Photo by Anahit Hayrapetyan
Everything was so mute and motionless that it seemed as if daytime was nighttime when the sun shines in the sky. The day would reach the trees and hesitate as under the trees there was untimely night. The sun had cast the shadows of the leaves on the walls of houses. The monotonous creak of the swing could be heard. No other sound was breaking the muteness that surrounded the day. No humming of a bee could be heard, as the beehives were silent. The birds had stopped chirping because of the heat, had petrified and hidden from the sun, sat motionless on branches and in bushes, disguised and erect. They simply existed.
The boy was in the yard, squatted under the sun and was observing the commotion of the ants, captivated by the discovery of that micro-civilization. In order to reveal the ingenuities of the ants, he could follow for hours their migrations and raids, funerals and rituals. The ants were hurriedly carrying the empty shell of a dead bee so they could hide from the sun.
Mother was hanging their washed shirts for drying, in pairs and identical. On the rope the shirts looked sort of weak. The wet smell of laundry was leaving an illusion of freshness. While the sun scorched so much that immediately after hanging completely dry clothes were ready to be collected on the rope’s other end. But she would leave the laundry hanging for such a long time so that it would get so warm that it would breathe the sun’s warmth and the clothes would smell like summer.
The brother got off the swing, knelt next to him with the sun-scorched ball under his arm, and looked at the ants with an indifference characteristic of God. The boy prompted with a whisper that the ants were taking the bee to make an airplane. The brother stood up, stepped on the ants and said, “Let’s go.” “Where?” asked the mother. “To play ball” answered the brother. “Don’t stay under the sun for too long,” cautioned the mother.
In the muteness of daybreak, the watch with the swing struck eleven or twelve times, the boy didn’t count right. In any event, it didn’t have anything to do with the time. The watches certainly worked, their ability to measure time was gone. In the middle of the sky, the sun was motionless, the heat and the hours of people’s secret existence remained ahead. Then, the eternal tolls of the parish were heard. The boy counted twelve tolls.
The day had gotten so mute that the tolls sounded all over the space. The sky had become a gable for those tolls as if the sun’s ball was tolling in that azure gable, while the sun shone really bright that day.
No one dared to come outside in the sweltering heat of daybreak’s cruel sun. If it weren’t for children for whom play was more important than the sun’s threat, it would seem as if the village was uninhabited. Their voices could be heard everywhere, but usually they could be found anywhere. Children had their secret play-places. From time to time, the seemingly uninhabited village’s muteness was broken by the faraway noise of bodiless children’s games, and the shrieks of old ladies driving them away like chickens. Then the noise would get lost in the emptiness of the dead hours and again silence would fall. After midday, people would disappear like shadows surrendering the space to the sun. The dusty streets, covered with eternal tire-traces, were empty. The half-open doors of houses looked like unknown traps.
The ground was wobbling from the heat, unstable for eyesight. The sky was ablaze with a blue flame. Light was underlining even the smallest stones, as if every stone was gifted with a special meaning. The leaves and the roofs were playing with the light, which would unexpectedly reflect and hurt the eye, flow over the roofs, and drip from the gutters.
There are many ramshackle, roofless houses without doors in the village. There are also abandoned houses with open and inhospitable doors. And there are houses baptized with rusty locks for so long until the Second Coming will take. In order to investigate the secret of their emptiness, children would toss rays through the windows with mirrors in hand; decrepit buildings attract them. The kindergarten’s decrepit building is a spacious play-place. No child in the village has gone to kindergarten. They don’t care why the kindergarten’s building is so abandoned; they are interested only in games. There they can play hopscotch and hide-and-seek, jump on the broken and rusty beds and enter the sky.
At daybreak, the kindergarten’s backyard, which is the only asphalt-covered area in the village – even though the asphalt is cracked and gross grows from within it – is in a shade. The tall poplars have climbed and block the sun, but that summer heat infringed the border of the shadows.
