Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 6: Gyumri and Its Underworld

At the very moment when the station official was calling out — "Second bell, Kars–Alexandropol!" — Sergei and I flung ourselves into the train.

Before the train the tsarist gendarme paced up and down, his sword at his side, jingling the shpors [spurs] on his boots, though this was no place for cavalry and there was no horse under him. He kept eyeing us askance, and we from the window watched that cockerel of the state.

A minute later the third bell rang, and the train,

going "pəsh-push, pəsh-push," moved off with a dəkhkər-dukhkur; and the further it went the more it quickened its pace, until at last it began to run.

In the train was Hagop too (Zilinkarian), who had kept places for us. Facing him sat a woman of Alexandropol, in a red chukha [broadcloth] apron worked all round with gilt, and wearing the blue chübbe [overmantle], embroidered with klapiton [gold thread]. Her breast-piece was lost among roses and vərner [lace]; it covered her bosom. On her head the beaked band — the brow-piece of the woman's headdress — was bound fast, lost in pearl and gold, and the whole of it gracefully covered over with a transparent chifila [veil]. On her arms the gold khalkhal [bracelet]; on her fingers a glittering ring. And all of it together — she might have been a living treasury. The woman was like an idol, but she breathed: her breast rose and fell, and she panted. Her chestnut eyes looked this way and that with the air of a mistress, and now and then she spoke with the man beside her.

The man beside her was her husband, and his clothing too was native to the place, though strange to an outsider. Instead of our long-topped boots he had yemeni chusts [soft leather slippers] on his feet, with white dulpas [stockings] drawn up to the knee. Below the knee the stockings were tied with a woven band of many colors, with pukher [tassels] hanging from its ends. His shalvar was wide: a small man could have hidden in the seat of it. He wore an arkhalukh [a fitted coat], covering his chest. Over it he had drawn the cherkeska, one sleeve on and the other not. Only the hat was ordinary — the Russian furazhka, flat and ungainly, a witness to Russian civilization and to his subjection to it. He wore no ornament: that was the woman's business. Only, about his waist he carried a heavy, broad belt of silver, and a silver chain with a watch at the end of it, whose key hung from his neck and lay spread on his breast. His beard was his ornament, red as flame, as though it had been dyed with henna. But it was natural.

These Alexandropol types I had seen many a time. This

dress was very near to me, for it was the national costume of central Armenia. But that day I looked at it as a stranger might, and the whole of it came to me as something strange and full of mystery. Perhaps that was because we were in April, and the sexes, like the cuckoos, wake in that month; and the one seated opposite me was a young woman who was playing with me out of her badam [almond] eyes…

It was agreeable, and it made me a sinner in spirit, and silent. It made me forget, too, the conversation I had had with Sergei a few hours before. I remembered his saying that the Armenians who sit at the headwaters of the rivers are the true Armenians, and that they are the link of our national unity. And I began to carry Sergei's theory further, and thought that the spring of those Armenians was this woman too, with her dress, which comes down unchanged from the days of Haik the Patriarch.^t1

That woman was like the miracle-working "Our Lady of the Seven Wounds"^t2 of their own city, adorned in the same way with gold and with pearl, with weeping and captivating eyes — weeping not for herself, but for another. The goddess Anahit,^t3 it seems, must have been such a one as well: alluring for the sake of the fruit of her womb.

While I was trying to fix the springs of eternity in this mortal woman, Sergei, with his hot temper, had already made friends and fallen into talk with the woman's husband, and was saying to him:

— Brother stolyar [joiner], you have learned the Russian word; you have turned the word "joiner" into stolyar and taken it upon yourself. But why is it that for a hundred years now the Russian has been forcing you to call your town Alexandropol, and you go on stubbornly naming it Gyumri? I do not understand it. What does it mean?

Brother stolyar, it seems, had never in his life met with such a question. Thrusting out his red beard, he thought a moment and said:

— Gyumri — helbet [surely] Gyumri. The name was christened so from our grandfathers' grandfathers. The Russian came and changed the name. Let him say Alexandropol; we will say ours, and give the

real name. And where am I to know from what Gyumri means? It is a name, and there's an end of it, like any name. They say that in its day our town was a gömrük [customs-house]. That is why they gave it the name Gyumri.

Hagop broke in and, as a man of learning, explained that the stolyar was mistaken, because before ever it was a gömrük Gyumri had borne the name Kumayri.^t4

They wanted my opinion, but I got free of it with a shrug of the shoulders — though in Moscow I had heard from G. Khalatian, a Gyumri man, that the name comes down from the ancient Cimmerians, and that the name Gamirk is a synonym of it. What need was there to know the name, when there sat before us people who said everything by their dress?

I wondered why Sergei did not see, seated right before him, the costume of this exquisite woman, decked out like a partridge. Unlike the women of every other place, who adorn themselves according to the season, according to their kind of work, according to their age, according to the "mode," the costume this woman wore was unchanging — at home or abroad, in winter or in summer, until she should die. And when a woman makes her costume unchanging, then her taste and her soul too have crystallized, and she has one unchanging aim: to keep what she has, and to add to what she has the thing she has not. And the thing she had not was there in the longing of her eyes. She had no child, it seemed.

Sergei, it seems, did not perceive that this woman's costume was no creation of her own taste, nor did it belong to the imagination of tailors. Its maker was the past, lost in darkness, begun in the oldest of the old centuries, when the goddess Anahit was in Taron, on the banks of the Aradzani and the Euphrates, among the mountains of Yerznka. From those parts as far as the neighborhood of the Akhurian and of Akhalkalak, the women wear this woman's costume: gold and pearl on their heads, the red apron before them, the blue chukha worked with gold on their backs, like the ornament-figures of the old monasteries. Surely it was in this costume that the virgin daughters of the very rich

and of princes, and the barren wives, went on pilgrimage to the statue of the goddess Anahit; and, under pretext of "the vow, the sacrifice," gave themselves up to chance passers-by in the name of the goddess Anahit — not for rejoicing and for pleasure, but to be made fruitful and to bear fruit, for the love of eternity.

I looked into the woman's eyes. They were watching me: so velvet, so caressing, so alluring were they, that my own eyes closed before them. I seemed to hear the woman's prayer, her entreaty — she was asking for a child…

I came to myself, and, looking round, saw that the husband was still keeping up his hot dispute with Sergei about Gyumri. I cut him short:

— Brother stolyar, answer me one question: how many children have you, girls or boys?

The stolyar was struck dumb; his face soured; he glanced toward his wife; and, turning to me, said against his will:

— I had children. They died while they were little. Now I have nothing.

— That I knew, — I answered; and in my mind I said: "You are lying."

Just then the train stopped in a station. The woman opposite threw one more glance at me. But I had understood her secret by now. It was not I that was in her mind, but her own future — a bridge to her happiness and to her husband's self-deception. Like a beggar, she was begging alms. Why should I give alms? I thought; and I did not look at her face again.

*

Gyumri holds Ani's place, the capital of Shirak^t5 — but it is not Ani. About it are gathered two hundred thousand Armenian souls, though it is itself a small town. It has not, as Ani had, walls and moats turned into a girdle of war. It has not Ani's crooked streets, like the swirled filling of a gata, nor her palaces, nor her thousand and one churches, which

astonish a man with their beauty, and which are, for all that, silent — every one of them dead.

Gyumri is another thing. She has broad, straight streets; flat, squat houses; churches out of all proportion to her size, built of red and black stone and copied from the ruined churches of Ani.

Beside Ani, Gyumri is a dwarf. She is not beautiful; she is even ugly. Were it not for her few trees, to which they give the name sad [garden], and were Aragats^t6 not to be seen in the distance, she would be a dreary place. And yet, for all that, Gyumri is a most desirable town. There a man's heart opens and rejoices, more than in beautiful Ani, where a man's heart weeps and beauty turns into a hymn of lamentation. Of Ani's inhabitants there remain only the bats and the owls; but in Gyumri men are living, and they give the town beauty and life.

