An Armenian Sketchbook (13 page)

Through its outward simplicity an ancient Armenian church shows that within its walls lives the God of shepherds, of beautiful young women, scholars, old crones, warriors, stonecutters—the God of all people.

You realize this the moment you see such a church from a distance. High on a mountain peak in the transparent air, it seems as simple as the thought of Newton, as young as if it had first appeared only yesterday and not fifteen hundred years ago, both humanly divine and divinely human. The church looks so simple and natural that you think a child could have put it together out of toy basalt blocks. I, an unbeliever, look at this church and think, “But perhaps God
does
exist. Surely his house can’t have been standing uninhabited for fifteen hundred years?”

Only a pure, childish faith could have helped people to build these churches, chapels, and monasteries.

These churches are perfect, but I came to feel that the Armenians who built these perfect churches were not Christians but pagans.

That was my impression. Nowhere—neither in town nor village—did I see any believers; what I saw were people carrying out rites. You don’t hear or see a believer; you sense them. In Armenia I did not once sense a believer. I saw many old men and women in the villages—and I never sensed the presence of faith in them.

There are many ruined pagan temples in Armenia, but there is not one pagan temple that has been preserved. Not one pagan temple has withstood the pressure of two millennia. But the spirit of paganism has withstood the millennia; it has survived. This spirit—like the spirit of Christianity elsewhere—is not to be sensed in words, prayers, or sermons. I sensed it in the way Armenians drink wine, eat meat, bake bread, and perform rites; I sensed it in the way they walk, sing, and laugh. I did not sense the spirit of Christianity, even though Armenian churches still look splendid while their pagan temples are all in ruins.

Some years ago an ancient pagan temple was discovered beneath the altar of the main cathedral in Echmiadzin.[
48
] Excavations uncovered a huge sacrificial altar carved out of a single basalt slab. It was a flat dish, with crude gutters to drain away the blood, and it was massive; it looked as if the most powerful of modern tanks or tractors would be unable to move it. In the stony dark of this underground chamber you still sense a spirit of ancient cruelty. What victims were brought here, to this dark stone? Whose blood flowed down these gutters? The intelligent and enlightened young monk who had secretly let us into this temple smiled knowingly. What remarkable symbolism: a Christian church growing up over a pagan temple. When we returned to the cathedral, a stout priest with very black eyes was standing before the altar, baptizing a baby. He was holding the Gospels in his left hand, and his aspergillum in his right hand, plunging it into a massive silver font and sprinkling the newborn with holy water. In a singsong voice, quickly and indistinctly, the priest was reading from the holy book. His feet were directly above the black sacrificial altar; the scowling vault of the pagan temple had become the pedestal of the Christian altar. It is at this altar, decorated with a great deal of gold and the image of the crucified God,[
49
] that Vazgen I, the supreme pastor of all Armenians, conducts the most solemn of services. Generations of Armenian catholicoi, their bodies now buried in marble tombs beside the main door, have officiated at services and glorified Christ, little knowing that a pagan sacrificial stone lay sullenly beneath their feet.

But the spirit of paganism neither died nor went underground. It lives on in Armenian villages, in drunken songs and stories from the past, in the skeptical wisdom of old men, in flare-ups of jealousy, in the folly of lovers, in the simple-hearted but piquant judgments of old women, in the worship of vine and peach, in a carnivorous loyalty to the knife that cuts the lamb, in a glass of good cheer and in the arms of a woman, in the folk wisdom that has gathered thousands of years of experience not from a sacred book but from the hardships of everyday life.

The spirit of paganism lives on in ordinary village houses—where you never see an icon, where there is no humility, where the old men drink a strong homemade grape vodka and a cognac that is chestnut-gold—and it reaches to the doors of God’s house. On feast days people bring sheep, cocks, and hens and slaughter the poor creatures by the church gate, to the glory of the Christian God. The yards of almost every church—both working churches and those that are now museums—are stained with the blood of sacrificial animals; they are strewn with down, feathers, and the heads of chickens. And then, not far from the church, the sacrificed animals are grilled or fried over coals; passersby are treated to sacrificial meat.

