Like the groom, the best man is wearing a broad red band on his sleeve. He has many difficult and complex responsibilities, and it is no wonder that he doesn’t look much like a guest at a wedding. On his face lies an anxious frown, and he has the air of a factory director who is failing to fulfill the plan. He doesn’t feel like joking. Only now and again does he remember the nature of the occasion. Then he smiles hurriedly, downs a glass—and returns to his duties.
“It’s time now, it’s time we were off!” he shouts and points at his watch. I’ve heard that he bought seventy kilos of chocolates for the wedding table, out of his own pocket. His full, swarthy face looks determined. It would clearly take a great deal to make him give way; he is a man who finishes what he has begun.
The wedding was so complex and polyphonic, so full of different people and voices, that the young couple in their new coats, the young man and woman who had decided to get married, seemed almost forgotten. Later in the day, when we had at last got back to the groom’s village, I would feel this even more strongly.
But before this, when the bride began to say goodbye to her father’s house, there were a few minutes when the sadness of the day became apparent to everyone. The bride was crying—and this was not part of the ritual. Her tears were tears of true feeling.
Everything at this point was deeply touching and full of meaning. The girl was leaving the poor home of her parents, and she was going to the poor home of the groom. I had seen her future home—a cramped little stone room with a low ceiling and one little window, on the side of a mountain. This was her lot, her fate, her entire life. Stone and more stone, day in, day out—and never a drop of rain.
And then the human soul, with all its agitation and sorrow, was again eclipsed by ritual. For some time, the bride was not allowed to leave. The groom’s agents and representatives had to bribe the young lads surrounding the young woman, who was still wearing her light-blue coat and white satin slippers and still clasping her light-blue bag. Then these young lads, closing their fists around three- and five-ruble notes—I even saw one with a ten-ruble note—moved aside and allowed the bride to make her way towards the glassy coach. How little this light-blue vision, with her pretty slippers and handbag—how little she had in common with the poor, harsh life that awaited her.
As a parting gift, her mother gave her a little white hen, a white dish, and a rosy red apple.
Meanwhile, to the thunder of drums and the piercing sound of the flutes, people began loading the dowry onto one of the trucks. The truck had stopped not directly outside the house but a little way off: Everyone, after all, had to admire the dowry.
Leading the procession were the old men, the tipsy ninety-year-olds; they were singing, jigging up and down, and on their heads they bore the bride’s suitcases. Next came a group of strong young men, holding high in the air a table, a sewing machine, and a new wardrobe with mirror doors. Then came the women and children, carrying chairs. And then the orchestra thundered still louder: The best man and his friends were carrying a nickel-plated bed with a sprung mattress. The villagers’ jokes must have been risqué; the male listeners laughed and shook their heads, while the women and girls looked down at the ground.
As the bride, surrounded by a crowd of women from the groom’s party, walked up to the coach, a boy of about fifteen ran up to one of these women, hugged her and kissed her. Several men pounced on him furiously. In a moment the boy’s face was covered with blood. I assumed that the boy was blind drunk, and I felt he had been punished much too harshly. Then I was told that this too was part of the ceremony—the boy was the bride’s brother, and he had to kiss one of the women from the groom’s village in revenge for their taking away his sister. It was a ritual, a tradition—though to me it seemed a coarse and brutal tradition.
But then I saw something deeply moving: Through her tear-stained eyes, the bride looked up at her brother, and at the very same moment, this boy with a bloody face and eyes wet with tears looked at his sister. Through their tear-stained eyes they smiled at each other, with a smile of love. My heart filled with joy, warmth, and sorrow.
Again we boarded our glassy coach. The bride and groom were sitting beside each other. They sat there like strangers, their faces frozen, not once even looking at each other, neither of them saying a single word during the entire journey.
The sun was now setting behind the stone bones of the mountains. Turbid, full of wan fire, this sun seemed to come from some abyss of geological time. A smoky red light bathed the mountain’s red stone. At this moment, the biblical myth of Mount Ararat seemed entirely contemporary.
It was dark by the time we got back to the bridegroom’s village. The stars were shining up above us—southern, Armenian stars, the stars that looked down long ago on high, snowy mountains that are now only fragments of impotent bone, the stars that shone above Mount Ararat before the Bible even existed, the stars that will still be shining when Ararat and Aragats, too, are no more than dead bones.
