by Franz Werfel
That is the story of Sarkis Kilikian, "the Russian," as it emerged from Teacher Shatakhian's account, Chaush Nurhan's assenting silences, and the occasional comments and additions of other listeners, and as it was formed and reflected in Bagradian's sensitive mind. The European could only marvel and be aghast at the fateful burden of such a destiny and at the strength which had not broken down under it. But this respect was tinged with horror and the desire to see as little as possible of this victim of jails and barrack-squares. That night, after long consultation with Chaush Nurhan, Gabriel decided to assign the Russian and the other deserters to the defence of the "South Bastion." It was the strongest part of his whole defence, and also the farthest from camp.
On the third morning they all went back to the villages. Only a few dependable sentries stayed on the Damlayik with the stores and munitions. Ter Haigasun himself had given the order. The saptiehs, come to look for arms, must find no empty or half-empty houses. Any noticeable absence of young men could have been masked neither by Pastor Noldiudian's band of the devout in Bitias nor by a part of the people left in the valley for that purpose. Bagradian had expected the priest to give this order. Perhaps it had also an educational intention concealed in it. The young men of Musa Dagh, who so far knew of atrocities only by hearsay, must now come face to face with the living reality; their subsequent fight must be to the last point of desperation.
At the exact hour foretold by Ali Nassif the saptiehs entered Yoghonoluk, about a hundred strong. There was obvious contempt in this. The authorities had sent a handful of men to clear a considerable district. The Armenian sheep would be certain not to put up a fight when led to the slaughter. The few instances to the contrary, so welcome to the government, proved nothing. How could a weak, mercantile people hope to stand up to the warrior race? The answer to this question was the hundred gendarmes detailed for Yoghonoluk. But these were no longer stout assassins in the genre of Abdul Hamid. No more trusty, pock-marked faces, whose loyally menacing wink had often indicated that a quid pro quo would make them easier to deal with. Now it was plain, inhuman cruelty -- quite single-minded. These saptiehs did not, like their predecessors, wear lousy lambskin bonnets, nor the trumped-up uniforms, composed of a tunic and nondescript mufti, of the good old days. They were all clothed in the same yellowish-brown field uniform recently issued. Round their heads, in the manner of bedouins, they had bound the long, trailing sun- and sweat-cloths, which gave them an unmistakable aspect of Egyptian sphinxes. They arrived in regular formation, not marching perhaps with the true mechanical step of the West, but still, no longer in the uneven roll of the East. Ittihad had exercised its power even on these Antioch saptiehs, so far from Istanbul. The sporadic flames of religious hatred and fanaticism had been skilfully fanned to the cold, steady flare of nationalism. The deportation squad was commanded by the muafin, the police chief of Antioch. The young müdir with the pink, lashless eyes and freckled hands came with it. The men, whose arrival had long been heralded, came swinging at midday into the church square of Yoghonoluk. Strident Turkish bugle calls resounded, and drums were tapped. But in spite of these commanding admonitions, the Armenians still remained indoors. Ter Haigasun had issued the strictest orders to all seven villages that people must show themselves as little as possible, must avoid all crowding together, and walk into no provocative traps. The müdir read out his long decree of banishment to a public consisting of saptiehs, a number of stragglers with the troops, and the closed windows of the church square. This order was at the same time posted up in several places on the church walls, on the council house, and on the school building. After which administrative measure the saptiehs, since now it was dinner time, encamped where they stood, lit fires, and began to cook up their kettles of fuhl, broad beans with mutton fat. Then, squatting and chewing, as with flat cakes of bread they scooped up their portion of the stew, they looked round them idly. What well-built houses! And all made of stone, with firm roofs and carved wooden verandas! Rich people, these Armenians -- rich everywhere! At home in their own villages they were thankful when the roofs of their hovels, black with age, did not give way under the many storks' nests. And the church of these unclean pigs was as massive and imposing as a fort -- with all its angles and buttresses. Ah, well, Allah was about to pay them back something for their pride! They've had a finger in everything, haven't they -- governed in Istanbul, raked in the money like a harvest. Other people had had to put up with anything, till at last even the sleepiest patience gave out. Not even the müdir and the muafin could conceal their interest in the splendors of this village square. Perhaps, for the space of half a second the police chief felt the insecurity of a barbarian confronted with a superior civilization. But then he boiled with redoubled hatred, remembering Talaat Bey's famous words, quoted again by the Kaimakam as they mustered to set out: "Either they disappear, or we do."
