XVIII. The House and Life of the Village People

Dear Tornik, you have read holy Scripture, and you know that the old, old patriarchs had no settled house and dwelling: their house was a movable tent — today here, tomorrow in another place. And to this day the Arab tribes live by that same life. Not far from us, on the southern side, there are many tent-dwelling tribes, Kurdish by race, who are called köchers — nomads; their winter dwelling-places are the broad warm plains about the borders of Nineveh and Babylon, where the snow does not fall so heavily and there is no bitter winter. They live beneath the tent, and their beasts graze always under the open sky.

But in summer, when the heat grows fierce, all those tent-dwelling tribes migrate with their many flocks of sheep toward the north, to the breeze-cooled mountain chains of Korduk and the Taurus,¹ where there are springs in plenty and pastures without measure. Three or four months they enjoy that mountain-bred and free life, and at autumn's end they journey again south to the warmer deep plains. For this cause those tent-dwelling wandering tribes possess numberless flocks of sheep and droves of other beasts, for which no manner of care is needed — no stable, no byre, no laying-up of winter fodder; and following stock-raising alone, in this part they grow richer than the village people. And withal they enjoy the sweetest stillness of the natural life.

Are you curious, Tornik, to know whence the men of the first ages learned, or from whom they took example, to build a house and dwell within it, and shelter themselves from the cold in winter and from the sun's heat in summer?

They say that men learned the art and architecture of house-building from the birds and the beasts. They saw that the birds set their nests in the trees; the swallow builds her clay-wrought nest upon the flank of the house-beam; the eagle, who loves the high crags, has his eyrie; and the blind mole, building his nest beneath the ground, shapes the earth he casts out into a little hillock. And then the ant, that provident, threadbare little creature, who builds not a house only but a granary joined to his little burrow, where he gathers his winter store. And the husbanding bee — how she ranges her even-measured cells with the sap of wax; we know not whether she builds herself a nest or a honey-house, with such care is it done, that human wisdom stands amazed at it.

Yes, Tornik, men endowed with reason learn many a thing from the threadbare unreasoning creatures; those craftsmen-by-nature become our schoolmasters. Do you see that mischievous spider, who, making his footing in the corner of the wall, toils without ceasing, draws fine-spun threads out of his own mouth and weaves a net to take flies? — from him men learned the art of weaving, of the loom and of linen-making. And from the nightingale's trilling and the voices of the other sweet-spoken birds, from the roaring waves of the sea, from the sound of running waters, from the one-breathed murmuring of the forests — taking a thing from here and a thing from there, did not the song-makers compose all the wonderful modes and lessons of music?

Eh, Tornik, your Papik has gone astray again: leaving the natural order of our lesson, he would inquire whence men learned to build houses, and to sing, and all the rest. Let us come back to the village huts.

You know, Tornik, every rank of people lives upon this earth according to its own development. The city people, who are more developed than we, and whose taste has been opened with their developing, know how a comfortable life should be enjoyed; and so they build in measure according to their taste.

But the village people, who have no development, whose taste is shut fast — for them their huts are enough and to spare. Yet is the peasant people's taste indeed so dulled, that it cannot at the least build its huts with some small orderliness? But see how the villager answers me: "Yes, I too am a man; I have some little taste; I see the townsfolk's handsome houses — does my soul not long that I too should have a handsome house? But then I consider that I am poor, and in debt; and for the poor man a hovel is enough" — and so on. While the rich householder reasons with his prudent husbandry: "If I enlarge my house, the guests will multiply, my expenses will be doubled," and the rest. This objection of the peasant householder is just; but there is besides the root cause, as I explained above: together with his poverty the village people is ignorant and without taste. For there are certain light matters of arrangement that ask no expense at all, but only a little labor. And that I may show it to you palpably, Tornik, in a manner you can touch — that you may see with your own eye and mark with what bitter and grievous hardship our village families suffer in their household toil — let me bring one example. You see it always, and you do not feel it; your eye is used to it; perhaps you think that such must be the lot of village families, or that this is their fate.

Up then, Tornik; let us go together to the house of our friend Brother Kirakos. It is just the time when the village tonirs — the sunken hearth-ovens — are lit. See now: the tonir-house is filled with reek and smoke; the tonir is burning; on the cross-iron over it stand the pots of tanapur and of the day's dish; on one side of the house two cradles are set, and the poor babes, choked by the smoke, are crying — the mothers think it is milk they want; in one corner of the house, besides, an old woman lies stricken with the shiver-and-burn, the ague. The tonir has burned down, the smoke has drawn off; the mistress of the house has thrown down her sitting-pad and seated herself at the tonir's rim; one of the house's brides, opening out the balls of dough upon the tonir-slab, hands them to the mistress, and she with the baking-pad claps them to the tonir's wall. All this while the household's guardian mastiff lies sprawled in the doorway with his paws stretched out, his eye upon the mistress of the house, waiting for her to give him the loaf-end that comes out of the tonir.

