by Franz Werfel
Nurhan's long grey sergeant's mustache twitched with fury at him. "You louse! Where did you get that goat from?"
The long-haired deserter tried to free himself. He pretended not to know who Chaush Nurhan was. "What's it to do with you? Who are you anyway?"
"That's who I am!"
One crack on the jaw sent the fellow spinning, nearly into the fire. He picked himself up and began to whine: "What did you hit me for? What harm have I ever done you ? We went out at night to Habaste after this goat."
"To Habaste, you filthy pig! You found that goat in the camp, you poor crook. You stole their last bite from starving people. . . . Now we've our explanation. . . ."
The long-haired thief turned shifty eyes on Gabriel, who stood aside, leaving his subordinates to deal with this very uninspiring business.
"Effendi," the deserter whined, aren't we human beings? Do we feel less hunger than anyone else? And yet you ask us to work; we've got to be on duty all day and night, worse than in any barracks . . ."
To this Bagradian answered nothing, but signalled sharply to his people to tread out the fire and impound the goat's flesh.
Chaush Nurhan menaced, waving a roasted goat's leg: "You'll get hungrier yet before you've done. Better start eating each other up."
The long-haired culprit approached Bagradian, with humble arms crossed on his breast. "Effendi! Give us munitions! We've only got a cartridge belt each. You've taken all the rest away from us. Then we could go out hunting and shoot ourselves a hare or a fox. It's all wrong that we haven't a few more cartridges. The Turks might come along any night."
Gabriel turned his back on him. On their way back into camp, Nurhan the Lion declared, still very excited: "We ought to clear out that whole South Bastion. Best thing would be to turn twenty of the worst of them out of camp!"
But Gabriel's thoughts had long been occupied with more important things than this very unpleasant little incident.
"That's impossible," he said absently. "We can't send our Armenian fellow countrymen out to certain death."
"Armenian fellow countrymen?" Chaush Nurhan spat far and scornfully.
The face of the long-haired man came to Gabriel's mind. "There must be scum, among five thousand. It's the same everywhere."
Chaush glanced suspiciously at Gabriel. "It's bad to let a crime of this sort pass."
Bagradian stood still; he took hold of the old sergeant's Mauser rifle and stamped the butt of it hard on the ground. "We've only got one punishment, Chaush Nurhan -- and this is it. All the rest is absurd. Wasn't it too ridiculous to shut Kilikian up in the govermnent hut, where he had poor Krikor to keep him company? To punish these fellows round the fire, we should have to shoot the lot of them."
"Well, that's what we ought to have done. . . . But now we ought to put them into separate units, Effendi -- "
Gabriel stopped again. "We'll have separate units, Chaush Nurhan, something entirely new . . ."
He said no more. He himself was still not sure what this new thing was.
When, on the morning of September 6, the women came to the distributing- tables to receive the day's ration for their families, some of them were given only bones, with a few stray morsels of donkey's flesh still clinging to them. In desperation the mothers besieged the mukhtars, who as usual superintended the distribution, each at the table assigned to his village. These headmen stepped back before the flood, grey and green in the face, like their own bad consciences. By Council's orders, the best meat had gone to the trenches, they stammered; the fighters had to get up their strength for the coming attack. And as for the very last she-goats and donkeys, it had been decided not to slaughter them; the goats for their milk, which went to the smallest children; the four last donkeys because they would be needed in the fight. Nothing, therefore, remained but that mothers of families should begin to look about for their own provender. They must try to concoct some kind of herb-broth, of arbutus berries, acorns, Indian fig, wild berries, roots, and leaves, which at least should serve to deaden hunger. The mukhtars, as they gave this disconsolate counsel, kept bobbing and putting their hands in front of their faces, fully expecting that these women would strangle and tear them in pieces in their rage. They did no such thing. They hung their heads and stared at the earth. The feverish restlessness in their eyes changed into that dazed expression which they had worn that day in the church of Yoghonoluk, when the government decree had flashed down like lightning on them. The mukhtars began to breathe again. They had nothing to fear. The shoals of women began to separate. Slowly they turned their backs on the empty distributing-tables.