Shogher, who was their inseparable play-pal, was there already. She was jumping rope, light and on target, would not get tired like a charged-up doll and jump with her eyes closed, as if she was blessed with the skill of seeing dreams while jumping rope. When she would open her eyes it would seem to the boy that with her transparent eyes the girl could see the world much brighter. There was an evanescent commonality between the sun and the girl’s yellow hair.
The girl left the rope. They threw a bet. The boy’s heart trembled; suddenly he realized beforehand that it would be his turn to close his eyes. That’s how it turned out. They demanded that he count longer. He was counting with his eyes half-open, stealthily looking at the sun’s ray on his foot. He was bored, but no matter how long he would count his boredom would not end. That is how boredom is. Then he panicked because it seemed as if he counted so long that his brother and the girl had left their hiding places, leaving him alone in the half-ruined and airless building of the kindergarten, where the metal rods had gotten hot and the air was still. In that empty kindergarten, where no child had attended, the sun’s rays were so mysterious that they were betraying their secret presence. The floor creaked under the feet, a smell of pee and dirt reeked all over, which was a beneficial niche for flies. At night, the bellow of cows was heard; the chickens went in and out freely; bunches of grass and wild bushes grew; and wild birds lived there. Nature was returning there to reclaim the empty throne of humanity and was acting without hurry because it had an entire eternity ahead of itself.
On a spot on the floor, there was the foot of a doll; on a different spot there was a child’s shoe, a trace of someone’s childhood. The surrounding area was a ruin. Some children had vanished from there. At first, he looked in the lockers; he would hide there. One by one, he would peep through the keyholes. A secret eye gaze aimed into his eyes, hoping that nobody could see him. He ran, the door opened with a bang, but the brother could not reach him. Then he started looking for the girl. One by one, he examined the rooms. From the second floor, the clamping of crushed tiles was heard. He went upstairs, approached the restroom on tiptoes. He hid; then heard his heartbeat. Noise of flies. Creak. Yellow liquid flowed by his shoe. From the corner of the wall, astonished, he kept peeking. Then, when the girl raised her underwear, she ran to free herself. He wanted to tell to his brother’s how girls pee, but she cautioned him with her finger not to. The boy got goose-bumps, a little farther off a corpulent rat was looking at them.
During the years of famine, these rats had gotten so obnoxious that when there was nobody in the village they would freely come out under the sun, devour the last bits of flour in the storages, one by one suffocate the chickens, gnaw their throats, and steal their eggs. Once, the boy had found the eggs, harmlessly stacked on top of one another like a pyramid.
The rat wouldn’t go away; the enormous size had inspired it with boldness. It had stamped his pearl-like, protruded eyes on them. There was no fear, only curiosity shone in his eyes. For an instant, which was enough to evaluate the stranger’s essence and the measure of animosity, they looked at each other. The boy decided that the rat was seeing two people at the same time for the first time, and who looked like each other so much. The brother slowly knelt down, took a broken piece of tile, hurled it, the rat vanished under the planks, slid into the crack in the floor. From all that, the rat drew a conclusion: if two people look like each other so much, that means one of them is very evil and cruel.
They were discovering that crack for the first time, they were seeing for the first time that under the planks there was an entire, dark and unknown world. Yellow hairs could be seen in that crack. The brother said that under the planks there was a corpse. He stuck his hand in the crack and took out a doll. The doll’s eye was still in place, and a cold soul was directed at them through blue, persuasive eyes. The doll suddenly brayed, the boy shivered with fright. The boy was turning the doll in his hands and the doll brayed one more time. If that weeping was artificial, why did it sound so persuasive? Or maybe in that empty body there was a soul. The doll was smiling, and the fake crying together with it seemed to say; “How swell it is to be doll!” Shogher embraced her artificial twin, they came out into the yard, she carefully seated the doll on the ground, and they started to play ball. It seemed to the boy as if the doll was sitting and watching their game. He always wanted to turn his glance, maybe unbeknownst to him the doll was blinking her eyes, smiling, and following with her glass eyes how a boy was throwing the ball and a girl was dodging, managing to turn, and another boy was catching the ball; now, see if you can differentiate them. The doll is recollecting her doubles, one of whom probably belonged to this girl’s double. One of the twins didn’t have time to catch the ball. It flew asunder and jumped into the abyss. The doll knows well that human souls can enter balls.
