Forty Days of Musa Dagh (80 page)

 

 

It was almost symbolic that Stephan should have offered French sardines
and Swiss chocolate in exchange for mutton sausage and stale bread. Haik
scarcely knew the names of such foreign dainties. The boys did not control
their appetites, but made big inroads into their supplies without even
thinking of tomorrow.

 

 

Suddenly Haik remembered, packed his away, and advised Stephan:
"Better drink water and save the food."

 

 

So it was done. They drank great gulps of spring water out of the aluminum
top of the thermos flask, and Stephan mixed in some of his wine. He felt
as well as though this were a holiday excursion, and not the expedition
of two Armenians menaced on all sides, on their way into the pitiless
town -- an expedition which he had neither the right nor ability to take
part in. All his grief seemed left behind, once and for all, on the Damlayik.
How deliciously exciting it seemed to be resting here, having walked all
night, in the harmless, pleasant, morning sunshine. Stephan folded up
his rug for a pillow. The sunshine warmed him more and more. He sat up
again to ask like a child: "Do you think there'll be any wild animals?"

 

 

The self-important Haik pulled out his clasp knife and laid it beside
him. "You needn't worry. Even when I'm asleep, I see everything."

 

 

Stephan was not worrying in the least. What a good watcher, even when asleep,
Haik was! Never before had he felt more nestling trust in a human being
than he did in this rough boy, for whose admiration he had striven so hard.
He surrendered utterly to his leadership. He fell asleep. His hand fumbled
to seek his friend.

 

 

 

 

"Now we must make tarbushes," explained Haik, "so that we won't be noticed
if we meet people." He unfolded his aghil sash and wound it adroitly round
his felt cap. Stephan did his so badly that Haik had to help him. While
adjusting the headgear of the prophet he instructed the inexperienced one:
"If necessary you'll have to copy me. Do everything exactly the way I
do it. And don't ever talk."

 

 

It was late afternoon. Between the top branches of oaks and beeches a
golden sky, full of swarming carrion birds. The boys had been nearly six
hours on the road. But the word "road" is euphemistic. Far and wide,
there was not so much as a goat-path. They had forced their way along
the dried-up beds of streams which would be sure to lead them into the
valley. Literally they had "forced their way," impeded at every step
by masses of resistant undergrowth, clinging creepers, and walls of
shrubs, as hard and elastic as rubber, but barbed all over with long
prickles. Incredible how many terraces and rocky steeps they had already
had to clamber down. The mountain seemed always to have nothing more to
say, and never to come to the end of what it was saying. Stephan had
ceased to feel his body. His hands, his knees, his legs were covered
with scratches and wounds. For hours he had said nothing. But not
complained. Now they were sitting together on a bare rock, overlooking
the chalk-white highroad from Beilan. It looked brand-new. Stone heaps
all along it indicated the work of human hands. And indeed this byroad,
which linked up the harbor of Alexandretta with the plains of Aleppo,
and so the Mediterranean with all Asia, was a tribute to the unleashed
energy, the power, of Jemal Pasha, the Syrian dictator. That iron-willed
general had ordained that within a month the wretched, broken track should
have become an impeccable highway, smooth and properly underpinned --
and lo! it was done. The Turks were amazed at the energy they found they
possessed. At this point, under Stephan's and Haik's eyes, the road took
a bend eastwards. They could look down on only a small section of it:
not a man or vehicle, no mule or horse, came into sight, only here and
there a hare or squirrel flitted across the white chalk ribbon. Stephan
gazed down with longing eyes at its smooth possibilities. But even
Haik seemed to be yielding to temptation. Without having said a word
to Stephan to warn him how imprudent it was to do so, he jumped up and
ran down the slope. When they felt the smooth road under their feet, it
was like a drink when one is thirsty. All Stephan's ambition and energy
were renewed. He kept pace with Haik. Right and left, steep banks began
to rise. The road had become almost a tunnel, a narrow pass between two
cliffs. This oddly enough increased their sense of security, and with
it their carelessness. Then the cliffs widened out a little, the road
took a steep downward incline. Another bend and the plain would surely
open out! This road carried irresistibly onwards; they were borne, so
to speak, along its current. Straight to disaster! Since when they came
round the bend, they found, not the plain in front of them, but a Turkish
guardhouse, over which waved the half-moon flag. Four horrible-looking
saptiehs lounged in front of it. A detachment of inshaat taburi were
working away along the edge with spades, mattocks, and hammers. The
travellers had been too exhausted to catch the sounds of their picks
and shovels, the hoarse, dreary song of these laborers. They were so
terror-stricken that even Haik took a full minute before he moved. But
then he snatched Stephan's hand and tugged him away. They went galloping
off round the bend, up among the trees. Unluckily the place was bare of
rocks or shrubs to hide in. There were only the slender stems of young
beeches, which gave no cover. The slope ascended gently. Where did it
lead? Haik's inner eye had a vision of the head saptieh bending forward,
shading his eyes, growling out an order, and giving chase, with his
whole corps. It was worse than a nightmare. Voices! The leaves began to
rustle with Turkish steps. Stephan shut his eyes and kept close to Haik,
who flung his left arm round his body. Haik's right hand gripped his
open clasp knife. They prepared for death. But the sharp whisper they
heard was not in Turkish.

