Forty Days of Musa Dagh (108 page)

 

The Kaimakam straightened his loose, but mighty bulk. "What does this order
mean? I demand an explanation, Effendi!"

 

 

The general did not seem to see him; his grey-blue eyes were turned on
the yüs-bashi.

 

 

"Retire your advance companies. All troops to vacate the mountain and
concentrate in the valley of Yoghonoluk. Get a move on!"

 

 

"I demand your explanation!" bellowed the Kaimakam; the pouches under
his eyes had a deep blue look. "This is cowardice. I'm responsible to
His Excellency. There's no reason for holding up operations."

 

 

A long, cold glance from the young general passed into him. "No reason?
Do you want to give the Allied fleet its pretext for shooting the whole
coastline to bits? Their long-range shells will carry to Antakiya. Do you
suppose that cruiser out there is going to stay by itself, Kaimakam? Would
you like the French and English to land and set up a new war front in the
heart of undefended Syria? What's your opinion, Kaimakam?"

 

 

But the Kaimakam, yellowish-brown in the face, was spluttering now through
foamy lips: "All that has nothing to do with me! I, as the responsible
person, order you -- "

 

 

He got no further. Since naturally the general's counter-order had not,
in the few minutes, reached Turkish gunners, their first shots had
begun to crackle from a notch in the North Saddle. And now the long,
shapely barrels in the turret of the Guichen had begun to turn. There
was scarcely time to draw three breaths before -- crack after crack --
the first shells fell among the domino houses of Suedia, El Eskel,
Yedidje. At once the tall chimney of the alcohol factory ran up an
American flag. Wooden Turkish houses already flamed.

 

 

Ali Risa yelled at the yüs-bashi: "Telephone cease fire, damn you!
The saptiehs to evacuate all civilians. Everyone into the valley of
the villages!"

 

 

The freckled müdir from Salonika, who so far had stood in respectful
silence, was seized with frenzy in his turn. His hands flew up to his
mouth; he bellowed as though, through all the noise of her guns, he was
determined to be heard on board the Guichen: "This is a flagrant
infringement of international law. . . . Open coastline. . . .
Interference with domestic policy. . ."

 

 

But Major-General Ali Risa picked his walking stick up off the ground
and turned to go. His officers crowded in round him. He stopped. "Why
shout so, Müdir? You'd better thank Ittihad."

 

 

"I don't feel well," moaned the Kaimakam, who, considering the state of
his general health, had already exerted himself too much that day. His
heavy body sank down. He seemed to do his utmost not to faint. The same
words over and over again came spluttering through his blackened lips:
"This is the end. . . . This is the end. . . ."

 

 

The müdir had to fetch four saptiehs to carry his sick superior
down to the valley.

 

 

 

 

It might well have been supposed that Gabriel, too, would sink to earth,
the moment his consciousness of this miracle had fully permeated his
spirit, under the sheer weight of such relief. But nothing of the kind!
Gabriel was too numbed to feel. The most prudently and carefully chosen
words could scarcely render with truth what he felt at that moment. No,
not disillusionment. That would be too rough a way of putting it. Rather
the need for unwelcome effort, which an organism fagged to death has got
to make to readjust itself. Thus the human eye defends itself, coming
out of the dark into bright light, against this all too startling change,
even though the soul may have longed for it.

 

 

Bagradian's first reaction was the order, which he sent along the lines
of his defence: "No one to move! Everyone to stop where he is!"

 

 

