Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Juliette was one of the patients with strong enough hearts to resist the fever epidemic. As Gabriel began to be certain that, little by little, his wife was turning the corner, he pitied her deeply. After the critical time she had lapsed again into unconsciousness, or rather into the weakest lethargy. Juliette, when her temperature was highest, had always been able to take nourishment; now she refused it; that is to say her stiff, lifeless body refused. Antaram did her best to wake Juliette up. It was very slow work. Not till today had Juliette quietly opened her eyes, which seemed again to look at the real world. She asked for nothing, wanted nothing. Presumably she was trying to get back to those deep sea regions of unconsciousness she had left so unwillingly. Nor did her expression change as Gabriel came up beside her, though for the first time her face showed quite clearly that she was awake. But what, now that the vivid rouge of fever had died out of it, had become of Juliette's good looks? Her dry hair hung as dead as ashes. Impossible to decide whether it had bleached or turned grey. Her temples were two deep hollows, at the sides of her jutting forehead. Her cheekbones traced the lines of a pitiful skull; her shapeless nose, skinned red, stood out repulsively. Gabriel held her shrivelled hand. Not real bone, it seemed, but brittle fishbones, composed its skeleton. Could it be Juliette's hand -- her big, warm, firm hand? This stranger, suddenly here, embarrassed him.

  "Well, so now you've got over it, chérie; another few days and you'll be about again. . . ."

  Words which appalled him. She looked at him and answered nothing. This thin, hideous patient had nothing of Juliette. Everything she had been was extirpated, with cruel thoroughness. He did his best to smile encouragement.

  "It won't be easy, but I think we can still manage to feed you properly."

  Her eyes had still their alert, clear emptiness. But behind this emptiness was her fear that he might break the crust of coma which still protected her against the encroachments of the world. Juliette seemed not to have heard. He left her. Most of his time Gabriel now spent in the sheikh-tent. He could not stand the sight of human beings and so neglected the duties of his command. Only Avakian came three times a day with reports of the general situation, which he heard in silence, without the slightest sign of interest. Gabriel scarcely ever emerged from his tent. He could only bear his existence in a closed space, in the dark, or at least the twilight. He walked half the day up and down the sheikh-tent or lay, without getting an hour's sleep, on Stephan's bed. For as long as his boy's corpse was still above ground, Gabriel had striven, with the pains of the damned, and unsuccessfully, to recall his image. But now that Stephan had been lying a day and a night under the thin crust of earth on the Damlayik, he came unbidden, at all hours. His father, lying still on his back, received him. Stephan, in his present phase of eternity, was by no means radiant and transfigured. Each time he brought his body, dripping with wounds. He had no thoughts of comforting his father, or even of letting him know that he had died in his arms, without suffering much. No, he pointed to each of his forty wounds, to the gaping knife and bayonet thrusts in his back, to the blow, with the butt of a gun, which had broken his neck for him, and, worst of all, to the gaping slit in his throat. Gabriel had to feel these forty wounds, one after another. When he forgot one, he hated himself. Now he was at home in his grief, as a blind man settles into a house, till he knows the feel of every corner and angle. At these times, when Stephan came to see him, he could not bear even Iskuhi. But, when the dead kept off, it eased him to have her sit by his side and lay her hand on his naked body, over his heart. Then he could even sleep for a few minutes. He kept his eyes shut. But Iskuhi felt how the dull thudding under her hand grew shy.

  His voice came from a long way off. "Iskuhi, what have you ever done to deserve it? There are so many who've got away and can live in Paris or somewhere."

  He looked at her, at her white face with very deep shadows under the eyes, no more now than the shadow of a face. But her lips seemed redder than ever. He shut his eyes again. Everything threatened to melt into Stephan's face.

  Iskuhi slowly drew back her hand. "What's going to happen? . . . Do you mean to tell her? And when?"

  "That depends on how much strength I have."

  Gabriel very soon got the chance to display this strength of his. Mairik Antaram called him and Iskuhi. Juliette had tried to sit up for the first time and had asked for a comb. When the patient recognized Gabriel, fear came into her eyes. Her raised hand both sought and put him off. And the voice in her swollen throat would still not obey her.

  "We've lived a long time with each other -- Gabriel -- very long time . . ."

  He stroked her head, uncertainly. She spoke almost in a whisper, as though afraid of waking truth: "And Stephan -- where's Stephan?"

  "Hush, Juliette!"

  "Shan't I be able to see him soon?"

  "I hope you'll soon be able to see him."

  "And why . . . mayn't I see him now -- just through the curtain . . ."

  "You can't see him yet, Juliette. . . . It isn't time yet."

  "Not time? And when are we going all to be together again -- and away from here?"

  "Perhaps in the next few days. . . . You must wait just a little longer, Juliette."

  She slid down and turned on her side. For a second it looked as though she might weep. Two long shivers passed down her body. Then the empty peace, with which Juliette had waked that morning to life, came back to her eyes.

