Forty Days of Musa Dagh (69 page)

 

 

 

 

Juliette was on her way to Gabriel.

 

 

Gabriel was on his way to Juliette.

 

 

They met between Three-Tent Square and the North Saddle.

 

 

"I was on my way to look for you, Gabriel," she said. He said the same.
That absent-minded "running to seed," which for so long had infected the
"foreigner" had done its work. Where was Juliette's "sparkling step"? She
walked like someone who has been sent somewhere on an errand. As indeed
she had. Gonzague had sent her to tell the truth at last, and announce
her wishes, since this was the time of separation. . . . "Am I getting
short-sighted," she thought, "I see so badly?" She was surprised at the
November twilight of this hot midsummer afternoon. Was it the swaths
of smoke all over the Damlayik? Was it that other, confusing vapor,
thickening daily, which seemed to have clouded her mind? She was
surprised that, as she stood facing Gabriel, Gonzague should have become
so absurdly unreal. She was surprised that this Gonzague let her encumber
him. Everything seemed so far away, and so surprising. . . . Her garter
had slipped, and her stocking was falling below her knee, a sensation
she loathed. Yet she never stirred. "I've suddenly lost the strength
even to bend," so it crossed her mind. "And yet, this evening, I shall
have to climb down all those rocks, to Suedia."

 

 

The husband and wife began a really remarkable conversation, which ended
in nothing. Juliette started it: "I blame myself terribly for not having
been with you these last few days. You've had a great deal to go through,
and you've done magnificently. And you're always in danger. Oh, mon ami,
I've behaved disgracefully to you!"

 

 

Such an admission, a few weeks previously, would have moved him. Now his
reply was almost formal: "I, too, have you on my conscience, Juliette.
I ought to have been considering you more. But, believe me, especially
recently, I just haven't been able to manage it."

 

 

Very true, although he gave it a double meaning. His truth should have
given her courage to speak hers. She only hastened to agree: "Of course
you haven't. I can quite see you've had very different things to think
of, Gabriel."

 

 

He proceeded along this dangerous road: "I've naturally always known,
and been very glad to think, you weren't entirely deserted."

 

 

This got them both to the point in their tepid dialogue, at which it
was as though they had both shammed dead, although the vistas around
them were free on all sides. It could have been Juliette's chance,
had she seized it quickly enough. She could have spoken her mind:

 

 

"I'm a stranger here, Gabriel. The Armenian fate has been stronger than
our marriage. Now I've got my very last chance of avoiding that fate. You
yourself have suggested I should, a hundred times, and were always making
plans to save me. I'd hoped I had the strength to hold out to the end. I
haven't. I can't ever have, since this fight isn't my fight. Let me go."

 

 

None of these very simple and natural words passed Juliette's lips.
Filled as she still was with the vain delusion that she, in their
marriage, had been the donor, the superior, she was sure that, if she
said it, he would break down. Could she suppose that perhaps he might
only answer her good-naturedly:

 

 

"I quite understand, chérie. Even if I must perish because of it, I still
haven't the right to hold you back. I'll do all that's still in my power
to help you. I'll even let Stephan go, for your sake, since I know how
much you want to save him."

 

 

Frankness, in these few minutes, might have made as clean a job of it as
that, had not things been really too complex to disentangle. Juliette
knew as little of Gabriel as he of her. Nor did she know if she really
was in love with Gonzague. Gabriel was equally unaware how much he
was in love with Iskuhi, and of what kind of love it was that linked
them. Juliette's religious and bourgeois past made her recoil at the
thought of sinful happiness. She had many reasons for mistrusting the
transparently impenetrable Gonzague, and not least that he was three
years younger than she. In Paris there would have been a traditional
form for all of this. On these fantastic reaches of the Damlayik the
sense of sin oppressed her heavily.

