Goa and Greenhouses

Gagik Gelonyan was an only child and had everything a respectable family could provide. After graduating with a major in management from the Presidential Academy, he was a runaway success in everything he did, including some things he should have actually run away from. So his doting mamma packed him off to the Institute of Technology in Israel.

All would have been good if he had graduated from that elite school and scored a job as an analyst in a bank somewhere, golden parachute and all. But no. Instead, Gagik the golden boy set off with a bunch of other equally gilded youngsters for Tibet. Then on to Goa. And after all that, once he’d found a place in his heart for the teachings of Buddhism, gone vegan, and sprouted a wondrous man-bun, he realized that being an analyst was stupid. He had to turn himself around and buck the system.

Time was, someone like that would become a roving mercenary or a pirate. Now they join an ashram or make their home out in the country. Gagik opted for the absolutely exotic step of moving to the Russian countryside. If he’d gone to an Armenian village, that would have been the end of it. After eighteen months in those high mountain pastures, he would have scampered on down to Yerevan, had a shave, bought a Brioni suit, and headed back to Moscow. But a Russian village is something else altogether, because it has diddly squat to offer. No goats, no mountains, no electricity.

Gagik thought of Chekhov, whom he’d never read, and hired on as a village school teacher.

“And what would you be, young fellow?” asked Grandpa Vanya, eyeing the bearded young loiterer outside the school. “A gypsy, I dare say?”

The young women of the village were walking by, hand in hand with children dressed to the nines, it being the First of September, the first day of school, Knowledge Day. There was a lot of side-eye for the bushy-bearded fellow in a peculiar outfit of wide, high-water pants and a colorfully embroidered shirt worn untucked. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he was completely barefoot.

“Lordy, what a bum!” Ninka said to Zinka. “Must have been burned out of house and home.”

“Or he’s a jailbird,” said Zinka to Ninka. “They rob them poor devils blind in the joint. Somebody’s even stolen his boots! If that don’t beat all…”

While the locals went right on looking sideways at their quadrilingual prodigy, Gagik started cramming his vision of the world into his little charges’ easily moldable minds. Seated at his desk, he launched into tales of his recent travels in India, and the islands of Goa, and the Indian Ocean, and the sacred cows. The whole class yucked it up when informed that people there don’t eat cows. Photos of the Buddha made the girls blush for some reason. And when the boys heard the word “ashram,” they keeled over laughing.

The district mucky-mucks, with their Soviet-era education, weren’t too thrilled about that view of the world. But there was no one to put in Gagik’s place.

Not long afterward, a young biology teacher called Snezhana showed up and promptly fell in love with him, because, college educated as she was, who else did she have to love? And when you’re in love, you’re up for anything, so Snezhana started eating radishes. To this day, no one knows how the offbeat, not to say outlandish, Gagik captivated her, but the fruit of that captivity was a wonderful, curly-haired little boy they named Ovsep, in honor of one of Gagik’s distant ancestors. It was also Gagik’s way of sticking it to rural Russia.

Gagik and his significant other were aiming for minimalism in everything. But shabby clothing strategically slit to show glimpses of young bodies – that’s all well and good in Goa. What the Russian countryside demands is sheepskin coats, earflap hats, and felt boots. And a hut with a stove. Gagik was bound and determined not to knuckle under to the climate of northwestern Russia, but the Russian snows had him beat there. Gagik swathed his rickety, lopsided little hut in regally luxurious style, using an advertising banner he’d found somewhere.

But family life is all about self-denial. A family wants food, beds, chairs, clothing, and a wardrobe for the clothes. When he’d decided on withdrawing from the world, Gagik never thought that his wife would have her mind set on sleeping in a bed. With a mattress. And, preferably, sheets.

The thoroughly dumbfounded Gagik called his mom in Haifa. International wire transfers are a breeze these days, so he got the money, duly converted into rubles, and mournfully spent it on a double bed with an innerspring mattress. He also made his peace, after some hemming and hawing, with a dozen pans, some skillets, and a set of eco-friendly plates, but he never abandoned his commitment to what some might call “living green.” In the spring, following a happily snowed-in winter that could well have resulted in a little brother (or maybe sister) for Ovsep, the Gelonyans started growing vegetables.

The sight of Snezhana wandering the meager, sandy soil in a flowery sari while she carried her infant son in a knotted sling and bottle-fed him soy milk on the go filled the neighbors with holy horror.

“To torment the poor babe so!” the old girls wailed. “Refusing him the breast, did you ever see the like?”

Gagik’s mom, unlike his dad, took her only son’s needs to heart, and the money transfers came in like clockwork. When you have money, life is possible – even in the Russian countryside.

The villagers were as astounded by the novelties on Gagik’s property as Russia’s serfs had been at their first sight of a steam-powered threshing machine. Well furnished with theory, and hungry too, he somehow managed to grow things that had never been grown in the village before. Arugula sent up its fresh, green spikes; purple basil glistened; planters were dark with eggplants; and bizarrely colored tomatoes dangled like bunches of grapes. And there were grapes ripening too. Water recirculating around the greenhouses warmed the soil, while cunning little devices kept track of temperature and moisture, and even flashed the chemical composition of the soil on a display.

Wanting nothing to do with animal carcasses, the Gelonyans extracted their proteins and minerals from the treasure trove that is the World Wide Web. The bulgur, couscous, garbanzo beans, lentils, pecans, cashews, and other vegan delights came by mail, puzzling the post office mice, who were used to a very different diet.

The deeper the Gelonyans delved into raw foods, the greater the distance they put between themselves and the other villagers. They just couldn’t bear the sight of anyone eating a sausage. Still, the seclusion was good for them. Roe deer came right up to their house. Hawks flew overhead, disappointed not to see the standard-issue chickens down below. Bears grunted in the forest. And foxes barked.

But alas! Happiness sometimes comes to a sudden end. Gagik’s mom married for the third time and went off to Australia. Husband Number Three, a horrendous tightwad, slapped a veto on sending any more financial support to her son, for the simple reason that it’s not how things are done around here. The kid’s thirty; let him go get a job.

Gagik would actually have liked to, but there wasn’t a job to be had anywhere in the village.

When the money stopped, so did the electricity. The Mercedes G-class ran out of gas, and the cunning little displays went dark. Gagik and Snezhana had to haul water from the well, eat nettle flatbreads, and drink fireweed tea. The packages weren’t arriving anymore; the proteins and the carbs ran out. Snezhana’s saris were threadbare, and Gagik’s beard reached down to his knees. Sensing his illusions collapsing around him, Gagik left Snezhana and Ovsep to tend the vegetables, while he up and vanished. Because the Buddha’s ideals are attainable anywhere, even in Moscow.

Snezhana built a bonfire to burn her saris, tucked Ovsep under her arm, nailed up the house, and headed for the district center. Where she taught secondary-school biology. But to this day, the villagers still find tiny, unripe melons in the ruins of the greenhouses.