Forty Days of Musa Dagh (25 page)

 

 

This voice was not always silent. But its cries came muted. Musa Dagh
stood serene. Nothing changed. The world around seemed to show that
the Agha Rifaat Bereket had been right. Not a breath of outside trouble
reached the village. His home, which even now he could still sometimes
mistake for a vanished fairy-tale, kept fast hold of Gabriel Bagradian.
Juliette lost reality in his eyes. Perhaps, even if he had tried, he might
not have freed himself now from Musa Dagh.

 

 

He kept his solemn promise not to say a word of the hidden small arms.
Even Avakian had learned nothing. On the other hand that tutor was
suddenly given a fresh task. He was appointed cartographer. That map
of the Damlayik which Stephan, with clumsy markings, had begun early
in March, to please his father, gained fresh significance. Avakian was
instructed to make an exact, large-scale map of the mountain in three
copies. "So he's come to the end of the valley, with all its livestock
and people," thought the student, "and now he has to go to the hills."
The Damlayik is, of course, the real heart of Musa Dagh. That spur of
mountain disperses itself in many ridges towards the north, where they
peter out in the vale of Beilan in dream-like natural citadels and
terraces, while southwards it suddenly descends, disordered, embryonic,
into the plains around the mouth of the Orontes. In its center, Damlayik,
it gathers all its strength, its concentrated purpose. Here, with
mighty fists of rock, it drags the vale of the seven villages, like a
many-folded coverlet, to its breast. Here its two crests rise almost
sheer over Yoghonoluk and Hadji Habibli -- the only treeless points,
grown over with short crop-grass. The back of the Damlayik forms a fairly
wide mountain plateau; at its widest point, between the ilex gorge and
the steep, shelving rocks along the coast, it is, as the crow flies
(by Avakian's reckoning), more than three and a half miles across. But
what most of all preoccupied Avakian were the curiously sharp demarcation
lines which nature seemed to have set round this mountain plateau. There
was, first, the indentation towards the north, a narrow defile laced to
a ridge between two peaks, even directly approachable from the valley
by an old mule-track, which, however, lost itself in undergrowth,
since here there was no possibility of reaching the sea across walls of
rock. In the south, where the mountain broke off suddenly, there rose,
above a sparse, almost arid half-circle of rocky banks, a towering mass
of rock fifty feet high. The view from this natural bastion dominated
a sweep of sea and the whole plain of the Orontes with its Turkish
villages as far as away beyond the heights of the barren Jebel Akra.
One could see the massive ruin of the temple and aqueduct of Seleucia,
bent under the load of its green creepers; one could see every cart-rut
on the important highroad from Antioch to El Eskel and Suedia. The white
domino-houses of these towns gleamed, and the big spirit factory on the
right bank of the Orontes, in nearest proximity to the sea, stood livid
in sunlight. Every strategic intelligence must perceive at once what an
ideal place of defense the Damlayik was. Apart from the arduous climb up
the side facing the valley, which exhausted even leisurely sightseers
by its rough, uncompromising ascent, there was only one real point of
attack -- the narrow ridge towards the north. But it was just here that
the terrain offered defenders a thousand advantages, and not least the
circumstance that the treeless declivities, strewn about with knee-pine,
dwarf shrubs, tussock grass, and wild bush growths of every kind,
provided a difficult series of obstacles.

 

 

Avakian's map-drawing efforts took a long time to satisfy Gabriel.
Again and again he discovered fresh mistakes and inadequacies. The
student began to be afraid that his employer's hobby had little by little
become a mania. He had still no inkling. Now they spent whole days
on the Damlayik. Bagradian, the artillery officer of the Balkan war,
still possessed field-glasses, a measuring-gauge, a magnetic compass,
and other, similar surveying-instruments. They came in very useful
now. With stubborn insistence he made certain that the course of every
stream, each tall tree, big block of granite, was being marked. And red,
green, and blue markings did not suffice him. Strange words and signs
were added. Between the dome-shaped peaks and the northern saddle there
was a very extensive gentle declivity. Since it was overgrown with lush
and excellent grass, it was here that they always found themselves in
the midst of herds of sheep, black and white, with shepherds who, like
the shepherds of antiquity, drowsed above their flocks in sheepskins,
summer and winter. Gabriel and Avakian, counting their steps, got the
exact boundaries of this pasturage. Gabriel pointed out two streams which,
above, on the verge of the meadow, forced their way through thick growths
of fern. "That's very lucky," he said; "write above that, in red pencil:
'town enclosure.'" There was no end of such secret terminology. Gabriel
seemed to be looking with particular zest for some spot which he would
choose for its quiet, sheltered beauty. He found it. And it, too, was
near a well-spring, but nearer the sea, in a place between high plateaus
of sheer rock, where a dark-green girdle of myrtles and rhododendron
bushes extended.

