Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  The dead slept, the Christians and the Mussulmans, strewn here and there in the bushes above the ilex gully, the thickets of the northern side. The licking flames of this huge mountain conflagration crept nearer with overweening playfulness. These flames seemed to rouse the sleepers; they raised them up from underneath, so that the dead, with a stiff jerk of terror, sat bolt upright, before their bodies started crackling, and they sank back into the cleansing holocaust. From hour to hour the fire increased, spreading far and wide across the Damlayik, to north and south. It halted only at the barren stone slopes of that incline which falls sheer from the South Bastion, while a rocky inlet protected the North Saddle against it. The green slopes of this mountain blessed with many springs, this miracle of the Syrian coast, triumphed once again with flaming banners, till at last nothing was left to devour but a strong obstacle field of glowing embers. Thus did Musa Dagh armor with fire, with red-glittering debris, her weary sons, lost in their gulf of sleep, unaware that for some time now they need fear no more from their pursuers. None realized how a friendly wind kept danger helpfully off the Town Enclosure, driving sparks and tongues of flame downhill. The villagers and the decads slumbered on till late afternoon -- only then did the Council meet to resolve that every imperilled point must be fully cleared of wood and undergrowth. This was a new and exhausting task.

  They had slept all through the day, all but one of them. She in her tent sat on the bed and never moved. But it served her little to make herself feel smaller and smaller within the buzzing cocoon of her inexpressible alienation, her inescapable guilt.

  4. SATO'S WAYS

  Although the lucky wind still kept its direction, this forest, or rather mountain fire had a deeply depressing effect on all these people. There was no more darkness. The red-eyed nights squinted and blinked at them. Crazy shadows leapt up to dance. Unendurable heat, at midnight just as at midday, without a breath of cooling air. Biting fumes strangled every breath. They ate into the membrane of nose and throat. A unique and curious form of cold in the head spread savagely through the whole camp, making tempers more and more uncertain.

  Instead of pride in victory, jubilant thanksgiving, the first signs of demoralization began to show themselves, those signs of a sinister inward process, which threatened to destroy all discipline in sudden bursts of wild ill-temper. This, in great measure, was the cause of the ugly brawl with Sarkis Kilikian, which took place, unluckily, on the very night of this day's repose. It is one of the reasons why neither Ter Haigasun nor Gabriel would let themselves be influenced by the fact that now, by God's mercy, a long truce might be expected. To be sure, this mad idea of setting a mountain on fire had, with the vast new loot of rifles, much improved the prospects of the defence. Even the hope that the Turks might renounce all further attempts was by no means so insane as it had been. And yet -- only the breast of the Damlayik was in flames; its hips, the stone slopes above Suedia and the North Saddle, were as liable as ever to be attacked. In no circumstances therefore must the stringent routine of the trenches be relaxed. The leaders' authority must be kept as implacable as ever.

  It was just as essential to re-establish the morale of the Town Enclosure. What Ter Haigasun called "normality" must be reaffirmed against all destructive evil powers. So that, when it met that night, on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the Council of Leaders, to avoid any mass excitement, decided against ceremonial burial of the dead.

  In this late afternoon, detachments, sent to bring in the dead, came back with sixty-seven corpses, out of the hundred and thirteen missing men. There were also a good many mortally wounded, who died that night, since they had no proper medical aid. Dr. Bedros Altouni had much to say to the Council on this point. In his sharp little voice, which certainly was not suited to solemn talk of corpses, he informed them that, since the summer heat was unbearably intensified by this fire, it was essential to bury at once. Every minute's delay was a danger to the whole camp. He, Dr. Altouni, disliked having to say such a thing to mourners, but by now, surely, everyone's nose must have convinced him of the absolute necessity for funerals. Not a second to lose! Let every bereaved family set to work and dig its grave at the place appointed. The Council, in Altouni's opinion, would have been far wiser to leave all the dead to the mercy of the great fire. It had not been able to make up its mind to do so.

