Forty Days of Musa Dagh (22 page)

 

 

Johannes Lepsius started up. New means, new methods must be thought out.
If the German Embassy failed, perhaps the Austrian Markgraf Pallavicini,
a most distinguished man, might have more success. He might threaten
reprisals -- the Mohammedan Bosnians were Austro-Hungarian citizens.
And, so far, papal admonitions had been too tepid. But then Enver Pasha
approached him, with his never-to-be-forgotten smile. No -- shy was not
the word to describe this boyish (or girlish) amiability of the great
mass-murderer -- we intend, Herr Lepsius, to pursue the policy of our
interests to the very end. Only a power which stood above all interests
could prevent us, a power never tainted with any rascality. If you should
happen to turn up the name of such a power in the diplomat's register,
I shall be so glad to receive you again at the Ministry.

 

 

Lepsius shifted and fidgeted so wildly that his veiled neighbor on the
bench, becoming scared, got up to go. He did not notice, since now he
was weighted hand and foot with his leaden conviction: "No more to be
done." There was no more help. What the priest Ter Haigasun in Yoghonoluk
had known for weeks was just beginning now to dawn on Pastor Johannes
Lepsius: "There's only one thing left -- to pray.

 

 

And so, amid the press of these folk on holiday, jostled by laughing women
and squalling brats, as the janizary music brayed again, as his head,
with his eyes closed, rolled impotently about from side to side, the
pastor folded, or at least believed be folded, his hands, as petitioners
should. And his soul began speaking: "Our Father which art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. . . ."

 

 

But how had the "Our Father" changed? Each word was a gulf deeper
than the eye could measure. Even at the words "us," "ours," his head
swirled. Who dare still say "us," since Christ, who first bound the
"us" together, created it, went to heaven on the third day? Without Him
it is all no more than a stinking heap of shards and bones, as high as
half the universe. Lepsius thought of his mother, of the words which,
after his baptism, she had written fifty-six years ago in her diary:
"May his name, Johannes, for ever remind me that it is my sacred duty to
bring him up a true Johannes, one who really loves his Lord and walks
in His footsteps. . . ." Had he become a real Johannes? Was he really
full to the brim of that deep trust in God which cannot be named? Alas,
such trust threatens to crumble as the body declines. His diabetes had
come back again. He would have to be careful what he ate. Above all,
nothing sweet, no bread or potatoes. Perhaps Enver, by forbidding his
journey to Anatolia, had prevented his becoming any worse. But what was
the hotel porter of the Tokatlyan doing here? And since when had he worn
that lambskin officer's kepi? Had Enver sent him? Politely the porter
handed him a teskeré for the interior. It was an autographed photo of
Napoleon. And yes, of course, the first convoy of exiles must be waiting
for him outside the hotel. All his friends would be there, Davidian and
all the others. They were smiling and beckoning to him. "They all look
jolly well," thought the pastor. And indeed the worst, most horrible
reality has always a compensation at the heart of it, if only one can
look at it steadily. On the banks of a river they halted, under wildly
overhanging rocks. Why, they even had tents with them. Perhaps, sub rosa,
Enver had made a few small concessions. When they had all lain down
to rest, a tall Armenian man, his clothes thickly caked with slime,
came over to him. He spoke queer, ceremonious, broken German: "See --
this charming river is the Euphrates, and these are my children. But
you are to stretch your body across it, from bank to bank, so that my
children may have a bridge to cross by."

 

 

Lepsius pretended this was a joke, and retorted: "Well, you and your
children'll have to wait a bit, till I've grown a little." But at once
he began to grow, with delightful celerity. His hands and feet spread
endlessly far away from him. Now he could fulfil the Armenian man's
request with pleasant nonchalance. And yet, in the end, it didn't work,
because Johannes Lepsius lost his balance and almost slipped down off
his bench.

 

 

"This is really terrible," he said to himself, for the second time that
day. But actually, more than anything else, what he meant was the thirst
that tormented him. He shook himself, hurried to the first drink-shop,
and, without any thought of medical warnings, greedily swallowed down a
sweet iced drink. With his enhanced sense of well-being new and courageous
plans began to invade him. "I'll never let go," he laughed absent-mindedly
to himself. And this vague laugh was a declaration of war on Enver Pasha.