 

 

"Pick that out, Avakian, and write over it, in red: 'Three-Tent Square.'"

 

 

Avakian could not manage not to ask: "What do you mean by 'Three-Tent
Square'?"

 

 

But Gabriel had already gone on and did not hear him.

 

 

"Must I help him dream his dreams?" the student thought. Yet only two days
later he was to learn exactly what was meant by "Three-Tent Square."

 

 

 

 

When Dr. Altouni took the bandages off Iskuhi's arm and shoulder,
he sounded morose: "Just as I thought. Now, if we were in a big town,
it could still be set right. You ought to have stayed in Aleppo, light of
my eyes, and gone into a hospital there. Still, perhaps you were right
to come on here. Who can predict, in times like these? Now, my soul,
you mustn't get depressed -- we'll see what else we can do."

 

 

Iskuhi pacified the old gentleman. "I'm not worrying. It's lucky it
should be my left arm." But she did not believe the doctor's feeble
reassurances. She glanced down swiftly at herself. Her arm hung limp,
distorted, too short for the shoulder. She could not move it. At least
she was glad it no longer hurt her. So that now, she supposed, she would
be a cripple all her life. But what did that matter, when she considered
the fate of most of the convoy? And she had only been with them two
short days! (She, too, like all those people, was now deeply aware that
she had no future.) In the night she was still in the midst of horrible
sounds and terrifying images. The shuffling, scraping, creeping, tapping
of thousands of feet. Exhausted, whimpering children fell to the ground,
and she with her broken arm had to snatch up two or three of them at a
time. Crazy shrieks from the end of the column, and already saptiehs with
bloodshot eyes, brandishing cudgels, came dashing furiously. Everywhere
the face of the man who had tried to rape her. It was not made of one,
but thirty different faces; many of them she knew by sight, and they were
of people who had not even seemed repugnant. But mostly it was a filthy,
stubbled face, spotted with blood, that kept bending over her. Bubbles
of spittle broke on the tumid lips. . . . In such detailed clarity could
she see that kaleidoscopic surface larger than life. It bent above her and
enveloped her in an anesthetic vapor of oniony breath. She fought, fleshed
her teeth in hairy, simian hands, which closed on her breasts. I've only
got one arm, she reflected, as though it were a kind of extenuation to
the fact that she surrendered to this horror, and so lost consciousness.

 

 

The days that followed such nights were like those of a malaria patient,
whose temperature runs down without transitions from high fever to well
below normal. Then there would be a veil upon her senses, and perhaps
that was the reason why she took her misfortune so easily. Her lame arm
hung at her side like an impediment. But her body, young and full of sap,
surmounted its hurt more skilfully, day by day. Without quite knowing how
she managed it, she accustomed herself to doing everything with her right
hand. It pacified her deeply to think she needed no help from anyone.

 

 

Iskuhi had by now been living some time with the Bagradians. A short
while back, Pastor Aram Tomasian had called, thanked them for all their
kindness to his sister, and announced that he had come to take her away.
He had furnished an empty house near his father's. The suggestion deeply
wounded Gabriel. "But why, Pastor Aram, do you want to deprive us of
Iskuhi? We're all so fond of her -- my wife more than anyone."

 

 

"Visitors who stay too long end by becoming a nuisance."

 

 

"Please don't be so proud. You know yourself that Mademoiselle Iskuhi
is the kind of person whom, unfortunately, one notices all too little in
the house, she's so quiet and reserved. And then, aren't we all sharing
the same fate here . . . ?"