  So the dead were wound into their shrouds, for the comfort of orphans and widows. A heap of his own earth was granted to each.

  This order did not, as some had feared it might, cause much ill-feeling among the people. They feared too much for their own health. And corruption had already become apparent. Three hours after midnight, it was finished. This exhausting work had stifled pain. Only a very few surviving relatives remained standing by the graves, with the candles they had been keeping so long. Reflections from the mountain fire swallowed these poor corpses into their shadow. Nunik and her colleagues had stayed in the valley. They dared no longer leave their holes, since the Turks had caught two old beggar-men in the maize fields, and thrashed them to death.

  On the following morning, August 25, two very important public events were due. The first concerned the selection of volunteers for Alexandretta and Aleppo. Swimmers and runners must leave at once. The other event was the trial of Sarkis Kilikian. The case stood as follows: There could be no doubt that Sarkis had to answer to the people for heavy losses, and yet Gabriel had not thought of calling him to account for criminal negligence, since in all previous attacks the Russian had behaved with the coolest gallantry. Gabriel had a certain insight into human incalculabilities, and knew besides that it is impossible to reconstruct with any reality a determined instant in any battle. But other leaders disagreed. There had been a brawl on the altar square. Sarkis had stood surrounded by an angry mob of his comrades. . . . Let him explain -- answer their questions -- justify himself! He neither justified nor explained. He stood, with his bleached face, his incurious eyes, his mouth shut before the frenzied accusations that spattered around him. This silence may not have been as insolent, malicious, self-assertive, as it seemed. Perhaps Kilikian himself could not understand his sudden negligence, and disdained all such easy excuses as "fatigue or misunderstood intentions." He was shoved this way and that; fists kept dancing under his nose. Probably any jury would have found that he acted in self-defence, had it not been that he struck the first blow. . . . And had not that blow been so terrible!

  For a while, apathetic as ever, he let them shove and push him as they pleased, seemed indeed scarcely to notice what was happening. Suddenly, then, he snatched his bony fist out of a pocket, and dashed it in his youngest tormentor's face, so horribly that the lad collapsed, streaming with blood from a broken nose, having lost an eye. It was done with incredible swiftness. For a half-second Kilikian had straightened up out of his slouch, his eyes had seemed to flare -- then they went as dead again as ever. No one would have thought him the aggressor, and, at first, luckily for him, most did not know how it had happened, and retreated a step. But when, with shouts of anger, they closed in on him, it would have gone very badly with him indeed, had the police of the Town Enclosure not saved him by taking him in charge.

  During the morning of his trial by the Council, he admitted indifferently that it was he who had struck the first blow; that he had known just what its effects would be. Nor would he attempt to prove self-defence. He seemed too detached, too bored, too slack, to speak. The circumstances in which he must live or die may have been, to such a man as Kilikian, a matter of more profound indifference than other people could ever realize. Gabriel heard the case without saying a word. He neither defended nor accused. The exasperated people demanded punishment.

  Ter Haigasun, having heard the last witness, sighed: "What am I to do with you, Sarkis Kilikian? One only needs to look at you to see that you don't fit into any order established by God! I ought to have you turned out of camp."

  He did not, but instead sentenced Kilikian to five days' imprisonment in irons, intensi
fied by three days' fasting. This punishment was worse than it may appear. For a brawl, in which he had not really been the aggressor, Kilikian found himself degraded from his rank as a respected leader and thrust back into the criminal underworld. It was the harshest degradation. But no indication on his part suggested that he had any honour left to degrade. After the trial they bound him hand and foot with ropes and placed him in the lock-up which formed the third room of the government hut. Now Kilikian looked as he had so many times in the course of his inexplicable life, in which punishment had come so swift on the heels of the vaguest misdoing, or of none at all. To these penalties also he submitted, with indifferent eyes, as to yet another, familiar, inescapable incident, in a life so subtly contrived. But this prison-house differed at least from all other, similar institutions in his wide experience by the fact that he had to share it with so august a spirit as Krikor. Right and left, two kennels, with plank beds, as alike as cells. The one, a shameful lock-up; the other -- the universe entire.

