The Earth Shuddered
by
Levon Khechoyan
Translated by Diana Hambardzumyan
They forbade us to enter
the church with weapons. Free candles were passed out to us, for the salvation
of our souls. We lit the candles inside the church, leaving our weapons outside.
Then we took their
villages with meteoric rapidity. We approached the town; the town also fell. We
went in and out, running through broken telegraph poles, full-length portraits
of leaders, unwound wires, metals, and villages with strange smells which
surrendered one by one. The success of our attack was accomplished by the
swiftness of our thrust. Headquarters and the generals forbade the reporters to
follow us into the villages. Despite their complaints, they were forced into
cars and sent back. The prisoners and wounded were driven to the rear in
groups.
We slept in sleeping
bags in wet, dry, cold, and warm weather. We woke up before dawn; with the
tanks ahead of us, the earth shuddering beneath our feet, and in our ears the
screech of metal wheels over caterpillar treads, we entered the steppe. Taking
the village opposite us was not a difficult task, but we did not want to lose
our guys. We stopped and, ignoring the forked tongues of the snakes that jetted
out like blue-red electro sparks, slept in the yellow pumpkin fields.
At dawn the generals and
commanding officers, the map spread out on their knees, confirmed the position
of the village. Once again advancing through the telegraph and electrical
poles, giant portraits of leaders, unwound wires, smashed metals, and disparate
smells, leaving those who had fallen or injured to the ambulances heeling us,
we crossed the cotton fields and, the earth shuddering beneath our feet,
entered the village.
Somebody called out. I
heard the voice from behind. I turned around but there was no one there. Then
one of their woman soldiers, who was seated on a Shilka[1]
and destroying our tanks, was abandoned by her comrades; disappointed, she
surrendered. We took her diary out of her pocket. It contained some lines about
the sun, bastard generals, suppliers not supplying bread, and how many of our
tanks she had destroyed with her contraption. She unbuttoned the sleeve of her
jacket, which was adorned with green leaves, rolled it up, and exposed the
infected injection wound on the transparent blue vein.
“First give me a shot .
. . I’m not afraid.”
We were sitting here and
there around her. One of us was eating an apple. The apple exploded in his
mouth; the apple tree was nearby. I knew what this woman wanted. On my arm,
too, the indistinct scar under my skin had not yet healed; it lingered on like
a cloudy, colorful dream, and ached. We all knew what she wanted. We also knew
the secret of seeing nothing with glassy eyes. Around her, restraining the
reeling pain of our swollen legs and spines, we went on with our smoking.
Someone who had joined
us from the other detachment said, “Are you having fun? What are you waiting
for? Take her away and plug her three holes—and look at what veins she has!
Take her and do it—women like her love things like that.”
The woman stretched out
her arm. I saw the transparent blue vein. I heard the apple and pomegranate
exploding in their mouths. A voice came from behind again, and I turned around,
but there was nobody there. I did not understand what I had missed, and refused
any longer to hear the commanding officer from the other detachment. Kamo was
injured in the arm and was vomiting. I went over to cheer him up.
Then, again, the earth
shuddered beneath our feet. We were widely scattered on the endless yellow
steppe. We tried to call to each other in friendly tones, without knowing where
everybody was. We advanced, beating the thin dust under the metal caterpillars,
and entered the valley of the Arax—the shores of our dreams! Our tanks were
churning up the water. The sun stood in the middle of the sky, firing piercing,
intense heat and burning our heads. Then I heard the same voice for the third
time; it came from behind. I realized I should hide in a shadow, but there was
not a single black spot on the yellow steppe—every shadow melted under the
luxuriant, warm light of the sun. The small, grey, charred hills were steaming.
In these boiling hills they could not find a guy from the other detachment. No
one appeared on the distant plane of the steppe, which stretched far and wide.
All the radios that connected the detachments, all the binoculars searched for
Serob and could not find him. The air was howling. We smoked quietly. Our
nostrils were clogged with dust, and our breath was warm and saturated with
nicotine.
They showed us the
village. The generals and those who gave orders by radio said “Take that
village and establish a base there.”
The earth shuddered
beneath our feet; again we went through metals, unwound wires, telegraph and
electric poles, giant portraits of leaders, and different smells. The villagers
had seen us approaching, and had fled. No one remained when we entered the
village. Our commandant said, “Check the houses one by one; see if there isn’t
somebody hiding.”
Their dogs tore us
apart. Behind every padlocked door there were sheep dogs. They snatched at our
guys as soon as they entered the houses, and we in turn raked as many as we
could manage with fire when they jumped at our throats. Then, in the evening,
our scattered detachment began to turn up from everywhere: from behind bushes,
trees, houses, out of shadows and darkness. They came with the dust of the
steppe on their eyelashes and beards. They came from the four corners of the
village, one on a donkey, another on a horse, bearing a bunch of grapes, figs,
apples, pomegranates from the valley and booty from the endless expanse of
yellow desert. They called out to one another so the stragglers would not be
lost.
