The Siege

by Ismail Kadare

  “They must be worried about Skanderbeg mounting a counterattack,” the janissary said.

  “Look, there’s another guard-post that has been doubled,” the astrologer remarked. “Skanderbeg is supposed to be fearsome. Especially when he attacks in the dark.”

  “Everything is more terrible in the dark,” the janissary replied.

  “Our Pasha is his equal,” the chronicler interjected. “In the capital he is said to be the most brilliant war leader we have.”

  “God be praised!”

  To their considerable surprise they realised they were standing right next to the commander-in-chief’s tent.

  “Is the war council still in session?” the astrologer asked a passing courier.

  The courier did not answer at first, but when moonlight made the astrologer’s dress visible, he gave a curt “Yes”.

  “May you go cold!” the astrologer swore under his breath, uncertain whether he was cursing the sentinel, himself or the entire war council. He was worried. Whatever he did he could not stop his mind going back to his protector, the Mufti. Would the Mufti support him, or would he drop him at the council meeting?

  Meanwhile, the emergency meeting went on. The leaders were seated on animal skins draped over a divan. Most of them were wounded and had bandaged legs or arms. Three members of the council had fallen in the battle, and the architect, seated at the other end of the room from the Pasha, was already sketching the hexagonal turbes which by custom had to be raised over their graves. During meetings he often took pleasure in sketching and drawing.

  The Quartermaster General spoke. He asked for the astrologer to be stripped of his rank and sentenced to hard labour. Everyone knew that his onslaught, despite its measured terms, was really aimed at the Mufti. Saruxha, who had allowed himself to drop off from time to time, was now listening with rapt attention. At one point he even interrupted the Quartermaster to demand that the astrologer be put to death. Some of the sanxhakbeys who were in the sway of the Mufti attempted to excuse the astrologer’s mistake. Others among them agreed only that he should be sacked. Kara-Mukbil was the only one of the divisional commanders who wanted the astrologer’s head. The dreadful wound on his face made it difficult for him to speak, but lent great weight to the words he did utter. The Mufti himself, Old Tavxha and Kurdisxhi did not express an opinion. The Alaybey, for his part, went along with removing the astrologer from office, but did not suggest any further punishment. The Pasha listened to all of them in complete indifference. Whether or not to punish the astrologer seemed to him a matter of no greater importance than deciding whether to tread on an ant or not. He knew that was not the issue. The velvet-gloved fight between the two hostile factions within his own council, which in other circumstances might have agitated him, seemed trivial. Only one thing mattered to him: what was to be done?

  He cut short the debate with a clear decision of his own: the astrologer would be removed from office forthwith and reallocated to grave-digging. While the secretary was transcribing the order, Kurdisxhi rose to speak. He asked permission, in accordance with tradition, to mount a punitive expedition to sack and terrorise the villages in the surrounding hills. He claimed that an action of that sort was especially necessary in current circumstances, so as to shatter the confidence that the Turks’ defeat might have aroused among the rebels.

  “Today, I shall avenge the blood we have spilled!” he yelled. “I shall lay waste to the whole country! I’ll turn it into a living hell!”

  Tursun Pasha looked at Kurdisxhi’s flaming head of red hair and thought to himself that the man would literally do what he said.

  “Granted,” the Pasha said, nodding to his secretary to transcribe the decision which he had taken, contrary to normal practice, without consulting his advisers.

  “Pasha, sire,” a barely audible voice whispered.

  A curly redhead who was apparently attending the war council for the first time was requesting permission to speak.

  “Tabduk Baba, Agha of the secret police,” Tursun Pasha said, realising that most members of his council were eying the newcomer with astonishment. “Speak, Agha!”

  The man pretended not to have noticed the disdain that could be read in the eyes of some of those present.

  “Much has been said about the astrologer,” he said, “but there are others who should be punished too. I have learned that attempts were made to steal the secret of the new weapon. I am also in possession of an anonymous letter that incriminates the spell-caster.”