The kindergarten was on top of the cliff, a steep slope cut the backyard, the area used to fall into the abyss. They had almost gotten close the edge of the abyss, had collided with the unknown of the lost territory. A cricket was calling from the abyss. It was calling them to jump into it. It was making the scary emptiness of the abyss charming.
They were not leaving the edge of the cliff. They were waiting, but no one was throwing the ball back up. The abyss didn’t want to return the ball. That loss was a real mystery, the same as a ball not falling down when tossed down. It didn’t occur to them that they could lose a ball that had become one with its colors. They didn’t need another ball. Shogher ran towards the doll and called to them, “Wait, I’m coming, too.” The twin brothers were descending into the abyss after the disappeared ball. The railroad was down the abyss, in the ravine. When the boy went up into the village, their mother was calling them. He had realized early on in the railroad that he couldn’t return home without his brother. Where could he hide? He entered the kindergarten again. He stood in front of the same cabinet where his brother had hidden during hide-and-seek. What was he going to say if his mother entered the kindergarten and found him? What was he to say? The cabinet was narrow; he had barely cuddled up in there. He could stay locked up in the cabinets at home for hours because they were comfortable. At one point, he was afraid of the dark. But in hiding places small enough to provide comfort, darkness was a source of safety. The feeling of comfort would neutralize the fear of darkness.
His mother was calling from the kindergarten’s vicinity. He wanted to come out, run, and embrace her. He was safer in her embrace than in where he was, but something forbade him. He was out of breath. There was anger in his mother’s voice, it was a different voice. It wasn’t his mother, but a stranger double. He’ll say he’s playing hide-and-seek. The brother probably hasn’t closed his eyes, has left the game and gone astray, how could he know where? That lie was similar to his nature. That lie seemed so valid that relieved him of the responsibility of understanding the true occurrence. But it didn’t inspire boldness to come out of the cabinet. Where was Shogher? Had she gone home? Had his mother seen her? Had she found out that they had been at the railroad? Then, his mother’s voice went away. Other voices – both known and unknown – were calling them, and were getting close and getting far. Dogs were barking and echoing each other, and it seemed as if the whole village was in a commotion because of them. They hadn’t found the brother. They hadn’t found the brother. All the voices quieted down as if they all jumped into the abyss. He suddenly realized that in the kindergarten’s building he was all alone in the darkness. He felt like going home and finally decided to come out of the cabinet. The door creaked. An odd, ludicrous barking was heard from afar and stopped as if the dog got strangled. The floor creaked under his foot. He was walking slowly and cautiously, he stopped for a minute to make sure that the creak was due to his walking. The branches of trees sounded like sword-fighting. The voices were gifted with a scary distinctness. Tin-plates were rustling, broken glass was clanging; the doors creaked, as if unknown children were making these sounds. The kindergarten, where children played in the daytime, was the same in darkness. But at the same time, it was so different that it struck fear. Broken glass looked like open jaws. The shadows… the trees don’t recognize their shadows at night. The trees are horrified by their shadows.
He finally opened the door. A bird flew from the darkness and screamed in fear. The darkness encompassed it again. It was a real night. He was alone on the planet. It was hot. The planet had turned to the dark side of the cosmos because of the sun. But the stones had gotten hot and retained the fire of the sun. There was a warm stream from the crags. He turned and looked at the kindergarten’s building, where there were neither walls, nor ceilings, nor floors. There was only darkness. A foreign shadow kept following him. His own, unknown presence was hiding from him. The bushes and grass were barely audibly moving, in that furious silence their movement already seemed logical. A cricket was calling. Where might it be? Is it possible to find that cricket? Then he thought that maybe the cricket is sitting on the smallest stone in the abyss. The voice of that simple, restless existence was coming out of the abyss and encompassed the entire night, spread throughout the cosmos. It seemed as if the stars were cricketing. Why don’t the crickets quiet down at night? Maybe the heat doesn’t let them sleep. And so they cricket and cricket. He knew that those inexplicable creatures saw dreams. What kind of dreams do nano-brains see?
