Forty Days of Musa Dagh (111 page)

 

 

"And France, Monsieur?"

 

 

"France is in the midst of terrible trials, Madame, and must hope that
God will show her His mercy."

 

 

The sight of Juliette really seemed to perturb the old gentleman. He took
her shrivelled hand between both his. "Do you know, mon enfant, that this
must be the first time I've set eyes on you, since you grew up. . . .
You must have been quite a little girl the last time, when I spent a whole
day with your parents not long after they married. I was never a very
intimate friend of your father's, but I think that, when we were young
men, we frequented more or less the same world. . . ."

 

 

Juliette let out a little sob, but it brought no tears; only strange,
disconnected chatter: "But naturally . . . the house was sold after
Papa's death . . . and Maman . . . Maman lives now . . . Ah! I forget
the street! . . . You know nothing of her, Monsieur? But probably you'll
know my brother-in-law. . . . I mean the one in the Ministry of Marine
. . . a high official . . . What is his name? . . . My head! Coulomb,
of course, Jacques Coulomb. . . . You know him? I so seldom see my
sister. . . . But when I get back to Paris, I shall see all my friends
again, n'est-ce pas? . . . You
will
take me to Paris?"

 

 

Juliette tottered. The admiral lent her his support. Gabriel ran into the
tent for a chair. The invalid sat. But weak as she was, she could still
chatter. Presumably she felt herself obliged to make conversation. Her
gabble became stiffer every minute, more like a parrot. She mentioned
more and more people, mutual acquaintance, so she supposed. Her talk
jumped disconnectedly from one to another of them.

 

 

The old seaman grew more and more uncomfortable. At last he called to
one of his young men: "Mon ami, you'll see to everything and accompany
Madame on board. The Jeanne d'Arc is a warship, so you mustn't expect
to be too comfortable. We'll do everything we possibly can to render
your voyage agreeable, my dear child."

 

 

Even when the admiral, accompanied some of the way by Gabriel, had departed,
Juliette's parrot-voice still chattered on. The young officer, left by his
chief to escort and protect, sat nervously eyeing those poor pale lips,
out of which spluttered endless questions which he could not answer. And
the shadows under Juliette's eyes grew deeper. The officer was very
relieved when Bagradian came, and then in a few more minutes the marines,
who carried a stretcher.

 

 

At first Juliette struggled against it. "I won't lie down on that.
What a horror! I'd far rather walk."

 

 

"You can't, Juliette. Be reasonable now, and lie down. Believe me,
I shouldn't mind being carried down in one myself."

 

 

The two pink and white faces smiled encouragement. "Don't be afraid, Madame,
we'll carry you as though you were glass. You won't feel a thing!"

 

 

Juliette surrendered and, on the stretcher, lay perfectly still, as she
had before. Gabriel brought out a rug, put her beloved cushion under her
head, and gave her handbag to the officer. He stroked her hair. "Don't
worry. . . . Nothing that matters will be left -- "

 

 

He broke off suddenly. The officer glanced at him inquiringly.
Gabriel nodded. The stretcher-bearers lifted her up, took the first
steps. An excited Sato waited a little way off, to act as guide.

 

 

"I'll soon have caught up with you," shouted Gabriel.

 

 

Juliette shifted round so vehemently, that the stretcher-bearers stopped
and put her down. A mad, twitching face turned back to Gabriel, and a
voice screamed -- a voice he had never heard her use: "I say! Stephan
. . . Look after Stephan!"

 

 

 

 

In deliverance even, the cup of sorrow was not full. A loud voice kept
calling from the Tomasian tent: "Gabriel Bagradian! Come along, man!"

 

 

Gabriel had supposed Iskuhi to be with her sick brother. She was nowhere
about. He went into Aram's tent. Bygones had now become absurdly indifferent.
He found the pastor excited and feverish.

 

 

"Where's Iskuhi, Gabriel Bagradian, for Christ's sake! Where have you
left Iskuhi?"

 

 

"Iskuhi? She was with me for a time after midnight up on the howitzer
emplacement. Then I asked her to go to my wife."

