Dear Tornik, I am going to crown you once more, and anew. Do not think that the crowning of church or priest is enough for you. Yes — in the spirit, and by God's law, it is enough and more than enough. But if Papik does not set his own crown upon that crown, you will die hungry. See, dawn has broken: give order to the laborers to harness the gutan and take it to the stubble-field hard by the village. We must plow that field now, and dung it, and in spring make it a garden of pot-herbs.
Yoke the gutan! And now watch, Tornik, how I shall crown you. Go first and kiss the foreheads of the buffaloes and the oxen; then come here to the gutan's plow-handle and bow down to the ground — kiss the mother soil; my hand is laid upon the handle — kiss Papik's hand and the handle. Behold, Papik, forty years a plowman, this day delivers over to you the most exalted office of plowman, which the Lord God gave to Adam our great Papik: to work the earth and to keep it.1
Let me plait with my own hands a lovely, fair, round crown of wheat-stalks for you. Bring your head, Tornik; let me set on it this crown of mine. And this crown is your crown from Papik, and his memorial: never lift it from your head until the day of your death. And when you too are grown old like Papik, set that crown on the head of your firstborn son; and so let it go on from son's son to son's son. Let me open to you the mystery of that crown, that you may grasp it well and keep this day's memory unspoiled in your mind.
Noble Tornik, the meaning of my mystery-laden crown is this. The priest crowned you with Shushan, and you are bound to her until death — you cannot leave her. Even so Papik, crowning you, binds you to the mother soil, with the gutan and with the tillage of the field, which you shall never forsake; for it is our own possession, from our fathers and our Papiks. Adam said, and men say still, that woman is man's life. And is the soil not also man's life? Men live upon this earth by bread. Shushan shall bear you children; the soil shall give you bread. The cow and the sheep grazing in the field shall give you milk, abundant, abundant; of the milk you will make butter and cheese: and the enjoyment of all these good things — is it not of the soil?
Now, Tornik, tell the laborers to take up the gutan and the beasts; let us turn back home. I must make plain to your mayrik and to Shushan the mystery of the field crowning.
Give ear while I speak to you, good mistress of the house, and Shushan. Today I took the new bridegroom Tornik to the field; I had the gutan yoked; I gave the plow-handle into Tornik's hand; laying my hand upon his head I read the patriarchal blessing over him, and crowned him a second time — with the husbandry of the soil; I bound him to the soil and to the gutan. And know this, that Papik's crown must be indissoluble. Tornik now has two wives — understand it well. The one wife is Shushan, with whom he was crowned in holy wedlock; the other wife is the inherited soil of his fathers, with whom I bound him with the blessing of Father Abraham. Shushan shall bring forth children for Tornik; the soil shall give bread for all the family. I pray God keep Shushan, and long may she live; but Shushan is mortal — if she die, Tornik will find another lily. But if the soil die, then all the family of Papik's house die with it, together. And how should the soil die, which from Adam to this day is, and remains, deathless? Let me tell you how the soil dies. On that ill-fortuned day when Tornik draws his hand back from the plow-handle and tills the soil no more; or when, growing rich, he grows high-minded, and counts it a shame any longer to live in the village or in the village fellowship — leaves village and soil, goes off and becomes a townsman; or else evil days overtake him, when, trusting that he has lands in plenty, he heaps debt upon debt; the creditor seizes the lands — oh! and Tornik stands stripped of care and of all.
On that day the soil dies for Tornik, and stays alive for him that seized it. On that day, yes, the lamp of Papik's house goes out: Tornik the householder becomes a hired laborer. Alas, Papik's bride, graceful Shushan shall go out for a baker-woman in the village, and at evening, laying a few loaves in her apron, bring them home to her little ones. Mother of Tornik, good mistress — die you close after Papik, that you may not see that day.
Will you not say, Tornik: Ah, Papik, what evil soothsaying is this you make over your Tornik? Open your mouth to good! No, Tornik: God forbid that the soothsaying be fulfilled upon you. I pray that you may never see that black day; it is for this that I have painted before your eyes the sorrowful picture of that black day's life — that you may see and remember your Papik's far-seeing prophecy, and strive with all your strength never to let the soil out of your hand. Not only do you need the soil because it gives you bread and you live upon this earth — and for that may God give you long years of sun — but when you die, you need two cubits of earth for your grave. Do you not know that men fight even over the grave's earth? Woe to him who dies and has no place to be buried; for the grave's earth too is a man's own proper right. I mean, Tornik, that man from the day of his birth lives by the soil; and when he dies, again he needs the soil, to be buried beneath it.
Thus, Tornik, the soil is needful for the day of life and the day of death. For this Papik has bound and crowned you with the soil: that you clasp it fast; that you suffer no others to snatch it from your hand, lest you be left landless, become a bondman, go to strangers' doors and turn hired laborer; and then Papik's wizard-prophecy be fulfilled upon you, and coming to your senses you remember: alas! I was a householder; I gave no heed to my patriarch Papik's counsels; now, like the prodigal son,2 I am become a hired laborer; leaving my own flock of sheep, I graze other men's herds; and once a week at least, going round the doors, I gather the herdsman's bread.
Yes, Tornik — when the wheel of a village householder's fortune turns, and he sinks so low as to become the herdsman of that same village, do not think that lot is so very bitter a lot; for the village herdsman is a waged laborer: he carries bread home by the back-load; he has a milking cow, at least a few sheep, and a goat; and his family lives in plenty.
But when even the herdsman's place does not fall to that fallen householder's hand, then he, remembering of himself his former state, says: I was a householder; how can I be a hired laborer in the village? Better that I leave the village and go to the cities, and there, an unknown pauper, mingle with the beggars of the street and be a beggar. And if, as one fallen from wealth — a "devletten dushkun," fortune's castaway — I contrive to get a certificate from the Prelate of the diocese, that will be a great fortune for me: I will go from land to land, appealing to the churches and to the rich; and so, making my collection, I will come back, pay my debt, and keep my family.
There, Tornik: the direst and bitterest lot is this — when a householder turns to beggary, believing that by that base and honorless begging he can furnish out a sufficient sum and set his ruined house upright again. Do you believe that a husbandman's ruined house is raised up by beggary? In all the life of my old age I never saw such a thing. For the firm foundation of the village householder's house is the tillage of the soil: when the householder forsakes the soil and the soil's earnings, he is ruined already, and has no rising again for ever; he shall live in destitution until he die.
Eh, dear Tornik, it is enough: let us end the field crowning and my field lessons. But I must tell it also to the village priest and to the villagers — let the world know that the Papik of Archak has done this strange deed: taken his Tornik, the new bridegroom, to the field, and crowned him upon the soil and the gutan. No man knows what manner of crowning this is, performed in the open field without priest, without cross and Gospel and the people's witness.
Let our villagers judge of it as they will, Tornik. It is enough that you have well understood this crown's mystery. I shall die, and you will remain alive — you will see: afterward the villager too will understand, and will give his God-have-mercy for Papik's soul.