Forty Days of Musa Dagh (96 page)

 

 

 

 

Axes could be heard on the North Saddle from the distant, northern heights
of Musa Dagh. The Turks were felling the ilexes of the mountain. Were they
building gun emplacements? Or setting up a fortified camp to have a point
of retreat for their next attack; not, as previously, to be forced to leave
the heights when it was dark, or else be exposed to sudden onslaughts.
Scouts were sent out to investigate these crests of hill beyond the Saddle;
four of the quickest boys in the scouts' group. They never came back.

 

 

Profound commotion! Sato, the master-spy, was sent forth. No harm came to
her. And she came back. But nothing useful could be got out of her. "Many
thousands of soldiers." Sato's notion of figures had always been most vague;
either they were the lowest or the highest. As to what these "thousands"
were doing, she could only give the mistiest report. "They're rolling
wood," or "They're cooking." The duty seemed not to have interested her.

 

 

This happened on the thirty-sixth day in camp, the fourth of September.
That morning every family had been served with its exact portion of
donkey-flesh. No one knew that the ration might not be the last. At the
same time all the observers sent in reports that the villages and the
whole of the valley were stirring as never before.

 

 

And not only were there crowds of new soldiers and saptiehs, but swarms
of inquisitive rabble had collected again from the Moslem villages.
The cause of this tumult was soon apparent. When, armed with Gabriel's
field-glass, Samuel Avakian climbed the high knoll to clear up the
position, scouts came dashing in to him excitedly. Something entirely
new had arrived. Most of the villagers had seen nothing like it before in
their lives. It had just halted on the highroad from Antakiya to Suedia,
at the entrance to the hamlet Yedidje, where a small detachment of cavalry
were awaiting it. Avakian through his field-glass recognized a tiny, grey,
military car, which must have risked its life in crossing the passes at
Ain el Yerab. Three officers climbed out of the car and mounted horses,
held there ready for them. This miniature cavalcade turned straight into
the valley of the villages. The officers cantered on ahead; behind them,
the cavalrymen; a few minutes more and they'd be in Wakef. The officer
riding in the center kept almost half a length ahead of the other two.
The others wore the usual astrakhan kepi; he had on a field-gray service
cap. Avakian could plainly observe the general's red stripe on his riding
breeches. The riders cantered all through the villages without a halt.

 

 

It took them scarcely an hour to reach Yoghonoluk. There, on the church
square, some civilians were already awaiting them; no doubt the Kaimakam
of Antakiya who, with the müdir and other civil servants, escorted the
general pasha and his suite into Villa Bagradian. These very significant
events were at once reported to the commander. Samuel Avakian sounded
the major alarm on his own responsibility. Gabriel later endorsed this
measure. He reinforced it, indeed, by giving orders that from now on
the camp was to consider itself as being in a perpetual state of alarm,
whether anything happened or not. But to Avakian he confided his opinion
that the Turks were not ready yet by a long chalk, that neither today
nor tomorrow would anything happen, and probably not in the next few
days. He seemed to be right. Having spent two hours in the villa, these
new officers remounted and cantered to Yedidje, even more sharply than
they had come. They had not been half a day on the scene of action when
the little, cheaply rattling car drove off again toward Antakiya. The
Kaimakam accompanied these military gentlemen back to his provincial
capital.

 

 

