The Ghost Rider

by Ismail Kadare

  Çelebi looked away so as not to see the soldiers picking out their fleas. Many of them were in fact sitting cross-legged so as to examine the corns on the soles of their feet.

  “Their feet are sore from the long march,” the Quartermaster said with sympathy. “I’ve still never read a historical work that even mentions soldiers’ feet.”

  The chronicler was sorry to have displayed his distaste, but the harm was done now.

  “In truth, the vast Empire of which we are all so proud was enlarged only by these blistered and torn feet,” the officer said with a touch of grandiloquence. “A friend often said to me: I am willing to kneel and kiss these stinking feet.”

  The chronicler didn’t know what to do with himself. Fortunately for him, they had just got to the Quartermaster General’s tent.

  “So here’s my den,” the general said in a different tone of voice. “Come in, Mevla Çelebi. Do you like pomegranate syrup? In such scorching weather there’s nothing better than the juice of a pomegranate to cool you down. And then, a conversation with a friend on matters of high interest is like a violet blooming among thorns. Isn’t that so, Çelebi?”

  The chronicler’s mind flashed back to the soldiers’ blisters and filthy feet, but he soon took solace in the thought that man is so great that all can be permitted him.

  “I am overwhelmed by the friendship you bestow on me, a mere chronicler.”

  “Not at all!” the Quartermaster interrupted. “Your trade is most honourable: you are a historian. Only the uneducated could fail to grant you their esteem. Now, my dear friend, are you going to read me a few passages from your work, as you promised?”

  Çelebi would have blushed with contentment had he not been so scared. After the whole exchange of courtesies, the chronicler, who knew the start of his work by heart, began to recite slowly as follows:

  “At the behest of the Padishah, master of the universe, to whom men and genies owe total obedience, a myriad harems were abandoned and the lions set forth for the land of the Shqipetars …”

  The Quartermaster General explained that this overture was not entirely lacking in poetry, but he would have preferred the idea of abandoned harems to be linked to some more basic element of human life, something more vital to the economy, such as, for example, the plough or the vine. He added that a few figures would give it more substance.

  At that moment the general’s secretary appeared at the tent door. His master signalled to him to come nearer, and the servant whispered something in the general’s ear. The Quartermaster said “yes” several times, and “no” an equal number of times.

  “What were we saying?” he asked the chronicler as soon as the secretary had left. “Ah yes, figures! But you mustn’t take too much notice of me on this issue, because I’m obsessed with numbers. All day long I do nothing but count and reckon!”

  The secretary reappeared.

  “A messenger from the Pasha,” he blurted out as soon as he saw his master scowl.

  The courier came close to the general, bent down to speak in his ear, and went on whispering in that position for a long while. Then he put his own ear to the Quartermaster’s mouth to collect the reply.

  “Let’s go out,” the Quartermaster suggested when the courier had left. “We’ll have a better chance to talk outdoors. Otherwise the thorns of everyday business will throttle the violet of our conversation!”

  Dusk was falling. The camp was in a state of lively activity. Akinxhis were coming from all directions, leading their horses to water. Standards rustled in the wind from the tips of the tent poles. With the addition of a handful of flowers to add their smell, the many-coloured camp would have looked less like a military installation than a blooming garden. The chronicler remembered that none of his colleagues had ever described an army as a flower garden – a gulistan – but that was what he was going to do. He would liken it to a meadow, or else to a polychrome kilim, but one from which, as soon as the order to move forward was given, would emerge the black fringes of death.

  They had almost reached the centre-point of the camp when they ran into the engineer, Saruxha. He was wandering around looking absent-minded.

  “Is the meeting over?” the Quartermaster General enquired.

  “Yes, it’s just ended. I’m dead tired,” Saruxha replied, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “We’ve not had a wink of sleep for three nights in a row. Today the Pasha gave us final orders to ready the cannon for next week … In eight days, he said, he wants to hear their blast.”

