Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Mairik Antaram's voice sounded impatient.

  "Cheer up, Hovsannah, and be glad that your baby has a birthmark on his breast, not on his face. What do you expect?"

  Hovsannah closed weary eyes, as though she were tired of continually asserting her better nature in face of empty consolations.

  "Why doesn't he take his milk? And why doesn't he cry?"

  Mairik Antaram began to busy herself warming swaddling clothes round a hot stone. She cried out, without looking up from her work: "Wait another two days, till after the christening. Lots of children won't begin to cry till they're baptized."

  Hovsannah grimaced this away. "Provided we can make him live till then."

  The doctor's wife got very angry. "You're a wet blanket, Madame Tomasian. You depress everybody! Who can say, up here on the Damlayik, what'll have happened in two days, to anyone! Christening or death? Not even Bagradian Effendi could tell you for certain whether we'll be alive in two days."

  "Well, if we are alive," said Gabriel, smiling, "we must all have a christening feast, here outside the tents. I've talked to the pastor about it. Madame Tomasian, you must say whom you want invited."

  Hovsannah lay on, indifferent. "I don't belong to Yoghonoluk. I know nobody here."

  Iskuhi, sitting on her bed, had listened to all this without saying a word. Gabriel eyed her. "Iskuhi Tomasian, would you care to come for a walk? My wife's disappeared. I want to look for her."

  Iskuhi's face questioned Hovsannah, who with a plaintively exaggerated voice urged her to go with Gabriel. "Of course you must go, Iskuhi! I shan't need you. It'll do you good. You can't help with the swaddling."

  Iskuhi hesitated, she could feel some hidden spite in Hovsannah's words. But Mairik Antaram insisted: "You go along, Sirelis, my pretty! And don't let me see you again till tonight. What sort of a life is this for you!"

  Gabriel and Iskuhi went towards the Town Enclosure, though there was not much chance of finding Juliette there. They walked between the narrow lines of huts. People were sitting out in front of them. The air up here was cooler and pleasanter than it had been down in the valley. The sea sighed mildly, in long cool breaths. All were at work. The women were patching clothes and washing. The old men of the reserve were plying their trades, soling shoes, planing wood, curing lamb and goatskins. Nurhan's munitions works appeared to be working overtime.

  They left the camp. They could only exchange monosyllables. The most trivial questions and replies. They went westwards along the highest peak. Here it was barren. They had come out of the wild plateau landscape. They were on the verge of a desert without birds' voices, only stirred by a little breeze, which blew across them, carrying their words to one another.

  Gabriel did not look at Iskuhi; it was so good to feel her invisibly beside him. Only when they came to steep declines, did he watch with delight her hesitant feet which seemed to grow so charmingly embarrassed. Then all talk between them ceased. What was there to say? Gabriel took Iskuhi's hand. (Her lame arm made her walk on the left of him.) As they walked she surrendered to him in silence, keeping nothing back, insisting on nothing. They did not speak of this emotion which unfolded so swiftly. They never kissed. They went on, belonging to one another. Iskuhi went with Gabriel as far as the edge of the northern trench. When she had said good-bye, he stood there a long time looking after her. No wish, no scruple, came to life in him, no vague anxiety, thought of the future. Future? Absurd! He was light with joy from head to foot. Iskuhi's being withdrew so delicately that not one thought of her disturbed him as he worked out his new plan of defence. Later, when Stephan came to report, he forgot to punish the boy for his disobedience.

  The new life on Musa Dagh had also its religious consequences. In the last few decades it had been a sort of fashion among Armenians to change one's creed. Protestantism especially, thanks to the efforts of its German and American missionaries, had gained much ground since the middle of the previous century. It is enough to remember those admirable mission fathers of Marash, whose indefatigable efforts -- educational, charitable, architectural -- had been of such service to Cilician and Syrian Armenians, including those of the seven communes round Musa Dagh. But it was certainly a most fortunate circumstance that religious differences had caused no essential rift in the national unity. Christianity itself had so hard a struggle against the Turks as to preclude petty spite and religious intolerance. Pastor Harutiun Nokhudian of Bitias had been quite free in the seven villages to preach his doctrine and theology. In all major questions of conduct he had submitted himself to Ter Haigasun. Up here on the Damlayik Pastor Aram, his successor, took over the old pastor's duty of ministering to such Protestants as remained, though he too submitted to the priest. Ter Haigasun let him have the use of the altar every Sunday after Mass to deliver his sermon, which usually not only Protestants but the whole population came to hear. Differences of ritual had ceased to matter. Ter Haigasun was the uncontested high priest of this mountain, and administered to people's souls as the superior both of Pastor Aram and the smaller married village clergy. Therefore it went without saying that Tomasian should ask him to baptize his newborn son.

