Alone with Myself
Alone with Myself or How to Reach You, Descendants! by Leonid Karakhanovich Hurunts. A posthumous publication of entries from 1975-1982. Translated from the original Russian to English by Learn for Artsakh.
Part Eight: Reports from a Hospital Bed
It was at the beginning of the war. Or rather, on the eve of the war. A lecturer in the rank of regimental commissar came to the unit. It was a frontier unit. The commissar was a knowledgeable man and in his lecture he threw the phrase: "It is possible that you and I are on the verge of great events. The cannons of fascist Germany are aimed at us.”
The seditious lecturer and his “provocative” words were immediately reported to the appropriate place. This was the day before the war. Two officers were sent to search for the provocateur. They didn't find him that day. At night the war began, but two officers, having received a task in peacetime, continued the search. It never occurred to them that the lecturer was right, there was no provocation, his predictions were justified.
On the third day, at the height of the war, the commissar was found. He was dragged for interrogation. At this time, enemy aircraft attacked. A bomb that exploded near the dugout where the interrogation was taking place shook it so that the sheets of protocol immediately disappeared under a thick layer of earth that fell from the ceiling.
When the planes flew away, the officers began to rake the ground, removing the written protocol sheets from under it. They wanted to continue the interrogation, as if nothing had happened, but suddenly they looked at each other and, frightened, soiled with earth, smiled somehow pathetically - it must have dawned. They went home, leaving the commissioner alone.
We are used to losses. The most mind-boggling loss figures do not irritate the ear. We are accustomed to ignoring what cannot be ignored.
We had a horse with world fame in Karabakh - now it is gone.There was mulberry, shah-tuta - now she is gone. Although I’m lying, there is mulberry, it brings its gifts on time, but it’s as if it doesn’t exist. The law has revoked it. I can give you a figure of losses from this law: 30 million rubles.
The great liar Baron Munchausen believed that he could not walk on a par with everyone, because he had too fast a step. Therefore, he tied heavy weights to his legs.
I don't need weights on my legs. But they exist. Someone made sure they were there so I don’t inadvertently get ahead of myself. And I don't run. I walk on par with everyone who probably also has weights on their legs.
My God, how we are afraid of this word - the word "Vperyod"! Although from morning to evening we repeat it. [Vperyod is a popular Soviet slogan. It can be translated to: onward / forward / advance]
In New Zealand, they say, there are birds that do not fly. Forgot that they are birds. Forgotten what it is to fly. They have no need for it.
I know people in office for whom they write books, compose speeches. Won't they stop talking and thinking for themselves? For lack of need.
Do those who use other people's hands, someone else's head, know about New Zealand birds that do not fly?
The silent and indifferent observer has become an important, almost main figure in our daily life. If you can keep silent, ignore evil, agree with your superiors in everything, consider that you have already earned your bread, nothing threatens you, no bad luck in life is scary. Consider your road to Eden secured. For yourself and your descendants. Just don't forget that you'll enter Eden as a cattle. Such is the revenge for this tempting road to Eden.
Let no one wash their hands of this - we are all to blame for what is happening around us. The role of the indifferent observer, which we have chosen, will lead us into even worse waters. And what is unfortunate: we could have taken a different path, but we chose this one. Truly, with seven doors there is no way out.
The remarkable Russian writer Olga Forsh at the end of her life wrote: "The older a person becomes, the deeper his thought goes into the past, the old. A life that began eighty-seven years ago passes before the eyes. Years are like the windows of a train: some go out, others flash brightly. Such is the work of whimsical memory..."
I am not eighty-seven, but I can say the same thing. A fastidious, whimsical memory torments me: hurry up and speak out, don't wait for your eighty-seven, the sunset may come without waiting for such a happy age. And I'm not waiting-I'm in a hurry. I can feel the breath of my own sunset in the back of my neck. Well, then! Break in on me, my dark unwelcome guest. No one is safe from you, and I'm not safe from you. Torment me too, you son of a bitch, but remember, you can't wipe me off the face of the earth. I've done something in my life, and my trace will remain in people’s memory. Barely noticeable, small, but a trace nonetheless.
