Unlike the priest, Gampr interested everyone, especially children. Many of them would come to the priest’s place with different excuses to see the dog. Gampr was indifferent. He was neither barking, nor licking. Ani, the neighbor’s daughter, also loved the dog very much. With the other neighbor, papa Torgom, she came every week to help with the priest’s garden work. The neighbor papa was snowy-haired and silent like Gampr. While he checked the priest’s saplings, the girl sat in front of Gampr on the ground and watched him.

Suddenly Gampr raised his snout. He saw the master.

“Ani, have you come to see your friend again?” asked the priest. Passing by Ani, he gently stroked her head and went into the house. It was hot. He was tired. He would sleep.

The girl understood, that papa Torgom had finished his work and was waiting for her outside. Keeping her eyes on the dog, she put a step back, ran out and took papa’s hand.

…

In the evening the old neighbor came again to help the priest. He was silent during working. He was silent during the dinner as well. Then he decided to speak. He was nervous and worried.

The whole night he was thinking what to say, how to say. But now the words were fleeing and the thoughts were scattering.

“Father,” he stammered. “I have been thinking a lot… I think, you must give up the dog.”

The neighbor looked at Gampr with fear. The dog was indifferent.

“You were telling that you have found him in the mountains. Let’s take him back. What do you think, Father?”

The priest sighed.

“I have neither a wife, nor a child. Without the dog I will stay alone…”

“You won’t,” the old man got excited. “The priest will never stay alone. God is always with you.”

The priest looked strayed at the dog sitting at the corner. He wanted someone other than God to be with him.

Gampr liked his muzzle self-complacently. The priest was looking at his blue, crystal eyes and as if in the mirror could see a strange man. He was reserved and silent, he could hide Gampr’s secret under the knitted woolen shirt. He was able to rescue what he did not understand. The priest had never seen such reflection of his own merits. He knew that in general whoever the man looked at, whatever he looked at and wherever he looked at, he saw himself. Previously, the priest looked at his son and could see the father. But then, the father-priest reflection diminished. It then disappeared.

The priest constantly repeated in mind, “The world is a mirror for men.” And the simplest mirror is the pain. Here, everyone’s reflection is beautiful. Even the most villainous person is weak in front of the pain. The bigger the pain-mirror, the weaker and more helpless is the man. And the pain of the weak becomes smaller; it is easy to forgive the weak and it is difficult to judge the weak. He came to his senses. He understood that his thoughts had begun to progress in a wrong, apocryphal direction. He took a breath. He looked at the dog sitting under the window guarding the silence like Sphinx. He restrained.

Gampr’s eyes were as peaceful as the battlefield after the war; a moment when nothing matters; when the interests, heroism and even gods are retreating. And the sweaty tiredness wins.

Gampr yawned.

Usually the things you avoid are the things you get confronted with. Yeghishe knew this absurd formula well. In his entire conscious life he had strived for an honest, you can say spotless patriotism. He was always against various movements, groups and especially political parties splitting the nation. Yeghishe’s father was not Christian, but had fought against the extremist groups of One God for the sake of Church. His father liked repeating that when patriotism was mixed with politics everything started to smell like gangrene. That smell had also flushed into Yeghishe’s childhood.