by Franz Werfel
It was almost symbolic that Stephan should have offered French sardines and Swiss chocolate in exchange for mutton sausage and stale bread. Haik scarcely knew the names of such foreign dainties. The boys did not control their appetites, but made big inroads into their supplies without even thinking of tomorrow.
Suddenly Haik remembered, packed his away, and advised Stephan: "Better drink water and save the food."
So it was done. They drank great gulps of spring water out of the aluminum top of the thermos flask, and Stephan mixed in some of his wine. He felt as well as though this were a holiday excursion, and not the expedition of two Armenians menaced on all sides, on their way into the pitiless town -- an expedition which he had neither the right nor ability to take part in. All his grief seemed left behind, once and for all, on the Damlayik. How deliciously exciting it seemed to be resting here, having walked all night, in the harmless, pleasant, morning sunshine. Stephan folded up his rug for a pillow. The sunshine warmed him more and more. He sat up again to ask like a child: "Do you think there'll be any wild animals?"
The self-important Haik pulled out his clasp knife and laid it beside him. "You needn't worry. Even when I'm asleep, I see everything."
Stephan was not worrying in the least. What a good watcher, even when asleep, Haik was! Never before had he felt more nestling trust in a human being than he did in this rough boy, for whose admiration he had striven so hard. He surrendered utterly to his leadership. He fell asleep. His hand fumbled to seek his friend.
"Now we must make tarbushes," explained Haik, "so that we won't be noticed if we meet people." He unfolded his aghil sash and wound it adroitly round his felt cap. Stephan did his so badly that Haik had to help him. While adjusting the headgear of the prophet he instructed the inexperienced one: "If necessary you'll have to copy me. Do everything exactly the way I do it. And don't ever talk."
It was late afternoon. Between the top branches of oaks and beeches a golden sky, full of swarming carrion birds. The boys had been nearly six hours on the road. But the word "road" is euphemistic. Far and wide, there was not so much as a goat-path. They had forced their way along the dried-up beds of streams which would be sure to lead them into the valley. Literally they had "forced their way," impeded at every step by masses of resistant undergrowth, clinging creepers, and walls of shrubs, as hard and elastic as rubber, but barbed all over with long prickles. Incredible how many terraces and rocky steeps they had already had to clamber down. The mountain seemed always to have nothing more to say, and never to come to the end of what it was saying. Stephan had ceased to feel his body. His hands, his knees, his legs were covered with scratches and wounds. For hours he had said nothing. But not complained. Now they were sitting together on a bare rock, overlooking the chalk-white highroad from Beilan. It looked brand-new. Stone heaps all along it indicated the work of human hands. And indeed this byroad, which linked up the harbor of Alexandretta with the plains of Aleppo, and so the Mediterranean with all Asia, was a tribute to the unleashed energy, the power, of Jemal Pasha, the Syrian dictator. That iron-willed general had ordained that within a month the wretched, broken track should have become an impeccable highway, smooth and properly underpinned -- and lo! it was done. The Turks were amazed at the energy they found they possessed. At this point, under Stephan's and Haik's eyes, the road took a bend eastwards. They could look down on only a small section of it: not a man or vehicle, no mule or horse, came into sight, only here and there a hare or squirrel flitted across the white chalk ribbon. Stephan gazed down with longing eyes at its smooth possibilities. But even Haik seemed to be yielding to temptation. Without having said a word to Stephan to warn him how imprudent it was to do so, he jumped up and ran down the slope. When they felt the smooth road under their feet, it was like a drink when one is thirsty. All Stephan's ambition and energy were renewed. He kept pace with Haik. Right and left, steep banks began to rise. The road had become almost a tunnel, a narrow pass between two cliffs. This oddly enough increased their sense of security, and with it their carelessness. Then the cliffs widened out a little, the road took a steep downward incline. Another bend and the plain would surely open out! This road carried irresistibly onwards; they were borne, so to speak, along its current. Straight to disaster! Since when they came round the bend, they found, not the plain in front of them, but a Turkish guardhouse, over which waved the half-moon flag. Four horrible-looking saptiehs lounged in front of it. A detachment of inshaat taburi were working away along the edge with spades, mattocks, and hammers. The travellers had been too exhausted to catch the sounds of their picks and shovels, the hoarse, dreary song of these laborers. They were so terror-stricken that even Haik took a full minute before he moved. But then he snatched Stephan's hand and tugged him away. They went galloping off round the bend, up among the trees. Unluckily the place was bare of rocks or shrubs to hide in. There were only the slender stems of young beeches, which gave no cover. The slope ascended gently. Where did it lead? Haik's inner eye had a vision of the head saptieh bending forward, shading his eyes, growling out an order, and giving chase, with his whole corps. It was worse than a nightmare. Voices! The leaves began to rustle with Turkish steps. Stephan shut his eyes and kept close to Haik, who flung his left arm round his body. Haik's right hand gripped his open clasp knife. They prepared for death. But the sharp whisper they heard was not in Turkish.
"Boys! Boys! Who are you? Don't be afraid!"
