Liliana Mihaela Heleanu and her Mastership in english: „The Literary Charm of The Book of Whispers”

Liliana Mihaela Heleanu si-a prezentat joi, 23 iunie 2011,la Universitatea Bucuresti, teza de masterat in limba engleza, avand ca subiect Cartea soaptelor precum si traducerea capitolului patru. Iata, integral, aceasta lucrare pentru care autoarea a primit calificative excelente din partea examinatorilor:

	The Literary Charm of The Book of Whispers

 

 

 

 

 

 

„Cartea şoaptelor” 

de Varujan Vosganian

 

Patru 

 

Anul 1958 a început într-o miercuri şi tot în acea zi a luat naştere Piaţa Comună Europeană. Şi, aşa cum se întâmplă întotdeauna cu anii care nu sunt bisecţi şi care încep şi se termină în aceeaşi zi a săptămânii, anul 1958 s-a sfârşit tot într-o zi de miercuri, în chiar ziua când Fulgencio Batista a părăsit Cuba, alungat de revoluţionarii lui Fidel Castro. Astfel încât, sfârşind prin a schimba un dictator cu un alt dictator, anul 1958 s-a retras învins şi a lăsat neputincios pe seama vremurilor viitoare să descâlcească binele de rău.

Pământul s-a rotit cu precizie în jurul soarelui, dar şi cu băgare de seamă, chiar în vârful picioarelor, aş zice, căci, ocrotind cele de deasupra şi domolindu-le pe cele de dedesubt, 1958 a fost un an fără catastrofe naturale. Când, totuşi, nu şi-a putut stăpâni câte o tresărire, a trimis-o să cutremure locuri cât mai depărtate, precum Alaska, acolo unde a socotit că tresăririle sale, chiar şi cutremurele de 8 grade pe scara Richter, pot fi mai uşor de suportat. Dacă pământul s-a dovedit cumpătat şi cu băgare de seamă, nu acelaşi lucru s-ar putea spune despre locuitorii săi. Ei au fost cât se poate de neliniştiţi, ba chiar cât se poate de războinici. Vechile războaie nu s-au încheiat în timpul acelui an 1958, în schimb au început altele.

În Franţa a venit din nou la putere Charles de Gaulle, eroul din război, de data asta ca întâiul preşedinte al celei de-a V-a Republici, după ce, în prealabil, câştigând alegerile parlamentare, fusese prim-ministru. Dacă într-o ţară precum Franţa un om poate fi numai pe rând prim-ministru şi şef de stat, în Uniunea Sovietică nu e nevoie de astfel de precauţii. Nichita Hruşciov, prim-secretar al Partidului Comunist al Uniunii Sovietice, l-a destituit pe Nikolai Bulganin, devenind şi prim-ministru, ceea ce nu l-a îndemnat câtuşi de puţin să-şi completeze dantura pe partea stângă; râdea nestingherit şi ştirb cu toată gura între două ameninţări cu atacuri nucleare. Cu nimic mai prejos, dar mai atent la înfăţişare şi, mai ales, la copcile de la gulerul uniformei, Mao Tze Dun a declanşat Marele Salt Înainte, pulverizând aşezările Chinei în zeci de mii de comune, în care milioane de chinezi turnau oţelul cu găleata şi meştereau carcase de tancuri cu şurubelniţa. Purtat în sclavie ca pe vremea construirii Marelui Zid Chinezesc, cu singura diferenţă în rău că între timp apăruseră ideologiile, munca irosită a poporului chinez n-a făcut decât să transforme marele salt înainte într-un uriaş salt înapoi, spre vremurile bântuite de foamete ale războiului civil. Orientul Mijlociu a continuat să se înfierbânte. Egiptul, Siria şi, ceva mai târziu, Yemenul au format Repulica Arabă Unită, alegându-l preşedinte pe Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Israelul se înarmează. Europa are însă de lucru la ea acasă. Războiul rece a intrat într-o nouă fază dramatică, disputa privind Berlinul de Vest riscând să arunce continentul în război. Şi ca să arate că nu glumesc, deşi în legătură cu asta popoarele, mai ales cele ale Europei răsăritene, erau deja lămurite şi jertfa s-a dovedit, ca orice jertfă, inutilă, sovieticii au hotărât, cu largul concurs al autorităţilor române, să-l spânzure pe Imre Nagy, conducătorul revoluţiei ungare în 1956.

Când nu aveau cu cine să se lupte în interior, popoarele începeau să se lupte între ele. China şi Taiwanul şi-au continuat războiul civil. Libanul şi-a pornit propriul război. Franţa, câştigătoare în Europa şi împarţind această glorie cu Germania lui Konrad Adenauer, pierde în Africa teritoriu după teritoriu: Sudanul, Ciadul, Congo Brazzaville, Gabonul şi Republica Centrafricană, în timp ce Algeria e tot mai separată, rămânând cu adevărat franceză doar în scrierile lui Albert Camus. Fidel Castro asediază Havana, Faisal devine prim-ministru al Arabiei Saudite, ca un ecou târziu al politicii britanice de pe vremea lui Lawrence al Arabiei, în timp ce un alt Faisal, tânărul rege al Irakului, este ucis într-un atentat, iar Irakul şi Iordania, după modelul Republicii Arabe Unite, se alătură, dar se desfac chiar mai repede decât noul stat condus de Nasser.

Războiul rece de pe pământ înfierbântă cerul. URSS îşi continuă seria Sputnik, în timp ce SUA îşi lansează seria de sateliţi Explorer şi înfiinţează NASA. Sfâşiat în măruntaiele sale de bezmeticeala sateliţilor, cerul se răzbună pe cine nimereşte. Echipa de fotbal Manchester United îşi pierde două treimi din efectiv într-un tragic accident aerian. Avionul ce transporta membrii echipei s-a prăbuşit deasupra Münchenului, venind de la Belgrad, după ce echipa se calificase în finala Cupei Europei, învingând echipa Steaua Roşie. Opt jucători, printre care şi căpitanul echipei, Roger Byrne, îşi găsesc atunci sfârşitul. Scapă cu viaţă antrenorul, legendarul Matt Busby, şi unul dintre idolii copilăriei mele, eroul de la 1966, atacantul Bobby Charlton. Unul dintre rarele momente ale istoriei când oamenii se smeresc în faţa tragediilor: finala nu mai are loc şi Manchester United, rămasă doar cu câţiva jucători şi aceia traumatizaţi, este declarată, pentru anul 1958, campioană onorifică a cluburilor europene.

Ca mai întotdeauna când simte că oamenii îşi uită credinţa, bunul Dumnezeu a decis să-l cheme la sânul Său pe papă, adică, de această dată, pe Pius al XII-lea, după un pontificat de aproape douăzeci de ani, în care a condus Vaticanul cu abilitate, spun unii, cu concesii de neadmis, spun alţii, aşa cum se întâmplă întotdeauna când eşti silit să-ţi treci turma, ca păstor, prin tot felul de războaie reci şi fierbinţi. El însuşi, având dubii cu privire la sensul propriei existenţe, a lăsat, înainte de moarte, enciclica Meminisse Juvat, în care face apel la reîntoarcerea la valorile creştine pentru ca lumea să se poată, în fine, mântui. Valori pe care le enumeră urmaşul său Ioan al XXIII-lea, un an mai târziu, în prima sa enciclică, Ad Petri Cathedram: adevărul, unitatea şi pacea. Principii care, dacă ne gândim la anii ce-au urmat, au rămas doar în frumoasele biblioteci ale Vaticanului şi în enumerările biografilor pontificali. Revoluţiile şi războaiele, presărate, în perioadele de pace, cu atentate, au continuat, subiect inepuizabil pentru enciclicele viitoare.

Dacă rănile războiului s-au închis în ritm de jazz, iar durerile au amorţit în ritm de blues, războaiele reci şi fierbinţi ale anului 1958, dintre Europa occidentală şi cea comunistă, trăgând de Berlinul de Vest precum de o zdreanţă disputată pe câmpul de luptă între jefuitorii de morţi, dintre o Chină ce mergea înapoi prin salturi înainte şi un Taiwan încă stingher, dintre Franţa şi rebelii nordului Africii, dintre CIA şi guvernul indonezian al generalului Sukarno, războaiele civile din Liban ori din Irak, ba chiar şi războiul sateliţilor, revoluţiile, prin care dictatorii obosiţi erau alungaţi, iar unii mai proaspeţi le luau locul, s-au petrecut în ritm de cha-cha sau, mai exact, cha-cha-cha. Trei paşi repezi, “cha”, “cha” şi iar “cha”, apoi un pas înapoi, de parcă lucrurile o luaseră prea grăbit înainte. Jumătatea cealaltă, care nu se istoveşte în războaie, care, dincolo de hărţile în mişcare, vede copiii Africii, cu burţile umflate şi braţele subţiate de foame, şi simte frigul ploilor ce vor veni, slobozite din norii negri ridicaţi din măruntaiele pământului deasupra atolului Bikini sau a Insulelor Christmas – ce ironie pune alături aceste nume ale insulelor şi experienţele nucleare – jumătatea cealaltă, aşadar, în faţa acestui drum prea lung pentru a ajunge la capătul lui, încă visează.

Dmitri Şostakovici este, la Paris, solistul şi compozitorul celor două concerte pentru pian. De aceeaşi parte a zidului, Truman Capote şi Jack Kerouac povestesc despre suferinţa trează şi despre rătăcire. De partea cealaltă, Boris Pasternak scrie Doctor Jivago, un fel de Arhipelag Gulag al oamenilor încă liberi, în care, la toate durerile gulagului, se adaugă suferinţa din dragoste. Boris Pasternak este silit de autorităţile sovietice să refuze Premiul Nobel, dar el rămâne, la poalele Zidului, marele câştigător al anului 1958. Iar pe metereze, negăsindu-şi locul nici de partea apuseană, nici de partea răsăriteană a zidului, Albert Camus, fumând fără încetare.

Vladimir Nabokov scrisese, cu trei ani în urmă, Lolita şi, cu totul straniu, un fel de tragică Lolita, pe numele ei Marilyn Van Debur, câştigă titlul de Miss America. Ea va destăinui, după mulţi ani, violurile la care fusese supusă toată copilăria de către tatăl ei şi va lupta pentru alinarea suferinţelor tăcute ale dramelor incestuoase.

Nemultumiţi de regii pe care îi ofereau dinastiile, îi adăposteau palatele şi îi scorneau revoluţiile biruitoare şi, totuşi, atât de eşuate, oamenii şi-au creat propriii regi, ai îndeletnicirilor aflate mai la îndemână şi pe care îi găzduiau spaţii mai primitoare, cum ar fi stadioanele sau sălile de concert. Regii cei noi erau tineri şi domnia lor avea să fie fără sfârşit. Unul dintre ei, Elvis Presley, devenind regele rockului. Dacă „cha-cha“, dansul de salon al anului 1958, vedea din America Latină, născut din mambo şi născând, la rândul lui, salsa, rockul nu venise de nicăieri, fusese de secole în acelaşi loc, în cartierele mărginaşe din Memphis, locuite de negri, şi amestecând ritmul bluesurilor lui Robert Johnson sau John Lee Hooker cu gospelul cântat în biserici. În 1958, Elvis a fost luat în armată şi trimis în Germania, prilej pentru admiratoarele sale să-şi înteţească dorul şi pentru făuritorii de legende să-l aşeze mai trainic, aşa cum se întâmplă întotdeauna, tocmai pe temelia absenţei lui.

Celălalt rege, născut, iar nu făcut, al anului 1958 a fost Pelé, regele fotbalului. Brazilia deveni în acel an campioană mondială, cu o echipă din care făceau parte Gilmar, fraţii Santos, Garrincha, cel cu un picior mai scurt, Zagalo şi ceilalţi, cu nume ca zgomotul picăturilor de ploaie: Didi, Vava, Zito şi Pelé. Iată-l pe tânărul de optsprezece ani plângând de bucurie, după ce administrase Franţei lui Kopa şi Fontaine trei goluri în semifinale şi gazdei, Suedia, două goluri în finală, plângând aşa cum regii încoronaţi cu lauri ştiu să o facă, iar regi încoronaţi cu nestemate nu vor şti niciodată.

1958 a fost anul stării de confuzie şi al stării de luciditate. În ce o priveşte pe prima, anul 1958 s-a descris pe sine în Vertigo, filmul lui Alfred Hitchcock, cu James Stewart şi Kim Novak drept protagonişti. Starea de luciditate: descoperirea laserului. Confuzie şi precizie: ca o armă cu lunetă care ţinteşte rotindu-se încet deasupra mulţimii şi trage la întâmplare. Aceste invenţii amestecate ale anului 1958 au anunţat astfel genocidul celei de-a doua jumătăţi a secolului, şi anume UCIDEREA LA ÎNTÂMPLARE, îndreptată, cum se vede, împotriva acelui popor tăcut şi nedumerit al celor ucişi ori cel puţin ameninţaţi pe nepregătite. O combinaţie în care nu poate câştiga decât cel dintâi: unul pune scopul, celălalt sângele.

Iar cei care au pus laolaltă şi scop şi sânge s-au retras încetul cu încetul, în deşerturi sau în munţi. În 1958, România a rămas singura ţară unde rezistenţa anticomunistă continua încă. Ea avea să mai continue până în 1962, ultimul erou al rezistenţei fiind un ţăran, pe numele lui Ion Banda, ucis de trupele Securităţii în Munţii Banatului.

În 1958 a murit Petru Groza. I s-au organizat funeralii fastuoase. Ion Gheorghe Maurer i-a urmat ca preşedinte al Prezidiului Marii Adunări Naţionale. Pe când, în ce priveşte trebile din afară, România semna tot felul de tratate, în trebile dinăuntru represiunea se înteţea, ca să vadă, aşadar, ruşii că guvernul stăpâneşte situaţia şi că Armata Roşie se poate retrage fără îngrijorare de pe teritoriul românesc. Iar represiunea, cum e cel mai la îndemână, s-a îndreptat mai ales împotriva intelectualităţii. Tinerii anchetaţi după revoluţia ungară au fost daţi afară din universităţi. Constantin Noica, Arşavir Acterian şi alţii au fost întemniţaţi. Şi tot astfel întemeietorii „Rugului aprins“. Părintele Daniel Tudor a murit, la scurt timp, în închisoare, iar poetul Vasile Voiculescu a supravieţuit doar câteva luni după eliberare. Au fost închişi, de asemenea, Arsene Papacioc, marele duhovnic de mai târziu, şi Dumitru Stăniloae. „Aţi vrut să daţi foc la comunism cu rugul aprins!“ a strigat procurorul. Totuşi, focul a mai ars mocnit peste treizeci de ani.

Călăii vechi, ai trupului şi ai minţii, sunt îndepărtaţi: Iosif Chişinevschi sau Mihail Roller care, cu totul inexplicabil pentru acest gen de oameni, se sinucide. Adică nu este sinucis, ci chiar se sinucide pe bune. Estimp, călăii cei noi înteţesc prigoana. Asupra ţăranilor înstăriţi, asupra comercianţilor. Începu un efort căznit de industrializare. Ca şi în China, cu cât economia se dezvolta mai abitir, cu atât creştea sărăcia. „Ce ne facem?“ l-a întrebat Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej pe Nichita Hruşciov. Cu rânjetul ştirb pe partea stângă, care avea să însoţească bătaia cu pantoful în pupitru la Naţiunile Unite, Hruşciov i-a dat o povaţă înţeleaptă, în stil sovietic: „Vindeţi jidani!“. Ceea ce s-a şi întâmplat. Preţurile erau stabilite pe cap de evreu. Abia mai târziu, Ceauşescu a adaptat preţurile la cerinţele pieţei, chiar dacă preţurile fixate astfel nu se potriveau cu sistemul de valori al dictaturii proletariatului: anume, de câteva ori mai mulţi dolari pentru un intelectual decât pentru un muncitor. Cum evreii aveau mulţi intelectuali, comerţul mergea straşnic.

Viaţa curge înainte. Curăţate, cu puştile Securităţii, de orice urmă de rezistenţă anticomunistă, pădurile din Haţeg sunt repopulate, după mai bine de două secole, cu zimbri. Prima pereche este adusă din Polonia şi în cinstea ei se tipăreşte chiar o emisiune filatelică. În România apare televiziunea. Şi câteva filme noi: Doi vecini al lui Geo Saizescu şi Alo, aţi greşit numărul, comedii cu actori tineri şi frumoşi: Iurie Darie, Ştefan Tapalagă, Rodica Tapalagă, Stela Popescu. Are loc, la trei ani după moartea maestrului, primul Festival „George Enescu“. Noua nomenclatură îi aplaudă pe Yehudi Menuhin şi pe David Oistrach în dublul concert pentru vioară de Bach, la pupitru cu George Georgescu, căruia cu acest prilej i se iartă sentimentele filogermane. E ovaţionat David Ohanesian în primul Oedipe românesc, sub bagheta lui Constantin Silvestri. Iolanda Balaş câştigă primul ei titlu de campioană europeană la săritura în înălţime, iar „Petrolul“ Ploieşti, condus de Pahonţu, câştigă campionatul naţional de fotbal.

În curtea noastră din Focşani, pe banca de sub cais, bătrânii se adună după-amiaza la cafea şi povestesc despre apusurile de pe malul Bosforului şi despre gustul strugurilor copilăriei. Tinerii depăşesc planul anual şi îl vor depăşi, cu siguranţă, şi pe cel cincinal, merg ţanţoş în stilul lui Sergiu Malagamba şi pleacă sâmbăta la iarbă verde cu IMS-urile întreprinderii. Pe strada noastră apare Carol Spiegel, ieşit din închisoare, dar peste numai trei luni e arestat la loc. Când va ieşi de-a binelea, în 1964, nu o va face decât dintr-o încăpăţânare, greu de desluşit, de a muri altundeva decât sub privirile indiferente ale temnicerilor săi.

Temelie, tâmplarul, şi Mitică, tăietorul de lemne nebun, fiecare cu felul său de a se îmbrăca şi de a se purta, trec strada spre Statuia Eroilor, în ziua de 10 mai. Sunt singurii care îi mai cinstesc pe eroi de ziua Dinastiei, căci difuzoarele agăţate de perete bâzâie cântece patriotice în tonalităţi ruseşti cu o zi înainte, pe 9 mai, ziua biruinţei împotriva Germaniei naziste, încolonându-se asftel eroii în spatele tancurilor ruseşti şi ţintuindu-le pe frunţile livide steaua roşie.

Un an trist care, cuprins de remuşcări şi încercând astfel să îndulcească vremurile viitoare, naşte pe Madonna, pe Sharon Stone şi pe blonda păpuşă Barbie.

Cât despre mine, mama îşi aminteşte că, în clipa în care m-am născut, se auzea trecând, pe sub ferestre, un cortegiu funerar, însoţit de fanfara de alămuri. Era, aşadar, pe la ora prânzului. Asistentele s-au îmbulzit să privească de la geamuri, iar mama a strigat cu o voce ostenită şi speriată: „Cade copilul!“. N-am căzut. În schimb, am făcut un pipi arcuit, debutând în modul cel mai firesc cu putinţă în raporturile mele cu lumea. Aşa a aflat mama, fără a mai fi nevoită să întrebe, că are băiat. Cine era cel care, în sunetul spart al alămurilor şi sub privirile mai degrabă curioase decât îndurerate, tocmai murise, ca să-mi facă loc pe această lume, n-aveam să aflu niciodată.

Şi tot în clipa naşterii mele, la Bucureşti avea loc recepţia oferită de Gheorghiu-Dej, cu ocazia plecării ultimului eşalon al trupelor sovietice din România. Astfel, întâlnindu-mă cu moartea şi cu istoria din chiar prima clipă, naşterea mea a fost aşezată într-o cumpănă. Odată cu ea, numărul celor vii l-a depăşit pe cel al celor ucişi din toate vremurile de până atunci.

Trei feluri de întâmplări au trăit bătrânii armeni ai copilăriei mele: întâmplări pe care le-au evitat, întâmplări pe care le-au aşteptat şi întâmplări ce i-au luat cu totul pe nepregătite. La drept vorbind, până la urmă toate împrejurările prin care au trecut pot fi socotite ca aparţinând celei de-a treia categorii, căci lucrurile pe care le-au evitat au sfârşit prin a se întâmpla, iar lucrurile pe care le-au aşteptat n-au mai venit. Privite în acest fel, vieţile bunicilor mei sunt un fel de cronică a lucrurilor neaşteptate.

Aşadar, a vorbi despre lucruri neaşteptate este tot un fel de a scrie Cartea şoaptelor. A înşira lucrurile pe care au dorit să le evite ar însemna să scriem Cartea şoaptelor pe dos. Iar în ceea ce priveşte lucrurile pe care le aşteptau să se întâmple, bătrânii copilăriei mele, încă din anii când nu erau chiar aşa de bătrâni, s-au împărţit în două tabere: cei care aşteptau să vină ruşii şi cei care aşteptau să vină americanii. În cele din urmă ambele tabere s-au contopit într-una singură, fiindcă cei care aşteptau să vină ruşii, după ce ruşii au venit de-adevăratelea, s-au întrecut în beţii, s-au pus pe şterpelit ceasuri, privindu-le precum indienii lui Columb mărgelele de sticlă şi fugărind fetişcanele pe maidane, au pus în dregătorii tot felul de muncitori fără meserie şi hamali de zarzavaturi, cei care aşteptau, aşadar, să vină ruşii s-au mutat, smeriţi, în tabăra cealaltă, aşteptând să vină americanii. Tabăra prorusească era alcătuită, de fapt, printre bătrânii mei armeni, dintr-un singur om: Dicran Bedrosian. Smerit, dar suspectat, totuşi, cu argumentul că bolşevismul e o boală care, precum reumatismul, te mai lasă uneori, dar de care nu te vindeci niciodată, Dicran Bedrosian a fost primit în comitetul parohial şi în tabăra proamericană, ba chiar şi la şedinţele de taină care se ţineau în cavoul lui Seferian.

În tabăra cealaltă erau, aşadar, toţi ceilalţi. Unii dintre ei îi mai aşteptaseră şi altă dată şi tot nu se lecuiseră. Nu numai pe americani, dar şi pe francezi sau pe englezi. Îşi mai aminteau cum părinţii lor, în vremea „sultanului roşu“ Abdul Hamid, înspăimântaţi de grozăviile care se spuneau despre masacrele din 1895, aşteptau vasele americane să umple strâmtorile şi să-i salveze. Şi tot de la părinţii lor ştiau cum Armen Garo şi grupul care ocupase Banca Otomană au fost salvaţi de un vas englez. Iar printre cei încă în viaţă fuseseră chiar unii care, auzind de navele franceze venite să-i salveze pe luptătorii de pe muntele Musa, au rătăcit, precum bunicul meu Setrak, pe atunci un puşti de cincisprezece ani, dormind ziua ghemuiţi ca sălbăticiunile şi mergând noaptea, la marginea pădurilor sau lipiţi de ziduri, ocolind satele şi drumurile, îmbrăcaţi în straie turceşti, până spre sud, la ţărmurile Mediteranei. Dar alte vase englezeşti sau franţuzeşti n-au mai venit, iar după bătălia strâmtorilor, de la Gallipoli, câştigată în 1916 de căpitanul de la Salonic, Kemal Paşa, viitorul Atatürk, nici americanii nu s-au mai arătat. Mai mult chiar, amintea Anton Merzian, cizmarul de pe strada Unirii, americanii au abandonat şi mica Republică Armeană, refuzând protectoratul sugerat de Tratatul de la Sèvres. „N-or să ne lase de izbelişte“, spunea naşul meu de botez Sahag Şeitanian care s-a încăpăţânat să repete asta chiar şi după ce, în cavoul lui Seferian, traducând cu urechea lipită de cutia de lemn a radioului, Arşag clopotarul le repeta veştile pe care BBC-ul le transmitea despre Conferinţa de la Ialta. Între timp, ruşii au intrat în Focşani, intelectualitatea armeană din Bucureşti şi din Constanţa a fost arestată şi trimisă la Lubianka, pentru a fi sortată precum legumele şi apoi deportată în Siberia, la Bucureşti s-a înfiinţat Frontul Armeniei care, ca primă măsură, a început să se războiască cu cărţile de la Biblioteca Armeană „Hovsep şi Victoria Dudian“ şi cu fotografiile  de pe pereţi, înghesuindu-le de-a valma în cutii de carton pe cele socotite vătămătoare pentru vremurile noi şi, în cele din urmă, arzându-le în curtea Catedralei. În biroul parohial al bisericii armeneşti din Focşani s-a renunţat mai întâi la poza lui Roosevelt, apoi la cea a lui Churchill. În cele din urmă au renunţat, cu amărăciune, şi la portretul regelui, a cărui declaraţie de abdicare au ascultat-o la radio, nevenindu-le să-şi creadă urechilor. Sahag Şeitanian nu acceptă cu niciun chip să ascundă fotografia generalului Antranik, luptător împotriva ocupaţiei otomane şi bolşevice deopotrivă, precum şi pe cea a tovarăşului său de arme Kevork Ceauş, argumentând, pe bună dreptate, că aşa cum erau înfăţişaţi, în ţinută ostăşească, încinşi cu bandulieră şi purtând căciuli de astrahan, puteau fi prezentaţi oricărui vizitator al parohiei drept Suren Spandarian, colaboratorul lui Lenin, şi Stepan Şahumian, luptătorul din Baku, care murise prea devreme pentru ca fotografiile lor să fie trecute în panoplia conducătorilor bolşevici. Pe măsură ce pe rafturi cărţile se răreau şi pereţii se goleau de fotografii, se împuţinau şi speranţele. Una singură rămăsese, pe care o exprimau tot mai puţini şi tot mai rar, mai degrabă ca pe o părere decât ca pe un semn de luciditate. Aceasta poveste devine, dacă se poate spune aşa, una dintre cele mai tăcute din Cartea şoaptelor.

