Forty Days of Musa Dagh (89 page)

 

 

And he played his trump card to the mukhtars: "It all comes from the fact
that these old jossers are as thick as thieves with the Bagradians --
who send poor little fools like Shatakhian here to Europe, with the
money they've managed to sweat out of us. Aren't these rich families
the cause of all the troubles in the first place? These Levantines have
nothing to do with us! The whole Armenian people has to be slaughtered
to pay for their swindling business deals."

 

 

This touched an important chord in the peasant souls. Thomas Kebussyan
squinted before him, lost in memories: "Even old Avetis was that way.
Nothing but business all the time -- in Aleppo, in Istanbul, in Europe.
He was never here two months in the year. I've never cared to leave
Yoghonoluk. Not that I mightn't have if I'd liked -- my old woman worried
me enough . . ."

 

 

Something began to move behind the books. Into the narrow gap between the
walls of them came a groaning, hunched-up shape in a long white nightshirt.
Krikor of Yoghonoluk, the celibate, had been wearing his shroud since the
previous day. Since he did not want a Nunik or grave-digger to clothe him
in the robes of renunciation, he had donned them himself, hard as it was to
do so, knowing well that he would not survive to see the Damlayik taken by
the Turks. His yellow cheeks had now such hollows in them that a five-piastre
piece would have fitted in each. His shoulders were hunched up to his ears,
his arms and legs swollen to disjointed clubs. When at last he managed to
steady himself, between the two piled-up walls of his library, he did his
best to bring into his voice the old, hollow, indifferent note of the sage.
But that had ceased to be possible. His words came out tremulous,
disconnected:

 

 

"This teacher here . . . I've worked and worked at him . . . for years.
. . . I've pumped the blood of scholars and poets into him. . . . I used
to think . . . because he was intelligent . . . that he had the makings
of a human angel in him. . . . But I was wrong. . . . No one, who isn't,
can ever become it. . . . I used to say: 'He doesn't always think of
dung.' . . . But this teacher is far, far below the poor people who
only think of dung. . . . That's enough of him. . . . As to my guest,
Maris . . . I haven't told anyone, so far . . . he promised me to do
all he could for us in Beirut. . . with the consuls. . . ."

 

 

Krikor was too weak to go on speaking. Oskanian pounced on him.

 

 

"And where did he get his passports? You believe any empty talk, but not
the plainest facts."

 

 

The mukhtars seemed at last to have seen the light. Yes, where did he
get his passports?

 

 

Pastor Aram sprang to his feet: "That's enough, Oskanian! Stop this
intolerable fooling! We've wasted our time, and nobody's said one sensible
word. And in three days we shan't have anything more to eat."

 

 

The somber schoolteacher was swept away in his aimless malice. It was as
though, in this one hour, he were being forced to throw up all the bile
which suppressed rage and slights had for years accumulated. He even
came out with the kind of gossip which the most daring matrons ventured
to whisper only with their heads together: "Aha! even the pastor? Well,
of course he can't do anything else, since his sister has been living
so close to Bagradian . . ."

 

 

Aram wanted to fling himself on Oskanian, but was pulled back by strong arms.
Old Tomasian, red as a turkeycock, shouted and brandished his stick.

 

 

But Ter Haigasun was quicker than the two Tomasians. He gripped the teacher's
collarless shirt. "I've given you time, Oskanian, to prove what needs
proving. Now we all know who spreads the poison which I've felt for a long
time in people's minds. They chose you as a leader because you happen to be
a schoolmaster. Well, now I send you back to them, and I mean to let them
know the truth about you. And, listen to me! I exclude you from all further
sittings."

