224
Hovhannes Stamboulian stroked the hand-carved walnut desk he had been sitting at since early afternoon and felt the smooth, glossy surface glide under his fingers. The Jewish antique dealer who sold it to him had said such pieces were quite rare because they had been so hard to manufacture. Carved from walnut trees on the Aegean Islands, then adorned with tiny drawers and secret compartments like a fine piece of embroidery. Despite the delicacy of its adornment, the desk was so durable it could last several lifetimes.
'This desk will outlive you and even your children!' The dealer had guffawed, as if his merchandise outliving his customers was a standing joke with him. 'Isn't it sublime that a piece of wood lives longer than us?'
Though he knew the remark was meant to demonstrate the quality of the merchandise, Hovhannes Stamboulian had felt a pang of sadness.
Even so, he had bought the desk. Along with it, he had also purchased a brooch from the same store-a graceful brooch in the shape of a pomegranate, delicately smothered with gold threads all over, slightly cracked in the middle, with seeds of red rubies glowing from within. It was a deftly crafted piece by an Armenian artisan in Sivas, he had been told. Hovhannes Stamboulian bought the piece as a present for his wife. He was planning to give it to her tonight, after dinner, or perhaps better, before, as soon as he was done with this chapter.
Of all the chapters he had written, this was the most demanding. Had he known it was going to be this grueling, he might have abandoned the entire project. But he was up to his neck in the book, and the only way out was to keep at it. Hovhannes Stamboulian, a renowned poet and columnist, was secretly writing a book entirely outside his main field. He could be rejected, ridiculed, or reviled at the end. At a time when the entire Ottoman Empire was sated with grandiose undertakings, revolutionary movements, and nationalist divisions, at a time when the Armenian community was pregnant with innovative ideologies and ardent debates, he in the privacy of his house was writing a children's book.
Writing a children's book in Armenian was something never done before, almost inconceivable. Why was there not a single piece of literature in this field? Was it because the Armenian minority had become a society unable to consider its children as children? Was childhood a futility, if not a luxury, denied to a minority in need of growing up as quickly as it could? Or was it because the literati in Istanbul had been cut off from the oral traditions faithfully ferried by Armenian grandmothers to their grandchildren?
The book was titled The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country. It was about a pigeon lost up there in the blue skies while flying with his family and friends over a blissful country. The pigeon would stop at numerous villages, towns, and cities, searching for his loved ones, and at each stop he would listen to a new story.
In this manner, Hovhannes Stamboulian gathered in the book old Armenian folktales, most of which had been transmitted from generation to generation, others long forgotten. Throughout the book he remained loyal to the authenticity of each tale, hardly changing a word. But now he planned to end the book with a story of his own. When done, the book would be published in Istanbul and then distributed in the major cities, like Adana, Harput, Van, Trabzon, and Sivas, where Armenians lived in large numbers. Even though the Muslims had started using the printing press about two centuries ago, the Armenian minority had been printing its own books and texts long before then.
Hovhannes Stamboulian wanted Armenian parents to read these stories to their children before they went to bed each night. It was ironic that this book had taken so much of his time over the past eighteen months that he himself hadn't been able to spend much time with his own children. Every afternoon he would come into this room, sit at his desk, and write for however long it took him. Each night when he emerged from the room his children would already be in their beds, asleep. The urge to write had cast a spell over everything and everyone in his life. But fortunately he was about to finish. This was the last chapter he was writing this evening, the most demanding of all. When he was finished he would go downstairs, bundle up the whole text with a ribbon, hide the golden brooch inside the knot, and hand the package to his wife. The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country was dedicated to her.
'Read it, please,' he was planning to say. 'If it is not good enough, I want you to burn it. All of it. I promise I won't even ask you why. But if you think it is good, I mean, good enough to be published and distributed, then please take it to Garabed Effendi at Dawn Publishers.'
Hovhannes Stamboulian respected his wife's opinion like no one else's. She had sophisticated taste in literature and fine art. Thanks to her hospitality, this chalky konak along the Bosphorus had for years been a center for intellectuals and artists, visited by countless men of letters, some eminent writers, some aspiring to be. They would come to eat, drink, read, contemplate, and fervently discuss one another's works, and even more fervently, their own.
After flying too long the Little Lost Pigeon felt tired and thirsty and perched on a snowbound branch, which belonged to a pomegranate tree ready to blossom. He filled his little beak with some snow and having thus quenched his thirst, started to shed tears for his parents.
'Don't cry, little pigeon,' said the pomegranate tree. 'Let me tell you a story. The story of a little lost pigeon. '
Hovhannes Stamboulian paused without quite understanding what exactly disturbed his concentration. He let out a sigh of exasperation, much to his own surprise. For the last hour or so his mind had been a free-for-all of gloomy thoughts. He had a hard time understanding why he was so worried deep inside, as if his mind had been operating on its own, contemplating nameless worries. Whatever the reason behind such uneasiness he had to get rid of the torpor. This was the last chapter, the last story. It had to be good. He pursed his lips and went back to writing.
'But that's me you are talking about. I am that pigeon!' chirped the Little Lost Pigeon in surprise.
'Oh really?' asked the pomegranate tree, but didn't sound the least surprised. 'Then listen to your story…. Don't you want to learn about your future?'
'Only if it's a happy one,' said the Little Lost Pigeon. 'I don't want to learn about it if it's sad.'
Suddenly the still air was pierced by the smashing of glass. Hovhannes Stamboulian flinched in his chair, stopped writing, and instinctively turned toward the window, all- ears, frozen. For a long while he heard nothing but the howling of the wind. Oddly enough he found the silence more ominous than that eerie sound. The night was thick with a ghostly stillness while the wind outside roared as if it ferried the wrath of God, fuming for a reason unknown to mortals. In contrast to the wind whipping the walls outside, here in the house it was exceptionally silent. Hovhannes Stamboulian felt so deeply unnerved by this unusual quiet that he was almost relieved when he heard some sounds coming from downstairs. Someone scurried from one end of the house to the other, and then all the way back; panicky, abrasive footsteps in a rush as if running away from someone or something.
That must be Yervant, he thought, as a new concern crept into his eyes, a look of pensiveness and apprehension. His eldest son, Yervant, had always been naughty and boisterous, but recently the boy's waywardness had soared beyond limits. In truth, Hovhannes Stamboulian felt a pang of guilt for not spending as much time with him as he should have. Obviously the boy longed for his father.. Compared to him his three other children, two boys and a girl, were so docile it was as if their eldest brother's frenzied energy had a soporific effect on them. The two younger boys were three years apart but equally compliant. And then came the youngest sibling, the only girl in the family, little Shushan.
'Don't you worry, little bird,' the pomegranate tree smiled and shook the snow on her branches. 'The story that I'm going to tell you is a happy one.'
Downstairs in the corridor footsteps multiplied alarmingly. Now it sounded as if there were dozens of Yervants disobediently running from one end to the other, stomping and crushing the floor underneath. But amid the scuttle, all of a sudden, he thought he heard a voice, so unexpected and curt it was hard to be sure-stern and husky, cracking for a split second. That was it. After that it was silence again, as if it all had been a figment of his imagination.
Ordinarily, he would have run out of his room to check if everything was all right. But tonight was no ordinary night. He didn't want to be disturbed, not now, not when he was about to finish the work of eighteen months.