ARMELE GENERALULUI DRO. Am povestit, deja, despre întâlnirea din cavoul lui Seferin, cea de pe urmă, convocată în urma asasinării preşedintelui Kennedy. Atunci, la întrebarea „Ce-i de făcut?“, niciunul dintre bătrânii copilăriei mele, înconjuraţi de tot felul de ameninţări imaginare, nu a ştiut ce să răspundă. A făcut-o, totuşi, unchiul meu, Sahag Şeitanian, care, cu o voce înceată, de parcă i-ar fi fost teamă să nu-l audă careva, a sugerat: „Să căutam armele generalului Dro“. Toţi ceilalţi au tăcut brusc, iar părintele Varjabedian şi-a făcut cruce, nu pentru că ar fi încercat să alunge vreun gând rău, ci pentru că armele generalului Dro ar fi fost ultimul lucru de căutat, un gest disperat şi eroic de care poate că unii dintre ei ar fi fost capabili în 1945, dar mai deloc în 1963, nu atât din cauza anilor care trecuseră peste ei, cât mai ales din cauza întâmplărilor care îi compleşiseră.

Despre armele generalului Dro, bunicul Garabet nu mi-a vorbit niciodată. Mi-a spus multe poveşti, despre Tadeu şi Bartolomeu, apostolii ce i-au creştinat pe armeni, despre sfintele martire Gaiane şi Hripsime, despre regele Drtad şi viziunile Sfântului Grigore Luminătorul, despre Vartan Mamigonian şi David Beg, despre Kevork Ceauş şi despre generalul Antranik, poveşti adevărate sau care deveneau adevărate, tot repetându-se. Povestea despre armele generalului Dro este însă una dintre acelea despre care nimeni nu ştia dacă e adevărată, cei care puteau şti fie muriseră, fie fugiseră, iar cei care o cunoşteau nu o repetau altora, ştiind că nu ar face decât să tulbure minţile şi să adâncească deznădejdea. Unul dintre cei care s-au încăpăţânat să creadă în realitatea poveştii sau, mai degrabă, în iluzia ei, a fost Sahag Şeitanian şi el mi-a povestit-o cu putin înainte de a muri. De fapt, frânturi; Cartea şoaptelor este o poveste pe care nimeni nu o spunea pe de-a-ntregul, de parcă fiecare se temea să înţeleagă totul, încercând astfel să-şi mântuie viaţa de lipsa de sens.

Începutul poveştii este o fotografie. Sfârşitul poveştii este scurta propoziţiei pe care mi-a şoptit-o Sahag Şeitanian, cu puţin înainte de a muri, atât cât a socotit necesar să-mi spună din această poveste: „Armele generalului Dro sunt ascunse într-o pădure“. Astfel de poveşti alcătuite dintr-o singură propoziţie, cum este povestea armelor generalului Dro, arată că, de fapt, ele sunt atât de scurte tocmai pentru că sunt fără sfârşit. Astfel de poveşti vor exista câtă vreme oamenii se vor încăpăţâna să creadă că, dincolo de ceea ce li se întâmplă, peste capetele lor, se mai poate petrece ceva care, în culmea disperării, ar putea fi făcut. Ei nu ştiu exact ce, nu ştiu cum, dar tocmai în această neclaritate stă invincibilitatea ultimei speranţe.

Fotografia de început îl înfăţişează pe generalul Dro călare pe un cal alb, într-un luminiş cu un pâlc de copaci tineri în fundal. Generalul Dro este îmbrăcat în uniformă de campanie, încins cu o diagonală ofiţerească şi curea, de care atârnă toate cele trebuincioase războiului. Pe cap poartă o căciulă albă din blană de oaie, trasă peste urechi, până aproape de sprâncenele groase şi piezise. Are un barbişon negru, pe care ulterior, când va începe să se înspice cu fire albe, îl va rade. Privirea semeaţă şi poziţia studiată, cu spatele drept şi palma odihnindu-se pe picior, arată că e vorba de o fotografie realizată mai degrabă pentru ceilalţi decât pentru sine. Este fotografia învingătorului de la Sardarapat. Victoria din 1918 asupra trupelor turceşti a permis existenţa efemeră a micii Republici Armene. Drastamat Kanayan sau generalul Dro, pe numele său de gherilă, devenit ministru al Apărării, avea să facă, din răsputeri, eforturi pentru a apăra o independenţă fragilă, neştiind, între panturcismul agresiv al Turciei şi bolşevismul Rusiei, cui să facă concesii şi împotriva cui să lupte. Până la urmă istoria a ales, armenii au făcut concesii şi unora şi altora, Turcia şi Rusia împărţindu-şi teritoriile armeneşti. Iar generalul Dro a decis să lupte, în vremea tumultoasei sale vieţi, atât împotriva unora, cât şi împotriva celorlalţi. Arestat de ruşi şi ţinut sub supraveghere trei ani, în 1924 generalul a fost lăsat să plece în România, unde a rămas până în 1944.

O a doua fotografie povesteşte despre generalul Dro, acum mai corpolent, cu părul albit, dar cu aceleaşi sprâncene negre, arcuite şi cu aceeaşi privire umbroasă. Bunicul a căutat un unghi avantajos, în spate se văd blocurile de pe strada Armenească şi o salcie care există şi azi. În stânga se întrezăreşte coroana unui brad. Fotografia e realizată în curtea Catedralei armene din Bucureşti, cu prilejul dezvelirii bustului generalului Antranik. Statuia este înconjurată cu un brâu de flori de care atârnă panglici. Treptele ei sunt acoperite de covoare multicolore, dintr-acelea de care armenii nu duceau lipsă, şi de alte jerbe şi panglici de care generalul Antranik, om al cărărilor înguste de munte şi vieţii simple şi aspre, n-ar fi fost prea încântat. Cu o privire serioasă, cu pieptul plin de medalii şi, cum se obişnuieşte, cu aerul nefericit al busturilor fără braţe, generalul Antranik se uita de sus la celălalt general, Dro, împreună cu care luptase şi care, de astă dată, era îmbrăcat în costum de duminică, cu pălăria în mână, cu barbişon îngrijit şi cu o înfăţisare oarecum burgheză. Celălalt protagonist de onoare al inaugurării abia se poate zări în fundal. Este Grigore Tracu-Iaşi, unul dintre reprezentanţii marilor familii armeneşti din Moldova, fost ministru averescan şi fost preşedinte al Uniunii Armenilor, autor al primei legislaţii a muncii din România. Trancu-Iaşi a vorbit, cu siguranţă, în româneşte, în deschidere, apoi generalul Dro, în armeneşte, a îndemnat la luptă mulţimea care, abia înjghebând o negustorie, înfiripându-şi o familie sau, cei mai norocoşi, readunându-şi familiile risipite de masacre şi exoduri, părea dispusă să admire elocinţa şi entuziasmul generalului, dar prea puţin dispusă să-l urmeze. Data, dintr-un bun obicei al bunicului, e trecută pe spate, cu creionul chimic: 13 aprilie 1936.

Despre generalul Dro s-a vorbit, după război, foarte puţin în România. Cei care l-au cunoscut îndeaproape fie au fugit din ţară, fie au fost arestaţi şi, în cel mai fericit caz pentru ei, au fost duşi în Siberia. Cei care nu l-au cunoscut prea bine, deşi auziseră de el, au preferat să tacă, pentru a nu fi suspectaţi. Iar în legătură cu ce a organizat Dro în vremea celui de Al Doilea Război Mondial, tăcerea a fost straşnică. Şi tot aşa în ce priveşte armele sale pe care, dacă au existat vreodată, tăcerea le-a îngropat chiar mai adânc decât cazmalele şi funzişurile. Într-o pădure, cum mi-a spus cu limbă de moarte naşul meu de botez, Sahag Şeitanian. Puşti şi pistoale, gloanţe îngropate ca nişte seminţe. Imprecizia localizării a fost marea şansă a naşterii legendei. În acest fel, armele generalului Dro vor rămâne pe veci negăsite.

 

Drastamat “Dro” Kanayan

Drastamat Kanayan, generalul Dro, a fost luptător în munţi, fost ministru al Apărării în timpul scurtei existenţe a Republicii Armenia şi unul dintre eroii bătăliei de la Sardarapat, izolat în domiciliu forţat la Moscova, a primit în 1924 permisiunea să părăsească teritoriul Uniunii Sovietice. Avea să locuiască la Bucureşti şi Ploieşti. Motivul exact pentru care NKVD a decis să-l elibereze pe generalul Dro a rămas neştiut până astăzi. Cei care cred că generalul a fost cruţat pentru a nu se stârni revolte în Armenia pun pe seama NKVD-ului temeri pe care acesta nu le-a avut niciodată. Se poate ca, dintr-un orgoliu nemăsurat şi, totodată, ţinându-i ostateci pe membrii  familiei generalului, ruşii să fi crezut că se pot folosi de Dro. S-au înşelat însă amarnic şi aveau să se căiască, dar, ca şi în alte situaţii similare, căinţa bolşevică nu s-a exprimat prin smerenie ori tristeţe, ci prin represalii sângeroase, cărora le-au căzut victime, de la Ploieşti şi până la Odessa şi Rostov pe Don, mii de oameni. Le-au căzut victime chiar soţia şi unul dintre fiii generalului, care şi-au găsit moartea în taigaua siberiană. Cert este că generalul nu s-a mai întors în Armenia decât pe 24 mai 2000, la exact optzeci şi doi de ani după bătălia de la Sardarapat şi la patruzeci şi patru de ani după moartea sa, pentru a fi reînhumat, cu onoruri militare şi urmat de o imensă mulţime, la Baş-Abaran. A fost însoţit de Gayane, cea de-a doua soţie, cu care se căsătorise în România, în 1935. Aşa cum se întâmplă mai ales cu femeile decât cu bărbaţii, Gayane a fost unul dintre puţinii oameni care au reuşit să învingă veacul, fără ca măcar să fie nevoită să se ia la luptă cu el. Născută în anul 1900, în localitatea Nukhi, din Karabagh, trăind apoi în Cetatea Albă, într-o Basarabie redevenită românească, Gayane Kanayan a murit la Boston, în vârsta de 105 ani, chiar în ziua de 24 aprilie, când comunităţile armeneşti comemorau nouăzeci de ani de la genocidul din 1915.

Istoria armelor generalului Dro începe în 1924, când generalul, în vârstă de patruzeci şi unu de ani, a ajuns pe pământ românesc. Casa lui din Bucureşti, de pe strada Popa Soare la numărul 55, există şi astăzi. E construită în stilul vremii, dar pe ziduile ei, cu profiluri stilizate, sunt scrise în limba armeană literele pseudonimului de războinic al generalului. Dro a devenit administrator al unor firme petroliere, ajutat de prietenii lui din Federaţia Revoluţionară Armeană, partid înfiinţat în 1890 de Cristapor Micaelian, Rostom Zarian şi Simon Zavarian şi căruia i se spunea pe scurt Federaţia, ceea ce în armeană se traduce prin daşnagţutiun. De unde apelativul „daşnaci“ pe care, în mitingurile postbelice orgnizate la Casa de Cultură din Bulevardul Carol I, nr, 43, devenită un fel de al doilea sediu al Ambasadei Sovietice, ori în adunările de la cinematograful „Mioriţa“ de pe Calea Moşilor sau chiar din incinta Ambasadei Sovietice şi sub supravegherea atentă a trupelor Securităţii, noii lideri ai comunităţii îl rosteau cu oprobriu, iar masele de manevră, care habar n-aveau armeneşte, îl huiduiau prompt şi copios.

Un deceniu şi mai bine, Dro a dus o viaţă burgheză, ocupându-se de afacerile cu petrol, organizând mica comunitate armeană din Ploieşti, strângând rândurile foştilor membri ai guvernului armean refugiaţi în România şi participând, când şi când, la Paris, la întâlnirile Biroului Central al Federaţiei Revoluţionare Armene, al cărui reprezentant devenise pentru zona Balcanilor. Uciderea familiei sale la Omsk, în taigaua siberiană, i-a reaprins ura împotriva bolşevicilor. Generalul Dro a devenit, astfel, unul dintre militanţii cei mai activi ai eliberării Armeniei de sub ocupaţia bolşevică.

Bunicii mei, Garabet Vosganian şi Setrak Melichian, nu mi-au povestit nimic din toate acestea. Bunicul Garabet mi-a stârnit bucuria de a scrie, sperând că într-o bună zi eu voi fi povestitorul, fără a mă îndemna, însă, vreodată la asta şi fără a-mi dezvălui firul poveştii. Ar fi fost prea simplu, m-am gândit. Ar fi fost o greşeală, gândeau bunicii. Iar Setrak Melichian, bunicul dinspre mamă, mi-a mărturisit într-o seară, pe când jucam ghiulbahar sub bolta de struguri de la Craiova şi eram bărbat în toată firea: „Cine a suferit nu poate spune povestea aşa cum a fost, ci doar propria poveste. Cine a suferit nu poate înţelege. Şi nici cine duşmăneşte nu poate înţelege“. Bunicii mei au făcut parte dintre acele călăuze care merg în faţa ta, dar nu întorc capul să vadă dacă îi urmezi.

Până la urmă, am descoperit firul legendei armelor generalului Dro, mai puţin capătul ei, adică pădurea sub lăstărişurile căreia armele vor fi fost îngropate. Dar ce legendă poate să dăinuiască dacă e povestită până la capăt…

Grupul din jurul lui Dro a fost alcătuit îndeosebi din prietenii care împărtăşiseră aceeaşi soartă cu el şi care se stabiliseră, de asemenea, în România. Se numărau, printre ei, membri ai fostelor guverne ale Armeniei: Hovhannes Kaciaznuni, cel dintâi prim-ministru, Sarkis Araradian, fost ministru al Finanţelor şi al Comerţului, Kevork Hazarian, ministru al Educaţiei, Hovhannes Devegian, primul secretar al Consiliului, Abraham Kiulghandarian, ministru al Comunicaţiilor şi al Justiţiei şi alţii. De fapt, de la prim-ministru şi până la cancelarie, în România acelor vremuri se putea încropi un adevărat guvern în exil al Armeniei. Dar, poate pentru că Dro socotea – şi pe bună dreptate după ce americanii şi englezii abandonaseră Tratatul de la Sèvres, care dăduse iluzia unei mari Armenii – că patria lor nu se va elibera decât prin luptă armată, a luat alături de el pe toţi membrii grupului „Nemesis“ care se refugiaseră în România: Misak Torlakian, mâna sa dreaptă, apoi Ervant Fândâkian, Aram Yerganian, Măgârdici Măgârian.

Am fost învăţat că trebuie să deosebesc binele de rău, îndemnat, fireşte, să aleg binele, fără să fie foarte limpede ce linie le separă. Aveam să aflu după aceea că, totuşi, cel mai adesea trebuie să alegi între două rele şi că, mai important decât ce să alegi, este însăşi puterea de a alege. Aşa a fost adesea istoria armenilor, înconjuraţi de tot felul de duşmani care le-au râvnit pământurile, de la asirieni, babilonieni, mezi, perşi, parţi ori romani şi până la arabi, tătari, turci, kurzi, ruşi, astfel încât armenii au fost puşi să aleagă nu între prieteni şi duşmani, ci între duşmanul cu care să se unească şi duşmanul împotriva căruia să lupte.

Până la urmă s-a dovedit că răul cel mai bun nu există şi alegerea între două rele nu îţi lasă, de fapt, nicio şansă. Aşa s-a întâmplat şi cu generalul Dro în acel sfârşit de deceniu, odată cu începerea războiului. A ales să colaboreze cu Germania nazistă împotriva Rusiei bolşevice, socotind astfel că va reuşi două lucruri deodată: să-i protejeze pe armenii din Europa ocupată de nemţi şi să elibereze Armenia ocupată de bolşevici. Nu a reuşit, în fapt, nici una, nici alta.

Astfel a început recrutarea pentru Legiunea armeană. Nu prin atragerea armenilor din Europa ocupată de germani, căci ei erau în cea mai mare parte apatrizi şi, în consecinţă, nu fuseseră chemaţi sub arme. Din cauza acestei situaţii, de care totuşi armenii erau cel mai puţin responsabili, lucrurile erau cât pe ce să ia în România o întorsătură neplăcută. La nici jumătate de an de la invadarea Uniunii Sovietice, pe când fantasmele generalului Dro vălureau peste întreaga Europă, iar armatele germane şi ale aliaţilor lor nu se împotmoliseră încă în înverşunata rezistenţă de la Stalingrad şi în capcana de la Cotul Donului, crezând, aşadar, că totul le este permis, sfătuitorii mareşalului Antonescu priveau cu nemulţumire către nansenieni, armenii apatrizi care nu fuseseră înrolaţi, pentru simplul motiv că nu existau în evidenţele româneşti. Simţindu-se sfidaţi de aceşti imigranţi care, totuşi, avuseseră parte de alte încercări cu mult mai sângeroase, sfătuitorii au încercat să-l convingă pe mareşal să-i deporteze pe armeni în Transnistria. Ceea ce era cât pe ce să se întâmple. Delegaţia care se înfăţişă, după multe tergiversări, mareşalului, alcătuită din atâţia membri cât se permisese, adică doi, era întocmită anume să-l înduioşeze: un bărbat şi o femeie. Bărbatul era arhiepiscopul Husig Zohrabian, capul Bisericii Apostolice Armene din România. I-a vorbit mareşalului despre vieţuirea seculară a armenilor pe teritoriile româneşti, dăruindu-i o copie a hrisovului de la 1401 al lui Alexandru cel Bun, potrivit căruia se înfiinţa, cu binecuvântarea patriarhului Constantinopolului, Episcopia armeană de la Suceava. Cel de-al doilea membru al delegaţiei n-a trebuit să spună prea multe, căci avea, oricum, o anumită înrâurire asupra mareşalului. Era vorba despre graţioasa doamnă Sofia Cihoski, născută Ferhat, soţia unui general de neam polonez, fost ministru al Armeniei, vajnic comandant al Armatei române în Primul Război Mondial, şi care avea să moară întemniţat, câţiva ani mai târziu, la Sighet. În schimbul renunţării definitive la orice intenţie de deportare a armenilor nansenieni în Transnistria, ei primiră să fie chemaţi sub arme. Unii au avut un sfârşit tragic şi numele le sunt trecute pe pomelnicul citit de Ziua Eroilor în Cimitirul armenesc din şoseaua Pantelimon. Alţii, cum ar fi bătrânii armeni ai copilăriei mele, fură înrolaţi aproape de sfârşitul războiului şi singura spaimă pe care au tras-o a fost cea stârnită de bombardamentul aliat asupra Gării de Nord. Cum, în situaţia aceea, nimeni n-avea timp de ei, s-au întors acasă, în ciuda zvonurilor tot mai insistente privind apropierea frontului de linia Galaţi-Focşani. Dar, la vremea aceea, Legiunea armeană, care se alcătuise prin 1941-1942 şi ajunsese, prin Crimeea, până la Cotul Donului, era de mult nimicită. Unii dintre soldaţii legiunii, mai bine instruiţi, paraşutaţi dincolo de linia frontului, dar trădaţi, au fost mitraliaţi încă din aer şi au căzut în stepă, ca o grindină. Alţii au fost vânaţi cu sălbăticie prin păduri. Cert este că Legiunea armeană nu a ajuns niciodată să îndeplinească scopul pentru care fusese creată, anume să atingă pământul Armeniei, darămite să-l elibereze.

În 1940, însă, astfel de lucruri erau încă departe. Germania era neînvinsă, trupele germane, un an mai târziu, aveau să pătrundă pe teritoriul rusesc, înghiţind sute de kilometri pe zi, iar de Stalingrad nu auzise mai nimeni. Generalul Dro a pornit să colinde lagărele germane, în căutare de prizonieri sovietici de origine armeană. Aceşti oameni păreau fără scăpare. Când începuse războiul, ofiţerii Armatei Roşii le puseseră în vedere că pentru ei nu există decât lupta sau moartea, ordonându-le să aleagă: decât să cadă prizonieri, mai bine sinuciderea. Orice soldat sovietic căzut prizonier va fi socotit trădător. Dacă nu poţi lupta pentru biruinţa Sovietelor, eşti ca şi mort. Ultimul glonte de pe ţeavă trebuie să-l păstrezi pentru tine. Cu pericolul exterminării în lagărele germane, sub ameninţarea împuşcării pentru trădare de către Armata Roşie, neavând, aşadar, vreo soluţie a izbăvirii, prizonierii de război fură uşor de convins de către Drastamat Kanayan, dăruit, altminteri, cu o mare putere de persuasiune.

În toamna anului 1941, Legiunea armeană a ajuns la aproape opt mii de voluntari. Unii dintre prizonierii armeni risipiţi prin România şi care, în lipsa unor lagăre de concentrare, fuseseră puşi la diferite munci, au fost trimişi în Germania, pentru a reîncepe instrucţia şi a îngroşa rândurile Legiunii.

Legiunea a fost alcătuită aşadar în Germania şi, pentru a se pune ordine în această armată de încropeală, în care se amestecau de-a valma voluntari îndârjiţi şi prizonieri cu spaima morţii în suflet, luptători încercaţi şi soldaţi neinstruiţi, patrioţi şi fricoşi, fiecare căutând izbăvirea în felul său şi ferindu-se de moarte în acelaşi fel, ofiţerii au fost aleşi cu precădere din rândurile armatei germane. Generalul Dro, organizator al Legiunii sau, cum spuneau unii pe care cuvântul legiune îi speria, al Batalionului armean, a bătut continentul în lung şi în lat pentru a recruta voluntari şi mai puţin voluntari, întorcându-se în răstimpuri la Ploieşti, unde se găsea un alt fel de comandament al Legiunii  armene, iluzoriu, dacă socotim că mai toată ofiţerimea aparţinea Wehrmachtului. Ceea ce nu împiedică acest comandament închipuit să imagineze biruinţe răsunătoare şi neîntrerupte, din stepele Crimeii şi până la câmpia de la poalele munţilor Ararat, acolo unde unii dintre actualii soldaţi ai Legiunii dăduseră bătălia biruitoare de la Sardarapat.

POVESTEA ÎNCĂPĂŢÂNĂRII LUI HARUTIUN KHÂNTIRIAN. Primul drum pe care, ajuns la Bucureşti, l-a făcut generalul Drastamat Kanayan, ca fiu credincios al patriei sale, a fost la Consulatul Republicii Armenia. Pentru mine, povestitorul, este destul de greu să păstrez firul poveştii. Ea pare întretăiată, ca o carte citită la lumina fulgerelor. Poate că în loc de Cartea şoaptelor, această poveste s-ar putea numi Cartea lecuirii. Căci ea povesteşte despre oameni trecuţi printr-o suferinţă de neînchipuit, de care fiecare a căutat să se vindece în felul său. Şi cum realitatea este rareori leacul realităţii, bunicii mei şi bunicii bunicilor mei păreau că se învârt în cerc, reîntâlnind aceleaşi dureri şi vedenii. Lăsând în urmă lucrurile reale, poporul bunicilor mei s-a călăuzit după lucrurile imaginare şi după lucrurile imaginate, anume cele care nu existau şi cele pe care, existând, ei se încăpăţânau să le vadă altfel de cum sunt.

Consulatul s-a înfiinţat în anul 1918, cu entuziasmul armenilor din Bucureşti, care l-au deschis imediat ce a luat fiinţă Republica de la 28 mai. Autorităţile române l-au recunoscut, gândind că o ţară nouă, născută dintr-un imperiu în destrămare, putea fi o bună pildă pentru popoarele şi provinciile din Imperiul austro-ungar. Consul general a fost desemnat Harutiun Khântirian, unul dintre fondatorii Uniunii Armenilor din România şi primul ei preşedinte.