From my childhood I had been in Gyumri many times, but never once had I seen it as I saw it on my return from Kars, when I learned to see not only the lifeless houses and the views, but, more than these, the people. In earlier days my eye perched only on the domes of the churches. As a man will often go up into the forest and not see the trees, so I too, in my student and my soldiering years, when I came to Gyumri, saw no people. About me the people swarmed — papakhs on their heads, black chukhas on their backs, kerchiefs the size of red bed-sheets with broad borders at their necks — and I did not see them. They passed by me, jostling me, hurrying to clear their own road, and now and then giving me a fearsome look; but I said "kinto, kro," and did not see them. The streets were full of children, of schoolboys carrying their satchels, wanton, wicked, flinging out foul words. In the doorways stood the women in their red aprons; but I thought, "They are ablas," and I saw no people.

In despair I would go to Gyumri's sad, where blind

men like myself, or cultivated townsfolk, were hounded by boredom and killed time. They wore the ordinary European dress: a little walking-stick in the hand, spectacles on the eyes, long narrow trousers and a white collar, and on their heads a "melon" hat. Among them I had acquaintances — amiable, well-bred, and every one of them carried away by the delirium of being a "writer." In the sad the poet Mochorian would be waiting for me, hunting for a listener. He would take out of his breast his carefully written verses and read them to me:—

— or something of the sort. And he would want my opinion. I praised him smoothly, though in truth I understood nothing of it.

Here I present to you Sedrak — Mnjoyan, I think — who, back in Moscow, had been my first preacher of the Dashnaktsutiun. He too waits for me as for his own pupil, and repeats the same lessons in different words.

And here is his gainsayer, Vehapetian, whose very name commanded my awe. He accepted Mnjoyan's national views, but he would add: — "It is only by international reforms and by revolution that we can be delivered."

There were others too, of more extreme mind: "Strike at every ruler, whoever he may be." One of these went as far as the Transvaal, to help the Boers.^t7 I met him aboard a ship bound for India. He had traveled the whole of America as the agent of Singer, and wanted to go back to his Gyumri, after fifteen years of wandering.

Outside this circle of ours there were other circles too, that walked under the trees each apart. They were couples, cleanly dressed, the men in the uniforms of the intelligentsia or of the gymnasium.

There were also young men of grave and preoccupied aspect, a little older,

who traced marks on the ground with their walking-sticks as though they were members of the general staff of some great power, and who looked at us so coldly that there was no coming near them.

— Do you know who that group are? — one of our own set would explain. — They are the ones expelled from the Seminary. That one is Avetik Isahakian,^t8 who writes verses in the manner of our Yarjat, and, like a backward tiratsu, copies either the Song of Songs or the peasant songs of Aparan. He is not modern. He is neither Nadson(*) nor Lermontov.^t9

— And that one there is no Gyumri man; he is a countryman of yours, and one of the expelled as well. His name is Vahagn Demirjian. They say he is a good sculptor. But what is to become of a man who eats the bread of Echmiadzin? He wants to go to Aparan^t10 and turn ter-ter.

In this way I gathered particulars about the others as well. We argued — or rather we gossiped — and we wished very much that these elders would count us as men; but they kept themselves far off, reckoning us, no doubt, as "whelps."

My acquaintance with Gyumri was bounded by its wretched garden and by the denizens of that garden, whom I have presented. Gyumri itself, with its inhabitants, had been as uninteresting to me as a forest: it appeared to my eye a collection of "lotis and kros" — and how was I to attach myself to it, being an "intelligent"?

How arrogant they were, the denizens of the sad — in love with their own selves!

One day, when I was proudly repeating by heart the lines "In the blue of the heavens the stars are ashine, and thunder and lightning pour down on this head of mine," a Gyumri man in wide trouser-legs said to me:

— Hey, durumsagh, if the stars are shining and the sky is blue, then why are thunder and lightning pouring down on your head?

(*) A Russian poet, whose works set the whole of Russian youth weeping.

That "durumsagh," and Gyumri's sad with its torpor, drove me to despair and convinced me that it was the emptiest town on the face of the earth.

*

In 1904, when I came to Gyumri after going round the districts of Takht, Basen, and Kars, I was a changed man — but Gyumri was where it had always been. I remembered the abuse "durumsagh," and did not so much as look toward the sad; I passed close by the black-and-red-domed churches, and did not notice them.

Hagop Zilinkarian, who was a Gyumri man, said:

— The boys are bound to be hard-pressed just now; they are at their work. Let us go first and see what is going on.

And he led us to a house where men were coming in and going out as though it were a bit bazaar [flea-market]. Before the door they spoke aloud; in the passages, in whispers. We went into the hall: all were silent, as though they were novices. A table stood there, and about it men were sitting in a jumble; and in their midst a handsome man in a starched shirt and a necktie, to whom they gave the name Vahan Zallatian.^t11

When we came in they rose to their feet, saying "Ah, welcome!" and offered us places. Vahan took Sergei and Hagop at his right hand and at his left. Me he did not know. I remained standing; but they found a corner for me as well.

— Forgive us; it will not take an hour to finish these friends' business. Two hours a day we meet here, so as to be free of the street, of the shop, and of the workshop, and to see to affairs at our ease, — Vahan explained. Then, turning to those who were waiting their turn, he said: — Speak briefly, and come up in order.

One after another the representatives of the committees and of the sub-committees came forward. They had come to settle accounts. From their breasts they drew out their balance-sheets and presented them; from their pockets they drew out the money and counted it, and took a provisional receipt, to serve until the accounts should be verified — when they would receive

a receipt with the red seal.

After them came those with reports to make, the petitioners, and those who had come on this business or that; each one of them was satisfied with a short answer, or else given a fresh appointment for the night.

These proceedings, moving like a picture-show, however interesting they might be to onlookers such as ourselves, were wearying to the men who carried them out. Vahan Zallatian handed his part over to one of his comrades, whose name I do not remember, and invited us into the next room to drink coffee. With enthusiasm he laid out the state of the district. Though in everything he pointed out his own part, still, on the whole, it appeared that this party district of Gyumri was on the rise, and that its rank and file breathed and lived through the Central Committee.

I could see no difference at all between Kars and Gyumri. Gyumri was the same as Kars. The town was divided into quarters, the districts into circles, the circles and the wards into bands. Band, Sub-Committee, Committee, Central Committee. The same as in Kars — an Armenian government within the Russian government: the first real, the second a form.

What I have said of the district of Kars would present Gyumri and its districts, if one changed the men's names and the features of the players. Only — the difference lay in this alone, that Kars was a frontier district, and there were frontier fights there and soldiers who took part in them; whereas here, in Gyumri, there was none of that, and in its stead Gyumri was the place that furnished those fights with munitions and with the rest of their stores.

Hagop Zilinkarian was pleased that his native ground was no district to hang its head. I was so carried away by Vahan's account that I all but rose to kiss him.

But for Vahan Zallatian our praise, mine and Hagop's, counted for nothing. What counted was to win Sergei's approval, for Sergei had become the idol of the province of

Kars. Vahan watched him and wanted to make out his impression. But Sergei looked at the ground and let nothing be understood. At last he found his tongue and asked:

— And what are we, that you tell us all these fine things?

— That you may understand the position. We are a neighboring district.

— Only — your position is not a very good one. You are a member of the Central Committee, and it is dangerous for a member of the Central Committee to put himself on show. The gordzichs can do that. Is there really no one else here, that you and your comrades have thrown yourselves out into the open?

