, as if he was just
throwing the words out.
“Call Satik, Satik!”
“I can hear you, go ahead, I can hear you!”
Somehow something went through and the man yelled:
“Satik, you must know, I always loved you!”
“Me too, me too I loved you!”
The grandchildren were surrounding the woman with interest,
started laughing.
“I loved you too, always” the woman repeat, as if that far away
evening did not happen, when the snow was flying, herself standing
under luminous street lantern, the snow falling like dust, sitting on her
loose hair, falling and falling on the floor, but he was not there, and the
life within her seemed going away, and remained just the same, even
though later she got herself a husband (may he rest in peace), a home,
children, grandchildren.
“Satik, do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
The woman, the receiver on her ear pressed against her shoulder,
making signs with her hands was trying to make understand to the
grandchildren to keep quiet, and kept on screaming.
“Do you hear me?”
“I just want you to know…”
“I know, I know,” the woman yelled with the same teenager voice
that was waiting for him, and he in turn never appeared, but the snow
kept on falling and falling, sparkling on the white linen, fading, faint-
ing, just like her own soul, as if abandoning a happiness that could not
be her share, so big it was…
“We shall die the same day only,” the man was screaming. “I will
live one hundred years and you – one hundred and one, as we had
agreed. Do you remember?”
“I remember, I remember, you only leave in disillusion.”
“What, what did you say? Satik, you must know, you are the only
one whom I loved!”
The web of her past life was unfolding and, as if a forest nut, kept
in the snow, where she was standing under the street light and life
was burning from within, even though later she had a husband, chil-
dren and grandchildren… even though, sometimes she was thinking:
“Come and see how lovely my family is…”
“Satik, I calmed down at last,” the man was screaming.
“Do you hear me? I still love you,” the woman was yelling, and with
her the grandchildren were yelling, laughing and jumping.
And nobody heard how the wind was opening and closing the win-
dows, how from the violet clouds the autumn rain poured forcefully,
dancing on the roof, the garden, kissing the tree’s foliage, the fading
ivy, the white window screens and even the covered balcony’s floor.
Nobody heard the noise of the wind and the rain hugging and kissing,
since the woman was screaming with fury in the telephone, so that this
old deft man could hear her, while her grandchildren were jumping
around and fainting with laughter.
“Grandma is in love! Whom does she love? Did you hear her? She
said: I love… Ha-ha-ha!”

Translated from Armenian by Suzy Shakian