The Siege

by Ismail Kadare

  A viper and scorpion rolled into one! Tursun Pasha muttered silently between clenched teeth. The Mufti must have known that he was no longer at the peak of his favour at the Sublime Porte. That’s how he can dare to flout my authority. But there was one thing the religious head did not know: if the commander-in-chief scored a victory, all the Muftis and imams of the entire Empire would be toothless against him. On the other hand the Pasha was well aware that if he was routed, he could be knocked over by an ant.

  Vermin! he sputtered silently once again. He wished he could heap on the Mufti’s head all the insults that Saruxha had thrown at Tavxha a few days previously and that Kapduk Agha had told him about in a private report. But as he was not in the habit of using vulgar language he couldn’t remember the words. “You piece of trash!” Saruxha had once said, on another occasion, “I’ll pull off your beard and wipe my arse on it!”

  Even before he opened his mouth to respond, all present had grasped that he considered himself to have the upper hand, and that was enough for most of them to take his side.

  “I have heard what you said, O Mufti,” he said, speaking each word separately. “I have heard you speaking ill of our glorious soldiers and officers in action. Now it is your turn to listen to me. Captive women are allowed, artistic performers from the capital are allowed, the Koran will be read neither more nor less than at present, and soldiers, when off duty, are allowed, as I am, to amuse themselves as they see fit. And if you don’t like it, you can get out. Right now, if you want!”

  Tahanka made a noise that seemed to come from a severed neck. While the outcome of the conflict remained uncertain, the gargle, by the fact that its meaning was impenetrable, aroused the envy of all present. Anyway, they all knew that Tahanka’s contributions to their debates were written up by the scribe as “Sounds from Tahanka”. Moreover there was every likelihood he would take the Pasha’s side, since the latter had come to the defence of Tahanka’s eshkinxhis.

  “Pasha, sire, weigh your words carefully!” the Mufti shouted without rising from his seat. “It was not you who appointed me to the post that I hold.”

  “But I am he who is in command here,” Tursun Pasha threw back at him. “And from this moment I strip you of the right to speak.”

  The ensuing silence seemed charged with new meaning, such that the piercing screech of the scribe’s quill seemed the most appropriate way of recording the ban on the Mufti opening his mouth.

  “Now let me warn you all. Any rebellion, from whatever quarter, including any of you, will be dealt with by putting the instigator in irons. And I shall answer to the Sultan himself for all such actions.”

  The Quartermaster General requested the floor.

  “After all that we have just heard, we should assume that a state of emergency has been declared.”

  “Yes,” the Pasha said. “That is precisely what has happened.”

  “Then I understood you correctly, sire,” the Quartermaster said before sitting down.

  “You may now discuss the doctor’s report,” the commanderin-chief resumed. “Keep it short.”

  With the obvious intention of clearing the air, the Alaybey addressed Sirri Selim in a completely relaxed tone of voice, as if nothing had happened, and asked him how many days it would take for the epidemic to break out.

  “At the second siege of Aleppo,” the doctor answered, “the epidemic began fifteen days after the infected animals had been introduced. But we should not forget that only dead rats were used at Aleppo. Live animals move around and spread the disease faster.”

  “Do we not need authority from the high command to use this technique?” Saruxha enquired. As two or three voices could be heard muttering, “What does he mean to say?” he continued in a sharper tone:

  “I don’t see why my question should surprise anyone. The permission of the high command is required for the use of any new weapon. I know dead rats are allowed, but I’m not sure the same is true of live animals.”

  “Previously, the use of live animals was forbidden for safety reasons,” the doctor replied. “But the Grand Vizier sent us authorisation three months ago.”

  “Were there any conditions?” Saruxha asked.

  All present followed this exchange with interest. It was the first time that experts had had a row of this kind.

  “Yes, there are conditions,” the doctor answered. “We are not allowed to use catapults to get them inside the fortress, in case the animal cages burst in mid-flight.”