  Gabriel could feel in every nerve the advent of an incalculable event which would nullify the results of their recent victory. He had therefore urgently insisted that the messages must go out that day. Something must be made to happen quickly. And, even if the attempt proved vain, it would at least engender hope and expectation. The volunteers assembled, as the leaders had ordained, on the altar square. The whole camp was astir, since this choice of messengers, freely come to offer their lives, concerned the whole people.

  Gabriel came from a short inspection of the decads. In view of the dangerous slackness and irritation, which threatened to spread all through the camp, he had ordered fresh drill and fighting exercises for that same afternoon. His whole first defence had now been adequately armed with the two hundred freshly captured Mauser rifles. The best of his reserve had been sent to fill in the gaps, left by the recent, heavy fighting. Already Chaush Nurhan's jerky bugle calls could be heard, drilling these recruits. Iskuhi had come half-way to meet Gabriel. Since the first, sudden emotion sprang up between them, she had sought him out with the frankness of a little girl. They were walking side by side, without a word, the rest of the way to the altar square. Gabriel, whenever he had her with him, would be filled with the same strange, restful security. Always it was the same sensation, that what he felt for her was the most intimate thing he had ever known. Her warmth, as of a clear fire, seemed to reach far back, beyond any frontiers of conscious memory. Nor did she leave his side in the place of assembly, although she was the only woman, standing here without excuse in the midst of these debating men. Had she no fear that they all might comment on her behavior? That even her brother, Aram, might suspect?

  About thirty young men waited as volunteers for the Council of Leaders to choose among them. Five of them were still in their teens. The eldest among the cohort of youth had been allowed to give in their names. Gabriel, with a start of fear and anger, saw his son Stephan beside Haik. After a brief consultation with the other members of the Council, Ter Haigasun announced his choice. It was he who always gave the final decision in any estimate of the people's capacities and strength.

  The swimmers had been easy enough to pick out. In Wakef, the southernmost village, on the edge of the Orontes plain, and hence nearly on the coast, there were two famous divers and swimmers, one nineteen, the other twenty. Ter Haigasun handed out the leather belt, with its appeal, sewn up inside, to the possible commander of any English, American, French, Russian or Italian gunboat. The swimmers were to set out that night after sunset, over the North Saddle, having spent their last afternoon with their families.

  The question of the runners to Aleppo took a few minutes longer to settle. They had decided that only one young man should go out on that dangerous mission. But no Armenian adult, Pastor Aram Tomasian was convinced, would have the same chance as would a boy of getting to Aleppo alive. Armenian boys wore almost the same dress as Turkish. A boy would have twice the chance of slipping through. The justice of this was admitted. And one name occurred to them all: "Haik." That dour, resolute lad, with the fabulous swiftness, his body as hard as polished stone, was the right messenger, or nobody. Not another peasant in all that countryside had Haik's sightless adaptability to the earth over which he moved, that omniscient eye, as of some great bird, that setter's nose, the ears of a rat, the slippery nimbleness of an otter. If anyone here could succeed in evading death on the road to Aleppo, it must be Haik, and only he.

  But, when Ter Haigasun gave out Haik's name from the altar steps, there was a most unseemly protest from Stephan. Gabriel's face twitched with anger as he saw his son come impudently forth from his place in the line of volunteers and plant himself there under his nose. Never before had the crude precocity, the mental and physical untidiness, of his own son seemed so apparent.

  Stephan bared his teeth, like an angry dog. "Why only Haik? I want to go to Aleppo, too, Father."

  His mutinous voice shrilled out over the whole square. Such words, from a son to a father, were never heard among Armenians. Not even the unusual circumstance, this zeal in their defence, could excuse them.

  Ter Haigasun looked up impatiently. "Tell your son to behave himself, Gabriel Bagradian."

