When Gregory took a book out of his suitcase, Arshak noticed, that even his book smelled fresh. The pages of the book crunched when browsing through; probably he had just bought it. The shabby and crumpled Bible that was in Arshak’s hands looked quite poor.
“I know the place you live quite well,” said Gregory in the evening. He took two bottles of beer from his suitcase, “Here! It is not cold, but anyway…”
Arshak smiled and took it.
“I know many people from your neighborhood. Both my brother and I used to go there quite often. Together with the district boys we used to beat up the Christian children that lived there. But I don’t remember you…”
“Well… I was mainly at church,” Arshak took a sip. “I wanted to become a priest.”
Gregory’s loud laughter filled the wagon.
“In the end you took the opposite camp, didn’t you?”
“Well yes, it seems,” Arshak tried to smile.
“There used to be a lot of followers of that dead religion in your district”
“Not any more. Few are left.”
“Are you also a Christian?”
“I am a scientist… future scientist…”
“I see. You don’t like tales, do you?”
“I don’t.”
“Neither do I. But I believe in God. Have you read the Holy book, Revelation of 7 prophets?”
“About ten times,” Arshak smiled bitterly. “After all, it’s not thick, 30 pages…”
“Indeed, the truth is never long and fuzzy.”
“And meaningless,” thought Arshak, but preferred to remain silent.
Gregory frowned.
“I got it. You are probably one of those scientists who believe the holy revelation is what is left to humanity from so-called world religions. That view is flawed.”
Gregory paused, as if waiting that Arshak would argue, but he heard nothing and continued.
“Ancient religions contradicted each other, sometimes were contradictory to nature, and sometimes were a pile of inhuman texts. It was so complicated and confusing… Especially the Bible; every word, even my grandfather’s swearing, can be attributed to that book. In the end, everything can be found in that enormous tale, which once again proves that it contains incomplete notes of completely different people of different periods that have nothing to do with each other. Or, maybe the link was very weak. And people decided to connect everything and declared that this is the true word of God…”
Arshak said nothing. He sipped from the bottle.