  Outside the tent it looked as though the strong sunlight was blinding Gabriel, whose walk was unsteady. Iskuhi used her unlamed arm to support him. But he caught his foot on a rough place in the ground, and, as he fell, pulled her down along with him. He lay silent, as though there were nothing in the world still worth the trouble of getting up for. Neither did Iskuhi rise, till she heard the steps which came nearer quickly. They scared her to death. Was this her brother? Her father? Gabriel knew nothing of her struggles, which she had kept from him. At any hour now, she expected her family to invade her, though she had sent Bedros Hekim to her father, to say that Mairik Antaram still needed her help. Iskuhi's fears had been unfounded. Not the Tomasians were approaching, but two breathless messengers, from the north trenches. Sweat glistened on their faces, since they had run hard, the whole long way. They were so excited, they interrupted each other.

  "Gabriel Bagradian -- Turks -- Turks are there -- six or seven -- they have a white flag and a green one with them. . . . They want to parley. . . . Not soldiers. . . . An old man's the leader. . . . They've shouted across that they'll only speak to Bagradian Effendi, and to nobody else. . . ."

  More than a week had passed since the Turks encountered their great defeat. The wounded yüs-bashi, his arm in a sling, was already on duty again. There were more regular troops and saptiehs encamped round Musa Dagh than ever. And yet nothing happened. Nor was there any sign that anything would. The men on the Damlayik watched the indolent comings and goings in the valley and could not explain why, in spite of these threatening and ever-increasing forces, they should be left in peace. Nor could they know the reason. The Kaimakam of Antakiya had gone on a journey. Jemal Pasha had summoned all the walis, mutessarifs, and kaimakams in the Syrian vilayet round him, at his headquarters in Jerusalem. A series of unforeseen natural events demanded instant measures to cope with them, or the conduct of the war, indeed the whole life of Syria, the most important war area, would be paralyzed.

  Two plagues of Egypt, accompanied by sub-plagues and assistant-plagues of all descriptions, had invaded the land from the north and east. The eastern plague, spotted typhus, forcing its way as a localized epidemic via Aleppo to Antioch, Alexandretta, the mountains along the coast, was an appalling proof of cosmic justice. The drastic horror of this illness distinguished it from the milder epidemic on the Damlayik, which, thanks to fresh air, good water, severe isolation of all the infected, and indeed to other, unknown causes, still kept within bounds. But the death rate of Mesopotamian spotted typhus often stood at eighty percent. It had descended fro
m the cloud of disease which hovered about the steppes of the Euphrates. Ever since May and June hundreds of thousands of dead Armenians had been rotting, on that very unconsecrated earth, in that godless common grave. Even wild beasts fled the stench. Only the poor troops had to force their way through that unspeakable mass of putrescent humanity. Columns of Macedonian, Anatolian, Arab infantry, with endless baggage and lines of camels, were herded on in daily route-marches to Baghdad. The bedouin cavalry clattered among them. The worldly wisdom of Talaat Bey, in the Serail Palace of the ministry, might well have been confounded by the perception of what strange results may emerge from any attempt to exterminate a whole people. But neither he nor Enver let it perturb them. Power and the dullest insensitivity have gone together ever since there has been a world. The second, northerly plague had certainly less of super-terrestrial consistency than the other, but its actual effects were perhaps more formidable. It, too, seemed an actual repetition of Biblical punishment. This plague of locusts swept down from the Taurus into the plain of Antioch, and so over the whole of Syria. The gullies, slopes, and ravines of that great mountain were no doubt the birthplace of these tough nomads, who irresistibly swarmed far and wide. Huge locusts, hard, shrivelled-looking insects, brownish, like withered leaves, clearing obstacles in one wide leap, as though horse and rider had grown together. They came on in different huge detachments, army corps, covering the earth of hundreds of square miles of the sanjak, so that scarcely a strip of earth remained visible. This planned advance, the purposeful concentration of their descent, fully suggested that more than mere blind instinct guided their wrath, that they had a plan, and leadership. They seemed in fact to represent the big collective idea of essential locusthood. It was really terrifying to watch the descent of one of those swarms on a garden -- on elms, plane trees, yews, even on the hardened sycamores. Each tree, in a few seconds, would be wrapped in a kind of furniture-cover, a rain-proof sheet of rough, dark serge. Every vestige of green shrivelled up and vanished under the watcher's eyes, as though eaten by invisible flame. Even the trunk was enveloped in whirling puttees of insects. Nothing suggested that individuals made up the unity of the swarm. A single locust, caught in the palm of a man's hand, betrayed the same pitiful fear as other insects, and strove to escape. Back in the swarm, he realized his own true nature, feeling his own pushful greed as the service of a great cause.

  In August, east of the Syrian coastal area, as far as the valley of the Euphrates, there was no longer one green tree. But with trees Jemal Pasha did not concern himself. Harvesting, in northern Syria, never begins before the middle of July and lasts several weeks, since rye, wheat, and barley are not threshed at the same time as maize. The Moslem lets his sheaves lie out for weeks, having little to fear from rain. When the locusts descended in July, they found half the grain still standing, the other half in loose sheaves in the fields. So that, within a few days, in their fashion, they had gathered the whole Syrian harvest, and by the middle of the month there was not a stalk left to be harvested in fields stripped bare. On this Syrian harvest Jemal Pasha had impatiently reckoned.