 

 

Hrand Oskanian howled that that meant nothing to him. He'd come there
that morning fully intending to clear out of this collection of gossiping
old men, whom the people itself would send packing today or tomorrow,
as they deserved. But, for all his quick splutter of words, the once
so silent teacher did not get to the end of what he was saying, since
it was not a full minute before Ter Haigasun had sent him spinning,
with a powerful kick behind, and locked the door on him. A sly quiet
remained. The mukhtars winked at one another. There was a certain danger
in the dictatorial methods of Ter Haigasun, who at any minute might do
the same to one or another of them. But a chosen leader ought only to
be deposed by the whole assembly, and not by any of its members, not
even the highest. And, while the spectre of hopeless famine came in
giant strides nearer and nearer the Town Enclosure with every minute,
Thomas Kebussyan cleared his throat, wagged his hairless head, and
raised what might have been described as a constitutional protest
against the mishandling of an elected member of the Council. For the
first time a clear opposition began to form. Apart from the mukhtars,
it was composed of some of the younger teachers and one of the village
priests who disliked Ter Haigasun. The two Tomasians, still hot with
anger and embarrassment, remained undecided. But all the rest, beginning
with Ter Haigasun, had, without knowing or wanting to do so, become the
Bagradian party. Already the day's discussion had centered round Gabriel
instead of round the great catastrophe. When Ter Haigasun gruffly closed
all further discussion of him, to come at last to the question of how
to obtain supplies, it was already too late. The sinister noise outside,
on the altar square, demanded the Council's immediate intervention.

 

 

 

 

Hrand Oskanian was only a weak man. In any western community he would
simply have been described as an "intellectual"; that is to say,
a mediocre, book-learned individual, who does not feed himself by
manual labour, and whose soul vacillates, since, finding no place
in the raw conflict of powers, it devours itself, avid for power and
acknowledgment. So that, in other circumstances, Hrand Oskanian's case
might, for all its grotesque absurdity, have been harmless. Here on
the Damlayik it had to be reckoned with. Hrand Oskanian stood entirely
alone. And yet he was in touch with a certain world, an obscure,
unexplored world, which today, for the first time, was destined to
attract attention. The teacher had in a sense been appointed government
commissar over this world. In that role his very status as "intellectual"
was enough in itself to make him fail. His failure was not only due
to Kilikian. The Russian, though the uncrowned king of the deserters,
was silent and walked by himself. He might always be at the center of an
event; but he himself was as inanimate as a saint on the top of a column,
took as little interest as a ghost. But apart from Kilikian, in these
twenty-three days on Musa Dagh more than eighty other deserters had by
degrees collected on the Damlayik, and the word "deserter," it was well
known, covered in many cases a murkier origin.

 

 

Hrand Oskanian, therefore, was the one representative of authority on the
South Bastion. He aped Bagradian, in that he slept with these deserters,
and strove to share their whole life. It was by no means easy for him to
do it. The dwarf's puny body had to keep stretching itself continually
to try to come even with these toughs. He was forced, day in day out, to
pretend to be "a devil of a fellow," live always beyond his real courage
and strength. Next to the wound inflicted by Juliette Bagradian, this
company, which now he kept, was perhaps the second deciding reason for
the little teacher's strange development, of which his "revolutionary"
behavior in the Council had been no more than a sample. He was very proud
indeed of having had the quarrel. He had begun to describe himself as
"revolutionary."

 

 

The South Bastion was distant and solitary: as far removed as the sun from
the altar square, and therewith from the spirit of order and leadership.
The people showed a distinct dislike of having to go there. Whereas, for
instance, between the North Saddle and the Town Enclosure there was always
a vivacious coming and going, at most one or two inquisitive people ever
strayed to the rocks of the South Bastion. This was not fully explained
by the long way, or the fact that these deserters had no families in camp.
Now and then Bagradian would send a surprise inspection. To his relief,
it had never much to report. It was clear enough: these deserters might
consider themselves lucky to have been allowed into the camp, where they
were fed, instead of having to live like dogs. But nobody either knew,
or cared to ask, how loyal they really felt to this people, or willing to
sacrifice on behalf of it. The South Bastion was a world in itself. It
lived a life into which nobody inquired. It undertook, in payment for
regular food, to defend that sector; and that was all. Yet the deserters,
too, in keeping their unspecified contract, had so far scarcely troubled
about the camp -- the enclosure, the altar square, the Council --
and very seldom let themselves be seen in the places where most people
congregated. This, the morning of the catastrophe, was perhaps the first
time they had invaded it in any considerable numbers. They had come quite
aimlessly. The instinct "there's something up" had driven them there,
the eternal instinct of their kind towards confusion, the breakdown of
social order; towards a void, which at the same time seems a novelty.

