Forty Days of Musa Dagh (102 page)

 

 

And, indeed, at about this minute Pastor Aram had almost reached his
sister's tent. He was with Hovsannah, who carried her poor brat in
her arms. No sound from within when Aram gruffly demanded entrance.
He whipped out his knife and slit up the lacing of the door, knotted on
the inside. The pastor had let the big sack he shouldered slip to the
ground. The woman, with her almost lifeless bundle, her suckling, kept
a few paces behind him.

 

 

At that moment, had Pastor Tomasian been himself -- mild, evangelical,
affectionate, the strong, cheery brother of Zeitun -- Iskuhi might perhaps
have no longer hesitated, but gone along with him. Why should she stay
alone in this empty tent? She knew she had not the strength to walk very
far. Somewhere it would all end gently, the roaring in her ears, Gabriel,
she herself. But, instead of the cheery brother of Zeitun, some fierce,
unknown bully stood in her tent. He brandished a stick.

 

 

"Get up! Get ready! You're coming with us!"

 

 

These hard words rolled like rocks upon Iskuhi. Rigid on her bed, she
stared up at this unknown Aram. Now she could not have moved, even had
she been inclined to obey.

 

 

Tomasian gripped his stick more tightly still. "Didn't you hear what I said?
I order you to get up this instant and make ready. As your elder brother,
as your spiritual father, I order you. You understand? I'll see if we
can't snatch you from your sin."

 

 

Till the word "sin" it had all been a maze. She had lain there rigid.
"Sin" struck out a hundred well-springs of angry recalcitrance from the
rock. All Iskuhi's weakness fell away. She sprang up. Retreating behind
the bed, she clenched her small right fist to defend herself.

 

 

A new enemy glowered into the tent, Hovsannah. "Leave her, Pastor!
Give her up! She's a lost woman. I beg you not to go too near her, she may
infect you. Leave her! If she comes with us, God will only punish us still
more! There's no sense in it! Come, Pastor! I've always known the kind she
was. You were always foolish about her. Even in the school in Zeitun she
could never keep her eyes off the young teachers, the sinful piece! Leave
her, I beg you, Pastor, and come!"

 

 

Iskuhi's eyes grew bigger and bigger with rage. Since Juliette's illness
she had seen no more of Hovsannah and had no idea that this was a madly
hysterical woman. The young pastor's wife looked horribly changed. To
appease God's wrath with a sacrifice, she had cropped her pretty hair
close to her skull. Now her face looked small and witchlike in its
malice. Everything about her looked small and shrivelled, except her
belly, which still protruded, a diseased consequence of her labor.

 

 

And now Hovsannah, in an indescribable gesture of accusation, thrust her
swaddled suckling out in Iskuhi's face. She screeched: "Look there! You
alone brought this ill-luck on us!"

 

 

It brought the first sounds from Iskuhi's lips: "Jesus Maria!" Her head
sunk forwards. She thought of Hovsannah's difficult labor, and how she
had used her back as support. What did these crazy people want? Why
couldn't they give her any peace, on the very last day of her life?

 

 

The pastor meanwhile had pulled out a clumsy silver watch. He dangled it.
"I give you ten minutes to get ready in."

 

 

He turned to Hovsannah. "No. She's to come with us. I won't leave her,
I have to answer for her, to God. . . ."

 

 

Iskuhi still remained behind the bed, without a movement. Aram did not wait
his whole ten minutes, but after three of them left the tent. His clumsy
watch still dangled from his fist. Out on Three-Tent Square it had meanwhile
become strangely noisy.

 

 

 

 

The twenty-three had appeared noiselessly; they now moved on across the
open space between the sheikh-tent and Juliette's. The long-haired thief,
from the airs he gave himself, seemed to be their "leader." Sato, the
twenty-fourth member of the band, equally seemed to feel herself their
guide. She kept rubbing her nose with her sleeve, artlessly, as though
to suggest that she, an innocent, had no notion what might have brought
these armed deserters unheralded to Three-Tent Square. Some warrior duty
no doubt! And to all appearances there was nothing to cause alarm about
these deserters, unless perhaps that one or two of them had planted
Turkish bayonets on their rifles. But platoons of armed fighters were
often to be seen about the camp on their way back from the trenches, or
marching to them to take over. Today especially, since firing continued
in the north, there was nothing particularly surprising in the sight of
a few armed men. When Aram came out of Iskuhi's tent, the business had
already begun. Yet for a while he watched in complete indifference. His
mind, sullen and stupefied by his own unpardonable behavior, merely
supposed some order of Bagradian's, which the warrior-band had come
to fulfill. And what, since he was already cut off from the people,
did the defense of the Damlayik matter to him?