The quiet, which in spite of many soldiers lay over this square, was odd and unnatural. Nor was it broken perceptibly by the presence of a certain number of roughs, who had joined the saptiehs on their way. The off-scourings of Antakiya and the bigger villages on its outskirts poured their dregs into the valley of seven villages. On bare, dirt-caked feet the scum came pattering -- from Mengulye, Hamblas, and Bostan. From Tumama, Shahsini, Ain Yerab, and, further still, from Beled es Sheikh. Eyes of unbridled covetousness darted up and down the houses. Arab peasants from the El-Akra mountains in the south waited, quietly squatting on their heels, on the fat event. Even a little group of Ansariyes had come along -- the lowest pariahs of the prophet, nationless half-Arab mobs of underlings, waiting to make the most of this rare chance of feeling superior to somebody. There were also a few Mohajirs, even now; war refugees sent by the government to the interior and invited cordially to indemnify themselves with Armenian property. And, with such simple plebeians, strange to relate, a ring of heavily veiled ladies, in a half-circle of glowing timidity. There could be no doubts that they came of the better classes. It could be seen by a glance at the costly material of the cloaks drawn down over their faces, the texture of their veils, the tiny mules or lacquered slippers which embellished their braceleted feet. These women were the avid clients of the bargain sale about to begin, and they waited impatiently. For weeks the whisper had gone the rounds of the women's quarters of Suedia and El Eskel: "Oh, haven't you heard? These Christians have the most marvellous things in their houses, things we've never so much as heard of -- far too expensive to buy." "Have you ever been inside an Armenian house, dear?" "I? No. But the mullah's wife has been telling me all about it. You'll find cupboards and cabinets with little towers on the top of them and pillars and crowns. And you'll find very few sleeping-mats of the kind you lock away in the daytime, but lots of real beds with carved flowers and forbidden carved children's heads on them, beds for husband and wife as big as a wali's carriage. You'll find clocks with gold eagles sitting on them, or cuckoos jumping out of their insides and calling." "Well, there's another proof that they're traitors, otherwise how could they ever get furniture from Europe?" But it was just such household gear as this that so powerfully attracted these ladies, to whom beautifully wrought brass dishes, woven carpets, and copper braziers meant nothing.
The weird stillness was suddenly broken. The police chief, for some time eager for a victim, had thrown himself on a villager imprudent enough to come to his house door. The man was thrust into the middle of the square. This police constable's face was characterized by two entirely different eyes. His right eye was large and staring, the left little and nearly closed up. His military moustache might threaten as fiercely as it liked, his chin protrude itself as murderously -- his unequal eyes condemned this police chief to a role of ferocious comicality, of comic ferocity. Since he was always conscious of this defect, his fear of making himself ridiculous caused him to exaggerate the authoritative side of his personality. Therefore, though already by nature a bully, he had also to play the bully's part. His staring eye did its best to roll, as he bellowed at the c
aptured villager:
"What's your priest called? What's the name of your mukhtar?"
The villager whispered an answer. The next minute a hundred voices were shouting across the square: "Hello, Haigasun! Come out of your hiding-place! Come on out, Kebussyan. Out with you, Haigasun and Kebussyan!"
Ter Haigasun had awaited the summons inside the church. After the holiday mass, without having taken off his vestments, he had remained kneeling before the altar with his deacons. He intended to face the saptiehs in the glamour and sublimity of his office. This intention was entirely characteristic. There was more in it than an empty gesture of ceremony, there was a keenly psychological object. Every Oriental is filled with sensations of holy awe by ceremonious pageantry and the splendor of religious vestments. Ter Haigasun reckoned that his appearance as a fully vested priest would mitigate the saptiehs' brutality. Slowly, in purple and gold, he emerged from the doorway of his church. On his head sparkled the tall Gregorian mitre, in his right hand he bore the doctor's wand of the Armenian rite. And in fact this consecrated figure served to dampen the spirits of the police chief, whose brutal voice lost some of its certainty.
"You're the priest. You'll be answerable to me for everything that happens. Everything! You understand?"