 

 

There had often before been crowds on the altar square, meetings in which
some daily occurrence had been discussed with great excitement. But today
it presented a different picture from the most excited of previous
gatherings. And now the beggars mingled their drabness with all the rest.
Even the schoolboys, run wild since the last battle, as noisy as a flock
of famished sparrows, as wild as any pack of young wolves, swarmed in,
lifting up shrill voices.

 

 

In the general confusion and alarm it was not the poorest class which set
the tone. Not the poor peasants, the farmhands, the day laborers, but a
certain middling sort of "small proprietor." These "small men" behaved
like lunatics, flung up their caps, tore at their hair, flourished wild
arms and danced about in sheer desperation. This despair was less that
of approaching famine; it was for what they considered their personal
loss. They kept screaming that "their" property had been filched -- their
last! Anyone listening to their grief would have got the impression that
the Turks had looted hundreds of thousands of sheep. Each of these small
proprietors worked out his loss at fantastic figures. It was the same
symptom of decline as Oskanian's spy-fever. Ever-increasing unreason
was taking insidious hold of these people's minds.

 

 

At first the very poor, dazed by the shock, kept heavy silence. And they
asked anxiously what the leaders thought. It was small proprietors who
spread the excitement among the crowd. It was with these the mukhtars
had to contend, whom Ter Haigasun had sent out to eat this broth of
theirs. They, as the Council's executives, were in closest touch with
the mass of the people.

 

 

But they scarcely managed to swallow the first spoonful of it. Almost
before they could say anything, they were being shoved and punched,
this way and that, all over the square. All their attempts to excuse
themselves were lost in angry shouts of "You're the only responsible
ones! You're responsible!" A pious lie might perhaps have eased the
situation -- the hint, for instance, that still, in spite of this
misfortune, there were enough secret stores to hand -- might have
re-established the old insouciance, since on Musa Dagh a few days seemed
an eternity. None of the elders was inspired with the saving thought
of holding up this unhoped-for "something" to the crowd, to pacify it,
at least for the time being. But Thomas Kebussyan, usually a canny man,
who only now lost his head, used, under Oskanian's influence, the worst,
most damaging method of attempting to turn off popular wrath. He threw
the word "betrayal" among the people. In normally prosperous times
the people has a sound enough instinct to judge the truth, and a very
healthy fund of scepticism. Nor had most of these ever taken Oskanian
very seriously. But now the mukhtars set his foot on the ladder of
politics. His career was launched. The mass, which, in normal times,
displays such devastating scepticism at any suggestion of rhetoric,
becomes its prey at moments of catastrophe. And then the vaguest words,
expressing the least concrete notions, take the strangest effect. The
word "betrayal" was one of these. In only very few of the villagers
did it evoke any clear concept of an actual happening. But it served to
release every hostile instinct and give it direction, although not, to be
sure, the direction the mukhtars would have liked. The leaders, all these
notables and "bosses," had quietly arranged to sacrifice "the people," and
that merely to save themselves. And it was their fault that the communes
had moved on to Musa Dagh, and so exposed themselves to massacre. Pastor
Harutiun Nokhudian had been the only real "friend of the people." He and
his flock, now that the convoy had arrived there, were living in the east,
in poor but quite peaceful circumstances. Shouts of derision and hatred
of the Council bespattered the government hut like a hailstorm, and kept
increasing. The men of the South Bastion elbowed their way all over the
crowds, and seemed to view all this confusion as a kind of bear-fight
which, though it amused, in no way concerned them. But, wherever they
might be, effervescence rose, like an aerated bubble in a drink.