Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  The patient opened glowering eyes. Iskuhi noticed nothing. She had put down her poison-bowl again and thrust an extra cushion under Juliette's head, to prop her up. Only then did she set her draught to Juliette's lips. Juliette waited, to disarm her arch-enemy's suspicions, pretending that she really was going to drink. Suddenly, with well-calculated cunning, she knocked the cup out of Iskuhi's hand. The tea spilt over the rugs.

  But Juliette had sat up in bed and was panting: "Go! Get out, you! Go away! . . ."

  She had far worse to encounter early that evening, when Gabriel came beside her bed. Now it was a case of escaping quickly, diving back swiftly into the labyrinth. But suddenly those dark paths were blocked, and the whole area of the borderland had become most absurdly constricted. Gabriel, as usual, took up her hand inquiringly. A fully conscious thud of her heart: Will he speak? Shall I have to be told everything today, and know ? Mayn't I hide any more? She tried to breathe heavily, evenly. But she could feel at once that this time her sleep would not be limpid and just, but troubled by the will; Gabriel, too, said not a word. In a little while he lit the candles on the dressing table -- oil was no longer being used -- and went away. Juliette breathed freely again. But in two minutes he was back with that big photograph of Stephan which he placed on her bed. It was the photograph done last year, which usually he kept on his writing-desk in Paris; also in Yoghonoluk.

  But that isn't Stephan's photo at all, Juliette thought, it's something else, a letter perhaps, and, when I'm well, I can read it. But now I mustn't expose myself any longer to life. So bad for me! I really have still got a perfect right to vanish. She nestled down, and, with ice-cold hands, drew up the rugs to her mouth. But that threw the cardboard off the bed, with its picture side uppermost. The photo looked straight up at Juliette, whose head bent out over the bed. The candlelight, reflected in the glass, shone on the center of that flat image. Now it was done. Now there was no more going back for Juliette. But Stephan's visit was not any result of the photograph. The boy's essential reality was standing behind Juliette's bed. It was as if he had dashed in, out of breath, from among all the others, the Haik gang, or from orderly duty, or a game, bursting in quickly, much against his will, to gulp down milk.

  "Maman, were you looking for me?"

  "Don't come yet, not today, Stephan!" implored Juliette. "Not today, please. I'm not strong enough. Come tomorrow! Let me be ill just another day! You'd better go along to your father -- "

  "I'm always with him -- "

  "I know you don't love me, Stephan..

  "And you, Maman?"

  "When you're a good boy, I love you. You must wear your blue suit again. Because, otherwise, you're so Armenian. . . ."

  Stephan was very annoyed by this. He seemed not in the least to want to go back to his other clothes. His silence showed her he was defiant. But Juliette kept on begging in an ever stormier voice: "Please, not today, Stephan! Come early tomorrow! Leave me this one night . . ."

  "Early tomorrow?"

  It was an empty question, not a promise, impatient, absent, hasty, with Stephan's head half turned back, towards his mother. Yet, even as Juliette felt her petition granted, she sprang out of bed. Her voice rasped and came out strangled: "Stephan! Stay here -- don't run away -- here! Stay! Stephan! . . ."

  Mairik Antaram was on her way to Three-Tent Square to settle down her patient for the night. Shushik had joined her. For, since she heard her Haik was still alive, the widow had been shyly eager for company, and people to help. And who better than Antaram, the helper, could show her a way to this? These two women found the hanum lying out about two hundred paces in front of her tent. She cowered there in her night dress, by the side of a bush, her shrivelled legs drawn up to her chin. Sweat still stood out on her forehead, but her open eyes were again vacantly remote.

  Axes could be heard on the North Saddle from the distant, northern heights of Musa Dagh. The Turks were felling the ilexes of the mountain. Were they building gun emplacements? Or setting up a fortified camp to have a point of retreat for their next attack; not, as previously, to be forced to leave the heights when it was dark, or else be exposed to sudden onslaughts. Scouts were sent out to investigate these crests of hill beyond the Saddle; four of the quickest boys in the scouts' group. They never came back.

