Ismail Kadare - The Siege

That would really be the end of the world. The day God forbade, as people say in our land .

Towards midnight the hullabaloo stopped, and a deathly silence reigned .

Dawn had not quite risen when the East Tower raised the alarm. The sentinels had noticed the gleam of torches and suspicious movements around the cannon. Our men followed instructions and left their posts to gather in the underground shelters. There we prayed with great fervour to Christ and Our Lady right up to the moment when a mortal thunder seemed to shatter heaven and earth alike. Thereupon, an infernal explosion made the ground shake beneath us. Someone yelled: “The new weapon!” Then we heard screams, then the sound of men running who knows where .

The war had begun .

Giaour the architect was pointing his finger at a particular spot on the great plan of the citadel he had laid out on his lap.

“Must strike again wall left side main door hope big breach that side.”

The Pasha turned towards his aide-de-camp with a gesture of irritation. The architect’s way of speaking, which gave him a migraine even in normal times, had become quite unbearable in the noise of cannon fire.

“What he’s saying is that we need to shake the wall to the left of the main gate some more,” the aide-de-camp translated in a low voice. “He hopes a few more direct hits will open a large breach at that point.”

“Bring the engineer back,” the Pasha ordered.

One of his orderlies galloped off.

The Pasha stared sullenly at the castle walls. In many places the parapet had been shattered. There were large cracks in the walls too, but he was not satisfied with them. He had expected more from those cannon. For the tenth time he took the chart from the architect’s hands and pored over the spots marked in red ink. The cannon-balls had in fact come very near to hitting the targets directly. After each explosion the Pasha raised his eyes towards the wall that had been hit in the hope of seeing a gaping hole, which never materialised. It was past noon. The assault should begin in a couple of hours.

He handed the chart back to the architect with a gesture signifying that there was nothing more to say. The suspicion that the architect might have miscalculated merged instantly with the thought that he was maybe in the pay of the giaours , a thought prompted, without any real reason, by the man’s very name. He had in fact already been arrested three times just because of his name, but it seems he was cleared of all charges as unceremoniously as he had been accused, the only difference for him now being that the elaborately constructed imputations of guilt had taken root and become difficult to pull out entirely. Not only had he been declared innocent three times in a row, but after each release from prison his personal standing had risen even higher.

Several members of the war council were standing behind the Pasha and the architect. They said nothing and merely looked in the same direction as their leader.

The engineer came in with his assistant, swearing under his breath. As he came close, everyone noticed that the fringe of his hair was singed. His assistant had a blackish patch between his eyebrows.

“Engineer!” Tursun Pasha said without even turning towards the man. “Where are the breaches we have been waiting for all day?”

“They’re over there!” Saruxha said, waving his arm towards the citadel’s walls.

The Quartermaster, standing behind the commander along with the sanxhakbeys, bit his lip. The Pasha turned his bony face around abruptly.

“I don’t see them.”

Saruxha wiped his brow.

“I fired according to instructions,” he said tartly. “My guns hit the designated spots. We’ve not shut our eyes for four days and four nights. I don’t know what more you expect of me, sire.”

The Pasha looked carefully for a moment at the worn-out faces of the master caster and his number two. He noticed the burned hair on Saruxha’s forehead.

“I expect breaches,” he said in a slightly more accommodating tone.

“You expect them to come from me alone, Pasha. But ask him for them as well,” he replied, pointing to the architect.

Giaour was looking on with complete indifference, as if none of this concerned him at all.

“Must fire again wall left door …” he rattled on in his unwavering voice.

“That’s enough,” the Pasha said. “Sort it out between yourselves. I need the walls breached.”

The Quartermaster took a step forwards.

“Pasha, sire,” he said in a honeyed tone, spying from the corner of his eye the slight quivering of the map that the commander-in-chief had between his fingers, “do not forget that huge breaches were made today by our cannon — in the hearts of those miserable rebels.”

The Pasha sighed deeply. For maybe the hundredth time, his weary eyes scanned the vast plain where his innumerable soldiers were taking up their positions for the assault. Messengers on horseback were darting all over the camp. Here and there the throng made way for rolls of thick rope, ladders, crowbars, defensive screens called testudos, sections of reed fencing, and battering rams. Kara-Mukbil rode up on horseback, passed a message to the Pasha, and rode off again at high speed. Saruxha and his assistant conferred with the architect for a few minutes and then moved off in their turn.

“Why can’t we hear gun number two any more?” the Pasha asked without turning round.

Everyone shrugged. An orderly, standing at the ready, promptly galloped off towards the battery.

Clouds of dust hung over the walls. Not a soul could be seen behind the parapets. According to one of the doctors who specialised in nervous disorders, such a mind-numbing bombardment should have left the defenders suffering from the equivalent of a brain injury. With every blast of the cannon the Pasha hoped to see the white flag of surrender rise through the dust cloud. It was only a faint hope, but he clung to it nonetheless.

The orderly who had gone off to get news from the cannon came back.

“Gun number two missed its target three times in a row. The gunners are trying to find out why,” he said without dismounting.

“The gun must have been possessed by the demon!” the Mufti declared, drawing closer to the Pasha’s shoulder.

By age-old military tradition, that meant that the cannon would have to be fustigated. The Pasha didn’t approve of the practice, but that did not stop him giving the order to apply the appropriate punishment.

The orderly set off once again to deliver the order.

Little time remained before the appointed hour for the storming of the citadel. Without a word to anyone, the Pasha went into his tent to have a short rest.

The Quartermaster General took the opportunity to leave the sanxhakbeys and to go over to the artillery. After only a few steps he came across Çelebi standing at his usual position near the Pasha’s tent, hoping to pick up a detail or two for his chronicle.

“Mevla, let’s go and see what’s up,” he said.

The chronicler was only too happy to fall in behind. The Quartermaster General was worried about his friend Saruxha. He was sure the engineer would rebel against the Pasha’s order, and he had to go and calm him down before it was too late.

“Today is my day off,” the Quartermaster General said. “I was planning to watch the fight. I guess you were, too. It’s your big day, after all. What you would rightly call a ‘historic occasion’!”

The chronicler didn’t know what to say so he just kept a smile on his face as long as he could. He was aware that when he kept his lips in a fixed position his expression turned into a gloomy scowl, but he couldn’t help that.