Forty Days of Musa Dagh (9 page)

 

 

"I can't make out why people must be forever eyeing their neighbors.
War, government orders, Wali, Kaimakam -- let the Turks do as they please.
If you don't worry about them, they won't worry about you. We have our
own earth here. And it has distinguished admirers. If you please . . ."

 

 

With this Krikor introduced a young man to his host, a foreigner, who had
either been hidden by all the others or whom Gabriel had failed to notice.
Krikor rolled out the young man's sonorous name: "Gonzague Maris."

 

 

This young man, to judge by his appearance, was a European, or at least
a distinctly Europeanized Levantine. His small black moustache, on a pale,
highly alert face, looked as French as his name sounded. His most distinctive
trait was the eyebrows, which forked upwards in a blunt angle. Krikor played
herald to the foreigner: "Monsieur Gonzague Maris is a Greek."

 

 

At once he improved on this, as though he were afraid of demeaning his guest:
"Not a Turkish Greek, but a European."

 

 

This stranger had very long eyelashes. He was smiling, and these feminine
lashes were lowered almost over his eyes. "My father was Greek, my mother's
French. I'm an American."

 

 

The quiet, almost shy approach of this young stranger favorably impressed
Bagradian. He shook his hand. "What extraordinary combination of
circumstances -- if you don't mind my calling it that -- brings an American
with a French mother here -- of all places?"

 

 

Gonzague smiled again, lowering his eyes. "It's quite simple. I had business
for a few weeks in Alexandretta and got ill there. The doctor sent me up
to the hills, to Beilan. Beilan didn't suit me. . . . In Alexandretta
they told me so much about Musa Dagh that I felt inquisitive. It was a
great surprise to me, in the God-forsaken East, to find such beauty,
such cultured people, and such comfort as I'm enjoying with my host,
Monsieur Krikor. I like everything strange. If Musa Dagh were in Europe,
it'd be famous. Well, I'm glad it belongs only to you."

 

 

The apothecary announced, in the hollow, indifferent voice which he used
for giving important information: "He's a writer, and he's going to work
in my house."

 

 

But Gonzague Maris seemed embarrassed. "I'm not a writer. I send an
occasional article to an American newspaper. That's all I do. I'm not
even a real journalist." Vaguely, with a gesture, he indicated that his
scribbling was no more than an attempt to make money.

 

 

But Krikor would not let go of his victim, who must be used as an asset.
"But you're also an artist, a musician, a virtuoso. Haven't you given
concerts?"

 

 

The young man's hand was raised in self-defence: 'That's not quite right.
Among other things I've been an accompanist. One must try all kinds of
things." His eyes sought Juliette's assistance.

 

 

She marvelled: "How small the world really is. How strange that I should
have met a compatriot here. You're half French."

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Juliette's verve the evening was a very successful one, not
to be compared with former gatherings in Villa Bagradian. Most of these
rustic Armenians lived Orientally, that is to say they foregathered only
in church or in the street. Visits were for state occasions. This cloistered
domesticity was the true cause of the women's uneasiness. But this evening
they thawed, little by little. The pastor's wife forgot to warn her husband,
whose life she devoted her energies to prolonging, and whose sleep must
therefore never be encroached upon, that it was time to go home. The
mukhtar's wife had come close up to Juliette, to finger the silk of her
dress. Mairik Antaram, however, had suddenly vanished. Her husband had
sent a small boy to fetch her, since he needed her help in a difficult
delivery. It was one of her duties to chase away the old spey-women,
who at every childbirth besieged a house to sell magic potions to the
mother. In the course of decades Madame Altouni had become the doctor's
valued assistant and had ended by taking over most of his practice.
"She's better at it than I am," he always said.