  Profound commotion! Sato, the master-spy, was sent forth. No harm came to her. And she came back. But nothing useful could be got out of her. "Many thousands of soldiers." Sato's notion of figures had always been most vague; either they were the lowest or the highest. As to what these "thousands" were doing, she could only give the mistiest report. "They're rolling wood," or "They're cooking." The duty seemed not to have interested her.

  This happened on the thirty-sixth day in camp, the fourth of September. That morning every family had been served with its exact portion of donkey-flesh. No one knew that the ration might not be the last. At the same time all the observers sent in reports that the villages and the whole of the valley were stirring as never before.

  And not only were there crowds of new soldiers and saptiehs, but swarms of inquisitive rabble had collected again from the Moslem villages. The cause of this tumult was soon apparent. When, armed with Gabriel's field-glass, Samuel Avakian climbed the high knoll to clear up the position, scouts came dashing in to him excitedly. Something entirely new had arrived. Most of the villagers had seen nothing like it before in their lives. It had just halted on the highroad from Antakiya to Suedia, at the entrance to the hamlet Yedidje, where a small detachment of cavalry were awaiting it. Avakian through his field-glass recognized a tiny, grey, military car, which must have risked its life in crossing the passes at Ain el Yerab. Three officers climbed out of the car and mounted horses, held there ready for them. This miniature cavalcade turned straight into the valley of the villages. The officers cantered on ahead; behind them, the cavalrymen; a few minutes more and they'd be in Wakef. The officer riding in the center kept almost half a length ahead of the other two. The others wore the usual astrakhan kepi; he had on a field-gray service cap. Avakian could plainly observe the general's red stripe on his riding breeches. The riders cantered all through the villages without a halt.

  It took them scarcely an hour to reach Yoghonoluk. There, on the church square, some civilians were already awaiting them; no doubt the Kaimakam of Antakiya who, with the müdir and other civil servants, escorted the general pasha and his suite into Villa Bagradian. These very significant events were at once reported to the commander. Samuel Avakian sounded the major alarm on his own responsibility. Gabriel later endorsed this measure. He reinforced it, indeed, by giving orders that from now on the camp was to consider itself as being in a perpetual state of alarm, whether anything happened or not. But to Avakian he confided his opinion that the Turks were not ready yet by a long chalk, that neither today nor tomorrow would anything happen, and probably not in the next few days. He seemed to be right. Having spent two hours in the villa, these new officers remounted and cantered to Yedidje, even more sharply than they had come. They had not been half a day on the scene of action when the little, cheaply rattling car drove off again toward Antakiya. The Kaimakam accompanied these military gentlemen back to his provincial capital.

  That same day Gabriel roused himself and shook off his pain. The soldier aroused in him by the banishment laws got the upper hand again. From hour to hour he managed to extinguish his inner life. Pain was still there, but only in the form of some dim consciousness, like a wounded limb deadened with injections. He flung himself on his work with wild eagerness. Sudden resolution seemed to have worked a complete cure, so that now he stood more firmly erect than ever. Only now did he become fully aware what invaluable help he got from Avakian, his adjutant, or better, his chief-of-staff. That indefatigable tutor, that strangely impersonal ego, who never once -- though in knowledge and intelligence he stood head and shoulders above most of the leaders -- had appeared to lay any claims to leadership, had put forth iron strength. When Avakian appeared i
n the trenches, he spread that feeling of almost joyous zeal, that precious "morale,' which is really complete trust in the leadership. It was because, even when there was no commander, the adjutant could reflect Bagradian's qualities, like light. And Avakian, too, since Stephan's death, had had little sleep. He had lived four years with the Bagradians and had loved Stephan like his young brother. Why, on that horrible day, had he not guessed what was going on in Stephan's mind? He would never forgive himself. Never? Alas, it was his only comfort that this "never" was only a matter of a few days, and that so everything -- everything -- weighed lighter. Avakian set himself to serve Gabriel. Among other things he had drawn up a new roster of the decads. From it Bagradian found that his fighters had diminished to seven hundred or so. But this great gap left by death did not connote any essential weakening of their fighting strength. The best reservists could be armed with the rifles of these dead. And then, thanks to the forest fire, the area of defence had shrunk to a few sections. The ilex gully was still an oven of glowing coals. Their heat could be felt in the Town Enclosure as much as ever, where, usually towards evening, it spoilt people's tempers. So that the weakest part of the line was now protected for ever against attack. And not only in this great sector of the Damlayik, but far around, on the lower slopes, ridges, and hillocks, caved-in tree trunks still glowed. Here a compassionate hand had turned it all in favor of the Armenians. Gabriel finally disbanded the garrisons of sections, grown superfluous, and in place of them formed a strong chain of outposts, to protect the mountain from surprise attacks and Turkish spies. Judging by present signs and possibilities, the Turks were intending a massed assault in the north, probably supported by artillery, with a force that should ten times outnumber and wipe out the exhausted Armenians. Their axes rang all day on the Damlayik. But, in spite of these apparent preparations, Gabriel was far-sighted enough to send out spies in the southern areas. These brave young men ventured out at night as far as Suedia. They reported that only very few soldiers, and scarcely any saptiehs, were in the Orontes plain. All the troops were concentrated in the villages. The rock bastion with all its possibilities of an avalanche, seemed still, in spite of this new general, to inspire the Turks with insurmountable respect. None the less Gabriel decided to inspect the South Bastion next morning.

