Valery also drives me thirty kilometers east of Yerevan — to Gari. I have absolutely no time, but it turns out that going to Gari is something categorically, radically, obligatory! You are a slave here — you must be humble, compliant, obedient, or else you will not see anything, will not learn anything.
As far as the eye can see, bare, rocky hills, rounded, smoothed by the wind for millions of years, not a sign of a tree anywhere. And suddenly — at the top of one of these hills — a cow. Motionless, rooted to the earth like a stone. What does this poor animal feed on? There is nothing here, no grass, no leaves. A cow abandoned, as if forgotten by everyone. Forced to rely on herself, on her own patience, on her own luck. Here finally one can understand Yesenin, who, sitting in Paris, dreamed of throwing his arms around a cow’s neck!
Along the way Valery stopped to show me the place where Egishe Harenc liked to spend time. Harenc — their greatest poet, murdered by Stalin in 1937. “So when you step through your fragrant field / And spring walks at your side …”
The view from this place is expansive, high. Mountains and more mountains, mist, light, a pastel brightness — impressionism.
Gari is a temple built more than two thousand years ago in honor of the beautiful sun god Helios. I must see Gari, for what if I should have some doubts about whether Armenia really belongs to the Mediterranean world, the world of ancient Greece and Rome? Here you go — proof. And moreover, all around lie the ruins of a fortress — a fortress that for centuries held back various Mongols, Tatars, all of brutish Asia. That’s what colonization meant in the time of Gari. It meant building roads that are still used today, it meant building factories, constructing magnificent Ionic temples. And what does it mean today? It means placing kalashnikovs in the hands of barefoot, hungry people mad with hatred!
NOW BY BUS from Yerevan to Georgia, to Tbilisi. At the city limits, a road sign:
Tbilisi—253 km.
Moscow—1971 km.
The highway runs along Lake Sevan. In the spot where it almost touches the water, a group of boys stop the bus — they are selling fish. The passengers rush toward the exit, and, as always happens in the Imperium wherever some merchandise appears, immediately a breathless and shrieking human throng forms, immediately a struggle begins. Now they are grabbing fish away from one another, but this combat is difficult, for the fish are slippery and, furthermore, still alive, agile, strong, and so they escape; some passengers try to hide them inside their coats or in their pockets, but the beasts either slither out, or some greedy and skillful fellow passenger snatches them for himself.
The fish-human war ends at an impasse. Half the passengers are left with wet, slimy, but empty, hands. The rest are stuffing their still-jumping, but now-dying, prizes wherever they can. The bus stinks like a fish market, but we are driving on.
I took with me for the road The Book of History—the work of the late medieval Armenian historian Arakelian from Tebryz. In chapter 53 the author introduces us to the mysterious and colorful world of precious stones:
Kayc, or korund. Its attributes are as follows: if a man puts it in his mouth, his thirst will disappear; and if one melts gold and throws a korund into the melted gold, the korund will not burn and its color as well as its luster will remain intact. And it is also said: whoever carries a korund on his person, he is pleasing to others; and also, a korund is good for apoplexy.
We are driving along precipices, streams down below, masses of snow above, and then, suddenly, a turn, and — the border patrol. The army. Russians. They enter the bus, looking around, searching for something. It is obvious for what — weapons. Suddenly an Armenian or Georgian starts shouting at them that they are delaying the bus, taking up our time, and so on. He shouts and shouts. Now, I think, this Red Army man will shoot him on the spot. But nothing of the sort happens — these are different times! The soldier starts to explain, apologizes, says that they were acting on orders — the whole patrol quickly disappears, and we crawl on over the mountains.
Agate, or ayn-ul-hurr. It possesses all the characteristics of the korund. Whoever wears it will not fall ill with leprosy, the itch mite, or similar diseases. His wealth and property will not diminish, his person and his words will be pleasing to others. It is advisable to wear an agate in order to increase one’s good judgment. And no matter how much wine he should drink, a man who wears an agate does not lose his reason. That’s what they say, but I do not believe this, for wine is a lion’s milk and whoever drinks it greedily deprives himself of fame, reason, and property.
WE ARE IN GEORGIA. There is no need for the signs, already in a different, Georgian alphabet. It is enough to take a look around. In comparison with Armenia, Georgia is wealth; it is better, more affluent houses, large vineyards, good-looking herds of sheep and cows, big tobacco plantations, green, succulent meadows.
The road continues through mountains, winding, plastered to the steep slopes. The forests already autumnal, multicolored, patterned. Fish, a smell like the one at a fish market.
Diamond. And if you inquire about the attributes of a diamond, they are as follows: if a man has a spotted complexion, a diamond will drive away the spots. He who wears a diamond is pleasing to kings, his words arouse respect, he is not afraid of evil, he will not suffer from stomach pains or the itch mite, his memory will not fail him, and he will live eternally. If one were to pound a diamond on an anvil and serve it to a man, one could kill him with it as with poison.
Higher still, up to the mountain peaks, and suddenly, from here, one can see the whole city.
This is Tbilisi.
THE MAN ON THE ASPHALT MOUNTAIN
ONCE UPON A TIME Tbilisi was a city of only one street — Rustaveli Boulevard, which stretched for kilometers along the bottom of a winding valley. By its location alone, amid green mountains warmed by the sun, Tbilisi brought to mind one of those quiet and popular health resorts so prevalent in the Swiss and Italian Alps. Throughout the Imperium one had to stand in line to buy a bottle of mineral water, but here one could drink this same water straight from the springs, in which the city abounded.
The western end of Rustaveli Boulevard ended at the neighborhood of Sololaki, spread out on small and gentle hills, a neighborhood of latticework pastel houses, verandas, balconies, and gardens. Even today, Sololaki has retained in places a touch of its former charm. The eastern end of the avenue, on the other hand, until recently, when a new neighborhood arose there, disappeared into the forest surrounding the city.
Tbilisi has changed greatly in recent years. Georgia, like the rest of the southern territories of the Imperium, assumed a model of development typical of the entire Third World: a rapid, unnatural buildup of the capital paid for by the neglect and further impoverishment of the countryside. A monstrous disproportion was thus created between the capital and the rest of the country.
Today one-quarter of the citizens of Georgia live in Tbilisi, one-third of the citizens of Armenia in Yerevan. Applying the same proportions, it is as if more than fifty million people were living in Washington, D.C., eight to ten million in Warsaw.
Life in the provinces means stagnation, poverty, hopelessness. Hence the rush to live in a large town, and, above all else, in the capital. Here there is the possibility of a better existence, of advancement, of a career. As a result, old Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku, et cetera, are overgrown with gigantic neighborhoods of shoddy housing projects, constructed without any care, cheaply and sloppily. Nothing in these apartment buildings shuts properly, screws tight. Nothing matches anything else. Even so, the quality of these houses varies greatly throughout the Imperium. They build the best in Moscow. Worse in the other European parts of the Imperium. The lowest standards befall the houses of Georgians, Uzbeks, Yakuts, Buryats.