"Vordan karmir," was his answer.

At the museum of the Mother Church in Etchmiadzin I also came across the same reds in the miniature illuminations of several Gospels. I couldn't remove my gaze from them. "It is vordan karmir, " explained the monk accompanying me.

The laboratory of the Armenian vordan karmir, or the Araratian cochineal, is in Yerevan: two rooms, with the necessary equipment, temperature and humidity controlled by thermostats, and glass cases which contained samples of saline soils. The research assistant, Leonora Mkrtchyan, can speak for hours on vordan karmir. She begins with the phase of the development of the insects.

Towards the end of April and the beginning of May, she says, out of the eggs which have successfully wintered, there come the larvae of the Araratian cochineal, which are called "the wanderers." They fully justify that name, because they wander through the salt marshes until they come across those roots that can nourish them, which are of two kinds here: reed grass and "vordan grass" (Aeluropus littoralis). The wandering stops and the larvae go into the soil, attach themselves to the roots and begin to grow. By August, they will have grown several times their original size, like miniscule turtles, light violet in color but later on deep red.

From here on, the growth progresses in two directions simultaneously. The male and female insects differ from each other so much that one who sees them can't imagine that they can eventualty copulate. Toward the middle of August, the females, still in their condition of miniscule turtle-like insects and still feeding on the reed or "vordan" grass, come out onto the surface of the soil. So do the males, with the difference that they are much smaller and have not yet developed a full mouth. Entomologists call this the affiancing phase. The insects crawl allover the marshland, then they go back into the soil, where the males form a cocoon. In September, the males comes out of their cocoons, out of the soil, and begin flying around, with tails two or three times longer than their wingspread. In contrast, the female has not changed from her turtle-like appearance and has no wings.

Now the females are ready for fertilization. This phase lasts at most a month and a half. After being fertilized, the females reenter the soil, there to lay their eggs in cocoons formed by waxen threads, after which they die in peace.

(Here the author tells of his examination of the insect in its various stages, all preserved in solutions of formaldehyde, and his guide tells him that the insects' habitat is located only in marshy soils of 3,000 hectares, that this area is being drained and, so that the insect will still have some land for its development, the government has given 200 hectares to the institute for experimental purposes.)

This "living dye," continues the guide, was known from time immemorial. The Bible mentions this red dye derived from the red worm, used by Noah's offspring. In the third century A.D., the king of Persia presented Emperor Aurelian with a woven wool fabric dyed in red, which became a phenomenon in Rome because of the brilliance of the color, all the more remarkable because the source of that dye was a worm growing in distant Armenia.

Written records begin in the fifth century A.D., in Armenian. (ED. Note: the Armenian alphabet was invented around 401 A.D.) "It is not for nothing that reed grass grows in the Araratian Plateau," writes Lazar P'arpetzi. "That grass nourishes red worms, the dye from which greatly pleases lovers of luxurious fabrics, thereby aiding in the economy of the country." The fame of this dye comes down through the Arab occupation of Armenia (seventh to ninth century), called kirmiz by Arab travelers and historians, and its use continues for the dyeing of textiles and their export to various countries.

Unfortunately, luck turned against this dye later on. In the 16th century and thereafter, its use diminished with the appearance on the international marketplace of the Mexican cochineal. The insects brought from the New World were smaller, but they had some marked advantages. First, their color was a deeper and more brilliant red. Secondly, as many as five generations can be harvested per year in Mexico, instead of the one in Armenia; so the production of the dye is much greater. Finally, it seems that the cactus (genus Nopalea cochinellifera, or cochineal cactus) on which the insects feed has practically no fat-producing substance, a feature that interferes radically in the cultivation of the Araratian insect. The insects are harvested from the cacti, are dried, then placed into commerce. It is not difficult to get the dye from this insect at this point.

In the meantime, the Araratian cochineal was all but forgotten. Only in a few monasteries did vordan karmir retain its previous importance. That dye was being used for illuminating and decorating the manuscripts in their scriptoria. One such place was the Mother Church in Etchmiadzin, where the monk Isaac Ter-Grigorian, Sahak The Decorator, was tirelessly trying to gather the insect and rediscover the secrets of getting dye from it.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, there came the era of aniline and other dyes, and it seemed that both the Mexican and Araratian cochineal was doomed. In time the users of the new dyes toned down their enthusiasm. Cheapness was naturally attractive, but the old dyes had two irreplaceable characteristics: they could withstand light and they were harmless to human beings. So the Araratian cochineal again came to the forefront. In 1929, the Ministry of Trade of the U.S.S.R. organized the first Soviet investigation of the Araratian insect. The late war interrupted this effort. It wasn't until 1971 that the investigation on the vordan karmir resumed:from the beginning. It was then decided to research the possibilities of its production and utilization.

(The director of the laboratory enters the room where the author is.) Robert Sarkisov finally rushes in, tired and covered with dust, but with unveiled enthusiasm. And the fact that some stranger is waiting in his office to see him for some unknown reasons makes him cheerful.

"Have you ever thought," he begins at once, "of the etymology of the Slavonic work chervonniy, meaning red?"

