Forty Days of Musa Dagh (67 page)

 

 

Down in the valley slept the infantry, the saptiehs, chettehs, as many
as came clear of the slaughter. The officers slept in their rooms at
Villa Bagradian. Yesterday's first victim, the Kolagasi from Aleppo, had
been taken back in an ambulance to Antakiya many hours ago. Now another
wounded officer had replaced him on Stephan's bed. The Kaimakam, too,
in Juliette's bedroom, had been overcome by sleep. He had been engaged
on a report to the Wali of Aleppo when it became no longer possible to
sit upright.

 

 

But his mind and conscience worked in the depths of sleep with more cruel
truth than ever in the meshes of consciousness. He had just encountered
the worst setback in his career. Yet every failure contains the elements
of grace in it, since failure, with a grin, reveals the ineptitude
of human estimates of worth. This Kaimakam, this high official, this
member of Ittihad, he of whom the party thought so highly, this Osmanli,
steeped to the marrow in all the pride of his warrior race -- what had he
just been forced to experience? That the weak were strong, the strong in
reality impotent. Yes, impotent even in those heroic activities which made
the weak appear so despicable. But in his sleep the Kaimakam's perceptions
went deeper still. So far he had never one instant doubted that Enver
Pasha and Talaat Bey were in the right; more, that against the Armenian
millet they had acted with consummate statecraft. Yet now furious doubts
of Enver Pasha and Talaat Bey reared up within the Kaimakam, since failure
is also the stern parent of truth. Had men the right to work out skilful
plans by which this or that people should be stamped out? Was there even,
as he had asserted a thousand times there was, enough practical basis
for such a scheme? Who is to say that one people is worse or better than
another? Certainly men cannot say it. And God, that day on the Damlayik,
had given a most unmistakable answer. The Kaimakam saw himself placed
in certain contingencies which made him feel not a little concerned for
his skin. He was sending a written resignaHon to His Excellency the Wali
of Aleppo, destroying, of his own free will, the whole structure of his
career. He offered the Armenians, in the person of Gabriel Bagradian,
wrapped in a bathgown, freedom and friendship. In the central committee of
Ittihad he urged the immediate recall of all Armenian convoys and passed a
compensatory tax to indemnify them. But the Kaimakam's soul only haunted
such ethical summits in deepest sleep. The thinner wore the fabric of his
slumbers, the nearer he returned to everyday consciousness, the more utterly
did his surface mind reject any such foolhardy suggestions. At last, in far
smoother, more peaceful repose, he hit on a convenient way out. Why not
simply omit any superfluous, uneasy report to the central authorities?
The Kaimakam slept on till midday.

 

 

The dead slept, the Christians and the Mussulmans, strewn here and there
in the bushes above the ilex gully, the thickets of the northern side.
The licking flames of this huge mountain conflagration crept nearer with
overweening playfulness. These flames seemed to rouse the sleepers;
they raised them up from underneath, so that the dead, with a stiff
jerk of terror, sat bolt upright, before their bodies started crackling,
and they sank back into the cleansing holocaust. From hour to hour the
fire increased, spreading far and wide across the Damlayik, to north and
south. It halted only at the barren stone slopes of that incline which
falls sheer from the South Bastion, while a rocky inlet protected the
North Saddle against it. The green slopes of this mountain blessed with
many springs, this miracle of the Syrian coast, triumphed once again
with flaming banners, till at last nothing was left to devour but a
strong obstacle field of glowing embers. Thus did Musa Dagh armor with
fire, with red-glittering debris, her weary sons, lost in their gulf of
sleep, unaware that for some time now they need fear no more from their
pursuers. None realized how a friendly wind kept danger helpfully off
the Town Enclosure, driving sparks and tongues of flame downhill. The
villagers and the decads slumbered on till late afternoon -- only then
did the Council meet to resolve that every imperilled point must be
fully cleared of wood and undergrowth. This was a new and exhausting task.

