Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Bagradian did not at first remember the stimulus he had given his son, when they met that morning. Then he recollected the stormy eagerness with which his son had sought and tried to persuade him. The uncertain sketch had become a symbol.

  The reception-room of the villa led out into a wide room, which opened into the hall. It was barely furnished and used only as an anteroom. Old Avetis had built his residence 'with a view to numerous descendants, so that neither the solitary hunter nor this small family, now remaining, could use more than a few of the rooms. An oil lamp, screwed down to the floor, lit this bare anteroom. Gabriel stopped for an instant and listened to the voices next door. He heard Juliette laugh. So she was pleased, then, with the admiration of the Armenian villagers in there. Something gained.

  Old Dr. Bedros Altouni was just opening the door on his way out. He lit the candle in his lantern and took up his leather bag, which stood on a chair. Altouni only noticed his host when Bagradian called to him softly: "Hairik Bedros" -- Bedros, little Father. The doctor started. He was a small, shrivelled man with an untidy goatee, a survival of those Armenians who, unlike the younger generation, seemed to bear on their shoulders the whole load of a persecuted race. In his youth, as Avetis Bagradian's protégé and at his expense, he had studied medicine in Vienna and seen the world. In those days the benefactor of Yoghonoluk had cherished vast projects, which even included the building of a hospital. But he had gone no further than to install the district doctor, though this was much, considering the general state of affairs. Of all living people Gabriel had known this old doctor longest, this "hekim" who had brought him into the world. He felt tenderly respectful towards him, another legacy of his feelings as a child. Dr. Altouni was struggling into a rough serge overcoat, which looked as though it might have been a relic of his student days in Vienna.

  "I couldn't wait any longer for you, my child. . . . Well, what did you manage to get out of the Hükümet?"

  Gabriel glanced at the shrivelled little face. Everything in this old man was angular -- his movements, his voice, even the occasional sharpness of what he said. He had been sharpened, inside and out. The road from Yoghonoluk to the wood-carvers village on the one side, the beekeepers' village on the other, seemed damnably long when you had to travel it several times a week on the hard back of a donkey. Gabriel recognized the eternal leather bag in which, besides sticking-plaster, thermometer, surgical instruments, and a German medical handbook dated 1875, there was only a pair of antediluvian obstetrical forceps. The sight of this medical bag made him swallow down an impulse to confide his experiences in Antioch.

  "Nothing special," he answered, dismissing it.

  Altouni fastened the lantern to his belt and buckled it. "I've had to renew my teskeré at least seven times in my life. They take them away to get the tax which you've got to pay on every new one. It's an old game. But they won't get any more out of me. I shan't need any more passports in this world." And he added caustically: "Not that I even needed the others. It's forty years now since I moved out of here."

  Bagradian turned his head to the door. "What sort of a people are we, who submit without a murmur to everything?"

  "Submit?" The doctor seemed to relish the word. "You young people don't know what submitting means. You've grown up in very different times."

  But Gabriel stuck to his question: "What sort of people are we?"

  "My dear child, you've lived all your life in Europe. And I should have, too, if only I'd stopped in Vienna. It was my great misfortune I ever left it. I might have become somebody. But you see, your grandfather was as big a fool as your brother, and he wouldn't so much as hear of an outside world. I had to sign a promise to come back. It was my misfortune. It would have been better if he'd never sent me away."

  "One can't always go on living as a foreigner." The Parisian Gabriel felt surprised at his own words.

  Altouni laughed harshly. "And here -- can one live here? With uncertainty always in the background? I suppose you fancied it all very different."

  Suddenly the thought came to Bagradian: "We shall at least have to do something to defend ourselves."

  Altouni set down his bag on the chair again. "Curse it! What are we talking about? You're dragging the old stories out of me again. I'm a doctor, and I've never believed particularly in God. And yet, at one time, I was always having arguments with Him about it. You can be a Russian, or a Turk, or a Hottentot, or God knows what -- but to be an Armenian -- why it's impossible."

