The Siege

by Ismail Kadare

  Each time he went underground, the fear of never emerging cut through him like a dagger. Despite all the precautions they were now taking (they were barely digging any more, just gently scraping at the soil), they were obsessed by the fear of being located by the enemy. That was the first danger. The second was what awaited them when they came into the open. Those who had the bad luck to be the first to reach the exit were likely to pay for the privilege with their lives. And even if they didn’t suffer a first bloody clash — if they managed to open the tunnel mouth without being seen by the defenders — then they would most likely be trampled to death by the surge of janissaries from behind. Indeed, the moment the mouth was opened, the janissaries were going to pour through the tunnel like a raging torrent, and they would push the harassed and unarmed sappers straight on to the lances of the besieged.

  The nearer they got to the end of the job, the darker the astrologer’s forebodings became. The camp was now drowsy but in the tents that had been pitched right next to the bakery hundreds of elite janissaries were standing by on full alert, armed to the teeth. The last two nights, hundreds of others had been posted inside the tunnel, ready to attack in case the roof collapsed accidentally. They stood stock-still like a row of statues in the dark, with sappers trundling past them as if they were part of the wall. Their presence in the tunnel had made the atmosphere even less breathable. The janissaries did two-hour shifts underground, whereas the sappers often worked until they passed out.

  Everything indicated that the break-out was imminent. The astrologer plodded slowly through the darkness with a sack on his back, behind a former officer who had been punished for climbing back down a ladder during an assault, leaving his men in front of him. By interpreting the position of the stars in the constellation of the Snake (which obviously alluded to the tunnel), in a supreme effort to raise himself out of the mud into which he had been cast, he might try to forecast the most auspicious day for the break-out, accepting that if he failed he would bury himself in the mud for ever. But as he now found himself in the belly of the earth, he needed a few faithful friends to get his voice heard in high places. Çelebi was not among them. Maybe the poet Sadedin might have been his spokesman before he was mutilated, but he was now only a blind poet, and his words could hardly be taken seriously. The powerful Mufti who, by urging him to set the day of the assault, had been his undoing, had likely forgotten his very name.

  The astrologer sighed deeply. There had never been as many janissaries underground as that day. With their backs to the wall they lined the tunnel on both sides, standing three or four paces apart. The glow of the oil-soaked ashes burning in buckets placed at irregular intervals lit their faces with ghoulish effect, as it illuminated only their chins, noses and forehead, and left their eyes and mouths as black shadows.

  He came to the place where the passage dipped down steeply. Above it stood the foundations of the main wall, which they had tried to cross without disturbing them too much. Because this part of the tunnel was deeper underground, the air in this section was even heavier and damper than elsewhere. Then the tunnel climbed back to its previous elevation. The astrologer was now inside the perimeter of the citadel. Every time he came back here his heart slowed down. He hastened to fill his sack so as to get away as fast as he could, as if the fortress was weighing on his shoulders. He could see a knot of men at the face. The afternoon team was being relieved by the night shift. There was a lively discussion going on among them, with some men pointing to the walls, and others at the dripping roof. The astrologer recognised the architect and the Alaybey, talking to Ulug Bey, the captain of the engineering squad. The officer looked worried. The architect kept on raising his hand to make a gesture that looked as if he was drawing a circle over his head. They seemed to be trying to decide where the break-out point would be located.

  The weak light of the torches made the shadows of their heads on the tunnel walls look as if they were shrouded by the kind of halo that the Christians put around the heads of their holy martyrs in their churches.

  They were talking in whispers. The sappers, who had started to get down to work, were also digging noiselessly. They tore out the soil with broad-bladed daggers in complete silence. The astrologer began to fill his sack. It was obvious that the tunnel was not going to go any further. The sappers were currently widening it. That was no doubt in order to create a great crypt beneath the exit so that the largest possible number of janissaries could be assembled for the decisive moment.

  The astrologer finished filling his sack and hoisted it on to his back. As he passed by the group of important people he could hear them talking in low and worried voices. Something was going to happen that night, that was clear. Expectation and anxiety could be felt all around. With his sack over his shoulder, he walked past the long line of soldiers standing against the wall, went down the steep slope and then back up again, until he got to the spot where the use of carts was allowed. As he did every time he got to this place, the astrologer uttered a cry of relief.

  “What’s going on down there?” a haulier asked him. “I reckon it’s break-out tonight.”

  “I think so too,” said the astrologer as he dumped his load in the cart.

  The astrologer then walked off with his empty sack over his shoulder.

  Visibly, the assault was going to be launched that night. When he got back to the cutting face he found the important people still there, still talking in whispers, and making the shape of a circle with their hands above their heads every now and again. Their presence gave him a feeling of security and confidence. They weren’t as outcast as they had seemed, after all, since such elevated personages had come down there to be with them on this decisive night.

  The astrologer was lugging his second sack of earth when two sappers came the other way carrying a short, wide ladder.

  “It’s the second one down,” the haulier said when they met again.

  “Is everything ready at the other end as well?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t been out yet.”