Hello my notebook. Well, here we are again, alone. Again in captivity of disturbing thoughts about myself and my time. My partner is asleep. She knows how to heal. Don't punish me, Melsida Artemyevna, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how and I don't want to.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Ludwig van Beethoven, dying, exclaimed, “What a pity. After all, no one will hear it! What a pity…”
It was he who regretted the conceived, not yet written Tenth Symphony, about unfulfilled plans.
I also had something to regret bitterly: mountains of manuscripts that could have remained orphans, without my hands, which they needed so much.
At the hour of the death of the great master, the weather was furious, a snow storm with hail pounded on the glass of an old Viennese house.
The day that could become my last was much more modest: it was not raging with a storm, a light wind sprinkled the trimmed thujas in the hospital courtyard with a gray layer of city dust.
Melsida Artemyevna often asks: have I had stress, acute conflict situations? Naive question. It would be better if she asked if I had any gaps between stresses and conflicts.
I even know all the terminology on this subject: psychological incompatibility, genetic predisposition ... Yes, yes, everything was in abundance.
There was one thing I did not have in my long life: peace. Not a single day of rest. And I don't regret it. As a human being, I feel sorry for those who were not tormented by the vicissitudes of the century.
My thoughts went with the flow, taking me further and further away from today. I am looking for a blissful piece in my life, where I could rest, where life would smile at me. Aha! There is such a piece. Moscow. I am a student of the Philosophical Department of Moscow State University. I excelled in philosophy. Professor Bykov himself praised me. I wrote my first story, which was published in the capital's magazine. And there was love. Her name was Klava, she was also a university student. And suddenly - an unacceptable blow. Hit below the belt. My father was arrested, and I instantly flew out of the university. Another blow. Another blow. Klava couldn't stand the test. She renounced her love, renounced me, the son of a repressed man.
No, no, the memories of Moscow, of my student years, are not among the most gratifying. Let's go further, to those years that are considered to be golden childhood. I am talking about the time when, after my father’s arrest, as a young boy, I was taken from Baku, where I was born, and taken to Norshen, to my uncle Harutyun, who became my father in a really golden age of childhood.
I said “after my father’s arrest.” No, you heard right. Father was arrested not only in the thirties, but also then, under the tsar. Exiled to Siberia as a revolutionary. Don't be surprised, there is no overlap. Stalin didn’t just kill my father. He organically did not tolerate these revolutionaries. The former secret police agent was not comfortable with having people nearby who could know about his affairs. But history will tell.
To hell with Stalin, to hell with all life's hardships. Was there really no light in this long, more than half a century of life, no period of time free from injuries, blows below the belt? There was, There was, let's not anger God. This is all also childhood, colored by the kindness of my uncle.
But then I hear a commanding voice. What uncle are you talking about? Is it about Uncle Harutyun, the famous kulak, who was dispossessed and sent around the world? Yes, about him. But I wrote in plain language, in black and white in my book Forgive Me, Father, that long before his dispossession, I was not very happy with my uncle when he inadvertently came to visit me in Baku?
Yes, yes, I did write that. But I did not pardon not only my uncle, but also my own father, denying him after his arrest. I believed not in my father, but in Stalin, following him by accusing my father of treason. Such was my unshakeable faith in Stalin.
Same with uncle. "Kulak, kulak." We absorbed these poisonous words with our mother's milk.
We didn’t know, we didn’t guess how much blood we would then cough up from these calls and labels. My good, kind uncle Harutyun! Forgive me, forgive me for my confusion when meeting you. For the chill that ran between us in recent years.