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 sou
nd 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!
AN ARMENIAN PICTURE ALBUM
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
Grossman and “Martirosyan” with Echmiadzin cathedral in the background
A drawing Grossman sent from Armenia to Lena, the daughter of his stepson, Fyodor Guber. The text reads as follows:
TO LENOCHKA.
This is a trout from blue Lake Sevan.
A sheep, it is grazing on the mountainside.
Here I wanted to draw a donkey, but it has ended up more like a mouse.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM ESPECIALLY grateful to Vasily Grossman’s daughter, Yekaterina Korotkova, and his stepson, Fyodor Guber, both of whom have been patient and generous in answering questions. All unreferenced quotations or references to them are from personal correspondence. I also thank Fyodor Guber and his daughter Elena Fyodorovna Guber for allowing us to reproduce photographs from their fine collection.
It has been a joy, as always, to collaborate with my wife, Elizabeth, and with the Moscow scholar Yury Bit-Yunan.
I also wish to thank Michele Berdy, Olive Classe, Boris Dralyuk, David Fel′dman, John and Carol Garrard, Natalya Gonchar-Khandzhyan, Gasan Gusejnov, Alvard Jivanyan, Mark Miller, Francesca Ovi, Stephen Pearl, Anne Schumann, Gagik Stepan-Sarkissian, Polly Zavadivker, and the many members of my translation classes at Queen Mary, University of London and of the SEELANGS e-mail discussion group who have contributed to these translations.
R.C.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1 Valentin Kataev’s In the Country of Seven Springs (1934) and Andrey Bitov’s The Lessons of Armenia (written in 1969, five years after Grossman’s death) also deserve mention.
2 Lipkin, Kvadriga (Moscow: Knizhny sad, 1997), 582.
3 Yampolsky, “Poslednyaya vstrecha s Vasilyem Grossmanom,” Kontinent 8 (1976): 147.
4 Letter of January 3, 1962, published in Glazami druzei, an anthology of writings by Russians about Armenia (Yerevan: Ayastan, 1967), 360; see also letter of December 1, 1961, 356.
5 See http://karabah88.ru/history/persony/89_meri_kochar-grossman_voshishalsia_kecharisom.html. In his memoir about Grossman, Lipkin claims that it was he who first proposed this task to Grossman. He reports Grossman as replying, “If the novel isn’t vile, I’ll translate it. It’s a good thing that it is, as you say, a long book. I need the money, and I feel terrible. Maybe putting my nose to the grindstone will do me good.” (Kvadriga, 593). Lipkin, however
, is not always reliable; other parts of his account of Grossman and his Armenian memoir have been refuted by Natalya Gonchar-Khandzhyan in “K istorii publikatsii ‘Dobro vam V. Grossmana,’ ” Literaturnaya Armeniya (1989): 2.
6 Fyodor Guber, Pamyat′ i pis′ma (Probel, 2007), 109.
7 Ibid., 600.
8 Ibid., 603. The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) is a science-fiction novel by H.G. Wells. Doctor Moreau is a physiologist who lives on a remote island, performing painful experiments on animals with the aim of transforming them into human beings. He has some success, but the objects of his experiments have an unfortunate tendency to revert to their animal form.
9 Grossman’s original subtitle was “Notes of an Elderly Man.” The French translation is titled La paix soit avec vous. In English the memoir has often been referred to as Good Wishes, a title we considered for this edition but eventually rejected.
10 Lipkin, 603.
11 Ibid., 605.
12 Lev Slavin quotes parts of these passages in “Armenia! Armenia!,” an article written in 1970 and now available at http://www.litmir.net/br/?b = 25070. They were first published in Glazami druzei, 354 and 355.
13 From “Never in my life have I bowed to the ground” to “the words ‘It’s a pity Hitler didn’t finish off the lot of you.’” The accounts of this episode by Lipkin and by Grossman’s daughter, Yekaterina Korotkova, differ with regard to important details. Lipkin remembers Tvardovsky as having consistently stood by Grossman and interceded with the censor on his behalf; Korotkova remembers her father telling her in December 1962 that he had lost his temper with Tvardovsky and shown him the door when he insisted, after Grossman had already agreed to many cuts, on the need for still more. See John and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev (The Free Press, 1996), 288.