Translated from the Armenian by Shant Norashkharian.
The customers in the nearby room were no longer dancing, singing. The aged bearded man, whispering at the edge of the table, his eyes full of tears, was narrating something. They were all listening, saddened. The man who had opened his hands, was speaking moving his head right and left. When he stopped for a moment, they all used the pause to drink.
Then he spoke again. They drank again.
"When everything is ruined", said Beronian after a silent period was established, "the neighbors will take even the last stones of your house..."
"The Kemalists are bombarding with canons the splendid remnants of our ancient churches which remain in our provinces, so that there would be not one trace left of the Armenian nation", added Haig Shoushan.
"You will see tomorrow, they will consider Kemal a great man and a liberator..."
"Such are the affairs of the world...the American missionaries, who are the pioneers of their capitalism, will glorify these bloodthirsty beasts..."
"These are old pains, about which it is better not to talk...", said Sultanian. "Beronian is right; when nations become miserable and deprived of historic significance, they are despised and robbed. When one day, we stand on our feet again, the number of our friends will increase. Let us first think of ourselves, recover spiritually, and then we shall see..."
"A while ago, Sultanian, you were speaking of our historic effort to create a great culture...we interrupted you", said Gara.
"Yes, that is what I wanted to say..." continued Sultanian, "that culture is spirit and great culture is specially unique to small peoples..."
"If you like. At least that is so in the past; Athens, Florence...Culture is not wealth, civilization, reformed social system or state power, but pure spirituality; A lamp that illuminates and enriches life...Thus, if you examine our history well, you will see that from the beginning, from the days of the legends, we have run after that lamp, that light. Ara..."
"The king, that light, the king, the sun, Who bared his sword to declare war Against the dark wings of darkness; And rejected Shamiram's love..."
Gara recited the lines of the poem that he had written and looked at Sultanian's eyes.
"There, like that", encouraging Gara with a head gesture, continued Sultanian. "It is significant, that our history starts with that golden legend. As if history is telling us: Take that light and march on...And we have walked over difficult roads and every time that light died, we have wandered in darkness, we have come down from our height and resigned from our greatness...The legend of Ara and Shamiram is the war between two principles: On one side Ara, with the strong and agile body of a cougar, courageous, enlightened mind, the absolute and powerful sun-king; the will woven with eternal rays, the daring visionary who created awe-inspiring symbols, the chief priest who transformed blood and suffering into ecstasy and expressed the meaning of the universe with light; and, on the other side Shamiram, the Assyro-Babylonian desert-warmth, womanhood, hysteria, libido, the pigeon and the snake, the gold and the crime, the temple of lunar worship..."
"You forget, that Ara was the one defeated", remarked Shoushan.
"And that's the way it had to be. According to the rules of tragedy, the hero must sacrifice, he must be crowned with death, to be born again. The sun sets to rise again..."
"It is a little romantic", remarked Beronian.
"Perhaps to us, but not to our people", answered Sultanian. "Our people have never gone far from that principle. First, don't forget that Zarathustra was born in an Armenian province, Karabagh, and we, along with the Parthians and Persians, have been his worshipers for centuries; then, when they imposed Christianity on us, we transformed that religion into Araism...For our people Jesus is the Sun. Jesus is the resurrected Ara. Light, fire. Our peasant keeps a constant fire in his hearth, he swears by the sun, he worships the light, he invokes Ara's death and the setting of the sun by sacrifice, and prays turning toward sunrise..."
"That is true", agreed Beronian, "our people say 'my sun', ' your sun my witness', 'may your fire never die'..."
"They also say", remarked Gara, 'human-god'!..."
"To us the divine is not an external, ruthless and irresistible ruling force, but a power which is like light, and always reborn through and recreated by man. Man himself must become light, ray, divine...Perhaps our ancestors have possessed spiritual means to reach to that greatness, means which we have lost."
They fell silent.
In the next room they were singing again. A melancholic Eastern melody which was complaining as in mourning.
The bearded man, holding his head with his hands, was listening. His face had turned red, his eyes were swollen.
All had drunk.
Herian - while no one had heard - turned his ear toward the song, filled his cup, drank and became extremely sad.
He remembered Zvart.
"Whatever", he said as he looked blearily into his friends' eyes. "Whatever, let us drink some..."
They laughed.
"what is it?" he stammered, confused, "did I say something bad...?"
"No. I remembered that your name is Ara...", said Beronian.
Herian turned very red.
"And you had to say something...!"
"All that is very good, very beautiful", said Gara, "but the immediate life, its demands...the political conditions, the economic factors..."
"I knew that one or the other would raise that objection", answered Sultanian. "The objective conditions, the historical laws...they are there, no doubt they exist, however, let it not surprise you when I say; great things have always been accomplished in spite of objective conditions. That is one thing that the race of bookkeepers and priests does not understand..."
"Me, a priest?" Gara said angrily.
