Forty Days of Musa Dagh

by Franz Werfel

  The teacher had very sharp eyes. The javelins of a young, impetuous sun, eager to do battle, made it easy to read the big, black letters along the bow: Guichen .

  Oskanian let out a few yammering howls. Guichen . The miracle had been wrought. But not for him. They were all to be saved. Only not he. Suddenly he jerked his pendant banner: "Christians in Need." Faster and faster, like a lunatic, the teacher brandished the heavy pole, every minute, indefatigably. From the captain's bridge of this armored cruiser a French signalling flag soon gave him his answer. Oskanian never noticed that. He had ceased to know that he was himself. He waved and waved the big white sheet in wild half-circles. He groaned with the effort. But, for as long as his strength continued, he still might live. Bagradian's howitzers cracked far off, above. Shorter, each time more unevenly, the half-circles of the Armenian flag still oscillated. Perhaps, Oskanian thought, I might manage to get on board and not be seen. And, as he thought it, stepped over the edge, drawn forward by the weight of his own flagpole more than by any act of his own will, with a shriek of wild terror, into nothing.

  At that minute the twelve-inch guns of the Guichen halted the Turks with a shell that crashed down into Suedia.

  The general, the Kaimakam, and the yüs-bashi were struck to the very soul by this order to halt. A few minutes before receiving it, they had come together, as arranged, in the yüs-bashi's headquarters. Even the thick, dyspeptic, lethargic Kaimakam, for whom early rising and climbing hills were a more than ordinary sacrifice, had come. His four company commanders stood round the yüs-bashi, waiting to take his personal order to advance. Their scouts had done excellent work in the night. They could bring in precise information of this new refuge along the seashore. It was also known that two enfeebled, badly protected lines barred the south entrance to the Damlayik. Therefore, by order of Ali Risa, only two companies with machine guns need trouble to attack this rickety front. The attack was timed for the moment when, in the north, mountain artillery had begun to shatter Armenian trenches. But the Kaimakam and yüs-bashi were quite positive that, by about that time, resistance would have been effectually broken. This time they were done for! Bagradian's first howitzer shell had struck on the stone slope under the rocks, his second went even wider, his third came down rather close to this group of officers. Splinters and showers of stones whizzed round them. Two infantrymen lay yelping.

  The yüs-bashi carefully lit a cigarette. "We've some losses, General!"

  Ali Risa's transparent, youthful face flushed to the ears. His lips looked even thinner than usual.

  "Yüs-Bashi, I order you to see to it that this Bagradian doesn't get killed and is brought to me personally."

  Scarcely had these words been uttered, when the first forbidding thunderbolt was heard. The officers hurried up to their western redoubt, from which there was a good view out to the sea. The grey-blue Guichen sat firmly, as if frozen into its leaden waves. A black stream of smoke rose from its funnels. Round the mouth of its gun the flash-smoke had already dispersed. Its commander seemed to have planted only one shell in the Orontes plain for demonstration purposes.

  The first to find a voice was the Kaimakam. It shook with excitement. "Let's understand each other, General! You're in command of the military assistance. But the final decision rests with me."

  Ali Risa, without answering this, examined the Guichen through his field-glass. And on this occasion the Kaimakam, who usually seemed expectantly half-asleep at a moment of great decision, lost his temper. "I demand, General, that you start operations immediately. That ship over there can't hold us back."

  Ali Risa lowered his field-glass and turned to his adjutant. "Telephone down to Habaste. My order to be sent on full speed to every gun emplacement in the north: 'Artillery not to open fire.'"

  "Artillery not to open fire," the adjutant repeated, and rushed away.

  The Kaimakam straightened his loose, but mighty bulk. "What does this order mean? I demand an explanation, Effendi!"

  The general did not seem to see him; his grey-blue eyes were turned on the yüs-bashi.

  "Retire your advance companies. All troops to vacate the mountain and concentrate in the valley of Yoghonoluk. Get a move on!"

  "I demand your explanation!" bellowed the Kaimakam; the pouches under his eyes had a deep blue look. "This is cowardice. I'm responsible to His Excellency. There's no reason for holding up operations."

  A long, cold glance from the young general passed into him. "No reason? Do you want to give the Allied fleet its pretext for shooting the whole coastline to bits? Their long-range shells will carry to Antakiya. Do you suppose that cruiser out there is going to stay by itself, Kaimakam? Would you like the French and English to land and set up a new war front in the heart of undefended Syria? What's your opinion, Kaimakam?"

  But the Kaimakam, yellowish-brown in the face, was spluttering now through foamy lips: "All that has nothing to do with me! I, as the responsible person, order you -- "

  He got no further. Since naturally the general's counter-order had not, in the few minutes, reached Turkish gunners, their first shots had begun to crackle from a notch in the North Saddle. And now the long, shapely barrels in the turret of the Guichen had begun to turn. There was scarcely time to draw three breaths before -- crack after crack -- the first shells fell among the domino houses of Suedia, El Eskel, Yedidje. At once the tall chimney of the alcohol factory ran up an American flag. Wooden Turkish houses already flamed.