  The christening had been fixed for the following Sunday, the fourth in August, their twenty-third day in camp. But Mass and other duties prevented Ter Haigasun undertaking it till late in the afternoon of that day. Since Hovsannah was still feeling too weak to manage to get as far as the altar, Aram had asked the priest to baptize the child on Three-Tent Square, so that the mother might be present at the ceremony.

  Gabriel kept his promise to Hovsannah and sent out about thirty-five invitations, to notables and the most important section leaders. The reception into Christ's communion of this first-born on Musa Dagh was a good way of maintaining cordial relations with the chief personalities of the people. He had still nine ten-litre jars of the heavy local vintage. Kristaphor was ordered to bring out two of them and a few bottles of mulberry brandy. He could not, to be sure, offer his guests more solid refreshment; the food supplies on Three-Tent Square were already alarmingly reduced.

  The guests assembled, at four, outside the tents. A few chairs had been brought along for the older people. The sacristan had stood a little tin bathtub on a low table. The very ancient and beautiful font in the church had had to be left behind in Yoghonoluk. Ter Haigasun robed in the sheikh tent. Gabriel, by Aram's wish, had consented to stand ginkahair, godfather.

  The church choir, led by the diminutive Asayan, had taken up its position around the table, with its crucifix and the tin font. The lukewarm christening water had already been borne before the altar. Now, to the singing of the choir, one of Ter Haigasun's subordinate priests dropped three drops of the sacred christening oil into the tub.

  Gabriel, the ginkahair, gingerly took the child from Mairik Antaram. The women, in honor of the occasion, had laid that sallow, brownish, puckered object, which showed no strength, on a special cushion -- a magnificent cushion in view of the general circumstances. The child's eyes stared without seeing at the world, into whose cruel life he had come so guiltless. Nor did his voice yet find it worth its while to whimper one assent to the light of God, which lights up this cruelty so magnificently. Gabriel held out the wretched bundle, which seemed in its estrangement to resent being captured by religion, with all its consequences, in front of the priest, as the service prescribed. Ter Haigasun's eyes, so humble, yet so coldly sacerdotal, did not seem to know that this was Gabriel. Or at least they did not see the man, only the officiating person, with a ritual duty to discharge. It was always the same whenever Ter Haigasun stood at the altar or wore his vestments. Every human memory and relationship faded out of his eyes, to give way to the stern equanimity of his office. He asked the ritual question of the godfather. "What does this child ask?" And Gabriel, who felt very clumsy, had to answer: "Faith and hope and love." This was repeated three times. Only then the question: "And what shall this child be called?"

  He was to be called after his grandfather Master Mikae
l Tomasian. At this point of the ceremony that ancient was comically inspired to stand up and make a little bow, as though he were being cited to share in the future of his descendant. Opinions differed among the lookers-on as to what that future might prove to be. Even if by some miracle they were saved, the sickly, apathetic little body would scarcely have the strength to hold on to life. Mairik Antaram, Iskuhi and Aram Tomasian had come over to Gabriel. The child was unwound from its swaddling clothes. Iskuhi's and Gabriel's hands touched more than once. A morose hopeless mood was on the spectators. Hovsannah stared with a pinched puritanical face at the group round the font. Something seemed to impel her very soul to the bitterest desolation, hostility. It may have been the thought of that deep bond between Aram and Iskuhi, brother and sister, from which at this instant she felt shut out.

