“The Dead” by Armen Shekoyan

Armen Shekoyan (b. 1953) is an Armenian poet and prose writer known for his innovative usage of slang and Armenian colloquialisms as well as for a highly experimental prose style. While most of his works have appeared in periodicals, he also has a collection of short stories, entitled The Silk Road. Since 2005, the daily Aravot has been publishing, in serialized form, his autobiographic novel Armenian Time.

I am everywhere, or, rather, almost everywhere, or, more precisely, I try to be everywhere because if in this one and only life of mine I fail to be everywhere then I haven’t lived my short life to its fullest, or, rather, it means I’ve lived it like everyone else, to the same extent as everyone else, or, in other words, I’ve barely lived it at all, but then again, in this one and only life we get, there’s such a thing as getting tired, although I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m tired of life itself, nor would I say that I get more or more frequently tired than everyone else, despite the fact that I manage to be everywhere, or, rather, try to be everywhere and sometimes even succeed in being everywhere, although my age and  fatigue have started to take their toll on me, and I feel that mine is not just ordinary fatigue but a completely different and extremely dangerous kind that usually stinks of heart attacks and other unpleasant things, and danger follows closely on my heels, panting as it tries to keep up, and one day it will finally catch me and deliver my punishment, for those who deserve and receive the punishment are not always and not even very often those who have committed the most awful and glaring sins, but those who dare to try to be like God, and if trying to be everywhere is not playing God then what is, and the fact that our God managed to live through his ambition and desire for omnipotence for only thirty-three short years, and that we survive it for much longer can only be explained by our thick skin and incomparable sturdiness, although it’s also obvious that God has his hand mixed in our longevity, too, and it is by His will that we survive and resist this fatigue, though recently I’ve been getting so tired that I can’t stand it any longer, but, despite my fatigue and waning stamina, I still can’t sit still in my place, and, if you think about it, this habit of mine of not sitting still isn’t a result of a fidgety disposition, which I don’t even possess, but only and only of my limitless and insatiable curiosity and, likely, also of my inherent fear of loneliness, which isn’t just your ordinary human fear of loneliness but a blind animal terror, which, invisible to others, is always with me, and so I guess my God-fearing, my constant candle-burning and my ardent desire to feel God by my side at all times is a manifestation of this fear or terror, and just because from time to time my well-wishers and my ill-wishers alike mock my love of God and the Church, it doesn’t mean that they will ever be smitten for their behavior because far from scorning the life and deeds of our only God, they only want to emphasize the fact that I have nothing in common with his life and, consequently, deeds, but it also doesn’t mean that they won’t be smitten at all; they will be punished for repeatedly straying off the righteous path and for living much longer than their only God, and not simply for just living longer than God but, more precisely, because despite the fact that they get more time on earth, they never get any closer to either the righteous path or to God but instead stray farther and farther from him; and yet, my well-wishers and ill-wishers alike have never sensed or realized that they are moving farther away from the righteous path and from God, and I’ve never sensed or realized it either, just like I haven’t really registered the fact that, in the end, my God-fearing and my candle-burning are both empty and meaningless acts because no amount of candlelight has let me see and grasp the meekness and love imprinted on the face of Jesus Christ, which is probably why all of my ardent efforts at peace invariably lead to war, and this war I wage is a hundredfold more pathetic and dreary than all the wars that everyone else fights, because my war is never against the real enemy but only against my well-wishers and ill-wishers,  and the one and only reason why I don’t wage war against my enemies is that I have none, and this not because of my particularly peaceful disposition but solely because in my dreary life, I’ve never found myself on the righteous path, which usually abounds with enemies and rogues of all kind lying in wait, and it just so happens that I always find myself everywhere except the right track—the righteous path, which weaves through thorns and spikes, and abounds with rogues and fiends, who, on this righteous path, have taken on the function of traffic police and other roadblocks so that they have the ability to make it even harder to navigate the already difficult righteous path, difficult—not to say impassable—not only because on it you’re completely alone and separated from your well-wishers and ill-wishers alike, but also because the rogues and the traffic police on this path, as already mentioned above, aren’t the same fiends and traffic police as over on this side, who are easy to cheat and even easier to bribe with a couple of bucks, for over there, on the righteous path, the evil is truly and unambiguously evil, and the good is truly and unambiguously good, if, of course, you ever encounter it at all, because whereas the fiends and