— I understand, — Vahan answered, stung. — We are not the Kars Central Committee, to hang the davul [the big drum] about our own necks and put the chombakh [the drumstick] into the gordzichs' hands. Our work we do with our own hands. We are neither idle nor cowardly.

— You are mistaken. It is no question of idleness or of cowardice, but of the Central Committee's safety. A fish is taken by the head; and you are putting your head on show and endangering the whole organization.

— There is nothing of the kind. In Kars the population is mixed; here it is unmixed. In your house there is a thief; here there is none at all. Here there is no need to play blind-man's-buff.

Sergei heard him out with displeasure and made no answer, but muttered under his breath: "I do not understand what these men are after."

When we had parted from Vahan Zallatian and were left with Hagop — who, like me, was full of admiration for Zallatian — Sergei said:

— In Kars we have Plo Tapalur, who is dear to us because his braggadocio does harm to himself and good to the party. He is a child; he looks for nothing but to draw attention to himself and to earn the caress of an aferim [well done]. Your Vahan is other goods. What he is after is dark. There is danger for you here. To be rid of him a day the sooner is a mercy.

Hagop was displeased with these opinions of Sergei's. I too found Sergei's negative attitude strange.

Was Sergei, then, one of those who strike at the head of any man who shines, who spends himself and shows zeal? I told him what I thought, and it wounded him deeply. Embittered, he answered:

— Very well; let it be as you say. His hide we will know at the dabakhana^t12 — the slaughterhouse.

A year passed, or two. Those who came from the Caucasus told how Vahan Zallatian, the object of my admiration, had carried off a rich man's son to squeeze money out of him; and how, in fear of the party's ahabekum, he had fled and vanished into the depths of Russia. I was astonished; I was greatly shaken; and I repented of having wounded Sergei for nothing. I wrote to him about it. He answered me:

— It is Hagop now who is seeking V. Zallatian's death. Did I not tell you that the hide of such men can be known only at the dabakhana?

I granted that Sergei was in the right, and was convinced that to know a man by instinct, without evidence, is no small thing after all. But that gift, as it appears, had not been given to me nor to Hagop, but only to Sergei.

*

I had been often in Gyumri, but I had never come to know it as it needed to be known. Hamo Janpoladian, though of the rich class, was a sociable man who got into every hole and corner; I took up with him. He said to me:

— To come to Gyumri and breakfast at home, never to stand before the bakehouse and eat Gyumri's yaghli, means to understand nothing.

And so we did: we went to the bakehouse to eat the yaghli, which in savor is different from the yaghli of other places. Among the customers was a blacksmith's apprentice of twelve, with a sooty nose.

— My usta [master] wants four yaghli, but they are to be piping hot.

— Hey, oghul [my boy], how can they be piping hot? By the time you carry them there, they will be cold.

The boy, with his sooty nose, flared up:

— "Oghul" yourself. Since when have I been your oghul, durumsagh?

— Hey there — what did I say, that you call me durumsagh, you son of a dog? I have no yaghli.

— Look at him, look at him — you'll get my blood up till I take a stone to you and lay you out like a dog. Khtin ashe [look here] — hand over your yaghli, or I'll come and give you what's coming to you.

This unequal combat, between the sooty-nosed little fellow and the thick-set baker with the twirled mustaches, was diverting and full of interest. The customers went on eating their yaghli and waited, with twinkling eyes, for the end of this cockfight; while Hamo poured oil on the fire with his laughter and said to the baker:

— The boy is in the right; his usta wants his yaghli piping hot; why do you keep him waiting? — And turning to me he added: — Gyumri is like this. Great and small, it wants a fight. And if there is no fight to be had, it will open one over the hot and the cold of a yaghli. — The right is yours, — he said, turning to the boy; — eat half of my yaghli, until the oven turns out hot ones for your usta.

The boy measured Hamo with a scornful eye and said:

— What is this? Do you take me for a beggar, that I should eat your leavings?

The fight might well have turned upon us. We licked our fingers and made our way toward Vagho's padval [the cellar].

*

Vagho's padval had made a name for itself; men spoke of it even beyond the bounds of Gyumri. But wherein its excellence and its worth consisted, the man who knew did not say; and the man who did not know spoke of it as though it were the monastery of Jerusalem, or of St. Karapet.^t13

— You have been to Gyumri; did you go into Vagho's padval? — men would ask one another.

— No. I looked for it, but I did not find it.

— Then you have seen nothing at all. I have been inside; I have kissed Vagho's forehead too, and drunk his sweet wine.

But do not suppose that the man was telling the truth. He had neither gone into Vagho's padval nor set eyes on Vagho and kissed his forehead. The whole of it he had imagined, and by it he wished to show how near he stood to Vagho's business.

Many of our soldiers, of the depot-guards, and of the arms-carriers would say:

— How often I told Vagho not to send the weapons in great crates — there would be no hiding them — and he never lent an ear.

But there was no believing what they said. It is true that the weapon in the soldier's hand, and those that lay in our depots, had been come by thanks to Vagho; but the soldier himself had never so much as been in Gyumri, and where Vagho's padval was, and who Vagho was, he had never known.

The members of the Central Committee, and the comrades of mark, were proud that there was abundance in their arms-depots. They were like the beekeeper who is proud of the abundance of the honey he takes. But as the beekeeper does not know how that honey is made, nor which kind of bee makes it, so those comrades did not know the source of the munitions they had, nor the manner and the means of getting them. This alone was known to them: that Padval Vagho could give them as many weapons as they had strength to hide away. And if such men, after Zallatian's fashion, told you, "This we settled with Vagho, this we planned," you were not to lend an ear. The truth was that Padval Vagho had authority from the Central Committee to do whatever he pleased — to pour out the weapons he brought, safely, at an appointed place, and take no payment.

And if I too should tell you that I know the whole of the matter, do not lend an ear. That was known to Vagho alone, and to Bidza of Sivas (Harutiun),^t14 who kept what they did and what they knew inside their own bellies.

What I do know, Sergei and Hagop told me: they stood nearer to the business, and were very intimate with Vagho. And since the district of Kars was the chief hiding-place of the war-material that was got, it is the likelier that what they told was true and real. They had assured me that the source of our depots at Takht, Basen, and Kars was Padval Vagho; and they had charged me, likewise, to breathe no word of it, if I did not wish to bring my head into danger.

Hamo leads me to Vagho's padval.

"Padval," "padval" — when they said it, I would picture to myself the Delipudzur^t15 of Tiflis, with its white cloths, its flower-vases, its shining bottles and its dishes and its dainties of every sort, where there is everything except a seasoning made of nightingales' tongues. I was preparing myself, from the heart, for a good keyf [a fine time] at Hamo's expense.

Hamo stops in a street before a hole, out of which the smell of wine and of other drink comes blowing, and where you must go down under the ground by a winding stair, holding your breath.

In the murk of the half-dark you can just make out a few black tables with nobody at them, and shelves ranged with bottles; in front, the till, and behind it a young man seated. Beyond, a few casks of wine and of beer. So this is what he calls Vagho's padval… A door, without window, without light, and without dainties, hollowed out of stone and earth.

— Hamo jan [dear], is it you? Where have you been lost all this while? It is a long time since you came near us; you never do the entor.^t16

To all appearance the speaker was a close friend: he had taken Hamo's hand and was pressing it, and would not let it go. He shook it and shook it, and with his beautiful eyes he caressed him.

— Vagho, man, what are you saying? I do not do the entor! It is you that do not do the entor; it is your Hagop that does not do the entor. He takes me for a whelp; he puts me back from my vow.

— Good, good; I know, I know. Do not take it to heart; we will make something of it. What may I offer you? Who is this with you?

— Wheat of the upper field, like yourself; and I am your tail. I have come — let us see whether my business can be done.

