Forty Days of Musa Dagh (58 page)

 

 

In any case, Arab nationalism was on the march. From the south it spread
through Turkey to the line Mosul-Mersina-Adana. In the Syrian vilayets it
was very much a factor to be reckoned with, since already, on the rear
of the Fourth Army, or on its flanks, that mutinous envy spread abroad
which so endangers an army in the field. All the uproar against the poor
bimbashi in Antioch had its secret source in this envious mood. And the
Kaimakam had the inspiration to win over this simmering Arab populace
at the Armenians' expense. All Armenian property, by the text of the
law of deportation, went to the state; that at least was how it stood on
paper. In reality it was left to the discretion of provincial governors
to make what use of it they pleased. On the very day after the last
disaster on Musa Dagh, the Kaimakam had begun to send out officials
into all districts with a numerous Arab population within possible
reach of the seven villages. In each he had caused it to be proclaimed
that the most fruitful land in the whole of Syria, between Suedia and
Ras el-Khanzir, with vines and orchards, silkworm and bee farms, richly
treed and watered, with houses and barns, was to be freely parcelled out
among all those who should arrive forty-eight hours later to settle in
the Armenian valley. The müdirs slyly suggested that industrious Arab
cultivators were to be given the preference over Turks.

 

 

Hence this astonishing migration. The Kaimakam had come in person for an
indefinite stay in Yoghonoluk, to supervise this parcelling out of land,
and ingratiate himself with the Arab notables. He took up his quarters
in Villa Bagradian. In forty-eight hours the villages looked as populous
as ever. Arabs and Turks, grown rich, began to fraternize. Never had they
seen such houses. Palaces! It seemed almost a pity to live in them. In a
trice the church had become a mosque. Allah was praised in it that same
night. The mullahs thanked Him for all these new and bounteous gifts
-- though it is true that a shadow still lay over them, since up there
the insolent Christians were still alive. It was every believer's duty
to help exterminate them. Only when that was accomplished, could they
settle down to enjoy these blessings, as just men should. The men came
out of the mosque with glittering eyes. They too were hotly eager to make
quick work of those whose places they had taken so that a vague, nagging
uneasiness in their honest peasant hearts might cease to trouble them.

 

 

The men above grimly watched their houses being occupied. But to them
it was all the same.

 

 

 

 

What had happened to time? How many eternities did a day need to creep
into night? And yet how quickly the day passed in comparison to night,
the snail! Where was Juliette? Had she been living long in this tent?
Had she ever lived in a house? Had she lived in Europe long ago?
Certainly this could not be Juliette, who now lived captive among the
mountain folk. Certainly it could not be Juliette who awoke each morning
with the same start of horrible surprise. A tired, pale creature slipped
out of bed, stood on the rug, pulled off a nightgown, sat on the camp chair,
at the looking glass, to examine a pale, yet sun-scarred, face. Could it be
Juliette? Could the face, with its dull eyes and brittle hair, please any
young man? Juliette, for the last few days, had dismissed her maid in the
early morning. She had begun, with nervous hands, as though she were
committing a crime, to attempt some kind of toilette, with what was left
of her many essences. Then she had dressed, tied on a big white apron
and, round her hair, a napkin, like a coif. It was all she ever wore,
now she worked in the hospital. Coif and apron gave moral support. They
felt like a uniform. Uniforms were de rigueur on Musa Dagh.

 

 

Before coming out of the tent Juliette would fall on her knees, and
embrace her pillow, thrusting away daylight once again. At first, days
(years?) ago she had merely felt bewildered and unhappy. But now she
longed for such guiltless unhappiness. Never, since the world began,
had any woman behaved so basely -- she, a true, a self-respecting wife,
in whose long marriage there had been not one single "affair." But would
not a hundred affairs in Paris have been as nothing compared to this
meanest, basest treachery, in the midst of a desperate struggle with
certain death? Juliette knelt like a little girl, whispering, "I can't
help it," into her pillow. What use was that? By magic, how she could
not tell, here in this inexorable "foreignness" she had surrendered to
what seemed most akin. In a very low voice, as though to summon some
counter-force from herself, she cried out, "Gabriel!" But Gabriel had
vanished as much as Juliette. Less and less could she discover his true
image in that album of faded photographs, her memory. And the unknown,
bearded, brown Armenian who, now and then, caine in to sit with her --
what had he to do with Gabriel? Juliette felt scared of her own tears,
wiped her eyes carefully, and waited until they looked a little less
red and hideous.