Paganism lives on even inside the churches, apparent in the crude materialism of the gifts offered to God by Armenian millionaires from America and elsewhere: massive pieces of gold, huge precious stones, silver baptismal fonts that weigh forty pounds or more.

The spirit of paganism lives on in books written on parchment a thousand years ago—books whose authors not only discuss the delights of love but also suggest that the earth may be a sphere and that the universe may be heliocentric. These books are written in the language of a people that has existed for thousands of years, that adopted Christianity six centuries before the Russians but preserved the memory of the wisdom, nobility, and goodness of pagan nations from long before the birth of Christ. This memory has freed Armenians from religious intolerance, from cruelty and fanaticism.

True goodness is alien to form and all that is merely formal. It does not seek reinforcement through dogma, nor is it concerned about images and rituals; true goodness exists where there is the heart of a good man. A kind act carried out by a pagan, an act of mercy performed by an atheist, a lack of rancor shown by someone who holds to another faith—all these, I believe, are triumphs for the Christian God of kindness. Therein lies his strength.

All this is true. But I repeat: There are many ways through which one can recognize that someone believes in God. It is not just a matter of words but also of tones of voice, of the construction of sentences, of the look in a person’s eyes, in their gait, in their manner of eating and drinking. Believers can be sensed—and I did not sense any in Armenia.

What I did see were people carrying out rites. I saw pagans in whose good and kind hearts lived a god of kindness.

We looked at the cathedral and at the offerings brought by millionaires from abroad. I was particularly struck by the improbably huge emeralds and rubies adorning the silver and gold vestments, by the weight of the precious bindings around the Gospels, by the crosses sprinkled with large diamonds.

The injustice of these splendid bindings was glaringly obvious—even to a child.

As we left the cathedral we saw the secretary to the catholicos; he was accompanying one of their frequent American guests. The secretary, a nondescript young man in a plain jacket, ushered his guest into a car—an Intourist Volga—and then came over to us.[
50
]

As always, I did not understand a word of the ensuing conversation in Armenian. For some reason it seemed entirely normal, rather than absurd, that a translator from Armenian should wait for the author he is translating to explain to him in Russian what has just been said in Armenian; I was, after all, a literary, not a literal, translator. Eventually Martirosyan explained that he had been asking the secretary to tell the catholicos about me and find out if he might be able to receive us.

We stood in the middle of the cathedral yard, waiting for an answer. I felt excited. Never in my life had I met a senior cleric, a patriarch. . . . And every first meeting is a source of excitement, whether with a new city, a new sea, or a person who is special in some new way. For me, of course, the catholicos was a new and special kind of person. But since people tend to be shy, and even ashamed of their natural excitement—as well as of many other simple and entirely natural feelings—I joked and laughed as we waited for the secretary to return, trying to impress on Martirosyan that I took meetings with church leaders entirely in my stride. As for Martirosyan, he was frowning; he too was agitated. Should Vazgen I refuse to see us, Martirosyan would be in an awkward position; it would look as if he had been boasting on the two occasions he told me how well he got on with the catholicos.

But then we saw the secretary coming out through the red arch between the cathedral yard and the patriarchal residence. In a monotonous murmur, he said that the catholicos was expecting us.

Martirosyan stopped frowning and started to smile; I stopped smiling and started to frown.

We walked through the arch and saw a large and pleasant garden. Amid the tall autumn flowers was a gazebo. I imagined the clergy gathering here in the evening, chatting away over their coffee. But I didn’t have time to imagine what they chatted about; we were already in the anteroom of the catholicos. I’d lost my sense of smell after my bout of flu, and so, unfortunately, it was only with my eyes that I was able to take in this room with its low ceiling, its walls hung with engravings, and its antique furniture that today’s young people, were they to inherit any of it, would at once want to replace with something more sleek and compact. And the room, no doubt, had a wonderful smell of cypress wood, incense, hot wax, and dried cornflowers. I was as certain of this as the boy in the Chekhov story had been certain that the suitcases of his uncle the general were brimful of gunpowder and bullets.[
51
] But I didn’t have time to ask whether the anteroom smelled of cypress wood; we were called in to speak to Vazgen I, the Catholicos of All Armenians.

