Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

"Excellency" -- he pressed a hand against his wide and finely shaped forehead -- "I'm not going to speak to you in platitudes. I won't say that a whole people can't be made to suffer for the misdemeanors of a few individuals. I won't ask why women and children, small children, as you yourself were once, must suffer a bestial death for the sake of a policy of which they haven't so much as heard. I want you to look at the future, your people's future, Excellency! Even this war will end some day, and Turkey will be faced with the necessity of concluding peace terms. May that day be a good one for all of us! But, if it should be unlucky, what then, Excellency? Surely the responsible head of a people must take some measures against the possibility of an unfavorable ending of the war. And in what position will the Ottoman peace commission be to negotiate if it finds itself faced with the question: 'Where is your brother Abel?' A highly painful situation. The victorious Powers -- may God prevent it! -- might use this pretext of a great crime that has been committed to share out the booty remorselessly among themselves. And General Enver Pasha, the man who, in such a case as that, would be the greatest among his people, the man who had shouldered all responsibility, whose word had been all-powerful -- how would he defend himself then against that people?"

  Enver Pasha's eyes had begun to dream; he said quite seriously: "Thank you for this very excellent hint. But any man who goes into politics must possess two special qualifications: first, a certain levity, or, if you like, indifference to death -- it comes to the same thing; and, secondly, the unshakable belief in his own decisions, once they are taken."

  Herr Pastor Lepsius stood up. He crossed his arms upon his breast, almost in the fashion of the East. This guardian angel, sent by God to shield the Armenian people, was in a pitiful state. The big handkerchief hung out of his pocket, his trousers had worked up almost to his knees, his tie wandered nearer and nearer to his ear -- even his pince-nez seemed to have vanished utterly.

  "I implore Your Excellency" -- he bowed before his seated interlocutor -- "let it end today. You have made such an example of this enemy in your midst -- who is not one -- as history has never recorded. Hundreds and thousands are dying on the high-roads of the East. Make an end today. Give orders to keep back these new edicts of transportation. I know that not all the vilayets and sanjaks have been depopulated yet. If, for the sake of the German ambassador and Mr. Morgenthau, you still hesitate with the great deportations in Western Asia Minor, spare Northern Syria, Aleppo, Alexandretta, Antioch, for my sake. Say: 'This is enough.' And when I get back to Germany, I'll sing your praises wherever I go."

  And still the pastor would not sit down again, although the general's patient hand had several times pointed to his chair.

  "Herr Lepsius," Enver declared at last, "you overestimate my competency. The carrying into effect of such government decrees is a matter for the Ministry of the Interior."

  The German snatched his pince-nez from off red eyes. "But that's just it -- the way in which the thing's being carried out. It isn't the Minister, or the Wali, or the Mutessarif, who puts these decrees into execution, but bestial, heartless subordinates and sergeants. Do you, for instance, or does the Minister, intend that women and children should collapse on the high-road and be driven on at once with cudgels? Is it your intention that a whole area should be infected with rotting corpses, that the Euphrates should be thick with dead? I know for a fact that that's how it's being carried out."

  "I'm aware how well you know the interior." Enver Pasha came a little way to meet him. "And I should be very glad to have your written suggestions as to how these matters can be improved. I'll examine them carefully."

  But Lepsius stretched out his arms. "Send me down there. That's my first suggestion. Not even the old Sultan refused me that. Give me full powers to organize these transports and convoys. God will lend me the strength, and I've had more experience than anyone. I don't need a piastre from the Ottoman government, I'll get hold of the necessary funds. I shall have German and American relief commissions behind me. Once before I succeeded in a great work of assistance. I helped to establish numbers of orphanages and hospitals and more than fifty industrial societies. In spite of this war I can do the same again, and better -- and in two years you yourself will be thanking me, Excellency."

