Forty Days of Musa Dagh (70 page)

 

 

She had really been doing her best to understand him. She began repeating
it, like a child: "Tonight, about ten. . . . I'm to bring a suitcase. . . .
I can get anything in Beirut. . . . And you? . . . How long will you
stay with me?"

 

 

These vague mutterings, at so decisive an hour, exhausted his patience.
"Juliette, I loathe the words 'forever' and 'always' . . ."

 

 

She gazed devoutly at him. Her cheeks flamed. Her half-open lips pouted
out. It was as though she had just opened the right door. Gonzague was
sitting at the piano, strumming the
matchiche
he had played the night
the saptiehs came. He'd said to her: "There are only moments."

 

 

It filled her with profound hilarity. "No, don't say 'always' or 'forever.'
Just think of the moment!"

 

 

Now she could understand, with an indescribable super-clarity, that
there are only moments -- that, tonight, the steamer, the suitcase,
Beirut, her decision, had really not the slightest meaning for her; that
impenetrable solitude was awaiting her, into which neither Gonzague nor
Gabriel would find a way, a solitude full to the brim of home-comings,
in which it would all be settled and cancelled out. The happiness of it
came rushing in on her, filled her with strength. The amazed Gonzague had
no longer a shattered woman to deal with, a woman driven into a corner --
he had the châtelaine of Yoghonoluk, more beautiful than ever before. He
took Juliette in his arms. It might have been for the first time.

 

 

Her head toppled strangely from shoulder to shoulder. But he paid no heed.
And the meaningless words which she seemed to mutter in dreamy ecstasy
passed his ears unheard.

 

 

 

 

Until the men came where she could look at them, Sato still did not know
what was going to happen. She was on guard a few yards away from the
adultery, but was feeling too empty, too morose, to crawl in through
the bushes and view the pair. . . . Yes, if she could only have worked
it up a bit! How pleased old Nunik would have been with her; what thanks
and pence she might have earned! But Sato was caught! Sato was no longer
allowed to take profitable messages to the valley, and bring them back
from the valley to the mountain. All the more corrosive, therefore,
her jealousy, the one cogent emotion she still possessed. To get Iskuhi
away from the effendi! To pay the effendi back! She lay, with her knees
drawn up under her, staring at the smoky sky.

 

 

Then came the men. They came on slowly. Sato perceived the Leaders
of the Council -- Ter Haigasun, Bagradian Effendi, Pastor Aram. After
these, the mukhtar Thomas Kebussyan, Teacher Oskanian, and some village
elders of Bitias. The elect had only just finished a short, but very
serious conversation, and seemed depressed. They had every reason to
be so. The food situation was very grave. The herds had not diminished
"according to plan," but by the unknown law of some wild progression
of ever-diminishing returns. Rations were being cut down every day. Yet
that did nothing to check the dwindling supplies, for which bad fodder
seemed responsible. In spite of all Tomasian's efforts, his fishery made
no headway. And this new, contagious fever in camp was beginning to take
alarming forms. Only yesterday four fever patients in the isolation-wood
had died. Dr. Bedros Altouni could scarcely move on his weak little legs,
crooked with age. Over fifty wounded lay in and around the hospital
hut, and at least as many in the log huts, all without drugs or proper
bandages, left to their own devices, or God's. Worst of all, this growing
exasperation, an unforeseen result of victory, which had taken such
a hold on all men. No doubt the cruel heat of the burning countryside,
this itching cold in the head produced by pine-smoke, the over-fatigue,
had all contributed -- and the eternal meat. Its deepest cause was the
fact that life up here was insupportable. In the last few days, apart
from the Kilikian incident, there had been many brawls, and knives had
been used.

 

 

Today all this impelled the leaders to give more attention than they had
to the seacoast side of the Damlayik. Up on the Dish Terrace, which stood
far removed from all these happenings, there fluttered the great signal:
"Christians in Need." Two scouts of the cohort of youth were continually
on duty beneath it, scanning the sea for passing ships. It seemed likely
that some undependable lad had overlooked one ship, or several, since
not even a fishing-smack had been sighted, and this in August, at a time
when, as a rule, the Bay of Suedia is covered with this kind of petty
craft. Did God really intend to let the sea become a desert, merely to
take from his Christians on Musa Dagh what slight hope they still had
of survival? The Council had decided to strengthen this look-out, and
recondition it. The watch on the Dish Terrace was henceforth to be kept
by grown-up men. At some jutting point, farther south, a second would
have to be established. The leaders had come out today to settle on the
likeliest promontory.

