Forty Days of Musa Dagh (72 page)

 

 

These words amazed the mukhtar Kebussyan. His bald, shiny head rocked
to and fro as he thought of his censorious spouse: "What do you mean,
poor woman? She's rich -- "

 

 

Bedros Hekim's eyes scorched the mukhtar. "What do I mean? I mean that,
for at least three days, she's been in high fever. I mean she's delirious.
I mean she'll most probably die. I mean that she's been infected in the
hospital hut. I mean I'm sorry for her. . . . Damn it all, I mean --
I mean it wasn't her fault; it was simply her illness. I mean . . ."

 

 

 

 

Gabriel had half guided, half carried Juliette most of the way back
to the hut. There, she fell over the bed, unconscious, with turned-up
eyes. He tried to bring her round. All that was left of scent on her
little dressing table he sprinkled on her forehead and lips. He shook
her, he chafed her temples. Her happy soul hid, far away from him,
in the farthest regions of its oblivion. Fever had cooked for days
in Juliette's blood. But, in these last hours, it must have shot up
like a tropical plant. Her skin looked raw and inflamed. Like parched
earth, it sucked in every drop of moisture. Her breath came quicker and
quicker. This life seemed to be rushing towards its end.

 

 

Since he could not rouse her, Gabriel bent over Juliette and, hoping
that, free of her clothes, she would come to herself, began to undress
her. He tore her frock and her shift. He sat down on the end of the bed
and took her feet upon his knee. They were heavy and swollen, so that he
found it hard to free them of shoes and stockings. He never even noticed
the absence in him of any of those painful emotions which, it is said,
such an experience should engender. No pain of outraged susceptibilities,
no distressing thought that these feverish limbs had been another man's
pleasure an hour ago. Not even the frigid, hopeless consciousness that
the troth of a lifetime had been broken. He felt benumbed, but only with
pity for Juliette.

 

 

Gabriel felt no surprise. It seemed as though this fate were his own
contriving. Incredible as that might sound, it was precisely Juliette's
infidelity, followed by her collapse, which brought them together again
after they had been so long apart. Only now that this pitiful body had
strayed so far in its hostility that it gave itself to another man,
did he, wistfully, remember. Full of the most anxious tenderness, his
clumsy fingers tugged and nestled among these clothes, which resisted
so stubbornly. He stood looking down at the white body while a hundred
thoughts and sensibilities sprang up, half formed, to vanish in nothing.

 

 

What had happened? In the corner of the tent he noticed the bucket of
spring water which always stood there. He dipped in handkerchiefs to lay
compresses. It was not easy. Her rigid body was hard to lift. Gabriel
thought of calling one of her maids, who now, since their mistress had
grown so vague, and had, moreover, almost ceased to reward them, only
came on duty now and then. But shame prevented him. He must be alone, now.

 

 

When the old doctor came, he found Bagradian staring vaguely at the
unconscious Juliette. Bedros, at a first glance, doubted if she really
were unconscious, or half pretending. His second showed him how feverish
she was. The usual clinical picture of this epidemic. Sudden rise of
temperature, and unconsciousness, which usually came at the end of
a fairly long period of scarcely noticed ill-health. He lifted the
patient upright. She showed immediate signs of vomiting and difficult
breathing. It was obvious. But, when he examined the skin of her breast
and loins, where usually there were most signs of infection, he found
only three or four small red spots.

 

 

The doctor would have asked Gabriel to leave the tent and not come back.
He said nothing. He had noticed Gabriel's eyes, shadowed and shrunk far
back into their sockets. Nor did he deliver himself of his message,
or dwell on the moral unrest of the Town Enclosure. On the other hand,
he asked to be shown the medicine chest, which Juliette had had prepared
before their departure for the East. It was a big chest, but now
three-quarters empty. Most of its contents she had sent to the hospital.
The old man pressed a tiny flask into Gabriel's hand, who was still
quite dazed. This, in case the pulse should begin to get faint. His
wife would be in tomorrow and help to nurse. Gabriel wasn't to worry
about Juliette's unconsciousness or delirium. It was the natural result
of her temperature. And, as things were, it was a blessing. She had an
even chance of life or death. The greatest danger would only come when
she'd got the poison out of her system. Then the fever dropped with a
sudden rush, and, in many cases, took the heart along with it. Bedros
dipped a glass in a bucket, looked about for a spoon, and tried, with
an expert hand, to force a few drops between Juliette's lips. This one
practised gesture was quite enough to confound the lying self-mistrust
which made him call himself "a shaky incompetent."

 

 

"You must keep on making her drink," he instructed Gabriel, "even if she
doesn't come to herself."

