If not in the fall, in the spring

Part of a collection. A chapter of sorts.

I will not elaborate further on the experiences my brother and I shared on his short stint to the motherland. Too much time and effort has already been wasted on names and faces I never should have learned in the first place. 

  

His flight was to depart at four in the morning, and we decided upon a final romp through the streets of Yerevan. His insistence on a final meal of Khorovats didn't strike me odd, as he was a connoisseur of ceremony and I was intent upon giving him a well-deserved send off. By midnight we stumbled back into the apartment, drunk off a mixture of local spirits and the prospect of abandoning the charade we had maintained for too long a time. As he gathered his sundries, I began the familiar process of six numbers, then ten; but thinking better of it, hung up and called a taxi instead. We sat and waited for the designated time, entertaining ourselves with music television and the creation of a permanent record to be shared among absent souls with absent souls. While the world raced around itself, we made plans and arrangements, knowing full well, we would never see one another again. A loud honking of a horn at two in the morning had me set him upon his way to the world of our youth, leaving me to my task of escaping from that same world. Before stepping into the decaying automobile, he extended a hand and promised, "If not in the fall, then in the spring."

  By dawn, it was as if he had never come. I left my apartment at six in the morning and began walking. The streets were still abandoned except for the occasional band of scavenging dogs. Inside, mothers prepared their children for school while the children resisted the clearing of the cobwebs from their minds. I was alone and I finally had her all to myself. I danced through the streets of a beautiful city where I had learned of the inexplicable melodies that resonates through one's ears upon introduction to a soul he feels he has known for eons. Although I knew I would have to leave her, I never prevented her from tugging and tuning at the strings of my heart. There is no tribulation that a man in love refuses to endure, and I was no exception. Except, of course, that my love was a city, and she was drowning.

  By eight, the city began to come alive with activity. A terribly emaciated woman implored me to buy one of her apples at one corner, while at another a half dozen children ran barefoot through the street, trying their luck with the handful of tourists who sat at the garden cafes. All day I walked, desperately trying to ignore the hunger and destitution I observed at every corner. At four in the afternoon I dozed off at a Gorky park to awaken to the setting of the sun into the great peak of mount Ararat. For most Armenians, the mountain represents a source of infinite resentment. The twenty-five miles that separate it from the capitol seem to stretch the world ten times over and fed the resolve of this rapidly disappearing ancient people.

  The rumbling of my stomach led me to a sandwich place on Toumanian. Vasken was the owner of the restaurant and the patriarch of his family. We had become acquainted one late night as he watched the storefront for one of his employees. That particular conversation had been my first opportunity to honestly converse with an Armenian national of societal ills and the required actions to remedy them. My entrance into the restaurant caused an uproar among his sons as they rushed to seat me. Vasken would not be in, his oldest assured me, but it would be his pleasure to help me with whatever I needed. I quietly lamented the absence of my friend and hurriedly devoured a sandwich. 

  

  Later, I ventured to a local music joint, where a meadowlark sang to traditional jazz standards. I sat there, mesmerized by the reflections in the artificial lake that surrounded the restaurant and began thinking of my first days in Dilijian and the great distance that separated me from those carefree days. As the band played Girl from Ipanema, I remembered Vatche's words and drank to Nairi, hoping that the passage of time had had softened her rage or better yet, that she had forgotten me.