Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Gabriel made many friends in these frequent excursions into the villages. The closest of them all was the staid, respectable Chaush Nurhan, or, more correctly, Sergeant Nurhan. Next to the elder Tomasian, this Chaush Nurhan owned the best craftsman's business south of Yoghonoluk -- he was a smith and locksmith and besides owned a saddlery, a carriage-building establishment in which he built the kangnis used in these parts, and finally, a holy of holies, a shop where he worked alone, without any witnesses. Initiates knew that in secret he repaired hunting rifles and made the cartridges for them. But his occupation was best kept secret from Ali Nassif's inquisitive eyes.

  Chaush Nurhan was an ex-regular. He had served seven years in the Turkish army, which he had spent in the war and in an Anatolian infantry regiment in the huge barracks at Brussa. He looked the hardened regular that he was, with his straight, iron-grey moustache twisted into very long points, his continual, forceful use of army expletives, and above all his stiff respectfulness with Bagradian, whom he greeted only as his superior officer. He may perhaps have sensed certain qualities in Gabriel, who did not himself know he possessed them. Chaush Nurhan, who had already worked for the younger Avetis, agreed to inspect the extensive gun-room of the villa and make sure that everything was shipshape. He took away the guns to dismember and oil them in his secret workshop. Gabriel often came to see him at work. Sometimes he would bring Stephan with him. They reminisced about the army like keen professionals. The chaush was full of coarse barrack-room stories and quirks, of which the bel esprit Gabriel never wearied. So that, incredibly, in these months of banishment, two Armenian men became engrossed in their memories of Turkish army life as though they had been in a Turkish barracks. Chaush Nurhan was a widower, like old Tomasian. But he had a promising brood of half-grown children, whom he himself seemed to find it hard to distinguish. He scarcely ever troubled his head with his progeny. This erstwhile tyrant of recruits, with the awe-inspiring, iron-grey moustache, was placid good nature itself when it came to his own flesh and blood, and he let them run wild without a qualm. In the evenings, when his only journeyman had handed over the workshop keys, he neither entered his own house, full of children, nor knocked at any neighbor's door. With a pitcher of wine in one hand, in the other an infantry cornet, pilfered from a quartermaster's store, he would go into his apricot orchard. There, in the dusk, unsteady howlings rent the air. They were well known to the other villagers. Turkish bugle-calls, halting and kicking, would rattle forth, as though, before night came, Chaush Nurhan meant to rally the folk in all the villages.

  There had been some slight disagreement on educational policy in the villages. The scholastic program of the Miazial Engerutiunk Hayoz, the General Armenian Schools Association, that recognized scholastic authority for the whole Armenian people, had laid it down that the school year was to end in the first days of early summer -- that is to say, in the first week of May. But Ter Haigasun, as district head-superintendent of schools, gave sudden orders that this year teaching was to begin again after only one short week of holidays. The priest's decision sprang from the same motives as did the dully frantic industry of the whole population in these days. The deluge was at hand. This approaching dissolution of all order must be opposed by twice the normal regularity; utter helplessness, which all awaited as something inevitable, should be countered by the severest order and discipline. And besides, in these harassed days, the wild, unconscious clamor of children on holiday would have been an unbearable nuisance about the land. And clearly every grown-up in the district would have sided with Ter Haigasim, had the teachers not bitterly opposed him. These teachers, above all Hrand Oskanian, did not want to be robbed of their free time, guaranteed them by contract. They appealed to the mukhtars, they warned the parents -- the poor little mites would be getting brain-fever if they had to work on in this grilling heat. Oskanian, the ever-silent, vented a perfect torrent of spite against Ter Haigasun. It was all no good. The priest was inflexible. He called a meeting of the seven mukhtars of the villages and convinced them in a few short words. So that the new school year, in spite of the heat, began more or less where the old had ended. The teachers, as a last resource, tried to bring in Bagradian on their side. Shatakhian and Oskanian, serious and formal, called at the villa. But Gabriel plainly and ruthlessly declared for the continuation of studies. He welcomed it, not only as a matter of general policy, but in his own interests, since he meant to send his son Stephan to school with Monsieur Shatakhian. He should at last be able to mix with boys of his race and age.