 

 

Juliette's husband only nodded.

 

 

The doctor peered about, round the narrow tent. "Somebody'll have to stay
up with her."

 

 

Since by now it was fairly dark, he lit the oil lamp. Then he took
Bagradian's hand. "Well, it'd be something, wouldn't it, if the Turks
attacked again tonight?"

 

 

Gabriel did his best to smile. "We've set Musa Dagh on fire. They won't."

 

 

"No." Altouni's sharp little voice had a note in it of profound
disappointment. "Pity!"

 

 

He went, bowed with years and inhuman labors, without one word of direct
sympathy to this man whom he had helped bring into the world. All words,
the good and the bad, had long seemed worn out and useless. Gabriel meant
to go some of the way with him, to get fresh air. But he turned back at
the curtain of the tent. Had the Turks chosen that minute to begin an
attack on all his trenches, Gabriel could scarcely have managed to force
himself to come out of the dark. He lay down, opposite Juliette's bed,
on the divan. Never, he supposed, in all his life had he been tired until
today. These three battles, with all their bloodshed, all the sleepless
nights, the eternal backwards and forwards, from observation post to
trench -- each of these monstrous days on Musa Dagh hung on him, like a
gnome with a clay face, stupidly heavier, heavier, every second. It was
the tiredness which feels too tired to care about the horror of reality.
A dull, unrefreshing sleep invited him to fall into its pit. Gabriel grew
aware of Iskuhi's presence as he lay there, deep within this hollow. He
tugged himself out of it with great difficulty, and sprang to his feet.

 

 

"You can't stay here, Iskuhi! Not one second. We can't see each other
any more."

 

 

Her eyes were wide and angry. "And if you get ill -- am I not to be ill,
too?"

 

 

"But what about Hovsannah and the baby?"

 

 

She went to the bed and laid the palms of her hands on Juliette's
shoulders. In this position she turned to Gabriel. There! Now I can't
go back into our tent. I can't touch Hovsannah again, or the baby either."

 

 

He tried to draw her away. "What will Aram Tomasian say to that? No!
I can't answer to him for it, Iskuhi. Go along, Iskuhi, for your
brother's sake."

 

 

She bent over the patient's unconscious face. It was becoming more
restless every instant. "Why do you send me away? If it's to happen,
it has already! My brother? None of that matters to me now."

 

 

He stole up, uncertainly, behind her. "You oughtn't to have done that,
Iskuhi."

 

 

Her face seemed, almost avidly, to mock. "I? Who am I? You're the leader.
If you get ill, that's the end of all of us."

 

 

She wiped the patient's lips with her handkerchief. "When we first came
from Zeitun, Juliette was so kind, so wonderful to me. I have a duty
towards her, if I'm able to do it. Can't you see that?"

 

 

He buried his lips in her hair. But she caught him to her, with all
her strength. "It'll all soon be over. And I'm not going to lose you;
I want to have been with you!"

 

 

It was the first open expression of Iskuhi's love. They held each other
as close as though a corpse had lain beside them, who knew no more. But
the corpse was not dead. She was breathing heavily. Sometimes a little
moan forced its way out of her swollen throat. Was her voice seeking
someone forever lost to her? Iskuhi let go of Gabriel. But his hands
seemed still to be crying out for her. They had begun to talk the briefest
commonplaces, for the sake of the unconscious Juliette.

 

 

During the night Juliette had a spell of consciousness. She babbled
wildly, and tried to sit up. What a long way she had had to come back!
Even so, she had not managed to reach the Damlayik, only the flat in
the Avenue Kléber. "Suzanne . . . . What is it? . . . Am I ill? . . .
I'm ill. . . . I can't get up. . . . Why aren't you helping me?"

 

 

She was demanding a service of her maid. Gabriel and Iskuhi helped the
invalid, still in her Parisian bedroom. Juliette shivered all over. She
moaned: "C'est bien. . . Now perhaps I shall get to sleep. . . . It's my
angina again, Suzanne. . . . I don't think it'll be very much. . . . When
my husband comes back, wake . . ."

 

 

This mention of the former Bagradian, living so secure in Juliette's
world, had its shattering effect on the present one. He dipped another
cloth in water and renewed the compress round Juliette's throat. He
covered her up with the greatest care, whispering: "Yes, you must try
to go to sleep, Juliette."

 

 

She answered something unintelligible. It sounded like the tiredest
thanks, the most childish promise to be good, and get to sleep. Gabriel
and Iskuhi sat in silence, hand in hand, very close, on the divan. But
he never took his eyes off the patient. Life had developed a curious
pattern. The unfaithful husband served his faithless wife -- while he
deceived her. Now Juliette seemed really asleep.