 

 

In that same instant Talaat Bey's private secretary was handing the
representative on duty at the Ministry of Post and Telegraph an official
dispatch concerning Aleppo, Alexandretta, Antioch, and the coast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. THE GREAT ASSEMBLY

 

 

Ever since the day on which Djelal Bey, the estimable Wali of Aleppo,
had refused to carry out in his province the government decrees of
banishment -- since that spring day there had been no further hindrances,
no annoying recalcitrance.

 

 

Apart from those directly affected by it, the heaviest burden of this
tragic measure lay on the müdirs. Their nahiyehs, the districts they
administered, comprised wide stretches of territory, with scarcely a
railway line, with little telegraphic communication, where even carriage
driving along the cruellest highroads and tracks was an agony. So that
really the müdirs had no choice but to sit all day and half the night
in the saddle, till every Armenian village over every square mile of
country had been sent packing at the proper time. This "proper time"
was often the midnight before the morning of setting out. It had been
easy enough for the Wali, the Mutessarif, the Kaimakam, to give their
orders and "hold responsible." In the towns it was child's play. But
when one had ninety-seven small districts, villages, hamlets, parishes,
to control, it looked very different. So that many a müdir, who was
both unable to work miracles and not scrupulous as to the letter of the
law, decided without much hesitation to "forget" this or that remote
village. Many müdirs were inspired by good-natured indolence. In others
such easygoing mildness had in it a dash of cunning. These "overlookings"
might prove remunerative, since the small Armenian, even the peasant,
is not unprosperous. Indulgence was only perilous in districts in which
there was a standing gendarmerie post. The saptiehs wanted to make a
little themselves, and what better, more fruitful method than legalized
plunder, at which the authorities winked both eyes? To be sure, the
possessions of exiles were legally the property of the state. But the
state was well aware that it had not the means rigidly to enforce its
just claims and could see the advantage of not allowing the zeal of its
executives to flag.

 

 

Whereas in all provincial selamliks, cafés, baths, places of assembly,
the progressives -- all, that is to say, who read a newspaper,
who had been to Smyrna or Istanbul and there seen, instead of karagös,
the old-Turkish shadow-theater, a couple of French comedies, and who
had heard the names "Sarah Bernhardt" and "Bismarck" -- whereas these
cultured ones, the highly progressive urban middle class, stood to a man
behind Enver Pasha's Armenian policy, the simple Turk, peasant or town
proletarian, felt differently. Often, as he rode about his district,
a surprised müdir would pull up in the village street, where he had
just read out his decree of banishment, to watch Turks and Armenians
mingle their tears. He would marvel as, before an Armenian house, its
Turkish neighbors stood and wailed, calling after its dazed and tearless
inhabitants, who without looking back were leaving the doors of their
old home: "May God pity you!" And more, loading them with provisions for
the road, with costly presents, a goat, or even a mule. The amazed müdir
might even have to see these Turks accompany their wretched neighbors
for several leagues. He might even behold his own compatriots casting
themselves down before his feet, to beseech him: "Let them stay with
us. They haven't the true faith, but they are good. They are our
brothers. Let them stay with us."

 

 

