Ismail Kadare - The Siege

The astrologer finished filling his sack and hoisted it on to his back. As he passed by the group of important people he could hear them talking in low and worried voices. Something was going to happen that night, that was clear. Expectation and anxiety could be felt all around. With his sack over his shoulder, he walked past the long line of soldiers standing against the wall, went down the steep slope and then back up again, until he got to the spot where the use of carts was allowed. As he did every time he got to this place, the astrologer uttered a cry of relief.

“What’s going on down there?” a haulier asked him. “I reckon it’s break-out tonight.”

“I think so too,” said the astrologer as he dumped his load in the cart.

The astrologer then walked off with his empty sack over his shoulder.

Visibly, the assault was going to be launched that night. When he got back to the cutting face he found the important people still there, still talking in whispers, and making the shape of a circle with their hands above their heads every now and again. Their presence gave him a feeling of security and confidence. They weren’t as outcast as they had seemed, after all, since such elevated personages had come down there to be with them on this decisive night.

The astrologer was lugging his second sack of earth when two sappers came the other way carrying a short, wide ladder.

“It’s the second one down,” the haulier said when they met again.

“Is everything ready at the other end as well?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been out yet.”

When the astrologer got back to the face, the architect, the Alaybey and two unidentified officers were starting on the long walk back to the entrance. The feeling of safety that their presence had given the earth scratchers and sack carriers gave way to a sensation of emptiness and fear. But Ulug Bey, his deputy and a janissary officer had stayed behind at the tunnel face. The officer stood at a distance with his eyes glued to what was going on at the face. The sappers hadn’t really been aware of him when the other VIPs had been around. Only now did they take note of this silent and immobile silhouette that had apparently emerged from the darkness. He seemed to be the man who would be in command of the break-out.

The sappers quickly expanded the area. The friable soil was easy to scoop. Like the other porters, the astrologer was drenched in sweat. On one side a low cavity was quickly excavated where more men huddled, as close-packed as figures in a bas-relief. The sappers were now clawing at the facing wall, so as to allow yet more men to be accommodated. The soldiers were petrified as they looked at the short ladders that would soon be the route to their fates.

No one knew exactly what time it was. All they knew was that up there, on earth, it was dark. Now and again Ulug Bey cast an anxious glance into the murky depth of the tunnel. He was waiting for the courier who was to bring the order for breaking out. He was late. Or maybe that was only the impression they all got from being underground.

Their senses were dulled, and even the flickering light from the torches seemed drowsy. But suddenly, they felt a shock, as if the entire earth had woken up with a start, and then they heard a roll of thunder. Everyone went rigid. One torch went out, another fell over. The muffled roar of a rockfall could be heard from somewhere near the middle of the tunnel.

They all kept on staring in that direction until the noise died away.

Ulug Bey and his deputy rushed towards the collapse. All the others — soldiers, sappers, porters — suddenly came to life as if they had been released from a spell. Someone yelled: “We’re done for!” Another shouted out: “It’s an earthquake!” A couple of men wanted to run after the captain of the engineers, but the janissary officer, who up to then had been as still as a mummy, abruptly drew his sabre and cried out:

“Silence! No one moves!”

They obeyed the command.

In the ensuing silence they could now hear quite clearly the sound of Ulug Bey’s and his deputy’s footsteps as they faded into the distance. Then that sound too disappeared. Other noises came into earshot, as if they were coming nearer, then moving further off, then staying still. A sapper came running from the other branch of the tunnel.

“Halt!” the officer shouted. “Who goes there?”

“Sapir, sir. What has happened?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough,” the officer said.

“Allah! What has befallen us?”

“Silence!” the officer ordered. “Light the torches.”

“Someone’s coming.”

They all pricked up their ears. The men could hear steps, but they were rather slow in coming.

“So what happened?”

Ulug Bey and his deputy were grey in the face and covered in cold sweat.

“We are lost!”

“Oh!”

“Silence!” the officer ordered. “What’s up?”

“Tunnel collapse,” Ulug Bey said flatly.

“They did it?” the officer asked, pointing his finger upwards.

“Yes, it was them.”

“So they really got us!”

“They’ve buried us alive!”

“Silence!” the officer repeated, then turned to Ulug Bey and asked: “What can we do in a case like this?”

“Nothing,” the engineers’ captain replied.

“Nothing,” one of his deputies confirmed.

The word echoed gloomily all around the tunnel. “No-o-o-thi-i-ing”.

“Is there no way of cutting a shaft to let us out of here?”

“No, they’re watching every move we make.”

“Maybe the earth caved in under its own weight?”

“No. Can’t you smell the gunpowder?”

“So all that’s left for us to do is to die,” the officer said in a composed tone, to no one in particular. “Allah chose this way for us to die, and we have to accept his will.”

Some began to pray, but most of them started to wail.

The astrologer squatted on his haunches and put his head in his hands. In his mind he had already taken leave of this world.

“What if we surrendered?” somebody asked querulously.

“Be quiet, you wretch!” the officer said, putting his hand to his scabbard.

“So who thinks he can give orders? I’m in command down here.”

“And I am in command of my men,” the officer riposted.

“The only person to give orders down here is me!” Ulug Bey repeated.

“So you want to surrender as well, do you?”

“No,” the captain answered. “What I want is for nobody else to issue orders where giving orders is my business.”

“If we surrender, it will only be worse,” the officer insisted. “They’ll slaughter us like lambs.”

“You never know,” someone muttered.

“Silence!” the officer yelled. “They’ll tear us limb from limb to avenge the slaughter perpetrated by the akinxhis .”

Each syllable echoed around the group: limb … from … limb.

The astrologer leaned his back against a hump in the ground. He looked up to the roof of the tunnel which, in the crimson glow of the ash lights, looked like an upturned canal. So this is where you can now look at the stars, he thought to himself. Your Imperial Observatory, as the giaours call it, the institution he’d always dreamed of running … Blackish water dripped from its cupola. His befuddled mind could just about manage to gather a handful of loosely connected thoughts. He was aghast at the sad fate that had led him to end his days underground beneath a foreign fortress. Another thought took him back more or less to the stars which throughout his life had perhaps been closer to him than men, which had been his friends and partners in squabbles and reconciliations, and which now, as death approached, he would never see again. In their place he saw nothing but blackish earth with water dripping, dripping, dripping down.