#55 - Pashinyan- The Other Side of the World

ՆԻԿՈԼ ՓԱՇԻՆՅԱՆ. ԵՐԿՐԻ ՀԱԿԱՌԱԿ ԿՈՂՄԸ
55. մոսիկի տակի
Պաուլայի հետ հանդիպումը լուրջ հանգրվան դարձավ իմ երկարատեւ ճանապարհորդության ընթացքում:

55. “Mosiki Taki”

The meeting with Paola became an important stage in my long journey. For the first time, temptation was standing before me, palpable, storming my soul. I remembered her, her thighs pressed together, her feet intertwined, and inside of me was growing a person with a desire – a desire to be the medium for all of this. And how beautiful is that, which is temptation. Otherwise it wouldn’t be temptation, but a sign which would read, “Stay Away. Danger.”

In my head the rhythms of Argentinean tango were still playing. That tune wouldn’t leave me, and beneath those sounds there waged an enormous battle, an enormous war: an impulse to pick up the phone and call her cabin, and an internal obstacle, “don’t do it.” How simple and easy everything seems, to just go, to just fall into the lap of oblivion, for a moment, for but a moment, to feel unforgettable sensations, then to return, and to leave. But is it possible to come back from there? A voice was saying to me, you will stay there, and someone else will come back. A voice was saying to me, you will be admitting that those values in which you believe are defenseless, frivolous. She may not even open the door for you, and you will just be a pitiful traitor. Even if she caressed you, even if she dedicated her body and soul to you, you will still be the same; you cannot return from there, you will stay there, and another will return in your place. Sleep brought a ceasefire to my war, and when I woke in the morning, our ship had already entered Tokyo’s Bay, where the sea was lost under the multitude of ships.

All of the passengers of our ship had come up on deck, and were watching Tokyo approach, stooped under smoke. I wanted to push Paolo’s existence into oblivion, but that isn’t so easy. “And what if she’s just blowing hot air,” I thought, remembering Cecil’s treachery. But what if Cecil was blowing hot air, and if I had ended up in the same room as her, maybe something else would have happened than what she had declared. But this you can’t know, no one knows, maybe Cecil doesn’t know, maybe Paola herself doesn’t know what would have happened afterwards, had I called her.

I was just going to leave ship directly from the pier, but I thought, is that a good idea? Won’t that be way of running away? I wanted to leave the ship with the feeling that I had won the war waging within me. On the other hand, I didn’t know how many days I would need to overcome these feelings, and whether I would even reach that point.

The appearance of Japanese police on the ship made my decision final: I had to leave the ship and get situated in a hotel in Tokyo today. And the police had come to document Bob’s murder, and to solve the problems tied to Felipe. This investigation, of course, was not under the authority of the Japanese police, and it would have to be done by the investigators coming from Argentina. But until their arrival, the Japanese police and the Captain, together, had to keep the situation under their control.

I left the ship without saying goodbye to anyone. I got in a taxi, and asked to be taken to the hotel, where I had made a reserved online. Tokyo was the largest city I had ever seen, although larger cities either don’t exist at all, or are few in number. Tokyo is one big stress; it is a city which collapses down around your head. My room was on the 20th floor of the hotel, where I waited, hunched over, for an earthquake. But after a short while, and having had a little whiskey, I relaxed and drew back the curtains; and there, were stone jungles, a beast of metal-glass-stone, which seemed to be devouring any vegetation growing in the cracks of the buildings. You get the feeling that nature is being strangled here, and is crying out for help. The streets of Tokyo are flooded, the roads are flooded with cars; streets, sidewalks and subways are flooded with pedestrians. It seems Tokyo has forgotten all human qualities, and has put the emphasis on one thing, and especially one thing, rushing. People are in a great hurry, are constantly late, they leave things unfinished, they can’t finish things. They are abandoned to the flood, to the human flood, which has become one large living conveyor belt, which rushes each person to their pre-assigned location, without asking the latter’s will. Here, everything is done to hasten the human course, even such that in many places sidewalks have been replaced by escalators, on which, regardless, people walk, people don’t make it, people rush. All the same, they will be late; all the same, they won’t make it; but all the same, they’re in a hurry, a great hurry. They don’t notice that the city is collapsing around their heads, that the advertising billboards are oppressing them; they don’t notice that the sky has disappeared from over their heads; they’re rushing, they are constantly rushing.

And I, alone in this enormous whirlpool and unrushed; I have nowhere to go in this whirlpool, that is, I have no reason to rush. But the current suffocates me, I cannot simply stand because it seems the current will pull me in as well; it seems to me that it is better to voluntarily rush along. I feel that I am at a dead end, I can’t get into the current, nor can I stand, just stand.

“People, where are you rushing to?” I suddenly say. My voice comes out softly, no one hears me.

“People, where are you rushing to?” I say a little louder. The current swirls.

“People, where are you rushing to?” I say loudly. People don’t have the time to listen.

“People, where are you rushing to?” I yell. Just at that moment, someone who had fallen into the current, a naked, completely naked man, passes by me. People are rushing – his nudity doesn’t surprise a single person. And I understand that I am yelling in vain, that I will not be rewarded with a single response; this is Tokyo’s working neighborhood.

