Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  Gabriel answered him so softly that, no doubt, he did not understand: "No one who stands where I stand can begin again from the beginning."

  The Agha cupped his small, nimble hands, as if to catch the rain of time in them. "Why do you think of the future? Think of the next few hours!"

  The late afternoon light was filling the tent, the light of leave-taking. Gabriel stood up, unceremoniously. "It was I who first gave the seven villages the idea of this camp on Musa Dagh. I organized the whole resistance. I was leader in the battles against your soldiers, thanks to which we still remain. I am, and shall be, guilty -- responsible -- if, in a few more days, your people torture us all to death, even our sick and little children. What do you say, Agha? Can I simply leave them in the lurch?"

  To which Agha Rifaat Bereket made no answer.

  Gabriel had the Agha's gifts carried at once to the altar square, so that the Council might set about distributing them. Mainly it was only a question of sugar, coffee, a little tobacco. But the muleteers had also managed to smuggle in two sacks of rice. Since these gifts had to be shared out to two thousand families, it can be imagined how microscopic each ration was. What did that matter! To be able to drink hot coffee again, in little sips! To be able to draw tobacco smoke far down, into the very pit of one's stomach, let it out slowly, through nose and mouth, stare vacantly at the floating cloud, without any care, any tomorrow. The actual value of these gifts was far less than the revived morale engendered by them, and this on a day of general disaster. And the Turks left them all their mules, the two sumpter mules and those they had ridden. Only the old Agha still kept his, to ride into the valley.

  Thus, then, the benefactor and his five followers went back with unbandaged eyes to the North Saddle. The man of the oath went on ahead with the green and white flags. He seemed neither put out nor relieved at having been deprived of his good work. As guard of honor, besides Gabriel, Ter Haigasun, Bedros Hekim, and two mukhtars followed the strangers. Around them eddied a crowd of bewitched villagers. This talk in the sheikh's tent, since no one knew what had passed there, had become a source of fantastic hopes. The Agha walked through a fog of blessings, tearful petitions, hopeful questionings. He could scarcely go forwards. Never, not even in the banishment camps, had the Agha Rifaat Bereket seen such faces as here on the Damlayik. The savage, feverish masks of men grimaced round him avidly. Waving arms, as thin as twigs, thrust out of tattered sleeves, held children close up to his face, as the women begged. Nearly all these children had swollen heads, on the thinnest necks, and their huge, staring eyes had a knowledge in them forbidden the children of humankind. The Agha perceived that not even the most brutal convoy could, in its effects, be more dehumanizing than this isolation, this cutting off. He believed that now he could understand by how much this draining off of the spirit exceeds in cruelty even the massacre of the body. The most horrible thing that had been done was, not that a whole people had been exterminated, but that a whole people, God's children, had been dehumanized. The sword of Enver, striking those Armenians, had struck Allah. Since in them, as in all other men, even unbelievers, Allah dwells. And whoso degrades His dignity in the creature, degrades the Creator in his victim. This, then, is God-murder, the sin which, to the end of time, is never forgiven.

  To the old man, it felt as though he were walking through clouds of ashes, the thick death-cloud of the whole burnt-up Armenian race rising between time and eternity.

  The Agha walked bent over his stick, growing older and older, more deeply bowed. Now he kept his eyes on the earth, which had brought forth all this and bore it. His little feet in their soft shoes tripped eagerly, unused to walking. Pressing his white beard close against his chest, he hurried on like a fugitive whose strength may fail. He had ceased to hear the sounds of these petitioners, see their arms imploring him. Away out of this! But Rifaat's strength took him only as far as the trenches along the North Saddle. There, at the sight of the gaping decads, a violent giddiness forced him to earth. His two servants, the muleteers, came hurrying anxiously. The Agha was a sick man. The French hekim in Istanbul had warned him against overexertion. The more staid of these two servants drew out of the green velvet bag which he always carried for his master the smelling-salts and the little case of licorice which stimulates the heart.

