Forty Days of Musa Dagh (93 page)

 

 

"I hoped for a very long time that this fate of yours could be averted.
And, from you, it can still be averted."

 

 

"No, by me, too, it must be embraced."

 

 

"Are you afraid? . . . We can wait till it's dark. There won't be the
slightest danger in it."

 

 

"Day or night! It's not that, Agha." An embarrassed little pause.
"My wife has nearly died, and today she's beginning to recover."

 

 

"Your wife? You'll find other wives."

 

 

"My child is buried up here."

 

 

"It's your duty to beget another, to carry on your line."

 

 

The old man's heavy eyes still looked impassive.

 

 

Gabriel answered him so softly that, no doubt, he did not understand:
"No one who stands where I stand can begin again from the beginning."

 

 

The Agha cupped his small, nimble hands, as if to catch the rain of time
in them. "Why do you think of the future? Think of the next few hours!"

 

 

The late afternoon light was filling the tent, the light of leave-taking.
Gabriel stood up, unceremoniously. "It was I who first gave the seven
villages the idea of this camp on Musa Dagh. I organized the whole
resistance. I was leader in the battles against your soldiers, thanks to
which we still remain. I am, and shall be, guilty -- responsible -- if,
in a few more days, your people torture us all to death, even our sick
and little children. What do you say, Agha? Can I simply leave them in
the lurch?"

 

 

To which Agha Rifaat Bereket made no answer.

 

 

 

 

Gabriel had the Agha's gifts carried at once to the altar square,
so that the Council might set about distributing them. Mainly it was
only a question of sugar, coffee, a little tobacco. But the muleteers
had also managed to smuggle in two sacks of rice. Since these gifts
had to be shared out to two thousand families, it can be imagined how
microscopic each ration was. What did that matter! To be able to drink
hot coffee again, in little sips! To be able to draw tobacco smoke far
down, into the very pit of one's stomach, let it out slowly, through nose
and mouth, stare vacantly at the floating cloud, without any care, any
tomorrow. The actual value of these gifts was far less than the revived
morale engendered by them, and this on a day of general disaster. And
the Turks left them all their mules, the two sumpter mules and those they
had ridden. Only the old Agha still kept his, to ride into the valley.

 

 

Thus, then, the benefactor and his five followers went back with unbandaged
eyes to the North Saddle. The man of the oath went on ahead with the green
and white flags. He seemed neither put out nor relieved at having been
deprived of his good work. As guard of honor, besides Gabriel, Ter Haigasun,
Bedros Hekim, and two mukhtars followed the strangers. Around them eddied
a crowd of bewitched villagers. This talk in the sheikh's tent, since no one
knew what had passed there, had become a source of fantastic hopes. The Agha
walked through a fog of blessings, tearful petitions, hopeful questionings.
He could scarcely go forwards. Never, not even in the banishment camps,
had the Agha Rifaat Bereket seen such faces as here on the Damlayik.
The savage, feverish masks of men grimaced round him avidly. Waving arms,
as thin as twigs, thrust out of tattered sleeves, held children close
up to his face, as the women begged. Nearly all these children had
swollen heads, on the thinnest necks, and their huge, staring eyes
had a knowledge in them forbidden the children of humankind. The Agha
perceived that not even the most brutal convoy could, in its effects,
be more dehumanizing than this isolation, this cutting off. He believed
that now he could understand by how much this draining off of the spirit
exceeds in cruelty even the massacre of the body. The most horrible thing
that had been done was, not that a whole people had been exterminated,
but that a whole people, God's children, had been dehumanized. The sword
of Enver, striking those Armenians, had struck Allah. Since in them,
as in all other men, even unbelievers, Allah dwells. And whoso degrades
His dignity in the creature, degrades the Creator in his victim. This,
then, is God-murder, the sin which, to the end of time, is never forgiven.

 

 

To the old man, it felt as though he were walking through clouds of ashes,
the thick death-cloud of the whole burnt-up Armenian race rising between
time and eternity.

