Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Before coming out of the tent Juliette would fall on her knees, and embrace her pillow, thrusting away daylight once again. At first, days (years?) ago she had merely felt bewildered and unhappy. But now she longed for such guiltless unhappiness. Never, since the world began, had any woman behaved so basely -- she, a true, a self-respecting wife, in whose long marriage there had been not one single "affair." But would not a hundred affairs in Paris have been as nothing compared to this meanest, basest treachery, in the midst of a desperate struggle with certain death? Juliette knelt like a little girl, whispering, "I can't help it," into her pillow. What use was that? By magic, how she could not tell, here in this inexorable "foreignness" she had surrendered to what seemed most akin. In a very low voice, as though to summon some counter-force from herself, she cried out, "Gabriel!" But Gabriel had vanished as much as Juliette. Less and less could she discover his true image in that album of faded photographs, her memory. And the unknown, bearded, brown Armenian who, now and then, caine in to sit with her -- what had he to do with Gabriel? Juliette felt scared of her own tears, wiped her eyes carefully, and waited until they looked a little less red and hideous.

  Bedros Altouni had had all those patients who were not feverish dismissed and carried back to their huts. Though he gave no definite reasons for having done it, he had somewhat ticklish ones. The news of the Armenian victory of August 14 had spread like wildfire through plain and mountains. It had appealed especially to deserters in hiding in the surrounding hills. On the very next day twenty-two of them had come to the outposts and asked to be taken into camp. Gabriel, who had to be on his guard against spies and traitors, had closely cross-questioned them. But, since losses had to be made up, since they all appeared to be Armenians, and since each had a rifle and cartridges, he took them all in. Among them was a very young man who looked bewildered, and seemed uneasy. He declared that only a few days before he had escaped from barracks at Aleppo, and that the long tramp had worn him out. But that same evening, deathly pale, the young man had come into the hospital hut where, having mumbled something unintelligible, he had collapsed. Altouni had stripped him at once. The poor lad chattered and shook with fever. His chest was a mass of red spots, which increased considerably in the night. Bedros consulted his Handbook, a thing he had not done for a long time. Its hieroglyphics were unreadable. He asked the Frenchwoman's advice:

  "My dear, just have a look at this one, will you? What do you think?"

  Juliette was not the kind of woman who gets used to the horrors of disease. Each time she entered this nightmare hut she had to make an effort not to be sick. She did her best, her share of everything, and yet her shudders of nausea increased, the longer she stayed, instead of diminishing. Yet now incomprehensible ecstasy filled her. It was as though she could atone for her guilty betrayal -- here and now. This scrubby, sour-smelling creature at her feet, with spittle dribbling from his mouth, twisting and turning unconsciously in delirium, was Stephan and Gabriel in one. Juliette knelt beside him and leaned her head -- as though she herself were slowly fainting -- with closed eyes, on his shrunken chest.

  Gonzague's voice startled her awake: "What on earth are you doing, Juliette? You must be crazy."

  And the old doctor seemed as conscience-stricken as Madame Bagradian herself: "It'd really be better, my dear, if you came here less, and didn't work so hard."

  Gonzague caught her eye secretively. She followed, obedient. In his case, too, Juliette had lost her sense of time. It was all confused. How had it happened? In which of her pasts? Since when had she followed defenceless, whenever he called? How dense and heavy this silence and complicity, even now. But he had not changed. The same impenetrable alertness of eyes and thoughts, and never an unguarded second. Camp life had done nothing to his appearance; his hair was as neatly brushed as ever, his coat as spotless, his body as clean, his skin as clear, his breath untainted. Was she in love with him? No; it was something far more horrible. Since unhappy love, if only in a dream, can devise some path, some way of escape. This sensation was pitiless. Often Gonzague seemed as remote as Gabriel. He, at first the trusted, the familiar, the pleasantly "lost" child, who aroused comradeship and pity, had changed into a cruel inevitability, from which there could be no escape. When he touched her, she felt what she had never felt. But each touch made her loathe her treachery more. Many of the embowered and wooded solitudes along these cliffs had become accomplices. Her ebbing pride cried out in Juliette: "I -- here on the ground -- I? . . ." Yet each time Gonzague seemed to contrive to efface all ugliness. Perhaps he had a genius for the moment, just as there are gamblers, huntsmen, collectors, who have trained one faculty to its uttermost. At least he shared such people's inexhaustible patience. She had lured Gonzague on to the Damlayik; modest yet assured, he had bided his time. His concentration evoked in Juliette its opposite, inattention, and lamed her will. Often she was devoured by absent-mindedness. They sat down to rest in a quiet place, which they called "the Riviera" between themselves.