  Sirri Selim then laid out the paradox that confronted them. If the cages were strong enough to stay in one piece during flight, they would not be weak enough to shatter once they landed. On the other hand, if they were designed to break open on impact, then they might … That was why they planned to have soldiers carry them up the walls and tip them over the ramparts.

  “Have you thought about the soldiers?” Kara-Mukbil interrupted.

  “Of course I have,” the doctor said. “They will be equipped with leather gloves and hoods.”

  “Like executioners,” somebody observed.

  “Like executioners, or like ghosts.”

  “Hangmen or ghosts, what does it matter?” the medic riposted. “What matters is for them to have protection from bites when they open the cages.”

  Still suffering from the high tension of the earlier exchanges, they were all relieved by this relatively normal interlude. Even the commander-in-chief seemed to appreciate the respite.

  “Anyway, it’s a better idea than using catapults,” Old Tavxha broke in. “I remember that at the first siege of Szemendre we spent a week flinging rats, dogs and even dead donkeys into the fortress. Then they took to catapulting the corpses of prisoners, and the minders of the machine got so carried away that they started hurling vats of waste water, night soil, and god knows what else over the walls. Sure, the defenders caught diseases and finally surrendered, but what was the point? The stink was so sickening that our soldiers wouldn’t go into the place once it was ours. The risk of infection cooled their ardour! So there was no booty, no captives were taken, and the victory was a miserable one. I think I’m right in saying that it’s since that occasion that we’ve not been allowed to catapult filth. But as for live animals, that’s a different question. I’m not against it.”

  Then each spoke to give his opinion, and after that, they all felt easier. Only the Mufti remained in the doghouse. It was clear that the resumption of normal conversation had made him angrier still and increased his isolation.

  With the exception of Saruxha, who voted against for reasons that nobody understood, there was unanimous approval for the doctor’s plan.

  Finally the Pasha himself took the floor. He spoke slowly, for longer than usual, in a voice that was going hoarse from the cold he had caught. He decided that they would try to contaminate the besieged by means of infected animals, along the lines proposed by Sirri Selim. The doctor blushed with pleasure down to the nape of his neck. The attack would be resumed, and they would make repeated assaults to stop the enemy even catching his breath.

  “We’re here to take the castle, not to think deep thoughts,” he said. “The assaults will be daily, or almost, and no account will be taken of losses or obstacles.” He said that with deep conviction, because he knew from experience that only uninterrupted attacks, leaving soldiers no time to think, and barely enough latitude to save their own skins, were the best cure for war-weariness. Then he added, stressing each word individually, that he expected them all to put extra effort into preparing troops for combat. Also, and this was the essential point, he wanted them all to take part in the fighting themselves. Then he stared at each of them harshly in turn, as if to select those who should not be there at the meeting, reclining on the long stack of cushions, but ought instead to be lying six foot under, or at least on their beds, brought down, like Kurdisxhi, by battle wounds. In the ensuing silence the scratchy quill of the scribe felt like the fine point of a dagger scoring their skins. They realised that the c
ommander was getting tenser by the day and that you could no longer tell what a man so overwrought was going to do. Lastly, Tursun Pasha ordered them all to treat the plan to contaminate the enemy as top secret, so that the soldiers handling the animals remained unaware of the nature of their charges. That was absolutely necessary if they were to avoid an outbreak of panic over plague.

  The meeting came to an end. As the commander-in-chief had suggested, the Alaybey, Kara-Mukbil and the Quartermaster General accompanied Sirri Selim to the pavilion where the doctor kept his sick animals. On the way they encountered soldiers flocking to the central square where the flagellation of the astrologer was due to be held.

  The trial of the spell-caster which had been taking place a little further on under a canopy had been going on for so long as to have stopped interesting anyone. People were waiting only for the sentence to be carried out — specifically, the amputation of both the man’s hands, or, in the most favourable case, of the hand that had made the fatal error in the act of casting the spell.