rogues come in packs on this de jure difficult and de facto completely impassable road, the good ones, if you ever encounter them at all, normally pass by huffing and puffing, usually alone, very few and at great intervals, and the only dream they cherish, which is to transform this difficult path laden with roadblocks into a coveted and competitive relay-race, never materializes, so most of the panting good ones that happen on this road simply perish, and yet their last gaze is still incomparably more lively than the trite, spiritless gaze of all of us who never made it to the path at all or just turned back half-way, and I’d like to note here that there is more than one way of turning back half-way on the path, and most people who do turn back are those who prefer life to death, although ironically the majority of those who remain and perish are also those who prefer life to death, and we’d be simplifying the issue if we said that those who return and survive and those who remain and perish envision either life or death differently, and, what’s more, we’d be distorting the truth, for none of those who chose to stay the course and perish on the path has ever returned to announce that he regretted his decision, and, similarly, those who turn back half-way and survive never return to declare that they’ve truly been saved,  which is to say that if not life, then at least death is certainly omnipresent and unrecognizable, since many of us, practically everyone, cheer and celebrate in death and weep and mourn in life, and this applies universally and exclusively to all those who haven’t even embarked on the path, and it also applies in part to those who’ve turned back half-way, because, as they turned back, they lied to everyone including themselves, that there was somebody waiting for them on the other side, and while there are indeed people waiting for them, both their waiting and they themselves are nothing but ghosts, which is to say that those people who’re waiting are also lying to themselves and everyone else, pretending to be waiting when in reality they’re dead, and it should be added that their death is not a conscious one, which is why these people can’t realize they’re dead, nor can they see or comprehend anyone else’s death, and so they don’t attend each other’s funerals and don’t throw a handful of dust on each other’s coffin, and they persist in this dead and unburied state because they no longer remember that the dead have to bury their dead, and I’m one of them, but my situation is more complicated, because, as luck would have it, I haven’t forgotten anything and remember it all well enough, although I constantly pretend to have forgotten it, but, nonetheless, my memory continues to astonish me at every step, and my eyes are always wide open, for, although dead ourselves, we don’t even stoop to close each other’s eyes to allow each other to fall asleep and thus to live for a little while, because we are dead and asleep when our eyes are open, and with our eyes closed, we are alive and awake, which is to say that we can only live in our dreams, and when from time to time I am fortunate enough to fall asleep and live and to subsequently feel the joy of awakening, my memory continues to amaze me even after I’ve woken up because, unlike everyone else, I am dead and yet perfectly conscious of it, though this is not the death that we Armenians read and know about, but a more vivid and dreary reality that tears me away from my dreams and my life every morning under the pretense of waking me up and directing me everywhere, and despite the fact that the clock on the administration building tells the correct time every morning, it doesn’t reveal anything noteworthy because unlike the other dead people, those of us who have died a conscious death have nowhere to hurry, despite the fact that the clock on the administrative building is the very clock that used to always egg me on during all those years when I was still alive and constantly running late for my lessons at the school named after Teryan, and these, as it later turned out, were exceptionally bitter lessons or, in other words, very brief mementos of my life, and I guess it wasn’t even so much the lessons as my age, compounded also by innocence and purity, two words that no longer have any significance for either the consciously or the unconsciously dead, despite the fact that these words never come off the lips of those who’ve died an unconscious death, and the presence of these two words is akin to our presence in this unsteady and fragile realm, where I nevertheless wake up every blessed morning and direct my steps everywhere to convince myself and everyone else that I am out to discover innocence and purity, and that this pursuit of purity and innocence is what compels me to start my day by directing my steps to the Writers’ Union, then to Vilo’s printing house, then to Garun, from there to the Church of Saint Sargis, then to Nikol’s publishing place, from there, to the fund’s building, to Paplavok¹, then to Aib Fe², and, finally, as every evening, to the twenty-four-hour store of Sako, my childhood friend, and thus—every day I delude myself and everyone else, occupying with these errands my short day of a dead person, and every morning, when I enter the Writers’ Union, the day guard at the door, who also happens to be selling his and others’ books off a stall at the entrance, begins explaining to me anew that one of my two books was stolen from his table and he can’t give me the money for the second one because he’s already spent it, and I, as always, choose