He saw a twinkle of green light in the grass. He looked at the sky where countless stars were shining. He knew it was a fire-fly, but what if it was a star fallen down from the sky. So that means stars breathe, the cosmos is alive. A star had fallen on our planet from the sky and was breathing restlessly the existence of the gigantic cosmos. It was going to that small, mysterious gleam – so mysterious that it seemed as if it encompassed the secret of all the nights. At that moment, the signal of the train was heard from afar. The train is returning, the train is returning, he must find the time to…
He was baffled by how close the sound of the trains was heard at night, the clanging of the brakes and the wheels, regardless of the fact that the railroad was in the ravine. The signal. In the dark, the distance would hesitate from the voices. The brother would wake him up at night for the trains. He would open his eyes abruptly, his heart would throb restlessly not having gotten used to wakefulness. It seemed he had woken up in another place, in the station.
The brother was looking out of the window, which were left open on summer nights because of the stuffiness. The brother dreamt of becoming a locomotive-driver. Were they really at home? He would stay in the trap of the bed, holding his breath, restlessly listening to the sound of the night-cutting train; in order to comprehend the closeness of the train, the magic that was taking place with space. It was so easy to be convinced that home was no longer in the village, the brother having stuck his head out of the window could see the train, and if he himself were to stick his head out, he would see as well, but he preferred to dream, and if someone looked into his eyes would see that he was seeing a dream with eyes wide open; that it wasn’t their home but the railroad station where their family lived. And he is a switchman that comes out and with a lever changes the itinerary of a huge train, looking after the train he thought that if he didn’t pull the lever, the train would have a collision, and he feels that he gave direction to other people’s destiny. Thus, in those dreams, he was enjoying his glory. Everyone in the village is asleep, nobody knows that the signals of the night train are sounding in his honor.
When the train at night would succumb to the silence and the crickets, he would see his father with the bike under his arm, half surprised and half proud that his son so little yet but has managed to become a locomotive-driver during his absence. He was patting his son with pride. But his father’s face could not be seen well in the dark. Then the father would vanish in the night, in the decoy of that mystery. He would be afraid, wake up from that daydream, the house was safe and predictable.
On stuffy, summer nights it was hard to fall asleep. The heat was making wakefulness unbearable. He and his brother would rarely speak. The boy could feel that his brother was awake like him, and that his brother also felt that the entire village is asleep except for them; and that his brother also was enjoying the pleasure of secret wakefulness. Once, the brother whispered from his bed: “I wonder if the night trains carry people or merchandise?” This is what his brother was thinking about when the trains were passing away. If the train stops at night that means it’s carrying people. The father could return only with a train carrying people. But the sad thing was that the night trains would never make a stop.
Just like it didn’t stop that night, when he had reached the railroad from the kindergarten running and ignoring the dark, had been late to the train. He was thinking that the brother had got on the train without saying good bye. Otherwise, everything was incomprehensible; so far that was the only explanation of his traceless disappearance. If he had got on the train, then every train that passed by was a chance of his return. But the train was empty. There was silence. Only the sound of the crickets and electric wires could be heard that were getting intertwined. And the crickets there were so many that they had raised a real noise.