În decembrie 1920, armatele bolşevice ale lui Anastas Mikoian şi Alexandr Miasnikian au ocupat o Armenie secătuită de foamete şi de tifos, cu oameni înspăimântaţi, strângându-se unii într-alţii, precum locuitorii unei case cu două uşi, una la răsărit şi alta la apus, în care bubuiau lovituri duşmănoase în acelaşi timp: de la apus, armatele turceşti, de la răsărit, armatele bolşevice. Cea dintâi care s-a deschis, mai degrabă smulsă din ţâţâni, a fost poarta de la răsărit. Armenia a fost ocupată de o armată pestriţă, condusă de armeni, dar alcătuită din ruşi, georgieni, azeri şi tătari de-a valma. O tresărire de revoltă a populaţiei din Erevan, condusă de rămăşiţe ale ultimului guvern independent, a fost înecată în sânge în februarie 1921.

În acest răstimp, Harutiun Khântirian trăia stări contradictorii. Tulburat, tot citind depeşele despre soarta guvernelor care se succedau, se întreţeseau ori se duşmăneau. Netulburat, tot deschizând birourile Consulatului, oferite de către Uniunea Armenilor din România, şi aşezându-se, cu spinarea dreaptă şi bărbia ridicată, sub drapelul Armeniei, colorat în roşu-albastru-portocaliu.

În 1922, Armenia a devenit parte a Republicii Sovietice Transcaucaziene. Ultimii fugari, membri ai guvernului, diverşi alţi demnitari, generali şi partizani, veniseră în România sau trecuseră mai departe spre Occident. Khântirian îi primea, afla noutăţi, fără a le mai putea însă oferi nimic în schimb, nici măcar o ştampilă pe actele de călătorie. Căci, din păcate, după anul 1921, autorităţile române n-au mai recunoscut existenţa Consulatului. Oricât de pedant ar fi fost domnul Khântirian, cu surtucul său în carouri, cu papionul strâns sub gulerele răsfrânte şi cu sprâncenele groase coborând peste ramele negre ale ochelarilor, oricât de lăudabilă ar fi fost conştiinciozitatea lui şi oricât de multe însuşiri diplomatice ar fi avut, îi lipsea o însuşire de bază pentru un consul, şi anume aceea de a avea o ţară pe care s-o reprezinte. În ceea ce priveşte raporturile lui Harutiun Khântirian cu Armenia Sovietică, lucrurile erau cât se poate de clare: nici Khântirian nu avea vreo dorinţă de a reprezenta bolşevismul în România, cu atât mai puţin unul înglobat în Uniunea Sovietică, nici guvernului vag independent al Armeniei nu-i trecea prin cap să se lase reprezentat de mărunţelul, sprintenul, dar prea nărăvaşul Harutiun Khântirian. Ca să nu mai vorbim de faptul că, dincolo de acest dispreţ mutual, situaţia era fără echivoc. Armenia bolşevică nu putea fi reprezentată în România pentru că nici guvernul lui Averescu şi nici cel al lui Brătianu nu recunoscuseră Uniunea Sovietică.

În ciuda tuturor acestor evidenţe, Khântirian şi-a păstrat ştampila, pentru simplul motiv că nimeni nu i-o ceruse şi, oricum, n-avea cui s-o predea. Şi-a păstrat, de asemenea, plicurile şi hârtiile cu antet care, cu anii, începuseră să se îngălbenească. Steagul, mai întâi arborat la fereastră, l-a mutat deasupra biroului, întins pe perete, lângă portretul ultimului prim-ministru, Simon Vraţian, în locul căruia a atârnat apoi portretul lui Vartan Mamigonian care, conducător al oştirii armene fiind cu aproape o mie şi cinci sute de ani în urmă, se potrivea pe orice perete armenesc. Iar Aram Vdaranţi, credinciosul său secretar, după ce făcea curat pe birouri şi trăgea storurile, se putea adânci netulburat în traducerea rubaiatelor lui Omar Khayyam din persană în armeană, îndeletnicire care explică oarecum cerbicia cu care Aram îşi continua activitatea de funcţionar al unui Consulat ce reprezenta mai degrabă melancolii decât realităţi. Mai practici, ca toţi locuitorii porturilor de pretutindeni, care preferau să-şi cultive altminteri nostalgiile, armenii din Constanţa au închis viceconsulatul, condus de Givan Altunian, şi tot astfel au făcut armenii din Galaţi, dând onorurile cuvenite foştilor viceconsuli Simion Kehiaian şi Harutiun Sbengian.

La Bucureşti, Khântirian a semnat plin de râvnă felurite depeşe, pe care le-a trimis la Erevan cu informări despre mersul lucrurilor în România încă nedezmeticită după război. A primit, la rândul său, alte depeşe, e drept, mai puţine, despre apelurile guvernului Armeniei, la început ritoase, apoi tot mai disperate, privind recunoaşterea Tratatului de la Sèvres. După terminarea războiului, a continuat să trimită depeşe despre refugiaţii armeni, despre gloria şi, apoi, despre decăderea guvernului averescan, despre Brătianu, despre refugiaţii care îngroşau rândurile comunităţii armene, despre generalul Dro. În schimb, depeşele primite s-au împuţinat, până când n-a mai primit nimic din patrie, doar câte o scrisoare sforăitoare de la diverse guverne din exil pe care mai toţi miniştrii fugiţi le înjghebau peste noapte te miri unde, la Paris, La New York sau la Beirut. Asemenea depeşe, Khântirian încetă să le clasifice în dosarele lui şnuruite şi încuiate în dulapuri grele, sub sigiliu, căci nu aveau nimic secret într-însele, poate doar ceva înduioşător, şi, oricum, apăreau la scurt timp în ziarele care soseau din străinătate. Apoi, văzând că nimeni nu-i mai răspundea, Harutiun Khântirian continuă să-şi scrie depeşele, frumos caligrafiate de mâna secretarului său, Aram, dar le puse în dosare, fără a le mai trimite nicăieri. O dată pe lună, o bătaie familiară în uşă, de altfel singura care se mai auzea la Consulat, aşteptată cu un amestec de bucurie şi de ruşine, aducea un plic. Înăuntru erau banii pentru luna următoare, împreună cu o scrisoare care atesta că Uniunea Armenilor şi-a făcut datoria, colectând banii, şi salutând pe distinşii funcţionari ai Consulatului ca reprezentanţi ai patriei. Textul era mereu acelaşi, doar că semnătura se schimba, în funcţie de numele celui care se întâmpla să fie preşedinte în anii de funcţionare a Consulatului: Grigore Trancu-Iaşi, Armenag Manisalian sau Terenig Danelian.

Acolo unde, în ciuda scurtei sale existenţe, Republica Armenia avusese, totuşi, prilejul să fie inclusă pe hărţile lumii, mica ţară fusese ştearsă de mult, guvernele din exil îşi încetaseră activitatea, cu proclamaţiile lor bombastice cu tot, iar apatrizii emigranţi din Anatolia îşi găsiseră refugiu în cele patru colţuri ale lumii, strângându-şi rămăşiţele familiilor şi începând să încropească vreun negoţ pentru a-şi duce traiul. Doar Consulatul de la Bucureşti al lui Harutiun Khântirian şi al secretarului său Aram, cu storurile lui ridicate, cu drapelul roş-albastru-portocaliu ţintuit pe perete şi cu dosarele îngroşându-se cu depeşe spre nicăieri, rămânea, ca vestigiu al unei republici care nu mai exista decât în nostalgiile  armeneşti şi în ştampila oficială. În ziua de 7 octombrie 1929, bătaia în uşă a adus un plic asemănător cu celelalte, doar că de data asta, în locul banilor, Harutiun Khântirian a găsit o scrisoare, semnată, ca şi celelalte, de preşedintele Uniunii Armenilor. Numai că scrisoarea găsită pe masă atunci când, în cele din urmă, în faţa tăcerii încăpăţânate dinăuntru a fost nevoie să fie spartă uşa, nu mai vorbea de patrie şi de ilustra reprezentare consulară, ci de aceeaşi patrie, dar imposibil de reprezentat, căci dispăruse de pe hartă. În consecinţă: „Comitetul Director al Uniunii Armenilor hotărăşte: închiderea birourilor puse la dispoziţie de UAR pentru Consulat, valabil pentru întreaga Românie“.

Presupunerile au fost luate pe rând în dezbatere şi niciuna nu s-a dovedit mulţumitoare. Ceea ce aveau în comun toate variantele era faptul că, după primirea scrisorii, consulul Armeniei, Harutiun Khântirian, a lăsat storurile şi a zăvorât uşile. Pe dinăuntru, se jurau unii. Pe dinafară, insistau alţii. Şi adăugau: „Cum pe dinăuntru, dacă pe dinafară fusese pus lacătul?“.

Uşa a fost spartă în prezenţa unei comisii formate din Înalt Prea Sfinţitul Arhiepiscop Husig Zohrabian şi Terenig Danelian, preşedintele Uniunii Armenilor, însoţiţi de tot felul de gură-cască adunaţi în curtea bisericii. Au intrat cu sfială, pregătiţi să dea peste orice, inclusiv peste trupul ţeapăn al lui Harutiun Khântirian. Pe care nu-l găsiră însă. Nu avură destulă răbdare să-l caute prin cotloane, prin dulapuri, printre dosare unde, dintre ştampile violete şi sigilii portocalii cu stema bicefală, Harutiun Khântirian s-ar fi putut strecura dincolo de această lume, ca un scorpion de cărţi. Găsiră doar, scrisă cu o cerneală de care puteai să juri că e proaspată de parcă fusese aşternută pe hărtie chiar atunci, o traducere în limba armeană a poeziei Mortua est! de Mihai Eminescu.

Dar ce mai contează un lacăt în plus sau în minus? Important este că nimeni nu l-a mai văzut de atunci pe Harutiun Khântirian. Se zvonea că s-a sinucis, aşezat la biroul său, muindu-şi într-un ultim gest ştampila în sângele subţire, scurs de pe tâmplă şi pregătită, astfel, să se întipărească pe paşapoartele cetăţenilor unei republici imaginare. Se mai zvonea că-şi luase lumea în cap, mergând spre răsărit, către ţara care îl lăsase de izbelişte. Alţii, în decursul vremii, povesteau că Harutiun Khântirian a reapărut totuşi, cu minţile oarecum aiurea, din cale-afară de vesel şi pus pe glume, semănând prea puţin cu funcţionarul conştiincios al Consulatului real şi imaginar. Devenise autor de fabule, schiţe satirice şi de tot felul de comedioare şi murise, ca orice om cu simţul umorului, la aproape o sută de ani. Singurul lucru din toate astea ce poate fi probat ca fiind legat de moartea lui Harutiun Khântirian este poemul lui Mihai Eminescu, Mortua est!, care a şi fost publicat în 1941, în „Almanahul armenilor“ din diaspora.

Acum suntem, însă, în 1924. Când şi când, Harutiun Khântirian, citind cu înfrigurare despre negocierile privind Tratatul de la Lausanne şi căutând zadarnic vreun semn că puterile participante îşi aduc aminte şi de ţara lui pierdută, punea ştampila pe câte un paşaport aparţinând vreunui nansenian ajuns în România în al doilea val de refugiaţi, după războiul greco-turc din 1922. Cum pentru dreptul de şedere în România apatrizii aveau nevoie de un atestat de etnie, acordat de Uniunea Armenilor, iar Consulatul era găzduit în acelaşi sediu cu Uniunea, Khântirian se iluziona că solicitantul nu greşise de fapt adresa şi îşi punea ştampila tot mai inutilă, tot mai tocită şi tot mai violetă, pe actele aceluia.

În ceea ce priveşte însă pe Drastamat Kanayan, generalul Dro, el n-a greşit, căci voia să vină chiar la Consulat. Însă, spre dezamăgirea lui Khântirian, singurul om care venise de-a dreptul spre el nu avea nevoie, de fapt, de nicio ştampilă. Şi, totuşi, spre încântarea sa, se dovedi că nu era singurul pe această lume care se încăpăţâna să creadă că, în ciuda ocupaţiei, a graniţelor sfărâmate, a guvernelor exilate şi a revoltelor înecate în sânge, Republica Armeană continua să existe.

Şi, mai mult decât atât, după ce Harutiun Khântirian a dispărut fără urmă, subţiindu-se printre foi sau risipindu-se printre cotloanele întunecate ale pereţilor biroului său, aşa cum se scurge încet şi fără nicio urmă apa din chiuvetă, generalul Dro i-a supravieţuit în convingerea că Republica Armeană trebuie să existe undeva şi ea poate fi găsită dacă ştii cum s-o cauţi. Iar dacă în lupta sa pentru Armenia pierdută, Harutiun Khântirian se folosea de ştampilă, de drapelul ţintuit pe perete şi de dosare şnuruite, însoţit doar de secretarul Aram, generalul Dro întrebuinţa arme adevărate, în consecinţă înfiinţă Legiunea armeană şi desprinse de pe peretele Consulatului steagul captiv, lăsându-l să fluture în bătaia vântului, în fruntea noilor sale armate.

Între două asemenea incursiuni de-a lungul şi de-a latul Europei, generalul Dro se reîntorcea la Ploieşti pentru a menţine în formă războinicul său comandament. După ce le relata despre Legiunea armeană ca despre noua armată a mântuirii, generalul organiza expediţiile din pădurea Strejnicu. Expediţiile erau, neîndoielnic, şi prilej de distracţie, cu coşuri pline de merinde şi sticle îmbrăcate în rafie împletită, umplute cu ţuică sau vin, dar şi incursiuni războinice, în care generalul Dro, călare şi agitându-şi flinta, comanda asaltul spre pădure, pe care membrii grupului său, de la justiţiarii Misak Torlakian, Ervant Fândâkian şi Simon Pilibossian, tovarăşul de luptă al lui Kevork Ceauş, până la ploieşteanul Atam Altocaian, îl executau, răcnind către un adversar necunoscut, trăgând în copaci, stârnind roiuri căzătoare de frunze. După aceste raiduri victorioase împotriva tuturor duşmanilor posibili, de la osmanlâi până la bolşevici, şi fără a lua prizonieri, corpul expediţionar se întorcea la coşurile cu mâncare şi la sticlele cu rachiu, pe care în timpul incursiunilor le păzea cu străşnicie Nşan Maganian, învăţătorul Şcolii armeneşti, care nu punea mâna pe armă, dar participa emoţionat cu gândul la rebelii de la Zeitun, din propria sa copilărie.

Faptul că oamenii aceia, care înfruntaseră moartea pe câmpurile de luptă ori în acţiuni de gherilă, puneau la fel de multă îndârjire în ciuruirea copacilor, luptându-se cu năluci ascunse în spatele trunchiurilor, nu le micşora cu nimic avântul şi bucuria victoriei în pădurea de la Strejnicu, rămasă astăzi ca amintire pentru martiriul lui Nicolae Iorga, nicidecum drept loc al unui şir neîntrerupt de izbânzi ale membrilor ploieşteni ai Legiunii armene. Odată cu terminarea războiului şi cu deznodământul adus de Armata Roşie, grupul s-a risipit. Generalul Dro şi camarazii lui mai apropiaţi au părăsit România în primăvara anului 1944. Ba chiar şi puştii, Anuş şi Agop Kârmâzian, scutierii vajnicilor purtători de flinte, au fost duşi de către părinţii lor departe, mai întâi la Constatinopol, într-o Turcie încă prietenă cu Germania, de unde şi-au luat lumea în cap, îmbarcându-se pe un vapor spre Marsilia. Nşan Maganian, învăţătorul, a murit retras în sine, prea discret în viaţa lui de dascăl de duminică pentru a atrage atenţia noilor autorităţi, dar consolându-se că şi-a botezat pe singurul băiat între patru fete Setin, după numele oraşului de baştină, Zeitun. Printre cei care au plătit cu viaţa s-a numărat şi Atam Altocaian, într-un mod care arată încă o dată că istoria îşi râde de noi cu gura până la urechi. Atam Altocaian a ajuns pe front, dar pesemne că instrucţia căpătată în pădurea de la Strejnicu nu fusese suficientă, căci a căzut curând prizonier la ruşi. Din lagăr a fost recrutat de-a-ndoaselea, în divizia „Tudor Vladimirescu“, şi s-a întors, după 23 august 1944, să lupte cu ruşii împotriva nemţilor. Dar la un moment dat, până şi istoria s-a oprit din râsul ei şi a zis că e destul, curmând peregrinările războinice ale lui Atam Altocaian de-a lungul şi de-a latul Europei răsăritene, când împotriva bolşevicilor cu nemţii, când împotriva nemţilor cu bolşevicii. Din păcate pentru el, în acest război mereu de-a-doaselea, Atam Altocaian n-a mai putut fi oprit decât cu un glonte în frunte, în tranşeele dimprejurul Bucureştilor. Numele lui este pomenit de preoţii noştri la Vartanank, ziua mucenicilor, laolaltă cu cele ale membrilor comunităţii armene căzuţi pentru independenţa României în cele două războaie mondiale. Iar toţi ceilalţi sfătuitori şi companioni ai generalului Dro din toate vremurile, aflaţi în România, au fost strânşi grămadă şi duşi în Siberia. Cei care nu şi-au lăsat oasele pe-acolo, prea tineri ca să aibă înţelepciunea de-a muri, s-au întors şubrezi, cu gingiile moi şi pe jumătate orbi.

Bunicul Garabet, păstrător, cu străşnicie, al secretului despre armele generalului Dro, nu s-a numărat printre eroii acestor poveşti. Şi a reuşit să-i convingă şi pe ceilalţi să nu se lase îndemnaţi să plece. Nu i-a fost usor, mai ales în ce-l priveşte pe cumnatul lui, Sahag Şeitanian, crescut la Constantinopol de o bunică ce ducea noaptea, pe sub fustă, arme pentru atacarea Băncii Otomane. Bunicul ascundea cu grijă ziarele armeneşti ce publicau chemări la înrolare. „Prea mult sânge“, spunea, amintindu-şi, probabil, de obsesiile mamei lui, străbunica Mariam, care, cu cât cataracta îi acoperea mai tare ochii, cu atât vedea mai mult sânge, aşa cum îi rămăsese întipărit pe retină de la masacrele din tinereţe, de-a latul Anatoliei, de la Trabizonda şi până la Adana. Încât, atunci când s-a tăiat la o mână, din şovăiala bătrâneţii, n-a ştiut, din tot sângele din jur, care era al ei şi care vedenie. Au găsit-o cu ochii sticloşi, încovrigată şi golită de sânge, dar cu o expresie de linişte întipărite pe faţă. Se cufundase între propriile fantasme, ca într-o apă de scăldat. „Prea mult sânge“, a spus bunicul. Era abia vara lui 1941 şi nu ştia câtă dreptate avea.

Într-o zi, netam-nesam, a picat în oraşul nostru, de la Constanţa, Măgârdici Musaian. S-au adunat la consiliul parohial. Plin de însufleţire, Măgârdici le-a adus mesajul generalului Dro. Bunicul s-a arătat rezervat şi a reuşit să-i convingă şi pe ceilalţi să se stăpânească. Musaian n-a adăugat nimic, a părut chiar că îi înţelege. L-au condus la tren pe drumul drept de la biserică spre clădirea impozantă a gării, străjuit de castani şi de casele mari ale familiilor bogate armeneşti şi evreieşti, ocupate acum de comenduirea germană. Şi-au luat rămas-bun şi cu asta credeau că s-a terminat. Dar, în duminica următoare, chiar de Sfânta Maria, când se adunase multă lume la biserică, pentru a se ruga, dar şi pentru a mânca, după aceea, la praznicul cu pilaf şi carne de vită, în curte a pătruns o camionetă militară din care au coborât opt soldaţi în uniformă germană. Au intrat în biserică, iar cel care purta grad ofiţeresc s-a proţăpit cu un pas înaintea lor, aproape de altar. Oamenii s-au tras speriaţi înapoi, iar preotul Dagead Aslanian s-a oprit din predică. Atunci soldaţii şi-au scos chipiele, iar ofiţerul s-a retras în rând cu ceilalţi. Crezând că militarii nu vor înţelege, Der Dagead şi-a continuat predica, dar nu de unde o lăsase, ci îndemnând oamenii, în armeneşte desigur, să-şi ţină cumpătul şi să-şi pună nădejdea în bunul Dumnezeu. Fără a şti ce altceva să mai spună şi repetând Tatăl nostru, a privit spre soldaţi cu mai mare atenţie. Aceştia purtau pe piept vulturul german cu aripile întinse, dar la braţ aveau legate panglici în culorile tricolorului armenesc. Iar cel care îi conducea, în uniformă de ofiţer, nu era altul decât Tatevos Bedrosian, profesor de istorie şi directorul Şcolii armeneşti din Constanţa. Şi care s-a apropiat să sărute mâna preotului, rămas înmărmurit în faţa altarului. Apoi, Tatevos Bedrosian s-a întors către oamenii din biserică, a terminat rugăciunea de unde rămăsese între buzele încleştate ale preotului şi a vorbit despre patrie, despre pământurile ocupate de bolşevici, despre sfânta datorie de a le elibera, îndemnând bărbaţii, după pilda fedainilor din munţii Caucazului, să se înroleze ca voluntari în Legiunea armeană. Îi dădu exemplu pe ceilalţi şapte, armeni cu toţii, foşti prizonieri şi acum soldaţi ai unei armate ciudate, cu simboluri amestecate. Oamenii priveau uluiţi când la neamţul care vorbea armeneşte, când la vulturul german de pe pieptul său, când la banderola cu tricolorul armenesc, neînţelegând şi, de aceea, temându-se. La sfârşit, Tatevos Bedrosian s-a întors spre Der Dagead, din care nu mişca decât fumul cădelniţei, şi spre bunicul meu, a clătinat scurt din cap, şi-a aşezat la loc chipiul, a salutat milităreşte, evitând, totuşi, salutul nazist, şi, urmat cu mers ţeapăn de ceilalţi soldaţi, a ieşit, nu înainte de a promite că avea să se întoarcă. Bucuria săracilor, adunaţi în cimitirul vechi din curtea bisericii, căci nimeni altcineva n-a mai avut chef să se atingă de bucatele praznicului.

Tatevos Bedrosian, profesorul devenit ofiţer german, n-a mai revenit în Focşani, căci Legiunea armeană a sunat adunarea tocmai în Olanda, unde fusese încartiruită. Tatevos s-a întors la Constanţa, unde pe vremea aceea locuiau cam zece mii de armeni şi unde şansele de a recruta voluntari erau mai mari. A continuat să organizeze întâlniri, iar la unele dintre ele a participat şi generalul Dro. Ne-a rămas o însemnare de la o asemenea întâlnire, căreia îi cunoaştem şi participanţii: Tatevos Bedrosian, director al Şcolii armeneşti din Constanţa, profesor de istorie; Garo Zartarian, industriaş, politician influent în rândul comunităţii armene; Măgârdici Musaian, legumicultor, colaborator apropiat al lui Dro; Hapet Kasparian şi Vazken Kasparian, tată şi fiu, comercianţi de cafea; Hosrov Bedrosian, cerealist; Aram Sarchisian, comerciant; Hovhannes Sahaghian, învăţător la Şcoala armenească. Cei care, spre deosebire de Tatevos Bedrosian, nu au apucat să fugă înainte de venirea ruşilor, au fost pe rând arestaţi şi, dacă nu au fost executaţi pe loc, aşa cum s-a întâmplat la Rostov sau Harkov, au fost condamnaţi la ani lungi de muncă silnică şi deportaţi în Siberia.

Despre soldaţii lui Tatevos Bedrosian nu s-a mai ştiut nimic, au murit, probabil, în încercuirea de la Stalingrad. Despre Tatevos s-a zvonit că a reuşit să scape şi s-a întors în Germania, zvon întărit de faptul că nevasta şi cele două fiice, Emma şi Seta, au plecat, în cele din urmă, tot într-acolo. Măgârdici Musaian a fost arestat şi trimis în Siberia. Era un om credincios. Trupul lui a murit printre gheţurile Siberiei de răsărit. A mai avut, totuşi, puterea să supravieţuiască, cu o bucată de suflet agăţată de încheieturile uscate, ca un colţ de haină prins în chepeng, până când a primit ultima împărtăşanie de la preotul Hamazasp Bedikian din Constanţa. Care, în locul cuvintelor ce însoţeau înşiruirea morţilor din război şi din exilul siberian, şi anume „mort nepregătit de moarte năprasnică“, zise, punând într-una singură cele două morţi ale lui Măgârdici Musaian: „răpus de moarte năprasnică, dar pregătit“.

