Forty Days of Musa Dagh (95 page)

 

 

They had thanked Herr Rössler and Herr Hoffmann, but would answer further
suggestions, indeed prayers, only with the curt embarrassment with which
young men express such emotions. "We have our fathers and mothers up there
. . . and our girls as well. . . . We couldn't stand it . . . if anything
were to happen up there and we were here . . . alive . . . in this
beautiful house."

 

 

So on September 2 Vice-Consul Hoffmann had let them go again. They had
told him of the lack of bread on the Damlayik, and he, though not by
strictly official methods, had obtained two sacks of army biscuits from
the Imperial Ottoman Commissariat, which he gave them as a parting
gift. But the best thing he did was to take them in his consular
yayli. The swimmers were put to sit on either side of him. On the box
beside the coachman in his lambskin kepi, sat a resplendently uniformed
khavass, who kept slowly waving a small German flag. Proudly they drove
on past saptieh guardhouses. The gendarmes jerked to attention, with
respectful salutes for the representative of Germany, his flag, and
his two doubtful protégés. Herr Hoffmann had even taken them further,
past the second guardhouse outside Arsus. There the two swimmers had got
out and, weeping in spite of all their efforts, said good-bye to their
warmhearted protector.

 

 

Someone had fetched the widow Shushik from her hut. She was told that Haik
was safe. First she seemed quite unable to grasp the fact. She crouched
on the ground, bending forwards, dully. Since Stephan's death she had
scarcely once raised her eyes. She looked more bony than ever. But now
her hard, male fists hung limp at her sides. Now she only went from
time to time to draw her ration at the distributing-tables. If anyone
ventured to say a word to her, Shushik replied more brusquely than ever
before. She was full of hate. Now, as she sat hunched up, she could hear
them whispering behind her.

 

 

"Shushik! Listen, can't you! Haik's alive. . . . Haik's alive."

 

 

It took a very long time before their whispers reached her mind, before
her hunched and angry back relaxed gradually, became feminine. One of
the swimmers completed this softening process: he embroidered his tale --
a successful traveller.

 

 

"Rössler and Jackson see each other every day. The German himself told
me how he'd seen Haik. He said he was looking fine!"

 

 

Then, at last, certainty could penetrate the remotest corner of Shushik's
mind. Two long breaths, like groans. She stumbled a few steps nearer
the rest. And these steps led Haik's mother out of a solitude which had
lasted fifteen years, into the wide circle gathered round the swimmers
and their families. One more tottering step and she lay full length,
but at once propped herself up on to her knees. Into the colorless,
ageless face of this giantess there came, like an astonishing revelation,
like sudden sunlight, an inexpressible love of humankind. The standoffish
Shushik, she who had kept herself to herself, raised heavy arms in the
weakest supplication. Shushik's arms besought: Take me in, let me share
this with you! Because I belong to you now.

 

 

 

 

She had still not been thrust out of her shadow. As a rule she could
only see moving blurs. If she made an effort, they came together and
formed shapes. But she was far too clever to make efforts. Words and
sounds beat in her ears, as hollow as though she lay in a padded room.
So that, really, there she was, in the telephone-box at the lower
end of the Champs élysées, calling up the Armenian Club for Gabriel,
because there was a new comedy at the Trocadéro, which she wanted to
see. But, when these cool uncertainties grew less vague, when they
even threatened to take on solid form, she grew nervous and escaped at
once. The one sense she could still trust and enjoy was not only normal,
but highly developed: her sense of smell. She sniffed whole worlds into
herself. Worlds which committed her to nothing. Banks of violets, early
scents of spring in little villa gardens in Northern France, where colored
glass balls mirror the roadway. Only, in Heaven's name, no roses! She
could sniff that peculiar odor composed of sundust, of midday bustle,
gasoline, stale incense, and cellar-damp, which assails our nostrils as
we open the little wooden side doors which will lead us on inside the
cathedral. To confess oneself again -- and receive holy communion! But
is it really necessary to confess oneself, of something one has never
really committed, something which was probably part of one's illness? Then
again -- that horrible, all-pervasive scent of myrtle bushes. At least
not that, Jésus! Marie! The myrtle bushes can be effaced by a very strong
counter-irritant -- washing one's hair. So then she sat chez Fauchardičre
Rue Madame 12, in the close, steamy warmth of her compartment, wrapped
all in white, leaning well back in the swivel chair. . . . Not scent
this time, only the clean and rustic smell of camomile. (Peasant women,
going to mass on Sunday.) Juliette's head was foaming with a cloud of
camomile. And her hair was quite smooth now, skimpy, plaited, like a leggy
schoolgirl's. But already the warm, foamy camomile surged up all over
this juvenile blond head and ruffled it out into a woman's. Sensitive
fingers began to work on it. A white coolness laid itself on Juliette's
forehead, on her cheeks and chin. Soon she'd be twenty-four; at certain
hours the skin round her eyes and mouth had a tired look. It ought to
be evening all day long, and the sun turned into electric light. Oh,
how nice to be able to be in love with oneself again! Not to live for
others! To be really absorbed in one's own perfectly cared-for body,
full of delight in its charms, armed by it against all self-mistrust,
as though there were no such things as men. . . .