As we gathered in one
place and spat the sticky dust from our mouths, we noted that our water flasks
were empty. We sensed the danger at once; none of us had noticed a spring in
the village. Our thirst intensified. We poked around all over the village but
found no water. Our men went away and fetched dry, insipid watermelons from
behind the steppe and the charred, seething hills, but they did not quench our
thirst. We were all dejected again. We tried to put the house with green and
dark green verandas in order, to make it our quarters. Lone mosquitoes from the
swarms that milled about kept eating us. The guys went all over the village
again, looking for water, but in vain. Many of us grumbled and complained.
Someone arrived from another base, in the neighboring village, looking for
Serob. He addressed our commander: “We haven’t been able to find Serob, no
matter how hard we look. Haven’t you seen him? He was in the right flank,
constantly advancing.”
We wanted him to leave
us in peace and go away. We gave him a juicy pear. There was dust on his
chapped lips. As he bit into the fruit, a worm emerged from it; noticing
nothing, he bit into it again. We waited for him to go away.
“I brought him here; he arrived with me. His
wife is going to have a baby in a couple of months,” he said. His drowsy eyes
were closing. “Well, I’m going. If you see him, let us know.”
Then Gegham arrived.
“There mustn’t be any water in this village. How do you expect to find a spring
on a steppe? I’ve discovered a well,” he said.
The commanding officer
did not want us to drink that water. He repeatedly refused, knowing that wells
were the best places to poison people.
“Be patient;” he said,
“they may supply us with water from the rear; we’ll find out by radio.”
We switched on the
portable radio. Again somebody was asking about Serob. We yelled at the
operator, “Switch it off, you idiot! have you ever made contact with it?
Whenever you’re needed, you’ve always had diarrhoea! Switch it off!”
“Let me connect you through the night
line—it’s always free—and seventy nine may be vacant,” the operator replied.
Amid all the radio
interference, both noisy and soft, someone was still searching for Serovbeh[2]
in a monotonous voice. At that very moment, I heard a voice from behind again.
I turned around, but nobody was there.
The guys were still yelling
at the radio operator, “Switch it off, switch it off . . . !”
Our thirst was getting
more and more intense. We needed water, and the commanding officer gave in; it
was he, though, who drank the first glass of boiled water, and we loved him
longingly.
Seven more days went by.
The mosquitoes had left running wounds on our bodies. When our men returned
from the night shift they could not sleep because of the flies and the
toothache caused by the muddy, sour-tasting water. Many had eyes that were
inflamed with ruptured capillaries; their sleeplessness, the dust, and the
endlessness of the steppe had caused their blood pressure to drop.
More days went by. From
all around the village, small and big, colorful cats and packs of dogs of
various breeds showed up and filled our quarters; they had been injured by
bombardments but survived. They meowed, wailed, and gnawed each other’s throats
for bones. From our hands they snatched pieces of leftovers from the meals
prepared by our cook. During the day they ate our bread, and at dusk they left
us, sat before the open doors, licked their wounds, and barked violently at us,
or turned the flames of their sparkling eyes to the sky and barked at the moon.
We were irritated; our nerves could not stand it.
At night, for those of
us who were on patrol in the village and around the base post, the natural
silence was broken by the concealed displacements of their scouts and by the
tracer shots sent up to help our friends in the dark, mixed with the meows and
wails emitted by flabby, soft bodies, small and big, beneath our feet; the
sounds of their rushing swiftly here and there, tormented in pain; and the
enemy’s footsteps. We were unable to distinguish the sounds one from another.
All through the night the winds that blew from north and south kept beating,
banging, and screeching against the open and closed doors and windows of
hundreds of houses. Although we were aware that the doors and windows were
about to bang behind us, it made us jump all the same. Its voice was becoming doubled,
as if blowing up inside us once more; furthermore, the night was spilling out
under our feet like water from a shattered glass, on which we would tread as if
walking barefoot, knowing full well that the blade of a sword was whirling
around us in the dark. The pomegranate tree irritated us too. Suddenly, in the
silence of the night, pomegranates fell and with a huge whack split the dense,
fluid darkness. Groups of cats and dogs of various breeds started to invade our
quarters. We knew that we would not be able to get rid of them; we had already
tried that the day we entered the village. While raiding the houses, we shot
the sheep dogs that leapt at our throats, and in order to get rid of the
unbearable stench that their decaying flesh spread over the village, we poured
gasoline from our vehicles on them.
On the twentieth day all
of us were infested with lice. At dawn, as we sat along the wall wiping lice
from our vests and crushing them with our thumbnails, the guy from the
neighboring village base came again. His lips were chapped He was still looking
for Serovbeh: “We couldn’t find Serob, no matter how hard we looked,” he said.
“Haven’t you seen him? His wife is going to have a baby in two months. He
arrived here with me,” he repeated as before.
We wanted him to leave
us in peace and go away. We gave him some soup. As he ate and dipped his bread
in it, his drowsy eyes were closing.
“Well, I’m going; if you
see him, let us know.”
