Aram Pachyan

WINNER

Within me I have neither a sea, nor an ocean, and I am closed to boundless expanses, I have neither the inclination nor the ambition to be in the sky or space. I love to watch the sky as I stand on the ground, I love to watch the stars from the roof of our house. Everyone should stay in their place, the sky should be the sky and the ground should be the ground. Within me I have neither a sea, nor an ocean, enough already, I am tired of my freedom, tired of cafés, clubs, soft chairs, honey-drenched pastries, salt sticks and jerky, meaningless troubles, and forced laughter. Enough! I need edges that will tear through my face, river banks that are located near each other, I need a crack, the sharp blow of an axe, a torrent, ruins, springtime mud, a piece of turf, the collision of snowy rocks, a narrow opening that I can approach, isolating myself, sitting for a few hours, simply looking, continuing to look and see the masquerade of the eruption separating the two shores. Within me I have neither a sea, nor an ocean, but I have found the place I must come to, my focus, which is a bubbling creek, a wobble of grape molasses along the ground, which existed in the past and still does, its course arrested by concrete and iron, then modified, flowing in a narrow line through the bowels of the city, writhing, boiling, silently bubbling. I have found it and I come to it at the end of the day, at its vein that still exists on Khanjyan Street, I park my car in front of the basalt stone block, step outside, stand at the edge of the block and look below. The Getar flows, its coils wrapped tightly, it has grown so narrow that it would fit comfortably in my fist; it is like a thin forearm, the pale breast of an adolescent. It flows slowly, as if someone had conspiratorially grabbed its leg, pulled at its hair, driven hooks into its tongue, not allowing it to live. This is not the Euphrates, nor the Tigris, the Seine, the Thames, the Danube, nor the Po. The Getar has no bloodline in common with the daughter of the ocean, the Styx that flows in the land of Hades. The gods have not taken any oaths on its waters. There are no emphatic proverbs about it, no books or odes. It is left out of all possible discussions, it is off the planet’s axis. The world does not know about it, it does not have the wondrous bridges crafted by the masters of Venice, where lovers exercise their tongues. One does not die from it, nor does one live for it. It is impossible to drown in it. Nobody loves it, its name is disgusting. Nobody writes its story, nobody adopts a law about it, nobody stages a protest for it, environmental activists are not arrested for its sake. Nobody forgets it because nobody remembers it. Nobody goes mad with joy upon hearing its name. Its waters do not inebriate anyone with their smell, no mature reeds stick out of it, nobody picks the flowers growing on strange mushrooms, nor the rotten thyme and wild mint, nobody is mesmerized by the buzzing of the bugs tasting dung. Nobody undresses by its banks or walks beneath its sun, nobody takes a picture with it, printing and framing the photograph, hanging it above their beds. There are no melodious birds, fuzzy creatures, or smiling butterflies around it. Nobody baptises their newborn with its waters, nor gives their cancer-inflicted child its waters to drink. So what if Jesus chose another river. I see him right there in the Getar’s waters, it is in those whirlpools of urine, those clumps, slime, terror, fear, the longing for life in the eyes of a dead half chicken, potato peelings, flaccid condoms, needles, rock moss, abundant magpie droppings, goat hooves, disgusting strands of hair stuck between the teeth of a comb, that stench, the rotting guts of a rat, threadbare rags, filthy soap water, shoes, sewage pipe spillage, mutilated lamb and rabbit skins, broken vodka and beer bottles, oil and paint cans, rubber car tyres, axles, animal bleating, vomit, greenery, jam, toilet paper, all the piss and shit that hung from the waters like snot, the chemical acids, piles of leaves, flowers cast away after a funeral, the lady’s scarf slithering like a snake, the black-and-white photograph rubbing against a rock, toys, the phlox flowers peeping out of cracks in the basalt, the abdomen bloated like a hot-air balloon, the pumpkin stem, the suffering, the coagulated blood of the slaughtered sheep that I see Jesus. He is there in the Getar, alive, he has things to do, because that filth-ridden river in my city is teeming with the genesis of life, the heartbeat of a promised paradise, the dream of a new melody. Jesus is spared the threat of unemployment for many years to come, there is as much work to do as one’s heart desires. Because it is the Getar that is the final reservoir of abundance and oblivion, the hag wheezing in agony, the toothless abandoned pensioner who makes only 30,000 drams, that shameless whore child fluttering in the spittle of the brothel, the tomb of rancour. Fucked a thousand times through every hole possible. Everyone has emptied whatever they could into you. Nobody feels sorry for you, nobody pities you, nobody cleans your pupils, the sprout that moans in that execration. They only clean themselves and whatever they have or have not, they vacate their stomachs and bladders, their what-have-you’s, their past, present and future, they fill you with their juices and fluids, their limbs, they offer you their half bananas, their cold coffees, their mouldy bread. How often have I passed by you and thrown into you whatever I no longer wanted to hold in my hand, a chewed apple, snot, construction waste, Davo’s dead dog, which we brought and handed over to your currents. How many times have I spat into you, scowling at you with disgust! How many times have I told my friends that I hate you, that you are the shallowest river in the world, the most meaningless of presences on the planet! And each time I am filled with unjustifiable anger at you and seek vengeance for your greyness, and I want to slaughter you, annihilate you. And now I come to you like the prodigal son, sitting on your rib seeing my salvation in your murky waters, my peace in your obscurity, the lymph of life still gurgles in your grime. You have neither morals nor sins. You are neither god nor human. You take me into your fold, I scream, spit in your waters, and yet you keep flowing. I swear at you and yet you keep flowing, I dump large stones on your wounds and yet you keep flowing. I slip and fall, my face, back, arms, and legs awash with blood, dropping into your filth, you keep flowing, I pull out a fleshy root and flail your waters with it as I laugh, but you keep flowing and flowing, taking my laughter, sweat, tears, my incompleteness, pain, ecstasy, suffering, madness, blood, salt, and stink. The Getar will not stop, the Getar will flow with the emotion of forty springs, flowing along the southwest of the city. Whether or not they cut off its course, it will flow. Whether or not they change its direction. The Getar will flow and scrape off the basalt spines, crushing any obstacles, erupting to return to the city all its love.