 

 

The host took longest to unbend. But little by little he grew convivial.
He eyed discontentedly the long table laid with plates of cake, tea and
coffee cups, and two carafes of raki. He sprang to his feet. "My friends,
we must have something better than this to drink." He went down to the
cellar with Kristaphor and Missak to fetch up wine. The younger Avetis
had laid down an ample store of the best years vintages. The steward
had charge of them. It is true that the heady wines of Musa Dagh did not
keep long. This may have been because they were not bottled, but kept,
in accordance with old tradition, in big sealed jars. It was a dark golden
drink, very heady, similar to the wines which flourish at Xara on Lebanon.

 

 

When they had filled their glasses, Bagradian rose to give a toast.
It came out as uncertainly and ominously as everything else he had said
that evening: It was good that they should all be sitting here, happy,
tonight. Who could tell whether next time, or the time after that, they
would still be so carefree! But nobody must let such thoughts spoil his
evening. They brought no good with them. . . .

 

 

This toast, or rather this veiled warning, Gabriel had given in Armenian.
Juliette raised her glass and looked across at him. "I could understand
every word you said. But why so gloomy, my dear?"

 

 

"I'm such a bad speaker," he excused himself. "I should never have made
a leader of the people."

 

 

"Rafael Patkanian," the apothecary interjected, turning to Juliette,
"Patkanian was one of our greatest popular leaders, a real inspirer of
the Armenian people -- and he was the worst speaker you could imagine.
He stuttered worse than the young Demosthenes. As a young man I had the
honor of knowing and hearing him speak. In Erivan."

 

 

"You mean," Gabriel laughed, "that everything's possible."

 

 

The heavy wine was producing its effect. Tongues wagged. Only the
schoolteacher Oskanian still kept the embittered, dignified silence due
to himself and his importance. Nokhudian, the man of God, who carried
his liquor poorly, defended his glass against the onslaughts of his
spouse as she tried to take it away from him. He kept saying: "Why,
woman, this is a feast day, isn't it?"

 

 

As Gabriel opened a window for a glance at the night, he felt Juliette
behind his back.

 

 

"Are you having a nice time?" she whispered.

 

 

He put his arm about her waist. "Whom have I to thank for it, if not you?"
But his strained voice was unsuited to the loving words.

 

 

Wine brought the desire for song. Several people pointed out a young man,
one of the teachers -- a disciple of Krikor. His name was Asayan. This wisp
of a man was known to have an excellent voice and memory for Armenian songs.
Asayan showed all the diffidence of amateurs. He couldn't possibly sing
without accompaniment, and his house was too far away to fetch a tar.
Juliette had already thought of sending upstairs for her gramophone;
to be sure most of the natives of Yoghonoluk already knew this triumph
of technical skill. But it was Krikor who settled the matter, with
a significant glance at his foreign guest: "We have a professional
among us."

 

 

It did not need too much persuasion to make Gonzague Maris sit down to
the piano. "One of the twelve pianos in Syria," announced Gabriel.
"It was sent from Vienna for my mother a quarter of a century ago.
But Kristaphor tells me that my brother Avetis had an expert in from Aleppo
to tune it and put it to rights. In the last weeks of his life he played
a good deal. And I never even knew he was musical."

 

 

Gonzague struck a few chords. But, as often happens, the professional
could not find the right tune for this late hour, the unusual relaxation,
the need these people felt to be amused. Carelessly, his head bent forward
over the keys, he sat there, cigarette in mouth -- but his fingers became
more and more involved in macabre sounds. "Out of tune," he murmured,
"horribly out of tune," and was perhaps for that reason unable to
disentangle himself from howling discords. A veil of boredom and fatigue
descended upon his face, which had looked so handsome. Bagradian quietly
observed this face; it seemed no longer boyishly shy, but dissipated
and disingenuous. He looked round for Juliette, who had pulled her chair
nearer the piano. Her face was suddenly sagging and middle-aged. Softly
she answered his questioning expression: "Headache -- It comes from
this wine.

 

 

Gonzague suddenly stopped, and shut down the piano-lid. "Please excuse me."