Then, in a little while, these women dispersed in all directions, in long, star-shaped lines about the mountain-plateau, went here and there among the rocks on the coastside, and even ventured down into such green spaces over the valley as fire had skirted. Their children ran with them, some not older than three or four, getting under their mothers' feet and hindering them. If only they could have crossed the North Saddle as formerly, there might still have been hope of nutritious finds. But the area within camp-bounds had been cleared as bare as the plundered bone of a wild dog. Some of these women strayed for the hundredth time in and out among the arbutus and bilberry bushes to glean what still remained unpicked. Others among the rocks tried to climb down to those rare places where grew Indian figs, whose big soft fruit was esteemed a delicacy. What good was all that? Their bellies all cried aloud for flour, for fat, for a piece of goat's cheese. No blessing lay on Pastor Aram's fishery. Without the necessary assistance it was impossible to construct a raft which would hold in the rough seas, and the nets also had proved useless. Nor did better luck attend the bird-catchers, though their decoys and springs were properly made. But here there were no birds as yet; they were all still in the cool north. Quail, snipe, and woodcock would not fly into such childish traps.
During these desperate expeditions of women the Council of Leaders held a session. The leaders were still unaware that this was their last day in the government hut. The wall of books set up by Krikor against the world still remained unaltered. Ter Haigasun's face was a waxen death-mask. The priest asked Pastor Aram to speak.
Today's counsels, and their very unfortunate sequel, were predetermined by the strained feeling already arisen between Aram Tomasian and Gabriel. Tomasian had still not questioned Bagradian. He loved Isknhi. Now that he scarcely ever saw her, that Hovsamiah kept slandering his sister in the wildest outbursts, he loved her as never before. Her words kept ringing in his ears: "I'm nineteen, and shall never be twenty." So that Tomasian tried not to bring things to a head.
But this first meeting with Gabriel, whom he had not seen since Stephan's death, filled Aram with a kind of bitter embarrassment. He could not manage to bring out a word of sympathy.
The sitting opened with his report:
"What we decided to do has been done. And now all the meat has been distributed. Only the very last portion was secretly kept back for the decads. At most it can last another two days. Today the women and children have their first complete fast day, unless we care to consider the rations of the last few days as a fast."
Mukhtar Thomas Kebussyan raised his hand, having first squinted round the room to make sure that all his partisans of the last sitting were in their places. "I can't see why the men in the trenches should be fed, and the women and children left to starve. Strong, well-set-up young fellows ought to be able to tighten their belts a bit."
Here Gabriel intervened at once: "That's very simple, Mukhtar Kebussyan. The fighters need their strength now, more than they ever did."
Ter Haigasun, to support their leader, switched the debate off food again: "Perhaps Gabriel Bagradian will give us his view of the real strength of the defence decads."
Gabriel pointed to Chaush Nurhan. "The morale of the decads is really not much worse than it was before the last fight. It's surprising enough, but that's how it is, and Chaush Nurhan will bear me out in what I say. And our defence works are far strong
er now than last time. The possible points for a Turkish attack are far more restricted. Roughly, there's only the north for them to attack in, and all their preparations prove what I say. In spite of this new general of theirs, they'll never dare attack the bastion; that's as good as certain. The garrison there, as we all know, does us no particular credit. But I intend sending Nurhan along there for a couple of days to keep them in order for a bit. This Turkish attack in the north will be worse than all the others put together. It'll all be a question of whether they have artillery and how much they have. Up to now we haven't managed to find out. It all depends on that. That is to say, unless we resort to some new method . . . but I'll talk of that later."
Ter Haigasun, who had sat as usual, with chilly hands and downcast eyes, could not suppress the essential question: "Good -- but what then?"
