Forty Days of Musa Dagh (55 page)

 

 

What stored-up, inexhaustible vitality, what stout hearts, the Armenian
women possessed! Not one, as they emerged from the steep ilex gully on to
the burying-ground of the encampment, breathed a jot more quickly. These
purple-faced wailers had all the strength they needed to set to work.
Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, and the others crouched round the dead. Their
dirty claws uncovered the already stiffened faces. And their song, older
perhaps than the oldest song of all humanity, rose to the skies. Its text
was no more than the ever-repeated names of these fresh corpses. Names,
keened over and over, without a break, till the last stars faded in
greenish ether. Poor though its text, the more richly varied was its
melody. Sometimes it was a long groaning monotone, sometimes a chain of
howling coloratura, sometimes the empty, drooping repetition, maimed
with its grief, of the same two notes; sometimes it was a shrill,
greedy demand -- yet none of this in free obedience to an impulse,
but strictly conventionalized and handed down by a long tradition.
Not all the singers had Nunik's voice or inherited technique. There were
mediocre, and so vain, artists among them, whose thoughts as they worked
were occupied with fees and inheritance. What use were all his pounds
and piastres to the richest man, up here? Let him give lavish offerings
to the beggar-folk, and he would do not only a deed pleasing to God, but
a useful work. The keening-women, the blind, the outcasts, were able to
lay out chinking piastres, even in Mohammedan villages, without risk.
So that Armenian money would not be wasted on them, but be of use to poor
Armenian bodies, and the benefactors thus acquire celestial merit at
bargain prices. Between the chants, her colleagues admonished Nunik,
with all their might, to insist on this common-sense standpoint, and
raise the usual fee for a corpse-watching. Through the grey light came the
relatives, bringing their long, fine-woven shrouds. These had been stored
up by every family, and had to be taken with every house-moving. The
shift in which a man stands up from the dead, his most festal garment,
is a gift given by the members of each household to one another, on the
most solemn occasions in their lives. The task of weaving such a shroud
is accounted a particular honor. Only the worthiest women may perform it.

 

 

These women's howls had died into a low, almost soundless, windy sigh.
It went with the corpse-washing, the enshrouding, like cold comfort. Then
the long shifts were tied under the feet in double knots. This was to keep
the limbs from dispersal, so that the last storm, which shall drive all
bones together, to be judged, might not find it hard to fit the right
ones. Towards midday the graves stood open, and all men ready for the
burials. On sixteen biers, made of strong branches lashed together, the
fallen were carried twice round the altar, while Ter Haigasun chanted his
funeral dirge. Afterwards, on the burial-ground, he addressed the people:

 

 

"These, our dear brethren, have been snatched away by bloody death.
And yet we must devoutly thank the Blessed Trinity that they have died
in battle, in freedom, and are to rest here in this earth, among their own.
Yes, we have still the grace of a free death, of our own choosing. And,
therefore, to see aright the grace in which God lets us live, we must
think again and again of the thousands from whom such grace had been
withdrawn; of those who have died in the worst bondage, who lie out
unburied on the plains, in ditches along the highroads, and are being
devoured by vultures and hyenas. If we climb that knoll to our left, and
look out eastwards, we shall see stretching away before us the endless
fields of our dead, where there is no consecrated ground, no priest,
no burial, and only the hope of the Last Judgment. So let us then, in
this hour in which we lower these happy ones into earth, remember what
real misfortune is, and that it is not here, but out yonder."

 

 

This short sermon drew deep groans from the villagers encamped on
Musa Dagh, who had all assembled. Ter Haigasun went to the tubs which
contained their consecrated earth. Sixteen times he put in his hand,
to open it over the head of a dead fighter. It moved with the slowest
deliberation. They could see how sparing he was of that precious soil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. THE PROCESSION OF FIRE

 

 

Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak -- today they were in luck professionally.
Before they so much as found time to wipe their faces clean with lettuce
leaves, another engagement presented itself. It was one of an exactly
opposite kind. If the woman's labor was prolonged, as they had every
reason to hope it might be, they could count on three full meals at
least. And, in the very just supposition that any human event may occur
at any time in a population of five thousand, they had brought all
the essentials of their craft, wrapped in the crumpled folds of their
garments -- sevsamith, the black fennel seed, a little swallow dung,
the tail hair of a chestnut horse, and other similar medicaments.

