Forty Days of Musa Dagh (94 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. THE ALTAR FLAME

 

 

Ter Haigasun, after a long talk with Pastor Aram and Altouni, had decided
that what was left of their provisions need not be economized. Would
it not be altogether senseless to eke out life, and its pain along
with it? Already -- before real hunger had set in -- there were enough
enfeebled people on the Damlayik, old men and women, women and children,
who sank to the ground and could not get up again. This slow grinding
process had proved itself the worst kind of destruction. And the priest
was willing to let the process be curtailed. So that, in the first
September days, Bagradian's two cows were slaughtered, with all the
remaining goats and kids; the milk of the she-goats was by now too thin,
and came too sparsely, to be worth thinking about. Then came the sumpter
and riding-mules, whose leather flesh it was almost impossible to boil
or roast. Yet with tail, skin, hoofs, and tripe, these animals yielded
great heaps of food, which both disgusted and satisfied. Added to these,
there were Rifaat Bereket's coffee and sugar, about a quarter of a pound
to each household. But the dregs were cooked up, again and again, so that
coffee-pots became like the widow's cruse. This drink inspired, if not
cheer and comfort, at least a pleasant surrender to the moment. Tobacco
was almost as effective. Ter Haigasun, in spite of protesting mukhtars,
had wisely ordained that by far the greater share of it, four whole
bales, should be divided among the men of the South Bastion -- among
ne'er do wells and unreliables. Now they could wallow in smoke as never
before at the best times in their lives. It was done to keep their minds
off mischievous thoughts. Even Sarkis Kilikian, stretched on his back,
and full of the joy of drifting tobacco smoke, seemed to have nothing
against the prevailing order. To be sure, Hrand Oskanian was a non-smoker.

 

 

On the thirty-fourth day of exile, twenty-four hours after Krikor's death,
there were about two hundred sick people in the fever-wood, and more
than a hundred others in and around the hospital hut. Mostly, apart
from the seriously wounded, they were cases of sheer enfeeblement,
people who had broken down at work or about the camp. In a population of
five thousand this was not an alarming proportion of sick, including,
as it did, wounded men. But on that day, for no obvious reason, the
curve of mortality shot upwards wildly. By evening forty-three lives
were extinguished, and it looked as though, in the course of the next
few hours, many others would follow them. The graveyard had long been
too small to take in all these new inhabitants.

 

 

Ter Haigasun therefore introduced a new kind of burial, without first
having described it to the people. Late in the moonless night they
collected the bodies and carried them up to the Dish Terrace, which
jutted out to sea like the long prow of a ship. Everyone had to take a
hand, hospital attendants, the churchyard folk, and anyone else whose
work in the camp was done at night. The ground had to be covered two or
three times, before all these dead, tied into their shrouds, had been
laid out in rows on the bare rock.

 

 

Since the new moon the weather had changed. There was no rain yet, but
wind, in angry rebellious gusts, swept across the hillocks of Musa Dagh;
sometimes a strangling wind from the steppes, sometimes a foamy sirocco
from the sea, which veered and veered, as though to fool the staider
elements, water and earth. Had Gabriel not placed his Town Enclosure so
skilfully in a hollow of the ground, not a single hut would have been
left standing. Here, on the exposed Dish Terrace, the wind seemed to
have built its eyrie. When it leapt in sudden gusts upon these rocks,
people found it hard to keep on their feet. The torches and church tapers
held by the mourners were blown out by its first assault. Only the silver
thurible still glowed faintly as the deacon held it up to the priest. Ter
Haigasun passed, blessing, in tiny steps, from corpse to corpse. This
method of burial scandalized Nunik, Wartuk, Manushak, but, since they
were on the Damlayik only by sufferance, they did not criticize. Two
men lifted the first corpse by its feet and shoulders and bore it along
to the narrow part of the ledge. There stood a giant with his legs
straddled, unshaken by these buffeting gusts, with hands like two big,
outspread lettuces, lifted in readiness. It was Kevork, the sunflower
dancer, the half-wit. It had not been easy to make him understand his
office. At last he had realized what was wanted and nodded with a broad
grin. "Oh, yes -- just what they do on ships!" So that then they learned,
for the first time, that as a boy Kevork had sailed on a coaler in the
Black Sea. The half-wit was by nature full of zeal, and nothing gave
him greater satisfaction than a chance to make himself useful.