  Ali Risa yelled at the yüs-bashi: "Telephone cease fire, damn you! The saptiehs to evacuate all civilians. Everyone into the valley of the villages!"

  The freckled müdir from Salonika, who so far had stood in respectful silence, was seized with frenzy in his turn. His hands flew up to his mouth; he bellowed as though, through all the noise of her guns, he was determined to be heard on board the Guichen: "This is a flagrant infringement of international law. . . . Open coastline. . . . Interference with domestic policy. . ."

  But Major-General Ali Risa picked his walking stick up off the ground and turned to go. His officers crowded in round him. He stopped. "Why shout so, Müdir? You'd better thank Ittihad."

  "I don't feel well," moaned the Kaimakam, who, considering the state of his general health, had already exerted himself too much that day. His heavy body sank down. He seemed to do his utmost not to faint. The same words over and over again came spluttering through his blackened lips: "This is the end. . . . This is the end. . . ."

  The müdir had to fetch four saptiehs to carry his sick superior down to the valley.

  It might well have been supposed that Gabriel, too, would sink to earth, the moment his consciousness of this miracle had fully permeated his spirit, under the sheer weight of such relief. But nothing of the kind! Gabriel was too numbed to feel. The most prudently and carefully chosen words could scarcely render with truth what he felt at that moment. No, not disillusionment. That would be too rough a way of putting it. Rather the need for unwelcome effort, which an organism fagged to death has got to make to readjust itself. Thus the human eye defends itself, coming out of the dark into bright light, against this all too startling change, even though the soul may have longed for it.

  Bagradian's first reaction was the order, which he sent along the lines of his defence: "No one to move! Everyone to stop where he is!"

  This was a highly important order. Since Gabriel did not know what the Turks intended, and then he, himself, with his own eyes, had not yet seen the flag this warship flew. Also it seemed highly improbable that this ship could or would pick up four and a half thousand people. No less surprising was the effect of this miracle on the defenders, who, after this eternity spent in the expectation of death, lay paralyzed in their long, extended order. A boy, breathlessly waving, had brought the news. It did not release one cry; tense silence followed it. But suddenly the lines broke. Those who had heard of this miracle crowded up the hillock to the howitzer emplacement, to their commander. Not this was remarkable, but the change in the de
ep, gruff voices of these men. Suddenly they piped and whined. High falsetto tones surrounded Gabriel. It sounded almost like a tremulous kind of women's chiding, or the outburst of terrified lunatics. Their voices, before their souls well knew they were saved, ran up into their heads. They obeyed his order at once. They lay down again in extended lines, each with his rifle, as though nothing stupendous had come to pass. Only Teacher Hapeth Shatakhian implored the chief to send him out as envoy to the ship, since he, whose French was so perfect, so flawless his accent, was obviously the man to negotiate. The teacher smiled all over his face. Gabriel, who, by his own example, wanted to keep the decads together till the last danger of a Turkish attack should have passed, let Shatakhian go, with these instructions: Whatever happened, communication must be maintained between the encamped people down on the shore and their armed defenders on the mountain. Ter Haigasun and Bedros Altouni were to board the French ship with Shatakhian. Moreover: the captain of the Guichen must instantly be informed of the fact that a French lady, dangerously ill, was in their camp.

  The artillery fire which opened against the North Saddle confirmed Bagradian's worst suspicions. The Turk had no thought of dropping his prey without further question. But, as soon as this artillery fire died down again, the big guns on board the Guichen dropped neatly crashing shells on to Ottoman villages. The whole Orontes plain might well have been roused for the Last Judgment. Even when Gabriel climbed his observation post, Suedia, El Eskel, Yedidje and indeed even the distant Ain Yerab gave out smoke and flames. On horses, mules, in oxcarts, in streaming shoals, the people were rushing on for safety into the valley of Yoghonoluk. After a time Gabriel went back beside the howitzers. Already the shells, set to fuse, were standing there behind the carriages. He had intended to swivel his guns round to the north, and, when things had got so far, drop shells into the Turkish advance. He gave up this intention, though he by no means considered the danger past. Gabriel sat on the ground by the howitzers. He stared out, and at the same time, inwards.

  "Now perhaps I'll be back in a few weeks in Paris. We shall live in the old flat in the Avenue Kléber, and start life again." But this thought -- which an hour ago had been the fantasy of a lunatic -- did nothing to fill up his astonishing emptiness. Not a trace of kneeling jubilation, that rush of warmest gratitude to God, warranted by the unthinkable miracle. Gabriel had no desire for Paris, for a flat, for cultivated people, for comfort; no, and not even for a bellyful, a bed and cleanliness. Whatever trace of emotion he managed to find in himself could be described as the nagging desire to be alone; it grew in him from minute to minute. But it would have to be such solitude as there is not. An unpeopled world. A planet without animal needs, or movement. A cosmic hermitage, and he the only person in it, gazing out at peace, without any past, present, and future.