  Gonzague broke a cigarette, and lit one half carefully. "I've still got fifty." Then, as though to give a more cheerful turn to this sad thought of tobacco running out: "Well, we shan't be here so much longer."

  She stared at him without seeing he was there.

  "I suggest we get out of this, you and I. It's about time."

  She still seemed not to hear what he was saying. He explained his plan with the driest precision. Only the first two hours might be a bit difficult. A day's excursion, south, along the mountain ridge -- that was all it was. One might have to do a little climbing to get down on the right from the tiny village of Habaste to the Orontes plain and the road to Suedia. He'd used last night to get the lie of all that ground, and, quite easily, without having met a soul, got within a square mile of the alcohol factory and into the manager's house, who, as Juliette knew, was a Greek, and a most influential person. It was amazing how simply it could be done.

  "The manager's entirely at our disposal. On August 26 the little factory steamer sails with a cargo for Beirut. She'll stop there on her way to Latakia and Tripoli, and, according to schedule, she ought to touch Beirut on the twenty-ninth. She sails under the American flag. You see, it's an American firm. The manager's certain there won't be the slightest danger, because at that time the Cyprus fleet is putting out again. You'll have your own cabin, Juliette! When we're in Beirut, you'll have won. All the rest is just a question of money. And that you've got . . ."

  Her eyes looked blank. "And Stephan and Gabriel?"

  Gonzague was blowing ash off his coat. "Stephan and Gabriel? They'd be taken anywhere for Armenians. But I asked the manager about them. He says he can't do anything for Armenians. He's so well in with the Turkish government he can't afford to take any risks. He said so definitely. So, unluckily, Gabriel and Stephan can't be rescued."

  Juliette drew away from him. "And I'm to let myself be rescued. . . . By you?"

  Gonzague jerked his head almost imperceptibly, unable, it appeared, to feel any sympathy with the woman's exaggerated scruples. "Well, you know how he himself wanted to send you! And with me, what's more."

  She pressed both fists into her temples. "Yes, he wanted to send me and Stephan. . . . And I've done this to him. And I lie to him . . . !"

  "You shan't go on lying, Juliette. I'd be the last to want that of you. On the contrary! You must tell him the whole thing. Better do it today."

  Juliette sprang up. Her face looked very red and bloated. "What? You want me to kill him? He has the lives of five thousand people in his hands. And at a time like this I'm to kill him!"

  "You distort everything by exaggerating," said Gonzague, still seated and very serious. "Usually it's strangers we kill. One sees that every day. But sometimes we're forced to choose between our own lives and those of what we call our 'nearest and dearest.' Is Gabriel really your nearest and dearest? And will it really kill him if you escape, Juliette?"

  Such calm words, his self-assured eyes, brought her back to his
side. Gonzague seized Juliette's hand and lucidly expounded his philosophy. Each of us has only one life. His only duty is towards this single, never to be repeated, life; towards nothing and nobody else! And what is the truest essence of life? What does life consist in? It consists in one long chain of desires and appetites. Though often we may only imagine we want a thing, the essential is that we want it intensely. Our duty is ruthlessly to satisfy our desires and appetites. That is the one and only "meaning" of life. That is why we expose ourselves to danger, even death, for something we want, since, outside this urge to satisfaction, there can be no life. Gonzague gave himself as an instance of the only logical, straightforward way of behaving. He had not hesitated a second to accept discomfort and danger for something he loved. He concluded disdainfully: "But all that you, Juliette, mistake for love and self-sacrifice is no more than convenient anxiety."

  Her head dropped heavily on his shoulder. She was steeped again in tormenting absent-mindedness. "You're so tidy, Gonzague. Don't be so horribly clear and orderly, Gonzague. I can't stand it! Why aren't you the same as you used to be?"

