This Translation Tuesday, we are thrilled to feature a hilarious piece of short fiction from the award-winning Armenian writer Narek Topuzyan. “Proclamation of Gugo” follows the titular Gugo and Zhanna, an elderly husband and wife duo who frequently quarrels with one another over seemingly frivolous matters: food, flowers, how the other “doesn’t fucking care.” Lilit Topuzyan’s translation conveys the frenetic energy of domestic squabbling and enables the author’s acerbic wit to shine through in the brief three paragraphs that compose the entire story. Reading this comedy of errors is sure to leave one reflecting on how even our most intimate relationships might be composed of a series of loving miscommunications.
Gugo and Zhanna have been living together for thirty years already, but their relationship has recently taken a wrong turn. Gugo and Zhanna’s relationship has taken a wrong turn, and like cosmonauts having appeared in oxygen deficit due to weightlessness, Gugo and Zhanna, knock on wood, do not know exactly how long all this will last, and this is why they try not to talk to each other much so that the oxygen in their lungs is not needlessly exhausted due to their conversations. If you take a look at this couple, each of who is over sixty, it seems that they are trying, with implicit feud, to postpone the termination of their coupledom, to the extent that they have enough resources for tolerance that they drain in a state of weightlessness of a family. Gugo has found or, who knows, has probably invented the reason for himself: “You don’t fucking care about me,” Gugo says, protruding his lips like a baby, and turns to the TV, anticipating floods of rebuttals, but alas, rebuttals do not follow. Rebuttals do not follow because Zhanna does not really care, at least not about this statement of Gugo, which is new in the usual course of events that have taken place in the last thirty years. Until then, this proclamation of Gugo had never crossed anyone’s mind—what does “caring about him” mean? They live together, share the same bread and maintain a living together. This statement of Gugo is so new that Zhanna does not know what to think. To think that she can calm him down by picking him up in her arms and putting her tits in his mouth would not be correct because the tits that she has are no longer the tits that she used to have; after all, Gugo is no longer a child. She is compelled to think that this man has definitely eaten bad food in the evening or in the afternoon and perhaps this outburst of his is the reaction of what he has eaten. Besides being new, this outburst of his is so unpredictable that Zhanna is sitting in front of a sewing machine, with her glasses on the tip of her nose, and is silently sewing her client’s curtain. Gugo is talking, while she is silently sewing, he is talking, she is sewing, and the more Zhanna remains silent, the more Gugo gets furious. “You don’t fucking care about me,” Gugo says and reiterates, and it is not new that Zhanna does not “fucking care about” Gugo. It is impossible to say exactly how long all this has been going on, but it’s definitely not new. It probably started the day when life lost the charm of hidden dates, but again, it is impossible to say exactly when. Whether it is possible to say the exact time or not, in any case, it is not new, but Gugo has noticed it recently, and the reason for this is that his brother-in-law recently hugged and kissed Zhanna and held her in his laps a bit longer and a bit tighter right in front of Gugo.
Gugo saw this and never uttered a word. He went ahead, left Zhanna behind, brought her home and makes her go crazy wherever he catches Zhanna: “You don’t fucking care about me,” he says and either lies on his side with his knees bent towards the TV or leaves, comes out to look for the pair of his slippers that a street dog has probably taken, while Zhanna listens, but does not understand. “Hey, man, what do you want from me?” Zhanna asks to understand, but not receiving an answer, lowers the presser foot lifter on the fabric with a jerk, presses her foot on the foot pedal of the sewing machine and makes the fabric go viciously through the machine like a road racer. In the meantime, while Zhanna manages to reach the end of the road, she takes her foot off the foot pedal, pushes the fabric to the right and then to the left, and while she will put her foot on the pedal of the sewing machine again, she is drilling the curved back of Gugo with a furious glance. “I cook the food that comes out of your mouth, wash your fucking shit, put up with your fucking moaning and groaning, what else have I not done that I should have done,” Zhanna murmurs and, not finding an answer, presses the machine again.
Gugo and Zhanna are in no way able to get along with each other. Gugo takes every chance to complain that Zhanna does not pay enough attention to him. The case in point is the day when “Prosperous Armenia,”¹ concealing its objectives under the pretext of the month-long celebration of women, was distributing roses ahead of the elections. Gugo fled the house and, somehow explaining why a flower should be given as a gift to him, a male with a huge inguinal hernia hung down from the crotch, grabbed a Dutch rose, brought it and put it upright in a vase in the middle of the room to make Zhanna happy, but Zhanna came home from the shop and did not even notice the rose. Zhanna entered and left the living room ten times in a row; five out of ten times she closely passed by the flower, the bud of which was in an erect position, and the core was spread wide suggestively, and once, she even stopped by and, sniffing the scent of the flower refuting the uniformity of the thirty years that they have spent together, smelled the living room, but alas, did not notice the rose. “You don’t fucking care about me,” Gugo looked at the rose and referred to Zhanna again, and the quarrel gained new momentum. One thing led to another, and at night, Zhanna entered the bedroom to sleep and saw that there was neither a pillow nor a blanket. The search for the pillow and blanket led Zhanna to the couch in the living room. And what a surprise, it turned out that that uncouth Gugo can show his talent, if he wants to—he had placed the bedsheet on the couch, flattened all the foldings, beaten the pillow, adjusted it over his head and even placed the blanket on the couch and half-opened the side of the blanket to crawl into it. Gugo did all this and stated: “You have nothing to do by my side.” And Zhanna, repeating the statement of Gugo “you have nothing to do by my side,” obstinating, got undressed on the spot and lied down, telling Gugo the following: “It is good for me, you Gugo guy, I won’t have to smell your fart or hear you snore,” Zhanna said, pulled the blanket over her head and turned to the wall. Zhanna has been sleeping on the couch in the living room and listening to the grumblings of Gugo for several days now. The attempts to comprehend this aggravation of Gugo’s condition accidently led her to their student daughter’s computer on which Gugo had most likely searched and forgotten to close eighteen+ photos on the Internet browser before going to a secluded corner. Confused, Zhanna kept looking at the photos of those sluts and figured it out: “Oh, my,” Zhanna thought, “Is that all he is after?” Zhanna figured out and intended not to care about Gugo at all, but fixed her glance upon Gugo in her thoughts, saw all his things swollen due to the inguinal hernia and changed her mind, and again, she intended, this time she fixed her glance upon Gugo and understood that she had forgotten: “God damn it, I wonder how that darn thing is done,” Zhanna asked herself, but never managed to find an answer.
[1] One of the leading political parties in the Republic of Armenia
Translated from the Armenian by Lilit Topuzyan
Narek Topuzyan is a lawyer by profession. He started writing fiction during his university years. His short stories have been published in literary magazines and newspapers. He was awarded with Antares Publishing House’s Fiction Award in 2013 and a special award at Yerevan Book Fest in 2017. His first short story collection Cheating on GasProm Company was out in 2017. His second book is coming out this autumn. He is currently working on his first novel. Topuzyan is also a photographer and a father of two.
Lilit Topuzyan is a translator who has experience working with legal documents, policymaking, and international relations. She currently works at the Department of Translation of International Cooperation-Related Documents of the Ministry of Justice. She started translating fiction for literary journals and periodicals these past few years.
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