  He seemed to jerk himself back from the edge of a gulf to which he had strayed. "That's enough. Let's leave all that. I am the hekim. That's all that matters to me. And I've just been called away from this pleasant company to a woman in labor. You see, we still keep putting Armenian children into the world. It's crazy."

  Grimly he seized his leather bag. This talk on the threshold, which had gone to the roots of the matter, seemed to have riled him. "And you? What's wrong with you? You've got a very beautiful wife, a clever son, no worries, all the money you want -- what more do you need? You live your life! Don't bother yourself with all this filth. Whenever the Turks have a war, they leave us in peace -- we've always known that. And after the war you'll go back to Paris and forget all about us and Musa Dagh."

  Gabriel Bagradian smiled as though he were not taking his own question seriously.

  "And suppose they don't leave us in peace, little Father?"

  Gabriel stopped an instant on the threshold of the big reception-room. About a dozen people were assembled. Three elderly women sat together round a little table, in silence, with the tutor keeping them company, presumably at Juliette's orders. But even he seemed to take no trouble to get them to talk. One of these matrons, Dr. Altouni's wife, was also a survival of Gabriel's childhood. Her name was Mairik Antaram, little Mother Antaram. She wore black silk. Her hair, drawn back off her forehead, was not yet quite grey. Her wide bony face had a look of daring in it. Even though she said nothing, she sat at her ease, allowing her inquisitive glances to travel freely about these people. The same could not be said of her neighbors, the wives of Harutiun Nokhudian, the pastor of Bitias, and of the village mayor, the Mukhtar of Yoghonoluk, Thomas Kebussyan. It was enough to look at them to see how embarrassed they felt, how much on their best behavior, even though they had taken all their finery out of the wardrobe so as not to be shamed by the Frenchwoman.

  Madame Kebussyan had the worst time, since she could not understand a word of French, though she was one of those who had been to school in the American mission at Marash. She blinked up at this extravagant candlelight, from lustres and chandeliers. Ah, Madame Bagradian had no need to economize! Where did she buy such thick wax candles? They must have come from Aleppo or Istanbul even. The Mukhtar Kebussyan might be the richest man in the district, but in his house, apart from petroleum, they only burned thin tallow candles and tapers of mutton-fat. And over there, next the piano, in tall candlesticks, there were even two painted candies, as in church. Wasn't that going a bit too far?

  The pastor's wife, who was feeling equally ill at ease, asked herself this very same question. To her honor be it said that, in her case, no squinting envy colored her feelings. The women's hands were folded on their laps. This evening, in honor of the soirée, they had left their sewing at home. The wives of the pastor and the mukhtar eyed their husbands in astonishment at these two old men.

  And indeed both gentle pastor and massive mukhtar had changed completely. They formed only a part of the masculine group around Juliette. (She was just then displaying the antiques which Gabriel had collected and set up in this room.) Among this group were the two schoolmasters, one of whom, Hapeth Shatakhian, had once spent a few weeks in Lausanne and ever since been conscious of the fact that he had an unusually good French accent. The other, Hrand Oskanian, was a dwarf, whose black hair grew very low upon his forehead. As Gabriel entered the room, he heard the loud-voiced French of the proud Shatakhian: "But, Madame, we should be so grateful to you for bringing a ray of c
ulture into our wilderness."

  That day Juliette had had an inner conflict to sustain. It had been so hard to decide in which clothes to receive her new fellow-countrymen. So far, on such occasions, she had always dressed very simply, since it had seemed to her both undignified and superfluous to attempt to dazzle "ignorant half-savages." But even the last time she had noticed how the magic she could shed upon her guests was reflected back upon herself. So that today she had yielded to temptation and chosen her most elaborate evening frock. ("Oh, well," she had thought as she examined it, "it dates from last spring, and at home I shouldn't dare show my nose in it.") After some hesitation, since the frock itself was so resplendent, she had also decided to wear jewefry. The effect of this deliberate decision, of which she had at first been rather ashamed, surprised even her. It is pleasant enough to be a beautiful woman among many, but the feeling soon wears off. In lighted restaurants one is only a pretty member of a beauty chorus. But to be the unique, the yellow-haired châtelaine, among all these dark, glittering-eyed Armenians -- that surely was no everyday fate! It was an experience, bringing back the flush of youth, a glow to the lips, a light of triumph to the eyes.

