Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  So far, in stolid indifference, ignorant alike of honor and shame, Sato had managed to hold her own. But now that her admired Iskuhi, her küchük hanum, had joined the enemy, thrusting her forth, Sato had to obey. In her short European frock with the butterfly sleeves, which, ragged and caked with mud, made her look grotesque, she went trailing off. But only as far as the nearest bush, under which she lay down quietly, like a jackal watching a caravan camp with ravenous eyes.

  Sato was not so poor as she seemed. She, too, had a world. For instance, she could understand the animals which strayed across her vagrant way. Iskuhi and all the others would no doubt have said without hesitation that Sato was a cruel little beast to them. Everything about her suggested it. But -- on the contrary! This bastard waif vented none of her spite on beasts, which she handled with a protective, whispering sympathy. Her insensitive hands would pick up a hedgehog, and she would whisper so long that at last the ball began to unroll, the pointed snout darted forth, the alert, businesslike eyes of a small bazaar-shopkeeper sized her up quickly. Sato, who could only speak to grown-ups as though she had a gag in her mouth, was expert in every shade of bird-cry. Such gifts, which would no doubt have commanded respect, she diligently hid, fearing they might do her social damage. And, as with beasts, so could she talk with the old madwomen, crouching in their holes round the Yoghonoluk churchyard. Sato never noticed that these breathless, disconnected gabblers used their tongues in any way differently from other, sanely gossiping matrons. In any case it was very pleasant to take one's share in such friendly talks, which made no fatiguing demands on one's choice of expression. The smaller beasts, these female halfwits, and sometimes even a blind beggar, formed a realm apart, in which Sato found herself respected, as every human being must needs feel respected, in order to live. Though, to be sure, with Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, Sato was still a respectful underling.

  But now this communion was shattered. It was dull. There was really no point in straying about within camp bounds. Little by little, this idle restlessness got diverted into channels of its own: spying on grown-ups. With the sharp instinct which mocked all that unintelligible book-learning, Sato perceived whatever was animal in these grown-ups, all that might have escaped their control, all cravings, their mad self-seekings. Of those emotions of whose dangerous existence in the world she was scarcely consciously aware, she could nonetheless hear the grass grow. The avid little spy, like a magnet, drew all that was not in order towards herself.

  It is therefore not in the least surprising that Sato soon realized how things were between Gonzague and Juliette. The pricking, ominous sense of a major catastrophe invaded her. All disinherited people know this delightful prescience of catastrophe, the delicious hope that the world is about to crash, which forms one of the strongest impulses both to minor scandals and revolution. Sato kept close behind these two. Next to Bagradian himself, Juliette and Monsieur Gonzague were the most resplendent apparitions in Sato's world. She did not hate them in the least, in the way bad servants hate their masters. She felt a primitive's curiosity for something which seems almost superhuman.

  She had soon spied out their hiding place, the secret place of myrtle and rhododendron. With delight trickling down her spine, she forced her muzzle slowly through the thicket. Her glittering eyes were avid for this sight sent by the gods. The august, resplendent hanum, from France, the giantess, the ever-perfumed . . . now her hair hung in wisps over a face which advanced its almost lifeless surfaces, its wide, dolorous mouth, towards the steady features of the man who, with drooping lids, still seemed acutely on the alert as, first, he savored the gift, before drawing it close. Sato, shaking with excitement, watched the play of Gonzague's long, narrow hands, like the knowing hands of a blind tar-player, come and go across the hanum's white shoulders, and cup her breasts.

  Sato saw all there was to see. Also, what was not to be seen. The schoolteachers had given her up long ago. Not even "twice two's four," not even the alphabet, could be hammered into this creature's stuttering mind, occupied with its own aimless images. Sato could make no progress, since her overdeveloped sense of tracks and clues engulfed all mental possibilities. Hidden among myrtle and rhododendron, she could taste the delicious ardors of this interlude, and yet, all the time, be well aware how lost and bewildered Juliette was, how resolved, Gonzague. Her mind was nothing, her instinct everything. Sato would have had no reason to curtail the raptures of the voyeuse, had there not been a certain complication, wounding to her most vulnerable emotion. Another couple had not long escaped her setter's nose. They offered no spectacle, had found no refuge for their desire. These two did not steal away together into labyrinthine bushes along the coast; they preferred the barren knolls and empty reaches of the high plateau. It was hard to spy them out without being seen. But Sato, luckily, or unluckily, had the faculty for making herself invisible. At this she was even better than Master Haik. This second pair kept drawing her off the scent of her sweet absorbing espionage on the first. True, she scarcely managed to see them kiss. But, between Iskuhi and Gabriel, this never-kissing passion burned far deeper, into Sato's heart, than all the embraces between Gonzague and Juliette. These two had only to touch hands, and glance briefly at each other; then, as though shattered, avert their eyes, to assure Sato that their union was far more maddeningly complete than all the close proximity of the others. Above all the communion between Iskuhi and Gabriel was detestable, and made Sato sad.