  Ter Haigasun took up the child with inimitable, dexterous certainty. His hands, which had christened a thousand children, worked with the almost super-terrestial grace and elegance which all born priests display in even the manual part of their office. For a second he held out the child to the people. Everyone could see the large red birthmark on its chest. Then he dipped it quickly, three times, in water, making the sign of the cross each time with its body. "I baptize thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost." Hovsannah had pulled herself up from her seat. She bent forward with a convulsive grimace. This was the decisive moment. Would her child, as it touched the baptismal water, break out at last, as Mairik Antaram had promised her, in a long wail? Ter Haigasun reached the suckling back to his ginkahair. It was not Gabriel, however, but Antaram who took him and dried his sickly body, gently, with a soft cloth. The child had not cried. But Hovsannah, its mother, shrieked aloud. Two long hysterical screams. The chair fell down behind her back. She hid her face and stumbled into the tent. Juliette, sitting at her side, had plainly heard her cry form, and repeat, a word: "Sin! Sin!"

  Aram Tomasian remained some time in the tent. He came back looking pale and laughed uneasily. "You must forgive her, Ter Haigasun. She's never really managed to get over the shock of Zeitun, though she hasn't shown it up to now."

  He signaled to Iskuhi to go in and look after Hovsannah. The girl glanced desperately at Gabriel, and seemed to hesitate. He said to the pastor: "Couldn't you leave your sister with us, Tomasian? Mairik Antaram's in the tent, you know."

  Tomasian pulled back a chink in the canvas door. "My wife has been asking for her so urgently! Later, perhaps, when Hovsannah's asleep . . ."

  Iskuhi had already disappeared. Gabriel could feel that the pastor's wife could not brook the fact that, while she herself suffered unspeakably, her young sister-in-law should not be chained to the same suffering.

  Nor in the ensuing jollifications could the guests shake off the weight of this christening. Gabriel had had another long table set end to end with the one at which Juliette "received." They all sat down along the benches. This arrangement, in the eyes of these socially hyper-sensitive people, seemed to indicate a dual treatment, which wounded a number of snobbish souls. The "best people" were all at Juliette's table. Ter Haigasiin, the Bagradians, Pastor Tomasian, Krikor, Gonzague Maris and -- shamelessly -- Sarkis Kilikian. Gabriel, who had invited that ragged outsider, now even asked him to sit beside him. Madame Kebussyan, on the other hand, in spite of the eagerest maneuverings, had found no seat among the notables. She had been forced to take her place with the other mayoresses, though her husband's wealth, notwithstanding the fact that she had lost it, should really have set her high above them. Gabriel, however, talked almost exclusively to Kilikian. He kept beckoning to Missak and Kristaphor to fill up the Russian's tin mug, since Kilikian would only drink out of that, and had thrust away the glass set out for him. Was it mere stubbornness? Or a deep mistrust in the heart of the continually persecuted? Gabriel could not be certain. He tried very hard, but quite unsuccessfully, to get on friendly terms with his neighbor. That impassive death's-head with agate eyes, brooding on nothing, would only give monosyllabic answers.

  Gabriel's feelings toward Kilikian were complex. Here was a man of some education (three years in the Ejmiadzin Seminary). Hence, something more than the ordinary Asiatic proletarian. And again, his life had been so astounding that this young man's feaures looked as ravaged by it, his eyes as dead, as though he were old. Set against the relentlessness of this fate, the common Armenian woe became as a shadow. Yet the man had mastered it, or at least he had not succumbed, and that, to Gabriel, was enough to prove an unusual personality -- which compelled respect. Yet vague mistrustful feelings of equal strength counterbalanced this positive attraction. There could be no doubt that Kilikian looked, and had often behaved, like a dangerous criminal. His vicissitudes could not always have been unmerited; somehow they were too much in keeping with his personality as a whole. Impossible to say whether prison had made him a criminal or some inborn criminal tendency led him there by way of politics. Nor did anything about the Russian in the least suggest the socialist or anarchist. He seemed not to have the slightest feeling for ideas and general social objectives. Nor was he altogether malicious, though a good many women in the camp called him "the devil," from his appearance. This did not mean that at any minute he might not have been ready to do a murder in cold blood. His secret lay in his being nothing at all explicit, in his seeming to belong nowhere, to be living at some zero point of incomprehensible neutrality. Of all the people on the Damlayik he and Apothecary Krikor were certainly the most unsocial beings. The Russian, though he attracted him profoundly, depressed Bagradian.

