Free The Dark Valley by Aksel Bakunts

of households and, in the old days, when they fought with clubs over the Apricot Field, it happened that one year Mrots won, and the next Mir, or that both returned to their villages defeated, because more or less the same amount of blows had been delivered with clubs on both sides in the name of the Apricot Field.
    Both Mrots and Mir kept sheep. There was a church in the above village and a church in the one below. Very often the bag of insults opened around the same time. In the above village, some of the elderly would sit against walls, toss cornel branches toward Mir, and curse.
    “Who on earth would want to live in Mir? If you burned it down, you wouldn’t even smell it. They knead their dough in our wastewater…”
    It was perfectly plausible that around the same time the elderly of Mir were cursing the village above and keeping the vengeance of their ancestors alive in their young. But they could not say that if you burned down Mrots you wouldn’t even smell it or that they knead their dough in wastewater, because even a child in Mir knew that the river flows from above, passing through Mrots, where garbage was disposed, ashtrays were emptied, and cows, oxen, and the hooves of horses were washed. The brides and girls of Mir knew this very well too, which is why they ran to the river at the break of dawn to fetch water before it got sludgy.
    Mir’s children also knew that the river flowed from above, but it would take a while before they grew up and understood what the elderly in the above village meant when they said that if you burned down Mir, you wouldn’t even smell it.
    Mrots had goats and sheep, and so did Mir. But in Mrots there were people who had as many sheep as the size of Mir. It was possible to drink fresh water from the river early in the morning when it was as clean and cold as the water that the village above drank, but Mir did not have as many cows as the above village. Whereas Mir’s emaciated cows tugged at the hay that had grown in the cracks of rocks, Mrots’s cows buried themselves in the fresh grass as their full udders rubbed against flower petals and carried back pollen to the above village.
    It was the latter that the children of Mir had to know about. When they had grown up they understood that the oil reserve that was kept in clay jugs was connected to the grass on the mountain. After they had understood what the disagreement over the Apricot Field was about, they pricked up their ears, clutched the handles of their clubs more tightly, and ran to the Apricot Field with the others as soon as they heard a cry for help that the shepherds of Mrots had driven their sheep and cattle to the valley.
    And even in the summer heat, when the grass had dried and the soil had cracked, the restless cattle could find a shade to stand in and cold water in the river to cool down with. And after the sun had set, the cattle could find a little grass in the Apricot Field to graze, and the goats could find leaves on the thorny shrubs to chew.
    * * *
    Nobody in neither Mrots nor Mir knew when the hostility between the two villages started over the Apricot Field.
    If the villagers in Mrots were asked, they would come up with a thousand and one arguments as to why the Apricot Field belonged to them, how they had blueprints drawn by hand and documents to prove the fact.
    “Here it is. I have drawn the border over there on the hill with my own hands…”
    “I remember that my father’s sheep used to stay the night in the Apricot Field.”
    “Mir’s border is much farther from the Apricot Field than ours… the field is our native land.”
    Naturally, the people of Mrots said much more, and more than three villagers spoke when asked about the Apricot Field. The villagers jostled each other as everyone worked to make their way to the government official and tell him what was on their minds, to confirm that what he had heard about the Apricot Field belonging to them was true. Some villagers would even go so