The tree-trunks were escorting him to the tunnel. The electric stream of high intensity is buzzing, passing through the cavity that entered the dark in order to feed the stars with power. It was passing on the voice of the crickets to the stars…He is standing in front of that entrance to the cosmos. Inside there is impenetrable darkness. He was always interested in the real depth of the tunnel. The brother, nevertheless, had the boldness to investigate that. He was throwing stones into the dark, again throwing, in order to feel again how mysterious was the echo of the stone from the inside of that horizontal abyss. He was thinking that the tunnel had to be very deep, boundlessly deep… A raven came out of the tunnel and didn’t fly away; it was walking or hadn’t even noticed him. Or, it was evaluating the distance to be safe. He was sitting on the rails, which were still warm; it still kept the warmth of the sun. It was pleasant that unlike daytime the seat wasn’t burning. The heat was bearable and the familiar smell of tar seemed to acquaint the nighttime with daytime. A swarm had formed somewhere in the night. The frogs were croaking a secret on that stuffy night. He remembered how cruel the brother acted towards the frog. He felt that the indignant croaking was directed towards his brother. He suddenly thought whether it was possible to lie down in between the rails in such a way so that the train would run over him but he would stay alive. The heavy rustling of the raven’s wings scared him. The raven had sat on the electric wire, and was observing how the boy was looking for a spot devoid of tree-trunks, then, how he was lying in between the rails. It is so strange that danger interests children. The boy thought whether the brother could do the same thing and be saved. It needed to be checked. He knew that the train was quite high and one could easily lie under it. He decided to stay lying down for so long until a train would come. He remembered how one night the brother woke him up, they stuffed the bed sheets, put on other clothes so that they could leave their clothes on the chairs as if they were asleep. The brother put on the father’s shirt. He climbed onto the windowpane and started to pee, enjoying the freedom afforded by the night. One can do anything, even pee from the window, wear one’s father’s shirt, escape from home, climb onto the roof, even the moon, go fruit-stealing, look inside a stranger’s window, only one must be careful not to look into the mirror in the darkness. The bedroom was on the second floor; the brother had already brought the ladder and put by the window.
They went down on the ladder; they could barely contain their excitement, so that they wouldn’t make noise. The brother disappeared in the garden of one of the neighbors. He looked around and was surprised how everything was so familiar at night, but how mysterious were the familiar houses, trees, and the shadows when moonlit. The brother returned two mallows in hand. On the pathway from the village to the railroad there were the same bushes, but at night the bushes looked like abandoned, helpless children. By the railroad they sat on the rails, which were still hot, and ate sunflower seeds.
“Is that you?” his brother suddenly asked. The rails were shaking; then they started to tremble. The increase of that trembling was parallel to the magnitude of the train. Then, the signal was heard that was announcing how close the train was. They saw the lights, which were a sudden spark of daytime – infernal daytime – against the backdrop of the nightly sky. They were petrified. They had closed their ears with both hands. Standing erect on a safe distance, they were observing how the train was cutting the night. They were terrified that they were standing so close to it, terrified that they were so small next to it, terrified by the unstoppable pace of that blind power. The train didn’t account for their existence; and the pressuring impact of the freight wagons would remain in their memory. Suddenly the train got lost in the enormous night, taking with it all the noise. The silence became full with the frog sounds again. Lying in between the rails was inspiring safety already, when the train had gotten so far that it looked like a toy.
Each of them in their thoughts, or maybe they were quiet about the same thing. They were twins after all, weren’t they? Lying in between the rails, looking at the stars, it seemed to the boy that he could fall into the sky. The brother said, “Wouldn’t you want to go up to the moon and walk on it? The moon isn’t as small as it seems.” “How are we going to go up there?” he inquired. “You go through the tunnel and you come out, from there the moon is very close. One good and long leap and that’s it, we’re on the moon” said the brother who already pictured it. And the moon that night had gotten so close to the earth that it seemed as if the frogs were croaking from the moon. That night of escape until the rooster-call, when they returned home and slept till midday, was like a real dream that only they both had seen. The escape remained unrevealed.