  When the Agha had quickly recovered, he smiled up at Ter Haigasun and Gabriel, who were bending over him. "It's nothing. . . . I'm old . . . walked too fast. . . . And then you give me too much to carry. . . ."

  As he rose with the help of his two companions, he was conscious that his task would never be finished, that he never would get to Deir ez-Zor.

  It was nearly midnight before his yayli reached the house in Antakiya. He was lamed with exhaustion. Nevertheless, he wrote off at once, in intricate and elaborate calligraphy, a letter directed to Nezimi Bey, but intended for the Christian pastor Lepsius, to whom he gave precise account of all he had so far achieved.

  And, at about the same time as the Agha Rifaat Bereket wrote this letter to Dr. Lepsius, the soul of Krikor of Yoghonoluk freed itself from his agonized body. That night, before he went to sleep, the teacher Hapeth Shatakhian had been bitten with remorse on Krikor's account. And so, at two o'clock in the morning, this negligent chief-disciple of the philosopher tiptoed into the government hut, came softly over to Krikor's bed, faintly lit, peeped over the wall of books, and whispered gently, so as not to wake the sick man, if he were asleep: "Apothecary -- hullo, how are you?"

  Krikor lay on his back. His breath came strangled. But his wide-open eyes were very calm. He chid the teacher because of the stupidity of his question.

  Shatakhian edged his way round the rampart of books. He felt Krikor's pulse. "Have you much pain?"

  Krikor gave his answer a double meaning: "I have when you touch me."

  The teacher squatted down beside the sick man. "I'll stop with you tonight. It'll be better. . . . You might need something."

  Krikor did not answer. He was far too occupied with his breath.

  But the teacher became soulful; he mourned: "I'm thinking of the good old days, Apothecary; our walks together, and all your sayings."

  Krikor's yellow mandarin face lay there immobile. He answered in a breathless, nasal head-voice. His goatee never stirred. "None of that was worth very much."

  These defensive words were enough to release all Shatakhian's sentimentality: "It was worth a great deal. . . . For you, and for us. . . . You know I've lived in Europe, Apothecary. I can say that French culture has become a part of my flesh and blood. . . . Over there, one sees and hears and learns thousands of things: lectures, concerts, theaters, pictures, the cinema. . . . And you see, you were all those things for us, in Yoghonoluk -- and more. . . . You brought us the whole world and explained it to us. . . . Oh, Apothecary, what might you not have become in Europe!"

  These encomiums visibly worried Krikor. He answered in a haughty breath: "I'm quite satisfied . . . as it is. . . ."

  Nearly half an hour more elapsed before that strange, falsetto voice resumed: "Teacher! Instead of talking nonsense, could you manage to do something intelligent? . . . Go over there to the shelf with the medicine on it You see that round black bottle? There's a glass beside it. . . . Fill it up."

  Shatakhian, pleased to be of some real use, obeyed and brought back the brimming glass, which gave out a strong scent of mulberry brandy. "Well, you've prescribed yourself the best medicine, Apothecary!"

  He put his arm under Krikor's head, propped him up, and set the glass to his lips. The sage of Yoghonoluk emptied it in long draughts, as though it were water. After a while his face had colour in it, a mocking glint had come into his eyes.

  "That's it . . . best medicine . . . against pain. . . but now I must be alone. . . . Go to bed, Shatakhian."

  Krikor's new expression and his more vivacious tone made the teacher uneasy. "I'll come in to see you tomorrow, Apothecary -- the first thing . . ."

  "Yes, come tomorrow -- as early as ever yo
u like. . . . But now you might just put out that lamp . . . it's the last oil . . . over there, my little candle . . . light it, please . . . put it up on the books. . . that's it. . . . That's all . . . go and sleep, Shatakhian."

  When the teacher was again beyond the rampart, he turned and looked back, over the books, at his master. "If I were you, Apothecary, I shouldn't worry about Oskanian; we've always known what he was like. . . ."

