The Two Sisters
armenians
It had already been noon for a while when Arevik started setting the table. Shafts of gold poured through the vines of the window onto the floral tablecloth, onto glass cups and bowls where they burst into anxious spines of light, onto blades of drying grass. After some contemplation, she stepped back and admired her canvas: slices of pale cheese beside woodsy walnuts, green grapes and red persimmons, a few bottles of wine tint’d like blood, freshly cut watermelon and the deep hues of basil and dill and wild sorrel. She opened the tap connected to a hose and poured herself a glass of water, lamenting that such perfection might be disturbed by the terror that follows appetites. She gulped down all of the water and redid her scarf to secure a few wild strands of auburn hair that stuck to her forehead.
“I brought the flowers,” Lucik said as she walked into the balcony, a coterie of sunflowers in her hands. After a few shakes, she drops them into a vase on the table and bites her thumb— she meanders in contemplation, unsure of what to do next. “Hmm,” Lucik said with her thumb in her mouth. She turned to Arevik and pulled free a few strands of hair from her scarf. “We should make pancakes,” Lucik said. Arevik nodded her head, her lips running to one side, her gaze fixed on the table; she moves a few of the apricots and plums on the table before answering that Lucik doesn’t even like pancakes. Lucik laughs; Arevik tells her to go upstairs and clean up after herself.
This house had been left to them by their father; you can tell by what’s been left behind through the years. Two stories, with a balcony and a yard and a cozy shed for bathing. Some of the wood had rotten away, but the bricks were bright and stoic. Away from the garden, past the kitchen and the living room and up the stairs, Arevik and Lucik slept in a large room full of colorful rugs and little wooden statues and old photos. After adjusting a few of the photos, Lucik took a cloth from a drawer, spat on it and wiped away the dust from the dressers and nightstands, from the paintings and the windowsills. Above one of the beds hung a portrait of flowers and fruit painted by their late mother. She does it just as her sister told her; she leaves nothing unturned, and even the interiors of the drawers are given a good scrub. A few of the shelves too, and some of the dolls they kept over the fireplace. A few old scarves, sweaters out of season, socks with holes, warm leggings— Lucik wipes at the dust under the bed and finds a stocking with a few blue banknotes tucked unevenly into it.
“What is this?” Lucik bellowed as she ran down the stairs back into the garden, carrying the stocking in her hands. Arevik was watering her tomatoes and cucumbers with a hose, her face shiny with sweat. “What is this supposed to be?” Lucik said, pulling blue banknotes from the stocking and throwing them down on the table. She held out a banknote before Arevik; it read “100000,” printed with the face of an ancient king with a bushy beard. “Where did this come from?” Lucik stood demanding, repetitious. Arevik threw her hose down and shut the tap. “It’s our money. What do you mean, ‘where did it come from?’” Arevik answered. “You know what I mean,” Lucik yelped. “You know what I mean,” repeating herself. “I want to know where this money came from! How did you get it?” Lucik’s voice started to strain as her temper flared.
Arevik folded her arms and laughed. “How did I get it? I robbed a bank, Lucik.” Arevik stared at Lucik as her expression hardened, watched the nostrils of her steep ski-slope nose flare; they’d always called Lucik “the smart one,” which left Arevik to be the pretty one. When their late father would compliment Arevik’s jade eyes and soft features, he’d always follow with something to say about Lucik’s cleverness or sweetness. And Arevik had indeed inherited her father’s pragmatism; when she was young, she’d often retort that beauty fades but intelligence perseveres. With age however, Arevik had come to realize that any potential suggested by intelligence withers away through the years far faster than skin. And ultimately, sweetness is lost in the bitterness that follows.
Lucik was stomping her foot. “Go outside!” Arevik shouts, rather dispassionately as she was more annoyed than angry. “Go outside, and take a long walk. And don’t come back ‘til you’ve put yourself into a better mood.” Lucik threw down the stocking and stormed out, grabbing a coat from a chair beside the dried apricots hanging from the roof, huffing and puffing. Out of anger, she kicked a few flower pots which sent ceramic shards flying down the descending steps of the garden and into the street. “Donkey!” Arevik shouted as she took a broom and chased Lucik away.
Lucik’s town sat under the black mountains of the Syunik province, and you could sit on the rocks of the graveyard and watch the trucks drive down the road into Iran. The streets were cobble-stoned, just wide enough for horses to pass, down endless winding and twisting walls made of dark bricks and bright wood. A pair of grandmothers exchanged gossip under the shade of the bus stop. Two cats feasted on a dead mouse. A few blocks down, beside the magazin, there was a fat sow behind a small metal fence who looked at Lucik with needy eyes. Lucik approached the pig, feeding her a few wild apples she’d found on the ground. She liked pigs. She’d always found it funny how human their eyes could seem, their greed was endearing and familiar to her.