  “Will you manage?”

  “I don’t know. We might. But you can’t imagine how difficult the work will be. Especially as we’re using a new kind of weapon, one which has never been made before, so I have to attend to every detail of manufacture.”

  “I understand,” the Quartermaster said.

  “Do you want to have a look at the foundry?” Saruxha asked, and, without waiting for an answer, he led them off across waste ground.

  The chronicler was delighted to be given so much trust. Before leaving the capital he had heard all kinds of rumours about the new weapon. People spoke of it alternately with admiration and horror, as is normal with a secret weapon. They said its roar would make you deaf for the rest of your life, and its blast would topple everything around it within a radius of several leagues.

  During the long march he had noticed the camels that were alleged to be carrying pieces of the barrel destined to serve the big cannon. The soldiers who marched silently alongside never took their eyes off the rain-soaked black tarpaulins hiding the mortal secret.

  Çelebi itched to learn more about the camels’ packs but he was frightened of arousing suspicion. When at last he overcame his shyness and questioned the Quartermaster, whom he had just got to know, the latter burst out laughing, with his hands on hips. Those heavy packs, he said, don’t have any tubes in them at all. All that was in them were bars of iron and bronze, and a special kind of coal. “So you’re going to ask me, where then is the secret weapon? I’ll tell you, Mevla Çelebi. The big, fearsome cannon are in a tiny little satchel … as tiny as the one over my shoulder, here … Don’t look at me like that, I’m not pulling your leg!” Now he whispered it into Mevla’s ear, nodding towards a waxen-faced man wrapped in a black cloak: “The secret cannon really is in a satchel.” It took the chronicler a little while to grasp that in that wan figure’s shoulder bag were to be found secret designs and formulae that would be used for casting the big gun.

  The foundry had been set up away from the camp in an area that was entirely fenced off and under heavy guard. It was separated from the stream by a hillock, and at twenty paces from the gate stood a sign saying: “Forbidden Zone”.

  “It’s well guarded, day and night,” the engineer said. “Spies might try to steal our secret.”

  The engineer acted as their tour guide through the long shack that had been thrown up and gave them copious explanations of what could be seen. The forge and the ovens had just been lit, and the flames gave off stifling heat. Shirtless, soot-blackened men dripping with sweat were busy at work.

  Heaps of iron and bronze ingots and huge clay moulds covered most of the floor.

  The engineer showed them the designs for the giant cannon.

  The visitors looked with wonderment at the mass of straight lines, arcs and circles meticulously traced out on the blueprints.

  “This one’s the biggest,” Saruxha said as he showed them one of the drawings. “My artificers have already dubbed it balyemeztop!”

  “The gun that eats no honey? Why call it by such a strange name?” the Quartermaster asked.

  “Because it prefers to eat men!” Saruxha replied. “It’s a whimsical cannon, if I may say, a bit like a spoiled child who says to its mother one fine morning, ‘I’m fed up with honey!’ … Now come and see the place where it will be cast,” he added as he moved off in another direction. “Here’s the great hole where the clay moulds will be laid down, and over there are the six furnaces where the me
tal will be melted. A standard cannon takes one furnace, but for this one, six will barely suffice! That’s one of the main secrets of the casting. All six furnaces have to produce molten metal at exactly the same degree of fusion at precisely the same time. If there’s the tiniest crack, the tiniest bubble, so to speak, then the cannon will burst apart when it’s fired.”

  The Quartermaster General gave a whistle of astonishment.

  Although he too was amazed at what he had heard, Mevla Çelebi was sufficiently astute not to turn his head towards the general in case the latter, once he had regained his poise, might feel annoyed at having been caught in a moment of weakness by a mere chronicler, or, in other words, at having let himself be seen to be astonished, when he was supposed to be far above such emotions.

