Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  The Agha's perspicacity needed no closer indication. "Was this talk of the secret army order degrading Armenians to street-sweeping and service as porters?"

  Gabriel Bagradian deciphered the flowery riddle of the carpet at his feet. "Even this morning I still awaited orders to join my regiment. . . . Then there was also some talk of the town of Zeitun. Help me. What exactly is happening? What has occurred?"

  The amber beads were again flowing evenly through the Agha's fingers. "As to Zeitun, I am well informed. What has happened there happens every day in the mountains. Some affair of thieving hordes, deserters and saptiehs. There were a few Armenian deserters. Before, nobody noticed such things." His voice was more deliberate as he added: "But what are occurrences? They are only what interpretation makes of them,"

  Gabriel seemed about to lose control. "That's just it. In the solitude in which I live no news of it reached me. The basest interpretations are being attempted. What does the government intend?"

  The sage put aside these indignant words with a weary movement of the hands. "I will tell you something, friend and son of my friend. A karmic destiny hovers over you, since a part of you belongs to the Russian empire, the other part of you to us. The war has cleft you. You are dispersed among the nations . . . Yet since, in this world, all things interpenetrate, we too are submitted to your destiny."

  "Would it not be better to do as we did in 1908 and strive to reconcile and adjust?"

  "Reconcile? That is no more than an empty word used by worldlings. On earth there is no reconciliation. We live here in corruption and self-assertion."

  And, to confirm this view, the Agha, in prescribed singsong, quoted a verse of the sixteenth sura: "And He created the earth diverse in color; see, there is in this truly a sign, for those that can take warning."

  Gabriel, who could no longer sit quiet on the divan, stood up. The old man's astonished eyes, reprimanding so arbitrary a movement, forced him to sit again.

  You wish to know the government's intentions? I only know that the atheists in Istanbul need racial hatred for their purposes, since the deepest essence of all godlessness is fear, and the sense of having lost the game. So that now, of every little city, they make a sounding-box of rumors, to spread abroad their evil will. It is good you have come to me."

  Gabriel's right hand tightened round the case with the coins. "If it were only I . . . But, as you know, I am not alone. My brother Avetis died without issue, so that my thirteen-year-old son is the last of our family. Moreover, I have married a Frenchwoman, who must not be dragged into this calamity, which does not concern her."

  The Agha dismissed this plea with some severity. "She belongs to your nation, since you have married her, and cannot be absolved from its karma."

  It would have been a vain attempt to explain to this confirmed Oriental the feminine independence of the West. So Bagradian ignored this objection. "I should have sent my family abroad, or at least to Istanbul. But now they have taken away our passports, and I can expect nothing good from the Kaimakam."

  The Turk placed his right hand on his guest's knee. "I must seriously warn you not to go to Istanbul with your family, even if you should find the journey possible."

  "What do you mean? Why? In Istanbul I have friends of all kinds, even in government circles. There our business has its central office. My name is very well known there."

  The hand on Gabriel's knee became heavier. "For that very reason -- because you are so well known there -- I would warn you against even a short stay in the capital."

  "Because of the fighting in the Dardanelles?"

  "No. Not because of that." The Agha's face became inscrutable. Before continuing, he listened to some inner voice. "No one can tell how far the government may go. But this much is certain -- the great and respected among your people will be the first to suffer. And it is equally certain in such a case that arrests and accusations will be begun in the capital."

  "Do you speak by hearsay, or have you any certain grounds for your warning?"

  The Agha let his amber beads vanish into his wide sleeve. "Yes, I have certain grounds."

  Now Gabriel could no longer control himself and sprang up. "What shall we do?"

  "If I may advise you -- go home to your house in Yoghonoluk, stay there in peace, and wait. You could not have chosen a pleasanter place of sojourn for yourself and your family, in the circumstances."

  "In peace?" Gabriel cried out scornfully. "It is already a prison."

  Rifaat Bereket turned away his face, perturbed by this loud voice in the quiet selamlik. "You must not lose your self-control. Forgive me if my candid words have wounded you. You have not the least reason for anxiety. Probably it will all vanish in sand. Nothing bad can happen in our vilayet, since, God be praised, Djelal Bey is the Wali. He submits to no high-handed measures. Yet whatever is to come is there already, enfolded within itself, like bud, blossom, and fruit within the seed. What will happen to us has happened already in God."

  Riled by these flowery theological commonplaces, Bagradian, careless now of forms, paced up and down. "The most horrible thing is that there is nothing to hold on to -- nothing to fight against."

  The Agha approached the distraught Gabriel, to hold his two hands firmly within his own. "Never forget, my friend, that the blasphemous knaves from your Committee are no more than a very small minority. Our people is a kindly people. If again and again blood has been shed in anger, you yourselves are no less guilty of that than we. And then -- there are enough men of God who live in the tekkehs, in the cloisters, and fight for the purity of the future within their holy circles of prayer. Either they win or we all perish. I must tell you, too, that my journey to Anatolia and Istanbul is to be made on behalf of the Armenians. I implore you to trust in God."