  Gabriel found his wife surrounded by humble, dazzled admirers. When Juliette moved, he recognized again her "sparkling step," as he once had called it. Juliette, here in Yoghonoluk, seemed to have found her way into the hearts of his simple-minded compatriots, though in Europe she had often jibbed at the society of the most cultivated Armenians. And strangest of all . . . In Beirut, overtaken by the war, without any chance to get back home, Gabriel had been haunted by the fear that Juliette would be devoured with homesickness. France was fighting the worst battles in her history. European newspapers seldom reached that corner of the world. One was entirely cut off, could find out nothing. Till now only one letter, dated November, had reached them, by many long detours. From Juliette's mother. Lucky that at least she had no brothers. Her marriage with a foreigner had estranged her a little from her family. Be that as it might, her present tranquil frivolity had come as a great surprise to Gabriel. She seldom seemed to think about home. In this fourteenth year of their married life the unhoped-for seemed to have taken place.

  And indeed there was something essentially new in her, as she put her arms round his neck. "At last, mon ami, I was just beginning to be anxious."

  She began to be concerned with his hunger and thirst, almost to the point of exaggeration. But Gabriel had no time to eat. He was surrounded. Naturally that morning's official inspection had not passed without leaving some trace on people's minds. The very fact that the Turkish authorities should have chosen a Sunday -- the hour of high mass -- for their visit, might itself be considered a hostile sign. An omen of intricate hostility.

  But the Musa Dagh colony had been almost spared in the bloody events of 1896 and 1909. Yet such men as Kebussyan and the little pastor of Bitias were sharp-eared enough to become alert at the slightest suspicious rustling. Only this evening-party and Juliette's radiant presence had been enough to distract them from such troubling of their peace. Now, as, remembering his promise, Gabriel repeated the müdir's words -- that this was no more than a general wartime measure -- they all, Kebussyan, Nokhudian, the schoolmasters, had of course long since answered the riddle themselves. They became light-heartedly optimistic. The most hopeful of all was Shatakhian. He drew himself up to his full height. The Middle Ages were over, he opined, addressing his glowing words to Madame Bagradian. The sun of progress would rise, even over Turkey. This war was its crimson dawn. The Turkish government was under the surveillance of its allies. Shatakhian glanced expectantly at Juliette. Had he not acclaimed progress in faultless French? His hearers, in so far as they understood them, seemed to share his views. Only the silent Oskanian, the other teacher, smiled sarcastically. But he always did when friend Shatakhian let himself go and revelled in his own linguistic verbosity. Another voice made itself heard: "Never mind the Turks. Let's talk about something more important."

  This had been said by Krikor, the apothecary, the most remarkable person in the room.

  Krikor's very garb denoted the fact that his character was subject to no change. All the other men, even the mukhtar, wore European dress (a tailor, back from London, lived in Yoghonoluk). Krikor had on a kind of light-blue Russian blouse, but made of the softest raw silk. His face, without a wrinkle in spite of the fact that he was sixty, with its white goatee and rather slanting eyes, was more that of a wise mandarin than an Armenian. He spoke in a high, but oddly hollow, voice, which sounded as though much learning had exhausted it. And in fact Apothecary Krikor owned a library surely unequalled in all Syria -- and was moreover himself a walking library, a man of encyclopedic information, in one of the remotest valleys on earth. Be the subject the flora of Musa Dagh, desert geology, an extinct species of bird, copper smelting, meteorology, the fathers of the Church, fixed stars, cooking recipes, the Persian secret of extracting oil of roses -- Krikor's hollow voice could supply information, and that in a careless, casual manner, as though it were rather an impertinence to have asked him such a trivial question. There are many "know-alls" in the world. But Krikor's genuine personality could not have shown itself by this alone. No, Krikor was like his library.