 

 

"Boys! Boys! Who are you? Don't be afraid!"

 

 

These Armenian words came sepulchrally. When Stephan opened his eyes,
it was to see a ragged Armenian soldier emerge breathless between the
tree stems. A scrubby skull, with eager eyes in it. Even to the eyes,
the man was not unlike Kilikian. Haik controlled himself, put away his
knife. The road-mender's voice shook with excitement.

 

 

"Aren't you the son of the big widow Shushik, who has her house on the
road to Yoghonoluk? Don't you know me?"

 

 

Haik approached the skeleton incredulously; loose rags enveloped its bones,
its feet were bare. He eyed it sharply.

 

 

"Vahan Melikentz, from Azir?" He sounded as hesitant as though he were
trying to pick up a name at random. The laborer-private nodded an eager
head; tears had begun to trickle into his bristles, so moved he was at
meeting his two young countrymen. Haik had only guessed at his name. What
had this ragged scarecrow to do with Melikentz, the dignified, gossiping
beekeeper he had met almost every day?

 

 

Melikentz raised despairing hands. "Are you crazy? What do you want to come
here for? Thank Christ Saviour, the onbashi dichi't catch sight of you.
Yesterday, down there by the bend, they shot five Armenians, a family
trying to get to Alexandretta."

 

 

Haik, once again in full self-possession, gave the ex-beekeeper a dignified
account of his mission.

 

 

Melikentz was horrified. "The road's full of inshaat taburi, as far as
Hammam. And yesterday two companies came into Hammam. They're to be sent
against the Damlayik. All you can do is to walk at night along by the
Ak Denis swamp. But then you'll fall in."

 

 

"We won't fall in, Melikentz," Haik declared, with laconic certainty.
And he asked hir countryman to show him the nearest way to the plain.

 

 

Vahan Melikentz mourned: "If they miss me, or I'm late falling in, I'll
get the third-degree bastinado. Perhaps they may shoot me. . . . I wish
they would! You lads have no idea how little I care, Oh, if only I'd gone
along with your lot, and not with Nokhudian the pastor! You were the clever
ones! Christ help you! He hasn't helped us!"

 

 

And Melikentz was in fact risking death to show them their way. Yet they
had only to go on by a short, fairly easy stretch of woodland. The poor
beekeeper talked continually; he seemed to want to recover a whole lost
harvest of unused words, if only to scatter it, before his last breath.
The fate of those on Musa Dagh seemed to interest him less than describing
his own. So that Stephan and Haik learned something of what had been done
to Nokhudian's followers. All the able-bodied men among them had been told
off from the rest in Antakiya, and sent to Hammam for road-building. Their
women, children, the old and sick, had been driven on towards the Euphrates.
Pastor Nokhudian had managed to get nothing from the Kaimakam -- nothing
at all! But the Armenian inshaat taburi were being used in a very special
way. To each detachment was assigned a particular stretch of road,
which had to be finished off at double-quick time. When the onbashi
reported the task as completed, the detachment was drummed together,
herded into the nearest wood, and there neatly dispatched, with a quick
volley, by a special firing party, expert by now at this routine.

