Forty Days of Musa Dagh (7 page)

 

 

Instead of calling them by their Turkish names, it would have been
possible to christen the villages by the handicraft which distinguished
each. All planted grapes and fruit. Scarcely any, grain. But their fame
was for skill in handicraft. Here was Hadji Habibli, the wood-workers'
village. Its men not only cut the best hardwood and bone combs, pipes,
cigarette holders, and such like objects for daily use, but could carve
ivory crucifixes, madonnas, statues of the saints, which were sent as
far as Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem. These carvings had their own style,
achieved only in the shadow of Musa Dagh; they were not mere rough
peasant handiwork. Wakef was the lace village. The delicate kerchiefs
and coverlets of its women found buyers even in Egypt, without the
artists knowing that this was so, since their wares were sent only to
the markets in Antioch, and that not more than twice a year. Of Azir and
its silkworms we have spoken. The silk was spun in Kheder Beg. In the
two largest villages, Bitias and Yoghonoluk, all these various crafts
worked side by side. But Kebussiye, the most northern, isolated village,
kept bees. The honey of Kebussiye, or so at least Bagradian considered,
had not its equal anywhere on earth. The bees sucked from the innermost
essence of Musa Dagh, from its magic dower of beauty, which set it apart
from all the other melancholy peaks in the land. Why should it have been
Musa Dagh which gushed forth such innumerable springs, most of whose
waters fell, in long, cascading veils, to the sea? Why Musa Dagh, and
not Turkish mountains, like Naulu Dagh and Jebel Akra? Truly it seemed
as though, miraculously, the divine quality in water, offended in some
unknown previous time by Moslems, the sons of the desert, had withdrawn
from off these arid, imploring heights to enrich with superabundance a
Christian mountain. The flower-strewn meadows of its eastern slopes, the
fat pasturage of its many-folded flanks, its lithe orchards of apricot,
vine, and orange around its feet; its quiet, as of protecting seraphim --
all this seemed scarcely touched by the fall of man, under which, in rocky
melancholy, the rest of Asia Minor mourns. It was as though, through some
small negligence in the setting up of the divine order of the world --
the good-natured indulgence of an archangel open to persuasion, and who
loved his home -- an afterglow, a reminiscent flavor of Paradise, had been
allowed to linger on forever in the lands around Musa Dagh. Here along the
Syrian coast, and a little farther, in the country of four rivers, where
experts in Biblical geography are so fond of locating the Garden of Eden.

 

 

It goes without saying that the seven villages round the mountain had
retained their share of this benediction. They were not to be compared
with the wretched hamlets which Gabriel had passed as he rode through
the plain. Here there were no loam huts, which had not even the look of
human dwellings, but of caked deposits into which someone had bored a
dark hole for living-room and stable, humans and beasts. Most of these
houses were built of stone. Each contained several rooms. Little verandas
ran round the walls. Walls and windows sparkled with cleanliness. Only
a few huts from the dark ages, observing the custom of the East, had no
windows turned towards the street. As far as the dark shadows of Damlayik
extended, sharp across the plain, so far this friendly prosperity was
evident. Beyond these shadows began the desert. Here, wine, fruit,
mulberry, terrace upon terrace; there the flat, monotonous fields of
maize and cotton, revealing in places the naked steppe, as a beggar
shows his skin through rags. But it was not only the blessing of the
mountain. Here, after half a century, the energy of old Avetis Bagradian
had borne full fruit, the love of this one enterprising man, who had
concentrated such stormy energies on this, his strip of native earth,
despite all the enticements of the world. That man's grandson watched
with astonished eyes this people invested in some strange beauty. The
chattering groups became silent a few minutes before his approach; they
turned towards the center of the street and greeted him with loud evening
salutations: "Bari irikun!" He believed -- it may have been fancy --
that he saw in their eyes a brief flicker of gratitude, not towards him,
but towards the ancient benefactor. Women and girls stood looking after
him; the spindles in their hands twirled in and out, like separate beings.