  On the first day of term Gabriel arrived at the schoolhouse of Yoghonoluk with Stephan. Sato came, too; her wounded feet were already healed. It had meant a tiff with Juliette. She was worried about Stephan, she told him. Why should he have to squat on the same benches as these unwashed boys in an Oriental stable? Even in Paris, Stephan had never had to go to the public primary school, where after all there had been less danger of infectious disease and lice. Gabriel had stuck to his decision. If one looked at things as they really were, such dangers as that, which any day now might give way to real ones, were certainly not worth taking seriously. As a father he considered it far more important that Stephan should at last get to know the life of his people from its beginnings. In former days, in another atmosphere, Juliette could have raised a hundred objections. As it was, she gave in at once and said no more. It was a silent acquiescence which she herself could understand least of all. Ever since that talk in the night, when Gabriel had seemed so very upset, something incomprehensible had been happening. Life on a basis of mutual confidence -- the gathered harvest of a marriage that had gone on now for fourteen years -- seemed to evaporate more and more. At present, when Juliette woke in the night, she felt as though she and the sleeper beside her were no longer sharing the same past. Their marriage had been left behind in Paris, in glittering towns all over Europe; they had lost it, were cut off, it was theirs no longer. What was this thing that had been happening? Had Gabriel altered, or had she? She could still not take the future possibility really seriously. It seemed to her almost absurd that a deluge should not gallantly retire from before her feet -- the Frenchwoman. Surely it was simply a question of getting through the next few weeks. And then -- back home! Whatever might or might not happen in these weeks was trivial child's play. So she said no more about Gabriel's decision that Stephan should go to the village school. Yet when in her most secret soul she suddenly was aware of that tepid sensation -- "Oh, well, what business is it of mine?" -- she felt startled and stirred to an unknown grief, not only for herself but for Stephan.

  Young Stephan naturally rejoiced at the very thought of this new arrangement. Lately, as he admitted to his father, he had scarcely been able to fix his mind on what the good Avakian was saying. He, the boy from the Paris lycée, the Hellenist and Latinist, much preferred an Armenian village school. Such complaisance was not due merely to the boredom of Stephan's lessons with Avakian. His very soul had become confused, and yet alert, ever since Iskuhi and Sato had been their guests. Sato had already got him into mischief. One morning she and Stephan had suddenly vanished into the wilds, not coming back till well after lunch. Since Sato seemed to be threatened with dire consequences, Stephan had gallantly taken all the blame, insisting that they had lost their way on the Damlayik. Juliette had "made a scene" not only with Avakian, but also with Gabriel, and had forbidden her son so much as to speak to Sato in future. The waif had been banished from the drawing-room and told to stay in her room when she was home. All the more frequently therefore had Stephan found himself drawn to Iskuhi, who was still not cured, though she too had long been out of bed. He would squat at her feet as she lay in a deck chair in the garden. He had so many things to ask her. Iskuhi had to tell him all about Zeitun. Yet whenever Maman came upon them, they were silent as a pair of conspirators. "How they all draw him to them!" reflected Juliette.

  The schoolhouse of Yoghonoluk was imposing. As the largest school of the Musa Dagh district, it comprised four classes.
Ter Haigasun had entrusted their superintendence to Shatakhian. That teacher, on his own initiative, had added continuation classes to those of the usual village school. In these he taught French and history while Oskanian taught literature and calligraphy. But even this was not enough. There were evening classes for grown-ups. Here such a universal sage as Apothecary Krikor displayed his light. He lectured on stars, flowers, beasts, on geology, and on the nations, poets, and sages of antiquity. As his habit was, he drew no clear distinctions between these things, but bathed them all in the effulgence of one magnificent fairy-tale of science.

  Shatakhian drew Gabriel aside. "I don't quite understand you, Effendi. What can you expect your son to learn here? I should say he knew more than I do about most subjects, though I did study for some time in Switzerland. But I've vegetated here for years. Just look at all these children. They're like Hottentots. I don't know whether they'll be a good influence."

  "It's just their influence that I don't want him to miss, Hapeth Shatakhian," Gabriel explained -- and the teacher wondered at this father who seemed so stubbornly set on turning his son from a good European into a little Oriental.

  The room was full of children and of parents come to enter their names. An old woman, pushing a little boy in front of her, approached Shatakhian. "Well, Teacher, here he is. Don't thrash him too much."

  "You hear?" Shatakhian turned to Gabriel, with a sigh over this wilderness of superstition, medievalism, and darkness of the spirit, which he had to spend such laborious days in combating.

  It was arranged that Stephan should come to school three times a week. His chief task would be to put the finishing touches to his written and spoken Armenian. Sato was consigned to the infant's class, composed mostly of girls and all much younger than the sorry orphan of Zeitun. Even after his second day at school Stephan came home in a very bad temper. He wasn't going to let them go on ragging him about these stupid English clothes. He was going to wear exactly the same as all the others. In a towering rage he insisted that the local tailor should be commissioned to make him the usual entari-smock, with an aghil-belt, and the loose shalwar-trousers. These demands entailed a long dispute with Maman. It remained undecided for several days.

