SEVAK ARAMAZD, MOTHER’S DEATH

Story 2006

 

 It was a dark winter’s night outside on the street. It seemed as if the ground had swallowed up the city and the lonesome gloom was searching hopelessly for a suitable hiding place in which to protect itself from the incredible cold. That cold penetrated everything, indifferently, and the walls and roof shivered at its insatiable breath. The small metal stove in the middle of the room was burning, but it scarcely managed to even heat itself. With invisible hands, the cold had also grasped the fire, that fluttered desperately like a captured bird in its icy grasp and now and then in its helplessness let out stridently crackling screams and monotonous sobs.

Areg, fully dressed, cowered under the blanket trying to avoid any movement that might let the slightest heat escape. That heat may have been lukewarm and damp, but it still helped him to constantly sense his living breath. It was actually pleasant to shiver slightly from time to time and then be petrified again. Involuntarily, Areg followed the flickers of light rising from the stove and shimmering in circles on the obscure ceiling of the room, taking on countless forms astonishingly quickly as if an unknown hand were constantly writing the same time and erasing it again immediately. Areg turned carefully and looked anxiously into the opposite corner of the room where his sick mother lay.

His mother was being consumed discreetly by sickness. On the exterior, everything seemed in order, yet with time his mother was fading more and more. Areg was plagued by terrible qualms of conscience in the face of this quiet disappearance of his mother and so he suffered both for her and for himself. He would love to have just disappeared, been swallowed up by the ground so as not to have to experience what he dreaded to even think of. The helpless silent smile of his mother, her weak hands becoming ever drier and more wrinkled, her increasingly slower movements and the muffled sighs when her head sank down heavily on the pillow – all this was driving Areg mad. The feeling that he himself was guilty of his mother’s situation never left him. Bowed by worry, he sat beside his mother’s bed, staring into her face. It seemed to him as if he was also coming down with the same illness as his mother, as if he too was slowly disappearing, and with despairing determination he longed to die with his mother. He closed his eyes and tried to actually imagine the moment, but immediately his heart was filled with infinite sadness and self-pity. Tears came to his eyes. He looked at himself in the mirror in search of clear signs of death on his face, but each time he saw the same cheerful young man with sparkling eyes. This alienated him so much that, insulted, he would like to have simply shattered that deceptive reflection. Then from behind he perceived the quiet conciliatory voice of his mother:

“Areg.” She raised her hand slightly and smiled. “Sit down here beside me: tell me something and I will listen…”

One day, his mother stayed in bed and did not get up again. Strangely, this certainty calmed Areg. The fear of death disappeared from his soul and, calmly, he now saw his mother there, incurably ill. And there was nothing special about the fact that he himself was strong and healthy. He was now content to take full care of his mother, and this had to do neither with his mother nor with him. A feeling of peaceful sadness came over him, mixed with a serious sense of duty and quiet compassion towards both life and death. He stopped thinking of the end: so long as his mother was there, he was also there; so long as he was there, his mother was also there; he and his mother are there and will always be there, regardless of life and death …

Areg turned over on his back carefully. The stove was still burning in the darkness. The fire crackled in the silence filling the room with the smell of smoking damp wood. Areg had a bitter taste of blood in his mouth. He pressed his lips together. Suddenly he recalled the great catastrophe his mother used to tell him about repeatedly: how, clasping him tightly in her arms, she fled in fear with dishevelled hair across the mountains … Inside him, everything was confused again, and again he looked at these bare facts. Perhaps it was pure chance that he and his mother did not die then … He tried to escape the images emerging chaotically within him. Areg raised his head quickly from the pillow. In the opposite corner his mother lay silently under thick blankets. In the darkness her bed resembled the faint outline of a grave. At once, and with a piercing clarity, he felt the superhuman bond that existed between him and his mother, and it seemed to him as if his mother were already no longer there, as if she were already dead …

“Mama?” he called softly and tried to suppress the quiver in his voice. “Are you asleep?”

“What is it, Areg?”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Go to sleep now …”

Sighing deeply, Areg lay down again. When his head touched the pillow it was as if an unknown insect was biting the nape of his neck, penetrating his skull and circling in his brain with a repellent hum. Areg sat up, covered his ears with his hands and leaned against the bed post. The humming got louder, as if the insect were looking for something in his head and sniffing his brain. Suddenly the humming stopped. The insect landed on his memory, stuck his pointed sinuous proboscis into a fine blue artery and began to suck his blood …

Agitated, Areg threw off the blanket roughly. Immediately he was attacked by the biting cold.

“Why are you not asleep, Areg?” the astonishingly calm and clear voice of his mother asked from the opposite corner.

Areg did not answer. He closed his eyes and wanted to pretend he was sleeping so as not to upset his mother, but before he knew it, he had already spoken:

“Mama, why did all that happen to us …?”

There was a tense silence: the only thing to be heard was the despairing crackle of the dying flames. On the dark ceiling the shimmer danced vehemently in a circle, inebriated and blustering … 

“Stop thinking about it now and go to sleep,” his mother murmured. “That’s not important now …”

“Why not?” Areg asked quietly, unpleasantly surprised by his mother’s reaction. But it seemed to him as if his voice echoed in the cold silence.

“When the time has come, you will understand,” his mother said, almost in a whisper, and then sighed. “Now go to sleep…”

Areg became silent. Staring at the ceiling with an absent-minded gaze he began to follow the shimmer that was now more like a ghost straying in the darkness. His heart was oppressed by a dark anticipation. That same moment he heard footsteps outside, as if coming from a great distance. He held his breath. Someone was approaching, inexorably, through storm and frost, stamping his feet mercilessly in the snow. The footsteps gradually became more distinct. When they reached the house, they stopped suddenly and became silent. Through the window a huge shadow fell into the room, then the scarcely audible sound of a cold breath …

Areg leaped out of bed: the window was well covered with fabric and scarcely stood out from the wall in the darkness. For a time he paused, embarrassed. Then he shrugged his shoulders, went back to bed again and covered himself up. Suddenly the same footsteps could be heard beneath the window, distancing themselves without haste …

Areg listened. Silence prevailed. The stove had gone out and the room was immersed in a deep darkness. It was as if someone had come in unnoticed, extinguished the fire and then left without a sound. Shuddering and wanting to get up, he then perceived his mother’s voice again out of the profound darkness:

“Areg, are you not asleep?”

“No, Mama. I wanted to light the stove again, it has gone out.”

“Don’t bother…,” his mother said absent-mindedly. “Lighting or not, it makes no difference… Lie down and cover yourself up well so you don’t freeze, my child. What a pity that I can’t get up and cover you myself…,” she sighed.

“But will you not freeze, Mama?”

“Ah! The cold will freeze before me, Areg…”

There was a weighty silence.

“Areg?” said the voice of his mother again, sounding indecisive and indifferent.

“What is it, Mama?”

“He came to me, but I sent him away.”

“Who?” Areg asked shocked.

“Death,” his mother said in her weak but clear voice.

Areg fell silent.

“I told him that I don’t want to die now and cause my son worry and sorrow in this cold,” his mother continued, strangely calmly, as if it were an everyday encounter. “I told him: go away now and come back again in spring, in April, when the sun is shining again and the flowers are blooming…”

“Mama …!” Areg pleaded, very moved by his mother’s words, which revealed so clearly and frankly what had not been spoken about openly till then.

His mother did not reply. Areg waited for an answer, as tensely as if his life depended on his mother’s reply. Suddenly he heard a very soft, secret voice: lying in the dark, his mother was apparently murmuring something. Areg listened attentively. Unexpectedly the voice fell silent, and at the same moment his mother’s words echoed amazingly clearly in Areg: “Saved is my son.” Areg was intrigued. He was about to get up when he heard his mother’s voice again: she seemed to be laughing and that laughter seemed to come from far away. It was a blunt, muffled laughter, the sound of which pierced the darkness like an invisible pin …

Areg’s heart raced with fear.

“Mama..!”

Areg jumped out of bed and put on the light. His eyes were blinded by the sudden glare and it seemed as if, panic stricken, some dark shadows had hidden in the corners of the room and disappeared. Areg hurried to his mother’s bed and bent over her.

His mother was lying in bed, her eyes closed and her dishevelled hair resting around her head like the pale rays of evening light. In the space of just one night, she seemed to have aged so much that the cold solemnity of her face resembled a rigid mask; the deep eyes lay buried in the shadow of their sockets and in the wrinkled corners of her mouth lay an irrevocable secret …

“Mama?” Areg repeated, shocked.

“What is it?” his mother murmured apathetically, her eyes closed as if sleeping.

“How are you…?”

“Fine.”

His mother’s word impressed itself unusually clearly on him and remained for ever in his soul. It seemed to Areg as if someone in the dark had closed the door, carefully locked it and departed with the key in his pocket. His quiet steps could be heard for a time until they gradually faded away. It was clear to Areg that he had lost his mother forever, yet he had no feeling of loss. A great stillness spread out, covering mother and son like an invisible umbrella …

Areg embraced his mother and pressed her closely to his breast. She was unimaginably drained and emaciated. Areg hid his face in her hair and sensed the familiar smell he loved so much, the only thing about her that had remained unchanged. Areg breathed in his mother’s smell insatiably and caressed her, but she did not respond to her son’s affection: she remained as she was, quiet and motionless, apparently absent, distancing herself unobtrusively with imperceptible steps for ever …

Areg clung to his mother, not wishing to let her go. For him his mother was his child, his small dear child, his dead child …

After that night, his mother was cloaked in an impenetrable stillness and she spoke no more. She lay in the same position, her face upwards, her big eyes half closed: but there was no expression in her gaze any more. It seemed as if his mother lived in another world, and her small body, resting on the bed, had no connection with her …

His mother died at the end of April, on a sunny spring day. Areg had her buried in an insignificant corner of the municipal cemetery. He laid the flowers he had brought with him on her grave, remained for a time with bent head and then returned home.

When he entered the room he was surprised: a gaping emptiness pervaded the house. It seemed as if all the familiar objects had also left him. He wandered around the house aimlessly and, with a dismal gaze, observed closely – as if trying to make a note of everything – every corner of the house, when suddenly he perceived the lively scent of his mother in the air. He sank down feebly onto the chair his mother used to sit on and broke into tears. For a time, he stared expressionlessly at the large-headed flies walking cheerfully around the table, until he suddenly cringed as if something long forgotten had just occurred to him. He stood up, packed his things without haste, locked the door, gave the key to the caretaker and left the city.

The one thing that has accompanied him ever since has been the rigid, scarcely perceptible smile on his mother’s face at the moment of death.

 

©Sevak Aramazd