Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  It was too much. Gabriel rudely sprang to his feet. All the European in him was up in arms against these sleepers, these gossips, who would sink down into death without a protest, as they rotted their lives away in filth. He interrupted Krikor, with a contemptuous wave of his hand: "I want most urgently to submit an idea of mine to you gentlemen. It came to me today as I talked to the saptieh, Ali Nassif. I'm still, after all, a Turkish officer, a front-line soldier, decorated in the last Balkan war. Now suppose I get into uniform and go to Aleppo? How would that be? Years ago I happened to make myself useful to General Jemal Pasha -- "

  The old doctor almost gleefully interrupted: "Jemal Pasha moved his headquarters some time ago to Jerusalem."

  But Bagradian was not to be put off. "It makes no difference. Djelal Bey, the Wali, is even more important than Jemal Pasha. I don't know him personally, but we all know about him, who he is, and that he'll do whatever he can for us. Well, now, suppose I go to him and remind him that Musa Dagh is right out of the world, and that therefore we can't possibly have had anything to do with politics, perhaps . . ."

  Gabriel said no more and listened to the imperturbable silence. Only the bubbling water in Krikor's nargileh broke it at irregular intervals. It was some time before Ter Haigasun laid down his chibuk.

  "The Wali, Djelal Bey" -- he thought it over, staring out in front of him -- "is certainly a great friend of our nation. He has shown us repeated kindness. And under his government we never needed to fear the worst. . . . Unfortunately his friendship for us has done him very little good. . . ." Out of his wide sleeves Ter Haigasun drew a folded newspaper. "Today is Friday. This is Tuesday's Tanin . It's a paragraph in very small print, pushed away into the corner of the paper." He held up the sheet, far from his eyes.

  "'According to information received from the Ministry of the Interior, His Excellency the Wali of Aleppo, Djelal Bey, has been permanently placed on the retired list.' . . . That's all it says."

  5. INTERLUDE OF THE GODS

  At the very instant when, urging his cabman to greater speed, Dr. Johannes Lepsius reached the great bridge across from Pera, the garden suburb, to Istanbul, the automatic signal started to ring, the barrier sank, the bridge trembled like a live thing, broke groaning in two, and its rusty halves, this side and that, rose slowly up, to allow a warship to proceed into the innermost harbor of the Golden Horn. "This is really dreadful," Dr. Lepsius said, aloud and in German, closing his eyes and sinking back on to the frayed upholstery of his araba, as though he had given up the struggle. Yet he was out of the cab in the next instant, had thrust a few uncounted piastres on the driver, had run (nearly slipping up on a fruit skin) down the steps and on to the quay, where a few kayiks, little ferryboats, plied for hire. There was not much choice; only two phlegmatic old ferrytnen drowsed in their boats, not seeming in the least to want a fare. Lepsius jumped into a ferryboat and waved across, in sheer, scurrying desperation, to the Istanbul side. He had still six minutes till his appointment at the Seraskeriat, the War Ministry. Even if his boatman rowed with a will, he would need a whole ten to cross the sound. On the other quay -- so reckoned the impatient Dr. Lepsius -- there could not fail to be a cab-rank. So that from there it need only take another five minutes to the Ministry. Six from fifteen minutes, if all went smoothly -- nine minutes late. Very unfortunate, but still not so bad as all that. . . . And, of course, everything went wrong. The boatman, pushing like a gondolier, was not to be roused by admonitions, nor by imploring prayers, from his calm meditation. The boat danced up and down but would not go forward. "It's the tide, Effendi. The sea's coming in." Thus did the weatherbeaten Turk define fate, against which there can be no striving. To make bad worse, a fishing cutter crossed their bows -- which meant the loss of two more minutes. Dully resigned, impotent as only a man can feel who finds himself tossed on waves, the German sank into reflections. He had, for the sake of this one appointment, undertaken all the fatigue of this journey, come to Constantinople from Potsdam, besieged the German ambassador day after day, and not him alone, but every neutral representative. This one appointment had sent him hurrying to meet every German or American in from the interior, in every possible quarter of the town, to get further details. This one appointment had kept him sitting for whole days in the American Bible Society's offices, had caused him to make himself a nuisance to the people of the various orders, had sent him, by carefully thought-out routes, avoiding spies, to meet Armenians in secret rooms. All so as to be prepared for the great encounter. And now fate played this practical joke of making him late for it. It was almost enough to inspire belief in some direct, Satanic intervention. How hard that very pleasant German naval commander attached to the military mission had worked to get this conversation arranged! Three times it had been conceded, three times postponed. Enver Pasha is the Ottoman war god. He does not care to be ceremonious with such an insignificant antagonist as Dr. Johannes Lepsius.