 

 

But these were only minor complications. For several minutes at a time
she was perfectly ready to nurse the thought that she would fly the
mountain with Gonzague and await the steamer in the little house beside
the alcohol factory. Then, in the very next instant, it all seemed so
fantastically impossible. It would need the most resolute courage to risk
so final an adventure, even if she avoided death in the process. Would it
not really perhaps be better to wait and see what happened on Musa Dagh
than to find oneself suddenly left in Beirut? The thought of the long
climb in the night, of the dangerous business of crossing the Turkish
plain of the Orontes, of the sea voyage among the casks of alcohol, the
threat of submarines -- the prospect of all these dangers and fatigues,
entangled itself into what, in the circumstances, was a merely ridiculous
feeling of propriety: "Ça ne se fait pas."

 

 

But what was all that, compared to the pain of losing Stephan? She kept
clear of him nowadays. She had ceased to make sure he washed and was
properly fed. She no longer, even at night, according to the sacred custom
of mothers, came to his bed in the sheikh-tent, to see that he was settling
down properly. All these omissions, these neglects, were summed up in a
prudishly guilty feeling, which weighed most heavily on her for Stephan's
sake. And, laden with all this guilt, she had come to Gabriel, to be frank,
to say good-bye.

 

 

They eyed one another, the wife and husband. The husband, as it seemed to
him, saw a face which looked at once elderly and dissipated. He fancied
he caught a shimmer of white upon the temples. All the less, therefore,
could he understand these sparkling eyes, this mouth, which seemed to
be so much bigger, with chapped, swollen-looking lips. "She's going to
pieces, with this life," he thought. "What else could one expect?" And
though, not so very long before, he had had the impulse to tell Juliette
about Iskuhi, he abandoned it now. What good would it be? How many days
have we still before us?

 

 

The wife saw a lined, distorted face, every feature different, framed
in one of the round, untidy beards which she couldn't abide. Each time
she saw it, she had to ask herself: "Can this oriental bandit really
be Gabriel?" And yet the voice was still Gabriel's voice, Might she not
surely have been faithful to it?

 

 

Thoughts buzzed through her head: "I'll stay, I'll go, stay, go. But her
heart was moaning: "Oh, if it were only all over!"

 

 

Their talk swerved neatly off its dangerous track. Gabriel described the
favorable prospects of the near future. Most probably they'd a long rest
to look forward to. He emphatically repeated Altouni's very good advice:
"Lie in bed and read, read, read." A swath of smoke from the great blaze
drifted heavily across her vision. They had to pass through resinous,
sharply fragrant wood smoke.

 

 

Gabriel stopped. "How one smells the resin! This fire's been a good thing,
for several reasons. Even the smoke. It disinfects. Unluckily we've already
twenty people lying in the isolation-wood, infected by that blasted deserter
from Aleppo."

 

 

He could manage to talk of nothing but public events. So he was too
indifferent to feel anything of what her silence had tried to express to
him! . . . I'm going, I'm going, I'm going" -- it kept sounding in her
ears, like a roaring seashell. Then, in the very midst of a smoke-swath,
Juliette turned pale and lurched, so that he was forced to hold her
up. His touch, a thousand times familiar, pulsed through her body like
an anguish. She could just manage to turn her face to him.

 

 

"Forgive me, Gabriel, but I think I'm I'm going to be ill. . . .
Or I am already."

 

 

 

 

Gonzague Maris was already waiting for Juliette, at the place on "the
Riviera" which they had arranged. He waited, observant and self-possessed,
smoking his half cigarette to the very end. Being an extremely thrifty
soul, he had still twenty-five whole cigarettes. He never threw away the
ends, but saved them up to use in his pipe. Like most people reared in
shabby gentility, in a series of cheap little boarding schools, people
with definite pretensions, who have never owned more than two suits at
a time, Gonzague was a fanatic for economy. He used what he had to the
last thread, the last bite or drop.

 

 

When Juliette came towards him, in a curious, lurching stride, he sprang
to his feet. His gallantry towards his mistress had not changed in the
least since she became one, and the clear attentiveness in his eyes,
under the closely slanting eyebrows, still remained, even though a glint
of firm criticism intensified it.

 

 

He at once noticed her defeat. "So again you've not spoken."

