Forty Days of Musa Dagh (107 page)

 

 

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.

 

 

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.