Forty Days of Musa Dagh (101 page)

 

 

His glance sought out the adjutant. "Still no news of those two batteries?"

 

 

The adjutant answered a brief "No." For two days now they had been
impatiently expecting the arrival of mountain artillery, sent to Aleppo.
But, since this transport came, not via Aleppo, but by way of Beilan and
the difficult route across the passes, it was delaying endlessly. So that
now the general had been forced to put off his main attack till tomorrow.

 

 

He stopped again in front of one of the junior officers. "How many yards
of telephone wire are there in the company stores?"

 

 

The young officer paled and began to mumble. Ali Risa Bey did not even
listen. "Well, it's no business of mine. But by this evening, by one hour
before sunset, mind, a telephone must have been installed in this house,
connecting me up with the mountain, both northwards and southwards. How
it's to be done is your look-out. I shall want telephonic reports of
tomorrow's attack from the major. Now you can go."

 

 

The wretched junior, who had not the vaguest notion how many coils of wire
the companies had, and considered this an impossible duty, shuffled off
despairingly to attempt it.

 

 

And now the general added sharply: "Yüs-Bashi . . . If you please . . ."

 

 

That wounded hero pulled himself together. The two went into the empty
anteroom. Ali Risa threw a frigid, hasty glance at the yüs-bashi's wounded
arm. "Yüs-Bashi, I'm giving you your chance in these operations to redeem
the gross blunder of which you've been guilty."

 

 

The yüs-bashi raised his wounded arm in suggestive protest; he had done
more than his duty! "I myself, General, went close up to those support
trenches of theirs, above Habaste, yesterday. They're perfectly empty.
The crew is no longer manning its supports. It was an hour before sunset."

 

 

"Good! And your four companies?"

 

 

"I think that covered advance of theirs in the night has fully succeeded.
Not so much as a lantern was shown. All day yesterday the men never moved
out of Habaste. Now they're disposed under the rocks, in fully concealed
positions. And the three machine-guns of my group."

 

 

"Tomorrow evening, when it's over, you'll telephone me, Yüs-Bashi.
Once you're on the summit, I don't want you to go on any further."

 

 

With that the conversation came to an end. Ali Risa had already turned
away.

 

 

But the yüs-bashi's voice halted him: "General, excuse me, please. I want
to say something. It's just this. . . . These deserters -- I've managed to
find out that it isn't only a question of Armenians. . . . And yesterday
an ex-Armenian came to see me, a lawyer, a Dr. Hekimian -- he's been
converted to the true belief. . . . Well, he's ready to treat with these
fellows, and get them to vacate their trench voluntarily. . . . Perhaps
we might have to make a few concessions, but on the other hand we'd be
certain of not having losses."

 

 

The general had listened quietly. Suddenly he interrupted: "Out of the
question, Yüs-Bashi! We can't ever allow it to be said of us that we could
clear out these Armenian devils only because some of them happened to be
traitors. Just think what the foreign press would say! It would pour out
venom over His Excellency and the whole Fourth Army!"

 

 

Heavy steps came echoing over the tiles of the entrance hall. The tall,
sagging shape of the Kaimakam, followed by the freckled müdir, came
into the room. The Kaimakam touched his fez carelessly. "At last,
gentlemen! General, your batteries will reach Sanderan in three hours.
Your people seem even less businesslike than mine. . . ."

 

 

Ali Risa's clear, ascetic face always irritated the ultra-bilious Kaimakam.
He decided to annoy this soldier. With his hand already on the door handle,
he turned before going out of the room, supercilious. "I hope our armed
forces don't intend to disappoint us a fourth time."

 

 

 

 

Shushik, Haik's mother, served Juliette clumsily, but with deep devotion.
Juliette was really convalescent, although so wasted and enfeebled that
she tottered with every step she took. Her face had a bluish, whitish
tinge. Or rather her face was colorless, as if, after such an illness,
it wanted to look as different as possible from the dark, sunburnt
faces all round it. Now Juliette could sit up for an hour, two hours,
every day. She would sink down in front of her looking glass, put her
head on her arms, and never move. And she would kneel, as she had before
in her desperation, by the bedside, pressing her face into the small,
lace-edged cushion, her last home. The worst sign of spiritual havoc
was that now her two dominant instincts -- to look beautiful and to keep
clean -- seemed to have died in her. The laundry basket stood open in the
tent. But she neither felt in it nor asked for any clean things. Nor,
in utter contradiction to the fantasies that obsessed her mind, did
she reach out for the flask of
eau de printemps
, in which dregs
still waited to be used, to attempt to freshen her dried-up skin. She
did not even step into the slippers which stood ready beside her bed,
but tottered barefoot the few steps she was able to manage.

 

 

Shushik saw in Juliette a mother driven mad by the horrible death of
her only child. Haik was alive! And more than that! His life for all
time was secure. Jackson protected him, and America! These words, to
Shushik, connoted supernatural powers. Jackson! He was not a man, but
presumably the head-archangel himself, brandishing a fiery sword. She
had been more blessed than any other mother on Musa Dagh. Must she not
day and night bestir herself to serve and thank, thank and serve! And
who should she thank, who serve, if not this other mother, on whom the
full curse had descended? This was a rich hanum, a distinguished lady,
a foreigner. Shushik's voice had been loud and rough for years, and
yet now she cooed like any sucking dove, almost singing her comfort.
It was all so simple. This world is this world. But over there Lord Jesus,
the Saviour, has arranged things so well that all shall be reunited. And
first of all mothers will see their children again. Up there in heaven
mothers see their children, not as those grown-up sons and daughters whom
they have left behind them in the world, but as real little children,
just as they were between two and five. And good mothers, up there in
heaven, are allowed to carry their children in their arms.

 

 

Blissfully lost in such a prospect, the gigantic Shushik raised her arms
up and cradled a tiny, invisible Haik. Shushik imagined that this foreigner
did not understand her speech. She sat down on the ground beside the hanum,
considering how she could comfort and be of use. She touched Juliette's
frozen feet. With a soft little moan of pity she pressed these feet between
her breasts, while her great, leathery peasant hands first stroked, and
then began to chafe them. Juliette shut her eyes and sank back. Shushik
had no doubt that the unhappy woman was mad. And she fully understood
this madness -- how far along the way to it she herself had gone, before
that blissful news called her back! She was far too rough and simple
to suspect that this was not real madness at all, but a kind of burrow,
in which the hanum crouched away from daylit consciousness. And Bedros
Hekim shared Shushik's view, considering Juliette's present state of
mind as an aberration, resulting from the spotted plague. A surprising
incident, in the course of his visit to the patient on the morning of
this fortieth day, seemed fully to justify his belief. The old man had
sat on the edge of Juliette's bed, doing his best in such French as
he could muster to bring hope and life to this frozen soul. Everything
seemed to be going splendidly. The war would be certain to end within a
few weeks, and so the world would be at peace again. Madame must have
heard of the visit of the Agha Rifaat Bereket, from Antakiya. Well,
this old, influential Turkish gentleman had clearly hinted that Gabriel
Bagradian and Madame would be given permission to go back to France,
almost at once. His kindness changed the grumpy old sceptic into a most
inventive teller of children's tales. Even the edged scornfulness of his
voice sounded protective. But, as he sat relating these pretty fables,
Iskuhi had come suddenly into the doorway.

 

 

Juliette, who, with amiably absent eyes, had seemed all this while to be
listening to the doctor's poetry, started at the sight of Iskuhi. She sat
up in terror, drew up her knees, and began to scream: Not her! Not her!
Tell her to go! . . . I won't take anything from her! . . . She wants
to kill me. . . ."

 

 

Strangest of all, Iskuhi stood listening to these frenzies and never moved,
her own small face like a mask of madness, looking as though she too might
scream her answer. Bedros Hekim, perturbed, stared from one to the other.
Now he could sense some gruesome reality. Long after Iskuhi had vanished,
Juliette, whose enfeebled heart was thumping, would still not be pacified.

 

 

 

 

What had happened to Iskuhi?

 

 

For five days she had not seen Gabriel. For two days she had had no food.
But Iskuhi wanted to go hungry, and not only because she starved with
her whole people. For five long days she had not seen Gabriel, but in
exchange her brother Aram had twice come to the door of her tent. Then
she crouched inside and refused to open. Each of these five days with all
its hours, which lasted years, had crept intolerably. Why did not Gabriel
come? Iskuhi waited for Gabriel every second of the day and night. Now,
even if her exhausted body had had the strength to let her do it, she
would not have gone out to him in the trench. Less every hour would
she have gone! She was lying, breathing deeply on her bed, in what had
been Hovsannah's tent, and could not manage to move a limb. A roaring
in her ears, like surf on a beach, seemed to burst her skull. And yet
this roaring was still not loud enough to overwhelm the truth in her
mind. . . . How many minutes were there to waste on the Damlayik? And
Gabriel wasted not only irreplaceable minutes, but whole eternal days
of their short love. Wasted? Love? Implacably Iskuhi frought to mind
all that she had experienced with Gabriel. Yes, Gabriel had been gentle
with her. But his grief was for Stephan. And, when he opened his heart,
it had been in compassion, sorrow, for his adulterous wife. Gabriel had
at least been frank with her. Really his whole attitude seemed to say:
"Little sister, I thank you, with my cold hands, my distant, brotherly
kisses, for having tried so hard to bear my pain with me. But how could
you, a poor little girl from Yoghonoluk, ever do it? In spite of all this,
and forever, I belong to the Frenchwoman, the stranger. I shall die,
not with Iskuhi, but with Juliette. Juliette may have played me false,
but I bow to her, I only bend over Iskuhi."

 

 

Would it have been any different, Iskuhi asked herself, if Juliette
had, as in her heart she had longed she might a hundred times, died
of her fever? And she perceived: No! If Juliette had died, Gabriel
would have loved her, Iskuhi, far less, even. How that sick woman could
spy out secrets! Iskuhi wanted never to go back into Juliette's tent,
never see her again. Yet it was not Juliette's fault; hers less than
anyone's. What made Iskuhi unworthy to be loved? She was not European,
only a poor village girl from Yoghonoluk, the daughter of an Armenian
village carpenter. Was it really that? Was Gabriel himself "European"?
Did he not even come from the very same Armenian village? She had lived
two years in Switzerland, and he, in Paris, twenty-three. That was all
the difference. When he looked at her, he told her that she was beautiful.
Stop! That was it! Why did he often look at her so oddly, with eyes
that half saw? Something in her disturbed him and made him cold. Iskuhi
conquered her enfeeblement and hurried to look in the little mirror,
which stood on the table. She need not have looked in her glass. She
knew without looking. She was crippled -- a cripple now, though not
born one. In these six months since the convoy from Zeitun, her left arm
had got worse and worse. If she did not help it with a sling, it hung,
withered and twisted, at her side. Gabriel had to watch her deformity,
no matter how skillfully concealed.

 

 

She knew! Once he had lightly kissed her crippled arm. Now Iskuhi felt
she could remember the compassionate effort this kiss had cost him. Iskuhi
fell back on her bed. The roaring in her ears rose like a sea storm. She
kept making convulsive efforts to justify Gabriel's absence by the facts.
No doubt, in these last hungry days, things had been disorganized in his
trenches. He must have had to work out a whole new defense. And shots
had begun again. None of these reasoned explanations gained the least
influence on Iskuhi. But, like the ground-note of the storm roaring in her
ears, she could hear her own voice, yet a stranger's. Her voice sang the
chanson d'amour which she had sung at Juliette's behest one day in Villa
Bagradian. Stephan had been there, and Gabriel came into the room. The
first lines of that ancient folk song kept up a ritornel in her head,
till their sound crazed her:

 

 

"She came out of her garden,
And held them close against her breasts,
Two fruits of the pomegranate tree
She gave them me, I would not take."

 

 

The song stopped there. Instantly the horror overcame her, which had
spared her so long. The face on the highroad to Marash, the kaleidoscopic,
twisting grimace of that scrubby murderer, was upon her. Its gyrations
ceased, as if something had gone wrong with the kaleidoscope. And now
in some secret fashion the staring mask was turning into Gabriel's face,
but far more hateful, murderous even. Iskuhi could not breathe for fear
and misery. Dumbly she wept for help. Aram!