  That evening he sat in his sleeping place and stared up the slope of the Saddle across to the group of trees on the crest, between which Stephan had gone his way without his being able to prevent it. His neighbors in the trench still kept their distance. When he arrived, their talk suddenly stopped; they stood up and greeted him as the leader. And that was all. Not one of them said a word to him of Stephan. They may not have dared. They all eyed him so strangely -- inquiring, disconsolate. For twenty-four hours he had seen neither Juliette nor Iskuhi. It was better not to. All ties were loosening. He must not let himself be cast back into weakness. He must be cold and free for the last fight. And, indeed, for all his immeasurable grief, he did feel cold and free. Here on this mountain summit even September evenings were chilly. Nor had the veering wind died down, though here and there it paused in its dance. Where were those peaceful moony nights when the forty wounds in Stephan's body had still not seared his father's mind? Gabriel stared on, out at the black wall opposite. Sometimes the wind mourned in the trees above. How timid their enemies were! On a night like this they could easily have dug themselves in along that slope without being prevented. Ah, well, they had no need of such arts, since they had artillery. That, in a hand's turn, would bring the end. Perhaps one ought not to be waiting for it, one ought to anticipate the attack, get a fresh idea. Had not he, Bagradian, always had the saving idea, so that here they still remained, unbroken? First, it had been the whole defence system, the completed plan of these entrenchments, then the komitajis, the mobile guard, the forest fire, to save them again. . . . Anticipate! A new inspiration! But what? How? His mind was a blank.

  Next day Gabriel visited the South Bastion as he had intended. But first he stopped to examine the howitzers. Their barrels were trained in opposite directions, the one on to the northern heights, the other on Suedia. Gabriel, in the days before Stephan's death, had set their direction by his map. It would at least be possible to hold up and disturb the Turks' advance. In the lockers there were still four shrapnel and fifteen grenades. The guns had a guard of eight men round them, trained by Nurhan, under his directions.

