by Franz Werfel
They sat with their backs to the Town Enclosure, where, indistinctly, they could watch the pickets of the new line. Some of these were now carrying hooded lanterns. This maze of lights wound slowly back and forth. The wind was as quiet as ever.
"I haven't slept -- not a second," admitted Gabriel. "I've had too much to think about, in spite of this lump, which lets me know it's there, right enough."
"Pity. You ought to have slept, Effendi."
"Why? Tomorrow's the day we've managed to put off so long. Yes, I wanted to say to you, Avakian, that really we've largely got you to thank for the fact that things have gone on as long as they have. We've worked splendidly together. You're the most dependable person I know. Forgive my stupid way of putting it. Of course you're more than just that."
This embarrassed Avakian. But Gabriel set a hand on his knee. "After all, some time we had to speak frankly. . . . And what other time is there?"
"Those swine have destroyed everything," raged the student, mainly because he was feeling embarrassed, but Bagradian waved away the past.
"No need to worry about that now. It had to come some day. And usually, in this world, what you expect comes in the way you'd least expect it. But it wasn't that I wanted to talk to you about. Listen! You know, Avakian, before all this, I'd always the feeling that you were going to come through. Why, I myself couldn't tell you. Probably it's sheer moonshine, but somehow I have a vision of you, back in Paris, the devil only knows how you managed to get there, or rather how you're going to manage it."
The tutor's pale and sloping forehead could be seen shimmering in the dark. "That's pure nonsense, forgive me, Gabriel Bagradian. What happens to you is bound to happen to me; there can be nothing else."
"Why not? I agree that, if you go by reason, there can't be anything else. But let's be unreasonable for once, let's say that, somehow, you get away."
Gabriel stopped and stared intently into the dark, as though Avakian's happy future was already fairly easily distinguishable. He took out his pocketbook and put it down on the grass beside him. "I didn't want to keep you here, I wanted to send you back to the north trenches. I feel easier when you're with Nurhan. But all that really doesn't matter much. I've something more important I want you to do for me, Avakian! Stay with the women. I mean with my wife, and Mademoiselle Tomasian. It's part of the good presentiment I have about you. Perhaps you bring luck. Do what you can! But above all, see to it, please, that the tent gets cleared in time before the sun's up. And see that Madame is carried down as carefully as possible on to the shore. Find somebody else, not Kevork. I hate the thought of his hands. Take Kristaphor and Missak."
Samuel Avakian protested. Tomorrow, in the last battle, he would be more necessary than ever. They had still the most important questions to settle. And so the conscientious adjutant began giving lists of the duties awaiting him.
But his commandant impatiently refused to consider them. "No! No! We've made all the preparations we can. You leave all that to me. I don't need you here any longer. This ends your war service, Avakian. The other is a personal request."
He handed over a sealed letter. "Here, friend, this is my will. You're to keep it till Madame is well again, understand? I'm still, of course, going by my ridiculous feeling that you'll come through. You see? And then, here's a check on the Credit Lyonnais. I've no idea how much salary I still owe you. . . . And, of course, you're perfectly right to consider me mad. Placed as we are, such calculations are too ridiculous. I'm being pedantic. It may be all the sheerest superstition. Let's say I'm making magic. See? Just a little magic."
Bagradian sprang up with a laugh. The impression he gave was young and dependable. "If I survive you, that nullifies both the will and the check -- so look out!"
But his laugh sounded strained. Avakian kept the papers at arm's length and began to protest again. And now Gabriel got impatient. "Go now, please. I shall feel easier."