Vagho measured me with a sidelong eye, took on a serious but cordial air, and reached down several bottles from the shelf.

— Which shall I offer you? — asked Vagho; and without waiting for an answer he filled the glasses.

— This is the best of them all. Good luck to you, — he said, and tossed off his own. — Now, Hamo jan, tell us how you took it into your head to make your father rich all at once, and to drop the price of salt all at once.

And Vagho held his sides and began to laugh, while Hamo went off like gunpowder. It was only there that I discovered Hamo's talent for economics.

— Vagho, what are you laughing at? Is your head made of wood too, like my father's? My reckoning is right, it is profitable, and it is just. A pud [about thirty-six pounds] of salt costs forty kopecks — no? Of that forty, fifteen kopecks go to the middlemen. Fifteen go to the cost of the offices, to the workmen — whose noses have to be wiped for them — to the weigher, to the man who sorts the salt as it comes out, and so on. There is left ten kopecks for the man who works the mine and for the government. Now tell me yourself: if I sell that salt at ten kopecks and save the thirty superfluous kopecks of expense, who is to lose by it, and who is to gain? There are a million people eating salt out of our mine. Let them eat it at a quarter the price. There are a few score, or a hundred, middlemen selling salt. Let them lose too; no matter. There are a few hundred workmen; let them change their terms and work on the new ones. And what was it that I did, that he and my father together should make a laughing-stock of me? I told them all: whoever digs the salt with his own hands and carries it off by his own means, to him I give it at a quarter the price. Men came pouring in on foot, with donkey and with horse, with cart and with camel, with their own picks; they took their loads at ten kopecks; and in three months they carried away more than my father had sold in a whole year. What did my father lose by it, or the government? They gained. Under-

stand that they would take no harm at all if it were sold at five kopecks. Understand that the salt-mine may go a thousand years and never feel that anything has been taken from it. They are misers, and greedy. They know neither how to spend nor how to earn. And you have come and joined with them and laugh at me.

The venom Hamo meant for his father he poured out before Vagho. And Vagho, though he went on laughing, said:

— I tell you honestly, I had not understood the pith of the question; but now I see that the right is on your side. — Hamo was content to have found a man who valued him.

While Hamo was telling his story, a man came and stood over him — tall, sinewy, shapely as a poplar, his beard black, his eyes dark and shining like a cat's — laid his hands on Hamo's shoulders and said:

— I see now that the men who call you a whelp are whelps themselves. Out of you, Hamo jan, a man will come. When you are hard pressed, I am at your side.

Hamo's eyes shone.

— Bidza jan, sit down. Vagho — pour one out for Bidza. May I be a matagh for your soul; the rest of them all call me a whelp and go their way.

When I heard the name Bidza, a shudder took hold of me. Sergei had told me of the soaped rope with which he strangled men. And Bidza seemed to me an old serpent from which there is no escape — though he was a handsome man, and there was nothing monstrous in him.

Vagho and Bidza were the sources of our munitions, and about them were woven feats of incredible daring and resolution.

To these men of legend, needless to say, I put no question about their services; but what Hagop and Sergei told me I will pass on to you.

Gyumri was a military town, filled with barracks. There too were the chief depots of the army for the Transcaucasian front. Those depots were guarded by a special detachment, which every two

hours changed the sentries, and every two hours verified the seals on the sealed doors; and only if these were found untampered with did the sentry take over the watch.

Vagho was handsome, young, unmarried, cheerful and open-handed. He was courteous. Gyumri man though he was, he did not wear the local dress, but military dress — without epaulettes. His party duty of buying arms he had discharged hitherto exactly as Hagop discharged it in Kars; but he had wearied of it, and would say:

"Drop by drop the belly is not filled. Some other road must be found."

He makes the acquaintance of the officer set over the depots, and perceives that the man is in money straits. He stops his gaps, sends him drink and food, and is soon an intimate of the family. And one day he proposes to empty two of the depots entrusted to him, in such a fashion that the seals will stay unbroken and no one will make out the secret. And since a general inspection comes once or twice a year, the officer is from this very moment to petition for his own transfer. If the secret does come out at last, he will not be the man answerable. Against all this, he is to be paid whatever he asks. They agree, I think, on twenty thousand. At the same time, into the detachment guarding the depots — a thousand men — Vagho puts some twenty-five Armenian soldiers. He organizes them, and out of them chooses the five or six most trustworthy, who were thirsting to go to the Land. He takes their word on it: to live together, to die together, and to take every danger upon themselves.

When all this had been arranged, he lays the matter open to Bidza, with whom he was intimate.

— I take it upon myself to get into the army's depots and to throw out everything that is in them, in front of the door, — he says

to Bidza. — How I will do it, do not ask at all. Can you take it upon yourself — what I throw out — to carry it away, and to move it to a safe place and hide it?

— The work is hard; we may set fire to Gyumri and to ourselves along with it. I cannot answer at once. Let us go and see the ground; afterwards I will answer.

They go; and then they settle upon the following.

The work is divided into three parts, each independent of the others.

The theft itself is to be done by Vagho, with two comrades and with the army's own guard-soldiers.

The carrying-off of the stolen goods, and the duty of losing the tracks, Bidza takes upon himself, with ten comrades, four drivers, one shepherd, four carts, and two hundred sheep. (Those sheep were to graze about the depot, in order to wipe out the tracks.)

The hiding of the stolen goods was to fall to the men of Kars. For this last part they speak with Hagop of Gyumri, who was the gordzich of Kars, and whose office it was to buy the weapons.

— We have come to terms with the railway administration to unload the freight of the Tula^t17 military trains at a certain station. We can hand the weapons over to you at the foot of such and such a hill. As much as you can hide, so much we can bring. The risk and the safeguarding are yours. At the appointed hour we will leave the goods and go.

— How much can you give, and in how many deliveries? — asks Hagop.

— A wagon a day, if you like; or half a wagon, if you like; or four furgons [covered wagons].

— I hope to hide four furgons a week; more would be hard. What is the price, and how is it to be paid?

— It is free. If we can make a present of 20,000 rubles, we become masters of goods beyond all reckoning. You are to give the 10,000; the rest we will find. When everything has gone well, we will tell the Central Committees, and they will pay it back.

— I go into that business, succeed or fail. Such a chance

will not come again — unless you are in a dzughak.^t18

Hagop calls in the most experienced of the old comrades among the Akhaltskha men — Usul-Mkcho,^t19 Levon, Ashik; he calls in Saro of Mush as well, and Aramayis, and others. He undertakes to organize the work of "hiding," and gives Vagho the 10,000 rubles.

After that the three separate operations are carried through with success, and take on the shape of a magnificent detective novel of theft.

Vagho presents himself to his friend the colonel, lays 5,000 rubles down before him, and says:

— You are to take me to the storehouse tonight. You are to open the door, lock it behind me, and seal it. In three days you will have the rest of the sum. And if disaster comes, there is no danger for you: they will find me an unrecognizable corpse.

There is no sentry there. By Vagho's order he has hidden himself, so that he will not see the man who comes, nor the officer know his own sentry. The officer breaks the seal; Vagho goes in. Then the colonel seals the door again and goes his way. Vagho is a prisoner inside the depot.

The sentry appears once the officer has gone off, verifies the seal, and calls out: — "All is in order. Mind your business."

Vagho has one hour and a quarter in which to work. With his fine tools he begins to saw through the eight thick iron bars of the window's cross-frame. He works feverishly; outside, the sentry goes to and fro with nervous steps, his rifle on his shoulder.

— Five minutes to my relief. Stop. In three days they will bring me back again.