“She always says I’m smart, but then she treats me like I’m stupid,” Lucik explained as the sow chewed on the apples, grunting with pleasure. “Besides sleeping with men, how are you supposed to get that much money? I wish she would just be honest with me.” Lucik broke the apple in half with her hands. “I never had a husband, or a man, and she won’t even tell me what it’s like,” Lucik played with her zipper as she stared at the sow’s rough-hewn hair. “Maybe you can tell me what it’s like,” she said when the sow looked up at Lucik and snorted. “To be with a man.” The sow had nothing to say. “I’m not a little girl. I’m a grown woman, you know.”
“Do you know where Japan is?” Lucik took out her phone and showed the sow pictures of Osaka from her social media page. “It’s eight-thousand kilometers away. There’s huge castles made of wood. And big, big signs made of neon light. There’s rivers of light running through gigantic streets, filled with every single sort of person. There’s businessmen, clowns, artists, girls wearing strange clothes. People are so beautiful there. And you can always have sushi when you want. Do you know what sushi is, khozuk?” The sow looked at Lucik then laid down in the mud. “It’s raw fish. It sounds disgusting but it’s actually good. I had it once in Yerevan. Expensive. Did you know that they eat with sticks there?” Lucik put away her phone. “Maybe we’ll see it together some day.” The sow snorted, groaned, shutting its eyes, and Lucik wiped away a few tears from her cheek.
After she’d had an ice cream cone from the magazin, Lucik went back up the steps and returned to her garden with her face sheltered by her long black hair. She took a few moments to appreciate the wild greens that came up from the concrete and the way the sunflowers swayed to the minute breeze. She wondered if the flowers of Osaka really were as brilliant as they seemed on her phone. Little petals of gold and cherry swaying in the wind. A few birds gathered in a rusted, broken part of the roof. She took a fig from the table, chewed on it, then took another fig and threw it at the birds. The fig oozed with nectar that spilled out of its gutsy, pink interior.
“Lucik!” Arevik shouted from the kitchen. “Food will be ready soon, go get cleaned up!” She looked at the table and saw that the money had already been cleaned up and put away. She chewed on some dried apricots, a dried persimmon then walked up the stairs to their bedroom. She looked at herself in the mirror; she pulled on the edges of her face, studied the lines of her body as she looked at herself from the side. She tweezered away some of her eyebrow hair, and took a brush to her curls. She took a kohl pencil and darkened the edges of her eyes.
Through the window, Arevik could see the paleness of the afternoon. After she’d made a few dozen pancakes, she laid them out on a teal plate adorned with stalks of dill and brought them out to the table, along with a few cuts of dried meat and a salad decorated with pomegranate seeds and fresh parsley. She looked in the garden for some fresh mint— she climbs up a part of the gate to look out over the walls, to see how the curves of the mountains disappear down into the deepest parts of the valley where the vultures descend on dead snakes. She took out a pack of Camels from her pocket and lit up a cigarette, savoring the taste as she draws the smoke in through her nose. She looks at the smoke as it takes a violent flight and disappears into the sky. She thinks of the chores for tomorrow: the chickens will need to be inspected soon, and the concrete floor of the balcony must be scrubbed.
She steps down and walks out the gate, just a few steps away from the garden. A few dogs run down the road. These fields were soaked with blood once, but now they’re calm and complacent. Right down the valley, next to the church, you can visit the graves and see the faces of those buried under the soil. Beyond this hill stood a few military bases covered in camouflage. How strange it must have been, Arevik hummed to herself, how strange it must have been to know nothing of the world besides mountains and stone and wine and fruits. There could be a kingdom of gold right down the highway and you’d go your whole life without knowing it. Magical instruments right across the stream. She walked down the road for a little bit, lighting up another cigarette. A car came down the road and stopped beside her, a few clouds of smoke pouring out the driver’s window. “Arevik-jan,” the driver said. “Where are you going?”
“Have you been to Moscow?” he asks as he lights up Arevik’s cigarette. She didn’t usually make conversation with oddball foreigners, but he’d complimented her on her Nietzsche book. “No,” she answers, trying not to appear excessively modest or innocent. The café was full of tourists who’d come for the capital’s wine festival, and all day she’d heard strange languages buzzing ‘round her head as if spoken by screeching birds in an aviary. “It’s nothing like Yerevan,” he says as he takes a few sips of his beer. “It’s unimaginably big. Like, something out of Star Wars. Do you know Star Wars?” Arevik laughs. “Of course, it’s in the kino,” she answers. “Right, you know this part with the big Death Star, the big laser thing, and you see how massive it is? That’s what Moscow looks like. It’s impossibly massive. Too many people. You can’t see it in one glimpse.” Arevik feigned disapproval and sipped from her murky cocktail. “Sounds like hell,” she says, watching his eyes to gauge his reaction. He laughed, thank God, looking down at his hands; he had kind eyes, even as they looked down on her. “Hm. I watched it with my father, actually,” Arevik said. “My father and my sister; they love films. It was the one thing they could share.” Behind him, a few tourists chirped and whistled before dunking their beaks into cheap alcohol.