  When the astrologer got back to the face, the architect, the Alaybey and two unidentified officers were starting on the long walk back to the entrance. The feeling of safety that their presence had given the earth scratchers and sack carriers gave way to a sensation of emptiness and fear. But Ulug Bey, his deputy and a janissary officer had stayed behind at the tunnel face. The officer stood at a distance with his eyes glued to what was going on at the face. The sappers hadn’t really been aware of him when the other VIPs had been around. Only now did they take note of this silent and immobile silhouette that had apparently emerged from the darkness. He seemed to be the man who would be in command of the break-out.

  The sappers quickly expanded the area. The friable soil was easy to scoop. Like the other porters, the astrologer was drenched in sweat. On one side a low cavity was quickly excavated where more men huddled, as close-packed as figures in a bas-relief. The sappers were now clawing at the facing wall, so as to allow yet more men to be accommodated. The soldiers were petrified as they looked at the short ladders that would soon be the route to their fates.

  No one knew exactly what time it was. All they knew was that up there, on earth, it was dark. Now and again Ulug Bey cast an anxious glance into the murky depth of the tunnel. He was waiting for the courier who was to bring the order for breaking out. He was late. Or maybe that was only the impression they all got from being underground.

  Their senses were dulled, and even the flickering light from the torches seemed drowsy. But suddenly, they felt a shock, as if the entire earth had woken up with a start, and then they heard a roll of thunder. Everyone went rigid. One torch went out, another fell over. The muffled roar of a rockfall could be heard from somewhere near the middle of the tunnel.

  They all kept on staring in that direction until the noise died away.

  Ulug Bey and his deputy rushed towards the collapse. All the others — soldiers, sappers, porters — suddenly came to life as
if they had been released from a spell. Someone yelled: “We’re done for!” Another shouted out: “It’s an earthquake!” A couple of men wanted to run after the captain of the engineers, but the janissary officer, who up to then had been as still as a mummy, abruptly drew his sabre and cried out:

  “Silence! No one moves!”

  They obeyed the command.

  In the ensuing silence they could now hear quite clearly the sound of Ulug Bey’s and his deputy’s footsteps as they faded into the distance. Then that sound too disappeared. Other noises came into earshot, as if they were coming nearer, then moving further off, then staying still. A sapper came running from the other branch of the tunnel.

  “Halt!” the officer shouted. “Who goes there?”

  “Sapir, sir. What has happened?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough,” the officer said.

  “Allah! What has befallen us?”

  “Silence!” the officer ordered. “Light the torches.”

  “Someone’s coming.”

  They all pricked up their ears. The men could hear steps, but they were rather slow in coming.

  “So what happened?”

  Ulug Bey and his deputy were grey in the face and covered in cold sweat.

  “We are lost!”

  “Oh!”

  “Silence!” the officer ordered. “What’s up?”

  “Tunnel collapse,” Ulug Bey said flatly.

  “They did it?” the officer asked, pointing his finger upwards.

  “Yes, it was them.”

  “So they really got us!”

  “They’ve buried us alive!”

  “Silence!” the officer repeated, then turned to Ulug Bey and asked: “What can we do in a case like this?”

  “Nothing,” the engineers’ captain replied.

  “Nothing,” one of his deputies confirmed.

  The word echoed gloomily all around the tunnel. “No-o-o-thi-i-ing”.

  “Is there no way of cutting a shaft to let us out of here?”

  “No, they’re watching every move we make.”

  “Maybe the earth caved in under its own weight?”

  “No. Can’t you smell the gunpowder?”

  “So all that’s left for us to do is to die,” the officer said in a composed tone, to no one in particular. “Allah chose this way for us to die, and we have to accept his will.”

  Some began to pray, but most of them started to wail.

  The astrologer squatted on his haunches and put his head in his hands. In his mind he had already taken leave of this world.

  “What if we surrendered?” somebody asked querulously.

  “Be quiet, you wretch!” the officer said, putting his hand to his scabbard.

  “So who thinks he can give orders? I’m in command down here.”

  “And I am in command of my men,” the officer riposted.

  “The only person to give orders down here is me!” Ulug Bey repeated.

  “So you want to surrender as well, do you?”

  “No,” the captain answered. “What I want is for nobody else to issue orders where giving orders is my business.”

  “If we surrender, it will only be worse,” the officer insisted. “They’ll slaughter us like lambs.”

  “You never know,” someone muttered.

  “Silence!” the officer yelled. “They’ll tear us limb from limb to avenge the slaughter perpetrated by the akinxhis.”

  Each syllable echoed around the group: limb … from … limb.

  The astrologer leaned his back against a hump in the ground. He looked up to the roof of the tunnel which, in the crimson glow of the ash lights, looked like an upturned canal. So this is where you can now look at the stars, he thought to himself. Your Imperial Observatory, as the giaours call it, the institution he’d always dreamed of running … Blackish water dripped from its cupola. His befuddled mind could just about manage to gather a handful of loosely connected thoughts. He was aghast at the sad fate that had led him to end his days underground beneath a foreign fortress. Another thought took him back more or less to the stars which throughout his life had perhaps been closer to him than men, which had been his friends and partners in squabbles and reconciliations, and which now, as death approached, he would never see again. In their place he saw nothing but blackish earth with water dripping, dripping, dripping down.

