Forty Days of Musa Dagh (85 page)

 

 

But when the doctor's wife came to relieve her, she had literally to
force her out of the tent for a few hours' rest, and even then Iskuhi
refused to sleep. She sat on the ground not far off and never stirred.
If she heard any voice or caught any footfall, she started in panic and
tried to hide herself. The thought of meeting her brother or father
appalled her. Her best hour was the last before sunrise, when she sat,
as now she was sitting, in front of the tent, to wait for Gabriel.
He usually came to her then, at this, the stillest of all hours, since
as a rule a whole night in the trenches proved more than he could manage
to endure. Gabriel, followed by Iskuhi, went in, to Juliette's bedside.
The oil lamp on the little dressing table cast its full light on to the
patient's face. Altouni had asked that Juliette might never be left
unwatched. She might come to herself, or her heart might begin to fail.
Gabriel bent over his wife and forced back her eyelids. He might have
been trying to force her spirit back into the light. Juliette became
rather restless; she moved a little and breathed heavily, but she did not
wake. Iskuhi's voice began relating the day's incidents. Inside the tent
their talk was always matter of fact. But, even outside it, their love
was not safe. Recently, as they walked at about this hour in Three-Tent
Square, Iskuhi had caught sight of Hovsannah's tent curtain moving, and
she felt Hovsannah's eyes watching them. So that now they crept out of
the tent on tiptoe and went to the "garden" -- that bank dotted about
with myrtle bushes where Juliette once had received admirers. Tonight
at least they were concealed. Yet, for all the utter loneliness of the
place, they spoke in a half-whisper and never touched.

 

 

"You know, Iskuhi, I thought at first I might go mad. But the moment
I felt you near me, the horror passed. I'm free of it now. Quiet!
It's beautiful here. We haven't much longer."

 

 

He leaned far back like a man in pain who at last has managed to find
a painless attitude, and wants to keep it. "I used to love Juliette,
and perhaps I do still. At least as a memory. But this between you and
me, what is it, Iskului? I was fated to find you now, at the end of my
life, just as I was fated to come here -- not by chance, but . . . well,
how shall I put it? All my life I'd only sought for what was foreign to
me. I loved the exotic. It enticed me, but it never made me happy. And I
attracted it, too, but I couldn't make it happy either. One lives with
a woman, Iskuhi, and then meets you, the only sister one can ever have
in the world, and it's too late."

 

 

Iskuhi looked away past him, at bushes, faintly stirred by the night
wind. "But suppose we'd met somewhere out in the world -- would you
still have noticed I was your sister?"

 

 

"God only knows. Perhaps not."

 

 

She showed no trace of disappointment. "And I could see at once what
you are to me, that time in the church, when we came from Zeitun . . ."

 

 

"That time? I never used to believe one could turn into another person.
I used to think one goes on adding to oneself, developing. The truth's
just the other way. One melts in a fire. What's happening now to you
and me, and our whole people, is a smelting process. That's a stupid
way of putting it. But I can feel how molten I am. Every bit of dross,
every unnecessary part of me, has gone. Soon I shall only be a piece of
metal, I feel. And that's the real reason why Stephan's done for. . . ."

 

 

Iskuhi caught his hand. "Why are you saying that? Why should Stephan be
done for? He's a strong boy. And Haik's certain to get to Aleppo.
Why not he?"

 

 

"He won't get to Aleppo. . . . Just think what's happened. And he has all
that on him."

 

 

"You oughtn't to say things like that, Gabriel. You'll be doing him harm,
with them. I have every hope for Stephan."

 

 

Suddenly Iskuhi turned her head to watch the sick-tent. Gabriel thought,
without knowing why: She wants Juliette to be dead, she must want it.

 

 

Iskuhi had jumped to her feet. "Can't you hear something?
I think Juliette's calling."

 

 

He had heard nothing, but followed Iskuhi. She rushed to the tent.
Juliette was writhing on the bed, like a bound woman, trying to free
herself. She was neither awake nor quite unconscious. Whitish scurf
covered her bitten lips. From her glowing cheeks it was obvious that
fever, in the last few minutes, had touched the limit of the possible.
She seemed to recognize Gabriel. Her hand strayed and caught his jacket.

