Forty Days of Musa Dagh (44 page)

 

 

Ter Haigasun, as the rain ceased, stood with bent head, confronting their
fierce hostility, his cassock clinging to his body, the drops pouring off
his beard. Bread and flour were utterly spoiled. The priest could not
escape the terrible question why God, within the space of ten minutes,
should have thought fit to confound the human reckonings of innocent
and persecuted men. And this before the end of their first day on Musa
Dagh! The sun sank in jagged mountains of crimson, oblivious of the whole
incident. Birds sang on till the last instant of light, as though they
were making up for lost time. All the humans had been struck dumb. Men,
women, children, wandered half naked past one another. Housewives tied
ropes between the trees and hung up the dripping clothes to dry. Nobody
wanted to sit on the ground, though, before the moon was up, this
thirsty soil had sucked in its last gout of moisture. None the less the
campfire would not burn, since thick drops still clung to the logs and
faggots. Single families squatted, bunched together, turning ill-tempered
backs on their next-door neighbors. They must manage to sleep on the
bare earth, since mattresses, coverlets, cushions could not possibly be
dry till tomorrow night. But they slept in heaps. In misfortune one body
needed another to touch, each grief to make quite certain of its neighbor.

 

 

 

 

Pastor Aram Tomasian sat in an observation post which the scouts' division
had set up in the branches of a very wide and shady oak. From this point
one could get a clear view of the church square and village street of the
large village of Bitias. The pastor had borrowed Bagradian's field-glass,
so that the dust-swept square and road were clearly visible. Nokhudian's
band of Protestants stood in marching order, outside the church. There
seemed a surprising number of them; many of his co-religionists must
secretly have gone over to Nokhudian. Surprise at finding every nest
of Armenians empty as far as Bitias may have caused the müdir and the
police chief to hold back their convoy from Saturday to this present
Sunday. Saptiehs were scurrying in and out, brandishing their truncheons
or guns. Impossible to make out exactly which. A distant zigzag of tiny
shapes. Perhaps the gendarmes were already striking right and left. But
no sounds of pain or rage drifted so far. Distance had toned down any
horror to a framed, faintly animated miniature. Tomasian had to make
a conscious effort to realize that this was not a puppet show which he
watched so detachedly through the round end of his glass, but his own
destiny. He might tell himself again and again that he had escaped from
among the outcasts who down there in the dust-clouds of the valley were
setting forth on their road to death, only to prolong his own earthly life
by a few days. Up here, among oak leaves, the shade was so pleasant. Rest
and comfort filled him from top to toe. The reality of that horror below
him was being dispersed in tiny movements, which teased the eye, but left
the heart more indifferent than any dream. Pastor Tomasian started, as he
realized his own cold-hearted guilt. Down there was his place, and not up
here! He thought of the mission house in Marash. The Reverend Mr. Woodley,
sent him by God to test his heart, posed again his enigmatic question:
"Can you help those children by dying with them?" The trap was set. But
later, over there in Bitias, he had let slip his chance a second time,
of adding to the pains by which he must bear witness to Christ.

 

 

It was a long, a painfully long while, before the convoy, with his old,
yet so much juster brother in God, Nokhudian, began to move off.
And the freckled müdir seemed certainly to have made a few concessions.
A line of sumpter mules walked in the train, the rear of which was even
being followed by two carts, their high wheels jolting through the
dust-cloud. Pastor Aram saw what he had seen so often in those last
seven days in Zeitun: a sick, worming line of human beings, feeble to
the point of extinction; a blackish caterpillar, with tremulous feelers,
bristles, and tiny feet, winding its piteous length through the landscape,
without ever seeming to advance. This mortally wounded, forsaken insect
seemed to seek in vain for a place to hide in, among the open windings
of the valley. Its peristaltic back thrust forward the foremost sections
of its body, drawing the rear ones painfully after it. So that deep
notches kept being formed, and often the creeping insect got split up
into several parts which, urged by scarcely visible tormenters, grew
jaggedly together, as best they might, to break once more when the join
had scarcely healed. It was not the wriggle, it was the twitching death
throes, of a worm, a last, writhing, stretching, convulsive shudder,
as though already carrion flies were creeping up to the open wound.

