But is one ever alone in Paris? In Montreux, or Chamonix? In any case the limpid air of Musa Dagh contained a releasing element which seemed to bring them close together, in a proximity neither had ever known. Gabriel went onwards like a guide, familiar with all the important landmarks. Stephan came after, Still expectantly silent.

 

 

Father and son in the East! Their relationship can scarcely be compared with the superficial contact of European parents and children. Whoso sees his father sees God. For that father is the last link in a long, unbroken chain of ancestors, binding all men to Adam, and hence to the origin of creation. And yet whoso sees his son sees God. For this son is the next link, binding humans to the Last Judgment the end of all things, the consummation. Must not so holy a relationship be timid and sparing of words?

 

 

This father, as beseemed him, gave a serious turn to the conversation. "What subjects is Monsieur Avakian teaching you now?"

 

 

"We started reading Greek a little while ago, Father. And we do physics, history, and geography."

 

 

Bagradian raised his head. Stephan had said it in Armenian. But had he asked his question in Armenian? Usually they spoke French to one another. His son's Armenian words stirred the father strangely. He was conscious that in Stephan he had far more often seen a French than an Armenian boy.

 

 

"Geography?" he repeated. "And what continent are you on now?"

 

 

"Asia Minor and Syria," Stephan rather zealously announced.

 

 

Gabriel nodded approval as though it was the best thing he could have said. Then, still a little absent-minded he tried to round off their talk pedagogically: "Think you could draw a map of Musa Dagh?"

 

 

Stephan was pleased at so much paternal confidence. "Oh, yes, Dad. In your room there's one of Uncle Avetis's maps, you know. Antioch and the coast. You've only got to enlarge the scale and put in all that they leave out."

 

 

Quite right. For an instant Gabriel rejoiced in Stephan's intelligence. But then his thoughts strayed back to marching-orders, perhaps already on their way, or perhaps still buried on a Turkish office desk in Aleppo, in Istanbul even. A silent digression.

 

 

Stephan's expectant soul awaited another remark. This is Dad's country. He longed to be told stories of Dad's childhood, that secret time, of which they had so seldom told him anything. His father seemed to make for a definite point. And already they were near that peculiar terrace he had in mind. It extended, jutting straight out from the mountain, into a void. A mighty arm of rock upheld it on spread fingers, like a dish. It is a flat spur of granite strewn with stones, so wide that two houses could have been built on it. Sea storms, to be sure, which have here free play, scarcely tolerate a few shrubs on this rock, and a clump of Mexican grass, tough as leather. This overhanging, freely jutting terrace springs so far out that any suicide who had plunged to destruction from its edge into salt water, twelve hundred feet beneath, could have vanished unwounded by any rock. Young Stephan tried, of course, to run to the edge. His father pulled him sharply back and held his hand clasped very tight. His free right hand pointed out the four quarters of the globe.

 

 

"There to the north we could see the Gulf of Alexandretta if Ras el-Khanzir, the Swine cape, weren't in the way.