 

 

Aram glanced slowly at Gabriel. "I hope you don't imagine our fate to be
rosier than it is in reality." These carping words had in them a kind
of suspicion of the foreigner, of this rich man, who seemed to have no
idea of the horrors by which he lived surrounded.

 

 

But this very mistrustful reserve made Bagradian feel intensely friendly.
His voice sounded cordial: "I only wish you were staying with us, too,
Pastor Aram Tomasian. But I beg that, whenever you feel like it, you'll
come in and see us. I'll give orders that from today they always lay
two extra places for you and your wife. Please don't let my invitation
annoy you, and come here to meals if it isn't too much exertion for her."

 

 

Juliette showed even more reluctance to let Iskuhi move into other quarters.
A very curious relationship had arisen between these two women,
nor can it be denied that Juliette sought the favors of the Armenian
girl. Iskuhi, for a girl of nineteen, was still strangely unawakened,
especially for the East, where women ripen so early. In Madame Bagradian
this young girl saw only a grande dame, infinitely above her in beauty,
background and knowledge of life. When they sat together in Juliette's
room upstairs, Iskuhi, even in such intimacy, seemed unable to conquer
her shyness. Perhaps, at such moments, she also suffered from the idleness
to which she was condemned. Juliette, on her side, seeking Isknhi, never
felt quite certain of herself when they were together. This seems absurd,
and yet it was so. There are people who need in no way be distinguished,
either by position or personality, and who yet infect us with a feeling
of timidity in their presence. Perhaps that constraint which always
seemed to get hold of Juliette in Mademoiselle Tomasian's society had
its origins in some such source as this.

 

 

She would watch Iskuhi for some time and then burst forth more or less
as follows: "Ma chčre, do you know, as a rule I detest Oriental women,
their laziness, their languid movements? I can't even bear brunettes
at home. But you're not an Oriental, Iskuhi. Right now, sitting there
against the light, your eyes look quite blue."

 

 

"You say that, Madame!" Iskuhi was startled. "You, with your eyes,
and your blond hair? . . ."

 

 

"How often am I to ask you, chérie, to
tutoyer
me and not to call me
'Madame'? Call me 'Juliette.' Must you always keep rubbing it in that
I'm so much older than you?"

 

 

"Oh, no -- really I wasn't. . . . Forgive me, please." Juliette had to
laugh at so much guilelessness, which answered a coquettish little joke
with startled, almost terrified eyes.

 

 

Iskuhi had had to leave nearly everything in Zeitun and the rest along the
road. Juliette fitted her out with a whole new wardrobe. It was a process
she thoroughly enjoyed. At last that cabin-trunk packed with garments,
the trusty fellow traveller from Paris via Istanbul and Beirut to this
wilderness (you could never be certain), justified the trouble it had
given. True that women's clothes are like summer leaves and wither in
the autumn of fashion, no matter how good and expensive the silks and
materials may have been. Juliette knew nothing at all of the present
fashions in Paris. She invented a few of her own "by sheer intuition"
and began to remodel all her apparel for her own as well as Iskuhi's
benefit. This occupation, eagerly embraced, pleasantly filled up the
afternoons after a morning's work in house or garden. Juliette had really
scarcely the chance to come to herself. The modiste's workshop was set
up in an empty room. She chose two skilful girls from the village as
her seamstresses.

 

 

Poor Iskuhi could only sit looking on. But she made an admirable fairylike
mannequin for the display of Juliette's handiwork. Dull shades suited her
especially. She was for ever having to try on this or that, let down her
hair and put it up again, twist and turn round. She did not mind doing
it. Her zest for life, shaken by the Zeitun experiences, began to revive,
her cheeks to flush a little.

 

 

"You really are a fraud, ma petite," Juliette remarked. "One might have
imagined you'd never worn anything all your life but your smock, and
perhaps a Turkish veil in front of your face. And yet you put on your
clothes and move about in them as though you could think of nothing but
fashions. You didn't come out unscathed from your stay at Lausanne and
your contact with French culture."