That same day Gabriel roused himself and shook off his pain. The soldier
aroused in him by the banishment laws got the upper hand again. From
hour to hour he managed to extinguish his inner life. Pain was still
there, but only in the form of some dim consciousness, like a wounded
limb deadened with injections. He flung himself on his work with wild
eagerness. Sudden resolution seemed to have worked a complete cure, so
that now he stood more firmly erect than ever. Only now did he become
fully aware what invaluable help he got from Avakian, his adjutant,
or better, his chief-of-staff. That indefatigable tutor, that strangely
impersonal ego, who never once -- though in knowledge and intelligence
he stood head and shoulders above most of the leaders -- had appeared
to lay any claims to leadership, had put forth iron strength. When
Avakian appeared in the trenches, he spread that feeling of almost
joyous zeal, that precious "morale,' which is really complete trust in
the leadership. It was because, even when there was no commander, the
adjutant could reflect Bagradian's qualities, like light. And Avakian,
too, since Stephan's death, had had little sleep. He had lived four years
with the Bagradians and had loved Stephan like his young brother. Why,
on that horrible day, had he not guessed what was going on in Stephan's
mind? He would never forgive himself. Never? Alas, it was his only
comfort that this "never" was only a matter of a few days, and that
so everything -- everything -- weighed lighter. Avakian set himself to
serve Gabriel. Among other things he had drawn up a new roster of the
decads. From it Bagradian found that his fighters had diminished to
seven hundred or so. But this great gap left by death did not connote
any essential weakening of their fighting strength. The best reservists
could be armed with the rifles of these dead. And then, thanks to the
forest fire, the area of defence had shrunk to a few sections. The ilex
gully was still an oven of glowing coals. Their heat could be felt in
the Town Enclosure as much as ever, where, usually towards evening, it
spoilt people's tempers. So that the weakest part of the line was now
protected for ever against attack. And not only in this great sector of
the Damlayik, but far around, on the lower slopes, ridges, and hillocks,
caved-in tree trunks still glowed. Here a compassionate hand had turned
it all in favor of the Armenians. Gabriel finally disbanded the garrisons
of sections, grown superfluous, and in place of them formed a strong
chain of outposts, to protect the mountain from surprise attacks and
Turkish spies. Judging by present signs and possibilities, the Turks
were intending a massed assault in the north, probably supported by
artillery, with a force that should ten times outnumber and wipe out
the exhausted Armenians. Their axes rang all day on the Damlayik. But,
in spite of these apparent preparations, Gabriel was far-sighted enough
to send out spies in the southern areas. These brave young men ventured
out at night as far as Suedia. They reported that only very few soldiers,
and scarcely any saptiehs, were in the Orontes plain. All the troops were
concentrated in the villages. The rock bastion with all its possibilities
of an avalanche, seemed still, in spite of this new general, to inspire
the Turks with insurmountable respect. None the less Gabriel decided to
inspect the South Bastion next morning.

 

 

That evening he sat in his sleeping place and stared up the slope of the
Saddle across to the group of trees on the crest, between which Stephan
had gone his way without his being able to prevent it. His neighbors
in the trench still kept their distance. When he arrived, their talk
suddenly stopped; they stood up and greeted him as the leader. And that
was all. Not one of them said a word to him of Stephan. They may not have
dared. They all eyed him so strangely -- inquiring, disconsolate. For
twenty-four hours he had seen neither Juliette nor Iskuhi. It was better
not to. All ties were loosening. He must not let himself be cast back
into weakness. He must be cold and free for the last fight. And, indeed,
for all his immeasurable grief, he did feel cold and free. Here on this
mountain summit even September evenings were chilly. Nor had the veering
wind died down, though here and there it paused in its dance. Where were
those peaceful moony nights when the forty wounds in Stephan's body
had still not seared his father's mind? Gabriel stared on, out at the
black wall opposite. Sometimes the wind mourned in the trees above. How
timid their enemies were! On a night like this they could easily have
dug themselves in along that slope without being prevented. Ah, well,
they had no need of such arts, since they had artillery. That, in a
hand's turn, would bring the end. Perhaps one ought not to be waiting
for it, one ought to anticipate the attack, get a fresh idea. Had not he,
Bagradian, always had the saving idea, so that here they still remained,
unbroken? First, it had been the whole defence system, the completed
plan of these entrenchments, then the komitajis, the mobile guard, the
forest fire, to save them again. . . . Anticipate! A new inspiration!
But what? How? His mind was a blank.

 

 

 

 

Next day Gabriel visited the South Bastion as he had intended. But first
he stopped to examine the howitzers. Their barrels were trained in opposite
directions, the one on to the northern heights, the other on Suedia.
Gabriel, in the days before Stephan's death, had set their direction
by his map. It would at least be possible to hold up and disturb the
Turks' advance. In the lockers there were still four shrapnel and fifteen
grenades. The guns had a guard of eight men round them, trained by Nurhan,
under his directions.