 

 

At first the soft crop-grass of this highland muffled, even for Sato,
the men's approach. When she twisted round on her side, they were fairly
near her. She was up in a flash -- something sprang to life inside her --
and waving wild arms in their direction. At first they paid no attention.
Whenever Sato made her presence known, in any group, it was the same.
All eyes would seem not to have noticed her, all heads would be slightly
averted, in a kind of severe, shamefaced discomfort. Sato was an
"untouchable"; all who encountered her felt the same, though, to the
Christian, all God's creatures are, by birthright, equal in His eyes.
Today these serious men, full of care and business, saw, without having
seen, this waving half-wit, and went calmly on. But the last of them,
Thomas Kebussyan, suddenly stopped and turned round to Sato. Her conquest
had so definite an effect on all the others that they, too, halted,
as by a spell, and eyed the sign-giver. So much at least, her strength
had achieved. The leaders stood as if bewitched, eyeing the repulsive
little creature, since now she pranced about like an evil thing under
unclean influence. Sato's eyes sparkled, her spindle-legs, beneath that
once so maidenly little frock, twitched with excitement. The contorted
mouth, such a mouth as only deaf-mutes usually show, was doing its best
to jabber words; the waving arms kept pointing again and again, into the
myrtle bushes. The suggestion given by all this gradually disarmed these
men's resistance. They came almost up to Sato, and Ter Haigasun grumpily
inquired what she was doing here and what she had to tell them. Her sallow
gipsy-face grimaced and twitched. She blinked in tortured desperation as
though it were impossible to reply. All the more eagerly she continued her
urgent pointings, towards the sea. The men looked at one another. The same
questioning thought was in all their minds: "A warship?" Little as they
cared to have to do with this misbegotten ape of sinfulness, everyone on
the Damlayik was aware what a keen pair of eyes Sato had. Perhaps those
repulsive lynx-eyes had discovered a tiny thread of smoke, away on the
farthest horizon, where no one else could have managed to see it.

 

 

Ter Haigasun gave her a little prod with his stick and told her curtly:
"Go on! Lead the way! Show us what you've seen."

 

 

She went hopping proudly, started to run, stopped from time to time to
beckon the men. Sometimes she put her hand to her mouth, imploring them
not to talk, or even make a noise with their feet. And now, full of a
strange excitement, they all obeyed her and held their tongues. All walked
cautiously, on tiptoe, suddenly fallen under the influence of this little
guide and their own deep curiosity. On, past box and arbutus, they came
into the mass of thick-leaved shrubbery which, in a broad belt, forms the
frontier of the coastside of Musa Dagh. There were many gaps through the
dark, cool undergrowth, corridors, intertwining lanes. A stream ran in and
out among it, to fall in cascading swaths over the cliff. Here and there
a pine or rock wrapped round in creeper sprang up out of the confusion,
Nothing else suggested a wild mountain summit. In many cases it almost
gave the impression of an artificial maze in some southern garden. On his
many strategic excursions in those early, preparatory weeks, Gabriel had
scarcely visited this paradisial belt of the Damlayik. Yet, cool and
refreshing as it was, he followed now, at the tail of the group, with
a sensation of heavy discomfort, on legs which seemed to resist every
step he took.

 

 