  This last piece of advice was entirely superfluous, since now the apothecary inhabited an entirely peaceful world, in which such absurd puppets as Oskanian had ceased to figure. He stared fixedly out, without moving his eyes, and rejoiced in the luxury of painlessness. His heart was jubilant. He counted his internal assets. How light his baggage, how happy he felt! He would lose nobody, nobody would have lost him. All these human things seemed so remote, far away behind him: probably they had never existed. Krikor had most certainly always been Krikor, a man made differently from his kind. The people pity those who have to be alone at such a minute. This Krikor could not understand. Was there anything more glorious than such solitude? A delightful warmth stole up through his body. Krikor felt his limbs become supple again, his joints lose their stiffness. With a jerk, which did not hurt him in the least, he turned towards the light. Small white moths and huge dark ones circled the flame. Krikor thought: If it goes on like this, I shall get well. Not that he cared. He reflected upon this dance of insects. Myriads of stars in the form of butterflies, whose delicate bodies have been composed of the ashes of burnt-out worlds, as the Arab astronomer Ibn Saadi had already demonstrated. His mind became clouded, and he slept. But to wake was horrible. The kennel had shrunk mysteriously. Krikor could scarcely see. The moths had increased by thousands till they almost obscured the flame of the badly made candle.

  No breath would come to the sick man. Desperate, gurgling sounds forced their way out of him; he jerked himself up and forwards, without noticing the pain. Viewed from without, it was a choking fit, but its inner reality was far worse. It was the monstrous sensation of not being able to hold out, and not in any temporal, passing sense, but a "not being able to hold out" which would go on and on; through all eternity. It was the major punishment of any hell that may exist. And this eternal "not being able to hold out" had its definite counterpart in the mind. Knowledge that one knows nothing, an ignorance that yet knows all, are a pale description of this ocean of half and half, of perceptions just begun, thoughts rapidly fused into one another, teachings misunderstood, errors devoured. The most trivial things never really grasped! Oh, gruesome impotence of the spirit, which every blade of grass confounds. In this sea of nauseating rubbish Krikor was drowning. He struggled to save himself, escape. With a rattle in his throat he crawled out of bed and clung to his rampart of books. When, in his weakness, he lost his hold on it and fell on his back over the bed, he pulled down the top layers after him, and with them the extinguished candle. The books came thudding down round Krikor's body, as though to embrace him and hold him fast. For a very long while Krikor lay as he had fallen, relieved that he could breathe again, that his stifling fit of complete ignorance had released him. His pain came back on him in waves. Every finger burned as though he had just pulled it out of the fire.

  And then the apothecary's books rendered him a last unique service -- the read, the unread, the skimmed-through, the beloved. He stuck his burning hands into the leaves. Their pages were as cool as water. And more than that. A thin, icy peace came streaming into him from the intellectual life-blood of these books. Even with numb fingers, in the dark, Krikor could distinguish one from another. A final impulse: "Alas for this pleasure!" Then the burning died, throb by throb. The soft release from pain stole higher and higher. A shimmer of leaden daylight gleamed in through chinks in the log hut. This Krikor did not even notice, since now he experienced the supreme. It began with a great awareness of quiet, as if each thud of his ebbing pulse were saying: "I am the first person, I am the first person." And then that thing began to grow which was -- Krikor of Yoghonoluk. This is already a misstatement. Words, meant for time and space, cannot say it. Perhaps it was not so much a growing of the thing which was Krikor of Yoghonoluk, as a shrinking together, shrivelling up, of the thing which had been the world. Yes, the world crumpled with giddy speed: the hut, the Town Enclosure, Musa Dagh, the house down in the valley, and all that surrounded it. It could not have been any other way. It had no volume, since it was made of the ashes of burnt-out stars. At last only Krikor of Yoghonoluk was left, standing alone. He was the All, he was more than the All, since around his head moth-worlds danced, without his observing it.