  This time Enver Pasha had listened with not merely his usual attention, but intense eagerness. And now Herr Lepsius saw and heard a thing he had never experienced in his life. It was no sneering cruelty, no cynicism, that transfigured the boyish look on this war lord's face. No. What Herr Lepsius perceived was that arctic mask of the human being who "has overcome all sentimentality" -- the mask of a human mind which has got beyond guilt and all its qualms, the strange, almost innocent naďveté of utter godlessness. And what force it had, that a man could not hate it!

  "Your estimable suggestions interest me," said Enver appreciatively, "but it goes without saying that I must reject them. This very request of yours shows me that up to now we have talked at cross-purposes. If I let a foreigner help Armenians, I shall create a precedent which will admit of the intervention of foreign personages, and so of the countries they represent. I should be destroying my whole policy, since its object is to teach the Armenian millet the consequences of this longing of theirs for foreign intervention. The Armenians themselves would be bewildered. First I punish their seditious hopes and fantasies, and then I proceed to send one of their most influential friends to reawaken them. No, my dear Herr Lepsius, that's impossible. I can't let foreigners benefit these people. The Armenians must see in us their sole benefactors."

  The pastor sank down into his chair. Lost. All over. Words were superfluous. If only the man were malicious, if he were Satan! But he had no malice, he was not Satan; this quietly implacable mass-murderer was boyishly charming. Lepsius had begun to brood and so did not see at once the whole effrontery of Enver's offer, made in a cheery, confident tone:

  "Shall I suggest something, Herr Lepsius? You get money! Get as much money as ever you can, from your societies, a lot of money -- in Germany and America. Then, when you've collected it, bring it to me. I'll use it all as you want it used, according to your suggestions. But I must point out that I can't allow any supervision by Germans or other foreigners."

  Had Johannes not been so perturbed, he would have burst out laughing, so amusing was the thought of those devious channels by which his collected funds, disposed of by Enver, would travel in Turkey. He did not answer. He was beaten. Although he had been without much hope, even before the interview began, he realized only now that a world lay shattered. He summoned his wits together and, to bring himself back to self-control, made himself look a trifle more presentable, mopped his glistening forehead several times, and stood up.

  "I can't bear to think, Excellency, that this hour which you have been so kind as to grant me has been quite fruitless. There are a hundred thousand Armenians in North Syria and along the coast, living far away from any battlefield. I'm sure Your Excellency agrees that punitive measures which have no object are better left in abeyance."

  Again the boyish Mars bared a row of smiling teeth. "You may be sure, Herr Lepsius, that our government will avoid all unnecessary harshness."

  This on both sides had been empty formality, an aimless juggling, to enable this political discussion, like every other, to ebb away in vague inconclusiveness. Enver had not made the least concession. It was still his affair what harshness he might think necessary. And Lepsius, too, knowing that his last words were meaningless, had said them merely to end the interview. The general, who, in contrast to the pastor, looked at that moment especially spick and span, stood back to give his visitor the pas . He even went with him a little way and then, in his slightly surprised inscrutability, watched the pastor's unsteady steps bear him out of sight, down a long corridor, with billowing curtain-doors on either side.

  Enver Pasha went into Talaat Bey's office. The clerks sprang up. Hero-worship shone out of their faces. That almost mystic love had still not waned which even these pa
per-gentry felt for their dainty war god. Hundreds of boastful stories of his mad daring were current here in all the departments. When, for instance, during the war in Albania, an artillery regiment had mutinied, he, cigarette in mouth, had stood before the muzzle of a howitzer and challenged the mutineers to pull the firing cord. Round Enver's delicate, silky features, his people saw a messianic aura. He was the man sent by God, who should re-erect the empire of Osman, Bayazid, Suleiman. The general greeted his clerks with a merry shout, evoking overemphasized delight in them. Too-hasty hands snatched open the doors which led on into Talaat's sanctum through outer offices. The little room seemed far too small for that Minister's crushing personality. When, as he did at this instant, this Hun stood up behind his desk, he darkened the window. Talaat's mighty head was grey at the temples. Above the pursy lips of the Oriental there hovered a small, pitch-black moustache. Fat double chins thrust out of a stick-up double collar. A white piqué waistcoat, like the symbol of candid open-heartedness, curved over a jutting expanse of belly. Each time Talaat Bey beheld his co-ruler in this duumvirate, he felt the urge to place his great paws in fatherly tenderness on the narrow shoulders of this youth blessed of the gods. Yet each time, the aura of glacial shyness surrounding Enver impeded such familiar proximity. Yet Talaat was the exuberant man of the world, the talker, whose heady, confident way could dispose of five diplomats at a time, whereas Enver, the demigod of his people, the consort of an imperial princess, would often at great receptions stand for half an hour shyly aside, lost in his dreams. Talaat dropped his big, fleshy hand again and contented himself with a single question: "So the German's been seeing you?"