Arachel, fiul lui, a încercat să afle apoi ce se întâmplase cu tatăl lui, ca să-i poată înţelege suferinţa, mai apoi tăcerea şi, odată reîntors, graba de a muri. Cum niciunul dintre ceilalţi deportaţi ai lotului constănţean nu s-a mai întors pentru a povesti, Arachel Musaian, atunci când vremurile s-au schimbat şi orice altă posibilitate de a afla ceva depre destinul tatălui său în deceniul postbelic pe care îl mai apucase fusese epuizată, s-a încumetat să scrie autorităţilor. Răspunsul Serviciului Român de Informaţii închide povestea noastră despre Legiunea armeană într-un mod în care printre canaturi nu mai poate răzbate nicio rază de lumină: România – Serviciul Român de Informaţii, Biroul de Relaţii cu Publicul, nr. 70865 din 16.09.2005, Domnului Musaian Arachel, Constanţa, Bd. Ferdinand nr. 93, jud. Constanţa. Referitor la cererea dvs. adresată SRI – Secţia Judeţeană de Informaţii Constanţa şi înregistrată cu nr. 3546158 din 31.08.2005 vă comunicăm că, în urma verificărilor efectuate în materialele de arhivă preluate de la fostele organe de securitate au rezultat următoarele: Musaian Măgârdici, fiul lui Mesrop şi Chiuvage, născut la 25.01.1891 în Turcia, a fost reţinut şi arestat de un ofiţer şi doi civili sovietici la data de 6 iunie 1945, fiind suspect de activitate naţionalist-armeană în cadrul organizaţiei „Daşnag“. După arestare, a fost deportat în URSS şi condamnat la 5 (cinci) ani de închisoare şi 5 (cinci) ani domiciliu obligatoriu în Siberia. La data de 15 mai 1956 s-a repatriat, stabilindu-se la vechiul domiciliu din Constanţa. Din documentele pe care le deţinem nu rezultă numărul sentinţei şi instanţa care a pronunţat condamnarea. Semnătura de la sfârşitul scrisorii e un fel de linie ondulată care poate fi citită oricum şi care sugerează că cel care semnează doreşte să rămână la fel de necunoscut ca ofiţerul şi civilii care au organizat arestarea ori ca instanţa care l-a condamnat.

Legiunea s-a pornit la finele lui 1941. Numele recruţilor nu se cunoaşte cu exactitate. Cifrele privind numărul soldaţilor variază de la opt mii până la douăzeci de mii. Diferenţa constă, de fapt, în a şti câţi morţi trebuie să adăugăm celor căzuţi în războaie şi care, spre deosebire de morţii obişnuiţi, au avut neşansa de a fi îngropaţi de două ori şi sunt deci mai neodihniţi: sub pământ şi sub statistici. În patima sa îndreptată împotriva bolşevicilor, generalul Dro a ignorat trei lucruri. Întâi că nemţii nu vor accepta să înarmeze o divizie întreagă fără să tragă foloase din asta şi că pe ei soarta armenilor şi a Armeniei oriunde va fi fost ea, îi interesa la fel de puţin cât interesase puterile aliate după Primul Război Mondial. Ofiţerii armeni recrutaţi dintre prizonierii sovietici şi-au pierdut din grade, iar ofiţerimea Legiunii armene a fost recrutată dintre cadrele Wehrmachtului. În al doilea rând, că Hitler n-avea de gând nici în ruptul capului să lase o Armenie independentă, tot aşa cum n-avea de gând să lase vreun alt petic de pământ liber în Europa. Armata germană intenţiona să elibereze Armenia prin intermediul Legiunii armene tot aşa cum, câţiva ani mai târziu, Armata Roşie avea să elibereze, cu ajutorul diviziei „Tudor Vladimirescu“, România, adică tranformându-se în armată de ocupaţie. Şi în al treilea rând, Dro ignora că, vrând-nevrând, drumul spre Armenia trecea pe la Stalingrad şi pe la Cotul Donului şi, mai ales, nu ştia ce avea să însemne asta pentru armata germană.

Când n-au fost mitraliaţi în văzduh, în tentativa lor de a se înfiltra în spatele liniilor sovietice, ori vânaţi, unul câte unul, rătăcind prin păduri ori înfometaţi şi zgribuliţi prin stepele înzăpezite, soldaţii Legiunii armene, atunci când n-au murit de frig şi de foame în încercuirea de la Stalingrad, au fost împuşcaţi de ruşi, care se dovediră neiertători cu ei. Represiunea a urmat pe tot traseul pe care înaintaseră soldaţii Legiunii, cei suspectaţi a-i fi adăpostit, hrănit ori măcar ovaţionat fiind împuşcaţi fără judecată. Pe generalul Drastamat Kanayan ruşii nu l-au găsit, deşi au răscolit Bucureştiul şi Ploieştiul cu tot zelul. Bănuiau că se ascunde în munţi, până când generalul însuşi, ca să le mai cruţe din strădanii, a dat un comunicat de la Beirut, unde se afla nevătămat şi la fel de neastâmpărat. Şi de acolo a plecat în Statele Unite, unde a murit, în 1956. De unde, cum spuneam, s-a întors în Armenia, după mai bine de patruzeci de ani, pentru a fi înmormântat, în prezenţa a zeci de mii de oameni, pe câmpul de la Baş-Abaran.

Despre Legiunea armeană, despre comandamentul de la Ploieşti al generalului Dro ori despre expediţiile din pădurea Strejnicu nu a mai scos nimeni vreo vorbă. Acum, când scriu Cartea şoaptelor şi întreb pe câte unii despre ce s-a întâmplat atunci, îmi răspund că nu ştiu, pentru că niciodată bunicii sau părinţii nu le-au vorbit despre asta. În pădurea Strejnicu, iarba a acoperit urmele cailor generalului, iar mierea sălbatică a astupat urmele de gloanţe din trunchiuri. Cât despre armele generalului Dro, dacă vor fi fost sau unde or fi fost ele îngropate, s-au dovedit folositoare măcar pentru a hrăni iluziile celor pentru care nu mai exista nicio altă speranţă. Ceea ce, pentru acele vremuri, nu era deloc puţin.

 

 

“The Book of Whispers”  

by Varujan Vosganian

 

Four

           

The year 1958 began on a Wednesday and on the same day the Common European Market was founded. As it always happens with the years that are not leap and that begin and end on the same week day, the year 1958 ended also on a Wednesday, just on the day when Fulgencio Batista left Cuba, sent away by Fidel Castro’s revolutionists. Therefore, by replacing one dictator by another one, the year 1958 drew back defeated and left helplessly the future the mission to distinguish the good from the evil.

The earth spun precisely and also with care around the sun, tiptoeing to say, since, while protecting the seeable part of things and softening the hidden ones, the year 1958 brought no natural catastrophe. When finally it could not restrain itself from a start, it freed it for places as remote as possible, like Alaska, thinking that its starts, even eight Richter degrees earthquakes, could be easily endured. While the Earth proved moderation and care, we cannot tell the same about its inhabitants. Indeed, they were restless, and even militant to the possible extent. The old wars did not end during that 1958, while others started.

In France Charles de Gaulle, the hero of the war, got back the power, but this time as the first president of the Fifth Republic who, previously winning the parliamentary elections, had been prime minister. While in a country like France one could only gradually become prime minister and chief of the state, in the Soviet Union there was no need for such precautions. Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dismissed Nikolai Bulganin and became also prime minister, feeling no impulse for arranging his teeth on the left side; he used to laugh freely and toothlessly between two threats of nuclear attacks. Without being inferior to him but with more care for his image and even more care for the hooks on the uniform collar, Mao Tze Tung initiated the Great Leap Forward, dispersing the Chinese settlements into tens of thousands of communes, where millions of Chinese people were pouring the steel by buckets and working on tank houses with the screwdriver. Led back to slavery time as when building the Great Wall, differing by only one negative aspect that meanwhile the ideologies had appeared, the wasted work performed by the Chinese people did nothing else but transform the great leap forward into a huge leap backwards, towards the civil war time haunted by famine. The Middle East continued to heat. Egypt, Syria and, somehow later, Yemen formed the United Arab Republic, electing Gamal Abdel Nasser for the position of president.

Israel got armed. Europe was busy with its domestic problems. The cold war reached its new dramatic phase, the dispute on the West Berlin being at risk to put the continent at war. In order to show that there was no joke, even if the countries, especially the Eastern European ones, knew the truth and the sacrifice proved to be futile as any other sacrifice is, in full agreement with the Romanian authorities the Soviets decided to hang Irme Nagy, who had been the leader of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

When there was no opponent inside, the countries began to fight against one another. China and Taiwan continued their civil war. Lebanon started its own war. France, being the winner in Europe and sharing this glory with Konrad Adenauer’s Germany, lost one territory after the other in Africa: Sudan, Chad, the Congo Brazzaville, Gabon and the Central African Republic, while Algeria was getting more and more separated, remaining entirely French only in Albert Camus’s works. Fidel Castro laid siege to Havana, Faisal became prime minister of Saudi Arabia as a tardy eco of the British politics from Lawrence of Arabia’s time, while another Faisal, the young king of Iraq, was killed in an attempt and Iraq and Jordan, following the example of the United Arab Republic, joined but also separated even sooner than the new state led by Nasser.

The cold war on earth heated up the heavens. USSR went on with the Sputnik actions while USA launched the Explorer satellites and set up NASA. Profoundly torn by the crazy intrusion of the satellites, the heavens took revenge randomly. The Manchester United football team lost two thirds of their team in a tragic plane crash. The plane with the team members of board crashed on Munich territory, on their way back from Belgrade, after the team had qualified for the final game of the European Cup competition, by defeating Red Star. Eight players, including the team captain, Roger Byrne, lost their life. The legendary Matt Busby survived, as well one of the idols of my childhood, the 1966 hero, the attacker Bobby Charlton. One of the rare moments of the history when the people became pious against tragedies was the following: the final game was not played anymore and Manchester United that had remained with only several players, shocked as they were, was declared the honorary champion of the European Clubs in 1958.

As always when He feels that people lose their faith, the loving God decided to ask the pope come to His heart, meaning for this time Pius XII, after a twenty-year pontificate in which he ruled the Vatican skilfully, as ones say, and with unacceptable concessions, as others say, as it always happens when a shepherd is forced to rule his flock of sheep out of all kind of cold or hot wars. Under the influence of his doubts about the reason of this own life, before he had died he left the encyclical Meminisse Juvat, by which he called for the come back to the Christian values for the people to get finally redeemed. One year later these values were mentioned by his successor John XXIII in his first encyclical, Ad Petri Cathedram: the truth, unity and peace. A reflection on the following years reveals that those principles remained only in the beautiful libraries at Vatican and in the lists with pontifical biographers. The revolutions and wars, studded with attempts during period of peace, continued and represented a never-ending topic for the encyclicals to come.

While the wounds of the wars healed in jazz rhythm and the pains went stiff in blues rhythm, the cold and hot wars of the year 1958, between the Western Europe and the communist one, tearing the Western Berlin apart as if it had been a rag disputed on the battle field between corpse plunderers, between China that was going backwards by stepping forwards and Taiwan that was still lonely, between France and the North African rebels between CIA and General Sukaron’s Indonesian government, the civil wars in Lebanon or Iraq, and even the satellites’ war, the revolutions that led to the elimination of the exhausted dictators and replacements by some fresher ones, happened in a cha-cha rhythm, better said in cha-cha-cha rhythm. Three quick steps, „cha”, „cha” and once more „cha” and then a step backwards, as if things were going forward too fast. The other half that had not exhausted in wars and, beyond the unstable maps, could see the swollen-bellied and hungry thin-armed African children and felt the coldness of the coming rains, released by the grey clouds escaped from the earth depths over the Bikini atoll or Christmas Island – what an ironic juxtaposition of name of islands and nuclear experiences – so the other half was still dreaming when at one part of a line whose end is too far-off to be reached.

In Paris, Dmitri Shostakovich is the soloist and the composer of the two piano concertos. On the same side of the wall, Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac were telling about the conscious suffering and wandering. On the other side, Boris Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago, a kind of Gulag Archipelago of the people who were still free, where any pain of the gulag is added the pain caused by love. Boris Pasternak was forced by the Soviet authorities to refuse the Nobel Prize but he stayed at the foot of the Wall for the big winner of 1958. On the ramparts, without feeling at home either on the western or eastern side of the wall, Albert Camus was smoking without cease.

Three years earlier Vladimir Nabokov had written Lolita and, totally oddly, a sort of tragic Lolita, called Marilyn Van Debur, won the title of Miss America. Many years later she disclosed the secret that she had been violated by her father throughout her childhood and would fight for the alleviation of the silent pains caused by incestuous dramas.

Unsatisfied by the kings given by the dynasties, sheltered by the palaces and imagined by the victorious revolutions, even if so unsuccessful, the people created their own kings, ruling their occupations at hand and to whom they gave shelters in more inviting places like stadiums or concert halls. The new kings were young and their kingship was to be unlimited. One of them, Elvis Presley, became the king of rock. While the „cha-cha”, the saloon dance of the 1958, came from the Latin America, following mambo and preceding salsa, the rock came from nowhere, residing for centuries in the same place, in the boundary districts of Memphis inhabited by negroes, and mixing the Robert Johnson’s or John Lee Hooker’s blues rhythm with the gospel played in church. In 1958 Elvis joined the army and was sent to Germany, which was an occasion for his female fans to strengthen their longing and for the legend builders to place him more firmly, as always happens, just on the ground of his absence.

The other king, born instead of produced, of the 1958 was Pelé, the football king. That year Brazil became the world champion, with a team that included Gilmar, Santos brothers, Garrincha, the one who had a shorter leg, Zagalo and the others, whose names were like rain drops sound: Didi, Vava, Zito and Pelé. There he was, the eighteen year young boy, crying for joy after having scored three goals against Kopa’ and Fontaine’s French team in the semi-finals and two goals against the host Sweden in the final, crying as the kings crowned with bay know to cry, against the kings crowned with jewels who never know to cry.

The year of 1958 was the time of confusion and lucidity. As for the former constituent, 1958 depicted itself in Vertigo, the Alfred Hitchcock’s film, whose protagonists were James Stewart and Kim Novak. The lucidity: the discovery of laser. Confusion and accuracy: like a telescopic sight that aims with slow circular movements above the crowds and hits randomly. This mixture of innovations of the 1958 announced the genocide of the second half of the century, meaning the RANDOM KILLING, directed, as we all could see, against that silent and confused country of off-handedly killed or at least threatened people. That was a combination whose winner only the former was: one made use of purpose and the other made use of blood.

And the ones who made use of both purpose and blood stepped back little by little, to the deserts or mountains. In 1958 Romania remained the only country where the anti-communist resistance still existed. It was to resist until in 1962, its last hero being a peasant named Ion Banda, who was killed by the Security’s troops in the Banat Mountains.

1958 was the year of Petru Groza’s death. His funerals were pompous. He was followed by Ion Gheorghe Maurer, as president of the Great National Assembly. During that time, in terms of external business, Romania signed all sorts of treaties, while inside the country the repression got stronger, in order to show to the Russians that the government holds the situation in its hands and that the Red Army could retreat without worrying out from the Romanian territory. The repression, as it was at hand the most, was directed against the intellectuals. The young people interrogated after the Hungarian revolution were expelled from the universities. Constantin Noica, Arşavir Acterian and others were jailed, as the founders of the „Burning Pyre” were. The priest Daniel Tudor died after a short time in the prison, and the poet Vasile Voiculescu survived only several days after release. There were imprisoned also Arsene Papacioc, the later great confessor, and Dumitru Stăniloae. „You wanted to set fire to the communism on the burning pyre!”, the attorney cried. Anyhow, the fire was still making smoke for more than thirty years.

The old body and spirit torturers were set away: Iosif Chisinevschi or Mihail Roller who committed suicide beyond any explanation fit for such people. This does mean „self- suicide„. That year the new torturers accelerated the oppression of the wealthy peasants and merchants.

A hard trying effort for industrialization began. Like in China, the more the industry developed, the more the poverty increased. “What shall we do?” was Nikita Khrushchev asked by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. With a toothlessly grin on the left side of his face, meant to join the kick of his shoe at the desk when at the United Nation meeting, Khrushchev gave a wise Soviet-styled advice to him: “Sell off the Jews !”. And this did happen. The prices were established per Jew. Only later Ceaușescu adapted the prices to the market’s requests, even if the prices established in this way did not fit the system of values of the proletarian dictatorship: meaning that several times more dollars were paid for an intellectual than for a worker. Since the Jews had many intellectuals, the commercial activities went on splendidly.

Life went on. Without any kind of anti-communist resistance that had been removed by the Security’s guns, the Hațeg forests were repopulated with aurochs, after more than two centuries. The first pair was brought from Poland and even a philatelic emission was printed to its honour. Romania had television at that time. Several new films were produced: Two neighbors by Geo Saizescu and Hello, you dialled the wrong number, comedies with young and beautiful actors: Iurie Darie, Ștefan Tapalagǎ, Rodica Tapalagǎ, Stela Popescu. After three years from the Master’s death, the first “George Enescu” Festival took place. The new nomenclature applauded Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrah in the double concert for violin by Bach, having George Georgescu as conductor whose germanophile feelings were forgiven on this occasion. David Ohanesian was acclaimed at the first Romanian Oedipus, conducted by Constantin Silvestri. Iolanda Balaș won her first title of European Champion for high jump and “Petrolul” Ploiești, led by Pahonțu, won the national football championship.

In our yard in Focșani, on the bench under the apricot tree, the old people used to meet in the afternoon for a cup of coffee and talk about the sunsets on the Bosphorus coast and about the taste of the grapes in their childhood time. The young people surpassed the annual plan and were certainly going to surpass also the five-year one and used to walk haughtily like Sergiu Malagamba and leave on Saturdays for a picnic by the company’s vehicles. There came in our street Carol Spiegel, released from prison, who after only another three months was sent there back. In 1964 he was set free for good only out of a non-understandable persistent decision to die far from the indifferent eyes of his jailers.

Temelie, the carpenter, and Miticǎ, the mad wood chopper, with their particular way to dress and behave, crossed the street towards the Heroes Statue on the 10^th of May. They were the only ones left to honour the heroes on the Dynasty Day, since the loudspeakers hanged on the wall were playing noisily patriotic songs with Russian tonalities a day earlier, on the 9^th of May, that was the day of the victory against the Nazi Germany, columns of heroes being organized behind the Russian tanks while wearing the red star fastened on their pale foreheads.

It was a sad, seized by remorse year that was trying to make the future look better and that gave us Madonna, Sharon Stone and the blonde Barbie doll.

As for me, my mother remembers that at the moment I was born, there was a funeral procession accompanied by a brass band that could be heard marching by the windows. There was about midday hour. The nurses hurried to the windows and my mother cried with a tired and scared voice: “I am dropping my baby!” I did not drop. Instead of that I piddled achingly, taking my first and most natural step into the world. This was how my mother learned that she had a son, with no need to ask. I never was to learn who that man who had died in front of that harsh sound and particularly curious eyes, for making room for me to live, was.

On the same moment I was born, Bucharest was the place where Gheorghiu-Dej offered the reception occasioned by the departure of the last echelon of the Soviet troops from Romania. Thus, meeting the death and the history at the very first moment, by birth was put in a balance. At the same moment, the number of the living people exceeded the number of the ones who had been killed by that time.

Three kinds of happenings were experienced by the old Armenians of my childhood: the happenings that they had avoided, the happenings for which they had waited and happenings that had taken them completely by surprise. To tell the truth, all the circumstances they experienced can finally be considered to belong to the third category, since the things they had avoided ended by becoming real facts, while the things for which they had waited did not happen anymore. One could say that the lives of my grandparents are a sort of chronicle of the unexpected things.

Therefore, to talk about unexpected things is something similar to writing the Book of Whispers. To enumerate the things they had wanted to avoid would mean to write the Book of Whispers inversely. As for the things for which they had waited to happen, the old people of my childhood, even in their earlier ages, divided into two parts: the ones who were waiting for the Russians to come and the ones who were waiting for the Americans. Finally, both parts joined into one part because the ones who were waiting for the Russians went humbly to the other part and waited for the Americans, after the Russians had come, turned their drinking into competitions, began to steal watches, looking at them as the Columbus’s Indians looked at the glass pearls and running after young girls on the fields, populated the official institutions with unskilled people and vegetables carters. In fact, among my Armenian old people, the pro-Russians part consisted of one single man: Dicran Bedrosian. Humble but suspected anyhow on the grounds that the Bolshevism was an illness that, likewise rheumatism, became sometimes less painful but could be never healed, Dicran Bedrosian was accepted to be member of the parochial committee and pro-America group, and even at the secret meetings held in the Seferian’s tomb.

As a consequence, all the rest belonged to the other part. Some of them had waited for them some other time too, and still did not save themselves from doing so. Not only the Americans had they waited for, but also for the Frenchmen and Englishmen. They still remembered how they parents, during the “red sultan” Abdul Hamid’s time, scared about the atrocities that were told about the massacres in 1895, were waiting for the American ships to fill the narrows and rescue them. Their parents were also the ones who had told them how Armen Garo and the group that occupied the Ottoman Bank were rescued by an English ship. Some of the people who were still alive were the ones who, learning that the French ships had come to rescue the fighters on the Musa mountains, wandered, as my grandfather Setrak did when a child of fifteen, sleeping at daytime, cowered like wild beasts and walking at night along the edge of forests or close to the walls, avoiding the villages and roads, wearing Turkish cloths, southwards, to the Mediterranean coasts. But other English or French ships did not come anymore and, after the narrows fight, at Gallipoli, won in 1916 by the Captain from Salonika, Kemal Pasha, the future Atatürk, not even the Americans came anymore. More than that, Anton Merzian, the shoemaker from Unirii street, reminded that the Americans had abandoned also the small Armenian Republic, refusing the protection offered by the Sèvres Treaty. „They won’t give us up”, used to say my godfather, Sahag Şeitanian, who insisted on repeating this even after Arşag, the bell ringer, had repeated the news transmitted by BBC about the Yalta Conference, while listening closely to wooden box of the radio in Seferian’s tomb. In the meantime, the Russians entered Focşani, the Armenian intellectuals from Bucharest and Constanţa were arrested and sent to Lubianka in order to be sorted like vegetables and then deported to Siberia, in Bucharest there was founded the Armenian Front that, as first measure to be taken, started to fight against the books in the Armenian „Hovsep and Victoria Dudian” Library and the photographs on the walls, crushing together into cardboard boxes the ones that were considered to be harmful for the new times and finally burning them in the Cathedral yard. The parochial office of the Armenian church in Focşani was first deprived of the Roosevelt’s photograph then of the Churchill’s. Finally, they gave up in sorrow also the king’s portrait, whose declaration of abdication had been listed to the radio, hardly believing what they were hearing. Sahag Şeitanian did not accept at all to hide the photograph showing the general Antranik, the fighter against the Ottoman and Bolshevik occupancy, as well as the one showing his comrade-in-arms, Kevork Ceauş, presenting rightful arguments that being clothed in the army uniform that they were wearing, with their trail put on and wearing astrakhan caps, they could be introduced to any guest of the parish as Suren Spandarian, Lenin’s collaborator, and Stepan Şahumian, the fighter from Baku, who had died too early for their photographs to be added to the panoply of the Bolshevik leaders. As the books on the shelves were getting less and less and the walls were losing their photographs, also the hopes were lessened. There was still one, put in words by people who were fewer and fewer, at times that were rarer and rarer, and that looked like an opinion rather than a sign of lucidity. One could say that this story becomes one of the most silent in the Book of Whispers.

GENERAL DRO’S ARMS. I have already told about the meeting in Seferian’s tomb, convoked as consequence of president Kennedy’s assassination. Then, to the question „What can we do?”, no old man of my childhood, surrounded by all kinds of imaginary threats, knew what to answer. My uncle Sahag Şeitanian did it anyway, suggesting in a low voice, as if afraid that one might hear him: „Let’s look for General Dro’s arms”. All the rest became suddenly voiceless and father Varjabedian made a cross, not because he intended to banish a bad thought, but because general Dro’s arms would have been the last thing to look for, a desperate and heroic gesture of which some of them might have been capable in 1945 but completely incapable in 1963, not because of the years that had been passed but especially because of the happenings that had overwhelmed them.