Ter Haigasun inclined his bloodless face in answer. In the strong sunlight it looked like carved amber. He bowed his head and did not answer. The head constable felt himself in danger of being polite -- that is to say, of becoming slack. His left, swollen eye had started to twitch. These two sensations filled him with rising irritation. It was high time to remind the müdir, his saptiehs, and this priest of his own pulverizing authority. So with clenched fists he bore down on Ter Haigasun but found that he had to halt in an uneasy posture of respect. All the more, therefore, did his voice feel obliged to spread consternation, the due effect of his own authoritative person.
"You'll deliver up all your weapons -- all of them! You understand? You can look like a bazaar juggler all you want, but you're personally responsible for every knife there is in the village."
"We have no weapons in the village."
This was perfectly true. Ter Haigasun spoke very quietly and steadily. Meanwhile, in the dark hallway of the mukhtar's house, there was in progress a minor tragi-comedy, which ended when the old village clerk with the sly goatee came flying out of the door, which quickly slammed after him. In this primitive fashion did Mukhtar Kebussyan, at this, the most difficult juncture of his mayoralty, appoint his clerk to represent him. The luckless pseudo-mukhtar, white as chalk, came stumbling into the arms of the saptiehs, who thrust him forwards to their leader.
The clerk babbled an echo of Ter Haigasun: "We've got no weapons in the village."
The head constable was greatly relieved by the sight of this trembling, stuttering mukhtar. It fully re-established his own thunderous divinity. He snatched a leather whip out of the hand of the nearest saptieth and swished the air with it. "All the worse for you if you've got no weapons.
Here, for the first time, the red-haired müdir took a hand. This young man from Salonika was anxious to show the Christian priest what a world of difference there existed between his like and a loutish police chief of the worst provincial variety. Ittihad did not stand for out-of-date massacres. Ittihad's methods were of the subtlest. Ittihad, with iron resolution, gave irresistible effect to the necessary raison d'etat, while endeavouring, in so far as this could be managed, to avoid superfluous harshness. Ittihad was so modern. It disliked the crude blood-baths of former days; it was in fact quite proud of possessing "nerves." All of which inspired the young müdir to a glance at his beautifully red-tinged fingernails before he turned towards Ter Haigasun, full of that dangerous amiability which all official persons invested with the powers of life and death know how to use so tellingly.
"You know what we've decided to do with you?"
The priest looked him steadily in the face, still not answering.
The müdir, a trifle disconcerted, waved at a placard. "The government has decided to migrate you. You're to be allotted other territory."
"And where is the other territory situated?"
"That's neither your affair nor mine. My only business is to collect you, and yours is simply to march."
"And when must we leave?"
"It will depend on how you behave how much time I give you to get your belongings into order and make yourselves ready to march according to exact stipulations."
The village clerk had by now managed to control himself. He asked in a voice of expectant humility: "And what are we allowed to take with us, Effendi?"
"Only what each individual can carry for himself on his back, or in his hand. All the rest, your fields, gardens, landed property, your houses, with all such movable and immovable furniture as belongs to them, goes to the state, by ministerial decree of the fifteenth of Nisan of the present year. The Migration Law of Mayis the fifth provides that you be allotted fresh holdings of ground in exchange for what you have vacated. Every holder to produce the registered extent of his property, to obtain a legal substitute from the government. Such a document must bear stamps to the value of five piastres. These stamps are obtainable at the district police headquarters."
This official chant came forth so mildly and melodiously from the lips of this young, carroty müdir that it sounded like some regulation for fruit-growers. The benevolent müdir raised his forefinger. "It will be best for you all to create as little disturbance as possible -- not to destroy any property, but to hand it over entire, just as it is, to the state."
Ter Haigasun opened his hands and spread them out towards the diplomatic young man from Salonika. "We don't want to keep anything, Müdir. What good would it be to us? Take whatever you find. Our doors are open."
The müdir's smooth tone had begun to rile the head constable. It was undermining his authority. After all, in the last resort, he was the head of this expedition, and this quill-driver a mere accessory person sent by the Kaimakam. If he let this mealy-mouthed clerk go on much longer, everyone would cease to believe that he was chief of police of the town of Antakiya. He opened the staring eye a little wider, with bloodshot, buffalo ferocity, came two steps nearer Ter Haigasun, and seized him by the thickly embroidered stole. "Now you'll get together six hundred rifles and have them piled up here before me!"
Ter Haigasun stared a long while at the place where the rifles were to be stacked. Suddenly he took a step backwards, with a violent jerk which almost overturned the head constable. "I've already told you that there aren't any rifles in the villages."