 

 

Although, to let the others see he was musical, Shatakhian began in highly
technical language to praise the foreigner's playing, the evening was
really at an end. Pastor Nokhudian's wife a few minutes later set the
example for breaking up. To be sure they were to stay the night with
friends in Yoghonoluk, but they must set out for Bitias at sunrise.
The silent Oskanian stayed on longest. When the others were already in
the park, he turned back, to approach Juliette on his short legs, so
resolutely, so severely, that she felt a little scared. But he had only
come to present her with a big and imposing manuscript roll, written in
different colored inks, in Armenian letters, before he vanished.

 

 

It was a passionate rhymed declaration of love.

 

 

 

 

Juliette awoke in the night to find Gabriel sitting bolt upright at her
bedside. He had lighted his candle and for some time must have been watching
her asleep. She could distinctly feel that his eyes, not the candlelight,
had awakened her.

 

 

He touched her arm. "I didn't mean to wake you. But I wanted you to wake up."

 

 

She shook back her hair. Her face was amiable and refreshed. "I shouldn't
have minded your waking me. You know that. You know I always like to talk
in the night."

 

 

"I've been thinking things out . . ." His voice was hesitant.

 

 

"And I've been having a simply marvellous sleep. So my headache can't have
come from your Armenian wine. It must have been brought on by the playing
of my -- comment dire? -- my semi-compatriot. What a coincidence! Fancy
using Yoghonoluk as a spa, and Monsieur Krikor's house as a hotel. But the
funniest one of all was that little black-haired schoolteacher who gave me
his rolled-up poem. And that other teacher, drawling through his nose.
He seemed to think he was speaking such good French -- and it sounded like
a mixture of stones being ground and whining dogs. You Armenians have such
a funny accent. Even you, mon ami, have it slightly. Oh, well, I mustn't
be too critical! They're really such nice people."

 

 

"Poor people. Poor, poor people."

 

 

Juliette had never observed the least sentimentality in Gabriel. All
the greater, therefore, her astonishment. She looked across at him in
silence. The candle behind his head made her unable to study his face;
she could see only the upper half of his body, like a dark mass of carved
stone. But Gabriel -- since now, not only candlelight, but the first
starry dawnlight fell upon Juliette -- was in the presence of a tenderly
radiant being. "Fourteen years in October. The greatest happiness in my
life. And yet it was a bad mistake. I ought never to have dragged you
away . . . thrust you into a foreign destiny."

 

 

She felt for matches to light her own candle. But he snatched her hand
and prevented it. So that again she heard him speak through the formless
dark. "It would be best if you could escape. . . . We ought to divorce."

 

 

A long silence. It simply did not occur to Juliette that this mad,
incomprehensible suggestion had any serious reality. She shifted nearer
him. "Have I hurt you, wounded your feelings, made you jealous?"

 

 

"You've never been so kind as you were tonight. It's years since I've felt
so much in love. . . . That makes it all the more horrible."

 

 

He sat up more stiffly, so that the dark mass of his body looked stranger
still. "Juliette, you must take what I'm going to say seriously. Ter
Haigasun will do whatever he can to get a divorce put through as fast
as possible. And the Turkish authorities don't put many obstacles in
the way of that sort of thing. Then you'd be free, you'd have ceased to
be an Armenian, you could get away from the ghastly fate of my people,
in which I've involved you. We could go to Aleppo. There you can place
yourself under the protection of a European consul, the American,
or the Swiss, it doesn't matter. And you'll be safe, whatever happens
here -- or there. Stephan'll go with you. You'll be able to leave Turkey
without diffculty. Of course I'll make over my property and the income
to you. . . ."

 

 

He had said all this with difficulty, but quickly, so that she should not
interrupt. But Juliette's face came close to his. "And are you really taking
this madness seriously?"

 

 

"If I'm still alive when it's all over, I'll come back to you."

 

 

"But yesterday we were quietly discussing what was to happen when you
got called up. . . ."

 

 

"Yesterday? Yesterday was all an illusion. The world's changed since."

 

 

"What's changed? This business with the passports? We shall be given new
ones. Why, you yourself said that in Antioch you heard nothing terrible."