Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  The wretched junior, who had not the vaguest notion how many coils of wire the companies had, and considered this an impossible duty, shuffled off despairingly to attempt it.

  And now the general added sharply: "Yüs-Bashi . . . If you please . . ."

  That wounded hero pulled himself together. The two went into the empty anteroom. Ali Risa threw a frigid, hasty glance at the yüs-bashi's wounded arm. "Yüs-Bashi, I'm giving you your chance in these operations to redeem the gross blunder of which you've been guilty."

  The yüs-bashi raised his wounded arm in suggestive protest; he had done more than his duty! "I myself, General, went close up to those support trenches of theirs, above Habaste, yesterday. They're perfectly empty. The crew is no longer manning its supports. It was an hour before sunset."

  "Good! And your four companies?"

  "I think that covered advance of theirs in the night has fully succeeded. Not so much as a lantern was shown. All day yesterday the men never moved out of Habaste. Now they're disposed under the rocks, in fully concealed positions. And the three machine-guns of my group."

  "Tomorrow evening, when it's over, you'll telephone me, Yüs-Bashi. Once you're on the summit, I don't want you to go on any further."

  With that the conversation came to an end. Ali Risa had already turned away.

  But the yüs-bashi's voice halted him: "General, excuse me, please. I want to say something. It's just this. . . . These deserters -- I've managed to find out that it isn't only a question of Armenians. . . . And yesterday an ex-Armenian came to see me, a lawyer, a Dr. Hekimian -- he's been converted to the true belief. . . . Well, he's ready to treat with these fellows, and get them to vacate their trench voluntarily. . . . Perhaps we might have to make a few concessions, but on the other hand we'd be certain of not having losses."

  The general had listened quietly. Suddenly he interrupted: "Out of the question, Yüs-Bashi! We can't ever allow it to be said of us that we could clear out these Armenian devils only because some of them happened to be traitors. Just think what the foreign press would say! It would pour out venom over His Excellency and the whole Fourth Army!"

  Heavy steps came echoing over the tiles of the entrance hall. The tall, sagging shape of the Kaimakam, followed by the freckled müdir, came into the room. The Kaimakam touched his fez carelessly. "At last, gentlemen! General, your batteries will reach Sanderan in three hours. Your people seem even less businesslike than mine. . . ."

  Ali Risa's clear, ascetic face always irritated the ultra-bilious Kaimakam. He decided to annoy this soldier. With his hand already on the door handle, he turned before going out of the room, supercilious. "I hope our armed forces don't intend to disappoint us a fourth time."

  Shushik, Haik's mother, served Juliette clumsily, but with deep devotion. Juliette was really convalescent, although so wasted and enfeebled that she tottered with every step she took. Her face had a bluish, whitish tinge. Or rather her face was colorless, as if, after such an illness, it wanted to look as different as possible from the dark, sunburnt faces all round it. Now Juliette could sit up for an hour, two hours, every day. She would sink down in front of her looking glass, put her head on her arms, and never move. And she would kneel, as she had before in her desperation, by the bedside, pressing her face into the small, lace-edged cushion, her last home. The worst sign of spiritual havoc was that now her two dominant instincts -- to look beautiful and to keep clean -- seemed to have died in her. The laundry basket stood open in the tent. But she neither felt in it nor asked for any clean things. Nor, in utter contradiction to the fantasies that obsessed her mind, did she reach out for the flask of eau de printemps , in which dregs still waited to be used, to attempt to freshen her dried-up skin. She did not even step into the slippers which stood ready beside her bed, but tottered barefoot the few steps she was able to manage.

