Forty Days of Musa Dagh (99 page)

 

 

"Gabriel Bagradian's dreaming, now," crowed the choir-singer, Oskanian's
little deputy.

 

 

But the gentle Shatalthian sprang up enthusiastically. "In my opinion
Bagradian's again made the only really bold suggestion. It's even more
magnificent than the others were. If we really succeed in getting hold
of the villa, and taking prisoner a general, a kaimakam, a yüs-bashi,
there's no saying what mightn't come of it. . . ."

 

 

"It's perfectly obvious what would come of it," Aram Tomasian cut into
this disdainfully. "If we capture one of their generals and a high official,
the Turks will cease to consider us a joke. They'll send out regiments
and brigades against us, And if Gabriel Bagradian imagines the army will
negotiate for its martinets and make concessions, he's much mistaken. The
death of a general or a kaimakam at the hands of Armenian rebels is just
what they want. It puts them completely in the right in every foreign
country; it's the fullest justification of their Armenian policy. They
welcome anything of that kind. What do you people in Yoghonoluk know
about it? I was in Zeitun -- "

 

 

Shatakhian boiled with rage: "It's not Gabriel Bagradian who's 'much
mistaken,' it's you, Pastor, in spite of all your Zeitun. I know Ittihad,
I know the Young Turks, even if I've only lived in Yoghonoluk. They stick
together. They never sacrifice one of their own. In no circumstances.
Point d'honneur! And the shameful death of a general or a kaimakam
would damage their whole prestige in the eyes of the people. They couldn't
stand up to it! On the contrary they'd do all they possibly could to buy
off their big bugs, with flour, and fat, and meat -- with freedom even."

 

 

The teacher's too exuberant optimism moved all the doubters to scorn.
Again there arose the empty, malicious strife of the last sitting, in
which no opinion could fully assert itself. All that it lacked was the
threatening crowd round the hut. Ter Haigasun, who, as usual, bore with
the din for a certain time, tried to get peace by saying dryly that the
usefulness of captured generals and kaimakams had better not be discussed
until they'd been caught.

 

 

Meanwhile the suffering demon in Tomasian had taken full possession of
the pastor. He was wild and senseless enough to attack, for no reason,
the Orthodox priest: "Ter Haigasun! Aren't you the supreme, responsible
head! I accuse you, here, of indecision. You let everything slide. You
don't want anyone interfering with you. It's a sheer miracle that with
your -- what shall I call it? -- your unconcern, we should still be
alive today. . . ."

 

 

This scabrous attack on the highest authority -- unique, unheard of
as it was -- so much annoyed Altouni, the agnostic, that he stridently
defended the Orthodox Gregorian vicar against the Protestant's attack:
"What have you to complain of here, young man? Nice state of things!
You know nothing at all of us or of our life, since your father packed
you off, as a boy, to Marash. Don't you get too big for your boots!"

 

 

Called to order like an impudent schoolboy, and already hot with shame
at his own tactlessness, Aram's voice became shriller than ever: "I may
be too much of a stranger to understand you, though the real strangers
among you seem to understand you well enough. But I still keep to my first
suggestion. More -- I've decided to do what I think fit on behalf of myself
and my family. When was it ever written that we must all keep together to
the end? It'd be far wiser to break up the whole camp. Let each family
save itself -- as best it can. It's much easier to catch a whole shoal
of us in one place. But, if we disperse all over the coast, then perhaps
some at least of us will be left alive, in one way or another. I mean
to pack up and get out with my whole family and find a way for myself.
I said my whole family, Gabriel Bagradian."