After remembering all of this, it suddenly seemed to him as if the brother was next to him, he almost spoke, but he remembered that he was alone and had lost his brother. Unseen teardrops flowed down his cheeks, and he felt again that there was no one to look into his eyes, and he wept from that thought. And he understood better that he had no right to return home alone. He wanted to hide, vanish, not to exist for others, to exist only for himself; until he found his brother, until he understood what had happened to his brother. Thus, he would sneak under the beds, wouldn’t want to be found, wanted to be alone; but when the mother wouldn’t find him for too long, his cheeks would get wet with secret teardrops. He decided that he would wait until the train would run over him, but he had a premonition that he didn’t want to die. How could he die? He could only be afraid, and in order not to be afraid it was necessary to pretend that he lay under the bed. He had chosen a harmless segment of the railroad that was devoid of tree-trunks. He closed his eyes, pretended he was under the bed; God would make sure the train didn’t hurt him. For God, what is the train if not a little toy? He was looking at the stars that were not prompting the arrival of the train. Mixed thoughts went through his head. The crickets probably see horrific dreams. What will happen if man suddenly sees a cricket’s dream? Why do girls pee squatted? Are there twin rats, or no? Will a rat play with a doll, or no? Where did his brother toss the doll? How could a doll stand on its own and look at him? Doll, toy, doll, toy…He saw a little toy train on the ground, he wanted to grab the magic toy. He grabbed it, barely stopped its pace but couldn’t raise it up. The wheels were hissing, turning in their places, emitting steel sparks, and it was impossible to raise them up. In his dream, he felt that the toy train had the mass of a real train. The power of the wheels was terrifying. Maligned by the powerlessness to hurt him, the train flew from his grip, sped forward releasing a mournful shriek of a desperate soul. He opened his eyes, the light entered his vision. The signal was terrifying, like trumpets of an angel the train was headed toward hell. He saw that above his head there were the cars of a real train; he closed his eyes, it was good that he didn’t have time to think that he wasn’t supposed to raise his head, that thought was enough to raise his head. He could barely feel that he was in the train, his heart couldn’t resist, the train was taking him, it was taking his soul, leaving the body empty.
He would always stand in the corridor, in front of the mirror hidden behind the door, he would look until his consciousness would vanish, so that he would become one with his reflection. He wanted to understand why his hair was white, when all the children he knew had black hair. How had his hair gotten white in the few seconds during which the train had run over him? How can a whole life’s duration pass in a few blinks of an eye? He would look and look and couldn’t understand the disturbance of time and the hidden mystery of that event that took place in his childhood. And he would feel an unhealthy satisfaction and a realization of a secret advantage that his peers had black hair while he had white hair. After all, his grandpa’s hair was white as well. Once he had the occasion to boast in front of his grandpa, “My hair is white like yours.” A proof that he was his grandpa’s secret peer. His grandpa didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes…
When grownups saw him, they would cross themselves. Children his age wouldn’t play with him. They would call after him, “Old man, old man, old man…” At that time, he understood that children don’t forgive when somebody is different from them, especially when the difference is to the extent of foreignness. They would look with animosity at their white-haired peer. Maybe it was because his face was familiar, or maybe because he was suddenly older than they. They would throw stones at him.
One of the stones hit him and pierced his head. He put his hand on his head and was surprised that his blood was red. He was astonished that there was so much blood but he didn’t feel any pain. In a panic, holding his head, he was running home under the scorching sun so that he would get there fast and not lose all his blood. He knew that a person’s soul was in his blood.
The traces of the past, the blood drops on the ground, would lead from the yard to where the incident took place. Now it’s deserted around him, there are no children, the sun is shining from different places, and the traces of the past lead back home… With one hand he held the handkerchief to his head, and with the other his mother’s hand, who was taking him to the neighboring village, to the urchin’s house who had hit his head with a stone. The urchin’s father couldn’t stop looking at his head; surely it was the first time that he saw a face below white hair, a glance wretched with pain that had a childish persuasiveness; moreover, red blood in white hair. The urchin had lowered his head, but in his shame there was no remorse. He understood that children don’t have a sense of pity. Suddenly, the father slapped the son and got stunned by the strength of his slap. The urchin grabbed his cheek and ran to the street. He will hold a grudge against him, if he was from the same village it would be alright. But he was from the neighboring village. The father yelled after him with an angry voice, “How many times have I told you there is blood in stones.” Perhaps the blood was really from the stone? And that’s why he didn’t feel any pain. He understood that the urchin’s father said that in order to justify his slap, as if seeking an apology from his son. He was spellbound between the slap to his son and the blood flowing in the white hair. The boy felt shame that he was the reason behind that slap; he hated his mother who brought him there.