 

 

Even before the earth of the Damlayik had closed over the last of the
dead, Hovsannah's labor had begun. Only Iskuhi was with her in the tent,
everyone else had gone to the burial. Iskuhi's lame arm prevented her
being of much use to her sister-in-law. There was no seat with a back
to it against which the laboring mother could bear down. Cushions
gave her no leverage, and the bed had only a low iron frame. Iskuhi
sat with her back to Hovsannah, so that the tortured woman might press
firmly against her body. But Iskuhi was too frail to hold out against
Hovsannah's heavy thrusts; cling as fast as she might to the bedframe,
she always slipped. Hovsannah let out a short scream. It came as a
signal to Nunik. That wailer's alert instinct had drawn her away from
the burial. These mourners' work was done, their surprisingly high fees
had been clawed together.

 

 

Iskuhi was about to leave the tent in search of Mairik Antaram when
the three fates, unbidden, thrust into the tent. Their rigid purple
faces shone in the gloom. The two Tomasian women were speechless;
not that the mourners themselves alarmed them -- who did not know them
in Yoghonoluk? -- but at the sight of their funeral trappings, which
they still wore. Nunik, who divined at once the superstitious reason
of these fears, calmed them: "Little daughter, it's good we should come
like this. It keeps death behind us."

 

 

Nunik began her obstetric treatment by drawing the sis out of her garments,
the thin iron poker to stir up the tonir fire. She began tracing out
big crosses along the inner wall of the tent.

 

 

"Why are you drawing crosses?" asked Iskuhi, spellbound. Nunik explained
as she worked. All the powers of the air assemble round the beds of
laboring women, the evil more numerous than the good. When the child
pushes into the world, in the very instant when his head pushes into life,
these evil spirits hurl themselves upon it, to possess and permeate. Every
human born must, of necessity, take something of them. It is because of
this that madness lies asleep at the bottom of all our hearts. So that
the devil has his share of all men, and only Christ Saviour was never
devil-ridden. In Nunik's view the highest art of the midwife lies in her
knowledge of how to cut down the devil's share. These crosses served as
prohibiting signals, as mystic quarantine. Iskuhi remembered her dream
of the convoy, night after night. The face of kaleidoscopic evil, Satan
and all his works, still hovered above her. And she, too, with her free
hand, had tried to ban him by tracing a great cross in the air. Oh,
for how much earthly terror must Christ Saviour at every instant not
be in readiness! This was by no means the end of Nunik's wisdom. She
explained to the startled women how all our entrails -- the lungs, the
liver, the heart especially -- are in sympathy with a different devil,
who will strive to get entire possession of them all. The whole act
of birth is no more than a wrestling match of good and evil, for the
full ownership of the child. So that a wise mother would use the old,
well-tried feints and aid which Nunik gave her. If she did, her child
was certain to get past its first, dangerous days.

 

 

When sudden panic had abated, the presence of these three bedizened
midwives was remarkably soothing -- lulling -- in its effect. Hovsannah
even dozed, and seemed not to notice how Wartuk tied her wrists and ankles
with thin, silk cords. But Nunik came close to the bed, and counselled
her: "The longer your body remains closed, the longer your strength
remains shut in. The later you open your body, the more strength will
enter, and issue out of you.

 

 

Meanwhile the little, sturdy Manushak had lighted a twig fire in front
of the tent. Two smooth stones, like flat loaves, were put to heat in
it. This was a far less occult remedy, since these warm stones, wrapped
into cloths, would serve to warm the exhausted body of the mother. Even
Bedros Hekim might have approved of this more practical part of magic
obstetrics, and of the fennel-water, which Manushak heated over her
fire. None the less his remaining hairs bristled with rage when he found
his three arch-enemies with the patient. He swung his stick and, with
all the nimbleness of youth, drove off the keeners. His sharp little
voice pursued them with insults. "Carrion-crows" was perhaps the mildest.