  Many minutes passed as the astrologer turned these thoughts around in his head. Then came another, even longer, phase. The big torches went out one by one. Then the lanterns also expired. And finally the oil and ash buckets ceased giving off their flickering light. Now and again they seemed to burst into life again, casting irregular flashes of bluish light all around, but then even that half-life fell away. Their last bursts lit faces marked by horror and exhaustion, with asymmetric features — eyes, noses and chins — on the verge of liquefaction, of melting like wax. They had all reached the threshold of eternal night.

  Prayers and moans once again broke the long silence. Now and again a short scream or a hiccup rang out but was soon muffled by sobs. The astrologer imagined someone was crawling towards him. He suddenly felt hot breath on his cheek. “Do you want me to tell you the story of my life?” the supplicant asked in a whisper. The astrologer did not answer. “Yes, yes, I’m going to tell you the story of my life,” the unknown speaker went on, and began to talk in an even, uninflected tone of a ladder whose rungs he went on climbing, on and on. The astrologer tried to move his ear away from the man, but the unseen speaker found where he had shifted every time. “May your tongue shrivel!” the astrologer said, using a traditional curse from his own language. Then, so as to stop thinking about the accursed speaker, he began thinking about forms of cursing in general. Most had to do with shadows and with earth: “May you smell of earth!” Or else: “May you be without your shadow!” But they had already lost their shadows without being cursed … For the first time in his life, he understood the deep meaning of the expression. I have no shadow, he thought, therefore I am dead.

  “I am the alternate,” a voice uttered somewhere close by. The astrologer then became aware of a struggle between two beings who were apparently trying to obtain sole access to his left ear. “What’s an alternate?” one of them asked. “A body double,” the other explained. “A man who for security reasons can take the place of Tursun Pasha.” “Take the place of the Pasha? Where? When?” “Whenever it turns out to be necessary. Mostly during assaults, but also on other occasions, at meetings, for instance … Yes, but he didn’t want to be replaced, and they shoved me down here.” “Who did?” “They did … It seems the Pasha got suspicious, but they did too … and then so did I … One day, they said, you could be useful to us, but for the time being you must not be seen. They shaved off my goatee beard so I would not look like him, and threw me down here …”

  “So you were his shadow?” the astrologer exclaimed. “That’s why you were cursing so excitedly just now …”

  “He didn’t want me,” the man said, “and that’s why I’m moulding away in this grave. There are a lot of undesirables down here, that’s to say, men who have been sentenced. Hundreds of others are under surveillance. Yet others are under interrogation. Not to mention torture …”

  “Have you lost your senses?” the astrologer asked. “Where are all these people?”

  “All over,” the man replied. “Half of the field hospital is under Kapduk Agha’s command. Many of the doctors are actually prosecutors. Behind the foundry workshop, on the waste land over there … there’s a reign of terror. As for spies, they’re all over the place, there are even some down here in this hole … I always keep on moving to cover my tracks. So I’m off …”

  Yes, you can scamper away as fast as you like! the astrologer thought. But the double’s voice was instantly replaced by that of a few moments before, the man with the ladder. The astrologer strove and strained to escape the voice, but it was no good. Eat me up! he moaned inwardly. Finish me off …!
The man spoke smoothly, as if to excuse his own persistence …

  “The first time I thought of turning back, I was on the fourth rung,” he was saying. “But I banished the thought and carried on climbing. At the seventh rung, a dead man slid down and landed beside me. At the eighth rung the wish to go back down attacked me once more with even greater force, but still I managed to repel it by thinking of what my soldiers would say about me. At the tenth rung I looked up and saw the scrimmage on the parapet. It was a dreadful sight. I looked around. My men were coming up behind me. They would have to make way to let me go down. So I went on up. At the eleventh rung I smelled burning flesh right under my nose. The nape of the man ahead of me was on fire. At the twelfth rung I reckoned that in such mayhem nobody would notice if I got lost. I pivoted round to the inside of the ladder, and hung on to the rung with my hands alone. With one hand I grasped the eleventh rung, and then swung in to grab the tenth with the other hand. I was on my way down. At the ninth rung my fingers were crushed by the feet of a soldier climbing up. At the eighth rung they were damaged even more. So I let go and fell on to the pack of men huddling at the foot of the wall. I thought no one had seen me. I was wrong. Every move I made had been watched. Nothing was missed. Later on it was all reported back to me, down to the last detail. To be honest, the idea of giving up came to me as soon as I had got on to the second rung. More precisely, by the seventh rung I had decided to climb down, but hadn’t yet worked out how to do so. On the eleventh rung I thought of pretending to be dead and letting myself drop, but the height scared me. That was when I smelled burning flesh … Aren’t you listening to me? Are you crying? Look, I would have told you the story of my life in any case. But I’d still like to add a few more details. Listen to me, but if you find it all too wearisome, I won’t be offended …”