 

 

Bedros Altouni had had all those patients who were not feverish
dismissed and carried back to their huts. Though he gave no definite
reasons for having done it, he had somewhat ticklish ones. The news of
the Armenian victory of August 14 had spread like wildfire through plain
and mountains. It had appealed especially to deserters in hiding in the
surrounding hills. On the very next day twenty-two of them had come to the
outposts and asked to be taken into camp. Gabriel, who had to be on his
guard against spies and traitors, had closely cross-questioned them. But,
since losses had to be made up, since they all appeared to be Armenians,
and since each had a rifle and cartridges, he took them all in. Among
them was a very young man who looked bewildered, and seemed uneasy.
He declared that only a few days before he had escaped from barracks at
Aleppo, and that the long tramp had worn him out. But that same evening,
deathly pale, the young man had come into the hospital hut where, having
mumbled something unintelligible, he had collapsed. Altouni had stripped
him at once. The poor lad chattered and shook with fever. His chest was
a mass of red spots, which increased considerably in the night. Bedros
consulted his Handbook, a thing he had not done for a long time. Its
hieroglyphics were unreadable. He asked the Frenchwoman's advice:

 

 

"My dear, just have a look at this one, will you? What do you think?"

 

 

Juliette was not the kind of woman who gets used to the horrors of disease.
Each time she entered this nightmare hut she had to make an effort not to
be sick. She did her best, her share of everything, and yet her shudders
of nausea increased, the longer she stayed, instead of diminishing. Yet
now incomprehensible ecstasy filled her. It was as though she could atone
for her guilty betrayal -- here and now. This scrubby, sour-smelling
creature at her feet, with spittle dribbling from his mouth, twisting
and turning unconsciously in delirium, was Stephan and Gabriel in one.
Juliette knelt beside him and leaned her head -- as though she herself
were slowly fainting -- with closed eyes, on his shrunken chest.

 

 

Gonzague's voice startled her awake: "What on earth are you doing,
Juliette? You must be crazy."

 

 

And the old doctor seemed as conscience-stricken as Madame Bagradian
herself: "It'd really be better, my dear, if you came here less, and
didn't work so hard."

 

 

Gonzague caught her eye secretively. She followed, obedient. In his case,
too, Juliette had lost her sense of time. It was all confused. How had it
happened? In which of her pasts? Since when had she followed defenceless,
whenever he called? How dense and heavy this silence and complicity,
even now. But he had not changed. The same impenetrable alertness of
eyes and thoughts, and never an unguarded second. Camp life had done
nothing to his appearance; his hair was as neatly brushed as ever,
his coat as spotless, his body as clean, his skin as clear, his breath
untainted. Was she in love with him? No; it was something far more
horrible. Since unhappy love, if only in a dream, can devise some path,
some way of escape. This sensation was pitiless. Often Gonzague seemed as
remote as Gabriel. He, at first the trusted, the familiar, the pleasantly
"lost" child, who aroused comradeship and pity, had changed into a cruel
inevitability, from which there could be no escape. When he touched her,
she felt what she had never felt. But each touch made her loathe her
treachery more. Many of the embowered and wooded solitudes along these
cliffs had become accomplices. Her ebbing pride cried out in Juliette:
"I -- here on the ground -- I? . . ." Yet each time Gonzague seemed
to contrive to efface all ugliness. Perhaps he had a genius for the
moment, just as there are gamblers, huntsmen, collectors, who have
trained one faculty to its uttermost. At least he shared such people's
inexhaustible patience. She had lured Gonzague on to the Damlayik;
modest yet assured, he had bided his time. His concentration evoked in
Juliette its opposite, inattention, and lamed her will. Often she was
devoured by absent-mindedness. They sat down to rest in a quiet place,
which they called "the Riviera" between themselves.