The last hours before sunrise dragged unbearably. Gabriel set his teeth as he stared through the brightening dark. In the first twilight he trained his guns on to the South Bastion. The dense early morning mists of this windless day took long to clear. A red, angry sun burst into the sky. Gabriel knelt as prescribed on the right of the first howitzer, and tugged with fervor at the fuse tape. The cracking din, the wild kick of the gun carriage, fire and smoke, the howling in the air, the crystal-hard seconds before the distant impact of the shell, were like a deliverance. All the unbearable tension in Gabriel's mind released itself in this piece of gunnery. What reason had the prudent commander of the Damlayik for wasting irreplaceable shells before the slightest sign of a Turkish attack? Was he trying to wake, or scare, the enemy? Encourage his own? Did he hope his shell would so devastate Turkish companies as to rob them of all their courage to advance? None of all this! Gabriel had fired this first shot, not for any tactical reason, but simply because to wait any longer was too unbearable. It was a sheer cry, half for help, half of tragic jubilation, that the night was past. And not only he -- all the exhausted men of the line of rifles, bent double with cold, felt just as he did. The outposts climbed the nearest hillock for a wider view. But as far as they could overlook the uneven ground of this mountain plateau, the Damlayik lay deserted. The Turks did not seem to have left their base yet, nor in the north. But the answer came. It took a little time coming, and in this breathing space Bagradian had leisure to fire two more shots. Then the deep, the monstrous crack of a thunderbolt. No one knew what it was. High over him a hiss of iron, which seemed to fill the entire mountain, from Amanus to El Akra. The impact crashed down far in the distance. Somewhere in the Orontes plain. This thunderbolt had risen off the sea.
That same night the communes had set up their unsheltered camp, pell-mell, among rocks, on the crags, without any definite plan. Ter Haigasun had given the mukhtars orders to bring Oskanian to him, dead or alive. The priest's whole soul was engrossed with the one fiery longing to avenge the outraged majesty of the law, this base betrayal of the community, on the guilty parties.
But Teacher Hrand Oskanian was in hiding, not far from the Dish Terrace. He was not alone. The neophytes of his cult of suicide had joined him. On Musa Dagh there had not so far been one case of suicide. Even tonight Oskanian only had four miserable converts. A man and three women. The man was fifty, but looked like an old man. He was one of the silk-weavers round Kheder Beg. Oskanian's teaching had found in Margoss Arzruni a willing disciple. Of the women the eldest was a matron whose whole family had died. The two others were still quite young. The child of one of them had perished in her arms on the day before. The other, unmarried, came of a well-to-do Yoghonoluk family and was known everywhere as a lugubrious, rather scatter-brained person.
Oskanian, while the putsch was still in progress, had escaped and in terror sought this refuge. But Margoss Arzruni, the prophet's apostle, had tracked him down, and now brought the teacher these three faithful women, all ready to make his words a reality. It is easier to kill oneself in company. And the silk-weaver was one of those implacable apostles who will not permit the prophet to go back one iota on his evangel. For many days, that these sayings might come to fruition in his mind, he had visited the Master in the South Bastion. The five sat close to one another, sheltered by one of the great boulders which block up the way to the Dish Terrace. They were freezing, and so huddled together. The apostle of suicide was himself vaguely surprised that he, almost at the point of carrying out the most solemn resolution of which a human being is capable, should still be feeling a certain glow of pleasure at the nestling proximity of a female. It did not trouble him, however, as he let himself be catechized by the matron, who, full of trust, questioned her teacher (since no doubt he had examined this side of the question) as to possible results in the Beyond for those who begin eternity for themselves.
"It's a great sin, Teacher, I'm sure. I only do it so as to see my folk again, quickly again! But perhaps I shan't be allowed to see them again. I may have to stay in hell for all eter
nity, because, you see, I know it's a great sin."
Oskanian raised his pointed nose, which glimmered through the dark. "You'll be giving back to nature what nature has given you."
This portentous saying seemed to afford Arzruni, the silk-weaver, a diabolical satisfaction. He rubbed his hands together, crowing in a weakly strident voice: "Well, old woman, hear what he says! Does that satisfy you? Of course, if it's only your folk you're wanting to see again, you can always wait for that till tomorrow. The Turks aren't likely to overlook you, you know. No one'll want you for his harem. But I'm not going to wait. I've had enough of it!"
