The Doves of Ohanavank (12 page)

“I like your theory, but in this case I think both are factors. In the world of these people, unsolved murders create a credibility problem, which can be a liability. They need to find the killer and take revenge, not necessarily because they miss the deceased, but to reestablish control of the business, and to make sure that would-be competitors understand that they’ve regained control.”

Lara thinks about what Laurian is saying and another thought flashes through her mind.

“In order to regain credibility, they have to
appear
to have found the real killer and avenged their boss, right?” she says, with a slow careful enunciation indicating that she may be onto something new.

“That’s right.”

“And what matters is to reestablish credibility in the eyes of the other oligarchs, not in the eyes of a bunch of miserable peasants in Saralandj.”

“Right again,” says Laurian, curious where Lara is going with this reasoning.

“Maybe we can feed them what they need. A really believable story…Something big… something that will keep them busy and engaged…”

Laurian is quiet. They have passed Ashtarak and are headed toward Aparan when he suddenly exits onto a narrower road.

“Have you ever been to Ohanavank?”

“No,” says Lara, “But you want to go there now?”

“It’s right on the way. Have you heard the story?”

“No.” Lara is disappointed that they’re making a detour to see an old monastery, when she is anxious to get to Saralandj.

“You’ll love the story, I promise. Something you said reminded me of it. We can learn from it. Bear with me.”

They reach the medieval monastery in several minutes. It is an imposing structure right at the edge of the gorge carved by the Kasagh River, and the walls are tiled with red and black tuff stone.

“It took centuries to build this.” Laurian is excited like a schoolboy.

As they approach the main gate of the church, around a dozen doves take flight from the bell tower to the right.

Laurian grabs Lara’s arm and points to the doves. “Remember that,” he says. “They’re part of the story.”

Inside, Laurian slows down for a minute and lets the peace and quiet of the church envelop him. Lara is affected too, looking at the imposing columns at each side of the altar, the walls lined with some of the most intricate
Khachkar
s she has ever seen—literally, stone-crosses, referring to the large slabs of stone with intricate carvings of crosses, which are prevalent all over Armenia—and the sunlight entering from the windows around the dome, creating a mysterious atmosphere that refuses to allow indifference.

“When Genghis Khan marches here in the thirteenth century,” starts Laurian, “he is determined to slaughter every man, woman and child in sight. The village priest pleads with him to allow the people to go into the church to pray for the last time. The Khan agrees. The priest hurriedly gathers every soul in the village and rushes them into the church. He then enters himself, turns around, bows deeply to the invader and shuts the door.” Laurian walks over and shuts the doors of the church. “Now, can you imagine several hundred village folk gathered here, with the knowledge that they are praying for the last time before being slaughtered? Imagine that for a minute, Lara; imagine yourself being here back then, among those people.”

Laurian takes a few steps toward the altar. “Here!” he says, approaching a small wooden door to the right of the altar. “While Genghis Khan thought the people were praying inside, they were actually escaping from here!” And he swings the door open to reveal a small room, with another, smaller wooden door in the back. “That leads to a vast cave below the church,” he says smiling from ear to ear. “Believe it or not, this church is built over a cave. And from the cave, it is possible to walk to the other side of the gorge.” He opens the inner door and peers down the dark steps, gesturing Lara to do the same.

“After a while, Genghis Khan opens the church doors, and a large flock of doves flies out, over a hundred birds, startling even the great warrior. The priest kept the doves in the church. When Genghis Khan finds the church empty, he thinks the doves are the souls of the villagers, rising to heaven. He departs Ohanavank in considerable haste.”

They stand at the top of the hidden staircase, looking down the steps leading to the cave. “They had to use their heads and resort to deceit to save their lives,” whispers Laurian. “I think that was what you were thinking earlier in the car, when you were talking about coming up with a believable story to feed Yuri. That’s what reminded me of Ohanavank.”

She looks at him, wondering how on earth he could find the connection between the medieval tale and their current predicament. But the image of doves and the escaping villagers stays with her.

“Come,” says Laurian, “we can see the opening where the cave leads into the gorge from the side of the church. But first, check these two Khachkars. They are believed to be carved by Momik in the fourteenth century. Most
of his work is in Noravank in Vayots Dzor, but these two masterpieces have ended up here. One day I’ll find the time to study how.”

They remain quiet for a long time while driving on the road to Saralandj. They see the scatter of stone homes in the distance, which swallow the road in their clutter and bring it to its end. Beyond the village, old pine and spruce forests spread up the mountainside.

The forests have special meaning for Lara. That is where she ventured when she was a kid, just to find out what was there. Her sisters weren’t curious, and her brothers were too afraid to go, even Avo. For them, the world ended with the back garden. To venture beyond, to cross the vast wild fields full of tall grass and thorns, which their father said harbored poisonous snakes, and to reach and actually enter the dark forest, was for them like venturing into another realm. She went alone. That is when she met the trees, really met them and felt their presence. And that is where she discovered, through the incredible fusion of fear and excitement pounding in her chest, a part of herself. The forest, and her father’s soothing voice when she finally found her way back home that evening, saying “What did you discover in the forest, Lara?” remained with her throughout her eighteen-month captivity, giving her the inner strength she needed to overcome the odds and escape.

They pass the sign by the side of the road announcing the village name in English and Armenian letters. The English is a post-Soviet addition. The letter “j” in the English version is faded and virtually erased, and the sign reads “Saraland.”

“One day, I’ll bring along a magic marker and I’ll write in the ‘j’ myself.”

Lara simply smiles. This is Edik, restless and eager to fix things. She realizes that last night and today in the car were the only times that Laurian talked to her as an equal, not as a little girl who needed to be protected, instructed and even pampered.