Vagho must stay where he is: he has not been able to saw all the bars through. Like a cat he draws himself back behind the door. There is heard

the measured beat of feet. "Karaul, stoy" (Guard, halt!) — the order is heard.^t20 They come up; they knock at the door, and the hanging seal swings. "Karaul, shagom marsh" (Guard, forward march!). Vagho draws breath. The sentry paces measuredly back and forth.

And so for three days and three nights, once in every two hours, the same business is gone through.

Vagho is hungry, and has no bread; he is thirsty, and has brought with him a single bottle of beer.

On the third day, at midnight, there is a knock at the door.

"It is I." The sentry paces measuredly to and fro before the storehouse. And Vagho has gone back to his work, and in half an hour the window is opened. Its iron cross-bars, all in one piece, are so parted from the wall that it is impossible to see the parting, unless you push hard against it.

Vagho wipes away the traces of the dust, comes out through the window, sets the bars back in their place, closes the window, and out of pure joy kisses the astonished sentry. That same night he presents himself to the colonel, lays the 5,000 before him, and says — "The rest of it later"…

The officer was dumbfounded; he could not understand the miracle that had been worked. The door was shut and sealed, and it was not possible to get out by piercing the wall and the foundation. Vagho misleads him, saying that he had opened the door with a false key and sealed it again with a false seal. So he leads the colonel astray — the colonel, who in the course of three tormenting nights and days had been turned into a skeleton.

Three days later, past twelve o'clock, when the guard withdraws from the depot after the changing of the sentry, three men hidden among the stones come up to the storehouse, having first taken the signals. Vagho lifts out the iron cross-bars, and the newcomers pass inside into the depot. Before ten minutes are out, Bidza's men come warily up; those within hand out the crates, the others take them on their shoulders and carry them down.

In this way, for an hour and a half, the men outside and the men within work on, without seeing one another and without knowing one another. That operation is performed thirteen times in one month, without a single mishap, until the full storehouse is emptied. One thing only is forgotten: the bag Vagho had brought, with his tools in it, and the empty beer bottle — which was to come to light eight months later.

Bidza is with the carts, four horses to each. When they are loaded and well stowed, he sets the porters, weapons in hand, on the carts, and drives forward. They come up with the empty carts that have arrived from Kars. The drivers are changed on the instant. The men of the loaded carts spring across onto the empty ones and are back in Gyumri by daybreak. And the loaded carts, when they have gone a hundred paces, or four hundred, are met by Hagop's men, mounted and armed, who divide first into two parties and then into more, so that each party may take the goods that fall to its share and hide them in this or that village of the province of Kars, or in a depot — without knowing where those things had been got, or by whose hand. In these last operations many took part; it even fell to my lot to go over the accounts of what was at Meghre and Berna.^t21 To me, however, it seemed that the weapons had been bought, or else brought from Tula. Some supposed it a matter arranged with the stationmasters of Gyumri or of Shghzel-Jakhchakh; but there were those who doubted it, the more so as Aramayis had recognized Bidza. Besides, it was not from the stations that the loaded carts had come.

— Be that as it may, these are the devil's work of Vagho and Bidza, — he would maintain.

Whatever the truth of it, this was a fact: we had grown strong in war-material. The multitude felt it, and every man of them, racking his head, wanted to know the source of that "meden" (mine), and made up legends of every kind. Some, for instance, said that the doer of it all was Bidza, who carries a soaped rope wound about his waist; and that whomever he suspected of a loose mouth, or of a leaning toward informing, he would take into Vagho's

padval,^t22 throw the rope about his neck, strangle him, and drop him into the pit that opens there. And other things of the same sort.

In these unwarranted stories there might be some portion of the truth, since several of the men under Bidza's hand are seen no more. On the other side, the soldiers who helped Vagho likewise vanished away with their rifles, and were never seen again.

The disappearance of Armenian soldiers from the army became a thing that struck the eye. Some said Bidza had done away with them with his rope; others, that Vagho had spirited them off to the Land, so as to lose the track of the theft altogether.

This last supposition is the likeliest, since before long, in Salmast,^t23 I was to fall in with two soldiers of the tsarist army from Akhalkalak, by the names of Suren and Grich, who had come there and joined Duman's band. Men whispered to one another that these were Vagho's men and the heroes of Gyumri; but they flatly denied that they were from Gyumri, or that they knew Vagho. Very likely they denied it on purpose, since there was danger of death for them from our side and from the Russian government alike, if they let their secret out.

Before long Vagho's acquaintance the officer vanished without a trace. He could not have earned Bidza's rope, since Vagho alone had dealings with him, and of his theft Bidza himself knew nothing. Afterwards I understood that, feigning sickness and pleading the bad climate of Gyumri, he had asked for a change of post to some other corner of Russia, and had got it.

Before long Bidza too was to vanish out of Gyumri — Bidza, who in the eyes of the people had become a "bobol" [a bogey]; whom I saw once, and

whom I am very sorry not to have seen better. Long afterwards I understood that he was from Sivas; and they say that in later years he was martyred in his own birthplace. Where he had gone on working, and under what name, remained unknown to me.

The plundering of the state depot was a fact. The fruit it bore was very great. Some said that tens of millions of cartridges and several hundred rifles had been got. Those figures may be conjecture; but it is no conjectural figure — the load of thirty Molokan^t24 carts, which was carried out of that storehouse. What was taken out was used in our frontier fights; it was sent to the Land; it was used in the Armeno-Tatar fights of the Caucasus. But for that stroke of Vagho's and Bidza's, who knows how feeble our material means would have been, and what would have become of the issue of our struggle.

Vagho, smiling as always, and to all appearance in ignorance of everything that had passed, went on with his usual life in the padval, and wondered greatly that his customers had grown so many, and that they looked at him so attentively and so fondly. Now and then, put out of temper, he would grow angry:—

— What are you gaping at (looking at), oghul? Do you know me? It is I, Vagho. What are you gaping at?

— Vagho jan, I am looking. Are you alive? Are you well? Why should I not look? Pour one out, one for each, that I may drink your health. — And leaving one glass standing on the table, he would toss off the other and go.

The facts were authentic; but not authentic were the stories they gave birth to, which I have set down here — though they pass from mouth to mouth, and are told even by such considerable persons as Sergei and Hagop. They too had heard them, but from others — though they had been with the actual players almost daily, had slept in one room with them and talked with them. There were names — the colonel's,

for instance, and the sentries' — that Vagho alone knew; the carriers' names Bidza knew; and whoever wished to know their secret was reckoned a traitor. And besides, there was no profit in knowing those stories — only harm. The persons and the events, therefore, can be verified only by an examination of the old state archives. That will certainly be come at, for seven or eight months after the theft an inquiry was opened into the emptiness of the depot. But by then there was neither Vagho nor any one of the players left in the town of Gyumri. One bottle of beer, and nothing else, had been left behind in the empty storehouse.

*

We had come from Kars to Gyumri, but not even we ourselves knew upon what business.

Of my comrades I remember only four — Sergei, Hagop, Rus-Kevork, and Hamo, who had come of his own accord, without being asked. They took us to the "nomera" (hotel) of a man named Kevork, which, oddly enough, put me in mind of the pilgrims' house at Echmiadzin that is called the Ghazarapat.^t25 Here there was no monastery, but there was the air of a brotherhood and of pilgrims about the place. Men were lodged in the numbers by groups, according to the parts they came from, and all of them, like us, with the purpose of going to the Land. They looked like representatives neither of the people nor of the party. Some were new Dashnaktsakans, some old; some had already made a name, and some were on the road to making one. It was plain that this was a meeting of travelers bound in different directions — travelers gathered to choose their companions, or to dispose their forces.