  “What’s an anonymous letter?” Aslanhan asked. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “It’s a letter without a signature,” Tabduk Baba explained. “I got a letter of that kind expressing grave suspicions about the damning of the citadel.”

  “Well, well,” two or three men muttered.

  Tursun Pasha gave a slight nod of agreement. The Agha of the secret police was like balm to his wounds when he felt depressed. The other members also perked up. So the defeat was not their fault.

  “If that’s how it is, let’s not waste time. Cut off the spell-caster’s head,” Aslanhan said.

  “Wait a minute,” the Pasha intervened. “We must first be sure of his guilt. Isn’t that so, Kadi?” he added, turning towards a small and wrinkle-faced man who was also attending the council for the first time.

  “Punishing a caster of spells is no easy matter,” the kadi said emphatically. “I would go so far as to say it is the opposite.”

  “That is not my view,” the Agha of the secret police replied.

  Tursun Pasha let them argue it out for a few minutes, and then cut in.

  “That’s enough! Put the caster of spells in chains, and investigate the matter with extreme discretion. We’ve got time to think about a trial. But I would suggest it be held in public.”

  “A public trial is always useful in these circumstances,” the Quartermaster General said with a smile that was full of unspoken meaning.

  Tursun Pasha pretended not to notice.

  “I give you full powers to spy on suspect elements,” the Pasha said to Police Commander Tabduk Baba. After a pause, he added: “To spy on anyone!” He noticed the glances across the room that his statement prompted and reckoned that all present had therefore grasped what it meant. “And now, let us get on to the main question, to the reason why the great Padishah sent us all here to the end of the earth. How are we going to proceed so as to take control of this citadel?”

  Old Tavxha, Tahanka, the Mufti and a few others were of the view that a fresh assault should be launched without delay. The glorious army of the Osmanlis which had stormed dozens of supposedly impregnable fortresses should never, they said, be allowed to suffer the slightest humiliation, even that of remaining stationary in front of these walls. The whole world was expecting to hear that the citadel had fallen. They had to attack. However, most of the advisers were against attacking, especially in present circumstances. If they had a second mishap, their numerical strength could be seriously weakened, and, worse still, another defeat would certainly wreck the morale of the troops. So they were minded to try to devise other means that would lead to the result that had not been obtained by direct onslaught. They reckoned that, for an army, any victory is another jewel in its crown of glory, irrespective of the means used to achieve it.

  The council went on arguing late into the night. Each spoke of all that he knew from long military experience about the means available for seizing a stronghold, from the most valiant to the least noble, not to say despicable. They included movable towers, infection with cholera, a feigned retreat followed by a surprise attack, the taking of hostages, throwing excrement over the ramparts, and a wide range of tricks, one of which would be to dress the akinxhis in Albanian costumes and to have them pretend to attack the Turkish camp.

  Tursun Pasha tried to imagine Kurdisxhi in Skanderbeg’s goat-head helmet, and thought, No!

  Dozens of variations were suggested and each was gone over several times, with
its pros and cons weighed against each of the others. One wounded council member fainted. The doctor was called, and he had the man taken back to his tent. In the end it appeared that the majority was in favour of digging an underground passageway that the architect had proposed right at the start. The Pasha nodded towards him. Giaour stood up in his corner, pulled a sheaf of plans out of his satchel, and came into the middle of the tent. Under the envious gaze of the secret policeman, who eyed him as a beast stares at prey within reach of its claws, Giaour laid out his plans on the kilim and started to explain. Nobody tried to follow what he was saying because they all knew that even if they concentrated as hard as they could they would not be able to understand. The only thing they could get out of the architect’s gibberish was the word “shaft,” which meant “passage,” and for which Giaour also sometimes used the words “hole” or “underground,” and even more often the term “tunnel,” borrowed from the accursed language of the giaours themselves.

