XIII. The Granary

It came suddenly to my mind, Tornik — what a happy meeting of days this is: tomorrow is the feast of the Cross of Varag.¹ It has been the custom from the forefathers' days, and all the Vaspurakan country tomorrow will set the harisa² on the fire; for the village people it is a day of rejoicing above others. On this day we thresh the korkot of the floor — the hulled wheat — for the threshing draws to its close; from the floor's first-fruits the village housewives make korkot, of the white-grained wheats especially, for the harisa; and all the houses of the village, each after its measure, set their harisa on. There was a time when the great hambans of the village — the rich householders — would slaughter an ox apiece for the harisa; remembering their dead, they made ready the soul-bread, and all the village folk, the poor among them, ate their fill upon fill and blessed the master of the house. It is gone, Tornik, that time of plenty; let the ox be — it is well enough if they can slaughter a kid. From of old there are many songs for the harisa; but I will speak you one song over again.

Let me tell you, Tornik, the tradition and memorial of the harisa, which has come from the day of our Illuminator and reached down to us.

I too heard it from my own Papik, who would tell it thus: when Saint Gregory the Illuminator came up out of the deep pit and came to Vagharshapat, for sixty days together he preached to the heathen Armenian people, and men by the myriad gave ear.³ Among them, no doubt, were many poor; and the Illuminator wished to make ready a meal for the poor. But this meal he did not make ready by miracle, as Jesus did: he gave command to the villagers in their thousands, and they brought oxen and sheep in plenty; he had them slaughtered; great cauldrons were set upon the fire, the meat filled in, and the korkot upon it; and he gave command to the thick-armed stalwart young men and said, Beat this! — harek zsa — whereby the name of this dish remained harisa.⁴ This dish is a noble Armenian dish. Hayrik⁵ loved the harisa well; he would always have it cooked at the monastery of Varag. And when in his exile he hungered after the harisa, he once wrote a letter to the brotherhood of Varag; the words of that letter I have kept in my mind:

Happy brotherhood of Varag, that dwell beneath the wing of the great Holy Sign!⁶ Do you remember, I wonder, the pandukht Hayrik? Ah, I remember you; I remember the feast of Varag's Cross, which is near; I remember the monastery's noble harisa — and you will eat the father-bequeathed dish without Hayrik. Eat, and sweet may it be to you; eat your fill, and drink the cold, cold water of the springs that gush from the bosom of the mountain of Varag. And Hayrik in his exile heaves a sigh — ah! — for the harisa. What would it cost you to remember Hayrik, and give one ladleful of harisa into the charge of Habakkuk's angel, that he bring it to Babylon,⁷ that I may eat and bless you? Farewell.

Eh, Tornik, enough! — let us leave this matter of the harisa of tradition, and return to the order of our lesson.

In the village husbandry the making of the granary is very plain and primitive. Commonly the villagers pit their wheat, their barley, and their other grain in the earth, digging a pit deeper than a man's height; and though they line the pit's sides round with grass or with straw, yet the grain very often takes harm: drawing damp, the bread comes out musty-tasting. And since these wheat-pits stand in open, unroofed places, it happens many a time that, taking in water from the rains and the snows, the wheat rots. It would seem, Tornik, that in the old, old times the villagers kept their wheat under ground for safety's sake, as they kept many other things besides. The wonder is that in this present time of security they keep the same custom still. But the thing is a fruit of heedlessness and sloth. When the villager builds a house for himself, a stable for his cattle, a fold for his sheep, is it then so hard that every house should build granaries after the measure of its grain? There are some who make great hive-shaped bins of clay, which hold grain in great quantity; the bins keep the grains very well — only the bins' roof must be well made, that no drippings come down into the bin.

But best of all we must count the granary, which we can build as roomy as ever we will, so that it have within it separate bays for every kind of grain. The wheat must be stirred and turned in due season, that taking air it may not heat and grow weevily.

Ah, Tornik, my soul groans: what need has the indebted villager-husbandman of a granary at all? See, there is the threshing-floor of our friend Brother Kirakos: they are measuring it. Look — a wheat-heap of some twenty kilas.⁸ The usurer townsfolk have come all in readiness; they measured the heap: twenty kilas it made. First the state's tithe-due was rendered; then the usurers, each by the reckoning of his interest, measured off and took. What was left? Only the floor-bottom; and upon that too the poor came pouring, took the threshing-floor dole, and swept the floor clean. Now see the sorry pass of Kirakos: hanging his sad face, he took up the floor-besom, the shovel, the carrying-pole and the rest, and went home. The housewife asked: man alive! out of that huge threshing-floor is no share left for us? What are our brood of little ones to eat? The master of the house answered: rye, wife, rye! (hachar) — and the barley will scarce suffice for the guests that come and go. The housewife wrung her hands and wept: ah, God, Thou hast seen it — the whole year long, before the blazing tonir, I baked the bread, I cooked the food, I tended the laborers; what judgment is this, O Lord? must I and my children go hungering after wheaten bread? Eh, housewife, do you not know? — the wheat is for the townsfolk, the fat, fat beeves again for the townsfolk; and the villager's portion is rye, millet, and tanapur. Even this is enough; give glory to God, wife: there are men more stripped than we, for the villager of Mush lives on his coarse gruel alone, which is far meaner than the rye and the millet.

And do you ask, Tornik, when our village people shall be delivered out of the hand of these conscienceless, unrighteous usurers? — who, let alone the wheat of the threshing-floor, seize our very fields, which are our life and our refuge; and of the freehold lands of the villagers of our Archak village a good part is seized already. This thing is a deadly question for the husbandman people. And the sole remedy and cure that watches over it: only the just law of the state, and the hand of authority, can cut short the usurers' hand, which lies heavy upon the indebted husbandman people.

Indeed, some years past the state's care was turned upon this thing: wherefore in the head-towns of the provinces it caused lending-chests to be founded, at strictly measured interest, so that the husbandman people, forsaking the usurers, might turn to the lending center.⁹ Only — will those chests suffice against those enormous, uncounted, piled-up sums with which the whole people of the state's land stands burdened on its back today? The threshing-floor and the granary gave me the occasion, Tornik; so much only, in passing, have I spoken, and it is enough. Let us leave this question to the great economists; let them compose volumes great upon great on the economy of the land, which is the life of the land's flourishing — for by bread lives the state, and all the people subject to the state.