Gabriel, consumed with longings for the end and its freedom, spoke far too resonantly for the little room: "Well, only think! At this minute all over the world millions of men are living in trenches, just as we do. They're fighting, or else they're waiting to fight, bleeding, dying, just like us. That's the only thought that pacifies and consoles me. When I think that, I feel I'm no worse, no less honorable, than any other man among those millions. And it's the same for us all! By fighting, we cease to be just manure, rotting somewhere round the Euphrates. By fighting we gain honor and dignity. Therefore, we should see nothing ahead, and think of nothing else, but how to fight."
A very small minority indeed seemed to share this heroic view of the situation. Ter Haigasun's "what then?" was going the rounds.
Gabriel looked round, surprised. "What then? I thought we'd all agreed on that. What then? We'll hope nothing more."
Here was a chance for Asayan, the choir-singer, to do his friend Oskanian a service. He had promised that, in this sitting, he would let slip no chance to sow mistrust. He need only hint at the "treachery" of Gonzague Maris, at the Agha's mysterious visit to Gabriel.
He cleared his throat. "Effendi, a warrior's death is not always quite so heroic and single-minded. Personally I wish nothing better. Nor do I presume to express an opinion on your respected wife. Perhaps you made some arrangements on her behalf with the Turkish pasha who visited you a few days ago. We know nothing of that! But what, may I ask, is to happen to our wives, sisters and daughters?"
It was in Gabriel's nature not to be prepared for such attacks. Arrows of malice and vulgarity were more than he could readily contend with, mainly because he always needed a certain time in which to become fully conscious of them. He stared at Asayan, not understanding him.
But Ter Haigasun, who knew Bagradian's nature from A to Z, took up the cudgels on his behalf: "Singer, keep a guard on your tongue! But if you really want to know why the Agha Rifaat Bereket from Antakiya came here to see the effendi, I'll tell you. Gabriel Bagradian could long since have been safe in the Agha's house in Antakiya, eating his bread and pilav in peace and quiet, since the Turk suggested that he should escape and offered him a very good chance to do so. But our Gabriel Bagradian preferred to keep faith with us and go on doing his duty to the last minute."
This declaration was a necessary breach of Gabriel's confidence. A long, rather uneasy silence followed it. Apart from Ter Haigasun, only Bedros Altouni had known the truth. The silence continued. But it would be a mistake to suppose that it expressed any general approval of Bagradian's act in refusing the Agha. The mukhtars, for instance, had no such thoughts. Each of these worthy men "of the people" asked himself how he would have reacted to such a temptation. And they each quietly decided that this European grandson of old Avetis had simply behaved like a silly fool. Aram Tomasian was the first to ease the silence with his voice.
"Gabriel Bagradian," he began, but could not keep his eyes on his opponent, "feels everything as a militarist, as an officer. After all, no one can reproach me with having run away in these last fights. But I don't feel as a militarist. Things strike me differently. We all see things differently from Bagradian, there's no getting away from that. Is there any object, I ask myself, in spilling more blood in another unequal battle, merely in order to be left to starve quietly for three days longer at most? And even that would be an unheard-of bit of luck. What should we gain?"
Till that instant Aram's "way out" had still been the vaguest of half-digested notions, without proper reality. His bitter urge to contradict Bagradian suddenly gave shape to this nebulous project, made it seem to him like a well-thought-out suggestion. "Ter Haigasun and all the rest of you must admit that there's no point in our holding out up here on the Damlayik; that we should do better to shoot our wives, and then ourselves, than die slowly of hunger or fall into the hands of the Turks. I therefore suggest that we leave the mountain, tomorrow or the day after, as soon as possible. As to the best means of doing it, that must all be carefully discussed. I would suggest that we go northwards, though of course not on the heights, since those are barricaded by the Turks, but along the coast. We might take Ras el-Khanzir as our first objective. The little bay there is very sheltered and certainly has more fish in it than the coast here. We shan't need a raft, and I give you my word that the nets will be enough. . . ."