  This was composed of only a few thousand volumes, most of which were written in languages which he himself was unable to read. Providence had set many obstacles in the way of his ruling passion. Such French and Armenian works as he possessed were the least interesting. But Krikor was more than learned, he was a bibliophile. The bibliophile is more enamored of the very existence of a book than of its form and contents. He has no need to read it. (Is not all true love much the same?) The apothecary was not a rich man. He could not afford to give expensive orders to booksellers and antique shops in Istanbul or abroad. He could scarcely have paid the freightage. He had to take what came his way. The foundations of his library, he insisted, had already been laid in his boyhood and his years of travel. Now he had agents and patrons in Antioch, Alexandretta, Aleppo, Damascus, who from time to time sent him a parcel of books. What a red-letter day when they arrived! Whatever they might be -- Arabic or Hebrew folios, French novels, secondhand rubbish -- what did it matter, they were always so much printed paper. Krikor contained within himself that deep Armenian love of culture, the secret of all very ancient races which survive the centuries. This queer, and most of it unread, library would scarcely have sufficed to supply the apothecary's vast store of information. His own creative audacity filled in the gaps. Krikor completed his universe. Any question, from statistics to theology, he answered out of his plenitude of power. The innocent happiness of poets glowed in his veins each time he threw out a few major scientffic terms. That such a man had disciples goes without saying. Equally obvious that they were composed of the schoolmasters of all seven villages. Apothecary Krikor was the Socrates of Musa Dagh -- a peripatetic who, usually in the night, took long walks with these, his disciples. Such walks offered many chances to increase his followers' respect. He would point up at the starry sky.

  "Hapeth Shatakhian, do you know the name of that reddish star, up there?" -- "Which? That one there? Isn't that a planet?" -- "Wrong, Schoolmaster. That star is called Aldebaran. And do you know what gives it that reddish tinge?" -- "Well -- perhaps our atmosphere." -- "Wrong, Teacher. The star Aidebaran is composed of molten, magnetic iron, and that's what makes it look so red. Such at least is the opinion of the famous Camille Flammarion, as he writes in his last letter to me.

  And that great astronomer's letter was no mere empty fabrication. It existed in fact. Krikor, in the person of Camille Flammarion, had written the letter to himself. To be sure, he rarely sent himself such letters; only on the most solemn occasions. Usually the disciples heard nothing of them, since even Voltaire and Raffi, the great Armenian poet, had several times been inspired to exhaustive answers to Krikor's questions. Krikor was therefore a corresponding member of Olympus.

  All the educated families in Musa Da
gh took an annual holiday, if only to Aleppo or Marash, to the American, French, German missionary schools there, in which their education had been completed. Not a few among the village elders had returned from America to enjoy their earnings. Almost as war broke out, a batch of émigrés had crossed the Atlantic. Only Krikor had remained where he was. It was rare for him even to visit a neighboring village. In his youth, he declared, his bodily eyes had seen enough wonders of the world. Occasionally he hinted at these journeyings, which had lost themselves in remote distances, eastwards and westwards, but in which he had, on principle, taken no train. It is uncertain whether they were of the same nature as Flammarion's letter. Nothing in Krikor's tales savored in the least of exaggeration or bragging. His accounts were steeped in shrewd observation and consistency, so that even such a man as Bagradian might not have suspected. But Krikor was always insisting on how little need he saw for travel. All places were alike, since the outside world is contained in the inner. The sage sits, quiet as a spider, in the net which his mind has spun round the universe. So that, when the talk was of war or politics, of any burning question of the hour, Krikor would begin to get restless. Last arrogance of the mind! He despised all wars not contained in books. That was why Krikor had snubbed the political observations of the schoolteacher. And he concluded: