Forty Days of Musa Dagh (21 page)

 

 

"Herr Lepsius," Enver declared at last, "you overestimate my competency.
The carrying into effect of such government decrees is a matter for the
Ministry of the Interior."

 

 

The German snatched his pince-nez from off red eyes. "But that's just it --
the way in which the thing's being carried out. It isn't the Minister,
or the Wali, or the Mutessarif, who puts these decrees into execution,
but bestial, heartless subordinates and sergeants. Do you, for instance,
or does the Minister, intend that women and children should collapse
on the high-road and be driven on at once with cudgels? Is it your
intention that a whole area should be infected with rotting corpses,
that the Euphrates should be thick with dead? I know for a fact that
that's how it's being carried out."

 

 

"I'm aware how well you know the interior." Enver Pasha came a little way
to meet him. "And I should be very glad to have your written suggestions
as to how these matters can be improved. I'll examine them carefully."

 

 

But Lepsius stretched out his arms. "Send me down there. That's my first
suggestion. Not even the old Sultan refused me that. Give me full powers
to organize these transports and convoys. God will lend me the strength,
and I've had more experience than anyone. I don't need a piastre from
the Ottoman government, I'll get hold of the necessary funds. I shall
have German and American relief commissions behind me. Once before I
succeeded in a great work of assistance. I helped to establish numbers
of orphanages and hospitals and more than fifty industrial societies.
In spite of this war I can do the same again, and better -- and in two
years you yourself will be thanking me, Excellency."

 

 

This time Enver Pasha had listened with not merely his usual attention,
but intense eagerness. And now Herr Lepsius saw and heard a thing he had
never experienced in his life. It was no sneering cruelty, no cynicism,
that transfigured the boyish look on this war lord's face. No. What
Herr Lepsius perceived was that arctic mask of the human being who "has
overcome all sentimentality" -- the mask of a human mind which has got
beyond guilt and all its qualms, the strange, almost innocent naďveté
of utter godlessness. And what force it had, that a man could not hate it!

 

 

"Your estimable suggestions interest me," said Enver appreciatively,
"but it goes without saying that I must reject them. This very request of
yours shows me that up to now we have talked at cross-purposes. If I let
a foreigner help Armenians, I shall create a precedent which will admit
of the intervention of foreign personages, and so of the countries they
represent. I should be destroying my whole policy, since its object is to
teach the Armenian millet the consequences of this longing of theirs for
foreign intervention. The Armenians themselves would be bewildered. First
I punish their seditious hopes and fantasies, and then I proceed to send
one of their most influential friends to reawaken them. No, my dear
Herr Lepsius, that's impossible. I can't let foreigners benefit these
people. The Armenians must see in us their sole benefactors."

 

 

The pastor sank down into his chair. Lost. All over. Words were superfluous.
If only the man were malicious, if he were Satan! But he had no malice,
he was not Satan; this quietly implacable mass-murderer was boyishly
charming. Lepsius had begun to brood and so did not see at once the
whole effrontery of Enver's offer, made in a cheery, confident tone:

 

 

"Shall I suggest something, Herr Lepsius? You get money! Get as much money
as ever you can, from your societies, a lot of money -- in Germany and
America. Then, when you've collected it, bring it to me. I'll use it all
as you want it used, according to your suggestions. But I must point out
that I can't allow any supervision by Germans or other foreigners."

 

 

Had Johannes not been so perturbed, he would have burst out laughing,
so amusing was the thought of those devious channels by which his
collected funds, disposed of by Enver, would travel in Turkey. He did
not answer. He was beaten. Although he had been without much hope,
even before the interview began, he realized only now that a world lay
shattered. He summoned his wits together and, to bring himself back to
self-control, made himself look a trifle more presentable, mopped his
glistening forehead several times, and stood up.

 

 

"I can't bear to think, Excellency, that this hour which you have been
so kind as to grant me has been quite fruitless. There are a hundred
thousand Armenians in North Syria and along the coast, living far away
from any battlefield. I'm sure Your Excellency agrees that punitive
measures which have no object are better left in abeyance."

 

 

Again the boyish Mars bared a row of smiling teeth. "You may be sure,
Herr Lepsius, that our government will avoid all unnecessary harshness."

 

 

This on both sides had been empty formality, an aimless juggling, to
enable this political discussion, like every other, to ebb away in vague
inconclusiveness. Enver had not made the least concession. It was still
his affair what harshness he might think necessary. And Lepsius, too,
knowing that his last words were meaningless, had said them merely to
end the interview. The general, who, in contrast to the pastor, looked
at that moment especially spick and span, stood back to give his visitor
the
pas
. He even went with him a little way and then, in his slightly
surprised inscrutability, watched the pastor's unsteady steps bear him
out of sight, down a long corridor, with billowing curtain-doors on
either side.

 

 

 

 

Enver Pasha went into Talaat Bey's office. The clerks sprang
up. Hero-worship shone out of their faces. That almost mystic love had
still not waned which even these paper-gentry felt for their dainty war
god. Hundreds of boastful stories of his mad daring were current here
in all the departments. When, for instance, during the war in Albania,
an artillery regiment had mutinied, he, cigarette in mouth, had stood
before the muzzle of a howitzer and challenged the mutineers to pull
the firing cord. Round Enver's delicate, silky features, his people
saw a messianic aura. He was the man sent by God, who should re-erect
the empire of Osman, Bayazid, Suleiman. The general greeted his clerks
with a merry shout, evoking overemphasized delight in them. Too-hasty
hands snatched open the doors which led on into Talaat's sanctum
through outer offices. The little room seemed far too small for that
Minister's crushing personality. When, as he did at this instant, this
Hun stood up behind his desk, he darkened the window. Talaat's mighty
head was grey at the temples. Above the pursy lips of the Oriental there
hovered a small, pitch-black moustache. Fat double chins thrust out of
a stick-up double collar. A white piqué waistcoat, like the symbol of
candid open-heartedness, curved over a jutting expanse of belly. Each
time Talaat Bey beheld his co-ruler in this duumvirate, he felt the urge
to place his great paws in fatherly tenderness on the narrow shoulders
of this youth blessed of the gods. Yet each time, the aura of glacial
shyness surrounding Enver impeded such familiar proximity. Yet Talaat
was the exuberant man of the world, the talker, whose heady, confident
way could dispose of five diplomats at a time, whereas Enver, the demigod
of his people, the consort of an imperial princess, would often at great
receptions stand for half an hour shyly aside, lost in his dreams. Talaat
dropped his big, fleshy hand again and contented himself with a single
question: "So the German's been seeing you?"

 

 

Enver Pasha turned his eyes on the Bosporus, with its jocund waters,
its little hurrying tugs, its tiny kayiks, its cypresses, which looked so
unconvincing, so badly painted, at that hour -- its theatrical ruins. Then
he glanced back and let his eyes stray through this empty office till they
paused on an old-fashioned Morse apparatus set on a little carpeted table,
like some very valuable curiosity. On this wretched machine, before the
Ittihad revolution had raised him up to be the first statesman in the
Caliph's empire, the young Talaat, the minor post-and-telegraph official,
had fingered out Morse code. Let every visitor admire this proof of a
giddily steep ascent, the reward of merit. Enver, too, seemed to view
this significant telegraph apparatus with benevolent eyes before he
quite remembered to answer the question. "Yes, the German! He tried to
threaten a little, with the Reichstag."

 

 

This remark showed how right Monsignor Saven had been -- how mistaken,
from the very start, those humanely imploring tactics of Dr. Lepsius.
A secretary brought in a sheaf of dispatches, which Talaat began to sign
without sitting down again. He did not look up as he was speaking:
"These Germans are only afraid of the odium of being made partly
responsible. But they may have to come begging to us for more important
things than Armenians."

 

 

This might have ended that day's discussion of the banishment, had Enver's
inquisitive eyes not rested on the dispatches in casual scrutiny. Talaat
Bey noticed his glance and made the papers rustle as he waved them. "The
precise directions for Aleppo. Meanwhile, I suppose, the roads will be
clearer again. In the next few weeks Aleppo, Alexandretta, Antioch,
and the whole coast can begin to move out."

