Forty Days of Musa Dagh (87 page)

 

 

Here that master of words, Krikor of Yoghonoluk, lost his thread and was
silent. Sarkis Kilikian seemed to have understood nothing of all this. But
suddenly he put aside the chibuk. "There are all kinds of souls," he said,
"some get snuffed out in their childhood, and nobody asks what kind of
souls they were."

 

 

With his fettered hands he found a razor in his pocket and took it out.
"Look here, Apothecary! Do you suppose I couldn't cut these ropes with that?
Do you think I couldn't smash up this whole shack with a few kicks,
if I wanted to? And yet I don't."

 

 

Krikor's voice came hollow and indifferent, as of yore: "We all have
such a knife, Kilikian. But what use is it to you? Even if you got out
of here, you wouldn't get past the camp bounds. All we can do is break
the prison within ourselves."

 

 

The deserter said nothing, and he lay still. But Krikor fetched a book
from his kennel, and, with his metal-rimmed glasses on his nose, began to
read from it in a lulling voice. Kilikian, with unmoved agate eyes, lay
listening to long-drawn periods, which confusedly told of the being and
influence of the stars. It was the last time that Apothecary Kri.kor ever
shared his treasure with a young man. It seemed to him for some unknown
reason to be worth taking the greatest trouble to get a new disciple,
in the person of this escaped seminarist. Vain labor! The next night, the
one just ending, the fisher of men was as lonely -- lonelier -- than ever.

 

 

 

 

Krikor, on two sticks, drew slowly nearer the dead Stephan. His yellow face
remained bent over the dead face of the young Bagradian. Soundlessly,
then for minutes together, he shook his bald, domed, pointed head. But
these were more than the usual dithering head shakes which came whenever
he was ill. These jerks and tremblings of his denoted his utter inability
to make any sense out of a world in which beings born to the Spirit spend
their time in fanatical throat-slitting, not in the many delights of
definitions, formulas, and couplets. How few human angels walked the earth!
And even these few betrayed their angelhood, fell below themselves. Krikor
searched his unique treasures of quotations for a saying which might furnish
support. But now his heart had too much grief in it to find the right one.
Bent double, he limped back to the hut.

 

 

Among his tinctures the apothecary still kept a tiny, thin glass phial,
sealed with a drop of wax. Decades ago, by the recipe of a medieval
Persian mystic, he had tried to distill the authentic attar of roses,
long lost to the world. Here, in this tiny pellet of glass, he kept his
one drop of this essence, gained with the labors of many days. Krikor
dragged his way back to the bier and crushed the thin glass ball over
Stephan's dead forehead. A heady perfume darted up; it spread strong
wings and remained hovering above the forehead of the victim. This
perfume was in effect that of the genius whose invisible body, in the
words of Krikor's authority, is composed of the essential being of three
and thirty thousand roses.

 

 

Meanwhile Ter Haigasun and Bedros Hekim caine into the square. At the
head of the bier the priest stood rigid, his frosty hands hiding in
the sleeves of his robe. The bony, searching fingers of the old doctor
uncovered, only for an instant, the stiffened body of the boy. Then
mildly and soothingly he smoothed down the coverlet again. The light
grew brighter. From the streets of huts, the nearest trenches, people
came crowding in, and pressed round the altar.

 

 

Only the widow Shushik tore at the quiet, with long, ugly screams.
Haik's mother roared like a wild animal, even before she had seen Stephan's
body. For, to her, Haik's fate and Stephan's were one and the same. It made
no difference at all that her son was not lying on this bier. If one had
been caught and slain, how should the other not have been slaughtered?
But Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, had left her son's carcass to the wild dogs,
since he was only a poor peasant lad, about whom no one cared to trouble.
Shushik did not sound like a mother. She sounded like a dying beast, which
shatters its own life with monstrous bellowings. A few women came towards
her, she who, even up here, lived by herself, apart from all, refusing
as obstinately as ever to have truck with any of her neighbors. But now
they came whispering round her. She must keep up her courage. What had
happened could only mean one thing -- that Haik had managed to get away
and would be safe in Jackson's protection within a few days. Surely if
they'd killed him too, he'd be lying here! Young Bagradian had not the
strength or slippery cleverness which, by Christ's help, would bring
Haik safe to Aleppo.