  5. THE ALTAR FLAME

  Ter Haigasun, after a long talk with Pastor Aram and Altouni, had decided that what was left of their provisions need not be economized. Would it not be altogether senseless to eke out life, and its pain along with it? Already -- before real hunger had set in -- there were enough enfeebled people on the Damlayik, old men and women, women and children, who sank to the ground and could not get up again. This slow grinding process had proved itself the worst kind of destruction. And the priest was willing to let the process be curtailed. So that, in the first September days, Bagradian's two cows were slaughtered, with all the remaining goats and kids; the milk of the she-goats was by now too thin, and came too sparsely, to be worth thinking about. Then came the sumpter and riding-mules, whose leather flesh it was almost impossible to boil or roast. Yet with tail, skin, hoofs, and tripe, these animals yielded great heaps of food, which both disgusted and satisfied. Added to these, there were Rifaat Bereket's coffee and sugar, about a quarter of a pound to each household. But the dregs were cooked up, again and again, so that coffee-pots became like the widow's cruse. This drink inspired, if not cheer and comfort, at least a pleasant surrender to the moment. Tobacco was almost as effective. Ter Haigasun, in spite of protesting mukhtars, had wisely ordained that by far the greater share of it, four whole bales, should be divided among the men of the South Bastion -- among ne'er do wells and unreliables. Now they could wallow in smoke as never before at the best times in their lives. It was done to keep their minds off mischievous thoughts. Even Sarkis Kilikian, stretched on his back, and full of the joy of drifting tobacco smoke, seemed to have nothing against the prevailing order. To be sure, Hrand Oskanian was a non-smoker.

  On the thirty-fourth day of exile, twenty-four hours after Krikor's death, there were about two hundred sick people in the fever-wood, and more than a hundred others in and around the hospital hut. Mostly, apart from the seriously wounded, they were cases of sheer enfeeblement, people who had broken down at work or about the camp. In a population of five thousand this was not an alarming proportion of sick, including, as it did, wounded men. But on that day, for no obvious reason, the curve of mortality shot upwards wildly. By evening forty-three lives were extinguished, and it looked as though, in the course of the next few hours, many others would follow them. The graveyard had long been too small to take in all these new inhabitants.

  Ter Haigasun therefore introduced a new kind of burial, without first having described it to the people. Late in the moonless night they collected the bodies and carried them up to the Dish Terrace, which jutted out to sea like the long prow of a ship. Everyone had to take a hand, hospital attendants, the churchyard folk, and anyone else whose work in the camp was done at night. The ground had to be covered two or three times, before all these dead, tied into their shrouds, had been laid out in rows on the bare rock.

  Since the new moon the weather had changed. There was no rain yet, but wind, in angry rebellious gusts, swept across the hillocks of Musa Dagh; sometimes a strangling wind from the steppes, sometimes a foamy sirocco from the sea, which veered and veered, as though to fool the staider elements, water and earth. Had Gabriel not placed his Town Enclosure so skilfully in a hollow of the ground, not a single hut would have been left standing. Here, on the exposed Dish Terrace, the wind seemed to have built its eyrie. When it leapt in sudden gusts upon these rocks, peop
le found it hard to keep on their feet. The torches and church tapers held by the mourners were blown out by its first assault. Only the silver thurible still glowed faintly as the deacon held it up to the priest. Ter Haigasun passed, blessing, in tiny steps, from corpse to corpse. This method of burial scandalized Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, but, since they were on the Damlayik only by sufferance, they did not criticize. Two men lifted the first corpse by its feet and shoulders and bore it along to the narrow part of the ledge. There stood a giant with his legs straddled, unshaken by these buffeting gusts, with hands like two big, outspread lettuces, lifted in readiness. It was Kevork, the sunflower dancer, the half-wit. It had not been easy to make him understand his office. At last he had realized what was wanted and nodded with a broad grin. "Oh, yes -- just what they do on ships!" So that then they learned, for the first time, that as a boy Kevork had sailed on a coaler in the Black Sea. The half-wit was by nature full of zeal, and nothing gave him greater satisfaction than a chance to make himself useful.