After several days, the mother plucked the wound from his hair and for the first time took him to the barber shop in the neighboring village. The barber shop was a shack; the sunny indolence was filled merely by the vain buzz of the flies. The boy smelled something strange in the barber shop. The barber had slept on the chair, the boy saw in the mirror that the barber opened his eyes, and was looking at him surprised as if he had woken up in his dream. Then he suddenly turned; no, the mirror was not faking it, it was a child with white hair.
The boy realized that he was encountering that man’s existence for the first time. His green, a priori sly eyes were directed openly to his mother, and his glance was directed to him.
“Sit down,” said his mother and the barber didn’t have time to interject. The boy sat down. The leather of the armchair had gotten warm from the sun. He liked that warm and comfortable softness. The smell of the barber shop was pleasant. Something moved in the boy, the smell was familiar. The barber covered him with a white cloth. The scissors devoured the light; it seemed for the reason that suddenly it was evaluated. At first, he was cutting with scissors, his hair was thick. The scissors was shaking in the barber’s hand, and the boy caught that even though the scissors was in the barber’s hand but the situation’s control was on his side. Then the barber put down the scissors and with a device that was not electrical and was being used as a scissors started to overcome the boy’s hair. The boy was closely following the barber via the mirror while he was avoiding to look at the mirror; but when his glance would meet the boy’s, he would wink via the mirror, would hide his sly eye; and the boy would smile not to him but to himself. He would smile because that way he wouldn’t recognize himself; he was him and wasn’t. That similarity was a little funny for him. After cropping the barber took a deep breath of relief. A pleasant lightness encompassed the boy as well, an unfamiliar feeling of weightlessness, a freshness of existence. He was getting a crew cut for the first time, or he didn’t remember that he had been given a crew cut before as well. The barber stroked his bare head, already devoid of white hair; it was a trustworthy, bald head, and said, “You must wear a hat, the sun is dangerous now.” Then he removed the white cloth with which he had covered him, shook it and promised, “Don’t be afraid, after this black hair will grow on your head.” The boy believed his words, that summer he waited impatiently for his hair to grow back, so that he would go to school with black hair, but it didn’t happen that way, white hair grew back on his head; only the senile expression was gone from his features. Was he really going to spend the rest of his childhood with white hair?
When he cropped his hair, children were calling him “baldy.” Only Shogher was playing with him. They would go to the kindergarten together and play there. Shogher reminded him that she had a brother. The boy felt, felt that there was something lacking in his memory, like the loss of his hair; that made the whiteness of his hair and the past unreal. His existence was surrounded with a lightness, which he could not fully reach. He was striving to recall something, but the past is dodging his memory. Maybe later he would gradually remember everything; perhaps pictures will take the place of the emptiness of memory.
Shogher took him to the edge of the cliff. She reminded him that the brother had thrown the ball so hard that he had had no time to catch it and the ball had fallen into the ravine. She reminded him that the three of them had gone down by the railroad to bring the ball. She reminded him that the brother was left-handed. She told him that he had entered the tunnel. She said that she had not told anyone about it, no one knows that she had been with them that day. No one knows that the brother is still in the tunnel. “If they ask you where your brother is, tell them that we had gone to the forest to eat blackberries and he has gotten lost in the forest because children get lost there.”
That day he and Shogher went up to the forest and ate blackberries, played hide-and-seek, climbed trees. Then, when they were going down to the village from the forest, the boy asked for the place of the tunnel, and the girl showed him from the top the pathway leading to the railroad. It seemed to the boy that he remembered his brother; it wouldn’t be hard since the brother had been so very much like him. But was he remembering? Or was he picturing his unknown counterpart? He got home impatiently.
The mirror had hidden behind the door in a way that it was surprising the people entering the home for the first time, as if an unknown counterpart was walking toward them. The boy stood in front of the mirror. It seemed the mirror shook when he understood that it was not a mirror, but a transparent glass, behind which stood his brother, mute like him, surprised like him.