 

 

"That's just it!" shouted the pastor. "This morning I was still perfectly
certain that Iskuhi was with you in the line. She hasn't come back --
she's disappeared . . . I've sent out to look for her. . . . They've
been looking hours for her. . . . The French stretcher-bearers have been
waiting a long time to carry me down. But I won't leave the mountain
without Iskuhi. . . . If anything's happened to her . . . I won't leave
the mountain at all."

 

 

He caught hold of Gabriel's arm and pulled himself up, in spite of his wound.
"It's my fault, Bagradian -- I can't explain to you now -- but I'm the guilty
one. It's only just that God should be punishing me personally in my child
and sister, after He's saved us all. And my wife was also the instrument
of His justice."

 

 

"Where is your wife?" asked Gabriel steadily.

 

 

"She's gone running down to the beach. With the child. They told her
there was some milk down there. I couldn't keep her."

 

 

His excitement got the better of the wounded Tomasian. He tried to get up,
but fell back at once. "Damnation! You see I can do nothing! I can't move.
Do something, Gabriel Bagradian! It's partly your sin with Iskuhi. . . .
Even you . . ."

 

 

"Wait, Pastor . . . I'll go."

 

 

Gabriel said this in a weary voice. He moved off across Three-Tent Square
and then some way further. He did not get far, but sat down somewhere to
stare up at the sky. One thought trailed through his weary mind: So this
is what it means to be saved! He tried to recall his talk with Iskuhi in
the night. But his mind had kept no details, only a spectral breath of
resignation. She had come to remind him of his promise to be with her at
the very end. But he had turned her away, sent her to Juliette. Iskuhi
must be somewhere safe. Had not that been his thought? But she had wanted
something he could not give, a resolute, happy belief in their destruction.
He had had to rob her of that courageous belief. Where was Iskuhi now?
Gabriel could not have said what made him so certain that Iskuhi was no
longer alive.

 

 

Gabriel was wrong. Iskuhi lived. Even as he set to his lips the whistle
which should summon further help, Kevork the dancer had discovered her.
Only just in time! The sole explanation was that Iskuhi must have lost
her way in the dark on the stamped-out path, and so fallen into a
little ravine, or rather a hollow, not very deep, overgrown with shrubs.
Certainly this hollow was some way off any beaten track, on the very
uneven ground which leads up to Dish Terrace. But what it was she had
sought in that spectral region, between midnight and morning, no one could
say. No harm had come to her, more than a few scratches on arms and legs;
no wound, no broken bones, not even a shock, not even a sprain. Yet this
fall in the dark had turned that state of deadly weakness, against which
she had struggled for days, yet cherished, to final collapse. When Kevork
carried her in, in arms which had certainly known very different burdens,
she was fully conscious, had huge, almost merry eyes, but could not speak.
Luckily among the hospital orderlies who had still the last patients
to carry down, there was a young second surgeon of the Guichen. He gave
Iskuhi a strong heart-stimulant, but insisted that it was urgently necessary
to get her on board as soon as possible to avoid the worst. So without delay
or many words both Iskuhi and Pastor Tomasian were strapped on the
stretchers. Gabriel had scarcely time to give Kristaphor orders that,
as soon as the luggage had been moved out, the three tents and everything
in them were to be set on fire without delay.

 

 

 

 

Gabriel kept close beside Iskuhi, as often as it was possible to do so.
But the path was almost too narrow for one man, and in places where the
bare rock-wall opened out on their right, the bearers had all they could
do to get past, with their loads. Just ahead of them swayed the wounded
pastor. Iskuhi came next, with the young doctor. But she was not the last
of the procession, since three men crippled with wounds from the fight
of August 23, and a woman in labor, brought up the rear. Behind these
again a swarm of stragglers, men from the decads who had been to what
was left of their family huts to rake about in the ashes for anything
the fire might have spared. The bearers halted two or three times on
the wider ledges for a rest. Then Gabriel bent down over Iskuhi. But he
himself could scarcely speak. And two paces further lay Pastor Aram.
The doctor kept returning every minute to make Iskuhi take a sip of milk,
or feel her pulse.

 

 

Gabriel whispered disconnectedly: "Where were you trying to get to, Iskuhi?
. . . What were you after . . . out there? . . ."

 

 

Her eyes answered: "Why are you asking me something I don't know? . . .
It was as though I hovered up off the ground. . . . We've scarcely any
time left, less than we had in the night."