  They contented themselves with watching the architect’s waxen hand move over the strange shapes drawn on the paper, amazed once again that something as real, solid and huge as the citadel could be summed up in a few squiggles which represented not only the visible parts of it but also the parts that could not be seen from outside, such as the stairs in the turrets and the foundations. The Muslim religion had made them all aware of the diabolical nature of figurative compositions, but they were nonetheless obliged to rely on them, just as they had believed in the complicated diagrams which had given birth to Saruxha’s monstrous cannon. The architect’s index finger ran this way and that over the plan. He was describing the nature of the earth around the fortress, and explained that although loose soil is much easier to dig, and therefore an advantage, it was also subject to caving in, whereas digging through rock, though much harder to do, produced less risky results. He showed the depth to which the shaft had to be dug at the start, how deep it would then have to dip to get underneath the foundations of the outer wall, how it would then have to split into two to allow an escape if one of the exits got blocked. He finished off by calculating how long it would take to dig such a “tunnel” and the number of soldiers who could pass through it in a given period of time.

  They didn’t understand a great deal of the architect’s talk. They didn’t put much effort into understanding, anyway, since none of them could have suggested any useful amendment to the plan for the underground passageway. They simply stared at the red arrow which started at a spot outside the fortress, then moved on under the foundations like a man trying to wriggle under a door, and ended at a different spot in the cellars and dungeons. A single question could be read in all their eyes: would this sharp-tipped arrow really pierce the belly of the citadel?

  During the architect’s address the Mufti showed his disdain by not turning his head towards the drawings laid out on the kilim. Old Tavxha looked distraught as he gazed at them, thinking sadly that suchlike figures and inscriptions were rapidly taking over the profession of arms, which would very likely lose its holy ardour and gradually turn into a dreary succession of stratagems concocted by mysterious and cunning souls like the accursed architect with his incomprehensible blather. He vaguely foresaw that if the Empire put too much trust in such paperwork, it would slowly wither away, and if its roots ceased to be fed by the combative vitality of men of his kind but drew instead on dry-as-dust, intellectual formulae, it would perish from thirst. Old Tavxha kept his eyes half-closed. His face wound was hurting and he needed to sleep. While the head of the Janissary Corps nursed these thoughts in his weary mind, the Quartermaster General, keeping alternate watch out of the corner of his eye on the Mufti, Tavxha and Kurdisxhi, thought, for his part, that if the Empire wanted to endure, then it had better keep up with the times and gradually move men such as these away from decision-making roles. But perhaps it was they, in fact, who maintained the spirit of war. Maybe he and his kind, for all their knowledge, would achieve nothing without the help of the others’ ignorance. Maybe a learned man and an unschooled one, when they serve the same cause, produce an alloy far stronger than two learned men or two unschooled men, just as bronze is harder than either the copper or the tin from which it is made.

  It was past midnight when the discussion came to an end. Before closing the meeting, the Pasha urged all to maintain the strictest confidentiality. Each would answer with his head, without distinction of rank or role. He rose, and said calmly:

  “If we have not succeeded in taking the fortress by pouncing on it like falcons, we shall now take it from below, like the snake, and will bite it in its sleep.”

  The Quartermaster General felt a shiver run through his entire body.

  Their huge camp has changed its appearance these last several days. It looks more like an enormous fairground than a military camp. We who first saw it cover the earth like a glacier, then keep us from sleeping during its night of orgy, then glower, grow angry and spill forth horror and death on the day of the attack, we do not find it easy to get used to this new state of affairs. We could easily believe that it is not the same army at all, but some other force from another time and another power that has suddenly emerged at our feet, God knows how.

  At first we watched with amusement as regiments marched off to exercises and marched back again to a chorus of orders and songs amid a jolly patchwork of brightly coloured banners and toy-like, hastily built wooden minarets, and as flutes, drums and cymbals played heart-rending tunes while horsemen ran races or competed in equestrian games.