 

 

Time was up. Gonzague Maris had made up his mind to wait no longer.
He shook himself. The past's the past! And yet it was not so easy as he
had imagined to slip clear of this, the strangest week in his life.
He was forced, in astonishment, to admit that a definite longing kept
him back in it. Did he love Juliette more than he thought? Was it some
guilty sensation clouding his freedom? In the last few days the woman had
behaved unaccountably. Again and again her agony had stirred his pity,
roused a wish to help and protect her. And besides, it had ended so
disastrously. As he thought of that ghastly minute, he set his teeth,
his controlled face became distorted. Must he, like any other seedy
adventurer, submit to this end -- this horrible breaking off? More
than once he had left his hiding-place and come in the direction of
Three-Tent Square -- to see Bagradian, to fight for Juliette. And yet,
each time, he had turned back. Not because he had been a coward, but
rather, unaccountably uneasy. It was a feeling he had never experienced.

 

 

"I've ceased to belong here." Some strong, although invisible rampart
had, since those devastating minutes, built itself up between Gonzague
and the whole world of Musa Dagh. It was scarcely possible any longer
to force a way through the aerial ramparts that protected the Armenian
mountain. And Juliette was on the other side. Added to which came the
exquisitely phrased suggestions of Apothecary Krikor, his former host.
Krikor had not once directly alluded to the painful subject of his mission.
He had congratulated Gonzague on having an American passport; expressed
regret at the fact that every earthly sojourn should be, of necessity,
so transient. Declared it to be the privilege of youth to keep on setting
out with a light heart. Life does not become really depressing, till only
one good-bye remains to be said. Maris had listened, with due attention,
to the old gentleman's practical philosophy, having grasped the casually
hinted fact that every further minute spent on the Damlayik contained
its perils for Krikor's guest. And this consciousness of lurking danger
intensified as the night wore on. The waning crescent moon stood directly
over him. He had waited a full hour past the time arranged. He had lost
Juliette. He went back again a few steps in the direction of the camp.
He turned, his mind made up.

 

 

Perhaps it was better this way. Slowly, with lingering care, he drew on
his gloves. This finicking gesture, in the midst of a dark, oriental
wilderness, might have struck a superior watcher as somewhat grotesque.
But Gonzague only put on his gloves to protect his hands as he climbed
down. He buckled his small suitcase on his back. As his habit was,
whenever he left a house, he drew out a pocket comb and arranged his
hair. The consciousness of having forgotten nothing, of not having left
one unnoticed fragment of himself -- his fresh and pleasant sensation
of being "all right" -- began to invade him, in spite of all. Slowly
he sauntered on, among rhododendrons, myrtles and wild magnolia,
into the moonlight, as though not a wilderness lay before him, but a
charming promenade. He remembered having said to Juliette: "I've got
a good memory because I find it so easy to forget." And indeed, with
every fresh step southwards, his memories became fainter, his heart
more free. He was already quickening his pace, inquisitively turning
towards a future which his passport and temperament made secure. The
chalk cliffs along the coast, hollowed out with incredibly black shadows,
glittered like sharp snow fields in the moon. The surf beat dully below
him. As his path became harder to negotiate, Gonzague's feet relished
each step. He enjoyed the controlled play of his muscles. . . . How
incomprehensible people were! All this pain and slaughter, merely
because they refused to let the impartial light have power in them,
preferring their stupid, untidy obscurity. So simple, so easily mastered
-- these black-and-white regions of the moon. To feel oneself nothing;
in the void. It was simply that! Gonzague frowned. He felt some vague
sympathy for Krikor. Krikor of Yoghonoluk, whom no one had ever quoted,
or ever would quote! He had to clamber along the edge of a bare surface
of rock, to surmount two crevices. Already he had in view the jutting
ledge, behind which his descent would begin. He stopped to rest. The
unfathomable gulf lay open beneath him. "Shall I get to Suedia? It's all
the same. Lose my foothold? It's all the same. First you fall hard,"
it occurred to him, "then you fall soft." How far behind he had left
Juliette, even now! . . . As Gonzague thrust his way on, among shrubs
and bushes, four shots rang out in quick succession, and spattered past
him. He threw himself down, pulled back the catch of his revolver. His
heart thumped. Krikor's warning! . . . It was not, after all, a matter
of such indifference whether or not he got to Suedia. The erring feet of
avengers pattered by, but Gonzague jumped up, seized a big stone, and
hurled it down, at a wide tangent. A noisy scurry below. The pursuers
thought they had tracked their victim, and sent several bullets pinging
after him, while Gonzague sped away from them, almost on wings, to the
point where the mountain slopes to the village of Habaste.