 

 

He scarcely understood her muttering question: "Is it true?
-- Is all this true?"

 

 

Between her question and his reply came a little pause full of icy stillness.
But then, bending down over her, he stressed each syllable, like a hypnotist:
"No, Juliette, that's all not true . . . it's not true."

 

 

A shuddering sigh: "Thank God. . . . It's not true."

 

 

Her body relaxed. She drew up her knees, as though to creep back happily,
innocently, into her womb of fever. Gabriel felt her pulse. A wild,
yet scarcely perceptible little beat. It seemed doubtful if she'd get
through next day. Quick -- that stimulant from the medicine chest. Iskuhi
thrust the spoon with the strophanthus mixture between Juliette's teeth.

 

 

Juliette came to herself, tried to sit up, and moaned: "And -- Stephan's
milk too . . . don't forget!"

 

 

 

 

For Pastor Aram there began an annoying day. He had buckled a lantern on
to his belt and gone out before it was light to climb down the rocks to
the sea and test the first result of his fishery. The raft was ready,
and they had ventured out on this windless night, with draw-nets and
little lanterns, to fish, in the ordinary way, off the coast. The idea
of it obsessed Tomasian. It seemed not only to hold the possibility
of a necessary change of diet and abundant supplementary supplies.
It was more than that even. It was their only real salvation from the
ever-increasing threat of famine. Surely, if they worked hard enough,
it ought to be possible to make the sea yield up its daily ration of two
to three hundred okas of fish. No matter how strictly they might economize,
in six weeks the last sheep would have been killed -- and that by the most
optimistic reckoning. But if he, Aram Tomasian, could only get his fishery
to flourish, new courage, new endurance, new strength to resist, would come
from the sea. The very thought of the sea, as the inexhaustible source
of all life, would work a miracle.

 

 

And so, in the greenish light of early morning, the young pastor climbed
down to the beach, along a path rebuilt by order of the Council. Yet,
as he climbed, he was thinking neither of sheep nor milk, nor even of
his own fishery. His little son was just sixteen days old -- his eyes as
big as the eyes of all Armenians. But they saw nothing. And still this
baby had not cried. The only sound it ever managed to bring out was a
toneless whisper. Every day the truth seemed more cruelly plain. His son
was born blind and deaf.

 

 

Yet the fiery birthmark on his body was spreading -- that mysterious sign
which Musa Dagh seemed herself, with some invisible seal, to have burned
into the flesh of the pastor's child. Since no ordinary medical aid
seemed of use, Hovsannah had nearly got to the point of consulting Nunik,
if she could find her. But now, since the Turks had invaded the valley,
the old women of birth and death were seen no more on the Damlayik.

 

 

The child had suffered much in Hovsannah's womb, on the way from Zeitun
to Yoghonoluk. This was the logical explanation. It did not satisfy
Hovsannah. She felt herself punished by God. It was not for nothing
that Hovsannah had been reared a Protestant. A child should be God's
blessing. This child was God's punishment. God sends His punishment for
sin. And Hovsannah was unaware of having committed any. Yet, since sin
undoubtedly there was, it must be in others, and clearly in those who
were most about her. Aram had certainly not sinned. Hovsannah was an
avidly faithful wife, whose marriage, as he knew, was spotless. Where,
then, was this sin, this taint, which branded her sinless child? There
was always, first and foremost, that prime mover of God's wrath, Juliette
Bagradian. In her, the adulteress, the fashion-maniac, the godless woman,
the foreigner, Hovsannah perceived the epitome of all sinfulness, whose
taint infects like a disease. Yet they lived shamelessly in proximity to
her, in her very tent, slept in her bed, ate off her plates. . . . And
Hovsannah's thoughts did not end there! Slowly the truth had forced
its way into her heart and, once perceived, she embraced it greedily:
Iskuhi! It was not to be doubted! Hovsannah knew how it stood with her
young sister-in-law. She too was an adulteress in her heart, without
control, without belief, desperately resolved to be a sinner. Had she not
always, even in Zeitun, been stubborn, preoccupied with herself, crazy for
pleasure -- even in the days when Aram demanded of his wife the bitter
sacrifice of sharing her house with such a woman. But Aram had always
refused to look at the truth; it had always been a sheer impossibility
to say one frank word about Iskuhi, his dear little sister. In the
moment when Hovsannah Tomasian had run weeping from the christening of
her child, she had seen the hidden connection of all these things, in an
indistinct and poignant vision, without really knowing anything. But now
she knew all! She knew that her child was accursed of God. She no longer
wept. With clenched fists she measured out the length of her tent --
five paces -- up and down, like a madwoman in her cell. And last night
she had refused to go on keeping silence and demanded of Arani that he
take her to Father Tomasian's hut. In the stench of sin surrounding the
Bagradians, her child would never be free of God's punishment.