"No, no, we are not talking about you", comforted him Sultanian. "I say in general...Look, let us consider our history; if the economic factor was the most supreme factor, we would have become, long ago, Persian, Arab or Turk; however, our history is composed of incredible successions of tragic events, in the name of one supreme stupidity...! Even today and tomorrow, how can we compete with the enormous Russian production machine, we, who are rich only with stones...?"
"You are an extreme pessimist; our economy is adequate for us", objected Beronian.
"Those times when we could isolate ourselves in our mountains and live according to our traditional lives are gone...The world is interconnected now and all peoples must contribute their own unique values...", said Shoushan.
"Very true", agreed Sultanian. There lies the question: With what values can we participate in the general life...? Today mankind is hungry for matter; crazed, bewildered, it runs after material goods and; to acquire those goods it destroys, burns and bombs everything..."
"They destroyed our home as well, and sacrificed us as well," said Herian.
"Yes! Tomorrow they will put machine against machine, factory against factory. They will get involved in the production of matter, they will swear by the name of matter, they will deify iron, cement, the compounds of steel, the object and will sacrifice the human being and his individuality...We, the small nations, cannot compete in that race, but we can save the pure human values. Instead of iron creative power, instead of cement spiritual ascent, instead of steel depth of mind and spiritual structuring. We can put against the smoky, dark, noisy factory, the elite which is dedicated to human dignity. We can bring forward great and strong individuals, persons who are capable of inventing and managing the goals of their lives, who are content with their spiritual ascent, who can be self-structured, self-realized completely... I foresee a human race made of the mighty ones of inner life, the heroes of spiritual ascent, torch-bearing, of divine creation...When one day, those insect-converted mobs which have submitted to economic shackles revolt against the machines and complain loudly about the loneliness and emptiness of their souls, that race will come out of its hidden interior places and will return to humanity the human and will fill the void with new and magnificent meaning."
"That is poetry", Beronian remarked murmuring.
"And let it be poetry", answered Sultanian, "Let it be poetry. Poetry is as real as life and death, and after all more essential to life than iron and cement..."
In the neighboring room they were fighting.
"Brother, I didn't say that, I said..."
"How can you say that, you said...no! Can such a thing happen...? You come, you sit at my table, you drink my wine...!"
"Brother, I didn't say so, I said..."
And the bearded man, furious, rocking right and left, his bull's eyes bursting out, was beating his hands against his chest and shouting.
That lasted a few minutes. Then, everyone sat down again and continued to drink.
Beronian, who had stood up, to watch the scene in the next room, suddenly noticed someone coming in and called him.
He was a short-necked, graying-haired, myopic man.
"Look! Mardig, come here!" invited him Beronian.
The man came in, shook everyone's hands, and sat down. He was the editor of the local Armenian paper. He looked at everyone's faces with his myopic eyes and fell silent.
"What is it, are you having a good time?" he asked a little later.
"No, just talking about this and that..."
He fell silent again.
"Drink something!"
He refused with a head gesture.
"Oh, friend", teased Beronian, "your mood seems to be bad..."
The editor did not answer. He smoked.
"What, you are drinking wine from Milan"? he asked mechanically.
"No, from Gakhed..."
"Yeah, Gakhed...you see?"
"What...?"
"There things are warmed up again..."
"Where is there...?"
"Where would you like it to be...? In our grand country..."
"Well, well, we got it! You want to scare us...don't tell us things full of lies...!"
"And Beronian looked at his face doubtfully.
"No, by my sun, I am saying the truth...new telegrams arrived..."
Everyone stretched his head toward him.
" A general mobilization is declared", continued the editor in a neutral voice. "A state of war, giving up the guns, etc..."
"War...?"
"A general revolt of Turkish people. First, it started in Beyig-Vedi...The Kurds on the other bank of Arax, joining with the Turks of Sharour and Nakhichevan, attacked our troops, cut the communications and are advancing toward Zankezour."
"The Turks were preparing for that for a long time..."
"They are rushing. They want to put the Peace Conference in front of a de facto situation. The tragedy is that we do not have guns, and the government has started to rely on the population to give up all of their guns."
"What a situation...!"
"We must return immediately", exclaimed Herian with a saddened voice.
"We must ask our local mission about that. The papers will come out soon. The reality becomes known, and perhaps many will leave..."
All the customers in the restaurant had come and gathered around the editor. They were shouted, interpreted, became sad.
They were cursing the states.
Herian and his friends decided to go immediately to the Armenian mission to receive detailed information.
In the streets, the Armenians were snatching the newly-published newspapers from one hand or another. A deep grief marked the faces of the passers-by. Everywhere groups were being formed. They were talking, arguing, becoming sad.
"Brother, it is five years now, five years, that this situation has gone on...!"
"They say there are no arms...that is it. arms, arms, arms...!"
"There are arms here, but the Georgians would not let us send them".
"They do not understand, that if we are defeated, they will be defeated as well...the Turks have their eyes on all of Caucasus..."
And the voices became deeper and more trembling.