  Her memory had imagined a golden age. Had the orphanage teacher in Zeitun not always been good and gentle with Sato? Had she not often expressly said: "My Sato"? Had she not even allowed her Sato to squat on the grass at her feet, and pat these feet, and stroke them even? Who but the effendi was to blame for the fact that this happy relationship, this mutual esteem, and their caresses, had ended harshly? Who but the effendi was responsible for the fact that, when Iskuhi's Sato approached her, with a loving and open heart, she only snapped: "Go away, Sato, and don't let me see you again, ever"? Sadly the waif sought out a place to think in. But planning and reflection were never her strong points. Either she evoked transient images, or would start at the sudden flash of a perception. These perceptions and images had no need at all of the assistance of anything like conscious understanding. They worked blindly towards an aim: just as they could join up threads, let them drop, take them up again, and so spread a web of planned revenge, of which their mistress was almost unaware.

  Juliette was on her way to Gabriel.

  Gabriel was on his way to Juliette.

  They met between Three-Tent Square and the North Saddle.

  "I was on my way to look for you, Gabriel," she said. He said the same. That absent-minded "running to seed," which for so long had infected the "foreigner" had done its work. Where was Juliette's "sparkling step"? She walked like someone who has been sent somewhere on an errand. As indeed she had. Gonzague had sent her to tell the truth at last, and announce her wishes, since this was the time of separation. . . . "Am I getting short-sighted," she thought, "I see so badly?" She was surprised at the November twilight of this hot midsummer afternoon. Was it the swaths of smoke all over the Damlayik? Was it that other, confusing vapor, thickening daily, which seemed to have clouded her mind? She was surprised that, as she stood facing Gabriel, Gonzague should have become so absurdly unreal. She was surprised that this Gonzague let her encumber him. Everything seemed so far away, and so surprising. . . . Her garter had slipped, and her stocking was falling below her knee, a sensation she loathed. Yet she never stirred. "I've suddenly lost the strength even to bend," so it crossed her mind. "And yet, this evening, I shall have to climb down all those rocks, to Suedia."

  The husband and wife began a really remarkable conversation, which ended in nothing. Juliette started it: "I blame myself terribly for not having been with you these last few days. You've had a great deal to go through, and you've done magnificently. And you're always in danger. Oh, mon ami, I've behaved disgracefully to you!"

  Such an ad
mission, a few weeks previously, would have moved him. Now his reply was almost formal: "I, too, have you on my conscience, Juliette. I ought to have been considering you more. But, believe me, especially recently, I just haven't been able to manage it."

  Very true, although he gave it a double meaning. His truth should have given her courage to speak hers. She only hastened to agree: "Of course you haven't. I can quite see you've had very different things to think of, Gabriel."

  He proceeded along this dangerous road: "I've naturally always known, and been very glad to think, you weren't entirely deserted."

  This got them both to the point in their tepid dialogue, at which it was as though they had both shammed dead, although the vistas around them were free on all sides. It could have been Juliette's chance, had she seized it quickly enough. She could have spoken her mind:

  "I'm a stranger here, Gabriel. The Armenian fate has been stronger than our marriage. Now I've got my very last chance of avoiding that fate. You yourself have suggested I should, a hundred times, and were always making plans to save me. I'd hoped I had the strength to hold out to the end. I haven't. I can't ever have, since this fight isn't my fight. Let me go."

  None of these very simple and natural words passed Juliette's lips. Filled as she still was with the vain delusion that she, in their marriage, had been the donor, the superior, she was sure that, if she said it, he would break down. Could she suppose that perhaps he might only answer her good-naturedly:

  "I quite understand, chérie. Even if I must perish because of it, I still haven't the right to hold you back. I'll do all that's still in my power to help you. I'll even let Stephan go, for your sake, since I know how much you want to save him."

  Frankness, in these few minutes, might have made as clean a job of it as that, had not things been really too complex to disentangle. Juliette knew as little of Gabriel as he of her. Nor did she know if she really was in love with Gonzague. Gabriel was equally unaware how much he was in love with Iskuhi, and of what kind of love it was that linked them. Juliette's religious and bourgeois past made her recoil at the thought of sinful happiness. She had many reasons for mistrusting the transparently impenetrable Gonzague, and not least that he was three years younger than she. In Paris there would have been a traditional form for all of this. On these fantastic reaches of the Damlayik the sense of sin oppressed her heavily.

  But these were only minor complications. For several minutes at a time she was perfectly ready to nurse the thought that she would fly the mountain with Gonzague and await the steamer in the little house beside the alcohol factory. Then, in the very next instant, it all seemed so fantastically impossible. It would need the most resolute courage to risk so final an adventure, even if she avoided death in the process. Would it not really perhaps be better to wait and see what happened on Musa Dagh than to find oneself suddenly left in Beirut? The thought of the long climb in the night, of the dangerous business of crossing the Turkish plain of the Orontes, of the sea voyage among the casks of alcohol, the threat of submarines -- the prospect of all these dangers and fatigues, entangled itself into what, in the circumstances, was a merely ridiculous feeling of propriety: "Ça ne se fait pas."

