Wu Ming - Altai

Then, suddenly as it had begun, the battle ceased.

It must have been about one o’clock in the afternoon; the sun was high, more than halfway through its course, and the heat was suffocating. Breathing burned the lungs. The sudden silence, after hours of hubbub and shouting, hurt the ears.

Lala Mustafa was vexed. His plans for lunch had been thwarted. “In a few hours we will resume the attack,” he said to us. “If you wish, you can still be my valued guests at the shacks on the Mount of Jews.” He pointed to the first hill below the fortress and took his leave. I stood gazing, unable to take my eyes off the vision of the apocalypse.

At last we came down from the tower, escorted by our janissaries, and we asked them to accompany us to the Beach of Gardens, across the battlefield.

My eyes met those of a soldier who was yelling at his fellows, his right hand stretching upward, clutching a scimitar. I knew that veil in his eyes. Hashish. Intoxicating cannabis resin, the sublime ingredient of the sweets I had eaten with Dana.

I knew that warlike rage needed to be helped, sustained, induced. Behind the lines, if you act like a coward, punishment awaits you. In the front, the defenders rake the enemy and death is almost certain. I wondered what Bragadin was doing to lift the mood of his soldiers. The supplies of wine in there must have been endless.

We passed by the point where, until a few hours previously, the thin outline of the Ravelin had still stood. The Turks had filled the moat with earth and with the corpses of their own comrades. The unburied dead numbered in the thousands. Some of them had lost their lives a few hours before; others had been dead for days. The stench of putrefaction was unbearable.

I could hear a faint buzz, getting louder. I didn’t know what its source was, nor from what direction it was coming. Then I realized that it was climbing from the moat, just fifty yards away from us. Flies. A black whirlwind spinning over the corpses. The pestilential stink reached us with a terrible intensity.

I felt a desperate urge to vomit. Ismail took me by the arm and dragged me away, far from the stench of death. He fixed his gray eyes on me.

“Have you seen enough now?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to do. I started breathing again; I tried to stand firmly on my feet and turned around once more. Ali was a few feet behind us. He advanced through the carnage as if nothing were happening, as if he were untouched by events. Before he caught up with us, he knelt to close the eyes of a corpse.

I asked him what the point of that gesture was, in a hell like this.

He replied that it had a point to him, and that should be enough.

We’d hardly reached the beach when cannons, arquebuses and human throats started roaring again. Lala Mustafa must have finished his lunch, albeit not where he had expected, and the assault began afresh.

We spent the rest of the day on the ship, without saying a word, listening to the noises of battle. At sunset, when the attack was over and the plain rang only with the wails of the wounded, a sudden explosion brought down the tower of the arsenal. The Turks must have detonated a mine below the walls. The rampart split in two, leaving an abyss. The southern walls were now broken at several points, and the city’s hours were numbered.

I couldn’t shake off that nauseating smell: Every pore of my skin was filled with it. I went down to the beach to swim in the sea, hoping that the saltwater might erase it. However much I rubbed myself with water and sand, it kept coming back.

Later, under the stars, I saw Ismail walking on the quarterdeck and exchanging a few words with the commander before he lay down.

I touched Ali, who was lying beside me, on the shoulder, and noticed that he too was awake. I didn’t need to say anything to him.

“He’s seen it all before,” the Arab murmured. “Tonight he hates himself for being forced to live through it again.”

“If he knew what we were going to find here, why did he agree to come?”

“Because he refuses to surrender. Even now, there’s a struggle going on inside him. The same one that has inspired him all his life. I hope he finds peace one day.”

I looked at the old man’s dark silhouette, then got up and joined him, as I had done on the White Sea, when we went to enlist Mimi Reis. The mood couldn’t be the same; the images of the day just past were still vivid, indelibly fixed in the mind.

Ismail’s grim appearance would have dissuaded anyone from addressing him, but I did so anyway. “What will happen now?”

He didn’t answer straight away, busy as he was studying the massive bulk of the dying fortress. Then he said, “Lala will give them time to decide. Whether to obey their pride or save those who can still be saved.”

“Bragadin can’t be as insane as that,” I said. “He must know by now that neither God nor the Christian fleet will save him.”

I was trying to convince myself.

Ismail stared at the stars. “It’s not over yet.”

The next day Lala Mustafa ordered a few half-hearted assaults, to wear out the last forces of the defenders, then suspended hostilities and waited. One more dawn and sunset, and then, on the ninth day of the month of Rabi’ al-Awwal, a white flag appeared on the shattered walls.

I greeted it with relief and thought that Ismail might have been wrong, that the war was finally coming to an end. Fate had brought us there at exactly the right time.

Information started coming in quickly. To guarantee respect for the truce, Lala Mustafa established an exchange of hostages. Negotiations over treaties of surrender were under way.

We passed another day on the ship, at the mercy of the heat and our impatience. At last the conditions of the capitulation were made known. All the Italians were free to leave for Candia with their families and their belongings. The same applied to those Greeks who wished to leave. The Turks would put the necessary ships at their disposal, if the last three Venetian galleys weren’t enough. On the other hand, those who had decided to stay wouldn’t be subjected to reprisals or similar vexations. The Venetians had asked to take away their artillery and Lala Mustafa had met this condition with a denial. He granted the conquered men permission to have only five cannons of their choice. Finally, he ordered the evacuation of the fortress by the fifth of the Christian month of August.

I told Ismail that in my opinion it was a good agreement: it preserved the honor of the vanquished and permitted them a safe way out. The old man didn’t reply, but went on thoughtfully staring at the defeated fortress, and I wondered whether he had noticed the anxiety in my voice.

From our mooring place, in the Beach of Gardens, we couldn’t see the embarkation of the surviving population, which took place on the following day. The chain that closed the port was withdrawn, and the Ottoman ships entered the roads. That same evening, around a bonfire, a Turkish sailor told us of the exodus that he had witnessed. As far as he could tell, there were still a lot of “useless mouths” in the city, people who hadn’t wanted to leave at the beginning of the year, unable to put their whole life behind them. A column of men, women and children, laden with bundles and goods and chattels, had embarked on the vessel. They would spend the night there, waiting to weigh anchor.

The next day, what remained of the garrison had to board the ship as well. Operations proceeded slowly, beneath a ruthless sun. The Turks carried water and food to the refugees, but their presence filled the air with a gloomy tension.

The worst moment seemed to be imminent when a gang of looters tried to slip into the city to set about sacking it. The Venetians took up arms, but it was the janissaries who reestablished order. I blessed the wisdom and the firm hand of Lala Mustafa.