“Are you Armenian, brother?” I hear suddenly from over my shoulder. This is the most unexpected and possibly, in this case, the most undesired response. There’s no use denying it, since it’s almost possible that a person of a different nationality would be able to enunciate the phrase, People, where are you rushing to, with such clarity.

“I am Armenian,” I say like a criminal caught in the act, and turn toward the inquirer. In front of me is standing a young man, about 35 years old, his hair cut short, with a round face, five days of stubble, cheap gold-framed darkened glasses, wearing a black long-sleeved, collarless shirt with gold buttons, with black pants made of synthetic silk and black fabric shoes. The impress he leaves is that just 15 minutes ago, he was at the Yerevan Circus stop. The impression he leaves is that this must be some kind of mistake, just a common misunderstanding. I look at him, afraid that he will recognize me. He looks at me calmly and says,

“I haven’t seen an Armenian face in a thousand years: Vardan, my brother.”

“Borik, my brother,” I say.

“Yes, my brother, they all rush around her. What brings you here,” he asks.

“Business.”

“For work reasons?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s been a thousand years since I saw an Armenian face, let’s grab something to eat.”

“No, I say, I’m not hungry.”

“You’ll drink coffee, around here somewhere there’s a place to eat.”

And why not, I ask myself. We went. “The place to eat,” it turns out, is “McDonalds.” We go in and stand in line.

“It’s like “Queenburger,” brother.”

“Yeah, I say.”

Our turn comes.

“You’re sure you’re not hungry?” Vardan asks.

“Ok, I’ll eat something, I say.”

“ ‘Double-double cheeseburger, double-double cola, double-double coffee,’ ” says Vardan.

They understand him very well, and they give us two double cheeseburgers, two double colas, two double coffees.

We go up to a table and sit down.

“And then, brother?” asks Vardan before we even sit down.

“What, and then?” I ask.

“So what’s up, what’s going on?” He asks lazily.

“Well, ya’ know,” I say.

“How did you get to this hellhole, brother? You know, right, that this is the end of the world, observes Vardan.

“What you mean,” I ask.

“Brother, the day starts here, and ends here. Like this, let’s say today is the 25th, the 25th of the month starts here, and it ends here. Seriously (xx) though, there are these mixed-up things. ”

“Who told you that?” I ask, noticing that Vardan is talking about something out of his league.

“There are these Korean guys, right, we work together,” he says.

“You work with Koreans?”

“Yeah.”

“But how do you understand each other, Vardan; what language do you guys speak?”

“We understand each other well, brother; language is like hunting, when a man speaks, whoever gets it, gets it.”

I am laughing, and so is he. Vardan senses that I don’t believe what he is saying. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket and makes a call:

“Allo, Hom, it’s Vardan, brother. Tell Cho that I’ll be an hour to an hour and a half late. Something came up. I’ll tell him when I get there. ‘Davai,’ brother. ”

Vardan hung up the phone and turned to me.

“I let the foreman know that I’m going to be late.”

“Vardan, were you just talking with a Korean?”

“Yeah, brother.”

“No, seriously.”

“I’m telling the truth, or I’m gay, brother.”

“You’re messing with me, brother,” I couldn’t resist anymore.

“Brother, I just swore to you, and you still don’t believe me?”In his turn, Vardan was hurt and went on – we’ve worked together now for two years, how can we not understand each other?

“Yeah, but at least, not on the phone; in person, at least, you gesture with your hands and feet, and understand that way.”

“Brother, I’m telling you, whoever gets it, gets it, and you’re still telling me, I don’t know what…” and again Vardan was hurt, and took a big bite his cheeseburger. And I took a big bite out of my cheeseburger. The phone rang. Vardan looked on the screen and then turned to me:

“See, brother, it’s Cho, our foreman. Now he’s going to say that there’s work to do, what happened to you,” said Vardan and answered the phone.

“Yeah, boss,” he said, eyeing me.

I was completely confused. I got up, went over to his side, and put my ear to the phone.
Vardan didn’t resist. On the phone, someone was really speaking some language, which could have been Japanese, or Chinese, or Korean, or something like that. Vardan was listening closely:

“?????????” the voice said.

“Cho, my dear, something came up, brother. There’s someone from Armenia, we’re sitting somewhere, I’ll be there in an hour and a half,” said Vardan.

“???????” the voice became agitated.

“Cho, my dear, I’ll make it, my brother, that’s not a problem, rest assured.”

“?????????” the voice didn’t give up.

“Cho, you know, this isn’t going anywhere. Something has come up, I have a visitor, but you keep pushing it. I mean it; I won’t sleep today until I get the work done, my brother. Are we done?” Vardan said, upset.

“?????????Okay, okay,” the voice softened.

“Davai, my brother,” said Vardan and hung up the phone, “we have to finish the work the day after tomorrow, the guy is panicking,” he explained.

I understood everything.

[Translator’s note: Vardan’s speech is very informal, with some slang- this dimension does not come through fully in the translated version.]