The Dark Valley by Aksel Bakunts Read Free Book Online

as she held on to her mother’s dress, leaving the forest of Akar behind her. How big the world seemed to her, and how close the mountains in front of her!
    Then the unexpected happened. A doctor called Shahan and Sandukht into his office. Timidly the young girl removed her dress. Through his spectacles, the doctor saw the girl’s emaciated shoulders, her flat chest, and her snow-white skin. Shahan attempted to lie by telling the doctor that her daughter was full-grown, that the priest had written down the facts wrong, that Sandukht had been ill, and that that was the reason why it seemed as if her body was not developed yet. But the doctor was speaking in the name of the law and tried to persuade her that it would be bad for the girl to marry.
    Sandukht understood what the doctor was saying, and when she buttoned up her dress, put on her sandals, and held on to her mother’s dress on her way out, she saw the doctor scratching his head. At the door, Shahan got angry with her daughter for clinging onto her dress like a baby.
    When Ghazakh’s Ohan heard of the law, he raised his eyebrows, then squinted. And within a second, he decided to break the law, to jump over it as if it were a narrow stream, and to put a lock on Hanes’s daughter’s hayloft.
    On their way back, Sandukht was walking ahead, Shahan and Ohan were walking together, and Ohan’s son was trailing behind them all. Ohan’s son was sluggish and dull and had heavy bones. When he spoke, his bottom lip drooped, and from one side of his mouth he had a drool that dripped down like rain from a gutter. Whenever he looked at Sandukht’s striped dress, the drool dripped faster.
    Shahan was telling Ohan what the doctor had said about waiting. But Ohan firmly announced that he did not want to wait. There were many poor girls, threshing floors, and lofts in Akar.
    “Have them live together, and when she is developed, we’ll register them. How is the law to find out? If you agree to it…”
    And that’s how they solved the problem. Sandukht was deceptively brought to Ohan’s house with tears in her eyes. Her mother stayed with her until morning, promising to visit her every day and threatening to beat her if she cried. At that, her own mother started crying. At dawn, Sandukht broke her promise and got scared when she saw Ohan’s son lying by the wheat sack, snoring.
    Sandukht cried the following night again, but agreed to share her pillow with Ohan’s son. In the morning, she ran to her mother’s, pale and teary-eyed. Sandukht embraced Shahan, but Shahan took her back to Ohan’s and tried to comfort her.
    Meanwhile, Ghazakh’s Ohan fixed the broken beams of the hayloft and laid stones near Hanes’s daughter’s threshing floor.
    3
    Four months passed. In Akar’s history, however, four months equaled four seconds. The villagers still ate lentils, and the renovated hayloft had not altered the sight of the village one bit.
    Sandukht had come to terms with her situation, though she remained silent. When someone asked her a question, she replied by nodding or shaking her head. It was as if she neither had any thoughts, nor any desires. She was like a squeezed-out lemon—an object without life. She had retracted herself inside her shell and no longer went to her parental home.
    Then, one day, she felt something move under her bosom. She became afraid, pressed her hand against her heart, and calmed down. The feeling under her breast disappeared like a ripple in water. A few days later, however, she felt the movement again, and this time she suspected something.
    Sandukht was to become a mother. Her body contracted all her muscles and collected all her water to adapt itself to her new condition. She resembled a small apple hanging from the branch of an apple tree which the sun had given a red color, but the thin branch had not been able to provide with any water for it to grow and ripen.
    On her way to the well one day Sandukht met another young bride who taught