 

 

"Antioch and the coast?" Enver repeated interrogatively, as though he might
have something to say on the point. He did not speak another syllable
but stared enthralled at Talaat's fat fingers, which, irresistible
as a storming-party, kept scribbling signatures under texts. These
same forthright and stumpy fingers had composed that order, sent
out to all walis and mutessarifs: "The goal of these deportations is
annihilation." The short pen-strokes showed all the impetus of complete,
implacable conviction; they had no scruples.

 

 

The Minister raised up his bent torso. "That's done. In the autumn
I shall be able to say with perfect candor to all these people:
'La question arménienne n'existe pas.'"

 

 

Enver stood at the window and had not heard. Was he thinking of his
future caliphate, which was to reach from Macedonia to India? Was
he worried about the munitions supplies for the army? Or dreaming of
fresh acquisitions for his magic palace on the Bosporus? In its great
banqueting-hall he had caused the wedding throne to be set up which
Nadjieh Sultana, the Sultan's daughter, had brought with her dowry. Four
silver-gilt pillars and, over them, a starry canopy of Byzantine brocade.

 

 

 

 

Johannes Lepsius was still creeping through the alleys of Istanbul. It was
long past midday. He had missed his lunch. The pastor dared not go back to
the Hotel Tokatlyan. An Armenian house. Terror and despair were in all
its inhabitants, from the host and guests down to the last waiter and
lift-boy. They knew his ways and had known of his undertaking. The spies
and confidence men who, by order of Talaat Bey, followed him everywhere
might track him now as much as they liked. It hurt him that his friends
should be somewhere waiting for him in a well-considered place of security.
Davidian, the president of the former Armenian National Assembly, would
be one of them; an arrested person who had, however, managed to escape
and remain illegally in Istanbul. Lepsius had not strength or courage to
face them. The fact that he did not come would be enough to show them the
truth, and it was to be hoped that by now they would have separated. Even
the worst pessimists among them (they all were pessimists, and no wonder)
-- even they had not considered it out of the question that the pastor
might get a permit for the interior. Much would have been gained by it.

 

 

Lepsius came to a public garden. Here, too, festivity. Garlanded benches.
Half-moon pennons fluttering out from poles and lamp-posts. The jam of
idlers, thick, slab, unpleasant, oozed its way along gravel paths between
the grass-plots. Lepsius, dazed and unsteady, caught sight of a bench.
He found a seat on it, beside others. A half-circle, vivid with waving
colours, curved out before him. That same instant, over in the grandstand,
a Turkish military band burst forth with clashing janizary music. Comets,
flutes, raucous clarinets, clashing brass, ascending and descending the
short intervals with the sharp unity of a razor blade, mingled with the
fanatical yelps of taut-strung drums, the incessant clattering, clinking
rattle of tamborines, the shivering hatred of cymbals. Johannes Lepsius
sat in this music up to his chin, as in a bath of glass splinters. But
he wanted to suffer, not to free himself, and pressed handfuls of glass
splinters into his consciousness. That which Enver Pasha had refused was
now conceded him. In the long deportation convoys of this people, given
into his charge, he dragged his way down the stony, marshy highroads
of Anatolia. Let not his own condemn him -- they who in the trenches of
the Argonne, on the battlefields of Podolia and Galicia, at sea and in
the air, were being decimated. Were not those endless hospital trains,
at the sight of which a man had to cry out, more terrible still? Had
not the eyes of German wounded and dying become Armenian eyes? Lepsius,
under this janizary band, let his head, dull with fatigue, sink lower
and lower. He had not been chosen to care for his own, but for that
which was not his. A new note was forcing its way into this strident,
wrathful Turkish music, a vibrant clatter which rose and rose. And it
came from above. A Turkish air squadron was on its way across Istanbul,
dropping swirling clouds of proclamations. Though he could not tell why,
it grew clear to Johannes Lepsius that these planes above him should
be named "Original Sin and Its Pride." He wandered about within this
perception as he might have in a huge building -- in the Ministry of the
Interior. Curtains fluttered out from before the doorways; they waved,
like flames, and he thought of a passage in the Apocalypse, which he
had meant to use in his next sermon: "And the shapes of the locusts were
like unto horses prepared unto battle . . . and they had breast-plates,
as it were breast-plates of iron, and the sound of their wings was as
the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. . . . And they
had tails, like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails,
and their power was to hurt men five months."