  Enver Pasha turned his eyes on the Bosporus, with its jocund waters, its little hurrying tugs, its tiny kayiks, its cypresses, which looked so unconvincing, so badly painted, at that hour -- its theatrical ruins. Then he glanced back and let his eyes stray through this empty office till they paused on an old-fashioned Morse apparatus set on a little carpeted table, like some very valuable curiosity. On this wretched machine, before the Ittihad revolution had raised him up to be the first statesman in the Caliph's empire, the young Talaat, the minor post-and-telegraph official, had fingered out Morse code. Let every visitor admire this proof of a giddily steep ascent, the reward of merit. Enver, too, seemed to view this significant telegraph apparatus with benevolent eyes before he quite remembered to answer the question. "Yes, the German! He tried to threaten a little, with the Reichstag."

  This remark showed how right Monsignor Saven had been -- how mistaken, from the very start, those humanely imploring tactics of Dr. Lepsius. A secretary brought in a sheaf of dispatches, which Talaat began to sign without sitting down again. He did not look up as he was speaking: "These Germans are only afraid of the odium of being made partly responsible. But they may have to come begging to us for more important things than Armenians."

  This might have ended that day's discussion of the banishment, had Enver's inquisitive eyes not rested on the dispatches in casual scrutiny. Talaat Bey noticed his glance and made the papers rustle as he waved them. "The precise directions for Aleppo. Meanwhile, I suppose, the roads will be clearer again. In the next few weeks Aleppo, Alexandretta, Antioch, and the whole coast can begin to move out."

  "Antioch and the coast?" Enver repeated interrogatively, as though he might have something to say on the point. He did not speak another syllable but stared enthralled at Talaat's fat fingers, which, irresistible as a storming-party, kept scribbling signatures under texts. These same forthright and stumpy fingers had composed that order, sent out to all walis and mutessarifs: "The goal of these deportations is annihilation." The short pen-strokes showed all the impetus of complete, implacable conviction; they had no scruples.

  The Minister raised up his bent torso. "That's done. In the autumn I shall be able to say with perfect candor to all these people: 'La question arménienne n'existe pas.'"

  Enver stood at the window and had not heard. Was he thinking of his future caliphate, which was to reach from Macedonia to India? Was he worried about the munitions supplies for the army? Or dreaming of fresh acquisitions for his magic palace on the Bosporus? In its great banqueting-hall he had caused the wedding throne to be set up which Nadjieh Sultana, the Sultan's daughter, had brought with her dowry. Four silver-gilt pillars and, over them, a starry canopy of Byzantine brocade.

  Johannes Lepsius was still creeping through the alleys of Istanbul. It was long past midday. He had missed his lunch. The pastor dared not go back to the Hotel Tokatlyan. An Armenian house. Terror and despair were in all its inhabitants, from the host and guests down to the last waiter and lift-boy. They knew his ways and had known of his undertaking. The spies and confidence men who, by order of Talaat Bey, followed him everywhere might track him now as much as they liked. It hurt him that his friends should be somewhere waiting for him in a well-considered place of security. Davidian, the president of the former Armenian National Assembly, would be one of them; an arrested person who had, however, managed to escape and remain illegally in Istanbul. Lepsius had not strength or courage to face them. The fact that he did not come would be enough to show them the truth, and it was to be hoped that by now they would have separated. Even the worst pessimists among them (they all were pessimists, and no wonder) -- even they had not considered it out of the question that the pastor might get a permit for the interior. Much would have been gained by it.