They walked out of the café, he offered her a cigarette. The street was full of drunk tourists, paying no mind to the old men on benches staring at them, paying no mind to the children running through the fountains which spat up cold water. Before he departed, he took Arevik’s hand, and his forwardness had made her wince. She withdrew her hand and put it close to her chest. “I think you have the wrong impression, I’m—” He moved away; he rubbed his face, took the glasses off his bulbous nose. His gaze roamed ‘twards the concrete, where her dress withdrew and surrendered to the bronze of her legs. “I’m apologize, I just find you very beautiful. I’ve always found Caucasian women beautiful. But I know you wouldn’t be interested in a Russian man like me.” Arevik didn’t respond, damn him; she resented him for reminding her of the shame she should feel, resented him for giving her the lone choice of shutting the door on her desires. And by doing that, he wanted to make her feel as if she was the deficient one. She sucked on the cigarette to hide her irritation, she covered her legs.
He wrote his contact details into her phone, smiling after he was finished. ‘Pavel Moscow,’ it read on her phone. “Maybe this is too forward but you could come visit Moscow. I mean if you want to,” he said with a slight tremble. “I could show you some cool sights,” a cool menace in his eyes. Arevik smiled, watching him zip up his jacket as he gets into his taxi and waves his casual farewell. “Moscow,” she mumbled to herself as she walked down Tumanyan street, trying to remember if her student dorm crept down this particular dark alley. Two men standing by a kiosk glared at her as she walked by, drinking warm beer. She thought about Moscow, thought about life among powerlines and stack interchanges. The people there are quite different, she reckons; they speak quietly, seldom a ramble. A couple walked by, holding hands, blabbering in Russian about money and friends. She tried to imagine herself running in the snow, her hair pale and wet and cheeks red. She might be a hairdresser or a custodian. She’d show up with a suitcase and a large pack of cigarettes to give as a gift. She would have to memorize a century of slang, and she would have to tell her story over & over again. She thought about Lucik, and she thought about what Lucik would do; she would have to come with her, or she’d have to send for her, and they would have to help her find an apartment for herself. Maybe she would marry one of his friends, but he would have to be tall and he’d have to have perfect teeth. Lucik was always particular about people’s teeth. But until then— where would Lucik stay, and what would Lucik eat? Lucik was a terribly picky eater, and she always got grumpy when it got cold. And she knows Lucik would be upset, she would say: “you’re abandoning me, you’re leaving me behind—” and God knows Arevik promised she’d never leave her sister behind. The cold air would probably bother her. She finished her cigarette and threw it onto the street. She never thought about Moscow again.
Lucik walked down the stairs, wearing a long flowing dress of black fabric with prints of lilies and roses and hyacinth and… a few vines hand-’n-hand hang from the windowsill beside rusting copper pipe, and a rat had crawled its way across the steps of the balcony, slipping into a little crevice under the house. Lucik sauntered over to a mirror in the living room, beside an array of family photos, and she studied the skin on her face. A few new freckles, a worrying mole— “no worries,” she mumbled and she walked into the kitchen and took from the cabinet above the sink three plates, three sets of cutlery, three glittering glass cups… she walked out into the balcony practicing her smiles and she set them at the table. She adjusts the plates, the fork and the knife, making sure they’re not too close to the salad bowl and the plate of cheese. She takes a picture of the table with her phone, she takes a few more pictures. She plays with the filters for a while. “Are you smoking again?” Lucik said as she tapped away on her phone. She looked around the balcony with probing eyes; Arevik wasn’t by the tree, neither was she by the garden nor the chicken coup. “Arevik?” Lucik yelped. “Arevik?”
After Arevik came back to the garden through the gate, she put out her cigarette in an ashtray by the chicken coup and brought it with her to the table. She sat down, she pulled on the cork of a wine bottle and poured herself a few fair gulps. Lucik smiled; she ran into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of cognac from her father’s chest in the living room. “Maybe today we’ll open this. What do you think, Arevik?” Arevik said nothing as she sipped on the wine, as she watched Lucik put down the bottle of cognac next to the wine, as she watched Lucik bring the pancakes to the table and set them beside a small platter of cold meat. Lucik walks to the side of the table across from Arevik, pulls on the chair, and sits down. She pats down her dress. She smiles; Arevik smiles too, she felt happier now that Lucik’s mood had lightened. “Let’s wait for a bit, just for a little bit,” Lucik says as the trees shudder in the wind and the sun recedes behind clouds. They sat in silence and they waited.