My grandfather Garabet did not tell me about general Dro’s arms ever. He told me many stories about Tadeu and Batolomeu, the apostles who had Christianized the Armenians, about the holy martyrs Gaiane and Hripsime, about king Drtad and Saint Gregory the Enlightener’s visions, about Vartan Mamigonian and David Beg, about Kevork Ceauş and about general Antranik, meaning real stories or stories that were coming true and being repeated continuously. The story about general Dro’s arms is anyhow one of those about nobody knew whether it is true, the ones who could know had either died or run away and the ones who knew it did not repeat it to others, since they knew that they would do nothing else but affect their minds and deepen their despair. Sahag Şeitanian was one of those who had persisted in believing the truth of this story, better said its illusion, and he was the one to tell it to me a little before he died. In fact, there were only fragments; The book of whispers is a story that nobody told entirely, as if everybody was afraid of understanding everything, trying in this way to redeem his own life of its lack of meaning.

The beginning of the story stays in a photograph. The end of the story consists of the short sentence that Sahag Şeitanian had whispered to me, short before he died, within the limits of the necessity to tell me about this story: „The general Dro’s arms are hidden in a forest”.  Such stories made of one sentence, like the story of general Dro’s arms, show in fact that they are so short only because they are endless. Such story will continue to exist as long as people insist on believing that, beyond their experiences, over their head, something can still happen and, to the extent of despair, could be done. They do not know exactly what and how, but the invincibility of the last hope resides just in this uncertainty.

The first photograph shows general Dro on a white horse, on a glade, with a cluster of young trees in the background. General Dro wore a campaign uniform, crossed by officer strap and belt, at which all the things necessary at war were hanged. On his head he had a white sheep fur cap that covered his ears down to his thick and oblique eyebrows. He had a black goatee that, when started to turn grey, he was to shave it off. His temerarious look and conscious posture, with his straight back and palm touching his leg, reveals a photograph taken for the onlookers rather than for himself. This is the photograph of the winner at Sardarapat. The victory in 1918 against the Turkish troops allowed the ephemeral existence of the small Armenian Republic. Drastamat Kanayan or general Dro, as per his guerrilla name, who had become Defence Minister, was to make hard efforts for defending a fragile independence, without knowing to whom to concede and against whom to fight, as long as he stood between the aggressive Pan-Turkism exercised by Turkey and the Russian Bolshevism. Finally the history made a choice, the Armenians conceded to both of them and Turkey and Russia shared the Armenian territories. General Dro decided to fight, during the tumultuous part of his life, against both of them. After having been arrested and kept under observance for three years, in 1924 the general was allowed to leave for Romania where he stayed until in 1944.

The second photograph tells about general Dro, who was at that time more massive, white-haired but with the same black arched eyebrows and with the same dark look. My grandfather looked for an advantageous angle since the background at his back consisted of the blocks on the Armenian street and a weeping willow that still exists nowadays. On the left one distinguishes the top of a fir tree. The photograph was taken in the yard of the Armenian Cathedral in Bucharest, on the occasion of public uncovering of the general Antranik’s bust. The statue was surrounded by a belt of flowers at which ribbons hanged. Its steps were covered by multicoloured carpets of that sort the Armenian had a plenty and by other showers of flowers and ribbons of which the general Antranik, who was a man used to walk on narrow mountain paths and live a simple hard life, seemed to be less enchanted. With a serious look, with his chest full of medals and, as for a habit, with an unhappy expression of an armless bust, general Antranik was looking down to the other general, Dro, together with whom he had fought and who was at that time dressed in a Sunday suit, with his hat in hand, with a neat goatee and with a somehow bourgeois look. The other protagonist of honour of the inauguration could hardly be distinguished on the background. He is Grigore Trancu-Iaşi, one of the representatives of the large Armenian family in Moldavia, ex-minister on Averescu’s time and ex-president of the Union of Armenians, author of the first labour legislation in Romania. Trancu-Iaşi spoke certainly Romanian at the opening, then, in Armenian, general Dro set on fighting the crowd of people who, since they had just built up a trade business, formed a family or, if the luckiest, re-brought together their families that had been casted away by massacres and exoduses, seemed to be prepared to admire the general’s eloquence and enthusiasm, but less prepared to follow him. The datum, out of my grandfather’s good habit, was written on the back of the photograph by the chemical pencil: the 13th of April 1936.

Only very little was told about general Dro in Romania, after the war. The ones who had met him closely either left the country, or were arrested and, in the happiest case for them, were sent to Siberia. The ones who did not know him too well, even if they had heard about him, preferred to stay silent for not being suspected. As for what had been organized by Dro during the Second World War, the silence was undisturbed. The same happened also with his arms that, if they had ever existed, were buried by silence even deeper than if buried by spades and leaves. They did it in a forest, as my godfather Sahag Şeitanian told me on his deathbed. There were guns and pistols and bullets, buried like seeds. The imprecision on localization was the big chance to give birth to the legend. In this way, general Dro’s arms will never ever be found.

Drastamat Kanayan, general Dro, who had used to be a fighter of the mountains, ex-Defence minister during the short existence of the Republic of Armenia and one of the heroes of the Battle of Sardarapat, sent to forced domicile in Moscow, was given the permission to leave the Soviet Union territory in 1924. He was to live in Bucharest and Ploieşti. The exact reason for which NKVD decided to discharge general Dro is still unknown even today. The ones who think that the general was saved for not causing rebellions in Armenia, ascribe to NKVD fears that had never existed. Out of an immeasurable vanity and keeping the members of the general’s family as hostages, the Russians might have thought that they could make use of Dro. In fact they were drastically wrong and were to have regrets but, as in other similar circumstances, the Bolshevik’s regret was not expressed by humbleness, but by bloody punishments whose victims were the thousands of people, from Ploieşti to Odessa and Rostov-on-Don. Even the general’s wife and one of his children fell victims of them and died in the Siberian taiga. We know for sure that the general came back to Armenia only on the 24th of May 2000, right after eighty-two years from the Battle of Sardarapat and after forty-four years from his death, in order to be buried again, with military honours and followed by a large mass of people, at Baş-Abaran. He was accompanied by Gayane, his second wife, whom he had married in Romania in 1935. As it always happens more frequently to women than to men, Gayane was one of the few people who had conquered the time without even needing to fight against it. Born in 1900, in Nukhi, from Karabagh, then living in Cetatea Albǎ, in a Basarabia that had become Romanian again, Gayane Kanayan died in Boston, at the age of 105, on the very day of April, the 24th, when the Armenian communities were commemorating ninety years from the genocide in 1915.

The history of general Dro’s arms began in 1924, when the general, at the age of forty-one, reached the Romanian territory. His house in Bucharest, on no. 55 Popa Soare street, still exists even today. It was built in the style of that time but its walls, with stylized facades, wear the letters of the general’s pseudonym of a warrior. Dro became the administrator of some oil companies, helped by his friends from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, a party founded in 1890 by Cristapor Micaelian, Rostom Zarian and Simon Zavarian, called shortly the Federation, whose Armenian corresponding term is daşnagţutiun. This was the source of the „daşnacs” appellation that, at the post-war meetings organized at the House of Culture on nr. 43 Carol I Boulevard, that had become a sort of secondary headquarters of the Soviet Embassy or at the meetings at the „Mioriţa” cinema on Calea Moşilor or even inside the Soviet Embassy and under the attentive supervision of the Security troops, the new leaders of the community used to utter it as reproach, while the masses of manoeuvre, who did not know Armenian at all, booed it promptly and copiously.

For a period of more than ten years, Dro lived a life of bourgeois, being involved in oil business, organizing o small Armenian community in Ploieşti, gathering the former members of the Armenian government retreated in Romania and participating, from time to time, in Paris, to the meetings of the Central Office of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, whose representative for the Balkans area he had become. The assassination of his family in Omsk, in the Siberian taiga, reignited his hatred against the Bolsheviks. Thus, general Dro became one of the most active militants for the liberation of Armenia from Bolshevik occupancy.

My grandparents, Garabet Vosganian and Setrak Melichian, did not tell me anything about that. My grandfather Garabet aroused my joy to write, hoping that one day I would be the story teller, without urging me anyhow to do so and without revealing the clue of story to me. I thought it would have been too simple for such a thing to happen. My grandparents thought it would be a mistake. Setrak Melichian, my mother’s father, confessed to me one evening, while I was playing ghiulbahar under the bower of grapes in Craiova and already a grown-up man: „The one who suffered cannot tell the story as it had been, but only his own story. The one who suffered cannot understand. The one who hates cannot understand either.” My grandparents belonged to those guides who walk before you but do not turn their head to see whether you follow them.

I have finally found out the clue of the legend on general Dro’s arms, less its end, that is the forest under whose shrubs the arms might have been buried. Anyhow, what legend can survive if told until its end…

The group around Dro consisted mainly of friends who had shared the same fate and who had also established in Romania. Some of them were the members of the former governments of Armenia: Hovhannes Kaciaznuni, the first prime minister, Sarkis Araradian, ex-minister of Finance and Commerce, Kevork Hazarian, minister of Education, Hovhannes Devegian, the first secretary of the Council, Abraham Kiulghandarian, minister of Communication and Justice and others. In fact, from the prime minister to chancellery, at that time in Romania, one could organize a true exiled government of Armenia. Anyhow, maybe because Dro thought – having the right to think so after the Americans and Englishmen had abandoned the Treaty of Sèvres that launched the illusion of a large Armenia – that their country would become free only by fighting, he took with him all the members of „Nemesis” group who had retreated to Romania: Misak Torlakian, his right hand, then Ervant Fândâkian, Aram Yerganian and Măngârdici Măgârian.

I was taught that I must distinguish the good from the evil, urged, of course, to choose the good, without being sure of the line that separates them. Anyhow, later I was to learn that most often one must choose from two evils and that the power itself to choose is more important than the act of choosing. This is how the Armenians’ history often was, surrounded by any sort of enemies who had coveted to their territories, from Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Parsee or Romans to Arabs, Tartars, Turks, Kurds, Russians, so that the Armenians had to choose not between friends and enemies, but between the enemy to join or the enemy against whom to fight.

It was finally proved that the worst evil did not exist and the choice between two evils saved no chance anyhow. This happened also to general Dro at that end of the century, at the moment the war began. He chose to collaborate with the Nazi Germany against the Bolshevik Russia, therefore thinking that he would manage two things at the same time: to protect the Armenians from the Europe that was occupied by Germans and free the occupied Armenia from Bolsheviks. In fact, he did not manage to do either of them.

This is the way the recruitment for the Armenian Legion began, but not by attracting the Armenians from the part of Europe that was occupied by Germans, since most of them were stateless and, therefore, they had not been called to join the army. Because of this situation, for which the Armenians were anyhow the least responsible, the conditions in Romania were about to become worse. After less than half a year from the invasion of the Soviet Union, at the time when general Dro’s phantasms were waving over the entire Europe and the German and allies’ armies had not gotten caught in the eager resistance in Stalingrad and in the trap at Don’s Bend, thinking that they were allowed to do everything, the marshal Antonescu’s counsellors were watching in discontent the Nansenians, stateless Armenians who had not been enlisted for the simple reason that they were not registered in Romania. Feeling defied by these immigrants who had come anyhow to bloodier experience, the counsellors tried to convince the marshal to deport the Armenians to Transnistria. This was just about to happen. The intention of the delegation, that came to the marshal after many delays, which consisted of two members, as it had been permitted, was to stir his heart: a man and a woman. The man was the archbishop Husig Zohrabian, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Romania. He told the marshal about the Armenians’ secular existence on the Romanian territories, offering him a copy of the Alexander the Good’s record from 1401, according to which the Armenian Episcopacy from Suceava had been founded under the benediction of the patriarch of Constantinople. The second member of the delegation did not need to tell too much because she had a certain kind of effect on the marshal anyhow. I am talking about the graceful lady Sofia Cihoski, born Ferhat, the wife of a Polish general who had been the former Army Minister and a brave commander of the Romanian Army in the First World War and who was to die at Sighet several years later. In exchange for the definite renunciation to any intention to deport the Nansenian Armenians to Transnistria, they accepted to join the army. Some had a tragic end and their names are mentioned in the diptych on the Heroes’ Day in the Armenian Cemetery on Pantelimon street. Others, like the old Armenians of my childhood, were enrolled in the army almost at the end of the war and the only fear they experienced was the one caused by the allied bombardment on the North Railway Station. As in that circumstance nobody had time for them, they went back home in spite of the ever-insisting rumours about the approaching of the front to Galaţi-Focșani line. But, at that time, the Armenian Legion, who had been founded around 1941-1947 and had reached, through Crimea, up to the Don’s Bend, was already destroyed for a long time. Some of the soldiers of the legion, who were better trained, parachuted beyond the front line, but betrayed, were gunned down when still in the air and fell in the steppe like hail. Others were hunted in wildness in forests. For sure the Armenian Legion never fulfilled the objective of its foundation, that was to reach the Armenian territory, to say nothing about setting it free.

In 1940 such things were still far from happening. Germany was undefeated and one year later the German troops were to enter the Russian territory, conquering kilometres per day while almost nobody had heard about Stalingrad. General Dro began to check the German camps in search for Soviet prisons of Armenian origin. These people looked to be without escape. When the war began the officers of the Red Army drew their attention to the fact that for them only the fight or the death exist and ordered to them to make a choice: it was better to commit suicide than get imprisoned. Any Soviet soldier who had become prisoner was considered to be a traitor. If he had been not capable fight for the victory of the Soviets, he was like dead. The last bullet in the barrel had to be saved for himself. Being aware of the danger of extermination in the German camps, of the threat of being shot for betrayal by the Red Army and having consequently no way out to salvation, the war prisoners were easily convinced by Drastamat Kanayan who, in other words, had a very strong power to persuade.

In the autumn of 1941, the Armenian Legion numbered almost eight thousand volunteers. Some of the Armenian prisoners dispersed across Romania and the ones who, in the absence of concentration camps, had been charged with different works, were sent to Germany in order to be re-instructed and join the Legion columns.

Therefore the Legion was organized in Germany and, for making order in this mixed army, formed of embittered volunteers and prisoners whose soul was fearful, experienced fighters and untrained soldiers, patriots and cowards, each looking for salvation in his own way and keeping himself away from death in the same manner, the officers were selected mainly from the effective force of the German army. General Dro, as organizer of the Legion or, as others scared by the word legion used to say, of the Armenian Battalion, travelled across the continent in order to recruit volunteers and half-volunteers, coming back from time to time to Ploieşti, where there was another kind of headquarters of the Armenian Legion, an illusory one, if we realize that almost the entire officers staff belonged to Wehrmacht. This illusory headquarters is anyhow not stopped from imagine famous and continuous victories, on all the territories from the steppes of Crimea to the lowland at the bottom of the Ararat mountain, where some of the soldiers of the Legion at that time had been victorious in the battle from Sardarapat.

THE STORY OF HARUTIUN KHÂNTIRIAN’S STUBBORNNESS. The first visit that general Drastamat Kanayan paid as a loyal son of his country, when arrived in Bucharest, was to the Consulate of the Armenian Republic. For me, the narrator, it is very hard to keep the line of the story. It seems to be interrupted like the reading of a book by flashes of lights. Instead of The Book of Whispers, this story might be called The Book of Healing, because it tells about people who passed through an unimaginable pain of which anybody tried to heal in his own way. Since the reality is rarely the remedy for reality, my grandparents and my grandparents’ grandparents seem to walk inside a circle, facing the same sorrows and visions. Abandoning the real things, my grandparents’ people found guidance in the imaginary and imagined things, meaning those things that had never existed and that, if real, they proved stubbornness in seeing them differently.

The Consulate was founded in 1918, in the enthusiasm showed by the Armenians from Bucharest, who opened it immediately after the Republic had been founded on the 28th of May. The Romanian authorities recognized it, thinking that a new country, born from an empire under a dissolution process, could be a good example for the peoples and provinces within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Harutiun Khântirian was nominated consul general, meaning the one who was also one of the founders of the Union of Armenians of Romania and its first president.

In December 1920, Anastas Mikoian’s and Alexandr Miasnikian’s Bolshevik armies occupied Armenia, a country that was exhausted by famine and typhus, with frightened people, crowding together like the lodgers of a house with two doors, one at the east and the other at the west, in which concomitant hostile booms could be heard: from the west, the Turkish armies, and from the east, the Bolshevik ones. The first one that was opened, better said the one that was rather taken off its hinges, was the door at the east. Armenia was occupied by a mixed army, led by Armenians but formed of huddled Russians, Georgians, Azeris and Tatars. A start of rebellion initiated by the people of Yerevan, led by the remaining staff of an independent government, was drowned in blood in February 1921.

At the same time, Harutiun Khântirian was experiencing contradictory states. He was troubled because of a permanent reading of the messages about the fate of the governments that kept on installing, interweaving or being at a feud with one another. He was untroubled due to a regular coming into the Consulate offices, given by the Union of Armenians of Romania, and when standing under the red, blue and orange flag of Armenia, with his upright back and lifted chin.

In 1922 Armenia became part of the Transcaucasian Soviet Republic. The last refugees, government members, sundry other high officials, generals and partisans had come in Romania or passed forward to the West. Khântirian was receiving them, learning the news, without being able to give them something in exchange, not even to stamp their transit documents. He could not do it because, after 1921, the Romania authorities did not recognize the existence of the Consulate anymore. No matter how pedantic Mr. Khântirian might have been, with his check coat, with a tight butterfly bow under the turned up collars and with his thick eyebrows falling over the black rims of the glasses and no matter how praiseworthy his conscientiousness might have been and no matter how many diplomatic skills he might have had, he missed a skill that was fundamental for a consul, meaning the one of having a country to represent. As for the relationships that Harutiun Khântirian had with the Soviet Armenia, the things were as clear as possible: neither Khântirian had any wish to represent the Bolshevism in Romania, especially the one controlled by the Soviet Union, nor the vaguely independent government of Armenia had in mind the idea to accept to be ruled by the tiny, agile, but too agitated Harutiun Khântirian. Besides that, beyond this mutual disdain, the situation presented no doubt. The Bolshevik Armenia could not be represented in Romania because neither Averescu’s nor the Bratianu’s government recognized the Soviet Union.

In spite of all these evident facts, Khântirian kept his stamp for the simple reason that nobody had asked for it and anyhow he had nobody to whom to give it. He kept also his envelopes and papers with headers that, in time, started to get yellow. He moved the flag, that first was hoisted at the window, over his desk, spread on the wall, next to the portrait of the last prime minister, Simon Vraţian, where he later hanged the portrait of Vartan Mamigonia, who, being the leader of the Armenian army about one thousand and five hundred years before, was fit for any Armenian wall. At that time, Aram Vdaranţi, his loyal secretary, after cleaning the desks and putting down the roller blinds, could focus, undisturbed, on the translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from Persian into Armenian, which was a work that somehow explained the obstinacy proved by Aram in carrying on his activity as clerk of a Consulate that had represented more melancholies rather than realities. More practical, like all the inhabitants of the harbours from everywhere, who in fact preferred to cultivate their nostalgias, the Armenians from Constanţa closed the vice-consulate led by Givan Altunian and the ones from Galatzi did just the same, duly presenting the arms to the former vice-consuls Simion Kehiaian and Harutiun Sbengian.

In Bucharest, Khântirian signed in full fervour different letters that he sent to Yerevan, including data about the progress of the situations in Romania, meaning in a country that was still dipped in the post-war confusion. In his turn he received other letters, that were in fact less in number, about the appeals of the Armenian government that were categorical at the beginning and more and more desperate afterwards, concerning the recognition of the Treaty of Sèvres. After the end of war he continued to send messages about the Armenian refugees, about the glory and about the decay of the Averescu’s government, about Brătianu, about the refugees who were enlarging the rows of the Armenian community and about general Dro. In exchange to that the received messages became less and less until he did not receive anything anymore from the country, except an insignificant letter, from time to time, from different governments in exile that had been instantly formed by almost all the escaped ministers, in any place possible, in Paris, in New York or in Beirut. Khântirian stopped filing such messages in his secretized files, locked in heavy cupboards and sealed, because their content was not secret at all, but only a little pathetic and anyway they were to be published soon in the newspapers that were brought from abroad. Then, seeing that nobody gave him an answer anymore, Harutiun Khântirian continued to write his letters, which were calligraphically transcribed in a careful manner by his secretary, Arman, but put them in files, without sending them anywhere. Once per month a familiar knock on the door, in fact the only knock still heard at the Consulate and waited for in a mixture of joy and shame, was when an envelope was received. It contained the money for the next month, attached to a letter that certified that the Union of Armenians had done its duty, by collecting the money and saluting the eminent clerks of the Consulate, as country representatives. The text was always the same and only the signature was a new one, depending on the name of the person who happened to be president at the time when the Consulate was in function: Grigore Trancu-Iaşi, Armenag Manisalian or Terenig Danelian.

From where, despite its short existence, the Armenian Republic had had anyway the chance to be included on the world map, the small country had been excluded a long time before, the governments in exile had stopped their activity, including their bombastic proclamations, and the stateless emigrants from Anatolia had found shelter in the four corners of the world, gathering the remains of their families and tying to begin any kind of commercial activity in order to live their lives. Only the Consulate of Harutian Khântirian and his secretary, Aram, from Bucharest, with its lifted roller blinds, with the red, blue and orange flag fixed on the wall and with its files that were becoming thicker and thicker with letters sent to nowhere, remained like a vestige of a republic that did not exist anymore, except in the Armenian nostalgias and in the official stamp. On the 7^th of October 1929, the knock on the door announced the receipt of an envelope similar to the others, but this time, instead of money, Harutiun Khântirian found a letter, signed like all the others by the president of the Union of Armenians. The difference is that that letter, found on table after he had finally had to break the door open, facing the stubborn silence that was present inside, did not tell about the country and about the eminent representation of the Consulate anymore, but about the same country that was impossible to represent because it had disappeared from the map. Consequently: “The Leading Committee of the Union of Armenians decides: the offices provided by the Union of Armenians of Romania to the Consulate must be closed all over Romania”.

The assumptions were debated gradually and none proved to be satisfactory. The common part of all the variants was that, after the letter had been received, the Armenian consul, Harutiun Khântirian, put down the roller blinds and locked the doors. Some people swore that he had locked the doors from the inside. Others insisted that he had locked them from the outside. They also added: “How is it possible to lock them from the inside, if the padlock is put outside?”.

The door was broken in the presence of a commission that consisted of His Grace, Archbishop Husig Zohrabian and Terenig Danelian, the president of the Union of Armenians, accompanied by all kinds of gapers, gathered in the church yard. They entered shyly, prepared to find everything, including Harutiun Khântirian’s lifeless body. The body was not found in fact. They did not have enough patience to look for it in the corners around, in cupboards, among the files where, from between violet stamps and orange seals with bicephalous coat of arms, Harutiun Khântirian could have strained beyond this world like a book scorpion. They found only a translation of the poem Mortua est! by Mihai Eminescu, into Armenian, written with an ink about which one could swear that it had been recently used as if in that very moment.

How much could matter in fact the presence or the absence of a padlock? The important thing is that nobody has seen Harutiun Khântirian since then. There were rumours that he might have committed suicide, while sitting at his desk, dipping with a last gesture the stamp into the thin blood, fallen from his temple and thus ready to get imprinted on the passports of the citizens of an imaginary republic. They rumoured also that he had left to the wide world, walking eastwards, towards the country that had abandoned him. In time others told that Harutiun Khântirian had come back in fact, a little absent-minded, extremely joyful and willing to make jokes, slightly resembling the meticulous clerk of the real and imaginary Consulate. He had become an author of fables, satirical sketches and any kind of light comedies and had died, as any man with sense of humour did, at the age of about one hundred. The only thing of all these that can be proved to be connected to Harutiun Khântirian’s death, is that Mihai Eminescu’s poem, Mortua est!, that was anyway published in 1941, in “The Armenians’ Almanac” from Diaspora.

We are now in 1924. From time to time Harutiun Khântirian, while reading frantically about the negotiations regarding the Treaty of Lausanne and searching in vain for any sign that the attending parties remembered also his lost country, was stamping one passport that belonged to one Nansenian who had arrived in Romania in the second wave of refugees, after the Greco-Turkish war from 1922. Because, as far as the right to stay in Romania is concerned, the stateless people needed a nationality certificate issued by the Union of Armenians and because the Consulate was located in the same building with the Union, Khântirian fed himself with the illusion that the requester had not mistaken in fact the address and kept marking his papers with a stamp that was more and more useless and more and more worn out and violet.

As for Drastamat Kanayan, meaning general Dro, he did not make any mistake because he wanted to come right to the Consulate. But, to Khântirian’s disappointment, the only man who had come directly to him did not need any stamp anyhow. Anyway, to his pleasure, he got the proof that he was not the only one on earth who stubbornly believed that, despite occupancy, broken borders, exiled governments and rebellions drowned in blood, the Armenian Republic continued to exist.