"A meeting" — well and good; but I knew not one of them personally. More than that: their pasts and their names said nothing to me either, for I knew nothing whatever of the history of the Dashnaktsutiun, and had no acquaintance with the personalities

then at work. The meeting was of use to a man of Sergei's temper, who was gifted with the faculty of drawing near to the known and the unknown alike and winning them over; but to a man of my hedgehog nature it offered no profit. There was nobody looking for me, and I looked for nobody. So my circle remained what it had been — those who had come from our room in Kars, and Kevork besides, the master of the "nomera," who visited everyone and made them merry.

Kevork put one in mind, by his features and his clothes, of the Jews of Warsaw. He was thin and tall; he had a little head on a long neck, and a great nose that hung down over his face. He wore a little Warsaw cap and a long black overcoat that came near to reaching his feet. That garment was neither a cherkeska nor an overcoat. Kevork was forever talking, and wanting to raise a laugh, though he never managed it. From room to room he carried the news.

One day he brought us word that the Erevan men had come. Who the Erevan men were, and why they had come, we did not know; but our curiosity was roused. I went out — and, to my astonishment, came face to face with Hovhannes Makarian, one of my comrades from the Seminary, whom, for his narrow brow and his frizzled hair, we used to call the "chimpanzee"(*). I was overjoyed. I ran and threw my arms about him, and we kissed. Calling him "chimpanzee," I asked him for news of the Seminary's teachers and of our comrades; and he, calling me "gorilla," answered. I asked him why he had come, and who these were that he had at his back.

— The men with me, — said he, — are nobody at all: merchants of a sort, and I have got in with them to earn myself a bellyful of bread. I mean to trade with them; we buy hides, wool, barley, and the rest of it.

I understood, and pressed him no further. In my turn I invented a lie of my own: that I was on leave, being an officer, and that in a fortnight I should be taking up my post in Gyumri. For the present I had hired a "nomer"

(*) A kind of ape.

(room) here, and I knew none of these apur-jupur (worthless, good-for-nothing) people. Naturally, he did not believe me either.

What were they for, these childish lies between two who stood so close — lies I am sorry for to this day? That very day I learned that one of the men in their room was Tokhmakh, Poghos of Kghi, and another Gayl Vahan;^t26 the names of the rest I do not remember. And Hovhannes, who was a novice like myself, had come with them, perhaps without knowing why he had come. Those lies of ours were the reason that I never went into Hovhannes's room, and remained a stranger to his comrades, and they to me. I am sorry for it, because I was never to see those men again, and was never to learn their thoughts and their longings. Every one of them was to be martyred a few months later, in the fighting at Khorun and Mosuni,^t27 and I was to hear of their death in the village of Kishmish-Tapa, which lay hardly a few score kilometers from the places where they fell.

Hovhannes was a Zok, from Agulis.^t28 In the Seminary they wanted to make of him a meek and Christian man; but he was a rebel, and always ready to find fault with any rule or order that did not answer to his taste. With him I used to race, and to play at "fortress"; many a time we quarreled in the middle of those contests, and out of that an intimacy had grown. More than this about him I did not know. How he had come into the Dashnaktsutiun, and what work he had done, has remained unknown to me. One thing, however, is plain: since he was traveling in the company of Gayl Vahan and Tokhmakh, he must have counted for something. His brothers went on serving the same ideas, and played a certain part in public life. Of the Makarian brothers, Minas died lately in Tehran; of the others I have no news.

*

Next door to the Erevan men's room there lodged a restless

man of European features, his face always shaven, who was continually going in and out of the Erevan men's room. Once Sergei said to me:

— Boy, what are you drawing into yourself for? You want to go to Van, and you never look a man in the face. Let us go to Yerkat.

Hagop joined us, and we went together. Who Yerkat was I did not know. I had heard only legendary things about him: that he was an American, and a member of the Responsible Body of Sasun, who had come back for the General Assembly^t29 and was going to the Land again. All that made him, in my eyes, a superman,^t30 to whom the name Yerkat — Iron — answered exactly. He was of middle height, firm-bodied and broad in the shoulder; his eyes were blue tending toward green, and his hair fair. His kindly smile could not hide the sternness of his nature. His shaven mustache and beard made a strange figure of him in those years, when everyone wanted a long mustache and a thick beard. When Yerkat saw Sergei he brightened; to all appearance he had a great respect for him, or a great regard.

— You show yourself seldom, — he said. — I am busy too; I cannot go hunting for you…

And indeed he seemed very busy. The table was covered with papers; it was as though he had opened an office. He spoke literary Armenian, and did not betray his Armenian peasant origin as the rest of us did. He rounded his words as he brought them out, which must of course have been the effect of America. In general he was not like us: he had a pencil in his hand and a pocket-book, and as we talked he noted down the points worth keeping. He came at a question straight, without windings and without long preambles. Suddenly Yerkat turned to Sergei:

— Jrsir,^t31 this one at your heels — what fruit is he?

Sergei made me known to him, and declared his admiration, and added that I had it in mind to go to Van. Yerkat looked at me, a little better disposed.

— So it is Van you want to go to? Very good; but can you make anything of it? I was there a few months ago. After me

two young men reached the place as well. Are you not a comrade of theirs?

It was agreeable to me that Yerkat spoke without reserve; but I had no notion either of Van or of those who had gone to it.

— I have not been in Van, — I said; — but I have heard of it. I know that it is Armenia. If I cannot make anything of it, it may make something of me. As for those two young men who went to Van after you, they have never been comrades of mine, nor have I any notion of them.

Yerkat looked at me, and then, turning to Sergei, asked:

— Do you get letters from your Nikol? Do you know that he has refused to have dealings with the Van men? He has taken the name of Ishkhan upon himself, has gone over into the mountains of Rshtunik, and has organized a district of his own, apart from Van. Do you know Koms — the one who was sent to Van as a painter? It comes out that the man is a native of Van himself.^t32 That is no bad thing; he can get on with the local men. But there is this drawback to it as well: that Sasun will suffer for it, and the material sent may never reach its place. — Yerkat, a little put out, went on. — They are strange men. I had left some articles and a hundred gold pieces, to be forwarded to Sasun. The men have gone and written after me that it is not worth sending out a special courier to forward them; and in the same breath they add that here too they are in want. — Is this work?

We understood nothing of it, the more so as we had no connection whatever with Van. Yerkat, seeing it, softened his anger and turned to me with a jeer:

— You want to go to Van; but have you settled your name and your standing? You have come late; there is no title left for you.

His words seemed to me insulting, and I said:

— Mr. Yerkat, I settled my name and my standing this very minute. My name is Asegh — the Needle — forged out of your Iron.^t33 At need

I sew with it; and where the place calls for it, I prick. Are you content with that?

— Hey, boy, this one seems to bite; but what he said was very much to the purpose, — said Yerkat, smiling. Sergei and Hagop were laughing too, and, going on with their introduction of me, told him that I was a Russian officer, like Torgom.

— Since that is so, come with me — but neither to Sasun nor to Van: to the middle place between the two. — And drawing a map out from among his papers, he went on: — We have astonishingly narrow and petrified notions. Where do you wish to work — Van or Sasun? Where do you wish to go — Sasun or Van? As though there were no other place in Armenia to work in, more peopled, more gifted, more solid, than Van and Sasun. We cannot grasp that in fastening our own eyes upon those two places we fasten the enemy's eyes upon them too. We cannot grasp that by not concentrating upon a single point, and by spreading ourselves through all the remaining provinces as well, we spread our ideas among the masses that live there, and grow the stronger for it; while the enemy, on the contrary, grows weaker, not being able to make out which way to turn. Coming at the question from that side, I will say that although I do not know Ishkhan, I hold his decision to be right and useful — that he would not stay in Van, and chose Rshtunik for the field of his work.