His bright spacious study was full of beautiful and precious things—paintings and sumptuously published books. A stout man of about fifty, wearing a black silk robe, was sitting behind a huge desk piled high with manuscripts and books. His face was smiling; his kind dark eyes were smiling; his moist full lips were smiling from behind a salt-and-pepper beard. The simplicity of his robe was evidently a testimony not to his asceticism but to his sophistication.

We introduced ourselves, laughing and smiling. Martirosyan and I sat in chairs behind a small table placed at right angles to the large writing desk.

I probably laughed rather too loudly and smiled too exuberantly. There was no reason for me to seem so overjoyed.

A pale servant, dressed in a mouse-colored jacket and trousers, brought us small cups of coffee, delicate little token glasses of cognac, and a box of chocolates.

We watched in silence as the servant placed all this on the table. It may have seemed that it was because of the cognac and chocolates that I went on smiling so radiantly.

Standing not far from the catholicos was a monk in a black robe; his black pointed cowl covered most of his forehead. I had heard that many of the Echmiadzin monks are extraordinarily beautiful, but only now did I realize what male beauty can be. This monk was stunningly beautiful.

His beauty was not a false chocolate-box beauty; it was a demonic beauty. His shining amber eyes, his nose, lips, pale cheeks, and forehead formed an extraordinarily beautiful picture, but he looked haughty and proud. There was a sharp contradiction between his malevolent beauty and his pose of humility beside the catholicos’s armchair.

The catholicos raised his glass affably, said a few words, and took a small sip. I conscientiously downed my own. Martirosyan, the author I was translating into Russian, translated the patriarch’s words for me: He was glad to meet me and he drank to my good health.

We began to talk. I understood at once that I need not have become so agitated: The catholicos was in no way a new and remarkable kind of man for me. It would have been a new experience for me to be meeting a man of fanatical faith, a prophet, a religious leader whose inner life determined his every word, movement, and look. I had been alarmed at the thought of meeting someone who, after a single glance at an unbeliever like me, would divine how petty, vain, and worldly I am.

But I sensed nothing fanatical about the man I was talking to. He was intelligent, educated, and worldly. An enlightened worldliness was, in fact, his most striking quality.

We talked about literature. The catholicos told me that he not only read Dostoyevsky but that he had seriously studied him, that without knowing Dostoyevsky it is impossible to gain a serious and profound knowledge of the human soul. He said he had published a work on Dostoyevsky, but that he couldn’t, unfortunately, suggest I read it: It had been published in Romanian some years ago, when he was bishop of Bucharest.

The catholicos told me that the writer he loved most was Leo Tolstoy. I did not feel surprised. The Church had once pronounced an anathema against Tolstoy—but everything changes.

Then he began to speak about writers who have discussed Armenians and Armenian history. I realized that he had not read any of my books.

He asked me about my own impressions of Armenia. I said something about the beauty of the country’s ancient churches. I said I wanted books to be like these churches, simply made yet expressive, and that I would like God to be living in each book, as in a church.

But I do not think my words meant much to anyone except me. The catholicos listened with a gentle, indifferent smile. I looked at the monk standing beside his chair; he did not seem to be listening at all. Beneath his black robe I saw patterned nylon socks and fashionable brown suede slippers.

Then the catholicos and Martirosyan conversed in Armenian; I did not understand a word. But I think I understood something else. I understood that this was a conversation between intelligent, educated, and decent people who knew the ways of the world; it was a conversation between men who enjoyed a joke and who sincerely respected and admired each other. There was a rapport between these two men: this Party member in a fine suit, an art collector and wine connoisseur, with a pretty dacha and a deep knowledge of Armenian history—and this patriarch, a worldly and sophisticated figure with a European education and several telephones on his desk.