Forty Days of Musa Dagh (105 page)

 

 

Ter Haigasun, too, had recovered and scrambled to his feet. His first
thought had been to pile his vestments, his torn alb, the stole, and
all the rest in a careful heap. He covered his own nakedness with a rug
which someone had lent him. A strand of Ter Haigasun's beard had been
singed away, and a large red burn covered his cheek. His face looked
entirely different. Those yellowish, hollow cheeks, the color of cameos,
were suffused with some dark flush of fever and rage. He struggled in
vain for words at the sight of Gabriel.

 

 

The people had ceased to struggle against the blaze. What energy they
still had was barely enough to impel their crazy eddyings round the
square, and these, little by little, ceased. Nor could the decads, sent by
Nurhan, save anything more for them. They stood idle, watching the flames,
which seemed not only to leap from outside upon the huts, but to burst
from within them. The crackling roofs of leaves and branches were lifted,
while puffs of wind drove fiery scraps across the sky. Soon the whole
camp was squatting close on the bare earth of the big square, women,
children, old men. These famished people could move no more. Firelight
flickered across their earthy faces; the eyes showed no sign that they
were aware of it. Their attitudes expressed only one desire: that no
leader should ask them to stir another inch, raise another hand, or show
the least sign of fresh activity. Here they would squat, awaiting the end
without further resistance. That state which might be described as the
"peace of annihilation" had come upon them.

 

 

But these shrivelled souls, these wasted bodies, were to be roused
again from this comfortable understanding with death. Behind closed
eyelids Gabriel had collected his thoughts. It happened almost against
his will. At first he even struggled to escape the very painful effort
it needed to concentrate. Then, it was as though, in that echoing mine
which was now his head, not he, Bagradian, was thinking, but, apart,
independently of himself, the task he had assumed, long ago in the
valley, the task of carrying on this defense to its last possibility.
An unbribable, implacable power went on calculating. Had the last possible
hope been lost? No. The Turks had apparently occupied the South Bastion.
They had brought up machine guns. The camp was on fire. What was to happen?
A new line of defense, which should block their way as well as might be.
Above all, the people must be cleared off the heights, they must be moved
down on to the shore. Then to the howitzers!

 

 

Avakian approached. Gabriel called to him: "What are you still doing
here? Quick, go to Nurhan! He's not to move from where he is! All the
decads I chose for the attack to come here at once. And half the scouts
group and the orderlies. We've got to form another line, with at least
head cover."

 

 

Avakian hesitated, tried to ask questions. Gabriel pushed him away and
went into the midst of the somnolent multitude. "Why are you in despair,
brothers and sisters? No need for that! We've still got seven hundred
fighters and rifles, and our two big guns. You needn't worry! It'd be
better for the defense if the communes would set up their camp down on
the shore for tonight. The men of the reserve to stop with me."

 

 

By this time even the mukhtars had come to themselves. Ter Haigasun ordered
them each to collect his village and lead it down the path to the shore.
He himself would go on, and find the best camping-grounds. The priest,
there could be no doubt, was in high fever, and had to make a tremendous
effort to turn back to life and to his duty. His face with the singed
beard looked shrunken and dark.

 

 

He turned to Gabriel. "To punish is the most important of all! You must
shoot down the culprits, Bagradian!"

 

 

Gabriel stared at him in silence. " I won't find Kilikian," he thought.
By degrees the comatose people had struggled up again. A drunken, lurching
confusion had begun. The mukhtars, the village priests, two of the teachers,
herded and shoved them into groups. No one resisted. Even the children
no longer howled. Bedros Hekim stole away unobtrusively, to bring at
least those patients in the two hospitals into safety who could still
move. Disaster gave this falling wreck of an old man the strength of
a giant.