  Shushik saw in Juliette a mother driven mad by the horrible death of her only child. Haik was alive! And more than that! His life for all time was secure. Jackson protected him, and America! These words, to Shushik, connoted supernatural powers. Jackson! He was not a man, but presumably the head-archangel himself, brandishing a fiery sword. She had been more blessed than any other mother on Musa Dagh. Must she not day and night bestir herself to serve and thank, thank and serve! And who should she thank, who serve, if not this other mother, on whom the full curse had descended? This was a rich hanum, a distinguished lady, a foreigner. Shushik's voice had been loud and rough for years, and yet now she cooed like any sucking dove, almost singing her comfort. It was all so simple. This world is this world. But over there Lord Jesus, the Saviour, has arranged things so well that all shall be reunited. And first of all mothers will see their children again. Up there in heaven mothers see their children, not as those grown-up sons and daughters whom they have left behind them in the world, but as real little children, just as they were between two and five. And good mothers, up there in heaven, are allowed to carry their children in their arms.

  Blissfully lost in such a prospect, the gigantic Shushik raised her arms up and cradled a tiny, invisible Haik. Shushik imagined that this foreigner did not understand her speech. She sat down on the ground beside the hanum, considering how she could comfort and be of use. She touched Juliette's frozen feet. With a soft little moan of pity she pressed these feet between her breasts, while her great, leathery peasant hands first stroked, and then began to chafe them. Juliette shut her eyes and sank back. Shushik had no doubt that the unhappy woman was mad. And she fully understood this madness -- how far along the way to it she herself had gone, before that blissful news called her back! She was far too rough and simple to suspect that this was not real madness at all, but a kind of burrow, in which the hanum crouched away from daylit consciousness. And Bedros Hekim shared Shushik's view, considering Juliette's present state of mind as an aberration, resulting from the spotted plague. A surprising incident, in the course of his visit to the patient on the morning of this fortieth day, seemed fully to justify his belief. The old man had sat on the edge of Juliette's bed, doing his best in such French as he could muster to bring hope and life to this frozen soul. Everything seemed to be going splendidly. The war would be certain to end within a few weeks, and so the world would be at peace again. Madame must have heard of the visit of the Agha Rifaat Bereket, from Antakiya. Well, this old, influential Turkish gentleman had clearly hinted that Gabriel Bagradian and Madame would be given permission to go back to France, almost at once. His kindness changed the grumpy old sceptic into a most inventive teller of children's tales. Even the edged scornfulness of his voice sounded protective. But, as he sat relating these pretty fables, Iskuhi had come suddenly into the doorway.

  Juliette, who, with amiably absent eyes, had seemed all this while to be listening to the doctor's poetry, started at the sight of Iskuhi. She sat up in terror, drew up her knees, and began to scream: Not her! Not her! Tell her to go! . . . I won't take anything from her! . . . She wants to kill me. . . ."

  Strangest of all, Iskuhi stood listening to these frenzies and never moved, her own small face like a mask of madness, looking as though she too might scream her answer. Bedros Hekim, perturbed, stared from one to the other. Now he could sense some gruesome reality. Long after Iskuhi had vanished, Juliette, whose enfeebled heart was thumping, would still not be pacified.

  What had happened to Iskuhi?

  For five days she had not seen Gabriel. For two days she had had no food. But Iskuhi wanted to go hungry, and not only because she starved with her whole people. For five long days she had not seen Gabriel, but in exchange her brother Aram had twice come to the door of her tent. Then she crouched inside and refused to open. Each of these five days with all its hours, which lasted years, had crept intolerably. Why did not Gabriel come? Iskuhi waited for Gabriel every second of the day and night. Now, even if her exhausted body had had the strength to let her do it, she would not have gone out to him in the trench. Less every hour would she have gone! She was lying, breathing d
eeply on her bed, in what had been Hovsannah's tent, and could not manage to move a limb. A roaring in her ears, like surf on a beach, seemed to burst her skull. And yet this roaring was still not loud enough to overwhelm the truth in her mind. . . . How many minutes were there to waste on the Damlayik? And Gabriel wasted not only irreplaceable minutes, but whole eternal days of their short love. Wasted? Love? Implacably Iskuhi frought to mind all that she had experienced with Gabriel. Yes, Gabriel had been gentle with her. But his grief was for Stephan. And, when he opened his heart, it had been in compassion, sorrow, for his adulterous wife. Gabriel had at least been frank with her. Really his whole attitude seemed to say: "Little sister, I thank you, with my cold hands, my distant, brotherly kisses, for having tried so hard to bear my pain with me. But how could you, a poor little girl from Yoghonoluk, ever do it? In spite of all this, and forever, I belong to the Frenchwoman, the stranger. I shall die, not with Iskuhi, but with Juliette. Juliette may have played me false, but I bow to her, I only bend over Iskuhi."

