Ismail Kadare - The Siege

“I know that,” the Quartermaster said.

There was another barrage of fire. Gun number three hit the walls above the inner door, a few cubits to the right, enlarging the breach that had already been made there.

“The next shot will be a bull’s-eye!” the Alaybey trumpeted to the world at large.

After the last round, the janissaries had again moved up towards the gaping entrance to the castle, keeping themselves under the cover of their huge reed screens.

“Tavxha’s getting ready,” the one-armed sanxhakbey observed. “Get on with it, you old blockhead!” he muttered to himself.

“They’ll launch an attack more terrible than a tidal wave!” someone standing behind them said, raising the stakes.

The handful of dignitaries watching the battle shuddered. They were waiting for the next cannonade. None of them now cared what was happening all along the wall. Collapsing ladders, sudden surges and retreats: all that had happened a hundred times already in the deafening racket of the battle drums. Everyone’s attention was on the area around the main gate, where Tavxha’s men, drawn up in squares, were waiting for the right moment to attack.

The mortars fired, one after the other. Their projectiles rose up over the battlements and fell on the other side, in the heart of the citadel. Then big guns one and two roared, and everyone held their breath, waiting for the now familiar thunder of gun number three. It hadn’t been fired yet.

The janissaries were now jostling up to the main entrance through which a part of the courtyard could be seen. It was completely deserted. Javelins, arrows and rags soaked in flaming pitch and oil fell uninterruptedly on their testudos, but the janissaries did not yield. Apparently guessing that the enemy were readying themselves to attack the inner door, the defenders raised the tempo of their efforts to repulse them. But at other points around the wall, azabs, eshkinxhis and volunteers were maintaining terrible pressure and making it impossible for the besieged to pull any of their men back from the front line.

The Pasha still did not give the go-ahead for the dalkiliç to advance, nor did he yet send in the last remaining death squadron. He was waiting for the blast of the third big gun. It had still not been fired.

“Why doesn’t he fire?” “What’s Saruxha up to?” Questions like these, spoken not shouted, were being repeated all around with increasing impatience. The Pasha sent an officer on horseback off to the battery. But the messenger had barely gone a hundred paces when the roar of gun number three shook the ground. They were all so wound up with expectation that they thought the explosion had been louder than it really was. It was immediately followed by an unusual screeching whistle tearing through the air very low, just above their heads. They were anxiously watching the outcome, expecting the cannon-ball to burst through the inner door, when they saw it crash down right in the middle of the Janissary Corps.

“Oh …!” the Pasha exclaimed in a tone that was not at all customary.

The janissaries, who had been standing in serried ranks up to that point, suddenly pulled apart in all directions. Total confusion reigned in front of the main entrance. Officers ran up from every side trying to assess the exact level of losses.

Old Tavxha galloped back on his black horse, raising a great cloud of dust. From afar he started yelling. Two bodyguards closed in on the Pasha to protect him. The Agha of the janissaries slid off his horse as if he were in a state of collapse. He was yelling at the top of his voice, spluttering and muddling up Mongolian with Turkish, so that his meaning was, at first, more to be guessed at than properly understood. The gesticulations he made with his stubby hands to accompany each expression made it look as if he wanted to strangle someone. When he stopped shouting quite so loud, people had to admit that he had more or less said what they all expected to hear from him.

“We’ve been taken for a ride by those pigs, those traitors, those Christians!” he started yelling again. “You see? Now they’re mowing us down from behind with their cannon-balls! Can we put up with that? No, we cannot, a hundred times no!”

“How many dead?” the Pasha asked.

Tavxha was so incensed with anger that he could hardly breathe.

“Dozens, hundreds of dead! I want revenge for my janissaries, the sons of Kara-Halil. I want the guilty man. Yes, Pasha, sire, I demand the head of the guilty party. My janissaries call for the guilty man!”

“They shall have him,” the commander-in-chief replied.

“This instant!” Tavxha boomed. “They want him now! They are beside themselves. They want to judge the man themselves. Give him to me!”

“Let the man responsible be found this instant,” the Pasha ordered. “Summon the chaouch-bashi !”

The chef-de-camp came running.

“Find the guilty party and arrest him forthwith, whoever he is,” the Pasha said. “You will give him over to the janissaries. It is their right, they can do what they will with the man.”

“Pasha, sire,” the Quartermaster interrupted, looking as white as a sheet. “What if … what if the man is … none other than Saruxha?”

Tursun Pasha raised his eyes to the sky as if to say, I can’t do anything about that.

The chaouch-bashi led a detachment of azabs off to the gun battery to arrest the guilty man.

“The Devil himself sabotaged this action,” Tursun Pasha said aloud, as if he was talking to himself. He knew there was no point carrying on with the assault without the janissaries. He gave the order to beat the retreat.

The harassed battalions withdrew in turn beneath the still powerful sun and the Pasha turned away and went back to his pavilion. The Quartermaster General promptly made his way to the gun emplacement. On the way there he came across a group of janissaries led by Tavxha and the chef-de-camp, all of them howling like a pack of wild dogs. In their midst he saw Saruxha’s assistant, tied hand and foot, and looking quite livid. Three or four officers were dragging him along the ground. The young man raised his terrorstricken eyes to the Quartermaster, imploring him to come to his aid. But the group was walking fast and the Quartermaster was not tortured by that look for very long. His attention was quickly caught by the sound of a furious voice that he knew well. It was Saruxha, running behind the janissaries, with his own orderly behind him.

“Stop, you lousy brutes! Let him go, I tell you! You will answer for this with your lives!”

“Saruxha,” the Quartermaster said to him gently as he grabbed his sleeve. “Listen to me for a minute.”

“Let go of me! He’s got nothing to do with it! Stop!”

The Quartermaster General almost had to run to keep up with the master caster.

“Wait! There’s no point running after them. Don’t you see that you’ll achieve nothing? Listen to me!”

“No! Stop, you lousy brutes! Tavxha! Chaouch-bashi ! You’re no better than animals, you disgusting vermin! Stop, I tell you!”

The janissaries just kept on going at a spanking pace and not one of them even turned his head. The Quartermaster reckoned that if he didn’t restrain Saruxha, he would launch into them with his fists and have to pay a high price.

“Saruxha, my brother, calm down, please.”

He tried to hold him back and signalled to his guard to help him. The guard came up but did not dare lay a hand on a member of the council.

“Tavxha Tokmakhan, you filthy pig, you sinister fool, you pile of shit, I shall smash your fat head! I’ll fire a cannon at your janissaries as soon as I can! I’ll demolish the lot of you without mercy! I’ll do in the whores who are your mothers, every last one of them!”