Damn it! We grow, become wiser, penetrate into the inaccessible chambers of the universe. But all the same, no matter what heights you reach, you are worried about the place where you were born, a thin thread stretched to childhood, to your father’s land. And this thread does not break, does not weaken in memory, no matter how high you are carried, and everything calls, calls to itself - the original, lullaby.
Damn it! We grow, we get wiser, we penetrate the inaccessible halls of the universe. But still, no matter what heights you have reached, you still care about the place where you were born, a thin thread stretching back to your childhood, to your father's land. And this thread does not break, does not fade in the memory, no matter how high you go, and everything calls, calls to you - the primordial, like a lullaby.
Karabakh, my Karabakh! You amaze the imagination of everyone who enters your land. Stun, surprise, leave no one indifferent. Here I am, your old friend, every day, every hour, I touch your life, your dreams and hopes, your difficult problems, then I am amazed and rejoice, then I am lost in silence, amazed by what I have seen....
What has become of you, my fatherland? Your gates are shut tight before me, and you are silent. Don't you dare take your sinister hand away from me.
I'm a little ashamed of you, my native land!
The concept of “Armenian people” includes Armenians living all over the planet, including in Karabakh.
When we say “the wounds of Armenia,” do not forget about the wounds of Karabakh. Whoever you are, my distant reader, if you do not feel in yourself the fire of burnt Shushi, the entire tragedy of my region, if you have not experienced the intrigues and ploys of new-age vassaks like Kevorkov, you will never understand the troubles of our today. Generous in promises, we know how to cut down all living things to the root.
Will my land ever be happy, free from oppression? I want to believe in its cost. I hope without hope.
For the second time Melsida Artemyevna comes into the ward and keeps suspiciously checking my pulse and measuring my blood pressure. She is obviously dissatisfied with me, but she speaks softly, kindly, somewhere sympathizing with my discomfort.
“Patient, when will you part with your Karabakh? Let's take a break from it. This is what you both need.”
I make an oath, believing in my vow, but as soon as she leaves, I break the vow again. Some crazy thought is burrowing into my brain, and I can't get rid of it. “Okay,” I give up, “I’ll think about it – I still can’t sleep.”
My hospital bed, witness to all my secret records. No, it was not in vain that we spent all these days and weeks with you. Look how much I have written here, thinking about my life. Doctors promise to separate us soon. Discharge home. But while I'm with you, I can’t sit idle, we still have something to tell, something to remember. Oh, my ill-fated bed! After all, I've been friends with you for a long time. Not once, not twice, long before the heart attack, I ended up in the hospital because of my stomach; throughout my young years, with short breaks, I was plagued by ulcers. I admit, even then, writhing in pain, I wrote something down and now I mentally return to them, my notes, and restore them as far as possible. Don't let them disappear. I don't expect that at home, in the chaos of my notes, I will find them. It is better to restore from memory what time has not yet erased. You know, my bed, it’s even good to evoke the events of long ago. It's the same as before at the threshing. The threshed grain was winnowed in the wind. The grain fell to the ground, and the chaff was carried away. Same with memories. Time carries away the chaff, leaving only grain left behind.
Well, let’s squeak with a ballpoint pen, bed, don’t languish from idleness in the last days before discharge. The bed is silent, and I again plunge into my life, into my endless memories.
A person begins with pity, with compassion, with a feeling of someone else's pain. Without this, he is a beast, and unworthy of the high rank of man.
A man will find a pebble. It has neither beauty nor utility. He turns it over in his hands and throws it away. And the master will lift it up and clean it. Will polish it. You look, and that stone sparkles with lights of unprecedented power.
If I have done my job to some extent, if I have managed, like that master, to clean and polish the stone - the vital material surrounding me - I will consider my task completed. I will consider that I did not eat my writer’s bread in vain!
When a person dies, his inner world, extraordinary, unique, belonging only to him, dies with him. This world is very similar to the one in which a person lives. The same sun shines in it, the same moon illuminates the earth at night. It also involves quarreling, loving, and cheating. And when a person passes away, he takes with him a piece of the big world, and this makes the world poorer. The world becomes poorer for one gone world.