  So -- the ten minutes had slipped away. Enver would by now have given orders not to admit this querulous German on any pretext. The game was lost. Let it be lost! "My own country is fighting for dear life. The dark rider with the scales flies above us also. What do Armenians really matter to me?" Johannes Lepsius discarded these spurious consolations with a short, dry little gasp. No! These Armenians meant a great deal to him -- even more if he dared rigorously to examine his heart -- more perhaps than even his own countrymen, mad and sinful as that no doubt might be. Ever since Abdul Hamid's butcheries, since the massacres of '96, since that mission to the interior, his first days of missionary experience, he had felt himself especially sent to these unfortunates. They were his task on earth. And at once he could see a few of their faces. Such faces as only those beings have who must empty the chalice to its dregs. Christ on the cross may well have had just such eyes. It was perhaps for them that Lepsius loved these people so dearly. An hour ago, in the eyes of the Patriarch, the Armenian chief priest of Turkey, Monsignor Saven, he had seen, or rather had had to keep turning his face away from, an ardent hopelessness. And this visit to the Patriarch had made him late. It had of course been stupid to go back to Pera after calling on him, to the Hotel Tokatlyan, to change. Yes, but -- he had had to call on the Patriarch in the long black cassock suitable to a Protestant clergyman. And, with Enver, he did not want to stress his position, was most anxious, in that fateful interview, to avoid any appearance of formality. He knew these Ittihad people, his opponents. A casual tone, a grey lounge suit, certainty of manner, the hint of powers behind -- that was the proper way to deal with adventurers. And now, the grey lounge suit had caused all this.

  He ought not to have stopped so long with the Patriarch, could have got away in a few minutes. Unluckily Dr. Lepsius' forte had never been systematic concentration. Even his success in helping Armenians at the time of the Abdul Hamid massacres had been less a matter of thought-out policy than of passionate insistence on being received. He was still far too much at the mercy of that youthful vice, of thinking graphically -- "dances of death," "the eternal Jew," "John Bull," etc. Improvisation, a tendency to rely on the minute -- these, as he knew, were his worst faults. So that today he had not been able to free himself from the aspect of that piteous cleric. "You'll be with Enver in an hour." The faintness of Monsignor Saven's voice told its own story of sleepless nights; it seemed to be dying, along with his people. "You'll stand before that man. God bless you! But not even you will be able to do anything."

  "I'm not so pessimistic, Monsignor," Lepsius had striven to reassure.

  But his words had been stopped by a gesture of agonized submission. "We've just heard today that, after Zeitun, Aintab, Marash, the same threat of deportation is to be suspended over the East Anatolian vilayets. So that up to now, apart from the west of Asia Minor, only Aleppo and the strip of coast from Alexandretta have been spared. You know better than anyone that deportation is a more painful, more long-drawn-out kind of death by torture. They say that not one inhabitant of Zeitun has survived." And the Pa
triarch's eyes had forbidden Lepsius any protest. "Leave the impossible and concentrate on the possible. You may succeed -- I don't suppose you will -- in getting a respite for Aleppo and the country along the coast. Stress German public opinion, the newspapers you intend to inform. Above all, don't moralize. It merely provokes him to contempt. Stick to political facts. Threaten him economically -- that's your most likely way to make an impression on him. And now, my dear son, you have my blessing for your noble work. Christ be with you." Lepsius had bent his head, but the Patriarch had signed his chest, with a wide cross.

