Forty Days of Musa Dagh (11 page)

 

 

The answer did not come as a surprise. The Effendi must remember that
this lack of able-bodied men was a legacy from the past, a consequence
of the blood-letting to which, at least once every decade, the Armenian
people was subjected. But that was only a euphemism. Gabriel himself had
seen over two hundred young men in the village streets. There were other
ways of avoiding conscription, without having to pay the bedel. The
pock-marked saptieh, Ali Nassif, was no doubt fully conversant with
these other methods.

 

 

Bagradian came back to the point: "Well, then . . . Fifty people were
sent to barracks in Antakiya. What's happened to them?"

 

 

"Forty were kept for service.

 

 

"And in which regiments, on what fronts, would they be serving?"

 

 

That was uncertain. It was weeks, months, now, since the families had
had news of their sons. The reliability of the Turkish field-post was
all too well known. Possibly they were in barracks in Aleppo, where
General Jemal Pasha was reconditioning his army.

 

 

"And does nobody say in the villages that they're going to use the Armenians
as inshaat taburi, as depot soldiers?"

 

 

"They say all kinds of things in the villages." The clerk looked rather
uneasy as he answered.

 

 

Gabriel eyed the little bookcase. A
List of Householders
stood next to a
copy of the
Imperial Ottoman Book of Laws
, and next that a pair of rusty
scales for weighing letters. He turned suddenly: "What about deserters?"

 

 

The harassed village clerk tip-toed to the door, opened and shut it again
mysteriously. Of course there were deserters, here as everywhere.
Why shouldn't Armenians desert, when Turks were setting them the example?
How many? Fifteen to twenty. Yes! They'd been after them, too. A few days
ago. A mixed platoon of saptiehs and regular infantry, led by a mülasim.
They'd looked all over Musa Dagh. Made fools of themselves.

 

 

The pointed face of the blinking little man was suddenly craftily triumphant.
"Fools of themselves, Effendi. You see, our lads know their own mountain."

 

 

 

 

Ter Haigasun's presbytery was the third best house in the church square
of Yoghonoluk. Only the mukhtar's house and the school buildings could
compare with it. With its flat roof and single-storied, five-windowed
façade, it might have stood in any small town in the south of Italy.
Ter Haigasun was Gregorian chief priest to the whole district. His province
even included hamlets with mixed inhabitants and the small Armenian
communities in such Turkish towns as Suedia and El Eskel. Ter Haigasun
had studied in the seminary at Ejmiadzin, at the feet of the Catholicos,
in whom all Armenian Christianity acclaimed its chief spiritual head,
and was therefore in every way the chosen vicar of his district.

 

 

And Pastor Harutiun Nokhudian? How did a Protestant pastor suddenly come
to inhabit such a remote Armenian village? The answer is that Syria and
Anatolia contained a great many Protestants and that the Evangelical
church had those German and American missionaries who had cared so well
for Armenian orphans and victims to thank for these proselytes. The worthy
Nokhudian had been such an orphan, sent by these compassionate mission-folk
to Dorpat in East Germany to study theology. But in everything that was
not of strictly spiritual concern Nokhudian submitted to Ter Haigasun.
In view of the constant danger besetting Armenians theological differences
became of comparative unimportance, and Ter Haigasun's spiritual leadership
-- he was, in the truest sense, a spiritual leader -- remained uncontested
and uncriticized.

 

 

An old man, the sacristan, led Gabriel into the priest's study. A bare
room with a wide carpet. Against the window a small writing-desk with,
beside it, a tattered, straw-seated chair for visitors. Ter Haigasun stood
up behind the desk and came round it a step nearer Bagradian. He could
not have been more than forty-eight, yet his beard had long grey streaks
on either side. His big eyes (Armenian eyes are nearly always big; big
with a thousand years of terror) had a mingled look of shy isolation and
resolute knowledge of the world. The priest was wearing a black alpaca
cassock with a hood that rose to a point over his head. His hands were
hidden in wide sleeves, as though they were freezing even on this warm,
spring day. Was it a shiver of humility? Bagradian sat down carefully
on the rickety straw-seated chair.