  The locusts had made short work of the whole commissariat plan of the current war year. The price of bread shot up. In spite of the most stringent countermeasures, the inflated Turkish pound dropped well below its nominal value. These August days, in which Musa Dagh defended herself so gloriously, also saw the first deaths from famine in the Lebanon district.

  Such was the state of affairs when Jemal Pasha summoned the meeting of Syrian governors at his headquarters. That powerful gathering was almost as perturbed as the Council of Leaders on Musa Dagh. The walis and mutessarifs were no more able to stamp trainloads of grain out of the earth than the mukhtars, ewes and sheep. But the potentate's speech was short and not conciliatory. By this or that day the Aleppo vilayet was to deliver so and so much corn to the commissariat. The officials turned pale with fury, not only at these outrageous demands, but even more at the pasha's tone in making them. Only one among them was all zeal and humility, and to be sure, in view of the disastrous business of Musa Dagh, he had very good reason for being so. The puffy, brownish face of the Kaimakam of Antakiya listened with intense enthusiasm to every word that fell from Jemal's lips. All the other governors haggled and bemoaned, but he promised to do the impossible. Even if he could get no rye or wheat, at least he would send maize, as much as was needed. But might he, please, be given the necessary transport? Jemal, in the course of one of these sessions, even got to the point of holding up the Kaimakam of Antakiya as a shining example to all the rest. The Kaimakam seized this chance for which he had striven with so much wisdom, and begged for a short interview after the sitting. This was a direct infringement of the laws of official hierarchy, but the Kaimakam hoped, by direct intervention, to win over the imperious chief of staff to his side. In Jemal's room, besides the Kaimakam, there was only Osman, the barbaric head of the picturesque bodyguard. The district governor of Antakiya obsequiously accepted a cigarette.

  "I'm addressing myself directly to Your Excellency because I know Your Excellency's generosity. Your Excellency will no doubt have guessed my petition."

  The small, stockily built Jemal, with his hunched shoulder, faced the Kaimakam, fair and square, whose loose, heavy bulk towered over him. The general's thick, Asiatic lips pouted spitefully through black surrounding meshes of beard.

  "It's a disgrace," he hissed, "a filthy disgrace."

  With bowed head the Kaimakam registered tribulation.

  "I venture to agree entirely with Your Excellency. It's a disgrace. But it's not my fault, it's my misfortune, that this disgrace should have happened in my Kazah."

  "Not your fault? It'll be the fault of all you civilians, if we lose the war because of this infamous nonsense with the Armenians and perhaps go utterly to bits."

  The Kaimakam seemed deeply shaken by this prophecy. "It's such a misfortune that Your Excellency should not be guiding our policy in Istanbul."

  "It is a misfortune, you can be sure of that."

  "But I, after all, am no more than a minor official, who obediently must receive the government's orders."

  "Receive? Carry them out, my good sir, carry them out! How many weeks has this scandal lasted already? You can't manage even to dispose of a few ragged, half-starved peasants. . . . What a success for His Excellency the War Minister, ha, ha! and His Excellency the Minister of the Interior!"

  And the short, sturdy Jemal went across to the gigantic Osman, to smack him on the chest with the palm of his hand, so that every accoutrement hung on this waxwork jingled.

  "My people'd have done it in half an hour."

  Osman grinned. The Kaimakam too smiled, bittersweet. "Your Excellency's advance on the Suez canal was one of the greatest campaigns in our whole history. You must forgive me, a civilian, for presuming to seem to give an opinion. . . . But to me it always seems that perhaps the greatest feature of the campaign was that it should have cost Your Excellency so few men."

  Jemal emitted a little laugh. "Right, Kaimakam. I'm not so magnificent as Enver."

  And now the Kaimakam gave its most adroit turn to the interview: "The mutineers of the seven villages are extremely well armed. I'm not a soldier, Your Excellency, but I shrink from sacrificing another life against them. Your Excellency, as our greatest general, must know, even better than I, that a mountain fortress can't possibly be cleared without mountain artillery and machine-guns. Let those cursed Armenians be victorious! I've done all I could!"

  Jemal Pasha, whose savage temper it was his constant effort to control, still could not force any calm into his voice.

  "Apply to the War Minister!" he shouted. "I haven't any mountain artillery, or machine guns either. People talk of my power -- I'm the poorest commander in the empire. These gentlemen in Istanbul have robbed me of my last cartridge. And anyway -- it's none of my business!"

  The Kaimakam became very grave and crossed his arms, as if in salaam, upon his breast. "Your Excellency must fo
rgive my daring to contradict you. But this matter does, perhaps, concern you a little . . . since not only civil servants are being made to look ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world by this defeat, but even the troops of the Fourth Army, which bears the famous name of Your Excellency."