She bent forward, crossing her hands over her breasts. "Jesus Christ will forgive me. . . . God knows all. . . ."
This gave the teacher his chance of a pungent saying.
"God knows all!" he screeched. "The one reason for forgiving Him for having made this world the way He has would be that He knows nothing -- nothing! -- about it. . . . He bothers His head with us about the same as though we were lice. See? He might have His hands full otherwise. . . ."
The apostle Arzruni echoed in an ecstasy of derision: "Yes, He might have His hands full otherwise. . . . Like lice . . ."
But the prophet, whose acumen had almost exhausted him, turned to this matron who hesitated to sin. "Why should He bother about you, since He's only a fool notion in your head?"
The silk-weaver blinked, getting the sense, of it; this dawned on him, and he roared with satisfaction slapping his thighs and swaying about like a praying Moslem. "Fool notion in your head -- old woman -- understand that? Only in your head . . . Well, spit him out of it, spit him out!"
These blasphemies and Arzruni's laugh evoked wild sobs in the young mother. She remembered how, after a long struggle, someone had taken the small, stiff body out of her arms. This man, one of the hospital staff, had run off to fling her three-year-old son away with the others, somewhere. She had spent hours looking for his corpse. She only hoped they'd thrown him in the sea. This mother longed to be in the sea, with her baby. She sprang up with a piercing scream: "Oh, why do you sit here talking like this for hours? Do come along!"
But the Master reproved: "It's got to be done in the proper order."
It was well past midnight when they set about determining precedence. Arzruni proposed they should draw lots. But Oskanian was of the opinion that the women should be the first to go; it was more seemly. First the eldest, he said, then the younger, and last the youngest. He gave no further reasons for this arrangement but, since the women raised no objections, they left it at that. Finally he declared himself willing to draw lots with his apostle. Fate went against or, if one prefers it, for him, since it gave him precedence of the silk-weaver. It was quiet, without a breath of wind. But a flurried sea still growled on the rocks far below. The darkness was thick enough to bite. The teacher crept, fumbling his way very gingerly indeed, to the rocks' edge, with the help of a lantern which he set down there. Its light, most curiously steady, marked the boundary line between Here and There. Then, as master of ceremonies of the Gulf, escort from here into eternity, he waved an inviting hand in its direction.
The matron knelt for a few minutes, crossing herself again and again. She came on, in little, tripping steps, and vanished without a cry. The young mother followed her at once. She went with a run. A short, sharp scream. . . . The lugubrious girl was far less eager. She begged the teacher to give her a shove over the brink. But Oskanian refused her this good office, protesting loudly. The lugubrious girl went down on her hands and knees, and so on all fours dragged on to the edge. There she seemed to think it over. Her hand went out for the lantern, which it upset. The lantern rolled to destruction. But, instead of keeping still, or crawling back, the girl stretched her hands out after it, bent forwards, and so lost her balance. A terrible, endless scream, since the wretched girl clung on, another full two minutes, to some jutting ledge, before she plunged down. . . . Oskanian and Arzruni stood in the dusk, without a word. A long, long pause. That scream still cut its way through the heavy consciousness of the teacher.
At last the apostle reminded his prophet: "Well, Teacher, now it's your turn."
Hrand Oskanian seemed to consider the whole position in all its bearings. He remarked, in a not too self-conscious voice: "The lantern's gone. I'm not going to do it in the dark. Let's wait for the twilight. It can't be so long now. . . ."
The silk-weaver observed with some show of reason: "Far easier in the dark, Teacher."
"For you, perhaps; not for me though." The Master sounded very reproachful indeed. "I need light."
With this lofty and inspiring remark Margoss Arzruni seemed fairly satisfied. But he kept close to Oskanian. If his teacher, who had sat beside him, made the smallest movement, the disciple would at once catch him by the lapel (Oskanian still had on the tattered wreck of that swallow-tail milord's morning coat, ordered and selected to outrival Gonzague with Juliette). The grip with which Arzruni detained his prophet was loyal, nervous, and mistrustful. Hrand Oskanian had become the prisoner of his teachings. Once he jumped up. The silk-weaver sprang up by his side. There was no getting away from this disciple.