  The place where the doctor kept his infected animals — “Death Row,” as he called it — was on the same hillock as the cannon foundry, behind a waste tip piled high with ash and other unusable material from the foundry. It looked just as sinister as the workshop, and was enclosed by the same kind of plank fence with a sign forbidding entry, but unlike the foundry there was a second enclosure behind the fence supporting a canopy that sheltered the whole area.

  The guard attached to Sirri Selim took out a key and opened the gate in the fence, while the lord of this strange manor called out to all and sundry, “Welcome to Death Row!”

  “Here is my kingdom,” Sirri Selim continued with a smile and waved his long arms at the lines of hutches, some of them double height, that ran the whole length of the enclosure. Inside them creatures shivered and mewled, or else lay lifeless on the floor. “Have no fear! There’s no risk of contagion for the time being.”

  He told them that at all the sieges he had taken part in as army doctor he had the habit of setting up these kinds of cages and of collecting various animals on which he tried out the effects of various drugs and microbes.

  Kara-Mukbil looked with disdain at the small cages mostly containing rats. But there were others with small dogs, cats, rabbits and some grey beasts he hadn’t seen before, as well as hedgehogs, grasshoppers and even, in a water-filled urn at the bottom of one of the cages, frogs. The Alaybey listened with all seriousness to the doctor’s explanations, whereas the Quartermaster General seemed to have his mind on something else.

  “The use of sick animals in warfare is not a new idea,” Sirri Selim declared. “The Carthaginians, in ancient times, the Christian armies in later centuries, and more recently the Mongols all knew how helpful they could be. But the practice is not as widespread as it should be. Previously, cadavers were projected by catapult into besieged fortresses, but the use of live animals now looks set to become the norm.”

  Aware of Kara-Mukbil’s look of disdain, he went on: “Some people may possibly find the tactic unworthy of a glorious army like ours, but that can’t be helped. Sometimes the principle of contagion can be more effective than sword or cannon.”

  Kara-Mukbil said nothing. He carried on looking at the rat cages with distaste.

  “Just look at this green grasshopper over here,” the doctor said, pointing to one of the cages. “It’s a little gem, if you know how to appreciate it. Local people call it ‘the witches’ horse’, and not without reason, it seems. It can lay waste to whole fields of crops, but if it is infected, it can be ten times more damaging. The Devil’s own horse!”

  The Alaybey looked carefully at each one of the cages and then asked the doctor a series of questions. Sirri Selim provided all the clarifications he sought, ranging from details of the various diseases with which the animals were infected to the means of getting them into the fortress. He said that he would leave the sick animals without food or water for several days and then, just prior to the attack, place them in wicker hampers that the soldiers would strap to their backs for the climb up the walls. When the attackers got to breaches in the wall or to the battlements at the top, they would slash the cane with their knives and let the animals escape. In the mayhem of combat the defenders would not easily notice the trick, and anyway, even if they did, they would not be able to track the animals, especially the parched and famished rats, who would scurry straight off towards the food stores or to the water well.

  Sirri Selim gave many other details about the extraordinary ability of rats to spread disease and the great future that lay in store for this new instrument of war.

  They were about to leave the compound when Sirri Selim got excited all of a sudden, and, gesturing towards the ramparts, proclaimed solemnly:

  “These people, who are said to have been born of eagles, will probably die of a rat.”

  He had honed that sentence for months, intending to come out with it at the meeting of the war council, but he hadn’t had the opportunity.

  The Quartermaster General easily guessed that the doctor was well acquainted with Mevla Çelebi.

  Sirri Selim walked back with them for a while, then they all took their leave and went their separate ways to their own tents. The Quartermaster General saw the chronicler walking in the opposite direction, which confirmed his intuition about the relationship between him and the medical man.

  “Are you off to see Sirri?” he asked.

  Çelebi thought he detected a touch of irony in his friend’s voice.

  “Yes, I am,” he replied. Under his breath he muttered: “May my legs shrivel up on the spot!”