The railway administration has such an expression: "do not turn over." Such a label is hung on a box with glass and other breaking cargo, so that such cargo is handled with care on the journey.
If only a person had such a sign hung on his back from the day he was born. If he had not been mercilessly turned over, then, probably, so early, in the prime of our years and creative powers, we would not have gone to the hospital with heart attacks, bleeding, frayed nerves, and hypertension. There would be fewer of these ailments, and maybe they would disappear altogether. How much the world would gain from such a warning! We take care of glass, and we care for a person at every step, from the day of his birth. And we regret, we write touching obituaries, if he did not live, did not love, did not give. Blessed will be the hour when man loves man.
I'm in my sixties, that's right. But I'm young. Young spiritually, if you will, even physically. I am ready to do what I never dreamed of in my youth. Look at the sunset. How rich in colors! How incredibly beautiful it is!
My hour has not yet come. The hour of great accomplishments, great transformations, about which the dying Goethe spoke.
They say that swans sing their best song before they die, at their sunset. My sunset. How long am I supposed to live? I'm not in a hurry. I'm still up to my neck.
My only fear is that I will never see this sunset. I will step into eternity without looking one last time at the starry sky, at the sunset, which is so beautiful and so brief, almost unattainable.
As long as I remember myself, except for my childhood, fatherlessness, brightened up by the kindness of my uncle who became my father, I remember my far from sweet life, replete with endless taboos, endless ups and downs and troubles, jokes, insults and failures, and various hardships.
Like bait, I sat on the hook almost sleeplessly and more than once cursed my fate. But if you offered to change it with someone else, I wouldn't change it. I entered this life from the back door and found out all its ins and outs. And I can firmly say: crossing it out by turning a blind eye to this ins and outs is, at the very least, immoral.
All my life I was in a hurry, there was no time to look back. And I worked. I worked selflessly, detachedly, like crazy. Loving justice, I could not remain indifferent to someone else's misfortune. My indifference did not give me rest. But these were all things. Where is life itself? Or did it consist only of these cases? Where have the years gone? Youth, maturity? Where they went, I didn't see them. There was concern for everyone, about my own and not my own, only I overlooked myself. I didn’t take care of myself. Now I’m paying for everything. I couldn’t have lived my life any differently.
On my land I did not feel like a random guest. In my writer's sketchbook, life was always drawn as it is, and not as it should be. When I saw a panther in a cage, I did not take it for a doe or a harmless hare. I learned to call a panther a panther and a hare a hare. And I thought, argued furiously, always remaining true to my understanding.
Reflection of living life and its anxieties has always been a theme in art and literature. This task was also my dream, the dream of our writing clan, and each of us realized it in our own way. It’s not my fault, it’s not our fault, if we didn’t always succeed. At the threshold of truth, while I lived and live, Azrael always stood with a naked axe, and not everyone dared to come close to it. However, Goethe said about all this long ago:
What is known is of no use.
One unknown is needed.
They didn’t let us get close to this “unknown.” Now we are reaping the benefits: lies have become our companion. We go to bed with her, we get up with her. As long as the ax hangs over the truth, there will be no art. There will be no Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol on our land. There will be no Raffi, Tumanyan.
That's what I'm grieving about.
I lived my cruel age as a man - for man.
And in this century, stained with the blood of a thousand talents, the color of the people, B. Pasternak could say: “You probably won’t flinch when you sweep away a man. Well, martyrs of dogma, you too are victims of the century.”
The search for justice did not bring happiness to anyone. If old age is an accumulation of grievances, then the search for justice is the fertile soil on which the tree of grievances grows. The more of these searches, the higher the tree.
Why is kindness defenseless? Because she has no fists. Evil has fists, that's why it is omnipotent. Kindness needs support, help, there is no need to help evil, it will achieve everything on its own. In life, everything turns out the other way around. There is a green street for evil, but on the path of good there are only delays, potholes, and impassability.
