Ismail Kadare - The Siege

When their bugles sounded the retreat we kneeled and gave thanks to God and to the good fairies who had rescued us. Only then did we notice that the church was half-ruined and that the cross on the steeple had fallen off, as if it had sacrificed itself for us. Despite everything, in the midst of ruins, scorched and bloodied as we were, we sang a “ Te Deum” and prayed for the salvation of the fallen .

Night has now come and those who are nearer to heaven than earth are making confession and taking communion. As we have not enough space to bury them we shall incinerate their bodies tomorrow and will keep their ashes in urns, in accordance with ancestral tradition .

Prince George sends us messages by means of beacons lit on the mountain-tops, but we can only see them dimly through the mist and clouds. Despite everything, we are different this evening from what we were in the morning and for us many things have changed for ever. We answered steel with steel, horror with horror, death with death. Often rivers of their blood fell on to our faces, just as we also rained blood down upon the enemy. Many events that can never be told or put into words have taken place, especially involving the soldiers of death who, in a blind fury, knowing that they could not return alive, fought with the savagery of wolves, but fell to our blades in the end .

Now their camp is shrouded in silence and darkness. All we can hear is the creaking of their tumbrels coming right up into our courtyard to collect their dead and wounded. The first cart flew a white flag, but we would not have attacked even if the sign had been absent: it is to our advantage to have the bodies taken away so that their miasma does not suffocate us and so that the wheeling crows stop driving us mad. Tomorrow we will perhaps make an exchange of the dead — those of our men who fell at the foot of the rampart against theirs who died at the top. But tomorrow is another day. Today is still night, and the silence of the dark is broken only by the groaning of dying men who lie all around and by the sound of burned-out ladders collapsing to the ground .

When the Pasha left, the group of sanxhakbeys who had stood in line behind him throughout the assault broke up. The Quartermaster General and Çelebi found themselves alone. It was quite dark. The citadel could barely be made out. As soon as the bugles had sounded the retreat and no more pitch or flaming oil fell from the parapet, the fortress was swallowed up by the night as if by a magic spell. The shouting and hubbub of the fight gave way to a muted hum that sounded like giants mumbling. A huge beast with a thousand legs and arms seemed to be rubbing itself without interruption on the ground.

The Quartermaster General gave a deep sigh.

“Let’s get going, Mevla!”

The chronicler followed him without saying a word. They took the main path through the centre of the camp. The Quartermaster General’s orderly trotted behind them like a shadow. The camp was dark and quiet, and most of the tents were still empty.

They wandered for a while with no particular aim in mind. Now and again the chronicler heard the sound of voices giving orders, sending men to this place or that. Two mounted heralds passed by. Many carts moved about on creaky axles, and from further off came the beat of marching boots — hundreds of boots.

What’s happening? Mevla Çelebi wondered. Who is giving the orders? Is it not all over?

A messenger went past in a rush of wind. Further on they heard the clap of galloping hooves, then anxious voices shouting orders. The chronicler’s consternation subsided as a strange new feeling encroached upon it — that of admiration tinged with sorrow for his country’s power. The commands and the ordered movements in the night demonstrated that even in this dark hour there were men in control of the situation, men in command.

A noise of wheels came nearer. All the chariots carried little torches fixed to the rear. Hundreds of them filed past, each with a flickering light that ravaged the heart.

A detachment of foot-soldiers followed behind. Çelebi noticed with surprise that they weren’t carrying lances, as he had initially thought, but spades and picks.

“Sappers,” the Quartermaster General said. “They’re going to dig the graves to bury the dead.”

“Will they be buried this night?”

“Looks like that’s what’s been ordered. In these circumstances burial is immediate, even at night.”

Soon after, another detachment of sappers went by.

“How many do you think we have lost?” the chronicler asked timidly.

The Quartermaster General was deep in thought and didn’t answer straight away. He was thinking that the two or three next days would, as usual, be days of cheating, false accounting and other kinds of fraud. Every day the deaths of thousands of wounded would change the total size of the army. In the general confusion and distress, nobody would remember the exact date of the death of each soldier, so that in the coming days the captains would collude with their units’ quartermasters to produce fictional musters with such cleverness that even the great Ali Ibn Sin would never be able to get to the bottom of it.

“What were you saying?”

“How many do you think we have lost?”

The Quartermaster General pondered.

“To judge by the violence of the attack and its duration,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he was talking about a quantity of money, “I think this business must have taken around three or four thousand men.”

Another unit of sappers went by.

“We’ll get a precise report tomorrow,” the Quartermaster General added. Then, after a pause, he went on: “The only thing that’s sure this evening is that we have suffered a major defeat.”

The army had returned to camp. Paths, tents and pavilions slowly filled with its heavy, weary breath and with the dreary sound of thousands of trudging feet and countless groans. The two observers stopped by the side of a thoroughfare to watch the horde of shadows slowly moving through the darkness. At that point the moon appeared on the horizon. Its light first swept over the citadel’s turrets, then bathed its high walls, then, like some great cloud of steam, enveloped everything, the plain, the camp, the crowns of the tents, and finally the Quartermaster General and the chronicler themselves.

Soldiers went on trudging past. Many had their arms round wounded comrades, others carried a man on their backs. Most of them moaned softly as they walked, and now and again let out a heart-rending shriek. In the moonlight it was hard to distinguish bloodstains from the marks made by hot pitch. Everything merged on bruised heads and shoulders, giving off a smell of oil, charred skin and scorching. Some fell down flat on their stomachs from sheer exhaustion as soon as they got to their tents, others — the most seriously wounded — were taken to field hospitals.

The Quartermaster General slowed his pace. The chronicler guessed he was doing a sum in his head. He could see the pale and evil glint in his eye that he had seen before.

“Some units must have lost about a third of their strength.”

The chronicler did not know what to answer.

“Others seem to have been halved,” the Quartermaster went on, staring at the long-drawn-out procession of returning men. Çelebi thought he saw the dalkiliç go by. Never before had he seen these previously unbeaten soldiers after a defeat, and he found them almost unrecognisable after such a terrible trial.

“The serden geçti !” the Quartermaster General exclaimed in a weird voice.

The chronicler shivered as if he had heard speak of ghosts. How is it possible? he thought. They are not supposed to return except as victors. They are surely going to be put to death.