Ismail Kadare - The Siege

Çelebi was in such a mental muddle that he wondered if his interlocutor was not trying to daze him so as to make him forget the Sultan’s white horse on the Kosovo plain. But even if you don’t ask me to do so, he promised silently, I will be sure to wipe it from my memory.

The Quartermaster was now almost tearing the beads off his prayer-string.

“You see, Mevla, he’s trying to oblige us to fight his shadow. To vanquish a ghost, so to speak, the image of his own defeat. But how can you overcome a defeat, a rout? It’s like trying to hollow out a ravine. It already is hollow! You would make no difference to it, whereas you could yourself fall into it … A while ago — I don’t know if you happened to hear this — a strange rumour spread among officers that Skanderbeg didn’t exist, and never had existed. At first this struck everyone as good news, but we soon saw that it was the opposite. Those responsible for the rumour were caught and punished. Why? Because, as I told you before, if there is no Skanderbeg, then we are fighting a ghost. It would be like struggling with one of the departed. What can you do if you are attacked by the dead? The dead already are what we fear for ourselves. So if you try to slay a ghost, all you do is bring it back to life. End of story. But I must have worn you out, my dear friend. Maybe it is time for you to go back to your tent. My orderly will escort you.”

He did feel exhausted, to tell the truth. His head was a jumble of unclear ideas. It was evening. Life went on in its usual way in the vast camp. Men came and went, this way and that, like so many ants. He was walking along the main thoroughfares when he heard the sound of cartwheels from behind. He turned around, and on one of the carts he thought he could see the astrologer. He quickened his step so as not to be overtaken, but as he felt the convoy draw near him, he took a side path among the tents of a volunteer unit.

Once inside his own tent he threw himself fully dressed on to his bedding of animal skins. As he fell into sleep (at that moment the astrologer on the tumbrel was waxing indignant at Çelebi’s faithlessness) he was gently overcome by a vague feeling that in spite of everything, life was beautiful. The same feeling, though mixed with bitterness, overcame the astrologer too as he got down from the cart and made ready to climb down underground with the detachment of sappers about to relieve the current detail. Before each journey into the tunnel he cast a sad glance at all around him, astonished that he had never previously noticed how beautiful the world was. All his life he had been dissatisfied with his position and had thought only of his own advancement by any means, but he had never fully tasted the satisfaction that comes from realising a dream entirely. Now fate had thrown him into a dark, damp hole underground, he realised that many of the days he had spent on earth could have been happy ones, had he not darkened them with his inextinguishable hunger for yet greater felicity.

Each time he went underground, the fear of never emerging cut through him like a dagger. Despite all the precautions they were now taking (they were barely digging any more, just gently scraping at the soil), they were obsessed by the fear of being located by the enemy. That was the first danger. The second was what awaited them when they came into the open. Those who had the bad luck to be the first to reach the exit were likely to pay for the privilege with their lives. And even if they didn’t suffer a first bloody clash — if they managed to open the tunnel mouth without being seen by the defenders — then they would most likely be trampled to death by the surge of janissaries from behind. Indeed, the moment the mouth was opened, the janissaries were going to pour through the tunnel like a raging torrent, and they would push the harassed and unarmed sappers straight on to the lances of the besieged.

The nearer they got to the end of the job, the darker the astrologer’s forebodings became. The camp was now drowsy but in the tents that had been pitched right next to the bakery hundreds of elite janissaries were standing by on full alert, armed to the teeth. The last two nights, hundreds of others had been posted inside the tunnel, ready to attack in case the roof collapsed accidentally. They stood stock-still like a row of statues in the dark, with sappers trundling past them as if they were part of the wall. Their presence in the tunnel had made the atmosphere even less breathable. The janissaries did two-hour shifts underground, whereas the sappers often worked until they passed out.

Everything indicated that the break-out was imminent. The astrologer plodded slowly through the darkness with a sack on his back, behind a former officer who had been punished for climbing back down a ladder during an assault, leaving his men in front of him. By interpreting the position of the stars in the constellation of the Snake (which obviously alluded to the tunnel), in a supreme effort to raise himself out of the mud into which he had been cast, he might try to forecast the most auspicious day for the break-out, accepting that if he failed he would bury himself in the mud for ever. But as he now found himself in the belly of the earth, he needed a few faithful friends to get his voice heard in high places. Çelebi was not among them. Maybe the poet Sadedin might have been his spokesman before he was mutilated, but he was now only a blind poet, and his words could hardly be taken seriously. The powerful Mufti who, by urging him to set the day of the assault, had been his undoing, had likely forgotten his very name.

The astrologer sighed deeply. There had never been as many janissaries underground as that day. With their backs to the wall they lined the tunnel on both sides, standing three or four paces apart. The glow of the oil-soaked ashes burning in buckets placed at irregular intervals lit their faces with ghoulish effect, as it illuminated only their chins, noses and forehead, and left their eyes and mouths as black shadows.

He came to the place where the passage dipped down steeply. Above it stood the foundations of the main wall, which they had tried to cross without disturbing them too much. Because this part of the tunnel was deeper underground, the air in this section was even heavier and damper than elsewhere. Then the tunnel climbed back to its previous elevation. The astrologer was now inside the perimeter of the citadel. Every time he came back here his heart slowed down. He hastened to fill his sack so as to get away as fast as he could, as if the fortress was weighing on his shoulders. He could see a knot of men at the face. The afternoon team was being relieved by the night shift. There was a lively discussion going on among them, with some men pointing to the walls, and others at the dripping roof. The astrologer recognised the architect and the Alaybey, talking to Ulug Bey, the captain of the engineering squad. The officer looked worried. The architect kept on raising his hand to make a gesture that looked as if he was drawing a circle over his head. They seemed to be trying to decide where the break-out point would be located.

The weak light of the torches made the shadows of their heads on the tunnel walls look as if they were shrouded by the kind of halo that the Christians put around the heads of their holy martyrs in their churches.

They were talking in whispers. The sappers, who had started to get down to work, were also digging noiselessly. They tore out the soil with broad-bladed daggers in complete silence. The astrologer began to fill his sack. It was obvious that the tunnel was not going to go any further. The sappers were currently widening it. That was no doubt in order to create a great crypt beneath the exit so that the largest possible number of janissaries could be assembled for the decisive moment.