  His light hand, a miracle of tender awakenings, passed stroking down the length of her arm, over her breast, down to her hips. She broke into babbling sobs. Gonzague comforted her:

  "You've still got time, yet, to make up your mind. Seven long days. And after all, who knows what may happen in the meantime . . ."

  Ter Haigasun after a long interval had summoned the entire Council of Leaders. They sat on the long bench in the council-room of the government hut. Only Apothecary Krikor, as his habit was, heard the discussion from his sleeping-apartment, without himself saying a word. The sage, it appeared, had, with the object of perfecting his inner life, almost entirely renounced human contacts. He spoke to scarcely anyone now but himself, though in the depth of night his soliloquies went on and on. Nobody hearing them would have been in the least the wiser. For Krikor merely ranged long lines of imposing encyclopaedic concepts in, so to speak, dreamy single file. As for instance: "Burning core of the earth -- celestial axis -- swarm of the Pleiades -- fructification of blossom . . ." Such high-sounding concepts seemed to raise Krikor's soul above itself, bringing it nearer the underlying cause of all things. He tossed them in the air. They hovered in swarms above his head. Out of them he fashioned a dome, set with the glimmering mosaics of Science, under which he lay with the enigmatic smile of a Buddhist priest. There exists a degree of ascetic perfection too elevated to permit of its being shared, since everything exalted is also asocial. Krikor had perhaps attained it, he no longer taught. The Leaders, his former disciples, never came near him now, or eyen inquired for him. The days were done when, on nightly walks with Oskanian, Shatakhian, Asayan, and other dust-devouring mortals, Krikor had named the stars and numbered them, out of his own mind. Now these giant stars, these giant worlds, circled in silence within his brain, and the sage had ceased to feel any pricking urge to give of them enthusiastic tidings. Krikor scarcely got an hour's sleep. A fierce pain, worse every day, cramped his joints and tendons. When, noticing he was ill, his old friend Bedros Altouni asked medical questions, he received a triumphant Latin answer: "Rheumatismus articulorum et musculorum." Not a word of complaint passed Krikor's lips. He had been sent this illness to preserve the supremacy of the spirit. It had no other consequence. Everything around him drifted away. Reality grew buzzingly remote. So that, as, for instance today, the men sat discussing, he heard their words with the staring eyes, the uncomprehending, muttering lips, of a deaf-mute. It was as though the words which expressed such earthly necessity had almost ceased to have a meaning.

  This time they talked for hours. Avakian and the parish clerk of Yoghonoluk sat apart, taking notes of their chief resolutions, to be shaped into minutes. The camp guard had been posted outside the government hut -- a personal edict of Ter Haigasun. Since their priest was not given to formal gestures, it must be supposed that he had some good and far-sighted reason for taking this protective measure. Today the guard had only the duty of shielding the Council from interruption, keeping unauthorized persons out of the hut. Later, more dangerous sittings might have to be held, on days when the Council needed protection. Ter Haigasun presided with half-shut eyes, as frostily weary-looking as ever. Pastor Aram Tomasian, as chief supervisor of the domestic economy of the camp, read out his report on the state of food supplies, which the priest had set down as the first item on the agenda. He gave an exact picture. Following on the first, disastrous hailstorm, the direct hit of the shrapnel had not only destroyed their remaining flour, but all their other precious stores: all oil, all wine, sugar, honey, and -- apart from unnecessary things like tobacco and coffee -- that first of all necessities, salt. There was only enough salt left to cure their meat for three more days. And the meat itself, which every stomach already rebelled against, was diminishing at a really alarming extent. The mukhtars, who were present, had arranged a count of remaining cattle, and reckoned that, since they had lived on Musa Dagh, the collective herds had shrunk by a third. Such economy could no longer continue, as supplies would very soon be exhausted. The pastor asked the mukhtar, Thomas Kebussyan, as an expert breeder, to explain the state of the herds. Kebussyan stood up, wagged his head. His squinting peasant's eyes stared at all and nobody. He launched out on a string of moving complaints over the loss of his own beautiful sheep, which it had taken him so many years of industrious breeding to rear. In the golden days before the migration, a full-grown wether had weighed anything from forty-five to fifty okas. Now it scarcely weighed half that. The mukhtar attributed this to two special reasons. The first of these was sentimental. This cursed communal ownership -- not that he did not admit that it was necessary -- was bad for the sheep. He knew his sheep. They were getting thin because they belonged to nobody, because they couldn't feel any master worrying about them, their good or bad health. His second reason was less political, more enlightening. All the best pasture in the enclosure, which had not only to feed the sheep, but goats and donkeys into the bargain, was almost cropped down. The sheep were being badly foddered; how could they be expected to put on fat, or tender flesh even? And it wasn't any better with the milk. You couldn't so much as think of butter or cheese any longer, Kebussyan concluded in a whine; some other pasturage was essential if they wanted to improve the condition of the stock.

