Ismail Kadare - The Siege

With great difficulty the Quartermaster finally managed to control the master caster. Saruxha was foaming at the mouth. His pupils were fixed wide open. “Rub his forehead,” the Quartermaster told his orderly. He himself wiped the spittle from Saruxha’s lips. Saruxha’s attempts to get free were gradually weakening. But his head with its protruding veins remained turned in the direction where the janissaries had dragged his assistant, and his words had now become incomprehensible because his voice had gone completely hoarse.

When the detachment passed out of sight, Saruxha began to moan as if he had been wounded.

“How will I manage without him?” he sobbed. “Those animals are going to kill him. Tell me, how can I manage without him?”

“We’ll take counsel,” the Quartermaster said. “We’ll try to save him.”

“What door will you knock on? To whom can we turn?” Saruxha whimpered. “It’s like a desert here.”

“We’ll have a think about it,” the Quartermaster said again.

Saruxha shot a dark look at his friend, trying to fathom whether he really had some hope, or was just consoling him.

“They’ll be sorry for killing him, but by then it will be too late,” he added sadly.

The Quartermaster wondered who might be capable of interceding with the Pasha to save the deputy caster. He was certainly willing to plead the case, but he wouldn’t pull enough weight, since his close friendship with Saruxha was no secret. Someone more distant was needed. Kurdisxhi would have been just the right man, but he was mouldering in his tent recovering from two serious wounds he had suffered in the course of Skanderbeg’s last raid. Kara-Mukbil would not be well received because of his known mistrust of Old Tavxha. Anyway, after this exhausting attack in which he and his azabs had taken the brunt of the fighting, it would be absurd to speak of saving the life of one man to someone who had just seen hundreds lost all around him. As for the Mufti, that was out of the question: he would probably rub his hands with glee at the death of an expert. There was only one man of influence left who might just be approachable: the Alaybey.

“Let’s go and see the Alaybey,” the Quartermaster said. “Maybe he can help us.”

As they walked towards his tent they saw endless columns of soldiers returning from the ramparts. Dreadful fatigue was written on the faces and in the weary movements of these men. Many were supporting wounded comrades-in-arms, whose singed heads lolled strangely on their shoulders. The Quartermaster turned away his eyes two or three times so as not to see the ghastly wounds that metal, pitch and stone had combined to make.

They tried to get there by way of a side alley, but it was a waste of effort. The combatants were streaming back towards their tents from all directions, and in gloomy silence. As the sun sank towards the horizon and bathed the sky in an orange glow, the great camp looked like a giant sponge imbibed with sweat and blood.

“The time is not particularly favourable for an approach of this kind,” the Quartermaster said, “but let us try, all the same.”

The Alaybey was alone in his tent. He listened attentively to what the Quartermaster had to say, without changing his sombre expression in the slightest. Saruxha did not say a word. When the Quartermaster had finished, the Alaybey went on staring at the same spot on the kilim. They guessed there was nothing they could expect from him. Then he told them that he would have considered it a great honour to be able to come to the aid of eminent men of science such as they were. He understood completely that the execution of such a skilled metal-caster was contrary to the true interests of the Padishah and of the Empire in general, especially as an age of new armaments had dawned, and that the number of gunsmiths in the entire Empire could be counted on the fingers of one hand. However, he considered that he would not be well advised to plead this case with the Pasha. They must know that themselves. He asked them to imagine the state of mind of men who had spent hours on end desperately attacking inexpugnable ramparts, getting slashed by lances and scorched by pitch, and had then been mown down from behind by cannon from their own side, cannon in which they had placed such high hopes. It would not be easy to reason with those men at a time like this, especially as many of them were also suffering from sunstroke — even leaving out the fact that Tavxha was involved.

At the name of the hated captain of the janissaries, Saruxha spat out a curse.

As they were leaving, the Alaybey advised them to seek an audience with the Pasha themselves, though for his part he did not hold out much hope of success.

Once they had left the Alaybey’s tent, Saruxha declared excitedly: “Let’s go to see the Pasha! Let’s go straight away, because if we don’t that scum is quite capable of executing the lad on the spot!”

They almost ran to the tent of the commander-in-chief. Two sentries with their axes at the ready stood outside the door.

“We have to see the Pasha,” the Quartermaster said curtly to an orderly who came out to deal with them.

“The Pasha is tired,” the orderly said. “He has given orders not to be disturbed.”

“Tell him it’s an urgent matter,” Saruxha insisted. “I am the Chief Engineer and my friend is the Quartermaster General.”

“I know who you are,” the young officer said with a bow, and he went back inside the tent.

The two sentries looked at the visitors out of the corners of their eyes. The blades of their axes gleamed in the last light of the setting sun.

The orderly came back after a few minutes had passed.

“The Pasha has a sore throat and cannot see you.”

Saruxha reached for his throat as if he had just been attacked.

“Tell him that we … we …”

But the orderly had gone. Saruxha caught the sidelong glance of one of the sentries.

“We’d better go,” the Quartermaster said.

They went away. They walked slowly. They no longer had any reason to hurry. The flat ground in front of the ramparts, which had been but a few hours earlier the scene of horrendous uproar accompanied by hundreds of war drums, lay abandoned and silent. All that was left there was the useless debris of the great iron gate that had been hauled as far as the outskirts of the camp.

As they walked they came across a long line of tumbrels setting off to gather the dead.

Their steps took them unthinkingly towards the quarter of the camp where the janissaries had pitched their tents. They walked in silence, as if they did not ever want to get where they were going.

They shuffled hesitantly, even when they came across a large crowd of janissaries among whom something still seemed to be going on. But now the men were beginning to disperse in two and threes. So it must be all over. They wandered nonetheless towards the assembly even as it broke up. The men who were still there all had blank and distracted expressions on their faces. Some looked dazed, and held hatchets or yatagans in their hands. The Quartermaster General and his friend Saruxha noticed the wide shoulders of Tavxha who was in the process of departing, with his men in his train. They came closer, and as they looked for the victim’s body, they saw sappers spading something on to a stretcher. That something was no longer a body, nor was it limbs, or even parts of limbs, but earth, flesh, bone and stone pounded into a pulp by the demented thrashing of yatagans and hatchets.

They could not take their eyes off the stretcher as the horrible mess was shovelled on to it. A few janissaries who were still standing around gazed with astonishment at the two council members. Hatred had left their eyes. They now looked only stunned, and immensely tired. The Quartermaster General stared at them. A few moments earlier they had been beating the caster with all the disgust and all the fear that the mystery of science, which so tortured their minds, inspired in them. In dismembering the technician they believed they were freeing themselves from the grip of the terror of the unknown. They would only be free of it for a while, for the same terror would soon seep back into their minds and preoccupy them once again. For the sake of mental peace they would then set off to find another head to smash …