These Armenian words came sepulchrally. When Stephan opened his eyes, it was to see a ragged Armenian soldier emerge breathless between the tree stems. A scrubby skull, with eager eyes in it. Even to the eyes, the man was not unlike Kilikian. Haik controlled himself, put away his knife. The road-mender's voice shook with excitement.
"Aren't you the son of the big widow Shushik, who has her house on the road to Yoghonoluk? Don't you know me?"
Haik approached the skeleton incredulously; loose rags enveloped its bones, its feet were bare. He eyed it sharply.
"Vahan Melikentz, from Azir?" He sounded as hesitant as though he were trying to pick up a name at random. The laborer-private nodded an eager head; tears had begun to trickle into his bristles, so moved he was at meeting his two young countrymen. Haik had only guessed at his name. What had this ragged scarecrow to do with Melikentz, the dignified, gossiping beekeeper he had met almost every day?
Melikentz raised despairing hands. "Are you crazy? What do you want to come here for? Thank Christ Saviour, the onbashi dichi't catch sight of you. Yesterday, down there by the bend, they shot five Armenians, a family trying to get to Alexandretta."
Haik, once again in full self-possession, gave the ex-beekeeper a dignified account of his mission.
Melikentz was horrified. "The road's full of inshaat taburi, as far as Hammam. And yesterday two companies came into Hammam. They're to be sent against the Damlayik. All you can do is to walk at night along by the Ak Denis swamp. But then you'll fall in."
"We won't fall in, Melikentz," Haik declared, with laconic certainty. And he asked hir countryman to show him the nearest way to the plain.
Vahan Melikentz mourned: "If they miss me, or I'm late falling in, I'll get the third-degree bastinado. Perhaps they may shoot me. . . . I wish they would! You lads have no idea how little I care, Oh, if only I'd gone along with your lot, and not with Nokhudian the pastor! You were the clever ones! Christ help you! He hasn't helped us!"
And Melikentz was in fact risking death to show them their way. Yet they had only to go on by a short, fairly easy stretch of woodland. The poor beekeeper talked continually; he seemed to want to recover a whole lost harvest of unused words, if only to scatter it, before his last breath. The fate of those on Musa Dagh seemed to interest him less than describing his own. So that Stephan and Haik learned something of what had been done to Nokhudian's followers. All the able-bodied men among them had been told off from the rest in Antakiya, and sent to Hammam for road-building. Their women, children, the old and sick, had been driven on towards the
Euphrates. Pastor Nokhudian had managed to get nothing from the Kaimakam -- nothing at all! But the Armenian inshaat taburi were being used in a very special way. To each detachment was assigned a particular stretch of road, which had to be finished off at double-quick time. When the onbashi reported the task as completed, the detachment was drummed together, herded into the nearest wood, and there neatly dispatched, with a quick volley, by a special firing party, expert by now at this routine.
"Our bit of road," said Melikentz dryly, "goes as far as Top Boghazi; that's about another four thousand paces. It'll be about six or seven days, at most, if we're clever. Then it's our turn. So if they shoot me today I'll only have lost six, or at most, seven days."
Yet, in spite of his simple calculation, Melikentz left them in breathless haste, having brought them where he could point out their way. Six days of horrible living were, after all, six days more of life. As he said good-bye, he gave Haik a lump of Turkish honey, given him by a compassionate Mussulman woman.
A rusty sunset was in the sky when they found themselves standing on the last, the lowest, of the mountain slopes. Flat land spread before them to the horizon. They were looking over a wide lake, in whose milky flatness the insipid sunset palely glistened. It was the Lake of Antioch, of which distant glimpses were to be had even from certain points of the Damlavik. But here Ak Denis, the "white sea," looked so near, you could almost touch it. The northern ridge of the lake was girdled with a broad belt of reeds, alive with plungings and cawings. Clumsy-winged herons, silver and purple, flapped out of these reeds, to circle low above the lake, drawing ornate legs slowly after them that cut the surface of the water. Then they sank down slowly to brood. A wedge of wild ducks clattered with the swiftness of torpedoes through the milky flood, to land among the reeds on an island. From where they stood the boys could hear the bickerings of reed-thrushes, the human, almost political disputation of ten thousand inflated, gigantic frogs. This reedy fringe of Ak Denis ebbed away gradually into the plain. Far out there were still thick clusters, but also there were stagnant pools, blind eyes, the whites of which looked tremulous. In contrast to the empty steppes this belt of urgent life along the lake seemed almost an exaggeration. It extended like the corpse of a fabulous dragon, being gnawed at by ornate birds of prey.
Whereas Stephan saw only the lake, Haik's sharp eyes had at once spied out the nomad tents strewn here and there along the east, the few horses, browsing with hanging heads in the smoky void. He pointed, certain of their direction. "That's our way. Between the road and the swamp. We'll get on, as soon as the moon rises. Here, give us your flask! I'll go for some water. Here, the water's still good to drink. We must drink a lot. Meantime, you can get some sleep."