  But the Quartermaster General wasn’t trying to hide his bewilderment. The chronicler, for his part, trembled at the thought that Engineer Saruxha was engaged on God’s work, or else the Devil’s own, by having his furnaces produce a fiery liquid that Allah himself caused the earth to spew out through the mouths of volcanoes. Labour of that kind usually brought severe punishment.

  As the engineer went on explaining how the casting would be done, in their eyes he slowly turned into a wizard, wrapped in his black cloak, about to perform some ancient, mysterious ritual.

  “It is the first time that cannon of this kind are to be used in the whole military history of humankind,” Saruxha finally declared with pride. “An earthquake will sound like a lullaby next to their terrible thunder.”

  They looked at him with admiration.

  “This is where the most modern war the world has ever known is about to be waged,” he concluded, staring at the chronicler.

  Çelebi was worried.

  “The Padishah’s priority at present is to force the Balkans into submission,” the Quartermaster commented. “Obviously, he will spare no expense to achieve his aim.”

  “This is my right-hand man,” Saruxha said as he turned towards a tall, pale and worn-out young man who was coming towards them.

  The young man glanced nonchalantly at the visitors, made a gesture that could barely be understood as a greeting, and then whispered a few words in the engineer’s ear.

  “You’re amazed I picked that lad as my first assistant, aren’t you?” Saruxha asked when the youngster had walked off. “Most people share your view. He doesn’t look the part, but he is extremely able.”

  They said nothing.

  “In this shed we will cast four other, smaller cannon, but they will be no less fearsome than the big one,” the engineer went on. “They are called mortars, and they shoot cannon-balls in a curved trajectory. Unlike cannon which hit the walls straight on, mortars can rain down on the castle’s inner parts from above, like a calamity falling from the heavens.”

  He picked up a lump of coal and piece of board from the ground.

  “Let’s suppose this is the castle wall. We put the cannon here. Its shot takes a relatively straight path” – he drew a line – “and hits the wall here. But the shot from the mortar or bombard rises high in the sky, almost innocently, if I may say so, as if it had no intention of hitting the wall – and then falls almost vertically behind it.” With his hand, which the chronicler thought he saw shaking a little, he made out the shape of the two arcs in the air. “Bombards make a noise that sounds like the moaning of a stormy sea.”

  “Allah!” the chronicler cried out.

  “Where did you learn how to do all this?” the Quartermaster General asked.

  The engineer looked at him evasively.

  “From my master, Saruhanli. I was his first assistant.”

  “He’s in prison now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Saruxha replied. “The Sultan had him put away in the fortress of Bogazkezen.”

  “And nobody knows why?” the chronicler ventured timidly.

  “I know why,” the engineer replied.

  The Quartermaster General raised his eyes and glanced at Saruxha with surprise.

  “Recently, the poor old man’s mind began to wander. He refused to make cannon of larger calibre. He claimed it was impossible, but in fact, as he told me, he didn’t want to do it. If we make them even bigger, he would say, then the cannon will become a terrible scourge that will decimate the human race. The monster has come into the world, he said by way of explanation, and we can’t put it back where it came from. The best we can do is to keep its barrel no bigger than it is now. If we enlarge it further, the cannon will devour the world. The old man stopped experimenting. That’s why the Sultan had him arrested.”

  The engineer picked up a piece of clay and rubbed it until it turned to dust, and said, “That’s what’s happened to him.”

  The other two men nodded.

  “But I have a different view of the matter,” the engineer explained. “I think that if we give in to scruples of that kind, then science will come to a halt. War or no war, science must advance. I don’t really mind who uses this weapon, or against whom it is used. What matters to me is that it should hurl a cannon-ball along a path identical to my calculation of the trajectory. The rest of it is your business.” And on that abrupt note, he stopped.

  “I’ve been given to understand that the money for making this weapon was donated by one of the Sultan’s wives for the salvation of her soul,” the Quartermaster General said, obviously intending to change the topic of conversation.