  So that here he sat in this heavy boat, ploughing its way through the waters of the Golden Horn, under its stolid, meditative oarsman. And when at last they arrived, it was more than twenty minutes late. With one glance Dr. Lepsius was aware that no arabas waited along the quayside. He broke into a wry little laugh -- since more than hazard must conceal itself somewhere within this chain of hindrances. Some opposing power had taken a hand in the Armenian business, which no doubt must be left to go on unopposed, and was thrusting a stave in between his legs. He made no further attempt to find a cab, but began to run, stout, elderly, conspicuous-looking as he was.

  He did not get far. The squares and alleys of old Istanbul were thick with holiday-keeping crowds. Along past shops and cafés, gay with bunting, under befiagged windows, thousands in fez and tarbush jostled and shoved. What was it? The Allies driven out of the Dardanelles? Lepsius thought of the distant gunfire which he heard so often in the night. The big guns of the British fleet, hammering on the gates of Constantinople. But he remembered that this was the anniversary of some triumph of the Young Turkish revolution -- perhaps of that glorious day on which the Committee had killed off all its political opponents, to seize power at last. Not that it mattered what they were celebrating; any crowd shouts and brawls. A solid mass of people in front of a shop. Boys, hoisted on ready shoulders, clambering up along the shop-front. Next minute a big sign-board came clattering down. Lepsius, wedged in the crowd, asked his neighbor, who wore no fez, what all this was about. "No more foreign signs," he was told. "Turkey for the Turks. All sign-boards, names of streets, and advertisements to be written exclusively in Turkish from this day on." And this neighbor (a Greek or Levantine) giggled spitefully. "This time they've demolished an ally. It's a German business-house."

  A long line of halted trains crawled on. "Really it doesn't matter," Lepsius thought, "when I get there now. It's all over." None the less he put on a spurt, thrusting into the crowd, shoving relentlessly. One more side-alley, and the square opened out before him. The vast palace of the Seraskeriat. High rose the tower of Mahmut the Second. And now the pastor took his time. He walked slowly, so as not to come breathless into the lion's den. When, fagged out with endless stairs and corridors, he whipped out his card at the offices of the Ministry of War, it was only to be informed by a smartly uniformed and very amiable aide-de-camp that His Excellency Enver Pasha deeply regretted that he had found it impossible to wait and begged the Herr Doktor to do him the honor of calling at the Ministry of the Interior within the Seraglio.

  So Dr. Johannes Lepsius had to set out on an even longer journey. But now the malign spell was broken. The demons had thought out another method. They almost forced him to be at his ease. Outside a cab had just set down its fare. The driver had his eye on an easy journey, he avoided crowds, and so, in a magically short time, fully reposed, and invaded now by a self-confidence for which he could have given himself no reason, the crusader entered the quiet world of the Seraglio and clattered thunderously on across the ancient cobbles to the Ministry. Here they were expecting him. Even before he could show his card, an official had greeted him with the question: "Dr. Lepsius?" What a good omen! More stairs, and a long corridor. But, borne on the wings of happy presentiment, the pastor almost felt he hovered along it. The quiet Ministry of the Interior, Talaat Bey's fortress, made a pleasantly dream-like impression. These official rooms seemed almost enchanted -- without doors, only divided by billowy curtains. This, he could not tell why, soothed him with the assurance of coming success. He was conducted to the end of a passage, into a special suite. Enver Pasha's headquarters in the Ministry. Here, doubtless, in these two rooms the dice of the Armenian fate had been cast. A large apartment, seemingly a waiting- and audience-room. Next it, a study, containing only a big, empty writing-table. The curtain into this study had been pulled back. Lepsius saw three portraits on the wall behind the empty table: right, Napoleon; left, Frederick the Great; an enlarged photograph of a Turkish general in the middle. Doubtless Enver Pasha, the new war god.