  Would it have been any different, Iskuhi asked herself, if Juliette had, as in her heart she had longed she might a hundred times, died of her fever? And she perceived: No! If Juliette had died, Gabriel would have loved her, Iskuhi, far less, even. How that sick woman could spy out secrets! Iskuhi wanted never to go back into Juliette's tent, never see her again. Yet it was not Juliette's fault; hers less than anyone's. What made Iskuhi unworthy to be loved? She was not European, only a poor village girl from Yoghonoluk, the daughter of an Armenian village carpenter. Was it really that? Was Gabriel himself "European"? Did he not even come from the very same Armenian village? She had lived two years in Switzerland, and he, in Paris, twenty-three. That was all the difference. When he looked at her, he told her that she was beautiful. Stop! That was it! Why did he often look at her so oddly, with eyes that half saw? Something in her disturbed him and made him cold. Iskuhi conquered her enfeeblement and hurried to look in the little mirror, which stood on the table. She need not have looked in her glass. She knew without looking. She was crippled -- a cripple now, though not born one. In these six months since the convoy from Zeitun, her left arm had got worse and worse. If she did not help it with a sling, it hung, withered and twisted, at her side. Gabriel had to watch her deformity, no matter how skillfully concealed.

  She knew! Once he had lightly kissed her crippled arm. Now Iskuhi felt she could remember the compassionate effort this kiss had cost him. Iskuhi fell back on her bed. The roaring in her ears rose like a sea storm. She kept making convulsive efforts to justify Gabriel's absence by the facts. No doubt, in these last hungry days, things had been disorganized in his trenches. He must have had to work out a whole new defense. And shots had begun again. None of these reasoned explanations gained the least influence on Iskuhi. But, like the ground-note of the storm roaring in her ears, she could hear her own voice, yet a stranger's. Her voice sang the chanson d'amour which she had sung at Juliette's behest one day in Villa Bagradian. Stephan had been there, and Gabriel came into the room. The first lines of that ancient folk song kept up a ritornel in her head, till their sound crazed her:

  "She came out of her garden, And held them close against her breasts, Two fruits of the pomegranate tree She gave them me, I would not take."

  The song stopped there. Instantly the horror overcame her, which had spared her so long. The face on the highroad to Marash, the kaleidoscopic, twisting grimace of that scrubby murderer, was upon her. Its gyrations ceased, as if something had gone wrong with the kaleidoscope. And now in some secret fashion the staring mask was turning into Gabriel's face, but far more hateful, murderous even. Iskuhi could not breathe for fear and misery. Dumbly she wept for help. Aram!

  And, indeed, at about this minute Pastor Aram had almost reached his sister's tent. He was with Hovsannah, who carried her poor brat in her arms. No sound from within when Aram gruffly demanded entrance. He whipped out his knife and slit up the lacing of the door, knotted on the inside. The pastor had let the big sack he shouldered slip to the ground. The woman, with her almost lifeless bundle, her suckling, kept a few paces behind him.

  At that moment, had Pastor Tomasian been himself -- mild, evangelical, affectionate, the strong, cheery brother of Zeitun -- Iskuhi might perhaps have no longer hesitated, but gone along with him. Why should she stay alone in this empty tent? She knew she had not the strength to walk very far. Somewhere it would all end gently, the roaring in her ears, Gabriel, she herself. But, instead of the cheery brother of Zeitun, some fierce, unknown bully stood in her tent. He brandished a stick.