 

 

Kevork would not allow anyone else to rob him of even the smallest part
of his dignity. He received the corpse, and, with a shove of his elbows,
edged away the two other men who wanted to help him. The sea seemed still
to keep some star-trace of former nights of perfect calm. Its white crests
presented a reflected semblance of light, enough to outline the dancer
as he worked. A few lanterns marked the threatening rock-edge. But, in
spite of them, it was cruelly dangerous work for Kevork. For the Dish
Terrace stood on what was known as the "High Wall," which fell sheer for
over twelve hundred feet into the sea. The sea had eaten its way so deep
into the foot of the High Wall, that this rock-plateau really looked like
a dish, held out in space on a hand, and, from above, the surf could not
be seen. A false step on this gigantic prow would have been the quickest,
surest death. Yet now, when night was at its darkest, the dancer showed no
trace of fear, no giddiness, though all the others drew quickly back. He,
on this narrow, faintly illuminated ledge, was really dancing, rocking
himself and the dead, like a powerful nurse. The corpses sank noiseless
and invisible, into night. Kevork, in spite of the pitiful rations he had
now been drawing for many days, had not lost any of his strength. When,
after about an hour, rhythmically, on straddling legs, he had lightly
heaved his forty-third body into eternity, he seemed downcast at the
sight of his empty hands, He would have liked to cradle four hundred,
a thousand, the whole people, and rock them asleep. An outsider might
have been astonished to see how little horror there was in this burial,
how much of beauty, indeed, there was in it.

 

 

 

 

Unexpectedly the swimmers got back from Aleppo. Early one morning these
two young men turned up in the north trenches, having slipped in safely
past the extended lines of saptiehs and soldiers, which for the last
few days had surrounded all the heights of Musa Dagh from Kebussiye to
the coast village Arsus in the north. The physical condition of these
swimmers in no sense suggested the toils and perils of their ten days'
adventure. They were thin as skeletons, but wiry, swaggering skeletons,
tanned with sun and the salt air. Strangest of all were their clothes.
One was wearing a shabby but one-time elegant gentleman's dressing gown
made of brown wool; the other, white flannel trousers, and with them
the wreck of a dinner jacket from the dim antiquity of that garment's
style. They both had heavy sacks full of hard army biscuits on their
shoulders, an act of heroism on the people's behalf when one remembers
the thirty-five miles of mountain country between Alexandretta and
the Damlayik.

 

 

Their return caused jubilation among the villagers, but the news they
brought was such as to extinguish all hope. They had stayed six days
in Alexandretta without seeing the sign of any warship in the outer
harbor. A few battered Turkish tin-tubs were riding at anchor there, and
coal-barges, fishing-smacks, and a Russian merchantman interned by the
war. But the whole vast bay, which forms the deep snug angle between Asia
Minor and Asia, lay empty, as empty as the coastline behind Musa Dagh.

 

 

For many months no one in Alexandretta had seen even the shadow of a warship
far out at sea.

 

 

All this they related confusedly. Each jealously strove not to let the
other go on speaking. They described their whole excursion day by day,
every detail of it. If one forgot some trifle, the other at once became
impatient. But the crowd, forgetting its own situation, could never have
enough minute description.

 

 

In the first day after they had set out, they had kept to the summit of
the mountains, skirted Ras el-Khanzir, and so come unperceived to the
road that leads along the coast from Arsus to the port. Then they had
spent a whole day on a hill close to Alexandretta, where, safely hidden
in myrtle thickets, they kept a sharp look-out on the front harbor. At
about four that afternoon, a narrow grey streak, far out at sea, turned
coastwards, with a line of foam in its wake. The swimmers, forgetting
all precautions, had dashed down to the sea, plunged in and swum out,
past the wooden jetty, into the open harbor. As their orders instructed
them, they swam on closer and closer, in wide circles, in the direction of
this supposed French or English torpedo boat, which quickly grew plainer
before their eyes, till soon, to their horror, they had perceived that
the half-moon flag flew on its deck. But the men on deck had sighted
the swimmers. Piercing shouts! And, when these remained unanswered, the
crew of this customs-inspection vessel, as now the ship turned out to be,
commanded by the Turkish harbormaster of Alexandretta, had peppered them
with a dozen small shot.