  Pastor Aram Tomasian, used at Zeitun to dealing with difficult boys, tried to pacify Stephan. "The Council of Leaders has decided that only one is to go to Aleppo. A big, intelligent fellow like you ought to know what the Council's orders mean to all of us. Absolute obedience -- isn't that it?"

  But the conqueror of Turkish howitzers was not to be fobbed off with legalities. Having no distinct notion of this duty, nor of how unfit he was to perform it,he could only feel he was being snubbed, set below the great competitor. The presence of so many assembled worthies did not deter in the least his touchy impudence. He still glared boldly at his father. "Haik's only about three months older than me! He can't even speak French. Mr. Jackson won't understand him. And what Haik can do, I can -- "

  Now Gabriel lost his temper. He came one quick step nearer Stephan. "Do? You can't do anything. You're a soft European -- that's all you are. A spoiled city child! Why, they'd snap you up like a blind cat. Get out! Go to your mother. If you stay another minute, I'll -- "

  Such harshness was most unwise. It hit Stephan's most tender susceptibilities. He was being publicly kicked down from the place he had found it so hard to win. Now all his deeds had been done in vain: his fruit-stealing, his heroic capture of the guns, which had nearly earned him the title "Lion." In a flash Stephan grasped the fact that no deed is done once and for all, that we always have to begin again at the beginning. He became suddenly very quiet. His sunburnt skin flushed darker than ever. He stared at Iskuhi with big eyes as though he were only just discovering her. It seemed to him that she answered his look severely, in a frigid stare. Iskuhi as the hostile witness of his defeat! It was too much! Suddenly Stephan began to bellow, not like an almost grown-up hero, a crack shot, the captor of enemy artillery, but like an unjustly punished schoolboy. Yet these childish sobs evoked no sympathy in the others, rather a kind of unholy glee. It was a fairly complex state of mind that invaded not only Stephan's comrades, but the grown-ups, and concerned not only the son but, for some obscure reason, Gabriel. "You don't belong here." It needed only a pretext for that sensation, and there it was! Stephan at once suppressed his howling grief. But its brief display had been quite enough to arouse contempt, not only among his comrades, but in all the other groups of the cohort of youth. Only Haik stood lost in serious thought. All this had nothing to do with him.

  Now the only thing left to Stephan was to slink away, with suspiciously heaving shoulders. Gabriel watched him go, in silence. He had ceased to be angry, having remembered the little boy in Montreux -- Stephan, charmingly dressed, his head bent sideways over the notepaper, forming big, round letters. He thought: "Stephan's getting to be a big boy. He'll be fourteen in November." . . . And this "he'll be" . . . "in November" . . . what idiotically Utopian thought was this? A chill presentiment stole
over him. . . . Something that can no longer be prevented! . . . Gabriel went to Three-Tent Square for another talk with his son.

  But neither Stephan nor Juliette was to be found there. In the sheikh's tent he changed his underclothes. As he did so, he missed one of the coins given him by the Agha Rifaat Bereket. It was the gold coin, with the head in sharp half-relief of the great Armenian king, Aschod Bagrathuni. He turned out the pockets of every suit. The gold coin was nowhere to be found.

  It was most unlucky that this new incursion of Turks and Arabs should have put an end to Sato's vagrant double life. And her status among the children was lower than ever. Ter Haigasun, a few days ago, in spite of all the teachers' recalcitrance, had insisted that school must be properly kept. But now, not even that martinet, Hrand Oskanian, could enforce discipline in class if Sato were sitting among the rest. "Stinker! Stinker!" chirruped the whole merciless flock, the instant that vagrant entered the school enclosure. Even up here, in this last refuge of the persecuted, Sato, that lousy orphan, supplied these children with a welcome pretext for feeling distinguished and nobly born. During one such class, taken by Iskuhi, their derision howled so loud that even the teacher, without concealing her own repugnance, drove the hated Sato out of class. "Go away, Sato; and don't let me see you again, ever!"