 

 

Ter Haigasun had not once lost his temper through the whole of this
very stormy session. When, exactly six days previously, he had kicked
Oskanian out of the hut, it had been done regally, with just the
necessary emphasis. Even now he showed no signs of excitement as he
stood up, pale, almost ceremonious. "That's enough. Our sessions have
no further object. The people elected us to lead them. I herewith, on
the thirty-eighth day, declare this warrant to be cancelled, since this
Council of Leaders has no longer the necessary strength and unity to make
decisions. If it's possible for a man like Aram Tomasian, responsible
for the civil law and order of this camp, to suggest its being broken up,
it's obvious that we have no right to exact obedience and subordination
from anyone else. So that, here and now, things become as they were again,
before the Council was chosen by the villagers. The mukhtars take over
the sole charge of their communes, and I, as chief priest of the district,
the guidance of the community as a whole. And in that capacity I request
Gabriel Bagradian that he should continue to lead our defense. His command
is independent. It rests with him whether he decides on a surprise attack
or on any other method of armed resistance. Further, in my capacity as
priest, I decree a solemn Mass of petition, the time for which shall
be given out later. I have no right to reject any possible chance of a
rescue. Consequently, Pastor Aram Tomasian, after this Mass, will get his
opportunity of repeating his present suggestion to the whole people and
giving his reasons. Then the majority can decide whether it would rather
leave the mountain or continue to trust to the valor of our fighters and
the plans of our military leader. But, once this decision has been taken,
we must also pass a resolution that anyone who, by deed or word of mouth,
sets himself up against the general will is to be shot instantly. Well,
now! Any further suggestions?"

 

 

In peaceful times it is very pleasant to be a leader, but when one
is two paces away from destruction it seems more inviting to lose
oneself in the anonymous herd. The mukhtars had become simple village
mayors again, and nothing more. The Council of Leaders, chosen by the
Great Assembly in the garden of Villa Bagradian, dispersed quietly,
without protest. Ter Haigasun had made a wise move and at the same
time a tremendous sacrifice. The leadership had been purged of all its
cantankerous, undependable elements. But now he alone, in this hour of
finality, would have to guide his people through death, to God. They
left the government hut in silence.

 

 

But Aram hated Ter Haigasun; he hated Gabriel Bagradian, and himself even
more than either. He took curt leave of his father, without answering
his many despairing questians. The days of the Zeitun convoy came back to
chide him. Had he not even then disgraced the Gospel and left his sheep,
his children, on the third day? Bitterly the pastor admitted that it is
always the same sin by which men are trapped. And how much more basely,
shamefully, crazily, had he failed to withstand today's temptation. Aram
at first wandered about the Damlayik; then he clambered down the path
to the beach, for another effort to solve the insoluble problems of
his fishery.

 

 

It would be better, he felt, not to wait for the people's decision and
set out at once with Hovsannah and the child. Kevork would be all the
help they needed. He would of course have to leave his father, who would
certainly refuse to fly. The swimmers had easily reached Alexandretta,
via Arsus. Why should not he and his small family, in three night
marches along the coast, be able to get as far as they? Herr Hoffmann,
who had given them hospitality, was a Protestant, and would not shut
his doors against a Protestant pastor. Naturally his priesthood was at
an end, after today's disgraceful lapse into sin. Tomasian felt in his
pocketbook. He had fifty pounds, a lot of money. Then, with a grimace of
moral repugnance, he stared down at the surf around his feet. And Iskuhi?

 

 

 

 

It was written, however, that neither Aram's plan nor Gabriel's should
reach fulfillment, and that no plebiscite should be held. It is always
the same: the dam has broken before the waves come surging over it,
and usually in the least expected place.

 

 

In the area of the South Bastion there was a wide plateau, facing seaward,
overgrown with short, dry crop-grass. There Sarkis Kilikian and the
circumspect commissar of the section, Hrand Oskanian, had set up their
camp. Two deserters a few yards off played a game of shells with the
long-haired thief of goat's flesh. These "deserters" might have been
anything. The various fortunes of the game were being acclaimed with
cries in every language spoken in Syria. The teacher was doing his best
to impress the Russian with his grandiloquence. He talked so loud and
so emphatically that even the tattered gamesters stopped to listen from
time to time to his bold opinions. But Sarkis, stretched out full length,
and with Krikor's cold chibuk between his teeth, was stubbornly silent
under all the excited efforts of the dwarf.