But what use was that? The very best-natured of müdirs could overlook
no more than a few unnamed desert villages, where secretly he tolerated
the presence of some remnant of the accursed race, cowering into the
shelter of its own terror of extinction. Otherwise it went stumbling
along field-paths, turned off on to cart-tracks, mingled and jostled
along the roads, to come at last, after days, to the great highway which
leads south-west over Aleppo into the desert. A hesitant, million-footed
rhythm, such as the earth had not yet known. The route-march of this
army had been sketched out and was being followed with real strategic
foresight. Only one department had been neglected by its invisible
commanders -- the commissariat. In the first few days there was still
a little bread and bulgur, dried wheat, available, when most had still
not exhausted their own supplies. In these early days every adult had
still the right to draw from the onbashi, the paymaster-sergeant of the
convoy, legal pay amounting to twelve paras, less than a penny. But
most were wise enough not to make the demand, which could only have
drawn down the hatred of the all-powerful upon their heads; and then,
for twelve paras, with the cost of living risen to what it was, the most
one could hope to buy would be a couple of oranges or one hen's egg. So
that with every hour the faces became more hollow, the million-footed
steps unsteadier. Soon no other sounds forced their way out of this
dragging throng along the roads than groanings, pantings, whimperings,
with sometimes a wild, convulsive scream. With time this being shed
more and more component parts; they sank to earth, were bundled into
the ditches, and there perished. The saptiehs' clubs came thudding
down on the backs of hesitant throngs. For these saptiehs foamed with
irritation. They themselves were having to live like dogs till such time
as they could hand over their convoys at the frontiers of the next kazah,
the next gendarmerie district. At first, roll calls were still taken. But,
as death and sickness gained the upper hand, as more and more half-dead
and corpses, especially children's corpses, were flung into the ditches,
this keeping of lists seemed highly onerous, and the onbashi relinquished
superfluous scribbling. Who cared to know that Sarkis, Astik, or Hapeth,
that Anush, Vartuhi, or Koren, were rotting somewhere in the open? These
saptiehs were not all brutes. It is even probable that most of them were
good, plain, middling sort of people. But what can a saptieh do? He is
under stringent orders to reach such and such a point with his whole
convoy by such and such a scheduled hour. His heart may be in perfect
sympathy with the screaming mother who tries to snatch her child out of
a ditch, flings herself down on the road, and claws the earth. No use
to talk to her. She's wasted minutes already, and it's still six miles
to the next halt. A convoy held up. All the faces in it twisted with
hate. A mad scream from a thousand throats. Why did not these crowds,
weak as they were, hurl themselves on the saptieh and his mates, disarm
them, and tear them into shreds? Perhaps the policemen were in constant
terror of such assault, which would have finished them. And so -- one of
them fires a shot. The rest whip out their swords to beat the defenceless
cruelly with the blades. Thirty or forty men and women lie bleeding. And,
with this blood, another emotion comes to life in the excited saptiehs
-- their old itch for the women of the accursed race. In these helpless
women you possess more than a human being -- in very truth you possess
the God of your enemy. Afterwards, the saptiehs scarcely know how it
all had happened.

 

 

A shifting carpet woven with the threads of blood-stained destinies.
It is always the same. After the first few days on the roads all the young
men and the men in the prime of life get separated off from the rest of
the convoy. Here, for instance, a man of forty-six, in good clothes,
an engineer. It needs many cudgel blows to get him away from his wife
and children. His youngest is about one and a half. This man is to be
enrolled in a labor battalion, for road making. He stumbles in the long
line of men and shuffles, gibbering like a half-wit: "I never missed
paying my bedel . . . paying my bedel." Suddenly he grips hold of his
neighbor. "You've never seen such a lovely baby." . . . A torrent of
sentimental agony. "Why, the girl had eyes as big as plates. If only I
could, I'd crawl after them on my belly like a snake." And he shuffles on,
enveloped in his grief, completely isolated. That evening they lie down
to rest on a hillside. Long after midnight he shakes the same neighbor
out of his sleep. "They're all dead now." He is perfectly calm.

 

 

In another convoy a husband and wife. Both still quite young.
The bridegroom's upper lip has scarcely a trace of down on it.
Their hour is approaching, since all the active men are to be separated.
The bride gets an inspiration to disguise her young husband in women's
clothes. These two children have already begun to laugh, delighted at the
happy disguise. But the others warn them against any premature triumph.
On the outskirts of a big town some strange chettehs, armed roughs, come
out to meet them. They are out on a woman-hunt. Among several others,
they choose the bride. She clings fast to her husband. "For God's sake,
leave me with her. My sister is deaf-mute. She needs me." "That's no
reason, janum, little soul! The fair one shall come with you." The couple
get taken off to a filthy hut. And there the truth is soon made manifest.
The chettehs kill the young man instantly, and mutilate his corpse in a
fiendish mockery of the disguise which he had assumed. Then, after the
most horrible abuse, the girl is tied naked to her groom -- face to face
with his mutilated corpse.