  "Get up! Get ready! You're coming with us!"

  These hard words rolled like rocks upon Iskuhi. Rigid on her bed, she stared up at this unknown Aram. Now she could not have moved, even had she been inclined to obey.

  Tomasian gripped his stick more tightly still. "Didn't you hear what I said? I order you to get up this instant and make ready. As your elder brother, as your spiritual father, I order you. You understand? I'll see if we can't snatch you from your sin."

  Till the word "sin" it had all been a maze. She had lain there rigid. "Sin" struck out a hundred well-springs of angry recalcitrance from the rock. All Iskuhi's weakness fell away. She sprang up. Retreating behind the bed, she clenched her small right fist to defend herself.

  A new enemy glowered into the tent, Hovsannah. "Leave her, Pastor! Give her up! She's a lost woman. I beg you not to go too near her, she may infect you. Leave her! If she comes with us, God will only punish us still more! There's no sense in it! Come, Pastor! I've always known the kind she was. You were always foolish about her. Even in the school in Zeitun she could never keep her eyes off the young teachers, the sinful piece! Leave her, I beg you, Pastor, and come!"

  Iskuhi's eyes grew bigger and bigger with rage. Since Juliette's illness she had seen no more of Hovsannah and had no idea that this was a madly hysterical woman. The young pastor's wife looked horribly changed. To appease God's wrath with a sacrifice, she had cropped her pretty hair close to her skull. Now her face looked small and witchlike in its malice. Everything about her looked small and shrivelled, except her belly, which still protruded, a diseased consequence of her labor.

  And now Hovsannah, in an indescribable gesture of accusation, thrust her swaddled suckling out in Iskuhi's face. She screeched: "Look there! You alone brought this ill-luck on us!"

  It brought the first sounds from Iskuhi's lips: "Jesus Maria!" Her head sunk forwards. She thought of Hovsannah's difficult labor, and how she had used her back as support. What did these crazy people want? Why couldn't they give her any peace, on the very last day of her life?

  The pastor meanwhile had pulled out a clumsy silver watch. He dangled it. "I give you ten minutes to get ready in."

  He turned to Hovsannah. "No. She's to come with us. I won't leave her, I have to answer for her, to God. . . ."

  Iskuhi still remained behind the bed, without a movement. Aram did not wait his whole ten minutes, but after three of them left the tent. His clumsy watch still dangled from his fist. Out on Three-Tent Square it had meanwhile become strangely noisy.

  The twenty-three had appeared noiselessly; they now moved on across the open space between the sheikh-tent and Juliette's. The long-haired thief, from the airs he gave himself, seemed to be their "leader." Sato, the twenty-fourth member of the band, equally seemed to feel herself their guide. She kept rubbing her nose with her sleeve, artlessly, as though to suggest that she, an innocent, had no notion what might have brought these armed deserters unheralded to Three-Tent Square. Some warrior duty no doubt! And to all appearances there was nothing to cause alarm about these deserters, unless perhaps that one or two of them had planted Turkish bayonets on their rifles. But platoons of armed fighters were often to be seen about the camp on their way back from the trenches, or marching to them to take over. Today especially, since firing continued in the north, there was nothing particularly surprising in the sight of a few armed men. When Aram came out of Iskuhi's tent, the busin
ess had already begun. Yet for a while he watched in complete indifference. His mind, sullen and stupefied by his own unpardonable behavior, merely supposed some order of Bagradian's, which the warrior-band had come to fulfill. And what, since he was already cut off from the people, did the defense of the Damlayik matter to him?

  But Shushik had sharper eyes. Her tall body filled the whole tent door. She perceived at once what lurked in Sato's consequential behavior, her eccentric pointings again and again to the hanum's tent. Shushik planted herself in the doorway. She spread her arms out, ready to keep off disaster with her body.

  The long-haired thief came out of the clustered pack. "We've been sent to take away the food which you still keep."