 

 

They dived and swam on under water, experts as they were, a very long way.
Later they hid among the cyclopean rocks on which the jetty itself is built.
Luckily it was already evening and the harbor deserted. Nevertheless,
high over their heads, they could hear the heavy thud of sentries' feet
on the rotten planks of the bridge. There they had sat, naked and wet.
Their clothes, their supplies, were lost. To make it worse, some near,
intermittent light kept picking them out, at about half-minute intervals.
They made themselves as small as they could. Not till well after midnight
did they manage, giving the long port-road a very wide berth, to get back
to land. There seemed now no choice, save between perishing wretchedly
in the hills and venturing boldly on into the town. But they found a
third way. On a parklike hill, just outside it, planted with eucalyptus
to keep off malaria, stood several big and opulent villas. The swimmers,
judging by all they had heard of Alexandretta felt convinced that one
of these villas must surely be owned by an Armenian. And the name-plate
on the first garden gate (they could read its inscription by moonlight)
confirmed their hope.

 

 

But the house was dead: no light, and the shutters nailed. The swimmers
were not to be put off. They would have broken in to get shelter. They
found a spade and a hoe left leaning against the garden wall. With
desperate strokes they began to try to force the door without thinking
that the din they made might equally well arouse an enemy. In a few
minutes a chain rattled inside. The door was pulled open. A shaky light
and a trembling man. "Who?" -- "Armenians. For Christ's sake give us
something to eat and hide us. We've come from the sea. We're naked."
The circle of light from the trembling man's electric torch eddied across
their shivering bodies. "Merciful God! I can't let you come in here.
We should all be done for. But wait!" Minutes dragged by. Then, through
the half-open door, two shirts and two rugs were handed out to them.
In addition to which they were given copious bread and cold meat and two
pound-notes each. But their panicked compatriot still kept whispering:
"In the Saviour's name don't stay here. They may have seen you, even
now. Go to the German vice-consul.
He's
the only one who can help
you. His name is Herr Hoffmann. I'll send an old woman to show you the
way, a Turk. Follow her. But not too close! And don't talk!"

 

 

Luckily Herr Hoffmann lived in the same parklike neighborhood. This German
vice-consul turned out to be very well disposed. He had done already more
than he strictly should have done, or could do, to help the Armenians in
this district. Hoffmann had most kindly taken them in, fed them, given
them a room, with two splendid beds in it, and fabulous meals, three times
a day. He had offered to let them stay on in this magic sanctuary till
things were normal again. Yet, on the third day of this life of ease, the
swimmers had told him that they felt it was time to hurry back to Musa Dagh,
to their own people. It so happened, by a curious stroke of fate, that
Rössler, the consul-general, had come on a visit to Aleppo on the very
day they informed the kind Herr Hoffmann of their decision. Rössler had
advised the two young swimmers to be thankful they had managed to save
their skins, warning them on no account to leave his safety and protection.
These thoughts of a rescuing gunboat were the mere crazy fantasies of
people whose troubles had unhinged their minds. First, there were no
French warships of any description in the Northeast Mediterranean. True,
there was an English fleet stationed in Cyprus harbor, but, since its
business was to guard the Suez canal and Egypt, it never strayed into
the north. Why should it? There was no chance of landing troops on the
coasts of Syria. Secondly, Herr Rössler had pointed out to them, it was
a piece of most exceptional good luck for Armenian refugees to be taken
into a consul's house. And real help was out of the question. Neither he,
Rössler, nor his American colleague in Aleppo, Mr. Jackson, was able
to offer it. But, he added, with obvious satisfaction, a few days ago
Jackson had managed to shelter a young Armenian, who also came from the
camp on Musa Dagh. The swimmers had rejoiced that Haik was safe.