 

 

The Agha walked bent over his stick, growing older and older, more deeply
bowed. Now he kept his eyes on the earth, which had brought forth all
this and bore it. His little feet in their soft shoes tripped eagerly,
unused to walking. Pressing his white beard close against his chest,
he hurried on like a fugitive whose strength may fail. He had ceased to
hear the sounds of these petitioners, see their arms imploring him. Away
out of this! But Rifaat's strength took him only as far as the trenches
along the North Saddle. There, at the sight of the gaping decads,
a violent giddiness forced him to earth. His two servants, the muleteers,
came hurrying anxiously. The Agha was a sick man. The French hekim in
Istanbul had warned him against overexertion. The more staid of these
two servants drew out of the green velvet bag which he always carried
for his master the smelling-salts and the little case of licorice which
stimulates the heart.

 

 

When the Agha had quickly recovered, he smiled up at Ter Haigasun and
Gabriel, who were bending over him. "It's nothing. . . . I'm old . . .
walked too fast. . . . And then you give me too much to carry. . . ."

 

 

As he rose with the help of his two companions, he was conscious that
his task would never be finished, that he never would get to Deir ez-Zor.

 

 

It was nearly midnight before his yayli reached the house in Antakiya.
He was lamed with exhaustion. Nevertheless, he wrote off at once, in
intricate and elaborate calligraphy, a letter directed to Nezimi Bey,
but intended for the Christian pastor Lepsius, to whom he gave precise
account of all he had so far achieved.

 

 

 

 

And, at about the same time as the Agha Rifaat Bereket wrote this letter
to Dr. Lepsius, the soul of Krikor of Yoghonoluk freed itself from his
agonized body. That night, before he went to sleep, the teacher Hapeth
Shatakhian had been bitten with remorse on Krikor's account. And so,
at two o'clock in the morning, this negligent chief-disciple of the
philosopher tiptoed into the government hut, came softly over to Krikor's
bed, faintly lit, peeped over the wall of books, and whispered gently,
so as not to wake the sick man, if he were asleep: "Apothecary -- hullo,
how are you?"

 

 

Krikor lay on his back. His breath came strangled. But his wide-open
eyes were very calm. He chid the teacher because of the stupidity of
his question.

 

 

Shatakhian edged his way round the rampart of books. He felt Krikor's pulse.
"Have you much pain?"

 

 

Krikor gave his answer a double meaning: "I have when you touch me."

 

 

The teacher squatted down beside the sick man. "I'll stop with you tonight.
It'll be better. . . . You might need something."

 

 

Krikor did not answer. He was far too occupied with his breath.

 

 

But the teacher became soulful; he mourned: "I'm thinking of the good old
days, Apothecary; our walks together, and all your sayings."

 

 

Krikor's yellow mandarin face lay there immobile. He answered in a
breathless, nasal head-voice. His goatee never stirred. "None of that
was worth very much."

 

 

These defensive words were enough to release all Shatakhian's sentimentality:
"It was worth a great deal. . . . For you, and for us. . . . You know I've
lived in Europe, Apothecary. I can say that French culture has become a part
of my flesh and blood. . . . Over there, one sees and hears and learns
thousands of things: lectures, concerts, theaters, pictures, the cinema.
. . . And you see, you were all those things for us, in Yoghonoluk --
and more. . . . You brought us the whole world and explained it to us.
. . . Oh, Apothecary, what might you not have become in Europe!"

 

 

These encomiums visibly worried Krikor. He answered in a haughty breath:
"I'm quite satisfied . . . as it is. . . ."

 

 

Nearly half an hour more elapsed before that strange, falsetto voice resumed:
"Teacher! Instead of talking nonsense, could you manage to do something
intelligent? . . . Go over there to the shelf with the medicine on it
You see that round black bottle? There's a glass beside it. . . .
Fill it up."

 

 

Shatakhian, pleased to be of some real use, obeyed and brought back the
brimming glass, which gave out a strong scent of mulberry brandy. "Well,
you've prescribed yourself the best medicine, Apothecary!"

 

 

He put his arm under Krikor's head, propped him up, and set the glass to
his lips. The sage of Yoghonoluk emptied it in long draughts, as though
it were water. After a while his face had colour in it, a mocking glint
had come into his eyes.

 

 

"That's it . . . best medicine . . . against pain. . . but now I must
be alone. . . . Go to bed, Shatakhian."

 

 

Krikor's new expression and his more vivacious tone made the teacher uneasy.
"I'll come in to see you tomorrow, Apothecary -- the first thing . . ."

 

 

"Yes, come tomorrow -- as early as ever you like. . . . But now you might
just put out that lamp . . . it's the last oil . . . over there, my little
candle . . . light it, please . . . put it up on the books. . . that's it.
. . . That's all . . . go and sleep, Shatakhian."

