Siro by David Ignatius (short books to read txt) 📕

make love to a woman in Lenin Square in Tbilisi. Armenian Radio says it’s all right, but people will probably stop and give advice.

6. Armenian Radio is asked: Can we create socialism in France? Armenian Radio answers: Probably, but who needs it?

Anna’s first thought was that it was a code, pregnant with hidden meaning, or a ruse of some sort. Nobody in his right mind would send a simple list of jokes in response to her query. But as she thought about Antoyan, and the seductive look in his eye when he talked, it seemed possible that the only hidden meaning of his message was that he wanted to sleep with her. Good, she thought. An innocent motive. She called Danielle and asked her to contact the Armenian doctor.

“Call him yourself,” said the French journalist. “His number is 537-17-77.” There was a note of pique in her voice.

Anna called Dr. Antoyan that afternoon at his laboratory and suggested that they meet for dinner. “Why not,” was Aram’s response. Anna deliberately chose a fancy restaurant, one that Aram couldn’t possibly afford on his research stipend. It was a small and elegant spot on the Ile St. Louis, which had been a favorite of her father’s many years before. Anna dropped the name of Ambassador Barnes when making the reservation and was promised a table outdoors, overlooking the Seine. She was on her way back to the hotel, to get ready, when it occurred to her that she was sick of everything in her wardrobe. She was staying at the Bristol Hotel, near the fancy dress shops along the Rue du Faubourg-

St.-Honoré, and on a whim she stopped and browsed in one of the most stylish boutiques. She emerged thirty minutes later wearing a new tweed suit, with a tight skirt and a short, tailored jacket. She also let the salesgirl talk her into a new silk blouse, suggestively open at the neck.

“Why are you so frank with me?” asked Anna when they were halfway through their first glass of wine. “I thought Russians had to be very careful with foreigners.”

“I’m an Armenian,” he said. “Not a Russian.”

“I meant ‘Soviets.’ But it’s the same thing. Aren’t you afraid that someone will see you talking to an American and report you or call you in for questioning?”

“Not at all. I am a scientist. Working with foreigners is part of my job. I don’t know any secrets, so why should anyone care? My job in Paris is to learn how to diagnose a condition called ‘reflux’ in the urinary tracts of little children. That is why they sent me here. The rest, pfff. Anyway, as I said, I am an Armenian. Everyone in Moscow knows we’re unreliable.”

“Why are you unreliable?”

He tilted his head, as if it were a question he didn’t really want to answer, but then went ahead. “There is an old proverb which the esteemed George Orwell quotes in one of his books. ‘Trust a snake before a Jew, and a Jew before a Greek. But never trust an Armenian.’ ”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Of course not, but it’s funny. And there is a strange way in which it is true. Armenians are not very trustworthy.”

“Why not?” asked Anna. She had no idea where the conversation was heading, but she was determined to let him set the pace this time.

“Because we have suffered too much. We begin with the assumption that the rest of the world hates us, so we don’t care too much about making a few more enemies. In fact, I suspect that Armenians have come to like being so universally despised. It is part of our national identity.”

“That sounds absolutely crazy,” said Anna. “Have some more wine.”

“It isn’t crazy. We Armenians are the victims of an accident of geography. It is our great misfortune, a nation of people who like reading Shakespeare and the sonnets of William Wordsworth, to exist on the barren steppes of eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. Think of it! A nation of craftsmen and merchants and poets surrounded by people whose idea of science is inventing new degrees of bastinado to torture their prisoners. What an absurd geographical mistake! But I am sorry. I am talking like an Armenian.”

“Have some more wine,” she repeated. “What on earth do you mean, ‘talking like an Armenian’?”

“I mean that I am talking like a victim. That is our great national failing. We Armenians are in love with victimhood. We love it the way an amputee loves his stump. It is our excuse, our reason for being.”

What a bizarre notion, thought Anna. It occurred to her that nearly everyone she had encountered the last few months was possessed by some crazy idea or another. Stone. Taylor. Now this Armenian doctor. Perhaps even herself.

“If my friend Ruth Mugrditchian heard you, she would want to punch you in the nose,” said Anna. “She would tell you how the Turks shot her great-grandfather in cold blood and left her great-aunt to die in a ditch on the road to Aleppo. And don’t tell me her grandparents were in love with their victimhood. That’s sick.”

“Perhaps it’s hard to see in each individual case,” answered Antoyan. “But you must stand back from this pathos and think of all the cases together. It simply isn’t possible for a million people to be destroyed in a few months’ time unless they acquiesced somehow in this fate, unless they embraced martyrdom and death. That is the danger for a nation of romantic poets, like Armenia. Its people fall in love with the idea of suicide. And I am telling you, the Armenians are in love with their pain. They hate to give it up.”

“But not you?”

“No, not me. I don’t want to be a victim, and I am not a victim. My father was not a victim, nor his father.”

“What did they do?”

“They were fighters. My father fought at Stalingrad against the Germans. My grandfather fought with General Antranik when the Armenian militia and the Red Army