 

 

 

 

We see, therefore, that Dr. Bedros Altouni was a very ardent champion
indeed of western science. Had not old Avetis Bagradian sent him to get
his education and supported him a whole five years at the University of
Vienna, that he might hold aloft the torch of enlightenment above the
darkness of this people? But how were things with him in reality? What
reward had fate given the hekim for having kept his promise to his old
patron? In all the long years through which, astride his patient ass,
the doctor had gone jogging round the villages, and indeed been in
constant request by Moslems, up and down the whole district, he had had
to admit the oddest experiences. His whole scientific heart might rebel,
but his eyes had had to see many cures obtained by the lousiest quacks,
the filthiest nostrums, in flat defiance of all antiseptic or hygiene.
In eighty percent of these cures "evil eye" had been the diagnosis.
For this the specffics were spittle, sheep's piss, burnt horsehair,
bird's dung, and even more attractive medicaments. And yet, more than
once it had happened that a patient, given up by Dr. Altouni, got a
lightning cure from having swallowed a strip of paper scribbled with a
verse from Bible or Koran. Altouni was not the man to credit the magic
of swallowed strips, not, at least, to the point where doubts assailed
him. But what use was scepticism? A cure was a cure! In Armenian villages
the news of such miraculous therapy would get about from time to time,
so that Altouni's patients all forsook him, to seek out the Arab hekim
in the neighborhood, or even consult Nuniik and her worthy sisters,
the other fates. And frequently there would be confirmed "enlighteners"
-- this or that schoolteacher, for instance -- who deserted the doctor
for the quack. It certainly did not improve his temper.

 

 

There was another reason for Dr. Altouni's bitter wrath. Perhaps it was
the really valid one. Science! Enlightenment! Progress! All well and good.
But to diffuse the light of scientific advancement one must oneself be
scientifically advanced. And who, cut off from all knowledge of recent
discoveries, medical books, or medical journals, could advance in the
shadow of Musa Dagh? Krikor's library contained the works of many years on
every conceivable subject except medicine, although, or perhaps because,
he was a chemist. Bedros Altouni had only a German
Handbook of Medicine
published in 1875. It was a solid work; it contained the essentials. But
it had one grave defect. For devouring time had not only affected the
vade mecum, but also the doctor's memory of German. The Handbook had,
as it were, been struck dumb. So now Dr. Altouni never opened it,
nor even used it as amulet and fetish. All that, decades ago, he had
learned theoretically, had melted into an inconsiderable something. For
the doctor there were ten to twenty diseases that could be named. Though
he had seen innumerable pictures of human suffering, he crammed them
all under the few headings he possessed. In the depths of his sad and
simple heart Altouni felt every bit as ignorant as the hekims, quacks,
and keening-wives of the district, whose gruesome cures so damnably
often succeeded, with a little help from patient Nature. It was just
this utter lack of conceit which, without his ever being aware of it,
made of Altouni a great doctor. On the other hand it provoked these
frenzied outbursts at the sight of Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak. But today
these midwives did not let themselves be dismissed. They lingered on
the edge of Three-Tent Square, eyeing the enemy with derision.

 

 

Hovsannah, the pastor's wife, was the first woman among the people to lie
in chuldbed on the Damlayik. Even in the everyday valley a birth was a
kind of public event, to which all assembled, near and distant relatives,
not excepting the men. How much more solemn, therefore, and public an
occasion, up here in camp -- since now, in perhaps the most perilous
situation in which that people had yet been placed, the first Armenian
child was to be brought forth. Even the resplendent spoils of war, the
two golden howitzers, shed their glory on it. The crowds which had that
morning surrounded those trophies now jammed into Three-Tent Square, the
most "select" place in this poor camp. The curtains of poor Hovsannah's
tent were lifted and she was mercilessly exposed to the sun. Her birth-pangs
were her own, but she was the people's. The inquisitive came in and out.
Altouni, having soon realized himself superfluous, had made way, with a
grunt, for his wife, who as a rule replaced him at a childbed. He walked
away, taking no notice of the deep salaams of the keening-women, towards
the hospital hut to visit his wounded.