He was teasing his facial movements. Suddenly he discovered the secret of multiplication of symmetrical space. Behind the mirror is the same door that opens into the same yard sprinkled with the light of the sun, the same corridor, the same doors, the same rooms…
He lifted his right hand, lifted his left; it’s him. For sure… He is right-handed, while he is left-handed. The boy went away from the mirror, while he… stayed standing.
He came close and looked from the crack between the mirror and the wall. The mirror was right up against the wall, and it was impossible to see anything in the space between. He tried to remove it, move its place, the mirror fell, and crashed into many unexpected pieces, and now you can look as much as you want, they will not come together. There is no entrance; in front of him is the same wall, although in the place of the mirror the wall is whiter; as if, nevertheless, the entrance has been shut.
The boy realized that it was necessary to hide the mirrors until the mother or grandpa had not stood above his head. But it was late; the grandpa caught him, “Areg, what broke just now?” He came out into the yard so that grandpa wouldn’t repeat the question, and his mother, who was sleeping in the bedroom, wouldn’t wake up suddenly.
The mother was asleep all day long, she was taking pills, the boy was happy that the mother was sleeping so much; his games had become free. She would lie down with her clothes on, wake up the same way, with black clothes that she didn’t use to wear before, and her eyes were always swollen, when she would wake up; but then it would seem to him that mother always had those clothes on.
It was a sunny midday, one of those days when people dislike putting their foot out of the house. Grandpa was alone in the yard, not counting the hens that liked to waste their mindless existence under the sun, poking at their own shadows. Grandpa with his eyes closed, the day hidden under his eyelids, had sunken in the rocking chair, having given the past to the rocking and the present was moving his past. Even in that unbearable heat, he was with his woolen, worn-out jacket. Grandpa liked very much to take out his rocking chair, as if he trusted it only to his skin and the sun shining in the sky; his skin, which was getting warm from the sun were the only proof of his existence. At midday he would put his back toward the sun, at sunset his glance. Grandpa liked to watch sunsets very much, and the sun of sunset looked very close to the earth in those parts. That day grandpa was sitting in the yard, under the scorching sun of midday, right in the middle of existence.
“What broke just now?” repeated grandpa loudly who spoke loud because he couldn’t hear well. The boy didn’t understand what connection there was between hearing loss and loud speaking. “The mir-ror,” he whispered in his ear, as if sharing a secret. “The mirror? In the corridor?” his grandpa got surprised. “Uhu,” affirmed the boy. The grandpa let out a groan of pity; he said that the mirror was so old that it could remember the grandma and the father’s childhood. The mirror was matt. Then he said that the father looked very much like him in his childhood; he said that the boy was almost like the return of his father’s childhood. The grandpa was scared that the father’s childhood with the boy’s white hair and his senility had created a short circuit.
“It is strange,” he said after a preoccupied silence as if he was talking to his surprised other half, not to the boy, “it is strange that it is breaking now. Usually, mirrors break before a misfortune, not after it.” Grandpa was surprised that in the secret chain of events, the consequence had preceded the cause.
“Gather those pieces quickly and throw them away until your mother hasn’t seen them. If she asks, tell her grandpa has broken it, ok?” he said. “Ok,” repeated the boy. He was happy that grandpa was taking the blame in order to protect him. “Now go and bring the salt-shaker,” demanded grandpa. The boy didn’t understand why grandpa wanted salt. He asked himself whether a hen would eat salt. Mother would say that grandpa had lost his mind, but he hasn’t lost it so much so that he would feed salt to the hens; and the hen, thought the boy, would have to be very hungry to eat salt. But in any event, he brought the salt-shaker and went to pick up the pieces of the mirror. He squatted, collected the pieces of his face. He created the cracked and complete mirror-image of his face; and smiled. He thought about burying the mirror. He cleaned the little pieces with the broom and gathered the big pieces with his hands. Children like to bury things in the ground. They know that if that spot is dug up later on, something will be found for sure.
“Be careful,” said the grandpa, “Don’t cut your hand.” “I won’t,” said the boy, but grandpa didn’t hear him because the boy had answered him in his mind.
Translated by
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