not to get into it with him, thus ruining the rest of the day, so I turn around and walk over to Vilo’s printing house where, over a cup of Vazganush’s delectable coffee, Vilo’s son Avik and I discuss in minutest details the prospects of publishing a daily newspaper written entirely in Yerevanian slang, and as soon as we arrive anew at the financial aspect of the project, I rush out of the printing house and walk down Proshyan street to  the offices of Garun³, where the editor Varuzh greets me by shoving the most recent issue of the magazine in my face, but I ask him to show me just one page of his childish scribble instead, and I gulp it up right there on the spot, and, in order not to ruin my impressions, I leave the brand new issue over there and direct my steps to Saint Sargis, where I light my daily candle and mutter to myself the words of yet another text, which I will subsequently have difficulty committing to paper, because the texts of those of us who have died a conscious death are different and intricate in new ways every day, and I, retreating with my back to the door, exit the church and enter Nikol’s publishing pace so that Vahag Tevosyan and I can discuss the ending of my story, but Avo gets in our way, Avo Babajanyan is feeling playful, as always, and I, in order to retain a pure and unspoiled memory of Avo’s playfulness, hurriedly exit the publishing office and take the elevator in the lobby of the same building to Varuzh’s studio, where Varuzh has already laid out a new canvas, and has already added some white strokes to the dark-green backdrop of the canvas, and although he’s just about to start painting, it already looks perfect as it is, so I beg Varuzh to please leave it as is and not carry on with painting, but Varuzh lifts up the brush to touch the canvas, and I, in order to forever preserve and keep the painting intact in my memory, take off from his studio and on my way stop by Vahe’s pharmacy, where I find the tax collector hovering around, as always, so I decide to stay out of their way and instead walk down Mashtots and pop into the Barrels⁴ to see Noro, and I find Grigor Khachatryan there giving an amusing lecture to his contemporaries in a croaky voice, and so I, in order to avoid interrupting his croaking, continue on my way and stop by the fund, where Sato, Tigo and I go over the prospect of holding readings in Los Angeles, and I rush out of there, not only in order not to ruin the project, but also because I realize that at the very same moment, the discussion about Vahram’s latest story has commenced at Bnagir⁵, and the guys are all there already, and I feel compelled to call them kids became I have a momentary illusion that this is my class at the Teryan school, and those in attendance—Vahan, Marineh, Harut, Violeta, Grandpa, Tsovik, Sonia, Arman, and all the others—are my classmates, and when such words as globalization and postmodernism begin ringing out in the course of the discussion, I suddenly realize that the recess bell has gone off, so I storm down the staircase of NPAK⁶, which leads me through dark corridors, where, from multiple screens of video-art, some video-artist on behalf of his own childhood is methodically defiling ours, and this continues for quite some time because the streets are also dark—not because it’s late, but because it’s wintertime and the days are short, and this premature darkness effortlessly carries me all the way to Paplavok, where, under the artificial lights, Abo’s Rusophilism and Arshak’s pro-Westernism resound with equal force, and as soon as they pause to catch their breath, John chimes in with his perpetual legend about Manuk Semerjyan, and Djavakhyan Vahan, the fastest Armenian runner in the world, joins him, and when I see the world’s most boring doctor approaching our table, I hurry off, not only so I can preserve positive memories of the meeting but also because I moonlight at a newspaper called Aib Fe, which pays me to keep to myself the secret about me and everyone else being dead, and from Aib Fe, very late at night, my feet take me on their own volition, to my childhood friend Sako’s twenty-four-hour store, where Sako and I drink to our health and chase the alcohol down with small crumbs of our childhood, and then, as usual, I get home around midnight, where I find my family fast asleep and, if I can judge by their facial expressions, in the middle of captivating and eventful dreams, and I, too, follow the example of the rest of my family and go to bed, where I try to fall asleep as quickly as I can, not only to dream new dreams but also to rest a bit in preparation for tomorrow, so that I can wake up refreshed to begin convincing myself and everyone else with renewed energy that we’re still alive.

Translated from the Armenian by Margarit Tadevosyan-Ordukhanyan

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^[1] Paplavok, from the Russian poplavok, float, is the commonly used name for a restaurant and jazz-bar, a Yerevan hot-spot frequented by artists and musicians.

^[2] Armenian daily periodical.

^[3] Garun is an independent literary magazine, one of the oldest and most respected literary publications in Armenia.

^[4] In Yerevan jargon, Barrels is a reference to the Armenian Museum of Contemporary Art located on the central Mashtots Avenue. The building derives its name from its shape, which resembles a number of interconnected barrels or cylinders.

^[5] An online publication dedicated to Armenian contemporary and experimental art.

^[6] In Armenian, the abbreviation for the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art.