Sato had picked so artful a way through the undergrowth that the men
all suddenly found they had emerged on the clearing most favored by
these lovers, a little open space fronting the sea. Sheer amazement,
like a blade of descending lightning, bewildered Juliette and Gonzague,
who had fancied themselves more hidden than ever before. One of those
eternal uneasy moments began, whose acute discomfort anyone who has had,
as a victim, to experience it will remember to the end of his days,
with only the burning wish he had not been there. Gabriel arrived in
the nick of time to see Maris spring up and swiftly put his clothes in
order. Juliette sat on motionless, with bare shoulders and hanging hair,
her fingers, right and left, digging into the ground. She stared like
a blind woman at Gabriel, seeing him, not with her eyes, but with all
her senses. The event passed in complete silence. Gonzague, who had
retreated a few steps, followed these proceedings with the victorious
and precise smile of a fencer. The strangers, Ter Haigasun first of
all, having turned their backs on the woman, stood rigidly staring,
as though they were finding it impossible to bear their own shame
another instant. The Armenian people, between the Caucasus and Lebanon,
are implacably chaste. Hot-blooded people are always inclined towards
severity, only the tepid are easygoing. These people esteemed no sacrament
so highly as marriage, and looked down disdainfully on the lax polygamy
of Islam. The men who now turned their backs in shame would probably
not have hindered Bagradian, had he ended the business once and for all
with a revolver bullet. Certainly Ter Haigasun would not, nor the Pastor,
though he had lived three years in Switzerland. But Hrand Oskanian stood
leaning forwards over his rifle, not moving an inch. It looked as though
that gipsy-faced teacher were about to thrust the barrel into his mouth,
as though his eyes only sought the right minute to pull the trigger. He
had good reason for this symbolic posture. The madonna of his only prayer
had degraded herself forever in his eyes.

 

 

The unapproachable backs of the men were expectant. But nothing happened.
No shot from Bagradian's army revolver. When, after a while, they could
turn their faces back to this reality, they saw Gabriel take the cowering
woman's hands and help her up. Juliette tried to walk, but her feet refused.
Bagradian supported her under the elbows and led her away between the
myrtle bushes, as one leads a child.

 

 

The men, with unforgiving eyes, watched this incredible proceeding.
Ter Haigasun growled a few short words at them and, slowly, each by
himself, they left the place. Sato scampered around the priest, as though
that supreme head of the people owed her a reward for her useful service.

 

 

Not another look was cast at the stranger, who stayed on alone.

 

 

 

 

No people can manage to live without admiration, and just as little
without having something to hate. Hate had long been brewing in the
encampment. All it had needed had been an object. Hate against the Turks
and government? That was too vast a target to appease; it was only there
as space or time are ever present in human consciousness, as the first
condition of all living. Hate against one's immediate neighbors? Whom
could such daily jars and bickerings satisfy? Not even the chiding women
themselves. So that the flood which, in spite of bloody slaughter and
many rigorous privations, had collected in the hearts of these people
had to find another channel for itself.

 

 

Before the men vacated that painful ground, Ter Haigasun had shouted a
few curt words to them. These words contained the admonition to keep
what had happened a close secret, since the priest all too clearly
foresaw the repulsive sequel, should this scandal reach the ears of the
Town Enclosure. Ter Haigasun had warned men, but not husbands. Mukhtar
Thomas Kebussyan, in spite of all his inflated dignity in public,
was both uxorious and henpecked. An organic necessity to supply his
stronger-minded mate with as much gossip as he could find for her was
so compelling a part of his nature that he ran straight home, to lay
this jewel, with many imploring admonitions to silence, at his wife's
feet. Madame Kebussyan had scarcely heard him out before, with a scarlet
face, she flung a shawl about her shoulders and ran forth from the mayoral
residence to seek the huts of the other mukhtars' wives, those ladies
"of the best society" whom she, within certain lńnits, patronized.

 

 

Sato took charge of all the rest. It was her threefold triumph. First,
she had done something to the effendi, from which he would not easily
recover. Second, having stirred this hell-broth, she had now a perfect
right to regard herself as the highly considered and useful member of a
virtuous, order-loving community. Third, she had firsthand information.
It was the least deceptive of her assets.

 

 

She began by enticing a few over-developed schoolgirls with her racy
suggestions of "knowing a thing or two." They were joined by others.
Sato was a born journalist. She eked out her "story" to its limits,
and soon had the never experienced thrill of finding herself the center
of attraction. Finally, in the coarsest words, used to form the ugliest
pictures, Stephan heard of his mother's shame. At first he could not
realize what it all meant. Maman stood far too high for Sato and her mob
even to mean her when they used her name. Maman (as recently Iskuhi)
was a veiled goddess in Stephan's eyes. Stephan grew more and more
bewildered as the rabble surrounded him with its gibes and Sato kept
jabbering out fresh nuances. Suddenly she had lost her throaty stutter
and was talking with the fluency of an expert. Just as failure benefits
the soul, so is success good for the body, so that these few minutes of
heightened consciousness triumphed over Sato's speech defect. Stephan's
big eyes widened. He had nothing to say.