But Stephan did not sleep. He only waited till his mate got back with two brimming flasks. Obediently he drank as much as he could. Neither thought of eating. Haik spread his rug to wrap himself into it. But Stephan crept up to him. It was no longer enough to sleep as they had that morning, in cool proximity. Now he could not hide his fearful need of friendship and love. And lo! Haik understood. Haik was no longer dour and reserved; Haik did not keep him at arm's length. Indeed he almost seemed to welcome the confiding closeness of young Bagradian. Like an elder brother, he drew him close and covered him. The two boys slept in each other's arms.
Haik and Stephan were in the plains. But now, against all expectation, they found that the rough, uneven Musa Dagh, full of clefts and gullies, had been far easier to walk on than this flat expanse, called El Amk, the "sinking ground." This sly, uncertain soil, covered with a greenish scurf, was already hostile, no longer Christian earth.
It was characteristic of Haik, with his sharp senses and almost superhuman sureness of nerve, to have chosen this way -- at night especially. El Amk was really nothing but a göl, a swamp, about twelve miles long, the hair-thin edge of which would have to be kept to. There were not many shepherds, peasants, or nomads with courage enough to use this short cut, to save themselves the long journey by road to the Kara-Su bridge. But it was the only way the boys could have chosen, since Vahan Melikentz had warned them of soldiers, saptiehs, and ishaat taburi along the whole length of the highroad. Haik had taken off his shoes, to be able to "get the feel" of the ground with his bare feet. Stephan did likewise. He had, as we know, long ceased to vie with his companion. They walked on the very thin, warm crust of a loaf, with the dough beneath them. This crust was cracked all over, and through the cracks rose dense, sulphurous vapors. Stephan proved intelligent enough to follow close on Haik's tracks, who, like a dancer, stepped out gingerly, with close attention, as though each step had been prescribed.
During this dance confused thoughts kept invading Stephan, they rasped and cackled in him. "Everyone goes along a road. Why can't we go along a road?. . . Oh, why are we Armenians?"
Haik shut him up, enraged: 'Don't talk such rot! Better look out where you're going. Don't step where it's green. Understand?"
So then Stephan did his best to relapse into the mental coma which helps us most to put up with bodily discomfort. He curvetted faithfully after Haik, engaged in picking out a way full of the oddest curves on this perilous crust. Thus they continued an hour -- two hours -- during which the moon at times lighted their way benevolently, only to vanish in evil caprice. Yet in spite of all the long way they had come, Stephan's exhaustion seemed rather to diminish as the night wore on. Dregs -- half thought, half emotion -- began to collect, like sediment, in his mind. It could not be controlled! He had to say it, no matter how afraid he might be of Haik: "I say, is it true that we aren't going to see our people" (he avoided any more intimate designation) "ever again?"
Haik did not stop his figured progress. It was some time before, on firmer ground again, he gave any answer. What he said, in spite of its Christian certitude, was said with clenched fists, rather than with folded hands. "I shall certainly see mother again."
It was the first piece of intimate self-revelation that Stephan had had from Haik's lips. But, since Stephan, the lycéen, had not the certain faith of a race of tough Armenian mountaineers, he became subdued, and replied uncertainly: "But we can't ever get back on to the Damlayik."
It was obvious from Haik's savage growl, ready to spring, how much this talk went against the grain.
"The Damlayik's behind us. If Christ wills, we shall get to Aleppo. There Jackson will hide us in the consulate. That's what it says in the letter." And, spitefully: "Of course, there's nothing about you in it."
But by now Stephan's thoughts were not in the least concerned with himself, only with his father and mother, from whom he had so stupidly run away. Why? He himself no longer knew. All life had strangely shifted its perspective. The Damlayik had become the wildest nightmare, everything that had happened before it, reality. The sole reality. Well-ordered, clean, just as it should be. Jackson would put an end to all this nonsense. After all, it simply couldn't happen that a Stephan Bagradian should find himself in such a position that he would never see his parents again. His thoughts were in a sense becoming Jackson's -- full of helpful schemes.
"Jackson'll cable. You cable to America, you know. Do you think the Americans'll send ships to fetch our people?"
"How should I know that, you sheep?"
Haik's increasing pace betrayed his wrath. The awed Stephan was forced to swallow down his need, and hurry to keep up with his leader. Though there was no wind, he felt as though a gale were swirling against him, preventing him from going a step further. Try as he might, he could not manage to get all this straight in his mind. His head swam. A stark beam of moonlight filled the whole world. An emerald-green streak of it streamed in upon him. For a second he for- got their danger.
The scream pulled Haik up short. He knew instantly what had happened. A shadowy Stephan struggled for life. He had already sunk in up to his knees.
Haik hissed at him: "Quiet! Don't kick up such a row!"
But uncontrollable panic forced scream upon scream out of Stephan. He could no
t prevent them. He believed himself fallen between the jaws of a slimy whale; the monster sucked him slowly in, turning him over on its tongue. Already the pulpy, tumid mass was above his knees. Yet, in spite of it all, the seconds in which he did not struggle were oddly peaceful, and did him good.