That sounded less fantastic than perhaps it was. Above all, Aram's speech suggested action, and the vague, but compelling prospect of being able before death to break through the mummification of the Damlayik. Heads, which up to then had never moved, began to sway as though a faint wind rippled them, faint color came into the faces.
Only Gabriel Bagradian had not changed as now he raised his hand for permission to speak. "That's a very pretty dream of Pastor Aram's. I admit that I've had similar dreams myself. But we must test fantasies closely by the chances they have of becoming reality. I'll therefore -- though, as responsible leader I have no right to -- assume that we succeed during the night in getting past the Turks, and reaching Ras el-Khanzir. I'll even go much further than that; I'll frivolously suppose that saptiehs and soldiers fail to notice a long, straggling procession of four to five thousand people, moving -- the moon's in her second quarter -- all along the brightly illuminated chalk cliffs above the coast. Good! We reach the sloping rocks of the cape unhindered. There we should have to get round a long promontory, since the little bay only eats into the coast beyond the cape. . . . Don't interrupt me, Pastor, you can rely on what I say, I have every detail of the map in my head. I don't know whether these bays are just bare rocks or whether they offer any kind of inhabitable ground. But, even so, I'll give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. Well, therefore, we find sufficient camping-ground, and the Turks are struck so blind that they need six, or if you like eight, days to hunt us out. And now comes the really important question: What shall we have gained? Answer: We shall have exchanged the known for the unknown. We shall have exposed our worn-out, famished women and children to a long, scrambling march, over pitiless rocks, along the cliffs, which probably they could never manage. Instead of this camp, to which we're accustomed, we should have to build up another, without strength and without means. Surely everyone sees that! Since we no longer have any mules, we've naturally had to leave all our beds and rugs, all our cooking utensils, our tools, behind on the Damlayik. But without tools, even if we found ourselves in Paradise, with bread growing on every tree, we could never start a new life. The pastor won't deny that. We relinquish a strong and tested fortress, for which the Turks have the greatest respect. We exchange a dominant position, on a height, for an exposed, helpless position in a valley, where there is no cover. We should be slaughtered within half an hour, Tomasian! We should of course have one great advantage. Down there we should not have such a long way to fall into the sea as we shall up here, from the Dish Terrace. But, anyway, I'm afraid the fish may get more to eat off us than we're ever likely to get off them."
Aram Tomasian had listened to this clear exposé with occasional excited interruptions. The voice of common sense, which even now warned him, at this decisive moment, not to let himself he driven by blind
emotion, grew fainter and fainter. Nor, as he attacked Bagradian, so hotly that he could scarcely control his voice, did he once look him in the face. "Gabriel Bagradian is always so despotic in defending his own point of view. He won't allow us to have any intelligence of our own. We're nothing but a set of poor peasants. He's so far above us! Well, I don't deny that that's so. We're poor peasants and craftsmen, not his equals. But, since he's just asked us so many questions, may I ask him a few in exchange? He, a trained officer, has made the Damlayik into a good fortress. Admitted! But what use is all this fortffication to us today on the Damlayik? None at all! On the contrary. It prevents our trying to find a last way of escape. If the Turks are intelligent, they won't let themselves in for another battle, since they can gain their object in a few days without losing a man. But whether or not there's another battle -- where is there some idea, some new attempt to escape death? I know it's not nearly so much trouble to perish here, in our usual surroundings. At least one hasn't got to make any effort. Personally I consider it despicable simply to sit down lazily and rot. And the most important question of all: What suggestions has Gabriel Bagradian got to make, to keep off hunger? Is it enough for him to jeer at my attempt with the fishery? Unluckily it was, and re mains, the only attempt. If I'd had support, if every able-bodied man hadn't been always drilling all day long, it might have been rather more successful."