 

 

But Shushik had sharper eyes. Her tall body filled the whole tent door.
She perceived at once what lurked in Sato's consequential behavior,
her eccentric pointings again and again to the hanum's tent. Shushik
planted herself in the doorway. She spread her arms out, ready to keep
off disaster with her body.

 

 

The long-haired thief came out of the clustered pack. "We've been sent
to take away the food which you still keep."

 

 

"I know of no food."

 

 

"You must know of it. I mean the silver boxes with the fish, swimming
in oil, the wine-jars, and the oatmeal."

 

 

"I know nothing of wine or oatmeal. Who sent you?"

 

 

"What business is that of yours? The commandant."

 

 

"The commandant had better come himself."

 

 

"Well, come on -- out of the way! I warn you for the last time, you silly
bitch! You're not going to be let squat here for ever with all that grub.
It's ours now."

 

 

Shushik said nothing more. She followed, with the eyes and hands of
a wrestler, the movements of the long-haired thief, who, having cast
away his rifle, was looking for the best attacking point. So that when
he tried to bear down on the giantess from the left, she had already
gripped him round the middle; her iron hands lifted the miserable
creature up and hurled him back among his fellows so violently that
he tore two of them to earth with him. The gigantic Shushik stood on
as before, not even breathing a jot more quickly, her arms spread,
waiting for the next. But before Shushik even knew she would die, she
was dead. A sly attack, delivered sideways with a rifle-butt, smashed
in her skull. She died in a flash, at the very summit of her happiness,
since even in these combative moments her heart was still brimful of
the one feeling: Haik's going to live. Her body, hurtling to the ground,
blocked the way to Stephan's less happy mother.

 

 

And now Pastor Aram understood. With wild cries, brandishing his stick,
he rushed on the pack, which at that instant, scared by the murder,
was drawing apart. Now Tomasian should have thrown his whole influence
into the scales. He was the pastor, and one of the chiefs. But Aram had
long since ceased to control himself. He did exactly what he should not
have done -- ran blindly upon them, striking, with his ridiculous stick,
on all sides. The answer was a bayonet thrust, in the back, just under
his right shoulder.

 

 

What's that, he thought, and what have I really to do with all this rabble?
I am a man of God, the Word is entrusted to me to preach, nothing more.
Let's leave all these strangers to their devices. His stick had dropped
out of his hand. But fully aware of his spiritual dignity, he squared his
shoulders, turned away again, and went back stiffly. Ah, yes, the women
there! Well? Had Iskuhi at last made up her mind? Had she decided to be
obedient? But why was she dressed in white? Yes, they must live again
in friendship with one another, just as in Zeitun. Hovsannah would see
that for herself. The way to the third tent seemed uncommonly long. The
pastor smiled encouragingly at his wife. But she seemed to look past him
with terrified eyes. Just three paces from her Aram collapsed on the dry
grass, staining it with his blood. Though his wound was nothing much, he
fainted. Hovsannah cowered down over him, helpless, at a loss, her child
in her arms. When Iskuhi saw the blood, she ran back screaming into the
tent, brought clean linen and scissors, and knelt by her brother. Only
now did Hovsannah pull herself together and put down her suckling on
the grass. They slit Aram's coat. Iskuhi pressed the cloth with all her
strength against his wound. Her right hand reddened with the blood of
her brother, from whom she was for ever alienated.