That day, from their
hiding places in the gardens and the steppe, thumping down the deserted village
streets on their horseshoes, came donkeys, mules, and old horses with broken
hoofs; they had been abandoned during the escape. Crazed with thirst, they
moaned and dug up the earth around our water containers with their hoofs, swallowing
whenever they found something in the shade that was wet, persecuted by the
swarms of blue-winged flies attracted by the moisture of their eyes. They
glared at us and neighed continuously. We saddled them and had our pictures
taken posed suitably on their quivering backs and puffing out our chests.
When Shahen and a few
others came from the post and told us to set the house opposite our shelter on
fire, the commanding officer objected: “No, you mustn’t do such a thing. Don’t
do it, that’s all.”
Shahen did not seem to
agree: “You say we mustn’t, but that makes being on patrol impossible. The roof
is tiled; when the tiles move a little or rattle their wings or whatever, it
sounds like a man walking. It goes on like that all night long; right across from
our base. The house has got to go. Otherwise we’ll get used to the noise and
one day the enemy will climb up on the roof.”
Karo and I were on
patrol together, and were talking about wanting a woman.
“There’s one inside of
me. I haven’t seen her yet, but one day, I’ll go to the half-ruined cathedral
with her, near the pool of blood,” he said, “and she’ll give herself up to
you.”
“No”, I said, “she would
betray me under pressure.”
And the bats passed
swiftly through the night.
“It’s weakness, filling the veins…otherwise,
how do you get to know that what hasn’t happened yet is going to happen?”
There was a noise; it
came from far away. We went forward and, holding our breaths, we entered the
vegetable garden of a two-storey house from different sides. A famished sheep
dog had a calf by the throat. On our way back, we smelled the strong aroma of
an oleander tree.
“I heard a voice from
behind four times,” I said.
We remained silent, and
then it was he who spoke first: “It’s the tension. The big village we entered .
. . anyone who goes there can hear everything you say. It’s quite impossible.
It’s your brain inventing things. When you’re upset, the brain likes to concoct
things . . .”
Suddenly, the darkness
turned red. The house opposite our night shelter had been set afire. From the
tiled roof hundreds of doves surged up into the air. The beating of their wings
exploded in the red dark of the night. As we were running there, I again heard
a voice from behind, and stopped. I did not want to go on.
Then the commandants and
generals at headquarters issued the order not to desecrate any cemetery. And on
the radio somebody was still searching for Serovbeh, in the same monotonous
voice. The next day they brought a French reporter who had arrived at headquarters;
all of us rushed outside. We heeded neither her speech nor those of the
deputies in white shirts and glasses. We ogled her white teeth; moist lips;
warm fingers; fine hair falling on her shoulders; supple, waving, delicate
waist; and breasts swaying beneath her almost transparent red dress. Her
sonorous laughter poured down through the intense heat onto our heads.
She said, “Give me a
fig.”
The guys fetched some
figs.
She said, “Give me a
pomegranate.”
The guys picked some
pomegranates.
She said, “Give me an
apple.”
The fascinated guys
fetched apples.
She said, “Give me some
grapes.”
The guys broke the vines
in their haste to pick grapes. Shirak first stretched his hands up to heaven,
then, holding his head, he addressed her: “Oh, sweet Mother, good heavens, do
you want a fig leaf, desire a fig leaf . . . ?”
And not until then had
we laughed, not giggled until then, and we realized how furious, long, and
brutal the fighting had been. The wave of laughter and giggles had come and
opened up our faces, sleepless, beaten by rain and wind, at nights smoked by
the wheel fire and by day scorched by the sun. And at that moment we all saw
the shade of Andrey from our detachment, who had fallen under enemy fire in the
distant mountains a year before, come up to us, strike, and pass through us.
The commanding officer alone was sad.
When we were left alone,
we went out to walk in the depths of the steppe, falling into the precipice of
the night. We heard our own footsteps and the echo of our speech. For us the
distant, starless sky was like the seclusion of a well that is covered with a
lid, and it agitated us, and our conversation became incomplete, half-spoken,
and inexplicable. The night was lightening. From somewhere in the village,
still hidden, a cock crowed, admonishing the darkish shadows and the opposed
forces of light to return to their places. We returned and switched on the
radio to demand food from headquarters. And somebody in a tedious voice was
again searching for Serovbeh on the radio. Without asking for bread and
cigarettes, we hastily switched off the radio and sat at the table Everybody
had already slept. In front of us were numerous green and dark green (unlike
our souls) house doors, on the other side of which was darkness. We drank some
wine. The commanding officer’s eyes were longing and sleepless, the night was
dark and deep, like the well, and he asked: “We’ve reached the valley of
dreams—what do you think, have we reached it yet?”
Again our conversation failed, and we poured more wine. I heard a
voice from behind again. From somewhere in the village, still hidden, a cock
crowed. It was getting light; it was already the fourth day since we had set
the tiled-roofed house on fire, and for four days the doves hung from heaven,
without ever landing, circling above us over and over.
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