 

 

It seemed almost to be a miracle that, little by little, a gap should
form between this worm and the last houses of the village, through
which it dragged so unbearably slow a way. "They have several pregnant
women," Aram reflected. The instant thought of Hovsannah weighed on his
heart. By various signs it was apparent that his wife was very near her
time. Nothing had been done, or could have been done, to help her. So that
his first child would be born as roughly as any beast on Musa Dagh. Bad
as this was, a deep presentiment burdened Tomasian still more heavily --
a fear lest this child in its mother's womb should have to suffer for his
sin. He lowered his field-glass and, suddenly giddy, clung with both arms
to the solid prongs of the fork within which he was sitting. When, after
a while, he looked again, the miniature in the telescope had changed.
Now the worm was wriggling on through Azir, the silk village. And a party of
saptiehs had detached itself and was marching northeast, away from Bitias,
towards Kebussiye. Pastor Aram sent instant warning to headquarters. The
danger soon passed. The saptiehs did not wheel in the direction of the
North Saddle of the Damlayik, but disappeared up the rising ground at the
foot of the valley. They were on the wrong track, thanks to Nokhudian. The
country lay quiet. A few hundred Moslems were prowling the squares and
streets of empty villages -- mohajirs from the northwest, brought by the
scent of booty, and the native riffraff of the plain. This scum still
seemed not to have possession of the houses. Perhaps some government order
had dulled its appetite. These gentry buzzed, like indolent horseflies,
along the streets. The saptieh detachment was lost to sight, eastwards,
down a side valley, before it had come as far as Kebussiye -- another
proof of how it had been outwitted. The sudden hope -- perhaps we'll be
left in peace for days . . . perhaps the Turks will leave Musa Dagh on
their left forever.

 

 

Pastor Aram jumped down from his spying-post. Wood-cutters' hatchets rang
out on every side, in the dark groves. If he had not been able to prove
himself God's priest, let him at least prove himself God's soldier. He
almost ran the whole way back into camp, in his haste not to miss an
instant's duty.

 

 

 

 

The camp looked incredibly industrious. Long lines of burdened donkeys,
piled high with heavy loads of oak branches, nodded past young Tomasian.
Great stones for laying foundations were being trundled by on wheelbarrows.
Father Tomasian's assistants were measuring out streets with lines of cord
and marking off the spaces for the huts. Already, here and there,
there had arisen the vague scaffolding of a hutment. Families competed
in speed. Children, and even the very old, worked beside the strongest
men and women. The "public buildings" were already surprisingly far
advanced -- the hospital tent, under Bedros Altouni's supervision, and
the big granary. But Father Tomasian in person supervised the government
barrack, a work on which he had set his heart. It covered a wide space,
with two side-cabins, provided with doors that could be locked.

 

 

Meanwhile Juliette had installed herself in Three-Tent Square. Gabriel had
expressly begged her to think of nothing and of nobody but herself, not
even of him. He had brought up the matter for discussion at a Council
sitting: "My wife has the right to lead her own life, even up here,
on the Damlayik. She must live here just as she chooses. We others
are of the same blood and so are subject to laws on which we've all
of us decided. But she remains outside our laws. She's French -- the
child of a more fortunate people, although she's compelled by fate to
share our dangers. And therefore she has the right to our most generous
hospitality."

 

 

All the members of the Council of Leaders had responded to Bagradian's
appeal. The three tents exclusively reserved for Juliette, the heaps of
luggage, her special kitchen and separate household, her tinned food,
her two Dutch cows, bought by Avetis the younger -- all these exceptional
possessions and special privileges would have to be made acceptable to
the people. Gabriel had indeed given orders that most of the milk was to
be distributed among the children of the camp, with whatever else could
be spared from Juliette's kitchen. But these were very minor concessions,
which left her still a highly privileged person.