  But what was all that, compared to the pain of losing Stephan? She kept clear of him nowadays. She had ceased to make sure he washed and was properly fed. She no longer, even at night, according to the sacred custom of mothers, came to his bed in the sheikh-tent, to see that he was settling down properly. All these omissions, these neglects, were summed up in a prudishly guilty feeling, which weighed most heavily on her for Stephan's sake. And, laden with all this guilt, she had come to Gabriel, to be frank, to say good-bye.

  They eyed one another, the wife and husband. The husband, as it seemed to him, saw a face which looked at once elderly and dissipated. He fancied he caught a shimmer of white upon the temples. All the less, therefore, could he understand these sparkling eyes, this mouth, which seemed to be so much bigger, with chapped, swollen-looking lips. "She's going to pieces, with this life," he thought. "What else could one expect?" And though, not so very long before, he had had the impulse to tell Juliette about Iskuhi, he abandoned it now. What good would it be? How many days have we still before us?

  The wife saw a lined, distorted face, every feature different, framed in one of the round, untidy beards which she couldn't abide. Each time she saw it, she had to ask herself: "Can this oriental bandit really be Gabriel?" And yet the voice was still Gabriel's voice, Might she not surely have been faithful to it?

  Thoughts buzzed through her head: "I'll stay, I'll go, stay, go. But her heart was moaning: "Oh, if it were only all over!"

  Their talk swerved neatly off its dangerous track. Gabriel described the favorable prospects of the near future. Most probably they'd a long rest to look forward to. He emphatically repeated Altouni's very good advice: "Lie in bed and read, read, read." A swath of smoke from the great blaze drifted heavily across her vision. They had to pass through resinous, sharply fragrant wood smoke.

  Gabriel stopped. "How one smells the resin! This fire's been a good thing, for several reasons. Even the smoke. It disinfects. Unluckily we've already twenty people lying in the isolation-wood, infected by that blasted deserter from Aleppo."

  He could manage to talk of nothing but public events. So he was too indifferent to feel anything of what her silence had tried to express to him! . . . I'm going, I'm going, I'm going" -- it kept sounding in her ears, like a roaring seashell. Then, in the very midst of a smoke-swath, Juliette turned pale and lurched, so that he was forced to hold her up. His touch, a thousand times familiar, pulsed through her body like an anguish. She could just manage to turn her face to him.

  "Forgive me, Gabriel, but I think I'm I'm going to be ill. . . . Or I am already."

  Gonzague Maris was already waiting for Juliette, at the place on "the Riviera" which they had arranged. He waited, observant and self-possessed, smoking his half cigarette to the very end. Being an extremely thrifty soul, he had still twenty-five whole cigarettes. He never threw away the ends, but saved them up to use in his pipe. Like most people reared in shabby gentility, in a series of cheap little boarding schools, people with definite pretensions, who have never owned more than two suits at a time, Gonzague was a fanatic for economy. He used what he had to the last thread, the last bite or drop.

  When Juliette came towards him, in a curious, lurching stride, he sprang to his feet. His gallantry towards his mistress had not changed in the least since she became one, and the clear attentiveness in his eyes, under the closely slanting eyebrows, still remained, even though a glint of firm criticism intensified it.

  He at once noticed her defeat. "So again you've not spoken."

  She sat down beside him without answering. What could be the matter with her eyes? Everything, even the closest surroundings, was being tossed on a noiseless storm, or veiled in rain. As the fog cleared, palms began growing out of the sea. Camels, with disapproving, averted faces, walked in procession across the waves. Never before had the surf below beaten so noisily or seemed so near. You simply couldn't hear yourself speak. And Gonzague's voice came from far away.

  "All this is no good, Juliette. You've had days to do it in! The steamer won't wait for us, and the manager won't help us a second time. We must leave tonight. Do try and be reasonable."

  She hid her breasts with her clenched fists, and leaned forward, as though to master a stubborn pain. "Why are you so cold with me, Gonzague? Why won't you ever look at me? Do look!"

  He did just the opposite: he looked far out to sea, to let her feel he was annoyed. "I always used to imagine, Juliette, that you were a plucky, determined kind of woman, and not sentimental."

  "I? I'm not what I was. I'm already dead. Leave me here. Go by yourself."

  She expected a protest. But he said nothing. These silences, which renounced her so easily, were more than Juliette could bear. She whispered, in a very subdued voice: "I'll come with you -- tonight."

 
; Only then did he lightly caress her knee. "You must pull yourself together, Juliette, and get over all these scruples and hindrances. You've got to cut loose. It's the only way. Let's get it all clear, and not deceive ourselves. There's nothing else to be done. You'll have, somehow, to tell Bagradian. I'm not suggesting in the least that you'll need to make a general confession. This is our chance, and we shan't get another. That explains the whole thing. You can't just -- vanish. Quite apart from the fact that it would be so incredibly mean, how would you live? Have you thought of that?"