  The new camping-grounds of the village communes were set fairly far apart. Yoghonoluk and Habibli were fairly high up, whereas Bitias, Azir, and Kebussiye had picked out places along the beach, where receding rocks left free a few uneven clearings, grown about with hard, dry shrub.

  They had all still been asleep when Teacher Oskanian waved his flag. It was no longer a sleep of human beings, but of dead matter, as rocks or mounds sleep. The crack of doom from the ship's guns broke it. Almost four thousand women, children, greybeards, opened startled eyes to the light of this fourth day of panic. Those down on the beach saw an incredible mirage, born of enfeeblement; it rose quiet on the solid sea. Some stumbled to their feet, to shake off the phantom. Others lay on the hard rock, indifferent to it, chafed to the bone as they were, since their bones had no flesh on them. They did not so much as turn on the other side. But then, among these grown-ups, suddenly, there arose a short-breathed, wheezing whimper, like the weak protest of very sick children. It spread from one to the other of them. And now the feeblest wraiths hovered upright. Boys, who had still more strength in them than anyone, began to clamber up the rocks.

  The big cruiser, the Guichen, had anchored about half a sea-mile off the coast. A devastating sight awaited its officers and ratings. They saw hundreds of bare skeleton arms held out to them, begging collectively. The human forms of which those arms were a part, and indeed the faces, looked blurred even through a field-glass, like so many ghosts. Added to which a sharp entanglement of thin voices, as of chirruping insects, which had the effect of coming from much further off than it actually did. Then, down between the rocks, more and more of these human grasshoppers came hurrying to increase the number of begging arms. Before the commander of the Guichen could decide what to do for these persecuted, two diminutive shapes had dived from a rock, boys it seemed, and begun to struggle towards the ship. They got to within about a hundred yards of her, and then their strength seemed to fail. But a boat had been providentially sent out to them, which took them up. Another boat moved off shorewards. It was to bring back the envoys of these curious "Christians in Need." But it was soon apparent that, when God sends us a miracle, reality has always enough malice in it to make it seem, by a hundred artful tricks, less miraculous. This coast was so difficult to land on, the surf so heavy, that even the well-manned boat of the Guichen could scarcely manage to put ashore, and Aram's failure to make his fishery answer was justified. Almost an hour of unsuccessful efforts to land had passed before Ter Haigasun, Altouni, and Hapeth Shatakhian could come on board. This was the hour during which the Guichen, provoked thereto by the challenging gunfire on Musa Dagh, sent heavy shells crashing all over the Moslem plain.

  When Captain Brisson received the delegation in the officers' mess, his guns had already ceased their fire. Brisson gave a little start of horror at the sight of these men -- these three shrivelled bodies hung with rags, these wildly bearded faces with high foreheads and huge eyes. And Ter Haigasun looked the wildest. Half his beard had been singed away. The burn glowed on his right cheek. Since his everyday cassock had been burned in the presbytery hut, he still wore the borrowed rug draped round his shoulders.

  The captain held out his hand. "The priest? The teacher?" he asked.

  But Shatakhian gave him no time for further inquiries; he gathered together his whole strength, bowed, and launched out on the long speech, rehearsed aloud on the path to the beach and, later even, in the boat. He began it somewhat in- appropriately: "Mon général . . ."

  When from these long-winded, Eastern outpourings, Captain Brisson had managed to disentangle essentials from much that was beside the point, the orator, delighted with his own prowess, stood hoping that so august a hearer might deign a word of praise for his faultless accent and choice vocabulary. Captain Brisson only glanced from one to another of them and asked what was Madame Bagradian's maiden name. Hapeth Shatakhian was delighted to furnish even this, and to proclaim his familiarity with the names of the best French families. And then Ter Haigasun spoke. To the teacher's amazement, indeed disgust, he spoke fluent French, though he had never even troubled to say so, in all these years as school superintendent. He told at once of the hunger and enfeeblement of his people, begging for help without delay, since otherwise many women and children might scarcely get through the next few hours. As he was saying this, Dr. Bedros Altouni collapsed and almost fell off the chair he sat in. Brisson sent at once for café and cognac, and a plentiful meal for the three delegates. Yet neither the old doctor nor the others could manage to swallow more than a few mouthfuls. Meanwhile the ship's commander had summoned the quartermaster and given orders to send out boats immediately with whatever supplies might be available. The ship's doctor, hospital staff, and an armed detachment of marines were also ordered ashore.

  Brisson then explained to the Armenians that the Guichen was not an independent unit, but the leader of a mixed English and French squadron, under orders to sail northwest along the Anatolian coast. Yesterday evening, three hours before the main body of the fleet, she had put out from the Cyprus bay of Famagusta. The fleet commander, the rear-admiral, was on board the Jeanne d'Arc, the flagship and vessel of the line. They would h
ave to await his decision. But an hour ago a wireless message had been sent out to the Jeanne d'Arc. The envoys need not be afraid; there was no danger that a French admiral would leave so valiant a commune of the persecuted Armenian Christian people to its fate without more ado. Ter Haigasun bent his head, with the singed beard.