  The Agha's little hands were strong enough to pacify Gabriel. "You are right. I will do as you say. Best to creep back into Yoghonoluk and not stir again till the war is over."

  Still the Agha did not let go of his hands. "Promise me that at home you will say no word of all these things. After all, why should you? If all goes as before, you will only have frightened people unnecessarily. If any evil should come upon you, the fear of it will have been of no avail. You understand me -- trust, and keep silence."

  And in taking leave he repeated urgently: "Trust, and keep silence. . . . You will not see me again for many months. But think that in all that time I shall be working for you. I received much kindness from your fathers. And now, in my age, God is permitting me to be grateful."

  3. THE NOTABLES OF YOGHONOLUK

  The ride home took some time, since Gabriel seldom galloped his horse and kept letting it slow down to its own pace. This also led to his straying off the shortest road and remaining on the highroad along the Orontes. Only when, beyond the clustered houses of Suedia and El Eskel, the far sea-line came into sight, did the rider start out of his dream and turn off sharply northwards, into the valley of Armenian villages. He reached the road -- if the rough cart-track could be called one -- which linked the seven to one another, just as the long spring dusk was gathering.

  Yoghonoluk was nearly in the center. Therefore he had to ride through the southern villages, Wakef, Kheder Beg, Hadji Habibli, to reach home, which would scarcely be possible before darkness. But he was in no hurry.

  In these hours the village streets round Musa Dagh were crowded. People all stood out in front of their doors. The gentleness of a Sunday evening brought them together. Bodies, eyes, voices, sought one another, to enhance, with family gossip and general complaints about the times, the pleasure of being alive. Sex and degrees of age made separate groups. Matrons stood eyeing each other askance, the young wives joyous in their Sunday best, the girls full of laughter. Their coin-ornaments tinkled. They displayed their magnificent teeth. Gabriel was struck by the numbers of able-bodied young men, fit for the army, but not yet called up. They joked and laughed as though no Enver Pasha existed for them. From vineyards and orchards came the nasal tw
angings of the tar, the Armenian guitar. A few over-industrious men were preparing their handiwork. The Turkish day ends with dusk, and so the Sabbath rest ends also. Settled, industrious men felt the urge to fuss over odd jobs before going to bed.

  Instead of calling them by their Turkish names, it would have been possible to christen the villages by the handicraft which distinguished each. All planted grapes and fruit. Scarcely any, grain. But their fame was for skill in handicraft. Here was Hadji Habibli, the wood-workers' village. Its men not only cut the best hardwood and bone combs, pipes, cigarette holders, and such like objects for daily use, but could carve ivory crucifixes, madonnas, statues of the saints, which were sent as far as Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem. These carvings had their own style, achieved only in the shadow of Musa Dagh; they were not mere rough peasant handiwork. Wakef was the lace village. The delicate kerchiefs and coverlets of its women found buyers even in Egypt, without the artists knowing that this was so, since their wares were sent only to the markets in Antioch, and that not more than twice a year. Of Azir and its silkworms we have spoken. The silk was spun in Kheder Beg. In the two largest villages, Bitias and Yoghonoluk, all these various crafts worked side by side. But Kebussiye, the most northern, isolated village, kept bees. The honey of Kebussiye, or so at least Bagradian considered, had not its equal anywhere on earth. The bees sucked from the innermost essence of Musa Dagh, from its magic dower of beauty, which set it apart from all the other melancholy peaks in the land. Why should it have been Musa Dagh which gushed forth such innumerable springs, most of whose waters fell, in long, cascading veils, to the sea? Why Musa Dagh, and not Turkish mountains, like Naulu Dagh and Jebel Akra? Truly it seemed as though, miraculously, the divine quality in water, offended in some unknown previous time by Moslems, the sons of the desert, had withdrawn from off these arid, imploring heights to enrich with superabundance a Christian mountain. The flower-strewn meadows of its eastern slopes, the fat pasturage of its many-folded flanks, its lithe orchards of apricot, vine, and orange around its feet; its quiet, as of protecting seraphim -- all this seemed scarcely touched by the fall of man, under which, in rocky melancholy, the rest of Asia Minor mourns. It was as though, through some small negligence in the setting up of the divine order of the world -- the good-natured indulgence of an archangel open to persuasion, and who loved his home -- an afterglow, a reminiscent flavor of Paradise, had been allowed to linger on forever in the lands around Musa Dagh. Here along the Syrian coast, and a little farther, in the country of four rivers, where experts in Biblical geography are so fond of locating the Garden of Eden.

