Free Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel Page A

French? His hearers, in so far as they understood them,

seemed to share his views. Only the silent Oskanian, the other teacher,

smiled sarcastically. But he always did when friend Shatakhian let himself

go and revelled in his own linguistic verbosity. Another voice made itself

heard: "Never mind the Turks. Let's talk about something more important."
     
     
This had been said by Krikor, the apothecary, the most remarkable person

in the room.
     
     
     
     
Krikor's very garb denoted the fact that his character was subject to

no change. All the other men, even the mukhtar, wore European dress (a

tailor, back from London, lived in Yoghonoluk). Krikor had on a kind of

light-blue Russian blouse, but made of the softest raw silk. His face,

without a wrinkle in spite of the fact that he was sixty, with its white

goatee and rather slanting eyes, was more that of a wise mandarin than

an Armenian. He spoke in a high, but oddly hollow, voice, which sounded

as though much learning had exhausted it. And in fact Apothecary Krikor

owned a library surely unequalled in all Syria -- and was moreover

himself a walking library, a man of encyclopedic information, in one of

the remotest valleys on earth. Be the subject the flora of Musa Dagh,

desert geology, an extinct species of bird, copper smelting, meteorology,

the fathers of the Church, fixed stars, cooking recipes, the Persian

secret of extracting oil of roses -- Krikor's hollow voice could supply

information, and that in a careless, casual manner, as though it were

rather an impertinence to have asked him such a trivial question. There

are many "know-alls" in the world. But Krikor's genuine personality could

not have shown itself by this alone. No, Krikor was like his library.
     
     
This was composed of only a few thousand volumes, most of which were

written in languages which he himself was unable to read. Providence

had set many obstacles in the way of his ruling passion. Such French and

Armenian works as he possessed were the least interesting. But Krikor was

more than learned, he was a bibliophile. The bibliophile is more enamored

of the very existence of a book than of its form and contents. He has no

need to read it. (Is not all true love much the same?) The apothecary

was not a rich man. He could not afford to give expensive orders to

booksellers and antique shops in Istanbul or abroad. He could scarcely

have paid the freightage. He had to take what came his way. The foundations

of his library, he insisted, had already been laid in his boyhood

and his years of travel. Now he had agents and patrons in Antioch,

Alexandretta, Aleppo, Damascus, who from time to time sent him a parcel

of books. What a red-letter day when they arrived! Whatever they might

be -- Arabic or Hebrew folios, French novels, secondhand rubbish --

what did it matter, they were always so much printed paper. Krikor

contained within himself that deep Armenian love of culture, the secret

of all very ancient races which survive the centuries. This queer,

and most of it unread, library would scarcely have sufficed to supply

the apothecary's vast store of information. His own creative audacity

filled in the gaps. Krikor completed his universe. Any question, from

statistics to theology, he answered out of his plenitude of power. The

innocent happiness of poets glowed in his veins each time he threw out

a few major scientffic terms. That such a man had disciples goes without

saying. Equally obvious that they were composed of the schoolmasters of

all seven villages. Apothecary Krikor was the Socrates of Musa Dagh --

a peripatetic who, usually in the night, took long walks with these,

his disciples. Such walks offered many chances to increase his followers'

respect. He would point up at the starry sky.
     
     
"Hapeth Shatakhian, do you know the name of that reddish star, up there?"

-- "Which? That one there? Isn't that a planet?" -- "Wrong, Schoolmaster.

That star is