 

 

Gonzague broke a cigarette, and lit one half carefully. "I've still got
fifty." Then, as though to give a more cheerful turn to this sad thought
of tobacco running out: "Well, we shan't be here so much longer."

 

 

She stared at him without seeing he was there.

 

 

"I suggest we get out of this, you and I. It's about time."

 

 

She still seemed not to hear what he was saying. He explained his plan
with the driest precision. Only the first two hours might be a bit
difficult. A day's excursion, south, along the mountain ridge -- that
was all it was. One might have to do a little climbing to get down on
the right from the tiny village of Habaste to the Orontes plain and the
road to Suedia. He'd used last night to get the lie of all that ground,
and, quite easily, without having met a soul, got within a square mile of
the alcohol factory and into the manager's house, who, as Juliette knew,
was a Greek, and a most influential person. It was amazing how simply
it could be done.

 

 

"The manager's entirely at our disposal. On August 26 the little factory
steamer sails with a cargo for Beirut. She'll stop there on her way to
Latakia and Tripoli, and, according to schedule, she ought to touch Beirut
on the twenty-ninth. She sails under the American flag. You see, it's an
American firm. The manager's certain there won't be the slightest danger,
because at that time the Cyprus fleet is putting out again. You'll have
your own cabin, Juliette! When we're in Beirut, you'll have won. All
the rest is just a question of money. And that you've got . . ."

 

 

Her eyes looked blank. "And Stephan and Gabriel?"

 

 

Gonzague was blowing ash off his coat. "Stephan and Gabriel? They'd be
taken anywhere for Armenians. But I asked the manager about them. He says
he can't do anything for Armenians. He's so well in with the Turkish
government he can't afford to take any risks. He said so definitely.
So, unluckily, Gabriel and Stephan can't be rescued."

 

 

Juliette drew away from him. "And I'm to let myself be rescued. . . .
By you?"

 

 

Gonzague jerked his head almost imperceptibly, unable, it appeared,
to feel any sympathy with the woman's exaggerated scruples. "Well,
you know how he himself wanted to send you! And with me, what's more."

 

 

She pressed both fists into her temples. "Yes, he wanted to send me
and Stephan. . . . And I've done this to him. And I lie to him . . . !"

 

 

"You shan't go on lying, Juliette. I'd be the last to want that of you.
On the contrary! You must tell him the whole thing. Better do it today."

 

 

Juliette sprang up. Her face looked very red and bloated. "What?
You want me to kill him? He has the lives of five thousand people in
his hands. And at a time like this I'm to kill him!"

 

 

"You distort everything by exaggerating," said Gonzague, still seated
and very serious. "Usually it's strangers we kill. One sees that every
day. But sometimes we're forced to choose between our own lives and
those of what we call our 'nearest and dearest.' Is Gabriel really your
nearest and dearest? And will it really kill him if you escape, Juliette?"

 

 

Such calm words, his self-assured eyes, brought her back to his side.
Gonzague seized Juliette's hand and lucidly expounded his philosophy.
Each of us has only one life. His only duty is towards this single,
never to be repeated, life; towards nothing and nobody else! And what
is the truest essence of life? What does life consist in? It consists in
one long chain of desires and appetites. Though often we may only imagine
we want a thing, the essential is that we want it intensely. Our duty is
ruthlessly to satisfy our desires and appetites. That is the one and only
"meaning" of life. That is why we expose ourselves to danger, even death,
for something we want, since, outside this urge to satisfaction, there
can be no life. Gonzague gave himself as an instance of the only logical,
straightforward way of behaving. He had not hesitated a second to accept
discomfort and danger for something he loved. He concluded disdainfully:
"But all that you, Juliette, mistake for love and self-sacrifice is no
more than convenient anxiety."

 

 

Her head dropped heavily on his shoulder. She was steeped again in
tormenting absent-mindedness. "You're so tidy, Gonzague. Don't be so
horribly clear and orderly, Gonzague. I can't stand it! Why aren't you
the same as you used to be?"