The Dark Valley by Aksel Bakunts Read Free Book Online Page A

her how to have a miscarriage. Sandukht was afraid at first, but later, when she bent over to put the pitcher on the ground and felt the movement under her bosom once again, a resoluteness came over her.
    She did as the young bride had explained. She did not eat for two days and on the third day she drank the juice of a yellow flower. When she started feeling unbearable pains in her belly, she bit her lip, clenched her fist, ran to the barn without being seen, and closed the door. She now had to hit her belly with a stone to make the pain go away…
    The cattle were driven back to the barn in the evening. When Ghazakh’s Ohan opened the barn door he saw blood by the door and an unconscious bride.
    He carried Sandukht home. At dawn, however, Sandukht s final drop of blood flowed out her body with her last breath.
    Shahan cried at her grave and at home.
    That night, one of her hair-locks turned gray.

On Mount Ayu’s Slope
    Peti would wake with the first cock’s crow, put on his moccasins, cup his hands once or twice in the narrow stream in front of his house, wash his face, wipe it with his hat, and stand at the edge of the village ready to let out the cows from the sheds and drive them to the mountain to graze.
    “Zar’s sister, you have milked her too much! The poor thing has no body left,” Peti would say to the old wife, who had many children at home and owned one cow.
    “I have no choice, Peti,” Zar’s sister would moan and hand over the cow.
    Peti looked after the herd with care. He only needed to look back once to tell which of the cows had been restless and which one was starving.
    And when the last of the cows were brought to him, he would swing his crook in the air and shriek:
    “Hey, stag!”
    Peti had been a cowherd for a long time. He had opened his eyes among cows. As a child he had looked after calves, and when he grew up, he was allowed to look after the village cattle.
    He had no one. His mother died when he was barely a calf herd. Since her death, Peti had become a real orphan. The village took care of him: one day he stayed at one person’s house, the next day he slept in someone else’s barn or hayloft, until dawn, when he would get up and drive the cattle to the mountain again.
    His old fatherly home was completely ruined. The roof had sunk in, the hanging beams were charred from smoke, and the sand and stone on the roof had fallen inside. Wild hemp had grown all around the ruins of the house, and the neighboring chickens lay in their shade after pecking the ground for food.
    “Peti! Oh, childless man, when will you rebuild your father’s palace?” people would ask him.
    Peti’s pockmarked face would smile and he would roll his sunken eyes, open his mouth, and shrug.
    “The entire village is my home,” he would say, swinging his crook in the air.
    Whenever his woolen overcoat would tear, the laces of his moccasins would break, or the old patches on his woolen trousers would wear out and expose his hairy legs, it was always Zar’s sister who scolded him and asked him why he wouldn’t get himself a wife and revive his father’s house.
    “Peti, you good-for-nothing, who will take advantage of your abilities?”
    Zar’s sister would scold him and, like a dried-up source, she would squint, take the woolen thread with her bony and shaky fingers, pass it through the eye of a needle, and sew Peti’s woolen trousers.
    The village brides laughed at Peti, but it did not bother him. He would smile, and the row of white teeth in his mouth would glow through his thick lips.
    There was one old girl in the village who was crippled and had a withered hand. She looked after the wheat and buttermilk that had been laid out on rooftops by the villagers to dry. The girls called her “Peti’s bride” and laughed, and the old girl, who was crippled and had a withered hand, would frown, get angry, curse, and then smile timidly.
    Sometimes a thought, a wishful thought, drifted across the old girl’s