“You know what?” he says out of the blue, “We should ask Sona if she’d like to have her wedding at Ohanavank.”

“That’s a great idea,” she smiles, “I’ll convince her.”

They enter the narrow single street of the village, the ‘torn apart obstacle course’, as Laurian calls it, and as they emerge from the cluster of houses, a lone building appears some twenty meters away. That is the Galian house.

“It looks like they have just filled this ditch,” says Laurian, referring to the huge pothole usually full of muddy water, that forces cars to stop and the passengers to walk the rest of the way to the Galians. “I’m going to drive over it this time.”

Avo has swept the floors and cleaned the pens with water, and then thrown fresh hay everywhere, but the stench is overwhelming nonetheless. There are over fifty pens, separated by metal bar-fences, twenty of which are occupied by expectant mothers. They walk to the one that has already delivered. She is lying on her side, and, just as Avo said, eight tiny pink bundles have attached themselves to her tits, eyes shut, shivering. If one could ignore the overpowering smell, it would in fact be an inspiring sight.

“They should all deliver in a few weeks,” Avo repeats. “Then, when the time comes to wean them, we’ll distribute them to the other pens. The male piglets will be castrated when they are three to four weeks old, to make the meat milder. Next year, when we get another litter, these will be older and we’ll need to build some new pens to accommodate all of them. Of course by then we’ll sell more than half.” He is so excited that he is oblivious to the smell. He talks of future expansion plans and big possibilities, which include exports, even diversifying into the necessary agricultural sectors whereby one day he will produce the feed he needs. He talks about signing contracts with restaurants and hotels to supply their pork, and even opening a small
Tonratun
, grill-house, in Saralandj and serving fresh clean khorovadz from his own farm.

His excitement is not the biggest surprise; the real novelty here is his forward planning, thinking of the future. People live for the day around here. The future is far too uncertain. Very rarely would the average villager, and most of the city folks too, have the time or inclination to plan anything past today or tomorrow, which consumes all their energies and resources. In order to start thinking ahead, one has to have hope, faith in the days to come. How Avo got that is a mystery to everyone.

“Avo,” says Laurian, sensing Lara’s unease with staying longer in the stable. “Why don’t we go to the house and continue. I love the planning part. Let’s sit somewhere with paper and pencil and do some calculations.”

“But Gago isn’t here yet,” protests Avo. He is reluctant to leave the pigs.

“He can visit the stables when he arrives,” says Lara. “Let’s wait for him at the house.”

Back at the house, they bring a bucket of water and a bar of soap and Laurian washes outside. Alisia offers him a towel. As he dries his hands and face, he can still smell the odor of the pigs on him. Lara washes up inside, but has the same problem with the lingering odor, which seems to be absorbed in their clothes.

They sit at the low table in the larger room, and Avo gets a sheet of paper and an old pencil, which looks like it has been sharpened with a pocketknife.

“Feed has been affordable,” he starts. “That’s why many small farmers are paying a lot of money for a weaned piglet. I have buyers now who’d pay up to 35,000 dram for a healthy piglet! Can you imagine? That’s almost 90 dollars!”

“What do they do with them?” asks Laurian, partly to show interest.

“They fatten them up and then sell them for a profit in a few months. A kilo of pork is now 3,200 dram. So by increasing their weight by fifteen kilos, they can double their money!”

“But you can do the same, right? Why sell and give them those profits?” Laurian is beginning to actually focus on the business model.

“One can keep at the most two piglets with household refuse,” says Avo. “If you have more, you have to buy feed. It will still be profitable, but not as much. We can do a little of each. Sell some to get cash in, keep and raise others to sell when they weigh more. And we may keep a few as future mothers. The vet will help us choose.”

“That’s a great strategy,” says Laurian.

“What’s great is this,” says Avo all excited, “if the others deliver a litter of eight, and assuming all survive, the value of this year’s brood alone will be almost equal to what I’ve borrowed from you. Can you imagine? In less than a year, this investment has repaid its debt.”

“First, don’t even think of repaying anything yet,” says Laurian firmly. “It is too early. You have to expand, remember? Besides, all the piglets may not survive, so do not count them before they’re even born!”

“I know, I know, but the vet says in the second year, these mothers deliver fourteen to fifteen piglets, and they will be even healthier the second time around. So an average of eight may not be a bad estimate.”

It’s close to noon, and a phone call from Gagik to Laurian interrupts the meeting.

“I’m on my way,” he says, “and I have some visitors following me. I ran into them in Aparan. They were asking for the way to Saralandj, the Galian’s house. The driver is Armenian. The passenger is an Indian guy. He says he’s from the Middle East, but would not say what business he has with the Galians.”

“You’ve passed Aparan already?” Laurian tries to gauge how much time they have before Gagik and the foreign visitor arrive.

“Just left town. We’ll be there in ten minutes, fifteen if I drive slow.”

“Drive even slower,” says Laurian and hangs up.

This can’t be good news, thinks Laurian. Someone from the Middle East visiting the Galians can mean only one thing: A connection from Dubai coming after Lara. He does not know anything about Lara’s experience in Dubai, so has no basis to even guess who the visitor could be.

“Avo, please forgive me for a minute,” he says, “I know we’re not done yet, but we have to stop for now. I need to ask Lara a question.”

Laurian would have preferred to talk to Lara in private, but he could not possibly ask Avo to excuse them.

“Edik, what is it?” asks Lara nervously.

“Some guy who says he is from the Middle East is headed this way. He has an Armenian driver. They were asking for directions to the Galians, Gago ran into them, and they should arrive in fifteen minutes or so. Do you know anyone who would come all that way looking for the Galian house?”