 

 

Yet, in spite of her wandering mind, Juliette could still keep a sharp eye
on much that occurred in the present. (Even in her deepest unconsciousness,
she had never lost her physical shame and cleanliness.) Now she could see
plainly all the trouble Mairik Antaram was taking to get her well again.
She heard how the doctor's wife and Iskuhi discussed the food which must
be prepared for her. In spite of the dimness of her thoughts she still
felt surprised that searching hands should always manage to find in the
store chest a handful of fine ground rice, a packet of Quaker Oats, a
bar of chocolate. Surely all that had been used up long ago! She tried to
count all the people who lived on it. Stephan. Yes, and because of Stephan
they ought to be very careful indeed. Then Gabriel, Avakian, Iskuhi, the
Tomasians, Kristaphor, Missak, Hovsannah, and -- and . . . She couldn't
at first think of the name. Her brain became muzzy again at once, her
head swam and sang. Nor could she count, and her sense of time was all
out of gear. Before, after, the things that had just been happening --
those that had happened long ago; it was all a jumble.

 

 

She lay alone. Mairik Antaram had had to leave her for a couple of hours
to go to the hospital hut. Then Iskuhi came into the tent and sat down
opposite the bed in her usual seat, hiding her lame arm, as her habit
was, with her shawl. Juliette, through eyelids grown transparent, saw
that Iskuhi fully believed her to be asleep and so had ceased to control
her thoughts and expression. But she knew even more. Gabriel had just
left Iskuhi, and that, Juliette knew, was why this girl had come into
her tent. And here Iskuhi would sit till he came back! Also she could
see how Iskuhi's face, although it was no more than a hovering light,
reproached her bitterly. Bitter reproaches for having let slip her chance
to die. And this spiteful, this hatefully pretty, thing was really quite
right. Since how much longer would Juliette be permitted to stay on,
in her irresponsible border-kingdom? How much longer would they let her
sleep and say nothing whenever Gabriel was about? Juliette felt -- like
strong rays beating on her face -- this reproach, this blame, the enmity,
in Iskuhi.

 

 

Juliette had always imagined herself hard, and the Asiatic soft and
yielding. Yet the hard had been dissolved by the soft. As she lay there,
seeming to be asleep, she was overtaken by sharp perceptions. How
was this? Not she, Juliette, had first claim on Gabriel. Iskuhi had
an older, prior claim, and no one had any right to contest it if she
took her own back. A great self-pity shook Juliette. Had she not done
everything in her power to win the love of this Asiatic, she who stood
so immeasurably above her? Had she not formed that ignorant chit of a
girl, dressed her up in all her own things, taught her how to care for
her face and hands? (Oh, yes, and when she's stripped, that young woman,
in spite of her pretty little breasts, has a grey-brown skin, and not
even God could alter that for her. And a crippled left arm. Surely --
such a fastidious man as Gabriel . . . ?) Juliette was astonished to
consider how, ever since she remembered life again, this arch-enemy,
in spite of her continued vomiting, had kept coming back solicitously
to the bed with a spoon and a cup. Why, she might have poisoned the
cup -- she ought to have poisoned it; it had been her plain duty, so to
do. Juliette blinked her thin eyelids. Et, voilŕ! Iskuhi had stood up;
had, as she always did, stuck in the thermos under her left armpit;
was unscrewing the top. This she put down on the little dressing table,
carefully filled it, came towards the patient. So it had been more than
empty suspicion then! The murderess was coming with her poison! Juliette
pressed together her eyes and lips. And heard how the murderess, in
the act, could still manage to sing, in her glassy voice, or at least
hum softly. She sang like one of the mosquitoes which kept settling on
Juliette's face. She listened intently.