 

 

Enemies, or ill-disposed friends, to demonstrate the gap between precept
and practice, needed only to point to Juliette's luxury when Gabriel urged
the necessity for a careful sharing-out of supplies. They could not have
denied that their leader did not sleep in a tent, but at his post; that
he drew the same rations as all his men; that his property had gone into
the general pooi and been of the greatest advantage to the community --
however, it remained equally undeniable that, for Juliette's sake, he
withheld a great many luxuries from the common stock. This discrepancy
might foster dangerous conflicts. But at present none of the leaders
seemed to be thinking anything of the kind.

 

 

And yet, not an hour before, the mayor of Yoghonoluk had had to submit to
an acid lecture from his wife on the subject of Three-Tent Square. Wasn't
she, the pupil of the Missionary Sisters at Marash, as much a lady as this
Frenchwoman? Was she so very much beneath her that she had to live, just
like all the common village women, in a wretched hut made of branches?
And was he, her husband, Thomas Kebussyan, really such a poor little worm
that now there was no difference between him and any beggarly Dikran
or Mikael, whereas the difference was so immense between him and that
inflated Bagradian? These wifely exhortations ended in Kebussyan's slyly
contriving that he and his family should not have to live in a draughty
hut, but in a spacious log house, especially built for them, close to
the altar. That no bad blood might be caused by this stately edifice,
the mukhtar had made up his mind to hang out a sign over the door, with
the inscription "Town Hall." So that, remembering his intended ruse,
he nodded approvingly to Bagradian's appeal on behalf of Juliette.

 

 

Ter Haigasun looked Gabriel full in the face before lowering his eyes,
as he always did when he was speaking: "Gabriel Bagradian, we all hope
your wife may escape, even if sooner or later the rest of us perish.
May she say a good word for us to the French."

 

 

Juliette lived in one of the two hunting-tents. She had asked Hovsannah
and Iskuhi to share the second. Hovsannah, in somber anxiety, awaited
her child. In the sheikh-pavilion, half of which was used for stores
and luggage, there were three beds. Stephan slept in one, the second
belonged to Samuel Avakian, who, however, as staff officer and adjutant,
always passed his nights within reach of Bagradian. Since the latter had
curtly renounced all comfortable living, Juliette placed the third bed
in the sheikh-tent at Gonzague Maris's disposal. She felt under some
obligation to that young man for the very discreet homage with which
he surrounded her, especially in these last, trying days. He had saved
Gabriel's life. Also he was the one European, besides herself, on the
Damlayik. There were many moments when this bond between them grew so
intense that they eyed each other like conspirators, prisoners in the same
jail. Juliette felt a dangerous inclination to slackness. Gonzague was
still dressed out of a bandbox. She came upon him sometimes unawares,
brushing a suit, with scrupulous care, outside the tent, sewing on a
button, polishing shoes. His nails were always clean, his hands well cared
for; he shaved, in contrast to Gabriel, every day. Yet this scrupulous
care of himself suggested no particular vanity, seemed rather to be an
active dislike of whatever was soiled or ill defined. A spot on his clothes,
mud on his shoes, would cause Gonzague real unhappiness. It was as though
by nature he could not tolerate anything fusty or half unconscious, as
though, if he were to live at all, it must all be raised into the light
of a clear purpose of his own. This meticulous approach to life, which
refused to give way before any circumstance, impressed Juliette. All
the less intelligible, therefore, Gonzague's placid decision to share
the death of a set of foreigners.

 

 

Once, when he had not been near her all day, she routed him out:
"Have you begun to write your descriptive articles?"

 

 

He watched her, surprised, and yet half quizzical. "I never take notes.
My memory is my only real asset. I shan't need to save a few smudged papers."

 

 

The young man's cocksureness annoyed her. "It remains to be seen if you'll
manage to save your head -- memory and all."

 

 

He answered with a short laugh; really he was expressing a deep conviction:
"You don't surely imagine, Juliette, that Turkish soldiers, or anything
else, could prevent my leaving this if I really wanted to?"