"It is midday," says the daughter to her mother; "the time is come, mayrik: I must carry bread to the laborers." The bread and the food are made ready; the brisk girl goes off to the field under her back-load. And now in comes the village gzir;² the mistress has a guest. Heaving a sigh, she bids the bride break a few eggs and cook an omelet for the guest.

You see, Tornik, the villager's house is a patriarch's tent: the door stands always open. Now begins, one behind another, the procession of the village poor. There came a trembling old woman, staff in hand: "Mistress, may I die for your soul — I caught the smell of the fresh bread and came; my little orphan grandchildren are crying with hunger; give me a loaf and a little soup to carry to my little ones." The old woman took what she asked and went away blessing. Another came; she too took and went; and so came many, took, and departed. Last of all came a brazen-faced beggar who would not be content with one loaf; the mistress lost her temper, took the black fire-poker of the tonir, laid it across his back, and drove him out of the house. Did you see, Tornik? — by the time the bread-making mistress had finished her baking, half the bread was gone.

Now let me turn and speak of this tonir-house itself, which it is very easy to better. Do you see? — the tonir is built in the middle of the house; in the ceiling there is but a single yerdik, a roof-hole, for the smoke to go out — though the house door standing open, the smoke goes out by the door-frame too. If we shift the place of this tonir and set it toward a convenient corner of the house, and over that corner bind a wide smoke-hood — and this hood is very easily made, if two slender posts be set up, woven between with pliant willow, and the spaces plastered over with straw-and-clay — and likewise upon the roof, in the same line, another hood be raised, at the least a good half-cubit high: then see how the smoke will draw upward, and the house will stay wholly free of it.

Eh, Tornik, speak now with judgment: for this small betterment what hardship or what expense is there? But why does the villager not think of it? Do you not know the cause? As I have said many a time, and repeat again now: it is his not knowing letters and reading. It is the letter and the book that open a man's mind and teach him to think. Yet do not marvel at the unlettered villager, nor blame him. Let us go to the city. See there the householders of all Van, every one of whom likewise has built his tonir in the middle of the house; there is but this difference, that the townsfolk's houses are high enough, and have many openings, not in the ceiling only but in the walls as well, so that the house's smoke draws out easily. But still the ceiling is black and grimed with soot; and when in the rains the house begins to drip, you will see the black drops foul the floor of the house and all that is spread upon it. And sometimes the older houses, in the spring season, without any rain make a mute drip, which is worse yet; for the floor-coverings, the tonir-cloth and the family's garments one and all grow soot-stained — and how hard it is to get that clinging soot-dye out of the cloth and scrub it away!

So do not say, Tornik: the townsman, who knows reading and writing, who is developed, who has seen the capital of Bolis³ and taken his pattern of cleanliness there — how is it that he too cannot contrive some thought and better his own house? If it be so, what advantage is there then between the lettered and the unlettered, when the course of life and the husbandry remain the same? Let me answer you, Tornik. First you must know that not every man who can read and write is a good husbander of his life. Second, the new generation of the townsfolk, though it has received the imperfect learning of the present schools, that is in no wise sufficient for the good ordering of our life; for with that half-finished, glancing learning we are not able so to till our minds that the old deep-rooted prejudices be plucked out. Still, the townsman like the villager will go on dwelling in soot-grimed houses, and they will say: our fathers, our grandfathers dwelt in these houses, and we too will dwell in them. It is no care of theirs that the family suffers in the reek and the smoke, and that at times their very eyes grow dim with it.

When I say that the townsfolk are developed, do not so understand it as though they were developed and enlightened in deed and in truth. If you gathered up all their intellectual light, it would not make the light of one dim lamp; only that, compared with the unlettered village people, they have some small advantage.

Tornik, the mind's eye of townsman and villager alike is still bleared and covered over with film; we do not see the things of the world straight and true: like the blind man of Jesus, we too see the men who walk about as trees.⁴ Now to tell tree from man there is needed light and clear seeing, which is got by education alone; and so long as we have not the light-giving grace of education and knowledge, our household life will remain as it is. Learning, it seems, has judged the dark and soot-grimed house our fit portion, until the time come when the people's mind's eye is opened, sees the light, and can know and distinguish the man from the tree. Then indeed — if we are still alive — we shall come out of these soot-grimed houses toward light and progress, and be delivered from that choking reek and smoke of ignorance.

Thus much only, Tornik, have I spoken upon the humble buildings of the village; but the peasant people's household life is very wide, and has many and divers other things in it. And you, Tornik, were born within the village life: I leave its portrait to you; study it yourself by your own trial. Now I shall speak upon the village church, the priest and the people, which is for you a spiritual lesson.