 

 

"I much regret the fact, reverend Father, that I am never able to greet you
at my house."

 

 

The priest cast down his eyes; both hands waved a gesture of apology.
"I regret it even more than you, Effendi. But Sunday evening is the only
time we priests have free in the whole week."

 

 

Gabriel looked about him. He had hoped in this presbytery study to find
some documents and records. Nothing at all. Only a few written papers
on the desk. "I can well believe that you carry a heavy burden."

 

 

Ter Haigasun did not deny it.

 

 

Gabriel tried to arrest the eyes of the priest. "Don't you agree,
Ter Haigasun, that these are not the days for social gatherings?"

 

 

A brief, attentive glance was his reply. "On the contrary, Effendi.
This is the right time for people to come together."

 

 

Gabriel at first said nothing in answer to these strange words with their
double meaning. It was a while before he observed: "It really is surprising
that life here should go on so calmly, and that nobody seems to be
perturbed."

 

 

Again the priest was sitting with downcast eyes, as though he were prepared
to accept any scorn with humility.

 

 

"I was in Antioch a few days ago," Gabriel very slowly observed, "where
I heard a good deal."

 

 

Ter Haigasun's freezing hands slipped out of his sleeves. He joined
his finger tips. "The people in our villages only very seldom go to
Antioch. And that is good. They live within their own boundaries and
know little of things in the world outside."

 

 

"How long will they still be able to live at peace in their own boundaries,
Ter Haigasun? . . . What will happen, for instance, if all our leaders and
rich men in Istanbul get arrested?"

 

 

"They have already been arrested," the priest answered very softly.
"For the last three days they have been in the prisons of Istanbul.
And they are many, very many."

 

 

So that Gabriel's fate was sealed, the way to the capital blocked. Yet for
the moment this major fact impressed him less than Ter Haigasun's calm.
He had no doubt that the news was reliable. The clergy, in spite of
the liberal Dashnakzagan, was still the one great power, the only
real organization of the people. The priest was the first to learn,
by quick and secret ways, of any new and dangerous factor, long before
the newspapers of the capital had dared report it. Gabriel wanted to
convince himself that he really had understood.

 

 

"Actually arrested? And who? . . Are you perfectly sure?"

 

 

"I'm certain."

 

 

"And yet you, the head priest of seven large villages, keep so calm?"

 

 

"Excitement would be of no use and would probably only injure my people."

 

 

"Have any priests been arrested?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun doubtless perceived the guile in this question. He nodded
gravely. "Seven, so far. Among them Archbishop Hemayak and three highly
placed prelates."

 

 

For all this devastating news Gabriel craved a cigarette. He was given
one, and a light. "I ought to have come to see you before, Ter Haigasun.
You have no idea how hard it has been to keep silence."

 

 

"You did very well to keep silence. And we must continue to keep it."

 

 

"Would it perhaps be better to prepare these people for what may happen?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun's face, as though carved in wax, showed no emotion. "I can't
tell what may happen. But I know the danger of panic in a community."

 

 

This Christian priest had spoken to almost the same effect as had Rifaat,
the pious Moslem. But in Gabriel's mind a lightning vision came and went:
a huge dog. One of those stray mad curs that make all Turkey dangerous
ground. An old man on a road, stopping in terror of the dog, swaying on
his feet, and turning, with a sudden jerk, for flight -- but already
the rabid fangs are in his back. . . . Gabriel passed his hand across
his forehead.

 

 

"Fear," he said, "is the surest way of exciting our enemy to slaughter us.
But isn't it rather sinful, and perhaps even more dangerous, to keep the
people ignorant of their fate? How long can the secret be kept?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun seemed to be listening into the distance. "The papers are
still not allowed to report these things, so that foreign countries
may not know anything of them. And in the spring there's so much work
to do that our people have no time and scarcely go anywhere. So that,
with God's help, we can be spared anxiety for some little while. But
one day it will come. Sooner or later . . ."

 

 

"Will come? How do you see it coming?"