 

 

"Our bit of road," said Melikentz dryly, "goes as far as Top Boghazi;
that's about another four thousand paces. It'll be about six or seven days,
at most, if we're clever. Then it's our turn. So if they shoot me today
I'll only have lost six, or at most, seven days."

 

 

Yet, in spite of his simple calculation, Melikentz left them in breathless
haste, having brought them where he could point out their way. Six days of
horrible living were, after all, six days more of life. As he said good-bye,
he gave Haik a lump of Turkish honey, given him by a compassionate
Mussulman woman.

 

 

A rusty sunset was in the sky when they found themselves standing on the
last, the lowest, of the mountain slopes. Flat land spread before them to
the horizon. They were looking over a wide lake, in whose milky flatness
the insipid sunset palely glistened. It was the Lake of Antioch, of which
distant glimpses were to be had even from certain points of the Damlavik.
But here Ak Denis, the "white sea," looked so near, you could almost touch
it. The northern ridge of the lake was girdled with a broad belt of reeds,
alive with plungings and cawings. Clumsy-winged herons, silver and purple,
flapped out of these reeds, to circle low above the lake, drawing ornate
legs slowly after them that cut the surface of the water. Then they sank
down slowly to brood. A wedge of wild ducks clattered with the swiftness
of torpedoes through the milky flood, to land among the reeds on an island.
From where they stood the boys could hear the bickerings of reed-thrushes,
the human, almost political disputation of ten thousand inflated, gigantic
frogs. This reedy fringe of Ak Denis ebbed away gradually into the plain.
Far out there were still thick clusters, but also there were stagnant
pools, blind eyes, the whites of which looked tremulous. In contrast to
the empty steppes this belt of urgent life along the lake seemed almost
an exaggeration. It extended like the corpse of a fabulous dragon,
being gnawed at by ornate birds of prey.

 

 

Whereas Stephan saw only the lake, Haik's sharp eyes had at once spied
out the nomad tents strewn here and there along the east, the few horses,
browsing with hanging heads in the smoky void. He pointed, certain of their
direction. "That's our way. Between the road and the swamp. We'll get on,
as soon as the moon rises. Here, give us your flask! I'll go for some water.
Here, the water's still good to drink. We must drink a lot. Meantime,
you can get some sleep."

 

 

But Stephan did not sleep. He only waited till his mate got back with two
brimming flasks. Obediently he drank as much as he could. Neither thought
of eating. Haik spread his rug to wrap himself into it. But Stephan crept
up to him. It was no longer enough to sleep as they had that morning,
in cool proximity. Now he could not hide his fearful need of friendship
and love. And lo! Haik understood. Haik was no longer dour and reserved;
Haik did not keep him at arm's length. Indeed he almost seemed to welcome
the confiding closeness of young Bagradian. Like an elder brother, he
drew him close and covered him. The two boys slept in each other's arms.

 

 

 

 

Haik and Stephan were in the plains. But now, against all expectation,
they found that the rough, uneven Musa Dagh, full of clefts and gullies,
had been far easier to walk on than this flat expanse, called El Amk,
the "sinking ground." This sly, uncertain soil, covered with a greenish
scurf, was already hostile, no longer Christian earth.

 

 

It was characteristic of Haik, with his sharp senses and almost superhuman
sureness of nerve, to have chosen this way -- at night especially. El Amk
was really nothing but a göl, a swamp, about twelve miles long, the
hair-thin edge of which would have to be kept to. There were not many
shepherds, peasants, or nomads with courage enough to use this short cut,
to save themselves the long journey by road to the Kara-Su bridge. But
it was the only way the boys could have chosen, since Vahan Melikentz
had warned them of soldiers, saptiehs, and ishaat taburi along the whole
length of the highroad. Haik had taken off his shoes, to be able to "get
the feel" of the ground with his bare feet. Stephan did likewise. He had,
as we know, long ceased to vie with his companion. They walked on the
very thin, warm crust of a loaf, with the dough beneath them. This crust
was cracked all over, and through the cracks rose dense, sulphurous
vapors. Stephan proved intelligent enough to follow close on Haik's
tracks, who, like a dancer, stepped out gingerly, with close attention,
as though each step had been prescribed.