More than that, after Harutiun Khântirian had disappeared without a trace, getting thinner and thinner between the sheets of paper or spreading away in the dark corners of his office, as water drains slowly from a sink, without leaving any trace, general Dro continued to be convinced that the Armenian Republic had to exist somewhere and could be found if you knew how to look for it. Unlike the fact that in his fight for the lost Armenia, Harutiun Khântirian made use of the stamp, of the flag that was fixed on the wall and of the secretized files, accompanied only by Aram, the secretary, general Dro used real weapons and, consequently, founded the Armenian Legion and took the captive flag off the Consulate walls, letting it fly in the wind, before his new armies.

In two such incursions across Europe, general Dro used to come back to Ploieşti for maintaining his war command in good form. After reporting about the Armenian Legion as if it were a new army of salvation, the general used to organize the expeditions in the forest of Strejnicu. It is far from any doubt that the expeditions were both opportunities to have fun, with hampers of food and bottles dressed in knitted raffia, filled with plum brandy or wine, and war incursions in which general Dro, on horseback and wielding his firelock, was giving commands for the assault in the forest, that was executed by the members of his group, from the redeeming Misak Torlakian, Ervant Fândâkian and Simon Pilibossian, Kevork Ceauş’ comrade in arms, to Atam Altocaian, from Ploieşti, shouting to an unknown enemy, shooting at the trees, generating a mass of falling leaves. After these victorious raids against all the possible enemies, from Turks to Bolsheviks and without taking prisoners, the expedition group came back to the hampers of food and to the bottles of plum brandy that, during the incursions, had been carefully guarded by Nşan Maganian, the schoolmaster of the Armenian School, who did not touch the gun, but whose participation was full with emotion at the thought about the rebels from Zeitun, from his own childhood.

The fact that those people, who faced the death on the battlefields or in guerrilla actions, put the same much determination in riddling the trees, fighting against spectres hidden behind trunks, did not lessen their enthusiasm and the joy of victory in the forest of Strejnicu, a place that reminds us today about the Nicolae Iorga’s martyrdom, without telling anything about an uninterrupted succession of victories obtained by the members of the Armenian Legion from Ploieşti. The group was dissolved when the war was over and the Red Army met its denouement. General Dro and his closer comrades left Romania in the spring of 1944. Even the young boys, Anuş and Agop Kârmâzian, the shield bearer of the fiery firelock bearers, were taken by their parents away, first to Constantinople, in a Turkey that was still friend to Germany, from where their went to the wide world, embarking on a ship to Marseille. Nşan Maganian, the schoolmaster, died solitary, too discreet in his life of Sunday teacher for drawing the attention of the new authorities, but being consoled that he had baptized his only son, while he had already had four daughters, giving him the name Setin, like the name of the place of his origin, Zeitun. Atam Altocaian was one of the persons who had paid for that with his own life, in a way that shows once more that history laughs at us with a wide grin. Atam Altocaian reached the front but most probably the instructions made in the forest of Strejnicu had not been sufficient since he became the Russians’ prisoner soon. From the camp he was recruited contrariwise in the “Tudor Vladimirescu” division and came back, after the 23^rd of August 1944, to fight together with the Russians against the Germans. But, at a certain moment, even the history stopped laughing and said that it was enough, putting an end to Atam Altocaian’s war travelling across the Eastern Europe, sometimes together with the Germans and against the Bolsheviks, sometimes together with the Bolsheviks and against the Germans. Unfortunately for him, in this permanently contrariwise war, Atam Altocaian could not be stopped except by a bullet in his forehead, in the trenches that surrounded Bucharest. His name is mentioned by our priests on Vartanank, the martyrs’ day, together with the names of members of the Armenian communities, who died for the independence of Romania in the two world wars. And all the rest of general Dro’s counsellors and companions of all times, who were in Romania, were trooped and sent to Siberia. The ones whose bones had not been left there and who were too young to possess the wisdom of dying came back weak, with soft gums and half blind.

My grandfather Garabet, the one who strongly kept the secret about general Dro’s arms, had not been one of the heroes of this story. He also managed to make the others not to accept to be urged to leave. It was not easy for him, especially if we take into consideration his brother-in-law, Sahag Şeitanian, raised in Constantinople by a grandmother who, at night, under her skirt, was carrying arms for the attack against the Ottoman Bank. My grandfather was hiding carefully the Armenian newspapers that were publishing calls for enrolment. “Too much blood”, he said, probably remembering his mother’s obsessions, my great grandmother Mariam who, the more the cataract was covering his eyes, the more blood she was seeing, as it remained imprinted on retina from the massacres she had witnessed in her youth, across Anatolia, from Trebizond to Adana. Consequently, when she cut her hand, out of a hesitation specific to the old age, she could not distinguish her blood from the one around her and tell which hers was and which illusion was. They found her with glassy eyes, bent and bloodless, but with an expression of silence imprinted on her face. She had fallen into her own phantasms as into bathing water. “Too much blood”, the grandfather said. It was only the summer of 1941 and he did not know how right he was.

One day, just out of the blue, Măgârdici Musaian came from Constanţa in our town. They all gathered at the parish council. Full of enthusiasms, Măgârdici brought general Dro’s message. My grandfather looked reserved and managed to convince the others to keep their temper, too. Musaian did not add a word, seeming that he did understand them. They accompanied him to the train, on the straight road from the church towards the imposing building of the railway station, bordered by the chestnut-trees and the big houses of the wealthy Armenian and Jewish families, occupied now by German officers. They said good-bye and thought that that was the end of all. But the next Sunday, right on The Virgin Mary’s Day, when a lot of people had gathered at the church for prays and for having a bite, as well, later, at the church feast that offered beef pilaff, a military pickup truck entered the yard and eight soldiers dressed in German uniform got down from it. They entered the church and the one with officer rank took a position at a distance of one step before them, close to the altar. The people retreated backwards frightened and the priest Dagead Aslanian interrupted his sermon. Then the soldiers took their peaked caps off and the officer retreated to the row of people. Thinking that the soldiers would not understand, Der Dagead continued his sermon, but not from the point of interruption, but urging the people, in Armenian language, of course, to keep their temper and hope in the loving God. Without knowing what else to say and repeating the Lord’s Prayer, he took a more attentive look at the soldiers. On their chest they were wearing the spread winged German eagle but their arms had ribbons with the Armenian flag colours. Their leader, in officer uniform, was nobody else but Tatevos Bedrosian, the teacher of history and principal of the Armenian School from Constanţa. He got closer to kiss the priest’s hand, who was frozen in front of the altar. Then, Tatevos Bedrosian turned to the people in the church, finished the pray from where it remained between the priest’s clenched lips and talked about his home country, about the lands occupied by Bolsheviks, about the holy duty to freed them, urging the men, following the example of the fedayeens from the Caucaz mountains, to enroll as volunteers in the Armenian Legion.  As example, he mentioned the other seven ex-prisoners, only Armenians, who were then soldiers of a strange army, with mixed symbols. The people were taking an astonished look sometimes to the German who was talking Armenian, sometimes to the German eagle on his chest, sometimes to the banderol with the Armenian tricolour, without understanding and, therefore, being afraid. At the end, Tatevos Bedrosian turned to Der Dagead, whose only movement was the smoke of the censer, and to my grandfather, shook his head shortly, put his peaked cap back, gave a military salute, avoiding anyway the Nazi salute and, followed by the others who were walking stiffly, came out, not earlier than making the promise that he would come back. As a result nobody else felt like touching the lunch food anymore, to the happiness of the poor people who were gathered in the old cemetery in the churchyard.

Tatevos Bedrosian, the teacher who had become German officer did not return to Focşani anymore, because the Armenian Legion had called for a gathering just in Holland, where it was billeted. Tatevos came back to Constanţa, where about ten thousand Armenian were living at that time and where the chances to recruit volunteers were bigger. He continued to organize meetings and also general Dro participated to some of them. We were left a note from such a meeting and know also who its attendees were: Tatevos Bedrosian, the principal of the Armenian School in Constanţa, teacher of history; Garo Zartarian, politician with influence within the Armenian Community; Măgârdici Musaian, vegetable gardener, Dro’s close collaborator; Hapet Kasparian and Vazken Kasparian, father and son, coffee traders; Hosrov Bedrosian, corn dealer; Aram Sarchisian, trader; Hovhannes Sahaghian, school teacher at the Armenian School. The ones who, unlike Tavetos Bedrosian, had not manage to run before the Russians’ arrival, were arrested one by one and, if not executed immediately, as happened in Rostov and Harkov, they were condemned to many years of hard work and deported to Siberia.

Nobody knew anything anymore about Tatevos Bedrosian’s soldiers; they probably died in the investment from Stalingrad. There were rumours about Tatevos telling that he had managed to escape and had come back to Germany, especially because his wife and two daughters, Emma and Seta, finally left to the same direction. Mǎgârdici Musaian was arrested and sent to Siberia. He was a believer. His body died in the ice regions of the eastern Siberia. He still had the power to survive, with a drop of soul hanging at his dried joints, like a piece of coat hanged from a hatch, until the priest Hamazasp Bedikian from Constanţa gave him the last viaticum. Instead of the words uttered together with the nomination of the ones who had died in war and in the Siberian exile, like „dead without being prepared for sudden death” and taking Mǎgârdici Musaian’s both kinds of death as for a single one, the priest said: „victim of sudden death, but prepared for it”.

Later, Arachel, his son, tried to learn what had happened to his father in order to understand his pain, his later quietness and, when returned, his rush to die. As long as none of the other deportees of the group from Constanţa had come back anymore for telling about that, Arachel Musaian ventured to write to the authorities when the circumstances were changed and when there was no other possibility to learn something about this father’s destiny or his last post-war decade. The answer from the Romanian Intelligence Service brings our story about the Armenian Legion to an end, in a way in which no ray of light can get through door wings anymore: Romania – The Romanian Intelligence Service, the Public Relations Office, nr. 70865 from 16.09.2005, in attention of Mr. Musaian Arachel, Constanţa, nr. 93 Ferdinand Bldv., Constanţa county. With reference to your request addressed to RIS – Intelligence Country Service Constanţa and registered under nr. 3546158 dated 31.08.2005, following the verification performed on the archive materials taken over from the former security bodies, we inform you about the followings: Musaian Mǎgârdici, the son of Mesrop and Chiuvage, born on 25.01.1891 in Turkey, was taken and arrested on the 6th of June 1945, being suspected of nationalist-Armenian activity within the „Daşnag” organization. After arrest, he was deported to USSR and condemned to 5 (five) years of prison and 5 (five) years of obligatory residence in Siberia. On the 15th of May 1956 he was repatriated, re- establishing his former domicile in Constanţa. The documents we possess give no information about the sentence number and the legal instance that pronounced the condemnation. The signature at the end of the letter is a sort of wavy line that can be read as you wish and that suggests that the one that signed wanted to be unknown, like the officer and the civilians who organized the arrest or like the legal instance that condemned him.

The Legion began its activity at the end of 1941. The names of the recruits are not known precisely. The figures concerning the number of the soldiers vary from eight thousands to twenty thousands. The difference consists in fact in knowing how many dead people we must add to the ones who died in wars and who, against the usual dead bodies, had the bad fortune to be buried twice, being therefore more restless: in ground and in statistics. In his ardour against the Bolsheviks, general Dro ignored three things. The first thing is that the Germans would never accept to arm an entire division without getting profit from it and that the Armenians’ and Armenia’s fate was of an interest as low as the interest of the allied powers after the World War the First. The Armenian officers recruited from the Soviet prisoners lost their ranks and the Armenian Legion was recruited from the Wehrmacht staff. The second thing is that Hitler absolutely excluded the possibility to let Armenia be independent and any piece of free land in Europe. The German army intended to free Armenia by means of the Armenian Legion as, several years later, the Red Army was to free Romania, by means of „Tudor Vladimirescu” division, becoming therefore an army of occupation. The third thing is that Dro ignored that, willy-nilly, the road to Armenia passed through Stalingrad and Don’s Bend and, more than that, he did not know what this would mean for the German army.

When they were not machine-gunned in the sky, in their tentative to infiltrate behind the Soviet lines or hunted one by one, wandering through forests or hungry and huddled up through the snow-bound steppes, the soldiers of the Armenian Legion, when they did not die of cold and hunger in the encircling from Stalingrad, they were shot by the Russians who proved to be unmerciful with them. The repression continued all during the progressing movement of the Legion’s soldiers, the ones suspected of having given them shelter, food or at least ovations being shot without trial. General Drastamat Kanayan was not found by Russians even if they quarried thoroughly the towns of Bucharest and Ploiesti. They assumed that he was hiding in the mountains until the general himself, in order to save their efforts, sent a communiqué from Beirut, from where he was living safely as restlessly as before. From there he left for the United States where he died in 1956. As already said, from there he came to Armenia after more than forty years, in order to be buried in the presence of thousands of people on the Baş-Abaran field.

About the Armenian Legion, about general Dro’s commandment from Ploiesti or about the expeditions in the forest of Strejnicu nobody said a word anymore. Now, when I am writing The Book of Whispers and ask some people about what happened then, they answer that they do not know because their grandparents or parents did not tell them about it. In the forest of Strejnicu, the grass covered the traces of the general’s horses and the wild honey filled the traces of bullets in the trunks. As for general Dro’s arms, if they had existed or wherever they might have been buried, they proved to be useful at least for nourishing the illusions of the ones who had no other hope. We know that doing that was something important at that time.

Translated by Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

Translator’s Notes  

 

 

The translated excerpt is representative for the political and social background of the narration. Its content spins around the year 1958 (a reference mark in the mankind’s history and the author’s birth year as well) and, besides the general description of world events, it also speaks about the uncertainty that governed the protagonists’ life during the political and social attempts that followed the World War II, in our country, from the viewpoint of several representative members of the Armenian community.

As for me, in my position of translator, the first challenge was to find the English correspondence for the Romanian long, fragmented (by many incidental elements) sentences that are representative for the author’s narrative style.

Then, the translation occasioned the familiarization with the English terms that refer to proper nouns in the fields of politics, geography or history and mainly with the events described or mentioned within the literary text.

Being mainly a chronicle, the language did not abound in figure of speech, poetic terms or expressions and this fact facilitated the adjustment of the text and the preservation of the original narrative flow. As in any other contemporary novel that is not very distant (in terms of time) from the evoked facts, I worked on a contemporary vocabulary, with less archaisms that might have caused difficulties in translation.

The translation was a benefit in terms of knowledge and experience. I did it with pleasure and with the conviction that my work will be an invitation to reading addressed to the English speakers.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu 

 

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A Dialogue with the Writer

 

 

Liliana Heleanu: What came first: the title or the book?

Varujan Vosganian: The book came first. The initial title was “Aleatoric Song”, used for the publishing of the first slots of the novel, in the spring of 2003, in Contemporanul magazine. On the other hand, the title was maintained in the paragraph that refers to both my grandparents, Garabet Vosganian and Setrak Melichian, who play ghiubahar (a sort of backgammon) over the world, deciding on its destiny by a throw of the dice. In the volume published by Polirom Publishing House, it can be found at the bottom of page 26.

L. H.: Is there any certain well-timed moment, in your own life or in a country’s life, for publishing such a book?

V. V.: I do not know whether this happens in a purposeful or arbitrary way, but the books, as well as the fruit, often choose their moment to ripen. For instance, The Book of Whispers came to light several years before the commemoration of a century completion from the Armenian genocide in 1915. This was to contribute to the dissemination of the book and to occasion debates on it. For example, this happened in March, when the conferences on the Armenian community from Romania took place in Italy, at Padua and Milano, as it was reflected in The Book of Whispers.

L. H.: With regard to this book, did you anticipate the readers’ interest in it?

V. V.: Because at that time, when I was writing the novel and preparing it for publication, I held important positions of public dignity, I took the due precaution against any risk of attitudinizing. You are familiar to the cases when certain important politicians verged on the ridicule by their literary velleities. This is why, before publication, my manuscript had been read by many qualified readers: Nicolae Manolescu, Nicolae Breban, Eugen Negrici, George Balaita, Gabriel Chifu, Adrian Aluigheorghe, Paul Cernat, Horia Garbea – who elaborated also the first book review, early when the novel was not published yet. With respect to the members of the Armenian community, the novel took benefit from the perusal of Bedros Horasangian, Vartan Arachelian, Sergiu Selian, who is living now in Australia, – and who is also the one who made the translation into the Armenian language – Madlen Karacasian, Eduard Jeamgocian from New York or Lanis Sahazizian from Toronto. Stefan Agopian, Magdalena Bedrosian and Silviu Lupescu are also worth mentioning since they were the tasters of the book, respectively the editor. Their opinions encouraged me. But I also confess that I did not expect it to be the Romanian bestseller contemporary novel of the last two decades. More than one thousand pages were written about The Book of Whispers.

L. H.: Did the book, by its more than five hundred pages, comprise all that you could add to the Armenians’ unwritten history?

V. V.: No, but, at a certain moment I decided to stop. I still had several stories about Krikor Zambaccian, the collector, or Levon Mirahorian, the parapsychologist, but I told myself I had written enough. The Book of Whispers was taking the risk of being endless. As a result, I wrote the shrine ritual and, with it, I finished the series of stories. Then I wrote the twelfth chapter, meaning the end of the book.

L. H.: Is there any mismatch between the information that is unofficially disseminated within the Armenian community and the consulted documents in archives?

V. V.: I did not find a flagrant mismatch. Most often the documents and the memories completed one another. In fact, The Book of Whispers is an intertwining of the complex history, registered in the study books, and the restricted history of the common people. Many facts that are presented in the novel were nowhere registered, but they still reside in people’s memory. There we have, for instance, the episode depicting the massacre from Vadu Roșca, which I wrote by following the survivors’ testimonies.

L. H.: Did the mature thoughts change the echo of the childhood memories?

V. V.: The difference between the child inside you and the child that you were is a nuance distinguished by only a few people and probably the differentiation between the childhood books, that are authentic, and the other books, that are only some “memories of childhood”, consists of the author’s struggle to make the difference between the child inside him and the child he was. The child inside you is your companion. He develops concomitantly with you and becomes an old faced child, in the same way as Jesus, if you look the icons showing him embraced by the Virgin Mary, has not a child face but, as people used to say, an aged child’s face. The child in you (without realising it) ages together with you, while the child you were is less difficult to approach. To come back and contemplate the child you were is a difficult gesture of consciousness. This happens because he does not know what the sin is and this is why he does not know what the forgiveness is either. This is his reason for being more merciless and more sincere with the memories preserved. He can see the things as they really are.

L. H.: Which are the childhood ingredients that affected the most its development into a grown-up phase of existence?

V. V.: The Book of Whispers is full of them. It presents the fires, the scents, the spices, the colours and the violin reverberations. Both my grandfathers’ stories are also present, showing their attitudes about life, resembling the masks of the ancient theatre.

L. H.: The death in your book is not accidental, but meaningful. What is the significance of the seven circles of the death?

V. V.: The seven circles of the death are an initiation to death and to a rebirth of indefinite proportions. Let us remember that at the edge of the seven circles of the death, at Der-es-Zor, we find the extensions of Tiber and Euphrates, meaning the Eden. Mankind came back to the same place, after many millions of years, making the original sin more severe. There are two characters in the book that symbolize this circular return to the original land and the recommencing of the world from the beginning.

L. H.: Do the Armenians have any range of symbols of spices and a correspondence between them and the emotions?

V. V.: Spices are a remedy against the passing time, against fatigue and sorrows of all kinds. Later I found the taste of the cemen, the spice used at the preparation of the Armenian smoke-dried salt meat, in a liquid that the abbot from Golia monastery gave me, that is a sort of brandy made of a plant named hemlock-parsley, that grows in the Rodna Mountains.

L. H.: Would the excluded pages of the manuscript have meant a distinct beginning point or the later modification of the content?

V. V.: I excluded more than one hundred pages from the initial text. Some of them, like the ones about the trees of my childhood, were published on the website dedicated to book – www.carteasoaptelor.ro – and others were copied in the introduction to the Album of The Book of Whispers. I excluded them because they would have highlighted the poetic dimension more than necessary.

L. H.: Is the whisper the tonality of the Armenian people’s consciousness?

V. V.: The Armenian music is often plaintive. Plaintive were also the folk melodies transcribed at the beginning of the XX century, by the monk Komidas. The Armenians have strong souls and are able to communicate at long distances, without crying out loudly. Therefore, when the hearts are close to one another, they share a whispered understanding and, when apart, they need cries. We never shout in the confessor’s ear at a confession. The whisper wears the sign of sincerity.

L. H.: Do these whispers break the silence or attenuate the cry?

V. V.: The whisper distinguishes the dumbness from silence. The dumbness is a state of reconciliation and introspection. We cannot stay dumb and whisper at the same time. But we can whisper silently. The silence is the real communication.

L. H.: Do the whispers still exist today?

V. V.: Despite all its various and noisy external profiles, the mankind, in its essence, remained the same, like a choral song by Johann Sebastian Bach. Fantasy, poetry, love, sorrow, pray and whispers coexist. As proof, The Book of Whispers stands for a collection of psalms.

L. H.: Which are the main attributes of the characters present in The Book of Whispers?

V. V.: Each character in The Book of Whispers has a key. The padlock is opened when all are present at the same time, since everybody’s key is necessary. A similar situation is given by the eye of a bee, which consists of ocelli, meaning smaller eyes, each of them capturing a fragment of a whole image. Therefore, each character has its own part of understanding of the world. This is the symbol of the explanatory shrine ritual at the end. This is the reason why nobody can explain the world completely. Even my grandfather, who was the wisest of us all, could not do it.

L. H.: Which were the Armenians’ resources to revive?

V. V.: The Armenians were saved by their love for culture and creed. A few people are strong enough to long for something lost, as the Armenians are.

L. H.: Are the Romanians the destination of this book?

V. V.: The Book of Whispers is not a book exclusively about Armenians, but also a book about Romanians, about Jews and about other nations. In fact, each place, each period and each nation has its own book of whispers. All we need is someone to tell it.

The story about the massacre from Vadu Roşca belongs to the Romanians. Then, in December, at Focşani, at the meeting occasioned by the commemoration of victims of the revolution from 1959, they read pages of The Book of Whispers. Later they were published in the local newspaper, as recollection.

L. H.: The faith in God is not very pregnant in the book. Is the omission yours or was the drama so overwhelming that the divine safeguarding was doubted?

V. V.: The Book of Whispers is a part of history that, from exodus until to the mountain of happiness, comprises many themes of the most important writings. God is not present as a character, but as reason. The characters have a strength that is not always earthly. In The Book of Whispers, God is like a clod of salt dissolved in water, we cannot see it, but is part of the world’s taste.

L. H.: Do the events evoked in The Book of Whispers still cause vibrations among the young generations of Armenians?

V. V.: The Book of Whispers was commented upon on all meridians. The Haaretz daily newspaper dedicated an entire page to it. El Pais, the most important Spanish daily newspaper spoke about the strong emotions provoked by the events narrated. The press accounts and the readers’ impressions made me realize how little known the Armenian genocide is and what a strong impression it induces to the readers of all ages. This happened without trying to plead for a certain impression. The book was not written with rude passion and the reader was given the freedom to choose.

L. H.: Besides the written word, what other way of communication do you choose?

V. V.: I have met my readers tens of times and told them about The Book of Whispers. When in Romania, I have told them especially about a possible Book of Whispers belonging to the Romanian people.

L. H.: Do you think that writing makes you transparent?

V. V.: There is a chance to develop a simpler communication. The political perception is more distorted and often disconcertable for the politician who feels not entitled or not understood. Literature gives a great chance to the author and reader to have a joint participation to the creation of work and then, unlike in politics, where the voter feels used, in literature the reader feels that he is a participant. This solidarity between writer and reader contributes to the openness to authenticity.

L. H.: Were you the right man in the right place or did you adjust the man or the place?

V. V.: I was properly educated. Think of an old amphora, in old Greeks’ time, which acquired in time the shape of wine poured inside.

L. H.: About what would you never write?

V. V.: About what I shall never know. About the one I am to be.

L. H.: How do you define the vulgarity in literature?

V. V.: As something insincere, ostentatious, inauthentic. As an artifice by which you try to cure yourself of the frustrations of which you cannot be cured in other ways.

L. H.: What about the definition of the sublime?

V. V.: The sublime is similar to being just on the line. You cannot get it, but you can tend to it. The secret of this beatitude is the presence of the motivations. They must be authentic, come from you, out of what you are, as a shadow that falls only before you, as it is pulled out from your body by a light from the back, that represents the memory.

L. H.: What do you read?

V. V.: I read very much. I could not live without books and fruit. The most pity I feel for the books that nobody read.

L. H.: Could you write without reading?

V. V.: This is impossible. I am mainly the product of what I have read. How can a student be good without teachers? How can somebody be a good writer without having as teachers the ones who wrote before you?