  Quite a few of us were bemused by it all. Some even went so far as to wonder whether the Turks had given up the idea of making war on us. Perhaps they had received an order — a firman, as they call it — from their monarch who lives at the other end of the earth? People began to pray. May they vanish from our sight as speedily as they can!

  In short, after seeing much that was truly unbelievable, we noticed dozens of soldiers going about in flower-patterned robes and feminine adornments bought from the stalls set up in the camp. We thought either we were having a bad dream, or the Turks had truly gone out of their minds. We gathered our men and told them they would do better not to look down on what was happening in the plain. We also pointed out that an army capable of taking on the appearance of a horde of mercenaries, then of an iron monster, and then of a loose woman, must surely be a satanic force such as is rarely seen on earth. God alone knew what shape it would take on tomorrow, whether it would turn into a raging tiger or a dead vixen.

  Many of us recalled the stories of our ancestors about ogres, many-headed dragons, witches with changing faces, about the Evil One and the horrible Horned Man. All those fantastical creatures had some resemblance to this wizard-army that now laughs and now cries, now spits smoke or else grows moody and silent. The noises it makes can’t be trusted. Even less trustworthy is its silence.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The akinxhis were leaving. Their vanguard was already on the march. Thousands of men came out of their tents to watch the departure. Many did so to say farewell to their friends.

  Seated on a short-legged horse, like all of the akinxhis, the chronicler, wrapped in a woollen blanket, cast a forlorn glance at all he saw.

  The colour had quite gone from his cheeks. He had barely slept since the Alaybey had ordered him to accompany the expedition. At first he had hardly believed his ears. At his age! Join the akinxhis! What fault had he committed to warrant being sent to these desolate parts?

  The Alaybey had explained that sending him on the expedition into the hills was not considered a punishment, but, on the contrary, as a favour granted him, so he could become better acquainted with war and describe it more faithfully, et cetera. Fearing he might otherwise be taken for a coward, the chronicler objected that his health was not up to it — his spine couldn’t take it, for sure, but there was also his spleen, which stopped him sleeping. The Alaybey pretended not to hear and went on with his speech, stressing that henceforth history would be written differentl
y, on the battlefield itself and not in the cushioned comfort of the capital, and so forth, and in the end Mevla Çelebi dropped his original intention of complaining about jealous rivals who wished him ill, and finally thanked the Alaybey and his colleagues for the great honour being done to him by this wonderful opportunity to see the famous akinxhis in battle with his own eyes.

  And now that he was there, on horseback, waiting for his unit to fall in, he was picking up snatches of conversation from all around.

  “Who knows how many captives they’ll bring back?”

  “Ullu, don’t forget what I asked you to find for me.”

  “They’ll come back with loads of gorgeous girls for us!”

  “Wait and see.”

  “Why do you say that? A plague on your tongue!”

  “The plague on yours, too! May you lick the earth with it!”

  “Hey, you two over there, will you shut up? Today’s a holiday. Can’t you hear the drums? Come on, lads, get into the swing of it!”

  “I’ll buy one at any price, as long as she’s blonde and a decent size.”

  “Even if she costs six hundred aspers?”

  “Yes, I’ll go up that far.”

  “You arsehole, you let the azabs bugger you.”

  “Shut your face, you venomous snake! Can’t you see how beautiful the world is today?”

  “And where are you going to find money like that?”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll manage.”

  “But in your unit you only get paid two and a half aspers a day. So how are you going to do it?”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “I’ll be surprised.”

  Çelebi was intrigued and turned around to look. The conversation was coming from a generously mustachioed, mounted akinxhi and a sapper standing next to him and leaning on the horse with his hand.

  “Six hundred aspers is beyond your means,” the akinxhi said with deliberation, staring suspiciously at the sapper with his black eyes. “But tell me, would you perchance have been …”