  Lepsius came to a public garden. Here, too, festivity. Garlanded benches. Half-moon pennons fluttering out from poles and lamp-posts. The jam of idlers, thick, slab, unpleasant, oozed its way along gravel paths between the grass-plots. Lepsius, dazed and unsteady, caught sight of a bench. He found a seat on it, beside others. A half-circle, vivid with waving colours, curved out before him. That same instant, over in the grandstand, a Turkish military band burst forth with clashing janizary music. Comets, flutes, raucous clarinets, clashing brass, ascending and descending the short intervals with the sharp unity of a razor blade, mingled with the fanatical yelps of taut-strung drums, the incessant clattering, clinking rattle of tamborines, the shivering hatred of cymbals. Johannes Lepsius sat in this music up to his chin, as in a bath of glass splinters. But he wanted to suffer, not to free himself, and pressed handfuls of glass splinters into his consciousness. That which Enver Pasha had refused was now conceded him. In the long deportation convoys of this people, given into his charge, he dragged his way down the stony, marshy highroads of Anatolia. Let not his own condemn him -- they who in the trenches of the Argonne, on the battlefields of Podolia and Galicia, at sea and in the air, were being decimated. Were not those endless hospital trains, at the sight of which a man had to cry out, more terrible still? Had not the eyes of German wounded and dying become Armenian eyes? Lepsius, under this janizary band, let his head, dull with fatigue, sink lower and lower. He had not been chosen to care for his own, but for that which was not his. A new note was forcing its way into this strident, wrathful Turkish music, a vibrant clatter which rose and rose. And it came from above. A Turkish air squadron was on its way across Istanbul, dropping swirling clouds of proclamations. Though he could not tell why, it grew clear to Johannes Lepsius that these planes above him should be named "Original Sin and Its Pride." He wandered about within this perception as he might have in a huge building -- in the Ministry of the Interior. Curtains fluttered out from before the doorways; they waved, like flames, and he thought of a passage in the Apocalypse, which he had meant to use in his next sermon: "And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle . . . and they had breast-plates, as it were breast-plates of iron, and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. . . . And they had tails, like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men five months."

  Johannes Lepsius started up. New means, new methods must be thought out. If the German Embassy failed, perhaps the Austrian Markgraf Pallavicini, a most distinguished man, might have more
success. He might threaten reprisals -- the Mohammedan Bosnians were Austro-Hungarian citizens. And, so far, papal admonitions had been too tepid. But then Enver Pasha approached him, with his never-to-be-forgotten smile. No -- shy was not the word to describe this boyish (or girlish) amiability of the great mass-murderer -- we intend, Herr Lepsius, to pursue the policy of our interests to the very end. Only a power which stood above all interests could prevent us, a power never tainted with any rascality. If you should happen to turn up the name of such a power in the diplomat's register, I shall be so glad to receive you again at the Ministry.

  Lepsius shifted and fidgeted so wildly that his veiled neighbor on the bench, becoming scared, got up to go. He did not notice, since now he was weighted hand and foot with his leaden conviction: "No more to be done." There was no more help. What the priest Ter Haigasun in Yoghonoluk had known for weeks was just beginning now to dawn on Pastor Johannes Lepsius: "There's only one thing left -- to pray.

  And so, amid the press of these folk on holiday, jostled by laughing women and squalling brats, as the janizary music brayed again, as his head, with his eyes closed, rolled impotently about from side to side, the pastor folded, or at least believed be folded, his hands, as petitioners should. And his soul began speaking: "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. . . ."