This was a highly important order. Since Gabriel did not know what the
Turks intended, and then he, himself, with his own eyes, had not yet seen
the flag this warship flew. Also it seemed highly improbable that this
ship could or would pick up four and a half thousand people. No less
surprising was the effect of this miracle on the defenders, who, after
this eternity spent in the expectation of death, lay paralyzed in their long,
extended order. A boy, breathlessly waving, had brought the news. It did not
release one cry; tense silence followed it. But suddenly the lines broke.
Those who had heard of this miracle crowded up the hillock to the howitzer
emplacement, to their commander. Not this was remarkable, but the change
in the deep, gruff voices of these men. Suddenly they piped and whined.
High falsetto tones surrounded Gabriel. It sounded almost like a tremulous
kind of women's chiding, or the outburst of terrified lunatics. Their
voices, before their souls well knew they were saved, ran up into their
heads. They obeyed his order at once. They lay down again in extended
lines, each with his rifle, as though nothing stupendous had come to
pass. Only Teacher Hapeth Shatakhian implored the chief to send him out
as envoy to the ship, since he, whose French was so perfect, so flawless
his accent, was obviously the man to negotiate. The teacher smiled all
over his face. Gabriel, who, by his own example, wanted to keep the
decads together till the last danger of a Turkish attack should have
passed, let Shatakhian go, with these instructions: Whatever happened,
communication must be maintained between the encamped people down on
the shore and their armed defenders on the mountain. Ter Haigasun and
Bedros Altouni were to board the French ship with Shatakhian. Moreover:
the captain of the Guichen must instantly be informed of the fact that
a French lady, dangerously ill, was in their camp.

 

 

The artillery fire which opened against the North Saddle confirmed
Bagradian's worst suspicions. The Turk had no thought of dropping his prey
without further question. But, as soon as this artillery fire died down
again, the big guns on board the Guichen dropped neatly crashing shells on
to Ottoman villages. The whole Orontes plain might well have been roused
for the Last Judgment. Even when Gabriel climbed his observation post,
Suedia, El Eskel, Yedidje and indeed even the distant Ain Yerab gave out
smoke and flames. On horses, mules, in oxcarts, in streaming shoals, the
people were rushing on for safety into the valley of Yoghonoluk. After
a time Gabriel went back beside the howitzers. Already the shells,
set to fuse, were standing there behind the carriages. He had intended
to swivel his guns round to the north, and, when things had got so far,
drop shells into the Turkish advance. He gave up this intention, though
he by no means considered the danger past. Gabriel sat on the ground by
the howitzers. He stared out, and at the same time, inwards.

 

 

"Now perhaps I'll be back in a few weeks in Paris. We shall live in
the old flat in the Avenue Kléber, and start life again." But this
thought -- which an hour ago had been the fantasy of a lunatic -- did
nothing to fill up his astonishing emptiness. Not a trace of kneeling
jubilation, that rush of warmest gratitude to God, warranted by the
unthinkable miracle. Gabriel had no desire for Paris, for a flat,
for cultivated people, for comfort; no, and not even for a bellyful,
a bed and cleanliness. Whatever trace of emotion he managed to find in
himself could be described as the nagging desire to be alone; it grew
in him from minute to minute. But it would have to be such solitude
as there is not. An unpeopled world. A planet without animal needs,
or movement. A cosmic hermitage, and he the only person in it, gazing
out at peace, without any past, present, and future.

 

 

 

 

The new camping-grounds of the village communes were set fairly far apart.
Yoghonoluk and Habibli were fairly high up, whereas Bitias, Azir, and
Kebussiye had picked out places along the beach, where receding rocks
left free a few uneven clearings, grown about with hard, dry shrub.

 

 

They had all still been asleep when Teacher Oskanian waved his flag.
It was no longer a sleep of human beings, but of dead matter, as rocks or
mounds sleep. The crack of doom from the ship's guns broke it. Almost
four thousand women, children, greybeards, opened startled eyes to the
light of this fourth day of panic. Those down on the beach saw an incredible
mirage, born of enfeeblement; it rose quiet on the solid sea. Some stumbled
to their feet, to shake off the phantom. Others lay on the hard rock,
indifferent to it, chafed to the bone as they were, since their bones had
no flesh on them. They did not so much as turn on the other side. But then,
among these grown-ups, suddenly, there arose a short-breathed, wheezing
whimper, like the weak protest of very sick children. It spread from one
to the other of them. And now the feeblest wraiths hovered upright. Boys,
who had still more strength in them than anyone, began to clamber up
the rocks.

 

 

The big cruiser, the Guichen, had anchored about half a sea-mile off the
coast. A devastating sight awaited its officers and ratings. They saw
hundreds of bare skeleton arms held out to them, begging collectively. The
human forms of which those arms were a part, and indeed the faces, looked
blurred even through a field-glass, like so many ghosts. Added to which
a sharp entanglement of thin voices, as of chirruping insects, which had
the effect of coming from much further off than it actually did. Then,
down between the rocks, more and more of these human grasshoppers came
hurrying to increase the number of begging arms. Before the commander
of the Guichen could decide what to do for these persecuted, two diminutive
shapes had dived from a rock, boys it seemed, and begun to struggle towards
the ship. They got to within about a hundred yards of her, and then their
strength seemed to fail. But a boat had been providentially sent out to
them, which took them up. Another boat moved off shorewards. It was to
bring back the envoys of these curious "Christians in Need." But it was
soon apparent that, when God sends us a miracle, reality has always
enough malice in it to make it seem, by a hundred artful tricks,
less miraculous. This coast was so difficult to land on, the surf so
heavy, that even the well-manned boat of the Guichen could scarcely
manage to put ashore, and Aram's failure to make his fishery answer
was justified. Almost an hour of unsuccessful efforts to land had
passed before Ter Haigasun, Altouni, and Hapeth Shatakhian could come
on board. This was the hour during which the Guichen, provoked thereto
by the challenging gunfire on Musa Dagh, sent heavy shells crashing all
over the Moslem plain.

 

 

When Captain Brisson received the delegation in the officers' mess,
his guns had already ceased their fire. Brisson gave a little start
of horror at the sight of these men -- these three shrivelled bodies
hung with rags, these wildly bearded faces with high foreheads and huge
eyes. And Ter Haigasun looked the wildest. Half his beard had been singed
away. The burn glowed on his right cheek. Since his everyday cassock
had been burned in the presbytery hut, he still wore the borrowed rug
draped round his shoulders.

 

 

The captain held out his hand. "The priest? The teacher?" he asked.

 

 

But Shatakhian gave him no time for further inquiries; he gathered together
his whole strength, bowed, and launched out on the long speech, rehearsed
aloud on the path to the beach and, later even, in the boat. He began it
somewhat in- appropriately: "Mon général . . ."

 

 

When from these long-winded, Eastern outpourings, Captain Brisson had
managed to disentangle essentials from much that was beside the point,
the orator, delighted with his own prowess, stood hoping that so august
a hearer might deign a word of praise for his faultless accent and choice
vocabulary. Captain Brisson only glanced from one to another of them and
asked what was Madame Bagradian's maiden name. Hapeth Shatakhian was
delighted to furnish even this, and to proclaim his familiarity with the
names of the best French families. And then Ter Haigasun spoke. To the
teacher's amazement, indeed disgust, he spoke fluent French, though he
had never even troubled to say so, in all these years as school
superintendent. He told at once of the hunger and enfeeblement of his
people, begging for help without delay, since otherwise many women and
children might scarcely get through the next few hours. As he was saying
this, Dr. Bedros Altouni collapsed and almost fell off the chair he sat
in. Brisson sent at once for café and cognac, and a plentiful meal for the
three delegates. Yet neither the old doctor nor the others could manage
to swallow more than a few mouthfuls. Meanwhile the ship's commander had
summoned the quartermaster and given orders to send out boats immediately
with whatever supplies might be available. The ship's doctor, hospital
staff, and an armed detachment of marines were also ordered ashore.

 

 

Brisson then explained to the Armenians that the Guichen was not an
independent unit, but the leader of a mixed English and French squadron,
under orders to sail northwest along the Anatolian coast. Yesterday
evening, three hours before the main body of the fleet, she had put out
from the Cyprus bay of Famagusta. The fleet commander, the rear-admiral,
was on board the Jeanne d'Arc, the flagship and vessel of the line. They
would have to await his decision. But an hour ago a wireless message had
been sent out to the Jeanne d'Arc. The envoys need not be afraid; there
was no danger that a French admiral would leave so valiant a commune
of the persecuted Armenian Christian people to its fate without more
ado. Ter Haigasun bent his head, with the singed beard.