  “For the salvation of her soul?” Çelebi asked, thinking the detail worthy of figuring in his chronicle. “Is it expensive?” he added after a pause, astounded at his own temerity.

  “He’s the one to know,” the engineer said, pointing at the Quartermaster. “All I can tell you about is the gun’s range and firepower.”

  The chronicler smiled.

  “Oh yes, the big gun costs a lot of money,” the Quartermaster said. “A very great deal. Especially now that we are at war, and the price of bronze has soared.”

  He narrowed his eyes and made a quick mental calculation.

  “Two million silver aspers,” he blurted out.

  The chronicler was awe-struck. But the figure made no impact whatever on the master caster.

  “To pay that much for the salvation of one’s soul may seem prohibitively expensive,” the Quartermaster said, “but if the cannon-balls break through those ramparts in a few days’ time, they’ll be worth their weight in gold.”

  An ironical smile hovered over his face.

  “At the siege of Trabzon,” he continued, “when the first cannon, which was much smaller than this one, shot its first ball, many of those present thought the barrel had grunted ‘Allah!’. But what I thought I heard through the roar, maybe because I think about it all the time, was the word ‘Taxation!’”

  Once again the chronicler was struck dumb. The engineer, for his part, started to laugh out loud.

  “You don’t realise the full meaning of that word, nor how many things, including the siege of this fortress, depend on it,” the Quartermaster observed.

  “Well, when the gun fires,” the engineer said, “I don’t hear it say ‘Allah!’ or ‘Taxation’ at all. All I think about is that the power and noise of the explosion are the product of the amount of gunpowder packed behind the cannonball combined with the precise diameter and length of the barrel.”

  The Quartermaster General smiled. Çelebi, for his part, pondered on his having become friendly with powerful and learned men, and wondered how long he could keep up conversations of this kind, which rose into spheres he had never previously encountered.

  “Let’s go outside for a breath of air,” the Quartermaster suggested.

  Saruxha walked with them as far as the door.

  “People say that these new weapons will change the nature of war,” the chronicler said. “That they’ll make citadels redundant.”

  Saruxha shook his head doubtfully.

  “Indeed they might. People also say they will make other weapons obsolete.”

  “
Who are the ‘people’ saying these things?” the Quartermaster butted in. “You don’t believe these cannon can overcome the fortress all by themselves, do you?”

  “I certainly wish they could,” Saruxha replied, “because they are, at bottom, my creations. However, I take a rather different view. I think that although the guns will play a role in the victory, what really matter are the soldiers of our great Padishah. It is they who will storm the fortress.”

  “Quite right,” the Quartermaster General said.

  “The cannon will have at least one other effect,” Saruxha added. “Their thunderous noise will spread panic among the besieged and break their courage. That’s a considerable help, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very important,” the Quartermaster agreed. “And I’m not thinking only of those wretches. The whole of Christendom trembles when it hears speak of our new weapon. It has already become a legend.”

  “I would walk with you for a while,” Saruxha said, “but this evening I’ve still got a thousand things to do. Casting should begin around midnight.”

  “Don’t apologise, and thank you,” the visitors replied almost in unison.

  Meanwhile night had fallen and fires had been lit here and there around the camp. Beside one of them, somewhere out there in the dark, someone was singing a slow and sorrowful chant. Further off, two ragged dervishes were mumbling their prayers.

  They walked on in silence. The chronicler thought how strange it was that men of such different kinds should all be serving the Padishah, brought together by war in this god-forsaken spot at the end of the world.

  They could still hear chanting in the far distance, and could just about make out the refrain: “O Fate, O Fate …”

  About the Author

  Born in 1936, Ismail Kadare is Albania’s best-known poet and novelist. Translations of his novels have appeared in more than forty countries. In 2005 he was awarded the first Man Booker International Prize for ‘a body of work written by an author who has had a truly global impact’. He is the recipient of the highly prestigious 2009 Principe de Asturias de las Lettras in Spain.