 

 

Gabriel left it to Ter Haigasun to break up the camp. Not another second
must be lost, since who could tell how far the Turks, even in the dark,
might not dare to advance? The howitzers were in danger. And another
danger was the pack of scoundrelly deserters. Forward! Now it was not
a question of thinking things out from A to Z, but of simple, blindly
resolute action. Gabriel mustered together all the armed and half-armed
men around him, the young and the old. Even little boys had to come
along. The wind had fallen, it was quiet. The sharp pungence of smoke
enveloped them. With it mingled the stink of singeing cloth. They could
scarcely breathe, and their eyes were streaming. Gabriel gave the signal
to move off. He and Shatakhian, who meanwhile had been routed out, went
on ahead of the widely extended lines. Exhausted men plodded after them,
a hundred and fifty, a third of whom were sixty years old. And this
wretched, famished troop were to turn back victoriously four infantry
companies at war strength, commanded by a major, four captains, eight
first lieutenants? It was a good thing that Gabriel did not realize the
enemy's strength.

 

 

On their way to the howitzers they passed the big new graveyard.
The graveyard folk had followed their custom in the valley and taken
up their quarters beside the dead. And now Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak,
and all the others bestirred themselves to cram their tight sacks with
moldy gear. Sato assisted them. This fresh migration seemed to make
little difference to these folk. The two newest graves were Stephan's
and Krikor's. Krikor had asked that his grave should not be picked out
by any inscription. A rough wooden cross had been planted on Stephan's
mound. His father went stiffly past, without a glance at it. Now it was
night. But the red glow of the blaze over-arched the Damlayik. It might
have been a huge city on fire, and not a few hundred huts of twisted
branches, a few clumps of trees.

 

 

Midway, however, as the grassy knoll of the howitzer emplacement came into
sight, something unexpected happened. Gabriel and Shatakhian stopped.
The plodding men behind them flung themselves down. Down the slope ran a
line of riflemen. Only their black silhouettes were visible as they waved
rifles frantically at the oncomers. Turks? The men sought what cover
they could in the dark. But the black shapes, outlined by a flickering
red sky, were advancing timidly. About thirty of them. Gabriel noticed
that they were pushing a bound man on in front of them. He went forward
to meet them. They carried lanterns. Five paces off, he saw that Sarkis
Kilikian was their prisoner. They were deserters. They flung themselves
down flat on their faces and touched the ground with their foreheads, the
most primitive of all gestures of self-abasement. What was there still to
say or justify? Their way out was barred. These ropes with which they had
bound Kilikian were their proof that they regretted their heinous deed,
had brought a scapegoat, were ready to suffer any punishment. Some, with
an almost childish eagerness, heaped up their plunder at Gabriel's feet
-- cartridges stolen from the armory stores plundered from the tents. But
Gabriel saw only Kilikian. They had forced him down to his knees, his head
flung backwards. In this flickering twilight the features of his face were
quite visible. Those indifferent eyes as little expressed the wish to live
as the wish to die. Impassively they watched their judge. Bagradian bent
a little nearer this gruesomely impassive face. Not even now could he rid
his mind of the tinge of liking and respect which he felt whenever he saw
the Russian. Was Kilikian, that spectral observer, the real culprit? What
if he was! Gabriel clicked back the catch of the service revolver in
his pocket. He set it to the Russian's forehead swiftly. The first shot
missed fire. Nor had Kilikian shut his eyes. His mouth and nostrils were
twitching. It was like a suppressed smile. But it felt to Gabriel as
though he had turned the unspent bullet against himself. When he pressed
the trigger again, he was so weak that he had to turn his head away. So
died Sarkis Kilikian -- after an incomprehensible life in many jails,
having escaped Turkish massacre as a child, and, as a man, a Turkish
firing party, to end at last by the bullet of a fellow countryman.

 

 

Gabriel signaled quickly to the others to fall in with the men behind.

 

 

Two of these repentant scarecrows had zealously spied out the Turkish
positions. What they had to report was an exaggeration of hard reality.
Perhaps their own miserable fear of punishment may have caused them to
distort the already formidable; perhaps they tried to diminish their
own guilt by describing a gigantic enemy power. Since how, even without
this monstrous crime of theirs, could the few South Bastion defenders
ever have resisted the sly envelopment by the Turks? Gabriel looked past
them in silence. He was aware that he himself was largely responsible
for their crime. He had not taken Nurhan's warning to redistribute these
rascals in other decads.

