But don't you worry. We'll manage the military tax again for you, all right. I need you for Stephan."

 

 

Still Avakian did not raise his eyes from the wheel-rut. "Dr. Altouni, Apothecary Krikor, and Pastor Nokhudian certainly aren't of military age, though I may be. They've all had their teskerés taken away from them."

 

 

"Are you certain of that?" Gabriel was beginning to lose his temper. "Who demanded them? What sort of officials? What grounds did they state? And where are these gentry, that's the main thing? I feel very much inclined to have a word with them."

 

 

He learned that it was nearly half an hour since the officials, escorted by mounted gendarmes, had vanished in the direction of Suedia. Judging by their demands it could only be a question of village notables, since the common craftsman and peasant owns no teskeré, but at most a written permission from the market in Antioch.

 

 

Gabriel took a few long strides to and fro, no longer noticing the tutor. At last he said to him: "Go on into church, Avakian. I'll follow you."

 

 

But he did not so much as think of hearing the rest of the mass, whose many-voiced choral that same instant came out to him in an especially loud burst of devotion. His head was on one side, sharply reflective, as he wandered back across the square, walked a little way down the village street, and left it where the road forked to the villa. Without even entering the house, he stopped at the stables to tell them to saddle one of his horses, which had once been the pride of Avetis, his brother. Unluckily no Kristaphor was there to accompany him. So he took a stable-boy. He had not yet made up his mind what to do.

 

 

But an hour's quick riding would get him to Antioch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. KONAK - HAMAM - SELAMLIK

 

 

The Hükümet of Antioch, as the government konak of the Kaimakam was often called, stood under the hill of the citadel. A drab but extensive building, since the Kazah Antakiya is one of the most extensive Syrian provinces.

 

 

Gabriel Bagradian, who had left his boy with the horses at the Orontes bridge, had already waited some time in the big central office of the konak. He hoped to be received by the Kaimakam himself, to whom he had sent in his card.

 

 

A Turkish government office like all the others Gabriel knew so well; on the mottled wall, from which plaster was crumbling, a clumsy portrait of the Sultan and a couple of sayings from the Koran. Nearly every windowpane had been cracked and repaired with oil paper. The filthy deal floor strewn with gobbets of spittle and cigarette-ends. Some minor official sat behind an empty desk, sucking his teeth and gazing out into space. An unopposed legion of portly flies were engaged in a fierce, disgusting concert. Low benches ran round the walls. A few people were waiting - Turkish and Arab peasants. One, not too squeamish, squatted on the floor, spreading his long garments out around him, as though he could not embrace enough of its filth. A sour aroma like that of Russia leather, made up of sweat, stale tobacco, sloth and poverty, infested the room. Gabriel knew that the district head offices of the various peoples had each its distinctive smell. But this stink of fear and kismet was common to all of them -- of little people receiving the impact of the state as a natural and monstrous force.

 

 

At last the gaudily patterned doorkeeper conducted him negligently into a small room, differing from the other by its rugs, its intact windowpanes its desk, thickly strewn with documents, its attempt at cleanliness. The walls displayed no portrait of the Sultan, but a huge photograph of Enver Pasha on horseback. Gabriel found himself facing a young man, with reddish hair, freckles, a small, military moustache. This was not the Kaimakam, only a müdir in charge of the coastal district, the nahiyeh of Suedia. The most noticeable thing about the müdir were his long, scrupulously manicured fingernails. He was wearing a grey suit, which seemed a little too tight even for his measly person; with it a red tie and canary-yellow lace-up boots. Bagradian knew at once -- Salonika! He had no reason for knowing it except the young man's outward appearance. Salonika had been the birthplace of the Turkish nationalist movement, of frantic Westernization, boundless reverence of Western progress in all its forms.