After this preface — which was a most interesting view of the matter, and pointed, it may be, at the chief of all our defects — Yerkat opened out the map of Akhlat, Nemrut, Grgur, and Bitlis^t34 that he had enlarged with his own hand, and said in a tone of conviction:

— Look at this map. Without fortifying these places, without mastering them, what worth have Sasun and Van? They are pieces cut apart; martyrs to be strangled each one by itself, and nothing more.

Yerkat had been in Van, and in Sasun, and in Akhlat, and for that reason his words carried weight. Besides that,

VAGHARSHAK (KAYTSAK)

his views seemed logical and just. Hagop and Sergei rained further questions upon him about the map. I did not; everything was plain to me.

We were still busy over the map when there came in a man of the same middle height as Rus-Kevork and Yerkat, firmly built, with chestnut hair and fair mustaches — Vagharshak of Mush.^t35 When Vagharshak saw the map spread open, and ourselves bent over it in curiosity, he cried out:

— Yerkat has found himself a new man, and has opened his map, and is riding his hobby-horse. Give him no ear. What he has spread out there is clever; but it is not a thing that can be brought off.

I had never seen Vagharshak. Sergei and Hagop probably knew more of him than I did, but they too were as though they did not know him. That unlooked-for pronouncement had stupefied us. Yerkat sat down in his chair and said nothing. We too were silent. It was Sergei who broke the silence:

— Mr. Vagharshak, but how can it be that you find what Yerkat has laid out clever, and are yet so much against it?

Vagharshak took fire.

— New chicks have come along, and they want to lay iron eggs. You, Sergei — I know you have done a great deal of work to help Sasun; that work you must double. Understand that both Duran^t36 and Sasun are under the threat of death. They have no money: money must be got to them. They have no head: a head must be got to them. They have no cartridges: cartridges must be got to them. They have no weapons: weapons must be got to them. If we do not get these things to them, they will all die; and if they are to die, then we will die along with them. That is the pass we are at; and Yerkat spreads out his map, which I have seen a thousand times, and repeats the same thing over again, and puts you off your road into the bargain.

Yerkat stirred in his place and opened his mouth.

— Vagharshak, I understand you, and I take no wound from your rough words. You say the house is on fire, and the water must be run to the place of the fire. That is your meaning, is it not — and other things you will neither hear nor understand.

— Yes; that is it.

— And it is what I want as well; but the water does not go to its place because you wish it. Read this letter. The moneys I have laid by^t37 have no way of reaching their place, because we have no means of getting them there. We have made no road for it beforehand. You say we have need of heads: take this letter, read it, and you will see that the heads we have are shaking themselves loose and want to be quit of it. You tell us we have need of cartridges and of weapons; but

to get them to their place there must be a road as well, and a possibility. It is for that that I do my thinking. You are forcing me to speak of things that are not to be spoken of here. What you had to say to me, you might have said in private. I do not deny it — since the house is on fire, we must run to the house with our water-vessels, and not stop to go into causes; but for that we need, before anything else, to know the road to the house. Why, then, do you fall into a passion every time we speak over this map?

This scene between two important workers from the Land opened an unknown world to us. At the same time Yerkat rose still higher in my eyes — a man whose boundless self-devotion and self-sacrifice were made subject to his reason. And Vagharshak grew greater in my eyes as well — a man who, setting every kind of reasoning aside, ran fanatically toward the fire. We were brooding a while in silence, when Vagharshak said:

— The right is Yerkat's. I am a man newly come out of the provinces; I let out what came from my heart, without thinking deeply.

Yerkat got up from his place again, and asked me:

— Your comrades say that you understand something of the matter, since you are an officer yourself. Tell us, then, what your opinion is. The map is there before you.

That was a hard examination, the more so as the man, after the scene that had passed, had become an authority in my eyes. I had to think for some minutes before I found an answer.

— I hold that thought of yours to be past dispute, — I said, — that all those isolated places are doomed to failure which have no link with the districts about them, and pursue no like aims with them. What you have spread out here I understood in this way: that the revolutionary points are to be bound to one another like a chain, link upon link; and that for that reason the distribution of forces must be over the links, and not concentrated in one place or two. If I have understood you rightly, I find it well suited

to its purpose. One question, however: — have we in the Sea of Van any fleet at our disposal?

Taken by surprise, he answered:

— Of course not; but we can find boats from time to time.

— If that is so, then, by this map, Akhlat and Nemrut cannot serve as a link between Van and Duran. Nemrut is not a place that can serve the people for a refuge and a field of battle. It is bound to Mush and to Sasun, but cut off from Van by the sea, where there is no fleet. It can be bound to Archesh, to Alashkert, to Erevan; but it cannot be bound to Van without Khut-Rshtunik.^t38 And as a field of battle, Nemrut is convenient against attacks made by the enemy from outside, but with that crater's mouth of it, it is inconvenient for our self-defense from within. So that it is a trap for those who take refuge there. That is what I think.

Yerkat did not dispute it; he changed the subject and asked:

— So then — do you mean to come with me, or do you hold to your intention of crossing over to Van?

— Not Van; but I should prefer to go to Vaspurakan. Akhlat is in fact a part of Taron, and I have my prejudices about it: it is too much cut off from the world.

— But you are late. Had you been here a few weeks ago, it would have been easy. Now that Haji Levon and Joj Agha^t39 have gone, how are you to go?

— The same way as the others who went, — I answered; and with that answer I drove Yerkat to despair. He put on such a countenance as I cannot forget to this day. It was as though with his look he were saying to me: — "Ah, my dear fellow; ah, you good-for-nothing; why will you not come with me? Why are you so past mending?" That look Rus-Kevork and Sergei caught as well.

— We have tried hard to argue him out of it, — they said; — but he has vowed to be a matagh for Vaspurakan.

Yerkat's face turned kind.

— Eh, no matter. Let your vow be fulfilled. A good road to you…

That was my first meeting with Yerkat, and my last. One meeting only — but how many new horizons it opened to me. There had stood up before me a man in whom feeling boiled; in whom there was a great struggle between reason and feeling; and in whom the two came to terms at last, to the profit of the common cause and to the hurt of his own existence. Yerkat seemed to me a great man.

*

Next day Sergei and Hagop came back to the room with a packet in their hands. They were sad, as though they were coming from a requiem. Sergei looked at the ground from under his heavy brows; Hagop, like a punished child, scrawled with a pencil on a paper. Neither of them made a sound; it was as though they feared that if they spoke one word they would not be able to hold back their weeping. I went up to the packet and saw written on it: "Not to be opened. When I ask for it, send it to me; if I do not ask for it, keep it. — Yerkat."

Sergei said:

— He charged us to say good-bye to you for him. He has gone off with his own people.

Silence settled on us. The word "gone," "gone," turned heavily in my head, like lead; but I could not ask where he had gone, or why. It was not the custom to put such questions. It might well be that they did not know themselves; and if they did know, the answer to be had would be — "How should I know?"…

Of Yerkat I have no certain information. What there is, is general talk, which makes plain neither his worth as a man nor his worth as a party worker. Happily, that packet of papers which Yerkat left behind is still with me. Now that forty-eight years have gone by, I think I will be committing no sin if I open Yerkat's diary — written in cipher and under false

names — and join it to my Memoirs, to throw some faint light upon his life(*).

*

There was an interesting man, of an intellectual cast of face, who frequented all the rooms and spoke in whispers, and particularly with the men of importance. Whomever he talked with at any length would go away and vanish; while he himself stayed on, to whisper with others and to speed them on their road. That pale, thin man was not much to my liking. He did not live in our hotel, but came in from outside. I took him for a man of Vahan Zallatian's sort, or, at the very most, for a schoolmaster.