 

 

Samuel Avakian and the men of the surprise-attackers had joined Gabriel
some time previously. It was an hour before these few straggling skirmishers,
in two lines, disposed themselves diagonally across the mound and in the
many hollows of the plateau to the zone of bushes, and in among the rocks.
Even the best fighters of the north trenches had come to the end of their
strength. What could one ask of elderly reservists? Each man lay like a
log where he had been told to lie, half awake, half asleep. The order to
pile up stones and earth as head-cover was scarcely obeyed. When Gabriel
had passed from man to man, down the whole length of this utterly hopeless
front, and posted a few stray pickets in advance of it, he went off to
the howitzers. He had every square inch of the Damlayik in his head,
every distance, the lie of all its ground. For the area of the South
Bastion he could check his ballistic elements by his notebook.

 

 

This was the first autumn night, after a day of grilling desert heat.
It was suddenly cool. Gabriel sat alone beside the howitzers, having sent
their men to get some sleep. Avakian spread out a rug for him. But he did
not wrap himself into it, since his body was hot all over, and his head,
grown far too light, was threatening to fly away from it. Gabriel stretched
himself out, neither sleeping nor waking. He stared up at the red flat lake
in the sky. That red mirror of conflagration seemed to deepen and broaden
out as he lay and watched it. How long has the altar been on fire?
The melodious question kept repeating itself. Then, for some long time,
he must have known nothing more about himself, since something in his
neighborhood waked him up. It was not a hand nor a voice, only something
near him. But this very sensation of being waked, this long, fabulous
instant of deepest experience, was so materially soothing in its effect
that he struggled against any fuller consciousness. His exhausted unity
with this presence was so complete, in this one short instant, that
Iskuhi's reality almost deceived. Since she, after all, brought back the
inevitable. The sight of her made him think, with a start, of Juliette.
It was an age since he had seen his wife or thought of her. His first scared
inquiry was therefore this: "And Juliette? What's happened to Juliette?"

 

 

It had taken all Iskuhi's failing strength to drag so far. For her,
all these recent happenings had fused into something indistinct. She was
aware only of the one persistent, burning question: "Why doesn't he come?
Why has he left me? Why hasn't he sent for me at the last?" And now those
questions were coldly throttled by the inquiry about Juliette. She said
nothing, and it took her a long time to collect her thoughts for a
hesitant account of all that had taken place on Three-Tent Square:
the raid, Shushik's death, Tomasian's wound. Bedros had tried in vain to
persuade Juliette to let Kevork carry her down to the seashore. Juliette
would have no such thing and had screamed that she wasn't going to leave
her tent. The wounded Aram also lay on, in his.

 

 

Gabriel stared up at the flat red sky. It had become no paler. "It's all
right as it is. . . . Nothing will happen before morning. . . . Time enough.
. . . A night in the open might kill Juliette. . . ."

 

 

Something in these words hurt Gabriel. He switched on his electric torch.
But now the last used-up battery gave out scarcely as much light as a
glowworm. In spite of the tragic red above him, and flames still shooting
up in the Town Enclosure, this night felt darker than all former ones.
He could scarcely see Iskuhi beside him. Softly he felt about for her
face, and started, so cold and thin were her cheeks and hands. Kindness
moved him.

 

 

He took the rug and wrapped her into it. "How long is it since you ate
anything, Iskuhi?"

 

 

"Mairik Antaram had brought us something before it happened," she lied.
"I've had enough. . . ."

 

 

Gabriel pressed her close, seeking again the half-sleep of her presence.
"It felt so good, just now, to wake up beside you. . . . What a long time
since I had you with me, Iskuhi, little sister. . . . I'm very happy now
that you're here. . . . Happy now, Iskuhi."

 

 

Her face sank slowly against his; she seemed too weak to carry her head
on her shoulders. "You never came. . . . So I've come. . . . It's got
as far as that, hasn't it?"