 

 

She sat down beside him without answering. What could be the matter with
her eyes? Everything, even the closest surroundings, was being tossed
on a noiseless storm, or veiled in rain. As the fog cleared, palms
began growing out of the sea. Camels, with disapproving, averted faces,
walked in procession across the waves. Never before had the surf below
beaten so noisily or seemed so near. You simply couldn't hear yourself
speak. And Gonzague's voice came from far away.

 

 

"All this is no good, Juliette. You've had days to do it in! The steamer
won't wait for us, and the manager won't help us a second time. We must
leave tonight. Do try and be reasonable."

 

 

She hid her breasts with her clenched fists, and leaned forward, as though
to master a stubborn pain. "Why are you so cold with me, Gonzague? Why won't
you ever look at me? Do look!"

 

 

He did just the opposite: he looked far out to sea, to let her feel he
was annoyed. "I always used to imagine, Juliette, that you were a plucky,
determined kind of woman, and not sentimental."

 

 

"I? I'm not what I was. I'm already dead. Leave me here. Go by yourself."

 

 

She expected a protest. But he said nothing. These silences, which renounced
her so easily, were more than Juliette could bear. She whispered, in a very
subdued voice: "I'll come with you -- tonight."

 

 

Only then did he lightly caress her knee. "You must pull yourself together,
Juliette, and get over all these scruples and hindrances. You've got to
cut loose. It's the only way. Let's get it all clear, and not deceive
ourselves. There's nothing else to be done. You'll have, somehow, to tell
Bagradian. I'm not suggesting in the least that you'll need to make a
general confession. This is our chance, and we shan't get another. That
explains the whole thing. You can't just -- vanish. Quite apart from
the fact that it would be so incredibly mean, how would you live? Have
you thought of that?"

 

 

And so, with all the steadiness and certainty of his voice and manner,
he kept persuading her that Bagradian would be bound to make what
arrangements he could, to assure her immediate well-being. There was not
a hint of vulgar adventure in what he said, though he frankly reckoned
on Gabriel's, and perhaps Stephan's imminent death. (As Juliette saw,
he was perfectly willing, if she insisted, even to encumber himself with
Stephan, though it would certainly complicate their escape.)

 

 

As he came to the end, he grew impatient, since their last, precious hours
were now on the wane. And how many times had he not had it all to say
before? Had Juliette been able to think, she would have had to admit the
justice of every word. But, for the last few days, the most casually
heard, or thought, words or expressions had clung like leeches to her
brain, obstinately refusing to be pulled off. Now she heard the words:
How would you live?" The loud "live" blared in her mind incessantly,
as the needle on a worn-out phonograph record sticks and repeats the
same maddening notes. Incredible mists kept rising out of the earth,
as though they had been sitting beside a swamp. She herself had become
a worn-out phonograph record, and the needle stuck.

 

 

"How should I live, how should I live, how should I live, in Beirut,
Beirut.. . . What for?"

 

 

Gonzague took pity on Juliette, whom, as he imagined, her conscience
tormented. He wished to help her. "You shouldn't take it so badly,
Juliette. Only think what it means! You'll be saved! If you like, I'll
be with you -- but not if you don't."

 

 

As he was saying that, she could see the sick boy from Aleppo, the deserter,
over whose mangy, red-spotted chest she had bent a few days ago in such an
exalted wave of despairing emotion. She must really go and see her mother.
Maman was living in a hotel. A long corridor, with hundreds and hundreds
of doors. And Juliette had forgotten the number.

 

 

Now Gonzague's voice was tender and charming. It was doing her good.
"I shall be with you."

 

 

"Will you? Are you with me now, Gonzague?"

 

 

Amiably, he became matter-of-fact. "Now, listen carefully, Juliette.
Tonight I shall wait about for you here. You must be ready by about ten.
If you need me sooner -- let's suppose Bagradian wants to speak to me --
send someone along. I'll help you. You can easily bring your big suitcase.
I shall manage to carry it. . . . Be careful how you choose your things.
But you'll be able to buy anything in Beirut."