L. H.: Is the involvement in the political life favourable to the development of such cultural projects?

V. V.: If I had not been a politician, I would not have been able to write The Book of Whispers. This novel is my victory against the danger that the politics might have estranged me from myself. I have a contradictory nature, I like the intimacy, to read, to write, the reverie, but I feel attracted also by the public places and crowds of people. Writing helps you stay alive.

 

L. H.: As far as you are concerned, is there any contrast between the literary and political ideas?

V. V.: The writing makes you feel freer. You do not have to participate to a group picture and are responsible only for your self and have unlimited right to make selections. Some people do not realize but, even if apparently the politician possesses the power, the higher he climbs on the mountain of temptation, the lower degrees of freedom he has. Without realising it, he becomes the product of the ones he thinks that he rules. In opposition to that, the artist wears the sign of oneness.

L. H.: Is there any difference between the literary and political success?

V. V.: The literary success has no need for elections at four-year intervals. There is no need for anticipated elections either. There is no need to make promises and no risk of not keeping them. It is impossible to lie since the literature means the word itself.

L. H.: Who do you think the readers of this book are?

V. V.: The Book of Whispers has readers of all sorts. On the website dedicated to the book you can find some of them. They are famous names in the Romanian culture, politicians, brother writers, adolescents and even people that made sacrifices to buy this book. The most I was impressed by the fact that the blind people’s association contracted an actor to record The Book of Whispers, in order to have access to it.

L. H.: Does the chronology of the debuts in the approached professional fields mark accurately the order imposed by passion?

V. V.: Not necessarily. When in the primary school, I wanted to attend philology (French), then, in the secondary school, I wanted to become a mathematician and a philosopher. The truth is that I always wrote, since I have learned the alphabet.

L. H.: Would the book have undertaken changes if it had been written in Armenian? If it had, of which kind would these changes have been?

V. V.: Probably the Armenian version of the novel will be published in September. There exist several changes. For instance, in the other versions, the Armenian words are written with italics. The Armenian translation will include the italics that refer to the Romanian words that cannot be translated. Then, the Armenian spoken by the heroes of the book differs a little from the Armenian spoken in Yerevan and The Book of Whispers will have to be translated into a more complicated Armenian, mixing the eastern and western dialects.

L. H.: Does the interest in this book oblige you to continue to write?

V. V.: Many people say that The Book of Whispers leaves no room for me to write anymore. I have another opinion and this is reason why I continue to write.

L. H.: Now that you have written, can you forget? 

V. V.: Once, when asked about the reason why I write, I answered that I do it because I was afraid of death. It is not a fear of death in its full meaning, but the fear that in this way I cannot any longer say all that I am meant to say. Each written word releases you, facilitates your selection, makes you conciliate with death. However, in order to be able to write, you must have access to that state that the chosen ones call vigil. The difference between a creator and the rest of people is that, in order to dream, the creator does not necessarily have to sleep.

Translated by Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

 

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The Portrait of the Author 

Not knowing Varujan Vosganian closely could make us misjudge his professional or artistic creeds. The moment a certain ranking seems to be the most adequate for placing him, you find in his biography something that makes you revise your opinion and understand how superficial you were at that time. He is, at the same time, person, personality and personification (of some beautiful ideals and aspirations), with reasons and interests expressed in dignity and fairness, both within and beyond the Romanian territory.

Even if Armenian, he was born and has lived in Romania; even if he graduated from high education institutions for economics and mathematics, he became more visible by a steady contribution to the political life of the country; even with a professional background in exact sciences, Varujan Vosganian completes his life by a responsible devotion to art, writing both poetry and prose. The success in all these fields certainly reveals points of organic connections between these opposite segments of interest, as well as huge respect for each passion and effort made.

The firm study, seriousness and talent gave him the occasion, sometimes at the same time, to develop a career in fields of activity that are completely different. For instance, only the last years, after year 2000, brought to him major responsibilities in politics, by holding several positions of

Minister of Economy and Finance, senator or member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council, if we limit our presentation to only several commitments in the political life; the same last years are opportune for the publication of two volumes of poems, The Queen’s White Gaze  and Jesus with One Thousand Arms.

Photograph: Ion Cucu

Beyond these two contrasting aptitudes and achievements, we find him in the position of university reader at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, the Faculty of International Relations. His case tells us about a single scale of values that made him step in three ascending and totally different directions. We realize that he is in a permanent and sustained competition with himself or with the ones whom he takes for examples of professional awareness and who are worthy of consideration. As any other important or exceptional personality, sometimes Varujan Vosganian provoked manifestations of envy and wantonly malice or put in light the people’s incapacity to understand and accept a value contemporaneous with them.

Even exposed to controversies, denigrations and polemics, Varujan Vosganian manages to keep his initial faith in his areas of activity. In the political part he proved an ideological liberal constancy. A similar constancy was proved also in defending the rights and interests of the Armenian community within the Romanian territory, by founding the Union of Armenians of Romania, whose president he has been from 1990. He is the voice with the most significant resonance, which tells us about the Armenians’ life in Romania, striving for the recognition of their rights and for the support of their cultural values here.

No other professional side revealed any hesitation in terms of principles or any abandonment of concern. He continued to write and be involved in the cultural life of our country; in 2005 he was appointed vice-president of the Romanian Writers Union, constantly assuming all the commitments of high cultural responsibility that are connected to such position.

Everywhere beyond the area of his activities, Varujan Vosganian distinguishes by sobriety and ethical constancy, by elegant attitude and classic manners. I can state also that he exhibits an evident attitude meant to discourage in full dignity any propagation of the bad taste, guilty intentions and deliberate untruth. No doubt that this is the reason why he is the subject of a high level of credibility in the social-political, cultural or university fields and why he was given the reins for leading several institutions of highest rank in state.

His moral conduct is a real guarantee for the fulfilment of some responsibilities assumed by holding important positions in the Romanian Government and Senate.

In his private life he displays much discretion and one could appreciate that he knows the value and the meaning of the family, of the rigour of education and of the reason of thoughts and deeds. By doing so, he belongs to the fashionable social environment only at a degree implied by his performance in public, without ascribing in fact any significance to it. He chooses to touch the keys of a piano, to read and write, out of a careful devotion to passions and soul duties.

The literature he wrote reveals a particular respect for the Romanian language. The Book of Whispers, whose echo is directed mainly to the Armenian readers, could have been written in the language spoken by this nation. He chose to be grateful to the country in which he was born and educated and to which he dedicated his efforts. For sure the feelings urge him to feel equally Armenian and Romanian while we, who have him close on different occasions, manage to take him for a valuable contemporary personality, who witnesses the entire course of life in Romania. In our turn we are grateful to him for having chosen to try to express his thoughts in Romanian words, giving us the unaltered product of his mind and soul.

 

 

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

 

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VARUJAN VOSGANIAN

– Curriculum Vitae –

(data selectively extracted from Mr. Varujan Vosganian’s blog: vosganian.ro)

Varujan Vosganian was born in Craiova on the 25th of July 1958. He is married to Mihaela Stanculescu-Vosganian, composer, and they have a daughter, Armine, who is 16.

 

 

Professional and political background

President of the Economic, Industries and Services Commission, Senate of Romania (2008-present)

Minister of the Finance and Economy (2007 – 2008)

Minister of the Economy and Commerce (2006-2007)

Vice-President of National Liberal Party

President of the Budget, Finance, Banking and Capital Market, Senate of Romania (1996-1998; 2004 – 2006)

Senator (1996-2000, 2004 – present)

Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2004-2006)

Member of the Political and Economical Commissions of APCE (2004-2006)

President of the Union of the Right Forces Party (1996-2003)

Member of the National Minorities Council

Leader of the Parliamentary Group of National Minorities (1992-1995)

Member of the Provisional Council of National Unity (1990)

Deputy (1990-1992, 1992-1996)

President of the Union of Armenians of Romania (1990 – present)

Prime Vice-President of the Romanian Writers Union (2005 – present)

University Reader at the Academy of Economic Studies, the Faculty of International Relations, Bucharest

 

Education

Doctor in Economics, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, 1998

Degree in Mathematics, Bucharest University, 1991

The Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, the Faculty of Commerce, 1982

Alexandru Ioan Cuza High School, Focşani, Vrancea

 

Special titles (selection)

“Ordine della Solidarieta Italiana” on behalf of the President of the Italian Republic, 2008

Doctor Honoris Causa, “Vasile Goldiș” University, Arad, 2006

The Romanian Academy Prize for contribution to the development of Romanian science and culture, 2006

The prize of “Nichita Stănescu” International Poetry Festival”, Chişinău, April, 2006

The Prize for Excellency for contribution to the development of Capital Market in Romania, Bucharest Stock Exchange, April, 2005

The prize for contribution to the development of Capital Market in Romania, The Capital Market Awards, 2005

The special prize for support to the development of Capital Market in Romania, Sibiu Stock Exchange, 2005

The prize “The best prose of the year” for the volume “The Statue of the Commander”, The Writers Union Bucharest, 1994

 

Professional organizations membership

Founder Member of Romanian Society of Economy (SOREC)

Member of International Experts Council of the Centre of European Political Studies – Brussels (1992-1995)

Honorary Member of the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Prognosis
Senior Researcher of the National Institute of Economy

 

International background

Invited to the “Future of Europe Trust” Annual Reunion of the Young Liberal Politicians Club, London 1992, 1993

Participant in the International Experts Meeting of the Centre of European Political Studies, Brussels, 1993, 1994, 1995

Invited by the Government of the United States to attend the “International Visitors”
Invited to attend international reunions organized by United Nations Organization, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, European Union, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

 

Published volumes

 

Economics

“The Financial Markets Reform”, Polirom Publishing House, 1999
“The c ontradictions of the transition to a market economy”, Polirom Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994
“The Front Journal”, Staff Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994

 

Literature

Jesus with a Thousand Arms, volume of poetry, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2004
The Queen’s White Gaze, volume of poetry, Cartea Românească Publishing House, Bucharest, 2001 (selected for the Jubilee of the American Literary Translators Association, Chicago, 2002)

The Statue of the Commander, prose, Ararat Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994 (Prize of the Writers’ Association from Bucharest)

The Blue Shaman, volume of poetry, Ararat Publishing House, 1994

The Book of Whispers, prose, Polirom Publishing House, Iassy, 2009

 

Politics

The Romanian Rightism. Tradition and Modernity, Nemira Publishing House, 2001

Dialogues with Varujan Vosganian, by Diana Coriciuc, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2000

He is the author of more than 500 articles on economics, politics and fiction, studies and essays. His works were translated into English, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian.

 

Foreign languages

Fluent in Armenian, English, French, Italian

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The main conditions that burst into one of the biggest crime against humanity, in the first decades of the previous century, were of social, cultural, economical and political nature. Armenians were the residents of a strategic region of high interest for the Ottoman Empire, with different social organization and with different cultural manifestations. Economically, they held the monopoly of the trade activities in that area and fought against the economic force of the Turks. These conditions were the ground of the Turks’ general hatred and led to several events whose climax was the most macabre union of forces intended to eliminate the Armenian inhabitants off that region.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Book of Whispers

Pages of Recognition of a Tragic Past 

Politician, economist, mathematician and writer at the same time, with many credits that occasioned the recognition of his merits in the above-mentioned fields of activity, Varujan Vosganian is one of the most complex personality of the present days.

In literature, after the publication of the volumes The Blue Shaman in 1994 (poems), The Statue of the Commander in 1994 (prose), The Queen’s White Gaze in 2001 (poems), Jesus with a Thousand Arms in 2004 (poems), Varujan Vosganian’s constant presence within the Romanian cultural territory of latest years was crowned by the publishing of The Book of Whispers, in 2009, by Polirom Publishing House in Iassy, being ascribed the classification of memorial prose.

The Book of Whispers was extremely successful in Romania and its national recognition occasioned the nomination to the title The Book of the Year by Romȃnia Literarǎ magazine. Besides the readers’ large appreciations, the book continues to attract the most favourable critical assessments disclosed by important members of the Romanian cultural society.

The volume is a disclosure of childhood memories, filtered through the mature judgement of a personality equally claimed by the Romanian political and cultural life.

From his position of a remarkable representative of the Armenian community in Romania, Varujan Vosganian gives the Romanians and Armenians from everywhere the heartbreaking proofs of the genocide meant to definitively exclude Armenia from the world map and throw its population under a veil of oblivion.

The author began by unfolding the memories of his childhood, spent in Focşani

together with his parents and grandparents,

and made use of the information taken from the official documents studied and developed all these into an emotional work full with historical references, which do not exist in any other literary work ever written in Romanian or Armenian language.

“This novel was written by self-release. There are so many things that were experienced but never told. The narrator is a child. It is not easy to encounter the child who you were. You need to have much courage. But note that the courage is not solicited by the child inside you, since this one undertakes the same evolution like you, becoming even an old man with child-like appearance, similarly to the ones who suffer of Progeria. I mean, in fact, the child that you were and who is the most merciless judge of yours because, without knowing what the sin is, he does not know what the forgiveness is either.” (Varujan Vosganian, Adevǎrul, the 29^th of December, 2009)

The novel abounds in recollections, details and symbols and realigns the thread of an unsaid or denied history. Therefore we can understand how hard the Armenians’ life was in the periods of transition from one political regime to another and to how much they were exposed to tragedies in their life.

“Here we have an exceptional book, without consisting entirely of memoirs or fiction, but sharing parts of their features, which is also extraordinary due to the way in which it weaves individual destinies on the history canvas. Only rarely did I find in a novel, as Varujan Vosganian’s book definitely is, such a vast density of human life and crucial events in the existence of a community. It is a rich, various and exciting book that you cannot abandon due to the art of telling proved by the author, as well as due to the documentary interest in the reconstruction of a tragic history.” (Nicolae Manolescu)

 

 

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

 

The Book of Whispers…

Or the Whispered Echo of the Memories

Only seldom is a nation given the opportunity to face its own history, its moments of glory or defeat or simply the certainty or doubt that certain events really ever happened. The certainty can be easily understood, since there have been many instances of palpable evidence; the doubt, in exchange, is determined by the magnitude of the events evoked, that can hardly be believed. There is an innocent doubt, based on the actual generations’ reason and on the principles of life, contemporary to the living individuals of this century.

The theme approached in The Book of Whispers gives the history the chance to penetrate the literary environment that is by far larger and easier to disseminate at the population’s level of interest. In other words, Varujan Vosganian uses the literary mechanisms for revealing certain events that are not distant in time, but counterfeited in the dirty game of the political and social powers that shared the interest in certain regions of south-eastern Europe. By the force exercised by the author’s narration, the history is given the consistence of a perfect literary work that belongs to the register of the memorial chronicle.

The descriptions of places, people, events and traditions are the fundamental ingredients of The Book of Whispers. In fact they all are the whispers of the memories from a childhood that faced huge tragic performance. Linked to one another, Varujan Vosganian’s memories, which root into his childhood, form his saddest connection to the past. The sadness gets well defined concomitantly with the narrator’s maturation and with the decoding of those fragments of memory.

Even if the participation to the events evoked in the book is not a direct one, it is sufficient to build the mirrored image of some episodes that are terribly sad and regrettable.

Throughout the book, death is given the characteristics of a main protagonist, disguised in all the opportunities to knee a nation. Death suppresses everything; it is a universal presence, the setting, the front stage, the climax and the denouement. The reason to die goes beyond the reason to live and becomes the macabre mechanism of the whole evocation.

It is sad to possess so much knowledge about death and to be conscious of the multitude of ways to die. The seven circles of the death to which the author allocated a large part of the book are in fact the illustration of large areas of extermination. Gradually they mark the futile struggle of the people who were to face the death. The depressing resignation, the despair, the risky impulse, the stifled rebellion, the raving, the endured coldness or the famine – they all gathered to form the struggle for survival but led to the final stage of life.

The characters in The Book of Whispers are constructed based on a distinct pattern: the physical details are ascribed only in the case they can reveal a moral feature; therefore the heroes are mainly the correspondent of some people overwhelmed with fear and injustice. The presence of a character resides mainly in the thoughts, feelings and terrors driven onto the stage of events.

When between two narrative paragraphs, the refrains consist of a charming depiction of domestic life customs that animate the family or community environment and of Armenian traditions that were transferred on the Romanian territory. In this way we learn the criteria of peaceful, wise and immaculate living; we also learn the significance and reason of a cup of coffee, of fruits and spices.

It is obvious also that, while on Romanian land, Armenians were involved in the events that crossed Romania at that time. At certain points in their life, they managed to reach a decent standard of living and feel at home in Romania. The Armenians here show a strong attachment to the places in which they remained and set up a family. These could be the arguments for the beautiful and affectionate descriptions of Craiova and Focșani that are added to the narrative content. These must be also the arguments this nation had for their stability in our country.

Of Armenian origins, Varujan Vosganian certainly gives the most valuable present to the Armenian community in Romania and abroad: a book that was meant to complete the pages of a history imbued with sadness and cruelty. Varujan Vosganian attached to this history its deserved part of truth, placed in a sort of discordance with what had been probably already written by the people who invaded Armenia.

The author decodes the stifled sorrows of the Armenian population, wipes the tears and glorifies the memory of the innocent martyrs into which the history of the last century roots. The most beautiful thing is that the grace of all these overtakes the literary grace and finds the path towards the evocation of sad but glorious experiences.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

A Comprehensive View on the

World of Whispers

After years the Armenian genocide remained, as one of the voices with the largest resonance in this world says, “the worst crime of the World War the First” (Theodore Roosevelt).

Sometimes the life gets crowded with all the pains in the world and the sins of the mankind are put in the store of a sole nation. Sometimes the time is so harsh that life becomes a daily burden that weights heavier and heavier on a nation’s shoulders.

History abounds with such moments of national exhaustion and the more recent the examples of injustice and national crimes are, the less understanding is left to us. If this world is ruled by a God, we take the risk and say that not everybody stays in His sight. Or, if we leave aside the search for the justice in the territory of the divine force, we find out that the worst enemies of the people are the people themselves, on a battlefield that stretches forever.

The recent history was shaken drastically by moments of injustice and abominable crimes and when the people lost the control on the number of those crimes, the history recorded them as genocide. The most prominent genocide is the one related to the World War II, but this does not mean that these dimensions of terror did not exist before or after this one. The difference between this one and the others could stay in the worldwide recognition, even if it is hard to accept the criteria of a classification that has in view the extermination of a nation.

The Book of Whispers is an invitation to unconditioned acceptance of the history. It is an appeal to the awareness of the fundamental values of the mankind and the obstacles met in recognizing and preserving them. The novel is almost a debate on the right to be born, to have a life and to die according the God’s laws. There were leaders in the twenty century history who discredited the Divinity by undermining His force; they empowered themselves with an unimaginable authority whose ruling mechanisms were intended to dismantle the order of the world.

To stay in the way of such destructive personalities was the equivalence to an unavoidable danger. Armenia existed in a place crossed by the ambitions of the neighbouring powers. It represented the stake of the territories reshaping process that marks the first two decades of the twenty century.

The genocide whose recognition was the subject also of the most recent years is the Armenian one and it was part of the World War I. By far, it represents the most atrocious component of this world war. Tens of years had to pass until a right sentence was given to a crime against a whole nation, even if the number of one million and a half victims could entitle anyone to name it genocide.

The whispers were contemporary with these atrocities; the loud noise of the battlefields was counterbalanced by the low voices remained at home, of the people terrified by the expected consequences. The deportation of the Armenians was an extrapolated desire to reconfigure the world in the detriment of the peaceful nations.

For centuries, the literature served the truth and removed the dust of oblivion off the most important books about the world history. More than that, there are writers who sometimes proved more passion and more talent to assess the historical events than a historian. In their joint effort the historians and the writers managed to reveal the past and facilitate the wide disclosure of its events. It is hard to learn to which quest they answer first.

The Book of Whispers is novel that speaks about the Armenians’ exodus and about the crimes endured at the beginning of the last century; it also speaks about the years that followed in which Armenians and Romanians shared almost the same destiny after the instauration of the communist regime in our country. Even now, when the barriers of the censorship are abolished, there are not many voices who speak up the truth of the past or many hands busy with the writing of these truths down on the white sheets of papers.

Varujan Vosganian is one of the messengers of a history whose echo was transmitted to him from an early age. First, his observation was curios, mute and deprived of too much meaning. In time, he got used to decoding the significances and then stepped forward, from meditation to writing, taking the decision to record the findings and offer them to the generations to come, unaltered in terms of content but stylized. This was the way to The Book of Whispers. It took long not because of the heavy dust deposited on memories or documents, but because the writer had to wait for the ripe words. The concept of this literary project resides in a duty of honour addressed to the memory of his grandparents, especially to Garabet Vosganian, who marked his childhood with good examples of life and who trained his mind and soul for the coming adulthood and for the big responsibilities of life. This book brings to front the troubled background of the yearly years of the twentieth century, whose protagonists are living now again in our mind, as if revived for a second life, hopefully better and safer.

The Book of Whispers tells us about the victimization of a nation in the context of the recent history, organically linked to the tumultuous political and social movements whose climax the Armenian genocide was. In this novel the historical background is extremely important since it brings sufficient ingredients that complete the characters’ features and impose the sequence of events rendered in details.

The title of the book is metaphorical; the whispers are those words that were uttered out of a total disagreement against a political system and out of a conscious disapproval of the propagated injustice, but at a tonality that made the words remain within a small community or family of Armenians. If uttered loudly, the echo of these words could have brought serious consequences at a time when even the unuttered thoughts seemed to be penalized. The whispers are mainly associated with discreet news and secrets that were disseminated unofficially within the Armenians and that kept its members informed about strategic events. At certain moment also a radio could whisper, when it became a single source of censured information. The whispers create also the effect of mutual closeness, reciprocal trust and protection. The author felt from an early age that there was a sort of mystery around them, that they were important and had to be kept secret. He had to grow up to decode them and thus The Book of Whispers is a kind of key to the disclosure of these whispered words. The whispers were a mixture of courage and precaution about which even the children were aware.

The Armenians had a whispered existence that questioned also its presence on the world map. The powers of this world wanted to take it out of the people’s mind and retrieve its connotation from all the languages spoken worldwide. At any price, Armenia was destined to disappear for good. Then, the whispers represented a revolt, a low voice that was meant to awake the spirit and call for opposition. The whispers are symbolic and stand for the courage to think and speak up at a time when all the walls had ears to hear and eyes to watch. The whispers from grandfather’s lips were also the later call for writing addressed to the author when still a child. In fact, the author’s wish to build this novel roots in the memories about those slight movements of lips. Later the author learned that those whispers were hiding the screams of the world and the revolts of the spirit.

To talk about the ones who died meant also to whisper. The death was omnipresent but to make it public or explain it was beyond concept in those years. Now we have the impression that the dead people were finally covered by a mixture of ground and whispers, in order to bury them deeper and leave no trace of their passing through life. The whispers could be seen also as a respect for silence; Armenians were unwilling to unleash a war or trouble the world with the loud noise of the weapons.

Another reference to whispers emanates a sort of comic situations and now I have in mind the secret meetings in the Seferian’s tomb, especially the one that occasioned the discussions about Kennedy’s assassination. I consider them comic because they tried to reproduce a religious atmosphere, going together into a tomb that had never been a real tomb, for making suppositions and for trying to find the answers to an imperious question: What shall we do?, as if they were the right persons to take an attitude and resolve the mystery of that crime that happened to remain unsolved even today.

A smile comes on our lips also when we are told about the famous dream or hope of being rescued by the Americans, as if an invasion from another direction could save a nation from disappearance.

After debates, doubts, hopes and curious auditions in front of a radio device, the priest, whose presence was always necessary on such moments, took out the censer for spreading the smoke of frankincense around, for providing to any occasional onlooker the good impression that they had just finished a religious ritual.

We can find out more about the characteristics of the Armenian people from the protagonists of this novel. Our first looks fall on the author’s family and their close acquaintances. We shall analyse them on the grounds of their role in the narrated story. Some are vital for the life and survival of the book over years, being the engine of the narrator’s determination to write. Others fill the narration with symbols, with details that complete the sceneries or represent the personification of certain human values. The common feature is their naturalness and affective participation to the community life.

In order to understand and motivate the presence of the characters of the novel, it is important to analyse the correspondence between them, as individuals, and their Armenian community, Romanians, nature, political suppression, war, traditions, professions, religion, life and death. All together form a large scene onto which the heroes unfold their performance.

The good relation between the individuals and their community is the key of survival, especially when in the blow of a wind of massive changes and oppressions. The community is the vivid environment that preserves the customs, traditions and habits of the nation and that creates the atmosphere of a native background.

More than that, they were assimilated by the Romanian communities, borrowing from them recipes to organize their life and offering in exchange their experience of long-time travellers across this part of the world. Together they shared the tumult of the turn-of-the-century years.