 

 

"I don't see anything."

 

 

"Our soldiers disarmed? Our leaders arrested?"

 

 

Ter Haigasun, in the same quiet voice, as though it gave him secret pleasure
to torment both himself and his listener, concluded his story. "They have
even arrested Vartkes, the bosom friend of Talaat and Enver. Some of them
have been deported. They may be dead by now. All Armenian newspapers have
been shut down, all Armenian shops and businesses closed. And, as we sit
here, there are fifteen innocent Armenian men hanging on fifteen gallows
on the square before the Seraskeriat."

 

 

Bagradian rose so excitedly that he overturned the straw-seated chair.
"What's the real meaning of all this madness? Can you make it out?"

 

 

"I can only see that the government is planning such a stroke against
our whole people as even Abdul Hamid never dared."

 

 

Gabriel glared as angrily at Ter Haigasun, as though he had been faced
with an enemy, a member of Ittihad. "Are we really so helpless? Must we
really hold out our heads to the noose in silence?"

 

 

"We are helpless. We must bow our heads. We may perhaps be allowed to
cry out."

 

 

This damned East, with its kismet, Bagradian thought in a flash of rage.
At the same instant his consciousness was invaded by a thousand names,
connections, possibilities -- politicians, diplomats, his personal friends,
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Scandinavians. They must arouse the whole
world! But how? The trap had closed. The mists returned. His words came
out very subdued. "Europe won't stand for it."

 

 

"You see it through foreign eyes." Ter Haigasun's passive calm was
unendurable. "These are two Europes. The Germans need the Turkish
government more than it needs them. And the others can't help us."

 

 

Gabriel stared at the priest, whose alert cameo-like face nothing
could disturb. "You are the spiritual father of thousands of souls" --
Bagradian's voice had almost a military sharpness -- "and your whole
skill consists in the ability to withhold the truth from people, just
as we hide it from children, or the old, to spare them. Is that all you
can do for your flock? What else can you do?"

 

 

The attack seemed to have pierced the priest to the quick. His hands on
the table slowly clenched. His chin sank on to his chest.

 

 

"I pray . . ." Ter Haigasun whispered, as though ashamed of letting be seen
by a stranger the spiritual struggle which day by day he waged with God
for the safety of his flock. Perhaps this grandson of Avetis Bagradian
was a freethinker, a scoffer. But Gabriel paced the room, breathing heavily.
He struck the wall with the flat of his hand, suddenly, so hard that plaster
came flaking down. "Pray then, Ter Haigasun" -- and still like an officer
giving an order -- "pray . . . But God helps those who help themselves."

 

 

 

 

The first incident which revealed these secret happenings to Yoghonoluk
occurred that very same day. It was a warm, cloudy day in April.

 

 

Gabriel, at Stephan's request, had had a few roughly carpentered gymnasium
fittings set up in the park. Stephan was naturally athletic. His father
often joined his exercises. Shooting at the target was their favorite,
though Juliette, to be sure, preferred croquet. Today, immediately after
lunch, at which Gabriel had still not said a word, Avakian, Stephan,
and his father went out to the range set up outside the park enclosure on
a little woody hillock of Musa Dagh. There Gabriel had had a transverse
gully, about fifty feet long, cleared of its undergrowth. Under a high
oak there was a lying-board wedged down into the soil, from which to aim
at the target fixed to a tree at the farther end of the gully. Avetis
had left his brother well supplied with arms -- a box of eight hunting
rifles of various patterns, two Mauser infantry rifles, and a full supply
of ammunition.

 

 

Gabriel was a fairly good shot, but for five cartridges he got only one
bull's-eye. The very short-sighted Avakian kept clear of the contest, so
as not to put too hard a strain on his pupil's respect. But Stephan proved
a crack shot, since, of seven cartridges fired out of the smallest of the
hunting rifles, six pierced the playing card which served as bull's-eye
to the target, and four hit the face of the figure. It excited Stephan
greatly to beat his father. He would have liked to go on shooting till
the evening, had Gabriel not suddenly broken off: "That's enough."