 

 

Shushik heard nothing of it all. She stood crouched forwards, pressing
her hands against her breasts, and bellowed dully at the earth. They
called Nunik to witness. That ancient threw back her veil from her
lupous face. She had still, in spite of their present dangerous life,
secret sources, in the valley, of information, which had not dried
up. She took her oath that young Bagradian had been caught alone,
without a companion, in the neighborhood of the village, Ain Yerab, by
two of the newly installed inhabitants, who had taken him to Yoghonoluk,
to the müdir. But the truth did nothing for Shushik. She did not believe
it. The others scarcely dared approach the giantess, whose huge limbs
struck fabulous terror into them all. Then suddenly the widow Shushik
allowed them to do with her what they would. The women redoubled their
whispering comfort. And, indeed, Haik's mother seemed to be pacified,
seemed to take hope, the further away she came from the corpse. A great
longing for human warmth expressed itself in her narrow head, which fell,
powerless, on to her right shoulder -- in her huge body, which bent low
down, to the daintily frail Armenian women. She put her arms round the
shoulders of two of these women, and let them lead her where they would.

 

 

But when, with the sobbing Avakian after him, Gabriel Bagradian reached
the altar square, not a soul came near him. Indeed the crowd drew off
a fairly long way, so that between him and the altar there was a space.
Even the beggars and the keening women scrambled up and vanished among
the people. Only Ter Haigasun and Bedros Altouni stayed where they were.
But Gabriel did not hurry his steps; he slowed them. Here it was! He had
thought of it for five days and nights, in every gruesome facet of
possibility. He had no strength left to taste the reality. He dawdled
on, step by step, across the space leading him to his son, as though,
by walking very slowly, to put off the last shock a few seconds longer.
His whole body seemed to dry up. It began with his eyes. They burned with
that dryness that no winking lids can mitigate. Then came the inside
of his mouth. Like a strip of dried, crinkling leather, his tongue lay
between raw gums. Gabriel tried to swallow up some saliva, and spit
it out of him. All he could do was to gulp at repulsive air bubbles,
bursting in his fiery throat. The most horrible thing was that every
effort at self-control ended convulsively in nothing. Every power in him
ebbed away from his grief, which gaped like an empty hole, in the midst
of his being. And he himself was unaware that this hole, this nothing,
this void within him, was pain's reality. Slyly he tested himself. How
does this happen? Why can't I suffer now? Why don't I shout? Why don't
I feel any tears? Even his grudge against Stephan was not quite dead.
And here lay the child he had loved! But Gabriel had not the power to keep a
clear sight of this dead face. His dry eyes saw only a long white streak,
and a little yellow one. He wanted to keep his thoughts on quite definite
things, on the guilt that burdened him. He had neglected the boy, driven
him to flight with scornful words. That he had come to perceive in the
last few days. But his thoughts did not manage to get far; images,
useless details, most of which had nothing to do with Stephan, kept
rising out of the empty hole to break in on them. At the same time,
out of the same void, there came a craving which, he thought, he had
fully conquered weeks ago -- for a cigarette! If he had had any left,
who knows that, to the horror of all the people, he might not have put
it between his lips. He fingered unconsciously in his pockets. In this
second he suffered for his child because, even now, he would have to part
from him. Why was he so far away from Stephan that he could not even
manage to see his face? Once, in the villa at Yoghonoluk -- on the table
Stephan's clumsy sketch of the Damlayik -- he had sat by Stephan's bed and
watched him asleep. Now surely, now for the last time, he must get very
close indeed to his son who was taking away, for good and all, everything
that had been himself. Gabriel knelt by the body, that his blinded eyes
might seize the tarrying image of that small face before it left him.