Heine’s eternal image is of a fighter who, without letting go of his weapon, still dies. I'm dying, but I'm not giving up.
Life is a collection of human suffering, unexpected acquisitions, meetings, partings. Only he leaves life happy, who lived it in a frantic denial of evil, in a painful search for truth.
The history of mankind is the history of the struggle for freedom and the history of the struggle against freedom. Such is the dialectic of life. And not a single formation, not a single system, whether capitalist or socialist, will destroy this struggle.
I knew life, its taste, its bitterness. I absorbed Russian speech, which you cannot learn at any faculty, comprehended the weight of the Russian word, its taste, its infinity of shades. And after Kapiev, I am ready to repeat: Oh, great Russian language, without you, without your enchanting words, there would be “nothing dear to me in my life.”
Why did you come again, angel? Because I'm already on the mend. They promised to release me soon.
“I am not the angel you take me for. Not an ocean, as the Armenians call my double, but a guardian angel. Come to save you.”
"Is there any threat to me? I'm getting better.”
“Right. You are recovering from a heart attack. But have you walked away from your destiny?”
The guardian angel sat closer to me and, looking around, asked, “No one is listening to us?”
“No. My roommate is sleeping.”
“What is he like?”
“Same as me. But he has tired of the fight. Wants to make peace with evil.”
The guardian angel said nothing. A minute later he spoke again.
“Listen to me carefully, Hurunts. I've read everything you've written here, and I have to ask, are you completely healthy in terms of sanity?”
“Completely sane.”
“You are sane and give out such pearls? You have judged yourself. You are a dissident, and in your country, you yourself know what awaits a dissident. I feel sorry for you. Please calm down. Leave your war until better times. And the angel of death will not know the way to you. It's not even about Kevorkov and his ilk. Who is your Kevorkov? An insect. The point is the automatism of the bureaucratic machine. With the same accuracy with which the machine throws out, say, a pack of cigarettes, the machine into which you put your coin will throw out notes that smell of dissent. Do you know this?”
“I know.”
“You know and you don’t want to save yourself?”
The angel thought, even ran his hand through my gray hair.
“You are free to dispose of yourself,” he said absently. “I envy you, brother. I envy and bless.”
And flapping his short wings, he disappeared.
I have already gotten used to the fact that an angel visits me and conducts the most sincere conversation with me.
“Hello,” he says, sitting down at the edge of my bed. And like an old acquaintance, he gives me a hand.
“Hello,” I answer and ask worriedly: “What have you come with this time, angel? I'm afraid of you. You are…”
But the angel does not let me finish. “Came to see if you look like people?”
“People?” I wonder. “What are we, if not people?”
Remember how Samuil Marshak says, “Terrible people in poetry are counterfeiters. The unskilled are not dangerous. Skillful ones are dangerous…” And further: “Monkeys are quite like people: they move like people, and parrots and talk like people. Everything is like people, but not people. That's what’s scary."
I am silent. Nothing to say. Angel's got a lot of things right. We're counterfeiters. We move, we speak, we even write books, but we're not human. Haven’t been for a long time. Where does man begin –
“You can stop now. Nothing is left of people who used to think about others, took responsibility for others. Only narcissists are left, who are in love with themselves.”
The angel flies away, very annoyed. He does not like this depopulated world.
Tomorrow is the 72nd day of my stay in the hospital. I'm being discharged. End of my secret notes. End of my hospital notebook. We come out of the underground, out of the conspiracy.
Alive! The smoking room is alive [1]! We will fight again!
Hello life! I accept you just the way you are.
Notes:
1] The smoking room is alive is "a Russian expression that has been used for a long time in relation to people who, by general opinion, have stopped their activities, disappeared somewhere, disappeared, died, but in fact are alive and busy with the same business."