 

 

The long-haired thief, Sato, and a few deserters crowded over Shushik's
body into the hanum's tent. Juliette, half-aroused from a heavy sleep,
had heard the dispute, the shouts, the scufflings. "The fever, thank
God! The fever back again!" she thought astutely. And even when the tent
filled with stinking people, her lethargy could make stand against any
fear. "Either it's the fever, and then I'm delighted. But if it's the
Turks, it's better it should come now, between sleep and sleep." Nobody
even thought of harming the hanum. They did not so much as notice the
invalid. Their one concern was to find those culinary treasures, of which
envious fables had gone the rounds. They dragged the big wardrobe trunk
and the rest of the luggage outside the tent. There every box and chest
in the sheikh-tent had already been piled. Only Sato and the long-haired
thief stayed on for a moment with Juliette, the one because he hoped
to find something useful on his own account, the other from malice
and curiosity. Since nothing more cruel occurred to her, Sato suddenly
stripped the bedclothes off Juliette. The man should see the stranger's
nakedness! He meanwhile had picked up a big tortoise-shell comb, as a
souvenir, no doubt to comb his own long, matted hair with it. Lost in
his contemplation of this treasure, he whistled his way out of the tent
without touching the woman. Outside, the pack had rummaged and rummaged
in the contents of the many trunks. Juliette's clothes and linen lay
defiled, just as they had been by saptiehs in Yoghonoluk. The loot was
miserably inadequate: two boxes of sardines, a tin of condensed milk,
three bars of chocolate, a tin of broken biscuits. That couldn't be
all! Quick, into the third tent! Sato gesticulated. But now the little
cracked bell had begun to ring across from the altar square, summoning
to the Mass of petition. This signal, prearranged with the other group,
called the deserters to the second half of their day's work. They would
have to hurry to get there in time. Each of them snatched up something,
not to have to go off empty-handed -- spoons and knives, a dish, and
even a pair of women's shoes.

 

 

Iskuhi and Hovsannah had stanched the wound with their clothes. The pastor
came to himself. He looked most surprised. He could not realize what a mad
dog had just been killed in him. No stubborn defiance forced him now to
commit afresh the grave sin of cutting himself off from his people. Blood
had been spilt. This spilt blood was the grace that saved him from the
test that had not yet taken place. He watched Hovsannah. She was cleaning
her hands with grass tufts, so that her child's swaddling clothes might
not be stained. Araim Tomasian felt surprised that a whole heap of rugs
and cushions should have been thrust in behind his back, so that now
he was sitting almost upright. Iskuhi, with her right hand, was still
pressing the compress against his wound, and so prevented his lying
back. Her thin, wasted face looked taut with the effort. Aram turned his
head away and said: "Iskuhi," and, five or six times, only sighed out:
"Iskuhi." He spoke her name with the sound of a tender "Forgive!"

 

 

 

 

The sacristan jerked at his little bell like a lunatic. It swung from
a pole beside the altar. These urgent peals were quite unnecessary,
since the congregation of old men, women, and children had long since
collected for Mass. But still, jerked fanatically by the sacristan,
the little bell pealed on and on, far and away across their heads, as
though not only Turkish infantry, but land and sea, had been called to
witness that this was the hour of death for a Christian people.

 

 

From a cord strung between poles right and left on the top step of
the altar, the curtain strung on rings hung down, waiting to be drawn
before the priest, as it is in the Armenian rite at the Consecration,
when he is hidden from the eyes of the faithful. The heavy fabric of
this curtain kept being blown against the altar. Between the gusts long,
anxious stillness. Shot could be heard from the North Saddle.

 

 

Ter Haigasun, in his presbytery hut, next door to the government barrack,
had long been vested for this Mass. The singers and deacons who were to
serve it had waited some time around the door for him. Yet a deep uneasiness
still prevented his coming forth to ascend the altar. What was this?
His heart, which as a rule was not perturbed, thumped against his priestly
robes. Did he fear the unknown, which was now so close?

 

 

Did he doubt if he had acted rightly in deciding to call directly on the
people at this moment of their dying need? Ter Haigasun's lids fell heavily
over his eyes. He saw himself alone among the dead, in his stiff Mass robes.
Horrible as it was, he had always known he would be the last of them.
His heart had begun to beat more evenly. But in exchange he was filled with
the indescribable sense of mortality, a surer expectation of death than he
had known in the worst minutes of battle.