Մենք եւ Սենեակը The Room and Us
By Arthur Shenian | translated by Tamar Marie Boyadjian
Before she leaves, I feel the urge to say a few heartfelt words to her.
You are my life.
You are my beginning and end.
From now on, you are the only woman for me.
Your children are my children.
Will you marry me?
And so on.
Is it within my right to say these things? Of course it is. Why should I hold my tongue? Why should I let the words linger in a situation that is already strained? I must let it out at all costs. And I certainly want to, but it’s as if something stopping me.
Ah, this room. I confess room 413 brought us together. We surely owe our meeting to it. Otherwise we never would have known one another. We could pretend we didn’t meet in this room. Instead, we could imagine, for example, we met in a grove at a park while quietly communing with the rustling leaves and the whistling birds. Or perhaps we met seaside, sitting on a large rock, lost in contemplation. We can even say we met in the neighborhood grocer’s shop, or simply crossing paths on the staircase of a building, just like any other boy and girl.
As I’m searching for a solution, which doesn’t seem impossible to me, she’s sitting on the table, staring intently into my eyes, and telling me her story, so simply. It isn’t really anyone else’s but her own. She tells it calmly, even cooly. She’s resigned in everything she’s saying, already digested it, so that as she speaks, her words don’t stumble, falter, or tremble. She doesn’t pause or waver. It is a typical, typical story of desolation: deceased parents, a divorce, two children, no relatives, no friends. The rest of her story is very familiar to me.
She is sincere, and has no choice but to be. She has given me something incredibly precious to a woman, though not so much to a man. And I don’t care that I’m not unique to her, but just one of hundreds.
You know what? This room is strange. It unmasks you and lays you bare before someone else. It doesn’t allow you to act formally in front of her. It banishes caution and judgement. For a moment, you truly forget that you haven’t known each other for years, and that your entire relationship has a history of no more or less than one hour. While she captivates me, with the way she moves as a lover does, with her alluring glances and teasing smile, I again feel the irresistible urge to say a few heartfelt words to her.
You are my life.
You are my beginning and end.
From now on, you are the only woman for me.
Your children are my children.
Will you marry me?
I gather her hand in my palms and squeeze it firmly. She reciprocates. Excitement rushes through me settling into an intense, inner throbbing. It’s then I realize that for me, such moments of intimacy occur in similar rooms too often to count. I haven’t held a woman’s hand in a park, I haven’t at the beach, I haven’t in the grocery store, and surely not on the stairs, which is probably why these rooms feel so comforting rather than the park, the beach, the grocery store, or the stairs. Over time, those places lost their meaning and allure.
I gently kiss her cheeks and don’t go near her lips, but not on purpose. I simply don’t think about them. It’s like they don’t exist. Then I caress her cheeks. I’ve resisted the urge to curse the wasted years. As I keep going, I resign myself to it.
“So, you aren’t going to betray me, right? By going to someone else?” she warns.
“C’mon now,” I reply with tenderness. “Even if I wanted to, I could never do it.”
“Sure, sure,” she purrs. She thinks I’m messing with her. Listen, jan. It’s one thing to tease someone, but I mean something else—especially when it comes to us.
The phone rings. Already? I think to myself. She answers and then hands the phone to me. This is how it works. Once it’s all done, I let them know whether I’m satisfied. Of course I’m satisfied, as always. As far as I can remember, I have never been disappointed. What can one say when a kind woman asks you on the phone, “Was everything to your liking, Sir?” I imagine it would be difficult to answer no.
In these same rooms I have been deemed worthy of the formality of “sir.” Whatever I long for, these merciful rooms have granted me. And for as long as they have, I continue to have faith that they will momentarily satiate my heated desire. Thank God for them.
The taxi should be here soon. She needs to go. And I’ll be left alone again, with two lifeless pillows, a bed unmade, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Should I say it already? I should… I should. Why hold back? We walk toward the door, both of us silent. Our stillness gives meaning to the moment of saying goodbye. She comes closer, even closer. She wraps herself tightly in my arms, kissing me warmly. I want to believe she is trying to redefine the room, to transform it, reform it, by leading me to a place I suffered to reach forever.
But… But. As I gently lower my gaze to her and lean in to whisper in her ear, to tell her everything, I remember a story from a not-so-distant past. A lived story. My story.
She was imposingly beautiful. Passionate, ethereal, and uninhibited. We came to an agreement on the street and went up to a room. The walk back? On foot, not in a taxi. We were like a couple in love. And all those characters sitting in the cafes on the street stared us down. Women like her were usually incapable of becoming my lover. But even so, everything changed. I don’t know how. I think she was the one who changed things. I fell in love to my very core. I felt so attached. I thought she was in love with me too, bound to me like no other. It didn’t take long for me to want to redefine our relationship.
One day, I gave it to her straight. “My darling, I’m not paying you again, after today.” I explained my intentions. She sat and listened like a well-mannered, obedient student. She made no peep, no plaint, and put forth no question. I thought she understood me, especially, my reasoning. It went on like this for some time. I was content. I even asked her not to take anymore clients off the street. She didn’t object. This made me even happier. But my joy didn’t last long. The poor woman couldn’t take it. At one point, she blurted out that she had not met a stingier man in her whole life. It bothered me but I didn’t say anything about it. I tried my best to explain it to her. I tried everything in every way I could but grew tired of explaining that it had nothing to do with being “stingy.” When it became clear that she really wasn’t getting what I was saying, I said goodbye and left immediately. I ran into her the following week on that same street. She was making a deal with a guy on a motorcycle.
I am tongue-tied. Numb. Withdrawn. She senses something is wrong but doesn’t seem to really care. She walks to the elevator and waits. As she is standing there facing the doors, her silence speaks volumes. It’s as if she’s already forgotten me. I lean my head against the door, watching her. I start to rejoice. Then, I sigh, tortured. I don’t let myself get weak. I don’t even flinch. I don’t give in, simply because I’ve been convinced. A room is a room and I have no right to it. Just like that, she leaves. In the room. Two lifeless pillows, a bed unmade, and a pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray. I look around for a moment, standing there enveloped by an all-consuming void. She’s not here anymore, and it doesn’t even matter. Only her shadow remains. I walk back to the elevator, to the exact spot where she stood just a moment ago. I close my eyes and reach for her with a tender, heartfelt plea. I think to myself the time is now. I muster all my inner strength, confessing everything—all the things I didn’t have the courage to say before.
You are my life.
You are my beginning and end.
From now on, you are the only woman for me.
Your children are my children.
Will you marry me?
Based in Naccache, Lebanon, Arthur Shenian is a writer whose work spans multiple genres, including short stories, impressionist prose, articles, and literary and non-literary translation. Since 2023, his writings have appeared in Baikar (Boston), Ararad (Beirut), Tchanaser (Beirut), Nor Haratch (Paris), and Granish (Yerevan), with additional publication in the Haigazian Armenological Review (Beirut).
Tamar Marie Boyadjian is an internationally acclaimed author, editor, and translator who works in the endangered language of Western Armenian. She is the first US-born author to publish a book of poetry in the language and the first to pen a fantasy series in the same. Her commitment is further reflected in her work as an editor of two anthologies of contemporary Armenian literature in English translation and her contributions to seven major translation projects.