 

 

When the teacher was again beyond the rampart, he turned and looked back,
over the books, at his master. "If I were you, Apothecary, I shouldn't
worry about Oskanian; we've always known what he was like. . . ."

 

 

This last piece of advice was entirely superfluous, since now the
apothecary inhabited an entirely peaceful world, in which such absurd
puppets as Oskanian had ceased to figure. He stared fixedly out, without
moving his eyes, and rejoiced in the luxury of painlessness. His heart
was jubilant. He counted his internal assets. How light his baggage,
how happy he felt! He would lose nobody, nobody would have lost him.
All these human things seemed so remote, far away behind him: probably
they had never existed. Krikor had most certainly always been Krikor,
a man made differently from his kind. The people pity those who have to
be alone at such a minute. This Krikor could not understand. Was there
anything more glorious than such solitude? A delightful warmth stole up
through his body. Krikor felt his limbs become supple again, his joints
lose their stiffness. With a jerk, which did not hurt him in the least,
he turned towards the light. Small white moths and huge dark ones circled
the flame. Krikor thought: If it goes on like this, I shall get well. Not
that he cared. He reflected upon this dance of insects. Myriads of stars
in the form of butterflies, whose delicate bodies have been composed
of the ashes of burnt-out worlds, as the Arab astronomer Ibn Saadi had
already demonstrated. His mind became clouded, and he slept. But to wake
was horrible. The kennel had shrunk mysteriously. Krikor could scarcely
see. The moths had increased by thousands till they almost obscured the
flame of the badly made candle.

 

 

No breath would come to the sick man. Desperate, gurgling sounds forced
their way out of him; he jerked himself up and forwards, without noticing
the pain. Viewed from without, it was a choking fit, but its inner reality
was far worse. It was the monstrous sensation of not being able to hold
out, and not in any temporal, passing sense, but a "not being able to
hold out" which would go on and on; through all eternity. It was the
major punishment of any hell that may exist. And this eternal "not being
able to hold out" had its definite counterpart in the mind. Knowledge
that one knows nothing, an ignorance that yet knows all, are a pale
description of this ocean of half and half, of perceptions just begun,
thoughts rapidly fused into one another, teachings misunderstood, errors
devoured. The most trivial things never really grasped! Oh, gruesome
impotence of the spirit, which every blade of grass confounds. In this sea
of nauseating rubbish Krikor was drowning. He struggled to save himself,
escape. With a rattle in his throat he crawled out of bed and clung to
his rampart of books. When, in his weakness, he lost his hold on it and
fell on his back over the bed, he pulled down the top layers after him,
and with them the extinguished candle. The books came thudding down
round Krikor's body, as though to embrace him and hold him fast. For
a very long while Krikor lay as he had fallen, relieved that he could
breathe again, that his stifling fit of complete ignorance had released
him. His pain came back on him in waves. Every finger burned as though
he had just pulled it out of the fire.

 

 

And then the apothecary's books rendered him a last unique service --
the read, the unread, the skimmed-through, the beloved. He stuck his
burning hands into the leaves. Their pages were as cool as water. And
more than that. A thin, icy peace came streaming into him from the
intellectual life-blood of these books. Even with numb fingers, in
the dark, Krikor could distinguish one from another. A final impulse:
"Alas for this pleasure!" Then the burning died, throb by throb. The soft
release from pain stole higher and higher. A shimmer of leaden daylight
gleamed in through chinks in the log hut. This Krikor did not even notice,
since now he experienced the supreme. It began with a great awareness of
quiet, as if each thud of his ebbing pulse were saying: "I am the first
person, I am the first person." And then that thing began to grow which
was -- Krikor of Yoghonoluk. This is already a misstatement. Words,
meant for time and space, cannot say it. Perhaps it was not so much
a growing of the thing which was Krikor of Yoghonoluk, as a shrinking
together, shrivelling up, of the thing which had been the world. Yes,
the world crumpled with giddy speed: the hut, the Town Enclosure, Musa
Dagh, the house down in the valley, and all that surrounded it. It could
not have been any other way. It had no volume, since it was made of the
ashes of burnt-out stars. At last only Krikor of Yoghonoluk was left,
standing alone. He was the All, he was more than the All, since around
his head moth-worlds danced, without his observing it.