 

 

The pastor, who suffered much at his wife's dementia, gaped at her,
unable to understand. "What's it to do with us and our child that Juliette
Bagradian is a sinner?"

 

 

Hovsannah had plucked the child away from her breast. She had felt her rising
anger poison the milk in her. "So even you want to be blind, Pastor?"

 

 

He had done his best to clarify her senseless rage. Then at last he had
lost his temper with her and reproved her sharply. Iskuhi was risking her
life, he had said, for the sake of a stranger. And all the thanks she got
for her Christian goodness and pure charity was to be slandered so vulgarly
-- and by her -- by her own sister-in-law! He, Aram, understood Hovsannah's
present condition; he was willing to forget what she had just said,
and forgive her for saying it.

 

 

But Hovsannah laughed scornfully. "You can convince yourself, Pastor,
of the way in which your tenderhearted Iskuhi nurses the sick. Just stick
your head inside the tent one night. You'll find them together. Sometimes
they go out shamelessly for walks in the middle of the night . . ."

 

 

Hovsannah's laugh, and her words, kept sounding in the pastor's ears all
the way down the cliffs to his fishery. He could think of nothing else.
The cold truth became more apparent with every step. God had punished him
in this child for his own great sin in Marash, his betrayal of the orphan
children. He himself was the guilty one, and not Iskuhi. Down on the shore,
among the rocks, Aram, to make bad worse, learned that his great idea had
so far only produced the most meager results. In spite of the calm sea,
the raft had come to bits as they put out, and three young fishermen had
almost been drowned. In view of such dangers the results were extremely
unsatisfactory: two small baskets of tiny silver sprats and jellyfish. The
catch would just have been enough for one big soup tureen. Tomasian mocked
them savagely, and gave fresh orders. The salting-ground had been more
successful than the fishery. A good haul of salt could be carried up to
the Town Enclosure.

 

 

Aram scarcely remained there fifteen minutes. His uneasy heart drove him
back. He had no clear idea what he could do to save Iskuhi. Had he not,
even in her childhood, always respected and been reserved with her?
And besides -- it was the only way with Iskuhi. Her personality, in spite
of all her quiet, friendly submissions, had something as hard and unyielding
as a crystal in it. It would not be encroached on.

 

 

In Zeitun and on Musa Dagh, the pastor had given proof enough of his courage.
But now, as he reached the shrubs which fenced off these rocks, he was
undecided and faint of heart. Perhaps the straightest solution would be to
go straight to Bagradian and have it out with him. But -- no! How could
he ever dare to bring out such an evil suspicion to a man of Bagradian's
rank, who compelled respect. A man whom fate had just struck so cruelly,
driven as he was to desperation for the life of his only son! Tomasian
saw no way out of it. He had almost made up his mind to leave it alone,
at least for the present. Yet, before turning into the Town Enclosure
to speak to his father, he resolved to take a last, quick look at Hovsannah.
He encountered a very different person. Iskuhi sat before Juliette's tent,
gazing out with unseeing eyes in the direction in which Gabriel had just
disappeared. She did not notice her brother till he was close to her.

 

 

Aram sat down, facing her, on the ground and strove uncomfortably to find
words: "It's a long time since we've had a talk with each other, Iskuhi."

 

 

This she dismissed with a gesture, as though no human memory could suffice
to measure the gulf between past and present.