The heroes of the novel are mainly connected to the genocide recorded in 1915 – 1918 that was, without reason, denied by many nations of this world. In this case, the word genocide caused much debate and was hardly accepted and recognized by other nations, especially because after several decades Europe was the core of cruellest world war, whose acts of genocide provoked the loudest echoes worldwide. A pain is usually forgotten when is muffled by a much stronger pain.

The description made by the narrator is a mixture of young and mature perceptions; he is the distant observer whose impressions deposit in time, party sustained by deep involuntary and voluntary meditations and studies. The narrator mentions his presence only as a testimony addressed

to the veracity of the related actions. His view was focused especially on the fragments of life that bear a special symbol and add value to the evoked facts of life. The narrator is not quite a genuine omniscient writer, even if placed outside the story and with a wide angle of perception, especially because some actions remained unknown after years, even in the secret archives of the countries. Then, a sort of subjectivity is motivated by the narrator’s young age at the time of his first contact with these realities.

The characters in The Book of Whispers are the centre of the narrative universe; they make the book exist in our mind and soul concomitantly, imprinting to us the desire to investigate their participation to the cruel episodes of the first decades of the last century. The time, the feelings and the happenings spin around them, polishing their existence. They experience a gradual estrangement from a peaceful life and most of them lose the coordinates of their reason to live on.

The novel is a selection of symbolic characters. If not members of the narrator’s family, they come at least in contact with them, adding significance to the happening or place with which they get in contact.

The opening chapter familiarizes the readers with the narrator’s family, the grandparents Setrak Melichian and Garabet Vosganian. More or less, they are a permanent presence throughout the novel, as a tribute addressed to them and as probation of the author’s respect and appreciation. The place of his childhood, Focşani, emanates a sort of melancholy; he still has fresh memories about the place in which he lived, about the quiet days in an almost inert peaceful town. He also recalls the world of aromas that is, in his vision, as diverse as a real world. His senses were profoundly exercised by the multitude of scents: of the warm dough, fruit, rooms, books, coffee.

Varujan Vosganian’s childhood was also the multicoloured scene of a daily uproar; he still keeps, in front of his eyes, the images of a working day, when the streets of the town were frenetically animated by the local traders. There were small shops with a large variety of products, but the most emphasized presence is the one of the ambulant seller of blancmange.

These early memories were dislocated by the things witnessed later, during the first years after the instauration of the communist administration. The shops were closed; the ones that resisted had to change their names into others that made no reference to the owner’s name anymore; some goods were confiscated. The Armenians were deprived of their means of living and the charm of their residence places vanished for good.

The family is perceived as a territory of the first grades of evolution and education and the right place for developing the first visions on life. Without being the right time for accumulating material values, those years spent close to his grandparents and parents facilitated the first contacts with the books, even sooner than possessing the ability to read, understand and appreciate their value. The smell of the books awaken his first acknowledgment that he stays in the near of a mountain of knowledge, science and art. We were also told about the privilege of belonging to a family with a high respect for books, against the rest of the urban community who was deprived of these advantages.

Education played an important role in his family. In the first pages of the novel we learn that his grant grandfather, David Melichenian, was educated in Constantinople, at Robert Collège. He was writing poems and had a calligraphic handwriting. Garabet, his grandfather, had a cupboard with books and knew the Latin, Greek, Arab and Cyrillic alphabets.

A cruel episode tells us about a massacre of the books and, if we extrapolate its meaning, we can call it a massacre of the spirit. A string of the Armenian nation was broken at that time, when the books was gathered, pushed by boots and finally burned in public. It took many hours over the night; it was perhaps an unforgettable night when people tried to sleep at the light of the burning books, eclipsing the light of the moon.

The childhood was also a chance to contemplate the nature, to understand and respect it. The narrator detected a strong correspondence between the fruit of the nature and a series of facts of life and feelings. Chapter six tells us about the feeling of having been given the good fate for loving the fruit, under the kind protection of a magus, Harutiun Fringhian. Garabet, his grandfather, made a sentimental account on the fruit of their domestic customs: the apricot tree or the pomegranate to which he ascribes meaningful senses. Their taste or colours complete the peaceful evening hours or the moments of respite enjoyed together with the other members of the family.

We learn that the orange apricot offered its colour to the Armenian flag, as a background of the national symbols and, in his grandfather’s opinion, to love the apricot tree was similar to loving the country. This motivates the pride of possessing an apricot tree in the yard, especially at that time. Beyond that, Garabet Vosganian thought that its colour gives proofs about their presence in this world and that it can be a sign for the ones who were wandering in this world in search for Armenian compatriots.

The recollection of the smells makes the author think much of his childhood, too. Each corner of the house had its own smell and the kitchen was an inviting place for him. Now his words are his gratitude for the pleasant moments that accompanied him in his early years. The warm dough prepared by his grandmother tickled his nostrils and familiarized him with the sweet atmosphere of a warm and cosy home.

Some smells remind him of the books; before being fascinated by their content, the books were an odorous presence in his near. They looked full of life and made promises for an unlimited love for knowledge. His bookcase was crowded with books written in different languages as if each language has its special version of the universal truth. The grandfather Garabet could read them all and made the impression that he could learn the rest of the languages of the world out of a sincere love for science and culture.

The childhood universe smelled mainly of coffee. The novel describes almost a ritual or a ceremony of the coffee time. It consisted of selected moments of pleasure, from roasting to grinding, that involved the participation of each member of the family. To boil it or to drink it was similar to unleashing the spirit. Wise words used to accompany a cup of coffee in those days and the grandfather Garabet proved to be one of the wisest. To stay in front of a cup o coffee meant to stop the time from passing and to feel that the whole life was hanging at those moments of peace.

Their life had also spots of silence and beauty, joined to the moments of respite between two episodes of fear or terror. Those moments talk, for instance, about a peaceful afternoon in the company of a cup of coffee or about the sound of an instrument.

Then the fruit seems to wear the crown of the Armenian symbolism. The exploration of the fruit is a search into the human soul. Thus, Varujan Vosganian takes these gifts of the nature for a small universe that is vital for a full understanding of the life. Its tiny constituents are smaller fruit, the “home-fruit”, like nuts, walnuts, almonds and pistachio nuts. The memories about them are relevant for learning the weight of the fruit in the day-to-day order within an Armenian community. First of all, all these represent a heritage of customs from their predecessors. The fruit is the present remains of the past that exemplify the safe resources for living. The fruit was food and delight at the same time, feeding both physical and rational needs.

The Armenians have their own coordinates that distinguish them from other nations and give singular features to them. These features reveal the entire past route of their existence and the substance of their mentality. From the physical point of view, the Armenians have distinct physiognomy: slightly dark complexion, dark hair and dark eyes. We can extend physical details into some character features and state that the Armenians are robust people. Each nation is the sum of its predecessor’s typology and consists of a bundle of fundamental characteristics. The historical events expose the nations to a drastic process of characters modelling that surpasses the effects the domestic environment could exercise on the human being. First of all, as part of their nation or community, people undergo a strict subordination to the historical events that shake their life, irrespective of their dimensions: within or outside the bounds of their native territory.

A series of other features put the Armenians in a cone of singularity. Besides the passages dedicated to nature and to several elements that derive from it, the book approaches the connotations of several other things that furnish diversity to the Armenians’ life, in opposition with their simplicity and helplessness. The music and the instruments, even the singing, are converted into the courage of facing the cruel life. The love for the ordered and suave sounds surpasses the conviction to silence and the fear to speak up. The love for music is the proof of an assimilated education. Any simple judgement could justify the author’s present interest in music and admiration for its world of sounds. The music is a divine gift or the divinity itself that can heal the deep wounds. Sometimes the dryness of the life was removed by a fountain of sounds.

His grandfather used to play the violin. The moments chosen for such incursions into the music reside in the solitude of his soul and in a desire to shake the burdens off the shoulders of the present time. We are told about his capacity to interpret the scores and give musical instructions to Mantu, an indispensable presence at a funeral convoy, in charge with leading the funeral brass band. We see in him an instructor and a pretender to a rigorous musical discipline. The funny thing is that Garabet exhibits his knowledge in front of a gypsy who had always followed the sense of his ears.

Then, the passion for music and the passion for colours happen to share the same soul. Painting was another shelter from the insignificance of an ordinary day. There were moments when Garabet was found in front of a canvas on which he had painted straight or curved lines. Each was connected to a state of mind or to his present mood. In his opinion, everybody and everything could be described by colours.

Large paragraphs in the novel draw the readers’ attention to the consistent significance of the religious life within the Armenian people. The church was the spiritual ruler of their minds and souls and a home of the highest hopes in a better life and world.

We are told that Focșani had two Armenian churches, proving the permanence of this community in the Romanian little town. A church is always built in a place where a community becomes stationary and where it is much desire to raise a family. Their specific element is the large yard around it that offered a large room for attending the religious ceremonies.

A world parallel to these illustrations of life is the one of the photographs. It has a certain consistency since they are images, proofs and documents at the same time. Some photographs mentioned in the novel can develop a story, can whisper about the past or mark an important event. There are two kinds of photographs here: some can stay in full light and some must stay in secret places. The later ones are associated to whispers and it is hard to watch and talk about them at the same time. Some show the common places and people and some the details that could incriminate political regimes, politicians, laws and political practices. They divide the world into two parts: known and unknown.

The first photographs mentioned in the novel were the ones that any old family used to have at that time: a picture of the whole family, from grandparents to grandchildren. Their reason was to keep the memory of a life spent together, at least for a very short time. The photograph recorded their presence together, against all the events that were to come and separate them for ever.

The photographs were silent messages sent beyond borders; the soldiers wanted to immortalize a moment of their life and send it to the beloved ones as proof that their blood was still warm and flowing through their veins. At that time it was hard to anticipate for how long this blood continued to sustain a life.

One of the photographs mentioned in the novel has a dramatic sense and represents a valuable testimony of the crimes whose victims also the Romanians were. This photograph presents an incontestable personality: Nicolae Iorga. The motivation of its inclusion among the lines of this novel is known: Iorga condemned the genocide against Armenians and sustained their effort to rehabilitate their presence in this world. To possess a photograph of this kind or to know about its existence was considered a crime committed against the political system. In our book, we learn that the man who made that photograph was punished for such a crime. The trial, if it had ever existed, was unjust and the sentence was meant to punish an example of disobedience and boldness.

The photographs in the novel are not speechless; added to the other elements of the novel, they round the whispered history.

After all, The Book of Whispers is a triumph of the whispers themselves and the end result of the interpretation of a history drowned in tears.

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The novel stays mainly within the territory of our country, within the author’s area of observation, and goes further only for drawing the routes through the history tried by his predecessors and the ways of the convoys of death, as a climax of a terrifying process of extermination.

It consists of twelve chapters that draw the dramatic progress of events, without following strictly a timeline. Time never imposes restrictions; the events captured did not unfold under the author’s eyes, partly being the restoration of his grandparents’ and parents’ memories. Some events had such a big resonance that gave the impression of exceeding their time and becoming eternal significations of life and death.

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The Old Armenian Church in Focşani

The first chapter reveals the town of a childhood: the author was living in Focsani, in the heart of his family and of the Armenian community. The description of the town renders authentic fragments cut off from the childhood memory assorted with the mature account of that place and time.

The picture of a child surrounded by white pages of paper is, in fact, a guarantee that the novel about to unfold is the fulfilment of a respected duty of honour and soul.

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The chapter two is an introspective comeback in time that tells us about the Armenians’ trajectory. Before being forced to leave their land and survive in other places in this world, the Armenians were tireless travellers busy with commercial activities. They were supplying the European countries with coffee, halva, spices, rice or pepper and bringing back wine, honey or cloths.

The protagonists of the narrated story are the victims of a wave of dramatic political changes in the world. The large-scale events animate real dramas within the Armenian community wherever they live and impose constraints of any kind.

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The chapter three has three big dimensions. The first one is a picture of the living place at the time when the narrator was a child. Indirectly he was involved in the secret meetings held by the Armenian members in the Seferian’s tomb. Thus he witnessed the permanent care of the local Armenians about the political decisions or happenings in this world.

Then the readers’ attention is drawn by the local burial ritual that places death at a very important position in the organization of the community life. We are told about the drastic change of interest in a dead man, after having been considered to have a banal existence. Death crowned the people and the Armenians of that place seemed to participate to a pleasant ceremony than to a sad one. This usually happens to people whose life was a chain of hard trials; for them death represents the escape or the freedom promised by the good heaven.

The ultimate component of this chapter is a historical plane. The Soviet Union is under a vast process of territorial distribution of forces, spreading terror across the Europe. The chapter includes also Stalin’s name and connotation, as a symbol of the most terrifying episode in the recent history of the Soviet Union.

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Chapter four is a picture of the year 1958, a bas-relief with the most important personalities whose careers pay tribute to this year and who are the representatives of the artistic, sports, political or economical fields. The information given is the result of the radiography of the entire world, with its positive and negative influence on peoples from everywhere. Then, the readers’ attention is directed to a narrower place whose main hero is general Dro, the legendary public figure whose memory will be honoured forever within the Armenian community. His is described like a statue in motion, being ascribed the pride of a victorious warrior and the fret of a character who was dreaming of important and irreversible changes in the favour of his nation.

The chapter is a story of high aspiration and low disappointments. General Dro is a complex of Armenian features: patriot, daring, open to sacrifice and able to survive any decline of his life.

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A different typology was embodied by Misak Torlakian in the fifth chapter. Succinctly, this part of the novel follows the evolution of a young boy at a time of tribulation. He could not have a natural trajectory because he experienced traumatic events from a child. He made a pact with the devil, choosing the company of the guns and dangers.

This chapter tells us about the sacrificed childhood. Misak Torlakian follows his dreams of rebellion under a continuous process of dehumanization: he becomes fully insensitive in the presence of blood or death.

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The main character of the chapter six is Hartin Fringhian. There are three hypostases that are projected on him: the professional ascension, the forced obedience to the regime of nationalization and the professional decline. His will loses gradually its importance and utility, concomitantly with the loss of power that once had been in the hand of the private sector of the national economy. He was a hard working character whose efforts were rewarded with the possession of several factories for sugar production, in Chitila, Timişoara and Arad. As any other owner of big properties at that time, he was affected the most by the legislation imposed by the new political regime organized by communists.

The chapter is the echo of a dream, of useless efforts and aspirations, of injustice and abuse. Hartin Fringhian identifies himself by the possession of the will whose value had been annulled by the new parvenus empowered to reorganize the civil society.

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The chapter seven impregnates the readers’ mind with a symbolic death. The national poet Daniel Varujan was arrested on the 24^th of April and then killed after being hit with stones. When a national poet dies, the consciousness of that nation gets amputated. The symbolic sign of spiritual freedom is dethroned and opens the free way to the chaos. As always happens with such meaningful losses, Daniel Varujan’s death is accompanied by a legend saying that the poet is still alive. Such legends are meant to keep the ideal alive and avoid the subjugation of the thoughts of freedom and justice.

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The genocide episode from the chapter eight occasions the most dramatic contact between readers and history. The impact is huge and stigmatizes the readers. It is the chapter that definitely involved many hours of search and documentation and demonstrated strength of character for enduring the effects of these findings. At the end of these investigations one inevitably learns the price of the life and appreciates its gifts.

Step by step, the author accompanies the readers along the route of the death: Mamura, Islahiye, Bab, Meskene, Dipsi, Rakka, Deir-Ez-Zor. Gradually the Armenians became less and less in number, being the victims of all the possible forms of the death, some of them initiating a real competition with our imagination. For the first time the reader can experience the pain caused by the written words. These words release feelings of revolt. The convoys gathered people from different places like Trabizonda, Anatolia, Izmid, Smirna, and from other adjacent regions. The fear, the unfriendly temperatures, the lack of any source of food, the continuous physical lassitude opened the doors to death. Any step on that way was diminishing their strengths. Their minds were so distorted that life and death became one single notion; deprived of the power to select one of the two, they moved on their moribund bodies towards a last step that was certainly the synonym of death. The crossed territories became carpeted with the dead bodies; the smells differed from one dead man to another, depending on the last circumstance of his fate.

The detailed description of the seven circles of the death is a daring attempt to depict the environment of an extremely tragic passage through history, which captured the most terrifying episodes of the extermination of the human being. It is formed of filigree-like reports on any little place crossed by the dying convoys.

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Chapter nine tells us about Levon Zohrab who became the owner of the maps and who had the mission to hide them from the Security. The maps, showing the place of Armenian territories in this world, were incrimination proofs against the new rulers of this world. Only seldom was a country so unstable on a map, like a spot of liquid on an unbalanced plate. The map was the symbol of a victorious right to exist and to being recognized as nation.

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Chapter ten is a description of the year of the falling teardrops, 1923. Misak Torlakian experienced the deepest despair of his life and the most helpless outburst.  His first cry was observed and kept secret by Garabet Vosganian; the second was probably noticed in public, but it remained the prisoner of his heart. In search for his brother Calust, once lost in the darkness of the time, between the children brought for being given back to their relatives, Misak Torlakian kneeled down in despondency.

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Chapter eleven described a burial ritual; a symbolic shrine was filled with the most representative objects that belonged to the protagonists of the novel and that motivate their presence in the memory of the writer. The shrine-box was meant to close for ever the desperate memories about the past, the leitmotiv-question “What shall we do now”, the boots of the people who had were forced to move on barefoot, towards death, the map of the disputed border lines, the stamp that had been used to officialise the people position in the country, a will whose value had been lost, the rosaries made from olive kernels, the warm light from a pair of palms, the powder of the coffee, a woman’s dress, totally useless when in mourning. The funeral ceremony finished by throwing ground over all these things, taking them away from the eyes of those people, but leaving untouched in their memory.

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The chapter twelve tells us the story of the little wooden horse that was claimed by the child and by the adults, as well. The toy was a way to send messages over the borders of the country. Here, at the destination point, it was converted into essential words: the beloved ones, who had left the country years before, were still alive. The child had to wait for the years to pass in order to understand its meaning and now, through The Book of Whispers, he elucidates the contrasting functions of this wooden horse.

The chapter twelve is also the reconciliation with the life and death; Garabet Vosganian dies prepared for this final departure, if compared with the other characters of the book to whom the death saved no moment of preparation. They were either too young for decoding the sense of the death, or taken by surprise by unimaginable acts of terror.

By Garabet’s disappearance from this world, the narrative circle becomes complete. To read the book means to enter the world of whispers; to stay outside means to disagree in full ignorance that the life we are living today was born from a time stained with blood and most probably we shall never find the meaning of it.

This is the end of the twelve whispers and the end of the twelve acts of unfettering of mind. The book is indeed a collection of whispers transcribed in a literary register. It induces the sensation that the words do whisper and accompany the purling of our lecture. After having read it, the reader experiences the sensation that he becomes the owner of these words and that his mind embraces an exquisite treasure of thoughts.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

 

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The Impact of the Book at National and International Level

 

The Book of Whispers filled a gap in the Romanian literature. I do not know whether its inexistence had been previously observed or felt before publication, but certainly, without it, we would have felt now poorer.

The interest in this novel, marked differently according to the readers’ position in the literary society, talks about the avidity for truth that has been for a long time repressed. It gives an answer to many personal quests and the sensation that, at the spiritual level, the justice was made. The readers were given the appropriate author and the author was given the appropriate readers, completing a relationship that serves the permanence of the art among arts.

Consisting partly of historical details, the novel fills several blanks and gives linearity to the first decades of the past century that, out of some intolerable reasons, were reduced to silence.

Then, the fiction is the connection particles of the literary product that extends the access to the book. There is also a perfect balance between the fictional elements that answer the readers’ expectation and the ones that represent the author’s decision to be a complex write.

The echo of this literary accomplishment saw no barrier in the national borders and aroused a resonance in a universal consciousness. The novel has been welcomed in Italy (translated by Anita Natascia Bernacchia) and Spain (translated by Joaquin Garrigos), after a series of successful presentations to the Romanian public. The critics encountered a new challenge: to express their opinion and literary assessment on a type of topic without correspondence in the Romanian literature. It is for the first time when a representative of the Armenian community in Romania x-rays the progressive existence of these people on the territories of our country, emphasising the crucial moments of their lives.

The most dramatic descriptions in the novel open the reader’s eyes for viewing unimaginable things; it is for the first time when we have the chance to understand a nation, its singular features and particularities.

The novel has two antithetic lines of reference: the charm of the domestic life of the peaceful time and the ill-fated hardship of the war. There are passages for which the readers must keep their emotions in chains, after having inhaled the scent of the most silent moments of respite in front of several family sceneries.

The novel leaves in our heart the resonance of the author’s love for his beloved family and the compassion for the heavy pains endured by the Armenians; for this reason, the novel is coveted by readers and will conquest the interest of the generations to come.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

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The Power of the

Written Words

The eyes are the doors through which the images are converted into acts of understanding. A written word is a word carved in stone, against the passage of the time, against tempests of all kinds.

To write a book about history means to undo that consumed time and re-launch the echo of the evoked events. To read it means to show gratitude to the writer. The efforts might seem unequal, if we took the gratitude for a simple state of mind. But this means more that this unanimated condition of a person. The gratitude means to acknowledge the creativity, the strength of mind, the effort and the pleasure to write. It also means to assimilate the book as being the property of your own heart, to love it and to respect it.

The Book of Whispers inspired much gratitude, which is the proof that its words will never die. The novel itself makes an account on the day when the Armenian books were burned in public. They may have burned, but their words continued to stay on the lips of the readers.

The written words that belong to the Armenian history lived on, with or without loud resonance. In time, they distorted the strong arguments of the enemies or reinforced the good will of the parties that sided with this victimized nation.

The chance belongs now to The Book of Whispers; its words facilitate the readers’ passage through history without resorting to history books.

 

A Book of Feelings 

 

There is no doubt that the book is an abundance of feelings. Any whisper is connected to a state of soul. The feelings are partly the narrative substance, a landscape of introspections into the human heart. In this novel, the feelings joined the smile, the teardrop, the eyes opened with fear or the mouth closed with terror.

First, we encounter the feelings of a child, too young to alternate to negative and too bright for getting mixed with the darkness of the real life. The author was a fortunate child, living within the protective area of his family. In the course of the book we shall never find such privileged child and this fact built a strong antithesis between the worshiped and massacred childhood.

If the reference is made selectively, with a focus only on his position in the heart of his family, we can state that the early feelings of the author are cut off from the idyllic scenery of his living place. There is peace, silence, security and beauty. The adults’ intrusion alters it and awakes the curiosity and interest in the world full of mysteries and secrets whose slaves the adults were.

The contemplation of the natural background makes possible the birth of another beautiful feeling: the love for the nature, for its smells, colours and forms.

The first drops of love fall also on the white pieces of paper and on the book on the bookcase shelf. This is the love whose fate is to become a hard work, continuous effort for important personal achievements.

At the opposite side we find the mature feelings of the active protagonists of the novel. They all are a scale of implacable acts of living and a sequence of painful trails.

The spots of silence stay in the near of the resigned ones while the rebellion of the hearts resides in the battlefields of that time.

The novel is a gallery of terrifying explosion of feelings: fear, disappointment, abandonment of hope, despair or bitter resignation. It is worth mentioning that the novel did not become an apology of hatred or a revolt against God, in spite of all the hard trials endured by the people.

The description of the long passage through the seven circles of the death is the image of despondency. The vision on the death is overwhelming; the feelings described are in resonance with the feelings induced to the readers. The intensity gradation of the feelings depends on the time allocated to the meditation. The superficial reading could save much pain, but deprives the reader from an affective participation to it.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

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I address my true thanks to the author of this novel, Mr. Varujan Vosganian, who kindly offered me support in my literary attempt to create this magazine, who familiarized me with one of the most dramatic episodes in the recent history of mankind and who determined me to get rid of ignorance.

Mihaela Liliana Heleanu

 

 

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Table of Contents

 

 

                     Page

1. Cartea soaptelor, Capitolul patru                  1

 

2. The Book of Whispers, Chapter four (translation)             18

 

3. Translator’s Notes                        36

 

4. A Dialogue with the Writer                     36

 

5. The Portrait of the Author                     43

 

6. Varujan Vosganian – Curriculum Vitae               45

 

7. The Book of Whispers – Pages of Recognition of a Tragic Past         48

 

8. The Book of Whispers… Or the Whispered Echo of the Memories      49

 

9. A Comprehensive View on the World of Whispers            51

 

10. The Impact of the Book at National and International Level         64

 

11. The Power of the Written Words                  65

 

12. A Book of Feelings                        66

 

 

 

 

 

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Foto: Imagine de epoca – Statuia Bratianu din Piata Universitatii.