The Last Number by Arpi Vanyan

She had done the same thing every evening for three years.

She would pour tea into a cup with a chipped rim, sit by the window, pick up her phone, and dial a number.

The same voice, every time.

“The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.”

She would listen until the end.

Then hang up.

And call again the next day.

Her daughter had noticed, more than once.

“Mom, who are you calling?”

“No one.”

“No one. Every day. Same time.”

She had smiled.

“An old friend.”

Her daughter nodded.

But they both knew it was a lie.

***

Armine couldn’t remember when she had started calling.

Maybe the day they were forced to leave their village. Maybe the day she understood she would never go back — the day she walked away with that chipped cup wrapped in a shirt at the bottom of her bag, as though she already knew it was all she’d be carrying of home. Or maybe it was the day her mother died.

She couldn’t remember.

She only remembered the number.

The digits lived in her like a heartbeat. Even if she lost the phone, she would dial them still. Because it wasn’t simply a number. It was the last living thing left from a life that no longer existed.

***

When she was small, she would come home and hear her mother’s voice before anything else.

“You’re back, sweetheart.”

Then the smell of bread — which was also, somehow, the smell of her mother. She had never been able to untangle the two: whether the bread carried her mother’s scent, or whether her mother had absorbed the bread’s.

Then the creak of the old green gate in the yard.

Then her father, sitting beneath the cherry tree.

None of that existed now.

The house was gone.

The tree was gone.

The gate was gone.

Her father was gone.

Her mother was gone.

But the number remained.

The number had not yet died.

***

In Yerevan, everyone assumed she had adjusted.

She held a job. She laughed. She helped people — saved some, even. She drank coffee with guests, posted photographs. Happy photographs. Or photographs in which she appeared to be happy.

People wrote to her: “It’s so good to see you strong.”

She thanked them.

And thought: If you only knew that every night I dial a number that no longer exists.

***

That evening began the way all the others had.

Tea. Window. Phone.

But before she could dial, the television caught her attention. A news broadcast — she almost never watched the news anymore. In recent years, the news only opened old wounds. But this time her eyes stayed on the screen.

The anchor was speaking about the region they had left behind. Then came the photographs.

And suddenly she recognized something.

At first she didn’t understand what she was seeing.

Then her chest closed.

It was the cemetery of her village. The place where her mother was buried. Her mother. Her father. Her grandmother. Her grandfather. All the generations before them.

The place where she had always brought flowers.

The place where her grandmother had walked her as a little girl, holding her hand.

But on the screen, there was no cemetery.

There were only flattened mounds of earth.

The stones were gone.

The crosses were gone.

The names were gone.

As though no one had ever lived there. As though no one had ever wept there, loved there, sat in silence there.

As though no one had ever died there.

As though her entire life had been erased.

***

Armine walked toward the screen.

Then sat down.

Then stood up again.

Her hands were trembling.

She picked up the phone.

Dialed the number.

Her mother’s number.

She heard the familiar recording:

“The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable.”

And for the first time in three years, she did not hang up.

She listened all the way through.

Then sat in the silence.

Then, quietly, said:

“Mama…”

Her voice broke.

“Mama, even the grave is gone.”

The room was empty.

No one answered.

But she kept talking. The way she had years ago. The way she had when her mother was alive. The way she had as a little girl.

“Mama, I’m frightened. I’m frightened that one day I’ll wake up and not remember what our house smelled like. I’m frightened I’ll forget the sound of your voice. I’m frightened that one day no one will believe that life ever existed.”

The tears came without sound.

Heavy.

Long.

***

She didn’t sleep that night.

She sat at the window while Yerevan rested.

But inside her, an entire village was awake.

Her mother was baking bread.

Her father was watering the trees.

Her grandmother was stirring preserves on the stove.

She was on the swing.

The dog was barking near the gate.

Everything was alive.

So alive it hurt.

And in that moment she understood something she had never been able to reach before.

If they were still living inside her memory —

If she could still recall the smell of her mother’s hands,

her father’s laugh,

the shadows of the trees in the yard —

then no one could destroy them.

Not the collapsed houses.

Not the war.

Not the broken graves.

Not time itself.

***

In the morning, she went out onto the balcony.

The sun had just risen.

The city was waking.

She picked up her phone.

Opened her mother’s contact.

Looked at it for a long time.

Then pressed Delete.

Her finger trembled.

It felt like deleting the number would kill her mother a second time.

The screen asked:

Are you sure?

Armine stared at those words.

Then whispered:

“No. I’m not sure. I’ll never be sure.”

And she began to cry — softly, without shaking, the way people cry when they have finally accepted the truth.

Then she wiped her eyes.

Looked at the sky.

And for the first time said the words she had never quite managed to say:

“Mama. Thank you. Forgive me. Goodbye.”

Then she pressed Delete.

The number disappeared.

The screen went blank.

Armine looked at the blankness for a long time.

Then she remembered:

It wasn’t the phone that had known the number.

She knew it by heart.

Still knew it.

The digits passed through her mind, one by one.

She smiled, through tears.

And for the first time in three years, she did not call.

But the numbers were still there.

By heart.

Like her mother’s voice.

 Like the smell of home.

 She went back inside.

The tea had grown cold.

The chipped cup was still waiting on the table.

She ran her thumb along the crack.

The cup remained.

Arpi Vanyan

Image: A phone with a blank black screen on a white background. From Pixabay.com