 

 

These people were no less foreign than the crowd that day in the bazaar.
What had he to do with them -- he who a few months ago had gone out for
drives into the Bois, attended Bergson's lectures, talked of books,
published articles on art in precious reviews? And yet, deep peace
enveloped him from them. Because he had seen the threat of which they
knew nothing, he felt some strange fatherliness towards them. He bore a
great load of care in his heart, he alone, and would keep it from them
as long as he could. The old Agha Rifaat Bereket was no dreamer, even
though he wrapped his shrewdness in flowery sayings. He was right. Stay
in Yoghonoluk and await the event. Musa Dagh stood beyond the world.
No storm would reach it, even if one should break.

 

 

A warm love of his people invaded Gabriel. May you long continue to rejoice;
tomorrow, the day after . . .

 

 

And from his horse he raised his hand gravely in greeting.

 

 

 

 

In cool, starry darkness he climbed the road through the park to the villa.
He entered the big hall of his house. The old wrought-iron lamp hanging
from its ceiling rejoiced his heart with its pale light. In some
incomprehensible cranny of consciousness it seemed like his mother.
Not that old lady who, in Paris, in a standardized Parisian flat, had
welcomed him back from the lycée with a peck, but the mildly silent
mother of days as impalpable as dreams. "Hokud madagh kes kurban" --
had she really ever spoken those Eastern words as she bent down over
her sleeping child? "May I be as a sacrifice to your soul."

 

 

There was only one other benediction from that primal age -- the little
lamp under the Madonna in the niche on the stairs. Everything else dated
from the time of the young Avetis. And those, in so far at least as the
hall was concerned, had been days of war and of the chase. Trophies and
arms hung on the walls, a whole collection of ancient bedouin rifles,
with very long barrels. That this solitary master had been more than a man
of one crude passion was proved by some magnificent bits of furniture --
chests, carpets, lustres, which he had brought back home with him from
his travels, and which delighted Juliette.

 

 

As Gabriel absent-mindedly went upstairs, he scarcely heard the babel of
voices from the rooms on the ground floor. The notables of Yoghonoluk were
assembled. In his room he stood some time by the open window and stared,
immobile, at the black silhouette of the Damlayik, which at that hour
seemed twice its size. It was ten minutes before he rang for his valet
Missak, whom, on his brother's death, he had taken into his service,
along with Kristaphor the steward, Hovhannes the cook, and all the other
house and outside staff.

 

 

Gabriel washed from head to foot and changed. Then he went into Stephan's
room. The boy was already in bed and so childishly fast asleep that not
even the glare of an electric torch could wake him. The windows were
open, and outside the masses of plane tree crowns rustled in some slow
presentiment. Here, too, the black, living mass of Musa Dagh invaded
the room. But now the crest of the mountain glowed against some gently
shining depths, as though there had been no salt sea behind it, but a sea
composed of the gleaming essence of eternity. Bagradian sat on a chair
beside the bed. That morning the son had watched his father asleep. Now
it was the father who watched his son. But that was permitted.

 

 

Stephan's forehead (it was Gabriel's forehead over again) shimmered
translucent. Below it the shadows of closed eyes, like two rose leaves
blown from outside on to his face. Even asleep, you could see how big
these eyes were. The pointed, narrow nose was not his father's; it was
Juliette's legacy, exotic. Stephan breathed quickly. The walls of his
sleep encased a rushing life. His folded hands were pressed against his
body, as though he had to keep tight hold of reins or galloping dreams
might run away with him.

 

 

The son's sleep became restless. The father did not move. He drew his son's
face into himself. Did he fear for Stephan? He could not tell. No thoughts
were in him. At last he stood up, unable, as he did so, to stifle a sigh,
so depressed he felt. As he fumbled his way out, he bumped a table. The
dark intensified the short noise. Gabriel stood still. He was afraid
he had waked Stephan. A boy's drowsy voice in the dark murmured: "Who's
that . . . Dad, is it you?"