  "I am glad I wasn't wrong about you, Sarkis Kilikian. We have you, as much as anyone, to thank for our success on the fourteenth. Those machines of yours were a very good invention. I suppose you remembered something you'd learned at the Seminary? The Roman siege methods, was that it?"

  "Haven't an idea, don't know anything about it," Kilikian grinned.

  "If the Turks don't venture another attack on the south, that'll be your work, Kilikian."

  This seemed to make some slight impression, but not a pleasant one. The Russian glanced with dead eyes at Gabriel. "We might have made those things far better."

  Gabriel felt how inexorably the Russian was rejecting him. He began to be annoyed at his own weakness, which had nothing to oppose to this. "I suppose you got some experience of engineering in the boring turrets of the Baku oil fields?"

  The Russian smirked at him mockingly. "Wasn't even semi-skilled. I was nothing but an ordinary hand."

  Gabriel pushed some cigarettes across to him. "I've asked you here, Kilikian, to tell you some intentions of mine with regard to you. It's to be hoped we'll be getting a few days' peace; but sooner or later they're bound to start a fresh attack that will make all the others seem like child's play. Now listen, my son, I intend to give you an extremely responsible post -- "

  Kilikian emptied his tin mug to the very last drop, set it down reflectively. "That's your look-out! You're the commandant."

  Meanwhile, the long "churls' table" had begun to get extremely noisy. These people had become unused to alcohol, and it soon went to their heads. And Juliette had given orders for a third jar to be unsealed. There were two very argumentative factions -- optimists and pessimists. Mukhtar Kebussyan had climbed up on the bench, where he stood swaying and rolling his bald head. He eyed them all with immense and vacant satisfaction. He was slyly mysterious:

  "We ought to negotiate. I've been mayor of Yoghonoluk for twelve years. . . . I've negotiated with the Turks, with the Kaimakam and the müdir . . . the Kaimakam was always most cordial . . . I was punctual to the minute in paying in the communal bedel . . . and I used to be taken into his office -- they all know me -- the whole lot of them -- Kaimakam, Mutessarif, Wali, Vizir, Sultan -- they all knew I was Thomas Kebussyan! If I go along to negotiate, they won't do anything to me, they know I'm a taxpayer . . . you aren't taxpayers, there's no comparison . . ."

  The smaller taxpayers, the village mayors and headmen of minor villages, wer
e annoyed; they pulled Kebussyan down off his perch. Chaush Nurhan shouted that he wouldn't stand any more useless people in camp, eating up the supplies -- he'd make the whole lot of them toe the line, whether they were seventy years old or not. Laughter. The tipsy row looked as though it might end in blows. But luckily Gabriel gave orders that no more of his wine was to be distributed before quickly leaving the table with Samuel Avakian, who had come to him to whisper some announcement.

  Almost all the notables had retired. Ter Haigasun had stayed just half an hour. Aram Tomasian had soon followed him and gone back to his wife in the tent. Gonzague and Juliette sat together. Hrand Oskanian was still in attendance on Juliette. He sat on the grass at her feet, and refused to take a place that had been vacated. But suddenly the silent little schoolmaster scrambled up, with the aid of his musket, as though a snake had bitten him. He stared in horror at Juliette, then he turned and left them stiffly. Oskanian had not had much to drink. And yet, before he had gone a few yards, he was telling himself that what he supposed he had just seen must have been an illusion, brought on by wine. It was not to be thought, it was something altogether impossible, that a fair-haired pale-skinned goddess should sit rubbing an amorous knee against that of a shady adventurer, her subject, of whose origins no one knew anything. Yet for all his conclusive reasoning Oskanian's heart was still beating hard, as he crossed the square before the altar. Juliette, grown suddenly restless, stood up to say that she must go in to see Hovsannah, neglected by her culpably all this time.