When, ages later, the edge of the rock outlined itself in misty twilight, Arzruni rose and took off his overall: "Teacher, it's not dark now!"
Oskanian was a long time stretching, yawning, as a man yawns after deep, refreshing sleep. He stood up portentously. He blew his nose several times with trumpet blasts before, followed by his guardian apostle, he would take the first inevitable steps. But he turned again, still some way from the sharp verge. "Better that you should go first, Weaver."
The shrivelled Arzruni, in dirty shirt-sleeves, craned his observant head in the teacher's face. "Why me, Teacher? Didn't we draw for it? You drew to go first, didn't you? And the three women have gone on in front of us. . . ."
Oskanian's hirsute face looked very white. "Why you, you say? Because I mean to be the last! Because I don't intend to have you run away and joke about me."
It looked at first as though the silk-weaver were giving his whole mind to this. But when the Master least expected it he found his apostle at his throat. Yet he had sensed an attack. He soon knew that, small as he was, he was stronger than the rickety Arzruni. And yet that fanatical weaver, whose deepest faith was suddenly shattered, threatened to be a dangerous customer. Oskanian felt himself thrust back, a good foot nearer the roaring deep. No doubt this madman was trying to pull them down to destruction together. The teacher suddenly flung himself on the ground, gripped a clump of a shrub with one hand, the weaver's right leg with the other, and so upset him. Still gripping hard to the steel-tough shrub, he kicked out wildly at the body and face of his sprawling disciple. Exactly how it happened he did not know, but almost the next instant he found himself kicking into the void. The body of Arzruni the silk-weaver toppled over the edge into the fog. Oskanian sat up stiffly. Still sitting up, he worked his way backwards along the ledge, back, back. He felt himself saved. But that only lasted a few minutes. Then he knew that even this victory was in vain. Never again could he return into the company of the just and the respectable. Nor could he fly. The little teacher jumped to his feet and wandered, in little, hesitant steps. During their struggle the weaver had torn a swallow-tail off his coat. Oskanian puffed out his pigeon breast, as he always did at the labored moments when he felt he must assert his puny self. But then his chest crumpled together, as he hopped in the fog like a bird with a drooping wing. He strove to comfort and move himself to tears by means of a poetic phrase, on which his whole mind was suddenly focused: "In sunlight, not in the grey dawn."
In the course of these hoppings Oskanian stumbled over a flagpole. It was their banner with the cry for help inscribed on it: "Christians in Need," which the wind had long since overturned and carried away. Both as a look-out station and burying-ground the Dish Terrace had for days been out of use. Hrand Oskanian picked up the heavy flagpole and shouldered it without knowing what he did. Then, most grotesque of
ensigns, he hopped about with it, in ever-increasing desperation. How he longed to forbid the sun to rise, over there, from behind the Amanus mountains! But here it already was, red and angry. One last, helplessly lived thought: "Off this cursed rock! Find somewhere to hide! Better starve slowly!" But for Oskanian there was no going back. He must make good his poetic word about the sunshine. The women and the weaver were expecting him. His banner held almost at arm's length, he lingered on around the edge. Mists cleared below him. Wide beams, swaths, banks of it, unwound themselves in coiling arabesques, leaving, here and there, a patch of sea as flat and dull as a dark-grey cloth. At one place on this cloth something was glittering. Hrand Oskanian shut his eyes. Now he must be really out of his mind, as he'd always feared he would be one day. He opened and shut his eyes again and again. The fog meanwhile dispersed and vanished. But not the glittering thing on the broad grey cloth; it might have been stuck to it. It no longer shimmered vaguely in and out, but was a long, blue-grey ship with four funnels, which, seen from above, looked rather small and not quite worth taking seriously. A few wisps of fog still hovered round it.