 

 

They had slept all through the day, all but one of them. She in her tent
sat on the bed and never moved. But it served her little to make herself
feel smaller and smaller within the buzzing cocoon of her inexpressible
alienation, her inescapable guilt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. SATO'S WAYS

 

 

Although the lucky wind still kept its direction, this forest, or rather
mountain fire had a deeply depressing effect on all these people. There was
no more darkness. The red-eyed nights squinted and blinked at them. Crazy
shadows leapt up to dance. Unendurable heat, at midnight just as at midday,
without a breath of cooling air. Biting fumes strangled every breath.
They ate into the membrane of nose and throat. A unique and curious form of
cold in the head spread savagely through the whole camp, making tempers more
and more uncertain.

 

 

Instead of pride in victory, jubilant thanksgiving, the first signs
of demoralization began to show themselves, those signs of a sinister
inward process, which threatened to destroy all discipline in sudden
bursts of wild ill-temper. This, in great measure, was the cause of the
ugly brawl with Sarkis Kilikian, which took place, unluckily, on the
very night of this day's repose. It is one of the reasons why neither
Ter Haigasun nor Gabriel would let themselves be influenced by the fact
that now, by God's mercy, a long truce might be expected. To be sure,
this mad idea of setting a mountain on fire had, with the vast new loot
of rifles, much improved the prospects of the defence. Even the hope
that the Turks might renounce all further attempts was by no means so
insane as it had been. And yet -- only the breast of the Damlayik was
in flames; its hips, the stone slopes above Suedia and the North Saddle,
were as liable as ever to be attacked. In no circumstances therefore must
the stringent routine of the trenches be relaxed. The leaders' authority
must be kept as implacable as ever.

 

 

It was just as essential to re-establish the morale of the Town Enclosure.
What Ter Haigasun called "normality" must be reaffirmed against all
destructive evil powers. So that, when it met that night, on the evening
of the twenty-fourth, the Council of Leaders, to avoid any mass excitement,
decided against ceremonial burial of the dead.

 

 

In this late afternoon, detachments, sent to bring in the dead, came back
with sixty-seven corpses, out of the hundred and thirteen missing men.
There were also a good many mortally wounded, who died that night, since
they had no proper medical aid. Dr. Bedros Altouni had much to say to
the Council on this point. In his sharp little voice, which certainly
was not suited to solemn talk of corpses, he informed them that, since
the summer heat was unbearably intensified by this fire, it was essential
to bury at once. Every minute's delay was a danger to the whole camp. He,
Dr. Altouni, disliked having to say such a thing to mourners, but by now,
surely, everyone's nose must have convinced him of the absolute necessity
for funerals. Not a second to lose! Let every bereaved family set to work
and dig its grave at the place appointed. The Council, in Altouni's opinion,
would have been far wiser to leave all the dead to the mercy of the great
fire. It had not been able to make up its mind to do so.

 

 

So the dead were wound into their shrouds, for the comfort of orphans
and widows. A heap of his own earth was granted to each.

 

 

This order did not, as some had feared it might, cause much ill-feeling
among the people. They feared too much for their own health. And corruption
had already become apparent. Three hours after midnight, it was finished.
This exhausting work had stifled pain. Only a very few surviving relatives
remained standing by the graves, with the candles they had been keeping
so long. Reflections from the mountain fire swallowed these poor corpses
into their shadow. Nunik and her colleagues had stayed in the valley.
They dared no longer leave their holes, since the Turks had caught two old
beggar-men in the maize fields, and thrashed them to death.

 

 

On the following morning, August 25, two very important public events were
due. The first concerned the selection of volunteers for Alexandretta and
Aleppo. Swimmers and runners must leave at once. The other event was the
trial of Sarkis Kilikian. The case stood as follows: There could be no
doubt that Sarkis had to answer to the people for heavy losses, and yet
Gabriel had not thought of calling him to account for criminal negligence,
since in all previous attacks the Russian had behaved with the coolest
gallantry. Gabriel had a certain insight into human incalculabilities,
and knew besides that it is impossible to reconstruct with any reality a
determined instant in any battle. But other leaders disagreed. There had
been a brawl on the altar square. Sarkis had stood surrounded by an angry
mob of his comrades. . . . Let him explain -- answer their questions --
justify himself! He neither justified nor explained. He stood, with his
bleached face, his incurious eyes, his mouth shut before the frenzied
accusations that spattered around him. This silence may not have been
as insolent, malicious, self-assertive, as it seemed. Perhaps Kilikian
himself could not understand his sudden negligence, and disdained all
such easy excuses as "fatigue or misunderstood intentions." He was shoved
this way and that; fists kept dancing under his nose. Probably any jury
would have found that he acted in self-defence, had it not been that he
struck the first blow. . . . And had not that blow been so terrible!