  The expectant pastor seated himself beside the window. His eyes, over the rims of pince-nez, drew in peace from the beauty of heaps of ruins, shattered cupolas, broken columns, sheltered by umbrella-pines. Beyond, the Bosporus, whose toy steamers thrust their way on. The pastor's blue, myopic gaze, his full and childish lips pouting through the short grey beard, his severe cheeks still rosy with haste and perturbation -- all this produced an image of long-suffering, of a soft heart, inflexibly hard upon itself. A servant brought in a copper coffee pot. Lepsius greedily gulped three tiny cups. This coffee gave him an advantage, his nerves tightened, his veins pounded fresh blood to his brain. When Enver Pasha came upon him, he had just emptied his fourth cup.

  Before leaving Berlin, Johannes Lepsius had asked for minute accounts of Enver Pasha, yet he felt surprised that this Turkish Mars, this one of the seven or nine arbiters of the life or death of the world, should be so unimposingly diminutive. He instantly saw the reason for those portraits of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Heroes five feet tall, little conquerors, always on tip-toe, who force a way to power to spite their inches. Lepsius would have wagered anything that Enver Pasha wore high heels. He did not, in any case, take off his lambskin képi, which certainly looked much taller than dress regulations allowed. The gold-tabbed marshal's (or fancy-dress) uniform, beautifully moulded to the waist, lent added majesty, by the smart, stiff perfection of its line, investing this figure, in conjunction with gleaming rows of medals, with something almost frivolously young, ornately bold. "The gipsy-king," reflected Lepsius and, although his heart was pounding, he could not escape a rampant waltz of his early youth:

  "All this and more You may be sure I'll do."

  Yet this text, which now assailed him at the sight of the spick-and-span magnificence of the uniform, was in sheer contradiction to the glance and manner of this youthful commander-in-chief. Enver Pasha looked shy, almost embarrassed; from time to time he would open his eyes like a young girl. The narrow hips and sloping shoulders gave his movements a certain delicate grace. Lepsius felt heavy and obese.

  Enver's first attack took the form of arousing a sudden sympathy with his tripping person, a feeling he knew how to awaken in visitors. He did not, having welcomed Lepsius, conduct him to the adjoining study but, begging him to stay where he was, pulled up a chair for himself from the table to the window, not troubling that his face was in the light while his visitor's was shaded.

  Johannes began the interview (he had thought this out, in deciding his plan of campaign) with greetings from an admiring German lady, which he laid at the general's feet. The general smiled his peculiar, shy little smile and said in a pleasant tenor, which, vocally even, gave full effect to the winsomeness of his whole personality, and in excellent German: "I have the very deepest respect for Germany. There can be no doubt that you are one of the most astonishing peoples in the world. Personally, I'm always delighted to get a chance to receive a German."

  Enver, Pastor Lepsius knew, had been pro-French on the Committee and perhaps, in private, continued to be so. He had stubbornly tried not to come into the war on Germany's side, but on that of the Allies. All that did not matter at present. Lepsius went on feeling his way, with civilities: "Your Excellency has so many devoted German admirers. We all expect you to astonish the world with your victories."

  Enver opened his eyes. A little movement of the hand seemed wearily to
defend him against the demands which always lie hidden within such flatteries. A silence, implying more or less: "Well now, my dear fellow, look out whom you're dealing with." Lepsius turned his head to the window, listening, though out there no noise was audible save the faint hoots and signal-bells on the Bosporus.

  "I've been noticing how enthusiastic the people seem to be, here in Istanbul. Especially today. I was most impressed by the crowds."

  The general, in his pleasant, but by now quite indifferent voice, decided on a pithy little saying, in the style of patriotic pronunciamentos: "The war is hard. But our people is aware of what it owes itself."

  The German made his first sortie: "Is it quite the same in the interior, Excellency?"

  Enver glanced with delight into the farthest corner of the room: "Certainly. Great things are happening in the interior."

  "Excellency, these great things are well known to me.