 

 

Ter Haigasun, Altouni, and the others watched the leader of their defense
come slowly up, swaying a little, to the bier. They saw how then he stood
forsaken, opened his lips, for snapping breaths, as though too little air
were available; and how his hands kept moving in irresolute gestures.
They saw how impossible it seemed to him to keep on looking at his son,
so that now he stood with his head averted. When at last he crouched
on his knees in silence, an eon had run its course in the hearts of the
thousand silent people. But now Gabriel's face lay on Stephan's face.
He might have fallen asleep or, on his knees, himself have died there.
No tears had forced a way out of his shut eyes.

 

 

Yet all the women round him, and many of the men, were shedding them.
Stephan's death seemed to bring the stranger near his people again. When
another age had fulfilled itself in the hearts of the crowd, Ter Haigasun
and Bedros Hekim took the kneeling man under his arms and raised him. They
led him away, without a word to him, and he, obedient, gave himself over
to them.

 

 

Not till they were far from the Town Enclosure, till already the three
tents were in sight, did Ter Haigasun, on Gabriel's right hand, speak
the brief words: "Gabriel Bagradian, my son, think that he's only gone
one or two empty days ahead of you."

 

 

But Bedros Hekim, on the left, in a bitter, weary little voice, straight
out of his heart, spoke the contradiction: "Gabriel Bagradian, my child,
think that these next few days won't be empty, but full of devils,
and bless the night."

 

 

Bagradian stopped, not answering either, and spread his arms, barring
the way. They understood, turned, and left him.

 

 

 

 

Juliette's fever had not diminished. Her swoon seemed to lie more heavily
on her than ever. She was lying now, stretched stiffly, not stirring a
muscle, occupied only with her breath, which came, short and shallow,
over scurfy lips. Was it the crisis of this fever, which killed or ebbed
within a few days?

 

 

Iskuhi paid no heed to Juliette. Let her live or die as she might decide.
Iskuhi no longer thought of the ominous threatenings of her brother Aram,
who had told her he would cast her off if by midday she had still not left
the Bagradians. Gabriel was standing in the tent, so upright that his
head almost touched the canvas. But he seemed further away than the
feverish Juliette, and not to know that she was beside him. She had
crept across to him and pressed her head against his knees. Stephan's
death moved her less than Gabriel's patience. Only she could tell how
shy and needy his spirit was.

 

 

And yet Gabriel had decided to take on his shoulders a burning world,
the whole Damlayik. His own had cut his tendons; first Juliette,
and now his dead son. And still Gabriel stood upright. What was she,
what was Aram, what were all the others compared to him? Insignificant
insects! Uncouth, filthy peasants, without a thought in their heads,
without a feeling in their hearts, unable even to see who it was had
stepped down to them. Iskuhi felt bowed down by her own weakness, her
own worthlessness. What could she do or offer to make herself worthy of
Gabriel? Nothing! She put forth her open hand. Like a beggar. She was
begging for a tiny mite of his pain, of the load that was on him. Her face
glowed with devotion and agonized longing to serve, as she grovelled there
before the man who still gave no signs of perceiving her presence. She
began to whisper, ardent, disconnected nonsense, which startled and
shamed her as she spoke. How poor she was, how horribly poor, that she
had no power in her to help him with. At last, out of her despair, she
became maternal, almost unconsciously: It's not good to stand up when
you're in such trouble. In trouble you ought to lie down. Sleep . . .
He must get to sleep. Only sleep would help him -- not Iskuhi. She undid
his leggings, fumbled with the laces of his shoes, forced him to lie down
on her bed. She even managed, superhumanly, to use her lame arm to do it
more quickly. It was a difficult job but, since Gabriel began himself
to undress mechanically, it was done at last. As she covered him up,
she gasped with exhaustion. She felt a quick, expressionless glance pass
over her.

 

 

"I'm lying soft." That was all Gabriel was thinking. For weeks he had only
slept on the hard earth on the north trenches. His teeth began chattering.
This shivering ague was half a pain and half a comfort. Iskuhi curled
herself up small, in a corner, so that he might not know she was there
until he wanted her. She prayed that a heavy sleep might overcome him.
Yet the sound he made was not the heavy breathing of a sleeper, but a faint
hum, a long and even moaning, like the women's dirge. Gabriel was still
looking for Stephan in the empty horror of his grief. And could not
find him.