 

 

For a while, apathetic as ever, he let them shove and push him as they
pleased, seemed indeed scarcely to notice what was happening. Suddenly,
then, he snatched his bony fist out of a pocket, and dashed it in his
youngest tormentor's face, so horribly that the lad collapsed, streaming
with blood from a broken nose, having lost an eye. It was done with
incredible swiftness. For a half-second Kilikian had straightened up
out of his slouch, his eyes had seemed to flare -- then they went as
dead again as ever. No one would have thought him the aggressor, and,
at first, luckily for him, most did not know how it had happened, and
retreated a step. But when, with shouts of anger, they closed in on him,
it would have gone very badly with him indeed, had the police of the
Town Enclosure not saved him by taking him in charge.

 

 

During the morning of his trial by the Council, he admitted indifferently
that it was he who had struck the first blow; that he had known just what
its effects would be. Nor would he attempt to prove self-defence. He seemed
too detached, too bored, too slack, to speak. The circumstances in which
he must live or die may have been, to such a man as Kilikian, a matter of
more profound indifference than other people could ever realize. Gabriel
heard the case without saying a word. He neither defended nor accused.
The exasperated people demanded punishment.

 

 

Ter Haigasun, having heard the last witness, sighed: "What am I to do
with you, Sarkis Kilikian? One only needs to look at you to see that you
don't fit into any order established by God! I ought to have you turned
out of camp."

 

 

He did not, but instead sentenced Kilikian to five days' imprisonment
in irons, intensified by three days' fasting. This punishment was worse
than it may appear. For a brawl, in which he had not really been the
aggressor, Kilikian found himself degraded from his rank as a respected
leader and thrust back into the criminal underworld. It was the harshest
degradation. But no indication on his part suggested that he had any
honour left to degrade. After the trial they bound him hand and foot
with ropes and placed him in the lock-up which formed the third room
of the government hut. Now Kilikian looked as he had so many times in
the course of his inexplicable life, in which punishment had come so
swift on the heels of the vaguest misdoing, or of none at all. To these
penalties also he submitted, with indifferent eyes, as to yet another,
familiar, inescapable incident, in a life so subtly contrived. But this
prison-house differed at least from all other, similar institutions in
his wide experience by the fact that he had to share it with so august a
spirit as Krikor. Right and left, two kennels, with plank beds, as alike
as cells. The one, a shameful lock-up; the other -- the universe entire.

 

 

 

 

Gabriel could feel in every nerve the advent of an incalculable event
which would nullify the results of their recent victory. He had therefore
urgently insisted that the messages must go out that day. Something must
be made to happen quickly. And, even if the attempt proved vain, it would
at least engender hope and expectation. The volunteers assembled, as the
leaders had ordained, on the altar square. The whole camp was astir,
since this choice of messengers, freely come to offer their lives,
concerned the whole people.

 

 

Gabriel came from a short inspection of the decads. In view of the
dangerous slackness and irritation, which threatened to spread all
through the camp, he had ordered fresh drill and fighting exercises for
that same afternoon. His whole first defence had now been adequately
armed with the two hundred freshly captured Mauser rifles. The best
of his reserve had been sent to fill in the gaps, left by the recent,
heavy fighting. Already Chaush Nurhan's jerky bugle calls could be heard,
drilling these recruits. Iskuhi had come half-way to meet Gabriel. Since
the first, sudden emotion sprang up between them, she had sought him out
with the frankness of a little girl. They were walking side by side,
without a word, the rest of the way to the altar square. Gabriel,
whenever he had her with him, would be filled with the same strange,
restful security. Always it was the same sensation, that what he felt
for her was the most intimate thing he had ever known. Her warmth,
as of a clear fire, seemed to reach far back, beyond any frontiers of
conscious memory. Nor did she leave his side in the place of assembly,
although she was the only woman, standing here without excuse in the
midst of these debating men. Had she no fear that they all might comment
on her behavior? That even her brother, Aram, might suspect?