 

 

Nurhan, Avakian, and several decad commanders accompanied Gabriel on
his surprise inspection. Their first impressions on reaching the South
Bastion were not such as to arouse instant suspicion. Sarkis Kilikian,
on release, had even consented to improve still further the machinery
of his battering-rams. The powerful battering-shields had been enlarged
by oar-shaped slats jutting over the wheel-edge. So that now the impact
of the shield could take in a much wider surface of the loose-heaped
stones. The shields themselves had been doubly strengthened and clamped
together with many strong iron hoops. Judging by the look of them,
these squat catapults would be capable of hurling tons of stone down
the slope as far as the ruins of Seleucia. Kilikian seemed interested
in nothing else but these sinister toys. It was a boyish trait, this
sudden fit of obstinate concentration with which he kept on working
at "wall-breakers." This zeal was in signal contrast to the usual
bleak emptiness of the man. But, from the first instant he set eyes
on him, Gabriel had sensed some eager, subterranean well-spring in
this victim of relentless fate. His relationship with Kilikian was
full of inexplicable tensions. Something in the prosperous "Parisien,"
the cultivated bourgeois, was afraid of the radical denials, the void,
within this deserter. They had only once been directly in conflict,
when Kilikian was routed with ignominy. Yet, even on that occasion,
Gabriel, the victor, had felt uneasy, and today he could still not feel
entirely assured. Kilikian was the one man on Musa Dagh with whom the
chief never could manage to strike the right note. Either he spoke to
him too negligently, or made him too much of an equal. But the Russian
could always find a method of keeping Bagradian at arm's length. That,
for instance, he should still lie quietly on his back while the chief
for the second time praised his catapults -- it was not only insolent,
it was subversive insubordination, and ought to have brought down instant
punishment. Gabriel did not punish; he turned away to look about for
Teacher Oskanian. But when Gabriel had been seen approaching, Oskanian,
in hysterical panic, had made himself scarce. He was unaware that neither
Ter Haigasun, Bedros Hekim, nor Shatakhian had told Gabriel of that sorry
Council meeting, at which the teacher had spat out so much venom against
Bagradian's family. To have been turned off the Council of Leaders had put
an edge on Oskanian's vanity. Apparently he was now intriguing to found
an "Oskanian party." For days he had blown off steam to all and sundry,
to simple-minded folk who did not belong to the South Bastion but came
there to visit him. "The idea," as he called it, took clearer and clearer
shape in his mind. But this idea was not an original inspiration; it
dated from a luminous dissertation of Krikor's, who years ago, on one of
their philosophical walks, had discussed the thesis "the duty of living"
and "the right to die," supported with sundry quotations from a number
of high-sounding authorities, whose opinions he set one against the other.

 

 

In the trenches of the South Bastion the inspecting party discovered no
flagrant infringements. The duty-routine as laid down for the decads
was being followed, the posts had sentries, the advance-pickets were
placed at the edge of the wide stone slope. Rifles left nothing to be
desired. And yet, for all its surface order, these men's manner had in
it something indefinite, slack, suspicious, which roused all Nurhan's
ire. This garrison was made up of eleven decads. About eighty-five of the
men were deserters. Not all of these fellows were doubtful quantities; on
the contrary, the majority were quite harmless fugitives from barracks,
who had escaped from a bullying sergeant, the bastinado, or enrollment
in a labor battalion. But, whoever was at fault in the matter, whether
it were due to want, depravity, or bad example -- they had one and all
taken on Kilikian's intractable apathy, as though that were the only way
of approaching life for such men as they. They lounged, they loitered,
they lay about insolently on their backs, they stretched and lolled, they
growled and whistled provocatively, in a way which boded no good for the
coming battle. These men might not have been a fighting garrison, not even
indeed an authentic gang of brigands, but a mere horde of dissipated,
disgruntled tramps clustered together in the wilderness. But Gabriel
did not seem to take their behavior too seriously. Most of these men had
proved themselves fighters. Everything else was beside the point. They
must be more carefully handled than the élite.