  It goes without saying that the seven villages round the mountain had retained their share of this benediction. They were not to be compared with the wretched hamlets which Gabriel had passed as he rode through the plain. Here there were no loam huts, which had not even the look of human dwellings, but of caked deposits into which someone had bored a dark hole for living-room and stable, humans and beasts. Most of these houses were built of stone. Each contained several rooms. Little verandas ran round the walls. Walls and windows sparkled with cleanliness. Only a few huts from the dark ages, observing the custom of the East, had no windows turned towards the street. As far as the dark shadows of Damlayik extended, sharp across the plain, so far this friendly prosperity was evident. Beyond these shadows began the desert. Here, wine, fruit, mulberry, terrace upon terrace; there the flat, monotonous fields of maize and cotton, revealing in places the naked steppe, as a beggar shows his skin through rags. But it was not only the blessing of the mountain. Here, after half a century, the energy of old Avetis Bagradian had borne full fruit, the love of this one enterprising man, who had concentrated such stormy energies on this, his strip of native earth, despite all the enticements of the world. That man's grandson watched with astonished eyes this people invested in some strange beauty. The chattering groups became silent a few minutes before his approach; they turned towards the center of the street and greeted him with loud evening salutations: "Bari irikun!" He believed -- it may have been fancy -- that he saw in their eyes a brief flicker of gratitude, not towards him, but towards the ancient benefactor. Women and girls stood looking after him; the spindles in their hands twirled in and out, like separate beings.

  These people were no less foreign than the crowd that day in the bazaar. What had he to do with them -- he who a few months ago had gone out for drives into the Bois, attended Bergson's lectures, talked of books, published articles on art in precious reviews? And yet, deep peace enveloped him from them. Because he had seen the threat of which they knew nothing, he felt some strange fatherliness towards them. He bore a great load of care in his heart, he alone, and would keep it from them as long as he could. The old Agha Rifaat Bereket was no dreamer, even though he wrapped his shrewdness in flowery sayings. He was right. Stay in Yoghonoluk and await the event. Musa Dagh stood beyond the world. No storm would reach it, even if one should break.

  A warm love of his people invaded Gabriel. May you long continue to rejoice; tomorrow, the day after . . .

  And from his horse he raised his hand gravely in greeting.

  In cool, starry darkness he climbed the road through the park to the villa. He entered the big hall of his house. The old wrought-iron lamp hanging from its ceiling rejoiced his heart with its pale light. In some incomprehensible cranny of consciousness it seemed like his mother. Not that old lady who, in Paris, in a standardized Parisian flat, had welcomed him back from the lycée with a peck, but the mildly silent mother of days as impalpable as dreams. "Hokud madagh kes kurban" -- had she really ever spoken those Eastern words as she bent down over her sleeping child? "May I be as a sacrifice to your soul."

  There was only one other benediction from that primal age -- the little lamp under the Madonna in the niche on the stairs. Everything else dated from the time of the young Avetis. And those, in so far at least as the hall was concerned, had been days of war and of the chase. Trophies and arms hung on the walls, a whole collection of ancient bedouin rifles, with very long barrels. That this solitary master had been more than a man of one crude passion was proved by some magnificent bits of furniture -- chests, carpets, lustres, which he had brought back home with him from his travels, and which delighted Juliette.

  As Gabriel absent-mindedly went upstairs, he scarcely heard the babel of voices from the rooms on the ground floor. The notables of Yoghonoluk were assembled. In his room he stood some time by the open window and stared, immobile, at the black silhouette of the Damlayik, which at that hour seemed twice its size. It was ten minutes before he rang for his valet Missak, whom, on his brother's death, he had taken into his service, along with Kristaphor the steward, Hovhannes the cook, and all the other house and outside staff.

  Gabriel washed from head to foot and changed. Then he went into Stephan's room. The boy was already in bed and so childishly fast asleep that not even the glare of an electric torch could wake him. The windows were open, and outside the masses of plane tree crowns rustled in some slow presentiment. Here, too, the black, living mass of Musa Dagh invaded the room. But now the crest of the mountain glowed against some gently shining depths, as though there had been no salt sea behind it, but a sea composed of the gleaming essence of eternity. Bagradian sat on a chair beside the bed. That morning the son had watched his father asleep. Now it was the father who watched his son. But that was permitted.

  Stephan's forehead (it was Gabriel's forehead over again) shimmered translucent. Below it the shadows of closed eyes, like two rose leaves blown from outside on to his face. Even asleep, you could see how big these eyes were. The pointed, narrow nose was not his father's; it was Juliette's legacy, exotic. Stephan breathed quickly. The walls of his sleep encased a rushing life. His folded hands were pressed against his body, as though he had to keep tight hold of reins or galloping dreams might run away with him.

  The son's sleep became restless. The father did not move. He drew his son's face into himself. Did he fear for Stephan? He could not te
ll. No thoughts were in him. At last he stood up, unable, as he did so, to stifle a sigh, so depressed he felt. As he fumbled his way out, he bumped a table. The dark intensified the short noise. Gabriel stood still. He was afraid he had waked Stephan. A boy's drowsy voice in the dark murmured: "Who's that . . . Dad, is it you?"

  At once his breathing became quiet again. Gabriel, who had switched off the electric torch, after a while switched it on again, blinding its little light with his hand. The beam caught the table, on which lay drawings. Stephan had already got to work and begun a sketch of Musa Dagh, as his father suggested. A hesitant sketch. Avakian's many red pencil-corrections intersected the lines.