 

 

"You're an educated man, a man who has studied, Kilikian," the fuzzy-haired
teacher was insisting, "so you'll understand me. I've never said much,
you know. I've valued my thoughts too much. I never even said it to the
apothecary, who cribbed a lot of my opinions. You know what life is,
Kilikian -- it's knocked you about more than any of us. And me, too, if
you'll believe me. I, Hrand Oskanian, have never been anything all my
life but a measly teacher in a dirty village. What can you know about me?
But all the same, I have my idea. Would you care to hear it? -- 'Finish
the whole thing' is what I say. Since what's the good of anything else?"

 

 

Sarkis leaned up on his elbow to crumble a piece of the tobacco Krikor
had given him. All the others mixed this pure, blond leaf with dried herbs.
Sarkis smoked his unmixed, not seeming to worry about the fact that his
ration was thus finished twice as quickly. The once silent Oskanian had
found a master of silence in the Russian. Kilikian's silence would have
withered the leaves off a tree. In the teacher's case it served to unloose
a flood of boastful words, on the surface of which, undigested, dishonored,
swam stray shreds of Krikor's conversation.

 

 

"Well, then, Kilikian, you understand me, and I you. You don't even need
to tell me so. Like you, I don't believe there's a God. Why should there
be such a piece of tomfoolery? The world is a lump of dung, spinning in
space -- mere chemistry and astronomy, that's all it is! I'll show you
Krikor's book of stars -- there you can see it all, in pictures. Nothing
but nature. And, if anyone made it, the devil did. There's a pig hidden in
it, an unclean swine. But it can't take the last thing off me, Kilikian,
see what I mean? We can spit in its face, we can make it look small, show
it who really is the stronger, stamp it out! You see? -- Well, that's my
idea! I, Hrand Oskanian, small as I am, can show nature and the devil, and
God Almighty, what's what! I can annoy them, punish them. The gentlemen
shall turn yellow with rage at Hrand Oskanian, against whom they're all
so powerless, understand? I've found one or two people who see what I
mean. I go along to the huts in the night sometimes. Ter Haigasun, ha,
ha! can't stop me doing that. Have you ever watched that half-wit Kevork
chucking out his corpses off the rock? They fly like white birds. Well,
that's my idea! We'll all fly away, you and me and one or two more of us,
before they force us, against our wills. One short step, and you don't
know anything more till you touch the water. See? Then we shall all be
dissolved in the waves. We shall have chosen that for ourselves, and so
the devil and the Turks, and all the other gentry, will shout for rage,
because we've beaten them, because it's really they who've been the weak
ones. Do you see, Kilikian?"

 

 

Sarkis Kilikian had long since been stretched out on his back again. His
death's skull stared up at scurrying clouds. Nothing about him suggested
that he had even listened to Oskanian's panegyric of suicide.

 

 

But the long-haired thief stopped his game and glanced attentively at
this cunning vanquisher of nature, as though he at least had grasped
"the idea," and considered it really not so bad. He wriggled a little
nearer. "How many store-chests are there in those three tents?"

 

 

The teacher stuttered and flushed. He had spoken shamefully into a void.
And any mention of Three-Tent Square was still painful. On the other hand,
here was a chance to show all these hard-bitten devils who he really was,
a "notable," the educated member of a very different social class,
one of the people's chosen representatives.

 

 

Oskanian's tone was something between bragging and disdain.
"Only store-chests? Chests are about the least of what she has.
Why, they've got huge great cupboards, boxes twice the size of wardrobes.
And more women's clothes inside them than the richest pasha ever heard
of. And all different. She not only wears a different dress every day,
she changes three times a day. . . ."

 

 

"What do I care about her clothes? What I want to know is how much food
she has."

 

 

Oskanian threw back his head. It was now so hirsute with wiry beard and
fuzzy hair that only a tiny patch of yellowish face still peeped from its
midst. "Well, I can tell you that exactly. No one knows that better than I
do, because down in the villa the hanum asked to see me when all the stuff
was being chosen and packed up. Well, they've got whole towers of little
silver boxes with fish in oil swimming in them. They've got sweet bread
and chocolate and biscuits. They've got jars and jars of wine. They've
got American smoked meat, and whole baskets of groats and oatmeal."