 

 

Iskuhi bent down over her. "You've had nothing to drink for five hours,
Juliette. This tea is still quite warm."

 

 

The patient opened glowering eyes. Iskuhi noticed nothing. She had put down
her poison-bowl again and thrust an extra cushion under Juliette's head,
to prop her up. Only then did she set her draught to Juliette's lips.
Juliette waited, to disarm her arch-enemy's suspicions, pretending that
she really was going to drink. Suddenly, with well-calculated cunning,
she knocked the cup out of Iskuhi's hand. The tea spilt over the rugs.

 

 

But Juliette had sat up in bed and was panting: "Go! Get out, you!
Go away! . . ."

 

 

She had far worse to encounter early that evening, when Gabriel came
beside her bed. Now it was a case of escaping quickly, diving back swiftly
into the labyrinth. But suddenly those dark paths were blocked, and the
whole area of the borderland had become most absurdly constricted.
Gabriel, as usual, took up her hand inquiringly. A fully conscious thud
of her heart: Will he speak? Shall I have to be told everything today,
and
know
? Mayn't I hide any more? She tried to breathe heavily, evenly.
But she could feel at once that this time her sleep would not be limpid
and just, but troubled by the will; Gabriel, too, said not a word. In a
little while he lit the candles on the dressing table -- oil was no longer
being used -- and went away. Juliette breathed freely again. But in two
minutes he was back with that big photograph of Stephan which he placed
on her bed. It was the photograph done last year, which usually he kept
on his writing-desk in Paris; also in Yoghonoluk.

 

 

But that isn't Stephan's photo at all, Juliette thought, it's something
else, a letter perhaps, and, when I'm well, I can read it. But now I
mustn't expose myself any longer to life. So bad for me! I really have
still got a perfect right to vanish. She nestled down, and, with ice-cold
hands, drew up the rugs to her mouth. But that threw the cardboard off
the bed, with its picture side uppermost. The photo looked straight
up at Juliette, whose head bent out over the bed. The candlelight,
reflected in the glass, shone on the center of that flat image. Now it
was done. Now there was no more going back for Juliette. But Stephan's
visit was not any result of the photograph. The boy's essential reality
was standing behind Juliette's bed. It was as if he had dashed in, out of
breath, from among all the others, the Haik gang, or from orderly duty,
or a game, bursting in quickly, much against his will, to gulp down milk.

 

 

"Maman, were you looking for me?"

 

 

"Don't come yet, not today, Stephan!" implored Juliette. "Not today, please.
I'm not strong enough. Come tomorrow! Let me be ill just another day!
You'd better go along to your father -- "

 

 

"I'm always with him -- "

 

 

"I know you don't love me, Stephan..

 

 

"And you, Maman?"

 

 

"When you're a good boy, I love you. You must wear your blue suit again.
Because, otherwise, you're
so
Armenian. . . ."

 

 

Stephan was very annoyed by this. He seemed not in the least to want to
go back to his other clothes. His silence showed her he was defiant. But
Juliette kept on begging in an ever stormier voice: "Please, not today,
Stephan! Come early tomorrow! Leave me this one night . . ."

 

 

"Early tomorrow?"

 

 

It was an empty question, not a promise, impatient, absent, hasty,
with Stephan's head half turned back, towards his mother. Yet, even as
Juliette felt her petition granted, she sprang out of bed. Her voice
rasped and came out strangled: "Stephan! Stay here -- don't run away --
here! Stay! Stephan! . . ."

 

 

Mairik Antaram was on her way to Three-Tent Square to settle down her
patient for the night. Shushik had joined her. For, since she heard her
Haik was still alive, the widow had been shyly eager for company, and
people to help. And who better than Antaram, the helper, could show her a
way to this? These two women found the hanum lying out about two hundred
paces in front of her tent. She cowered there in her night dress, by the
side of a bush, her shrivelled legs drawn up to her chin. Sweat still
stood out on her forehead, but her open eyes were again vacantly remote.