 

 

At once his breathing became quiet again. Gabriel, who had switched off
the electric torch, after a while switched it on again, blinding its
little light with his hand. The beam caught the table, on which lay
drawings. Stephan had already got to work and begun a sketch of Musa
Dagh, as his father suggested. A hesitant sketch. Avakian's many red
pencil-corrections intersected the lines.

 

 

Bagradian did not at first remember the stimulus he had given his son,
when they met that morning. Then he recollected the stormy eagerness
with which his son had sought and tried to persuade him. The uncertain
sketch had become a symbol.

 

 

 

 

The reception-room of the villa led out into a wide room, which opened
into the hall. It was barely furnished and used only as an anteroom. Old
Avetis had built his residence 'with a view to numerous descendants, so
that neither the solitary hunter nor this small family, now remaining,
could use more than a few of the rooms. An oil lamp, screwed down to the
floor, lit this bare anteroom. Gabriel stopped for an instant and listened
to the voices next door. He heard Juliette laugh. So she was pleased,
then, with the admiration of the Armenian villagers in there. Something
gained.

 

 

Old Dr. Bedros Altouni was just opening the door on his way out. He lit
the candle in his lantern and took up his leather bag, which stood on a
chair. Altouni only noticed his host when Bagradian called to him softly:
"Hairik Bedros" -- Bedros, little Father. The doctor started. He was a
small, shrivelled man with an untidy goatee, a survival of those Armenians
who, unlike the younger generation, seemed to bear on their shoulders
the whole load of a persecuted race. In his youth, as Avetis Bagradian's
protégé and at his expense, he had studied medicine in Vienna and seen
the world. In those days the benefactor of Yoghonoluk had cherished
vast projects, which even included the building of a hospital. But he
had gone no further than to install the district doctor, though this
was much, considering the general state of affairs. Of all living people
Gabriel had known this old doctor longest, this "hekim" who had brought
him into the world. He felt tenderly respectful towards him, another
legacy of his feelings as a child. Dr. Altouni was struggling into a
rough serge overcoat, which looked as though it might have been a relic
of his student days in Vienna.

 

 

"I couldn't wait any longer for you, my child. . . . Well, what did you
manage to get out of the Hükümet?"

 

 

Gabriel glanced at the shrivelled little face. Everything in this old man
was angular -- his movements, his voice, even the occasional sharpness
of what he said. He had been sharpened, inside and out. The road from
Yoghonoluk to the wood-carvers village on the one side, the beekeepers'
village on the other, seemed damnably long when you had to travel it
several times a week on the hard back of a donkey. Gabriel recognized
the eternal leather bag in which, besides sticking-plaster, thermometer,
surgical instruments, and a German medical handbook dated 1875, there
was only a pair of antediluvian obstetrical forceps. The sight of this
medical bag made him swallow down an impulse to confide his experiences
in Antioch.

 

 

"Nothing special," he answered, dismissing it.

 

 

Altouni fastened the lantern to his belt and buckled it. "I've had to
renew my teskeré at least seven times in my life. They take them away
to get the tax which you've got to pay on every new one. It's an old
game. But they won't get any more out of me. I shan't need any more
passports in this world." And he added caustically: "Not that I even
needed the others. It's forty years now since I moved out of here."

 

 

Bagradian turned his head to the door. "What sort of a people are we,
who submit without a murmur to everything?"

 

 

"Submit?" The doctor seemed to relish the word. "You young people don't
know what submitting means. You've grown up in very different times."

 

 

But Gabriel stuck to his question: "What sort of people are we?"

 

 

"My dear child, you've lived all your life in Europe. And I should have,
too, if only I'd stopped in Vienna. It was my great misfortune I ever
left it. I might have become somebody. But you see, your grandfather
was as big a fool as your brother, and he wouldn't so much as hear
of an outside world. I had to sign a promise to come back. It was my
misfortune. It would have been better if he'd never sent me away."

 

 

"One can't always go on living as a foreigner." The Parisian Gabriel
felt surprised at his own words.

 

 

Altouni laughed harshly. "And here -- can one live here? With uncertainty
always in the background? I suppose you fancied it all very different."