  “I’ve just been there,” the Quartermaster went on. “Walk with me a while. I’m bored.”

  The chronicler furrowed his brow. “You aren’t ill, are you?”

  “No, thank you,” the Quartermaster said, smiling gently. “I was at Sirri’s for a quite different reason. How’s your chronicle going?”

  It was Çelebi’s turn to smile. “Quite well.”

  The pathways they took were full of soldiers returning from training or else from the spectacle of the astrologer’s punishment. They made way for the Quartermaster. Many men were lying flat on the ground beside their tents.

  “They’re stressed,” the Quartermaster said. “The last attack drained them.”

  “They must be at their wits’ end over there, too,” Çelebi said, gesturing towards the apparently deserted castle wall, now pockmarked with breaches and draped with streaks of pitch that reached down almost as far as the ground.

  The Quartermaster did not answer.

  “They say their pupils have gone dark from peering day and night from the battlements at all the paths along which help might come,” Çelebi said.

  The Quartermaster seemed to be thinking about something else.

  “Look, here comes our blind poet,” he said sarcastically as he pointed at Sadedin. “Isn’t he another one of your friends?”

  This time Çelebi said nothing.

  Sadedin was on his own, tapping the ground with his cane. In any other circumstance the chronicler would have been sorry for his unfortunate friend, but on this occasion he felt as if the man had appeared on purpose in order to discredit him, and he felt cross. Other officers hailed the poet as he passed. And as the blind man turned round to return the greetings, the Quartermaster slackened his pace so as to hear what the poet was going to say.

  “What is there to see in the world?” Sadedin cried out in a rough voice as he turned his empty sockets towards them. “If I still had my eyes, I would pluck them out so as not to see such shame.”

  Seeing the Quartermaster General, the officers bowed obsequiously, wishing they had not prompted the poet. But it was too late now.

  “May the bread of the Padishah choke you!”

  Sadedin turned his empty eyes all around, apparently astonished at the sudden lack of response.

  “What is there to see in the world?” he boomed again. “An orphana
ge for fallen stars and nothing else!”

  He turned around and walked back, tapping the ground with his cane as if he was afraid of an abyss opening up before him at every step.

  The officers stood still and silent. The Quartermaster didn’t so much as glance at them as he walked on his way with the chronicler at his side.

  “It’s hot,” he said. “It would be nice to be at the seaside.”

  “Apparently the coast is not far from here.”

  “Yes, there’s a very beautiful sea quite near, though it has a complicated name.”

  “Ka-dri-a-tik,” Çelebi spelled out. “I think that’s what it’s called.”

  The Quartermaster burst out laughing.

  “At least you managed not to say ‘Ka-dri-bey’! Now listen carefully: A-dri-a-tic, the Adriatic …”

  Çelebi was mortified.

  “Yes, it really would be lovely to be at the seaside right now,” the Quartermaster went on. “They say the Padishah has gone to take a rest at Magnesia, in Anatolia.”

  Çelebi didn’t know what to say. His friend was talking quite casually about people and things he wouldn’t have dared let himself think about.

  “Apparently he’s spending his time on religious questions, on important points of doctrine.”

  “May Allah give him long life,” Çelebi said, regretting having used up the only phrase he had in store for circumstances of this kind.

  He cheered up when he saw the Quartermaster’s great tent not too far off. He was hoping that once they had got there his friend, feeling on home ground as it were, would drop his ironical tone, which he found disturbing.

  “Sit down,” the Quartermaster said once they were inside. “Now I’ll tell you a secret.”

  He revealed to the chronicler that diseased animals were going to be released in the castle during the next assault. Çelebi listened in astonishment, but he also felt reassured that he was once again being treated as trustworthy. In spite of himself he recalled the treacherous words of people he would gladly trample to death like snakes. So now their war-hardened lions and tigers were going to rise up against the citadel accompanied by fleas, grasshoppers, toads and rats … Ah, you mangy dog, he said to himself, don’t complain if you’re subjected to torture afterwards!