"From the word cher', I suppose, meaning worm?"

"Exactly!" he exclaims. "The dye from our vordan karmir, meaning red worm, is the oldest such dye, and in many languages, words meaning red are connected to it. In Latin, vermiculus from vermis, meaning worm; in Greek, kokkinos meaning red is derived from kokkos which also means worm. Now note the following: Latin vermis, Armenian karmir, Sanskirt krimi, Greek kokkinos, Russian chervonniy, Spanish arbuermes; from there, through Persian into Arabic kirmez (out of which rise in many languages carmine, meaning deep red), Hebrew karmil, Turkish kurmuz, all of them from the proto-lndo-European root word krimi, meaning worm. Do you see the great knot we face? In the beginning karmir signified a dye which came from a worm. The only trouble with this is that our vordan karmir is not so red after all."

And there appeared a dozen containers on the laboratory table, each with some powder of a different hue - dark violet, lilac, blackberry, rose. Beautiful! But none of the containers had that really deep, fiery red. Suddenly, there appeared in Robert's hands a container that shook me up. The real, true apricot red, the color that flooded the illuminations in the manuscripts of Matenadaran.

Sarkisov smiled. "This is Mexican cochineal. Who knows but that one day we also may get this same color. Everything depends on the insects. The Mexican belongs to an entirely different species. Our species belongs definitely to the hues of violet and lilac."

"But the old manuscripts, those glorious colors in them, didn't they come from Araratian vordan? There is no lilac in them. Their deep red has such exceptional strength. Can it be that the old masters knew secrets which are not lost?"

"Secrets? Of course, there have been secrets." Sarkisov was thoughtfully digging through some papers. "But why have they been lost? It isn't that at all. Here, read this." He extended a printed page to me.

That was an abstract from the researches of Sahak The Decorator's efforts, dated 1830. "After keeping the insects in a solution of potassium carbonate (?) for 24 hours, clear water is run over them; then the insects are boiled in a lichen solution, add arnakhot (literally, blood grass; botanical name unknown) and alum; then they are strained and dried."

I sense something like treachery in the simplicity of this "secret." But even so, I can't restrain my surprise. "Well, what else is needed?" I ask. "It is all clear."

"What is clear, is clear," Sarkisov says. "But years are needed to solve the quantitative unknowns. How much of each part? What is the relationship of what is being boiled with the vordan? Are the flowers, or the leaves, or the roots of the plants to be used? Nothing is clear, nothing is given. It seems simple, but actually it is most complex. Our researches result in dyes in accordance with our understanding, not in the manner of our forefathers. Clear, yes; but our ancestors knew much more than we do."

And Sarkisov explains the complex process for the natural cultivation of vordan karmir: the quantitative addition of necessary items during boiling; the separation of the fat in the insect (Ah, that fat, he says, which forms from 20% to 30% of the worm!) and its removal that is so troublesome - all are mind-boggling. They throw the fat away now, he says; but the ancients used that fat for the preparation of healing ointments.

Sarkisov suddenly interrupts himself. "All these are yet not the most pressing questions," he says, while I was being drowned in the technology he was explaining. "All right, so we get the dye, and that not too bad. Now listen to what we have received from the museum in Leningrad, which has experimented with our dye. 'The dye is very close to that used in old Russian paintings. If this dye can be manufactured in appreciable quantity, without doubt it would interest many who want to restore those paintings It doesn't fade under natural light.' In short," Sarkisov goes on, "the dye is needed by restorers, and not only by them. Rug weavers, in particular, and textile people in general call for it. Also drug manufacturers and biologists and microbiologists; also soap and perfume manufacturers; also dietitians. So there is a great need for vordan karmir. It is for that need that we are struggling."

While he is telling all this, I am imagaining the thankless task of those who harvest these worms from six to seven o'clock early in September mornings,for by 10:00 the worm goes back into the soil. Some of the females have to be left behind to continue the production next season; the others have to be picked up one by one and placed in glass containers. Every hectare can produce about 40 kilograms of the worms, which eventually are reduced to one or two kilograms of the dye. There is some thought about even mechanizing the harvest to increase it.

We had been in the laboratory several hours. The workday had ended. Robert Sarkisov gathers all the containers and arranges all the papers on the table.

He concludes our discussion. "The 200 hectares of saline soil is just the beginning, and a good beginning it is. But we are already thinking of producing the natural worm by artificial methods, letting the marshland be cleared for agricultural use. The same marshland can be created artificially. The worm needs not the marshland but the vegetation growing in it, which can be created hydroponically. Picture it: the worm can stop being endemic to the Araratian Plateau and can be produced wherever you want. And if our botanists succeed in producing enough plants, then vordan karmir may give us two harvests a year."

Before leaving I wanted to try an experiment myself. There was a piece of paper on the table with a bit of lilac dust on it. I licked one of my fingers and touched it to the dust, then I rubbed it on one of the pages of my notebook, giving it a bright hue. It has not faded to this day. Some 300 years hence, if my notebook still exists, someone will be able to determine if the 20th century vordan karmir is at all inferior to that of olden times. For example, to the fiery reds on the manuscripts in the Matenadaran.