  Nurhan, Avakian, and several decad commanders accompanied Gabriel on his surprise inspection. Their first impressions on reaching the South Bastion were not such as to arouse instant suspicion. Sarkis Kilikian, on release, had even consented to improve still further the machinery of his battering-rams. The powerful battering-shields had been enlarged by oar-shaped slats jutting over the wheel-edge. So that now the impact of the shield could take in a much wider surface of the loose-heaped stones. The shields themselves had been doubly strengthened and clamped together with many strong iron hoops. Judging by the look of them, these squat catapults would be capable of hurling tons of stone down the slope as far as the ruins of Seleucia. Kilikian seemed interested in nothing else but these sinister toys. It was a boyish trait, this sudden fit of obstinate concentration with which he kept on working at "wall-breakers." This zeal was in signal contrast to the usual bleak emptiness of the man. But, from the first instant he set eyes on him, Gabriel had sensed some eager, subterranean well-spring in this victim of relentless fate. His relationship with Kilikian was full of inexplicable tensions. Something in the prosperous "Parisien," the cultivated bourgeois, was afraid of the radical denials, the void, within this deserter. They had only once been directly in conflict, when Kilikian was routed with ignominy. Yet, even on that occasion, Gabriel, the victor, had felt uneasy, and today he could still not feel entirely assured. Kilikian was the one man on Musa Dagh with whom the chief never could manage to strike the right note. Either he spoke to him too negligently, or made him too much of an equal. But the Russian could always find a method of keeping Bagradian at arm's length. That, for instance, he should still lie quietly on his back while the chief for the second time praised his catapults -- it was not only insolent, it was subversive insubordination, and ought to have brought down instant punishment. Gabriel did not punish; he turned away to look about for Teacher Oskanian. But when Gabriel had been seen approaching, Oskanian, in hysterical panic, had made himself scarce. He was unaware that neither Ter Haigasun, Bedros Hekim, nor Shatakhian had told Gabriel of that sorry Council meeting, at which the teacher had spat out so much venom against Bagradian's family. To have been turned off the Council of Leaders had put an edge on Oskanian's vanity. Apparently he was now intriguing to found an "Oskanian party." For days he had blown off steam to all and sundry, to simple-minded folk who did not belong to the South Bastion but came there to visit him. "The idea," as he called it, took clearer and clearer shape in his mind. But this idea was not an original inspiration; it dated from a luminous dissertation of Krikor's, who years ago, on one of their philosophical walks, had discussed the thesis "the duty of living" and "the right to die," supported with sundry quotations from a number of high-sounding authorities, whose opinions he set one against the other.

  In the trenches of the South Bastion the inspecting party discovered no flagrant infringements. The duty-routine as laid down for the decads was being followed, the posts had sentries, the advance-pickets were placed at the edge of the wide stone slope. Rifles left nothing to be desired. And yet, for all its surface order, these men's manner had in it something indefinite, slack, suspicious, which roused all Nurhan's ire. This garrison was made up of eleven decads. About eighty-five of the men were deserters. Not all of these fellows were doubtful quantities; on the contrary, the majority were quite harmless fugitives from barracks, who had escaped from a bullying sergeant, the bastinado, or enrollment in a labor battalion. But, whoever was at fault in the matter, whether it were due to want, depravity, or bad example -- they had one and all taken on Kilikian's intractable apathy, as t
hough that were the only way of approaching life for such men as they. They lounged, they loitered, they lay about insolently on their backs, they stretched and lolled, they growled and whistled provocatively, in a way which boded no good for the coming battle. These men might not have been a fighting garrison, not even indeed an authentic gang of brigands, but a mere horde of dissipated, disgruntled tramps clustered together in the wilderness. But Gabriel did not seem to take their behavior too seriously. Most of these men had proved themselves fighters. Everything else was beside the point. They must be more carefully handled than the élite.

  But one piece of carelessness was too much for him. The bonfire! On the west flanks of the South Bastion, where the Damlayik curves off seawards, three high redoubts had been thrown up as flank protection. These redoubts dominated the whole steep descent at that side of the mountain which ebbed away in wooded terraces towards Habaste and thus made every outflanking maneuver impossible. And here, twenty paces below these redoubts (also crowned by protecting walls), a big cosy bonfire was flaming on the open foreground area -- in friendly invitation to the Turks! It was one of the most stringent regulations that no open fires should be lit in the trenches unless they had been sanctioned by the leaders. Yet even this was not enough! Round this fire there squatted not only a ragged crew of the least desirable deserters, but two trollops who had moved from the Town Enclosure to this society. And these women were turning the tenderest goat's flesh on long spits before the flames. Chaush Nurhan and the others hurled themselves in a frenzy on the group. Bagradian came slowly after them. Nurhan gripped one of the deserters by his ragged shirt and jerked him up. He was a long-haired lout with a brownish face and small, quick eyes, eyes which did not look in the least Armenian.