 

 

He knelt beside her and put his hand under her head, as though this
would make her speak. Yet his own words were scarcely audible: "Any
pain, Iskuhi?"

 

 

Her eyes understood him at once and answered: "No, I don't feel my body.
But what really hurts me is that this should have happened as it has.
Wouldn't it have been better without this ship? This is a kind of end,
but not ours, Gabriel. . . ."

 

 

Gabriel's eyes could neither speak nor perceive as Iskuhi's could.
And so, therefore, he said something entirely false: "This is just a
collapse, Iskuhi. . . . It's because you've had nothing to eat." And,
turning to the surgeon, he spoke French: "Isn't it, Doctor? In three days,
when we've got to Port Said, you'll be feeling ever so much better. You're
still so young, so young, Iskuhi."

 

 

Her eyes darkened and answered sternly: "At a moment like this you ought
not to be saying such banal things to me, Gabriel. I don't in the least
mind whether I die or go on living. You're wrong if you think I want to die.
Perhaps I shall live. But can't you see it'll all be different, once the
ships have taken us on board; even for us it will. We can only really be
together for as long as we've still the earth of Musa Dagh under our feet;
you as my love, I as your sister."

 

 

Not all, but much of this, Gabriel seemed to have understood. His next
whisper came out hesitant, like the mirrored echo of what her eyes said:
"Yes, where will we be . . . you and I . . . sister?"

 

 

Her lips opened at last, to form two syllables, their passion contradicted
all she had said: "With you . . ."

 

 

The stretchers were lifted again for the easy remainder of the way.
Already many voices had arisen. Down on the beach, on the narrow ledges,
there was a dangerous crowding and jostling, made still worse by the many
sailors who, on various pretexts, had got shore-leave. Embarcation was
already in full swing, a hundred times entangled confusion, and wild
yelling. Gabriel was besieged on all sides with demands, requests,
questions, petitions. The people, for no reason, had made of him the
secret worker of this miracle by which they were saved. And now, as
the kinsman of mighty France, the man sent by God, it would still be
his business to go on helping his fellow-countrymen in their exile far
from Musa Dagh. His former enemies on the Council, Thomas Kebussyan,
and his lady, with the quick mouse-eyes, most urgent of all, could
not now show him enough obsequious cringing. He had to fight his way
on through a flood of excited demands for protection. So that when, at
last, he came to the landing stage, the boat with Aram and Iskuhi had
put off, ahead of all the others, by order of the officer in charge of
sick-transport. Juliette, too, had long been taken on board the Jeanne
d'Arc in the admiral's motorboat. The sunlight glared off the sea in
unbearably dazzling splintered rays. Many boats were on their way to
the ships, others were moving along the coast. Iskuhi lay hidden in
hers. Gabriel could make out only the rigid shape of Hovsannah, clutching
to her breast her miserable bundle, the quiet first-born of Musa Dagh.

 

 

 

 

The embarcation proceeded slowly. There were many difficulties to surmount.
Though a good half of the villagers might easily have been taken abroad
the troopship, the doctors unanimously opposed this easy solution of
the room problem. It would be far too risky to herd together hundreds
of people in close proximity to their sick. It must, on the contrary,
be so managed, that only these sick, the enfeebled, the doubtful cases,
the waifs and strays, were shipped on the transport steamer. They must be
kept well apart from the crews and from healthy Armenians. The wretched
troopship, therefore, in contrast to the warships -- even more to the
splendid Jeanne d'Arc -- was a Gehenna, an abode of woe, of destitute
flotsam and jetsam. A special medical commission, composed of doctors
and naval officers, examined every single Armenian for lice and disease
before he was classified. Its methods were very severe. Anyone in the
least doubtful was banished at once to the transport. Ter Haigasun
was the only one of the former leaders on Musa Dagh with a seat on this
classification board. Bedros Altouni's strength had ebbed precariously in
the course of the day. The head-surgeon had long since shipped him on the
Guichen. The mukhtars, too, seemed to regard their term of office as at an
end. They had retired into private life, as the fathers of families. Nor
did the teachers, or any of the subordinate village priests, consider
this a concern of theirs. They had ceased to worry.