  Gabriel opposed this very decisively. These weren't the piping times of peace; at best this was life in a Noah's Ark, on a deluge of blood. There could be no question of allowing people or herds to stray as they pleased. Turkish spies were all round the camp enclosure. To let the herds graze outside that enclosure, especially on the northerly heights, would be more of a risk than anyone dare take on himself. Damn it! There must surely be some other pasturage, within the camp. Couldn't they drive the herds up the steeps?

  "The grass up there is short and all burnt out," interrupted the Mukhtar of Habibli, "even camels couldn't manage it."

  Gabriel refused to be led astray. "Better that we should have less meat than none at all!"

  Ter Haigasun endorsed Bagradian's warning and asked the pastor to finish his report. Aram went on to the lack of bread, and the consequences of unmixed meat-eating. There were a hundred reasons, besides this diminishing of the herds, for trying to find some other food besides meat. Forays into the valley were out of the question, now that the villages were reoccupied. On the other hand Bedros Altouni would agree with him that the people's health would be bound to suffer in the end, unless some other food could be found. They could see for themselves how much sallower and thinner people were looking. They must all have felt it. So that a change of diet would have to be made possible at all costs.

  And Pastor Tomasian had a scheme. So far they had all neglected the sea. At certain points along the cliffs it was possible to climb down to it in half an hour. He himself had discovered a disused mule-track which could easily be built up and made fit to use. What was the good of having skilled road-menders both among the villagers an
d deserters? Two days' work, and there would be a very easy road down to the beach. They must form a group of young people, the strongest women and biggest lads of the cohort of youth, to lay out a salting-ground down in the hollow under the cliffs. A raft, knocked together out of tree trunks and a few oars, would be enough to put out to a calmer place, a few hundred yards out to sea. The women could set to work that very day making draw-nets. There was plenty of twine in the camp. And another thing! He, Aram, remembered that as a boy he had always been out stoning birds. The boys of Yoghonoluk must be much the same nowadays. Well, let them all bring out their catapults! Instead of hanging about and getting under people's feet, the lads ought all to be out bird-killing.

  The pastor's suggestions were applauded and discussed in detail. The Council empowered him to organize these projects for food supplies. Then Bedros Altouni gave his health report. Of the twenty-four wounded in the last battle all, thank God, except four, who were still feverish, were out of danger. Twenty-eight he had already sent back home, to be looked after by their families. They would soon all be ready for the line again. But what gave the doctor cause for far worse uneasiness was the strange new illness brought into camp by a young deserter from Aleppo. Since last night the boy had been on the point of death, and was probably dead by this time. But worse still, the other hospital patients had begun to show signs of being infected by him; cases of sudden vomiting and high fever and choking fits. So it must be a case of that epidemic of which he now remembered seeing accounts, in the last few months, in Aleppo newspapers. But one epidemic of this description was as dangerous to the camp as were the Turks. Early that morning therefore he had made arrangements for the strictest isolation of all these cases. Far from the Town Enclosure, as everyone knew, there was a small, shady boxwood, with a stream between two high mounds. It was well out of the way of both the decads and workers. He suggested that the Council form a group of hospital attendants, out of all the least useful people in camp, who must also be kept apart from everyone else. Bedros gave Kevork, the sunflower-dancer, as an instance of the kind of person he meant. He obviously would be ideal as a nurse. He turned to Gabriel.