  Now that he had no Stephan to teach, Samuel Avakian had another, entirely different occupation. Gabriel passed him all the rough notes which he had been collecting for many weeks and asked the student to reduce them to one comprehensive, statistical statement. Avakian was not told why. His first job was to classify under various headings the population of all the villages, from Wakef, the lace village in the south, to Kebussiye, the bee-keeping village in the north. The information gathered by Bagradian from the village clerk of Yoghonoluk and the other six village elders was to be arranged and checked. By next morning Avakian had the following precise table for Gabriel:

  Population of the seven villages, classified according to sex and age:

  583 babes in aims and children ..... under 4 years of age 579 girls .......................... between 4 and 12 823 boys ........................... between 4 and 14 2074 females ........................ over 12 1556 males .......................... over 14

  This census included the Bagradian family, with dependants. But, besides such lists, more exact classifications were drawn up, giving the number of families in each village according to occupation or craft, indeed from every conceivable angle. But it was not only a matter of human beings. Gabriel had tried to find out the number of head of cattle in the district. That had been by no means an easy task, an only partially successful one, since not even the mukhtars knew the exact figures. Only one thing was certain. There were no big livestock, no oxen or horses. On the other hand, every well-to-do family owned a couple of goats and a donkey, or a riding and sumpter mule. The larger herds of sheep, owned by individual breeders of communes, were driven, in the fashion of all mountaineers, up on to the quiet meadow pasturage -- sheltered meadows where they stayed from one shearing to the next in the care of shepherds and shepherds' boys. It proved impossible to get any exact idea of these herds. The industrious Avakian, to whom every task was a boon, went zealously forth into the villages and had already transformed Bagradian's study into a kind of statistics bureau. Secretly he rather scoffed at this very elaborate hobby, by which a rich man was attempting to fill up the days of an indefinite period of suspense. Nothing seemed too trifling for this pedant, who had obviously conceived the idea of writing a scientific memoir on the village life around Musa Dagh. He even wanted to know how many tonirs, kneading-troughs walled into the ground, there were in the villages. He investigated the harvests minutely and seemed to be worried by the fact that the mountain folk imported their maize and the reddish Syrian wheat from Mohammedans down in the plain. It seemed to annoy him that there should be no Armenian mills, either in Yoghonoluk and Bitias or elsewhere. He even ventured to trespass on Krikor's preserve and inquire as to the state of the drug supplies. Krikor, who had expected to display his library, not his pharmacy, traced the curve of the roof with a pair of disillusioned fingers. On two small shelves bottles, jars, and crucibles of all kinds were set out, painted with exotic inscriptions. It was all there was to suggest a chemist's shop. Three big petroleum jars in a corner, a sack of salt, a couple of bales of chibuk-tobacco, and some cheap ironmongery indicated the more active side of the business.

  Krikor proudly tapped one of the mystic jars with his long bony fingers. "The whole pharmacopoeia, as St. John Chrysostom pointed out, can be reduced to seven primary substances: lime, sulphur, saltpetre, iodine, poppy, willow-resin, and bay-oil. It's always the same thing in hundreds of different disguises."

  After such a lesson in contemporary pharmaceutics Gabriel made no further inquiries. Luckily he had a fairly extensive medicine chest of his own. But, more significant than all this, was the incident of the small arms. Chaush Nurhan had already dropped some dark hints on the subject. Yet, the instant Gabriel tried to broach it with village notables, they beat hasty retreat. One day, however, he assailed Mukhtar Kebussyan of Yoghonoluk in his best parlor and pinned him down: "Be frank with me, Thomas Kebussyan. How many rifles have you, and what pattern are they?"

  The mukhtar began to squint horribly, and wagged his bald pate. "Jesus Christ! Do you want to bring ill-luck on us all, Effendi?"

  "Why should I, of all people, seem so unworthy of your confidence?"

  "My wife doesn't know it, my sons don't know it, not even the schoolteachers know it. Not a soul."

  "Did my brother Avetis?"

  "Your brother Avetis certainly did, God rest his soul. But he never mentioned it to anyone."

  "Do I look the sort of person who can't keep his mouth shut?"

  "If it comes out, we shall all be slaughtered."

  But since Kebussyan, for all his squintings and waggings of the head, could not manage to get away from his guest, he ended at last by double-bolting the parlor door. In a frightened hiss he told his story. In 1908, when Ittihad had gone over to revolution against Abdul Hamid, the Young Turkish agents had distributed weapons to all districts and communes of the empire, especially to the Armenian districts, which were regarded as the chief supporters of the revolt. Enver Pasha had of course known all about it and, when war broke out, his instant order had been to disarm the Armenian population. Naturally the character and methods of the government officials concerned had made a great difference to the way in which the order was carried out. In such vilayets as Erzerum or Sivas, hotbeds of provincial zeal for Ittihad, unarmed people had been forced to buy rifles from the gendarmes, simply to hand them back to the government. To possess no arms in such a district was merely considered a cunning attempt to evade the law. But here, under Djelal Bey, it naturally had all gone far more smoothly. That admirable governor, whose humane instincts were always in rebellion against the edicts of the pretty war god in Istanbul, carried out such orders very negligently, where he could not simply allow them to disappear in his wastepaper basket. This mildness usually found its echo
in the administrative methods of his subordinates, with one harsh exception -- the Mutessarif of Marash. The red-haired müdir of Antioch had arrived one day in January in Yoghonoluk, with the chief of the Antioch police, to collect all weapons. He had gone away again quite peacefully on receiving the smiling assurance that no such weapons had been distributed. Luckily the mukhtar of those days had not given the Committee's agents a written receipt.

  "Very good" -- Gabriel was delighted with the mayor -- "and are these guns worth anything?"