One day the pale man came into our room. Padval Vagho and Rus-Kevork were with me, and we were chattering. When Vagho saw who had come in, he sprang up on the instant, out of reverence. Kevork and I stayed sitting, and greeted him as one greets a stranger and a chance visitor. Neither I nor Rus-Kevork had any notion who Mr. S. Zavarian^t40 was, whom Vagho now presented to us. At that date we might well still not know who was one of the founders of the party under whose flag we had vowed to die. Curiosity of this kind was even reckoned out of place, and, on the score of impropriety, dangerous. In the press, in books, in public meetings, the names of the living and conspicuous leaders were not heard, nor were they spoken of. Our leading men stayed always in the shadow. Smiling, in a soft voice, S. Zavarian talked with Vagho. When he began to ask about Rus-Kevork's past, and understood that he was a student of the third kurs (year), he grew much interested in him. And Kevork on his side began to put questions and to probe:

(*) See Volume V.

— Sir, may I know what your office is, and what work you are engaged in?

With his kind smile on his face, S. Zavarian answered that he was an agronomist, and, as such, a servant of the state. And while the two of them were calling each other "kolleg" and talking about Moscow, I was thinking: who may this Zavarian be, of whom I had heard in an ashugh's song — "Brave Simon Zavarov, in the mountains of Sasun"…?^t41 Surely the song is not about this schoolmaster, I thought. Zavarian looked at his watch and told Vagho to be sure to bring all the boys tomorrow. "I will be there in the morning. You come as well; perhaps it will be interesting." Then he turned to me: — "And you will come, will you not?"

— That Vagho knows, — I answered; and that was the first exchange of words between us.

*

We are deep in the gorge of Zarkagh,^t42 far from Gyumri. There is no scent of man here; only the Akhurian, dashing itself against the stones, makes a noise. Trampling the flowers, we have come here, fifteen or twenty of us. Zavarian is here too; and some behave toward him with great reverence, and others — those who, like me, have never taken note of who he is — with indifference.

Vagho opens two valises and lays out what is in them, piece by piece. We are strictly charged not to smoke. Zavarian speaks, taking pains that what he says will be intelligible to all. For a preface he takes the proposition that in a fight the quality of the men, and new and perfected weapons, are things of moment. He brings examples out of military history, which astonish those of his hearers who knew nothing of them; while those who had some little knowledge make signs of assent. There were some as well, men of high education, who found what Zavarian said elementary, and were bored.

The subject of the second part was the making of black and white powders and their force; and of what compounds dynamite, melinite,

nitroglycerine, and pyroxylin are composed. Two only, I think, were listening with attention: one, a half-lettered peasant, in whose village they made black powder in the primitive way; the other, myself — because I had learned the whole of it, and with tolerably full knowledge, in order to sit the examinations for artillery officer. The rest were bored.

The third part is on the ways of handling weapons, and in this all take an interest. And when from theory it came to the filling of bombs and the throwing of them, it was worth seeing what ardor Vagho and Rus-Kevork displayed, who rose up on one foot and made trial of throwing the empty bomb at the enemy. I myself was particularly interested in the technique of filling bombs, which was to be of use to me afterwards. But the lecturer himself was not skilled in the practical work, and had gathered his knowledge out of books. He said as much himself.

The lecture ended, and we began to scatter, each his own way.

The gorge of Zarkagh is beautiful in the spring. The snowdrop has withered; but the datikha,^t43 the yellow flower that is eaten, the violet, and other flowers of many colors are smiling, and make an ornament of the green. The yellow flowers that are eaten I draw into my mouth like a bunch of grapes, and eat them: it was a memory of my childhood — in our parts they eat them. Ahead of me went Zavarian, gathering flowers with a choosing eye. When he looked at me, he said in astonishment:

— Do you eat that?

— Yes, — I answered; — I eat what is to be eaten, and throw away the rest, that is good for nothing.

My answer struck him as strange, and he asked me:

— Was this lecture of any use?

— Of course not. They heard things, but they did not digest them. In one hour it is impossible to digest a whole science.

SIMON ZAVARIAN

Vagho, taken aback by that rude answer of mine, exclaimed:

— Hey, oghul, can you not speak like a human being?

— Vagho, — Zavarian broke in, — he gave a right answer to my question; why are you angry? — And then, turning to me, he said: — From your answer I understand that I have gained my end. My end was not to make digestible, in two hours, a science that I have not digested myself, but only to leave those who know dissatisfied, and to tell those who do not know that they should go and interest themselves in these things.

I objected to what he said; but when my eye fell on the great bunch of flowers he was holding in his hand, I thought within myself: — "What manner of man is this? If he is a revolutionary, how can he be making bouquets of flowers, when the question before him is to be a matagh?" In those days I was steeped in one idea

only — to kill or to die. I had no faculty of understanding left in me. Zavarian, whoever he might be, was in my eyes a man of another kind, since he took an interest in flowers. If anyone had told me that this was the founder of the Dashnaktsutiun, that this was the man who disposed of our lives, I should not have believed it; and, disenchanted, I should have gone on holding him a schoolmaster. It was only after 1909 that I came to know him as he ought to be known.

*

Kevork's "nomera" had emptied. Everyone had scattered. The last visitor was Sergei, whom I found in a state of considerable agitation.

— I am going back to Kars, — he said to me; — and you are to go.

The word "go" sounded strange to me. I wanted to say that I too would come to Kars, see my mother, and then go; but I was ashamed, and held my tongue. Sergei gave me two letters: one written by himself, the other a paper in cipher over the signature "Anton."^t44 I hid the letters upon me.

We parted from Sergei. He kissed me warmly; and I was indifferent.

*

Next day Vagho came, to send Hamo and me off to Erevan.

— Four valises have been put into the second class. Keep your eyes on them, but do not claim them for your own. It is your business to bring them safe to Sargis's office.

The valises held explosives and other stores.

— Hamo, — I said, — you are the readier man, and you know Erevan besides. Take the responsibility upon yourself and get those valises to Sargis; I am under your orders.

— Why not? For empty business of this sort Hamo

is a ready hand; he can take a responsibility on himself. For other things he is a whelp, — said Hamo bitterly. — Very well, I accept your proposal; only, you are to meddle in nothing. Vagho's arrangement is wrong from the root. How is it possible to bring four valises safe to their place, when they travel second class and with no owner, and we travel third and without the valises? That is cowardice, or else folly.

— Very well, Hamo; do as you please.

Hamo left me and went off. Panting, our train raced on toward Erevan. I cracked sunflower seeds, and littered the place about me like a Russian muzhik.

The hours went by, and Hamo was lost and nowhere to be seen. We pass through the plain of Aparan. I am uneasy. At the Echmiadzin railway station I got down from the train to look for Hamo. I found him in the second class. Russian officers and townsmen were gathered about him; they were pouring down wine and vodka and making a keyf. When I saw that, I grew easy, and drew back into my own wretched carriage.

We have reached the station of Erevan. The gendarmes are at their work, scanning the travelers. One of them looked hard at me; I shrank, and got quickly out of the station. All at once I saw Hamo — but he was not alone: he was with an officer I did not know. I was very much afraid, for I supposed that he had been arrested. But I see that the two of them are laughing aloud, and that behind them come the porters with the valises on their backs, calling — "Faiton! Faiton!" [a carriage]. Hamo noticed me, came up, greeted me, took me by the hand, and led me to the officer, who was busy bestowing Hamo's valises upon the carriage.

— Might there be room in it for my office servant as well? — he asked. — If there is not, let me hire a second carriage.

— No need; there is a seat in front, — answered the officer, and made my acquaintance.

Before long our carriage stopped. Hamo, having made an appointment with the officer for supper that evening, sprang out of the carriage together with me. We took the four valises, full of dynamite. In spite of the officer's protests, Hamo paid the Turkish driver handsomely, and directed him to carry the officer wherever he wished to go. When the carriage had driven off, we shouldered the valises and, walking a few steps, went into Sargis's shabby office of timber and iron.

*