Ismail Kadare - The Siege

“Where?” he asked, almost choking on his words.

The Quartermaster General had already stretched out his arm towards a cart. The chronicler’s eyes bulged. There were many pale, sky-blue flags heaped up in the back. There was nobody following the cart.

Mevla Çelebi guessed what it meant. The brides of death, as they were called in the old chronicles, had kept their word. As the cart went by he saw that the standards were stained with blood and burns. He felt a lump rise in his throat and stifled a sob.

They had been watching the soldiers go by in silence for a long while when they saw the astrologer coming along, looking worried. The chronicler was tempted to hail him, but since he noticed a glint of scorn in the Quartermaster General’s eyes he looked down, so as not to have to respond to any greeting from the magician. He knew the Quartermaster’s hostile attitude towards the latter, and didn’t want to witness their enmity.

A horse drew up behind them.

“Gazi,” someone said.

They turned around. It was one of the Pasha’s messengers.

“What is it?”

“The war council is to meet immediately. You are summoned.”

The messenger bowed respectfully and got back in the saddle.

“Mevla, I must leave you. What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll hang around for a bit and then go to bed.”

As soon as the Quartermaster General had gone, the chronicler plunged into the crowd and looked for the astrologer. He was glad to have relations in high places, but there were times like tonight when he needed close friends, people he could talk to naturally, without having to choose his words, without fearing that their faces would suddenly freeze into angular shapes like ancient inscriptions. Mevla Çelebi eventually caught up with the astrologer.

“So, how are you? Where were you going?”

The astrologer looked at him distractedly.

“I saw you a while back,” the astrologer said, “but you were with the Quartermaster General. I imagine he’s not too fond of me.”

The chronicler shrugged his shoulders as if to say: That may well be, but what can I do about it?

They wandered around together for a while.

“What a wonderful evening it was yesterday,” the astrologer said. “This evening everything is mournful.”

“Allah chose not to grant us victory.”

“If only He had not punished us with such a great defeat!”

“Accursed citadel!”

They watched the seemingly endless line of returning soldiers trudge past. The men passing by at that moment seemed particularly worn out. They must have been the ones who had carried the ladders and broken down the main gate with the battering rams.

“Look, there’s Tuz, the janissary!” the astrologer cried out.

The young man looked up. He didn’t seem to be wounded or marked with tar. Just a scratch on his forehead. He was holding up a comrade by the arm.

“God be praised, you are alive!” the chronicler exclaimed. “And who’s the poor fellow with you?” he added, nodding towards the wounded man whose eyes were bandaged with a piece of turban. His face was blackened by pitch and his hair was scorched. “By Allah, is that not Sadedin?” he asked in a voice that broke.

Tuz Okçan nodded.

“He’s lost his sight. His eyes were burned.”

They bit their lips. The janissary spoke as if Sadedin couldn’t hear them.

“I noticed him by chance in the crowd that rushed into the inner yard as soon as we’d broken down the main gate,” the janissary explained. “He was among the first to get inside.”

They could not help staring at the bandaged eyes.

“Then I saw him again in the thick of the fight with his hand over his forehead. It was hell in there. Everyone else was running for his life, but this fellow was just turning round and round in the smoke …”

The janissary’s voice was weary and hoarse. He must have done a lot of shouting during the assault.

“When I saw him again, he still had one hand over his eyes but his other hand seemed to be seeking something in the air. He was being shoved about …” Tuz Okçan sighed deeply. “What was I saying?” he asked in a dull voice.

“That Sadedin was being shoved about … And that you saw him …”

“Ah, yes. He was being pushed around while he was waving one arm towards me, and I don’t know why, but I suddenly recalled one of my aunts who when she wanted to curse someone never said ‘May you go blind!’ but ‘May you look for the wall with your hands!’ That’s when I guessed what had happened to him,” the janissary went on blankly. “When I got closer I saw molten pitch dripping down his cheeks. So I took him by the hand and struggled long and hard but finally managed to lead him out of that hell-hole.”

Sadedin just stood there like a statue. If he hadn’t been standing up he would have been taken for dead.

“I’m taking him to the doctors,” the janissary said. “I know, there’s little hope of saving his eyes, but maybe they’ll be able to relieve him of some of the pain.”

“We’ll come along with you.”

The hospital tents had only been set up the day before but they had already turned into slaughterhouses. Ragged soldiers were stacked right next to each other on sloping pallets, to allow the blood and gore to drain away. Dying groans mingled with entreaties — “Brother, finish me off!” “Dig the scalpel into my liver!” — which were themselves interrupted by gruff reproaches: “Shut up, you milksop!” The old hags from Rumelia were nearby, emptying bucketfuls of their potion on to the wounds. Further on, groans and exclamations came louder and sharper: “Water! Mamma mia !” “Kill me!” “Shut your trap!” “An Ottoman soldier does not snivel!”

It made the chronicler want to retch. He turned away so as not to see these bloody bodies, but the knot in his stomach grew ever tighter.

They had to wait for a long time until any attention was paid to the poet. He was treated summarily. He didn’t yell or moan. When his eyes had been bandaged again, his friends took him by the arm and led him to his tent. They laid him down and he fell instantly into a deep sleep.

They went outside and wandered for a while among the innumerable silhouettes without saying a word.

“You were there,” the chronicler said, waving towards the citadel that was now lost in darkness. “Tell us.”

The janissary looked at him with wild eyes. His answer was long in coming. Only after walking along for a while in complete silence did he mumble, as if he was talking to himself: “Dreadful.”

“What was dreadful?”

“Over there,” he replied, waving towards the same place the chronicler had gestured at a few minutes before.

“I’m thinking of the wonderful evening we had yesterday,” the astrologer said.

Shapes of soldiers moved around them in every direction. None spoke. There was nothing but low mumbles and evasions.

“I can’t get his look out of my mind!” Tuz Okçan suddenly cried out. “Last night, when he was talking, how his eyes sparkled!”

“He was planning on writing a great poem about this campaign,” the chronicler blurted out, thinking of his own work.

“That is perhaps why he was the first to come forward, so as to be in the front row when the door came down,” the astrologer surmised.

“It’s really sad,” Çelebi said. “He was talented — and courageous.”

“God! How his eyes sparkled last night!” the janissary said again, softly.

“Yes,” Mevla Çelebi chimed in melancholically. “They shone as if they guessed they were looking on the world for the last time.”

“The fallacious world,” the astrologer corrected him.

“Pitch has covered that gleam with a black veil for ever.”