Ismail Kadare - The Siege

Aware of Kara-Mukbil’s look of disdain, he went on: “Some people may possibly find the tactic unworthy of a glorious army like ours, but that can’t be helped. Sometimes the principle of contagion can be more effective than sword or cannon.”

Kara-Mukbil said nothing. He carried on looking at the rat cages with distaste.

“Just look at this green grasshopper over here,” the doctor said, pointing to one of the cages. “It’s a little gem, if you know how to appreciate it. Local people call it ‘the witches’ horse’, and not without reason, it seems. It can lay waste to whole fields of crops, but if it is infected, it can be ten times more damaging. The Devil’s own horse!”

The Alaybey looked carefully at each one of the cages and then asked the doctor a series of questions. Sirri Selim provided all the clarifications he sought, ranging from details of the various diseases with which the animals were infected to the means of getting them into the fortress. He said that he would leave the sick animals without food or water for several days and then, just prior to the attack, place them in wicker hampers that the soldiers would strap to their backs for the climb up the walls. When the attackers got to breaches in the wall or to the battlements at the top, they would slash the cane with their knives and let the animals escape. In the mayhem of combat the defenders would not easily notice the trick, and anyway, even if they did, they would not be able to track the animals, especially the parched and famished rats, who would scurry straight off towards the food stores or to the water well.

Sirri Selim gave many other details about the extraordinary ability of rats to spread disease and the great future that lay in store for this new instrument of war.

They were about to leave the compound when Sirri Selim got excited all of a sudden, and, gesturing towards the ramparts, proclaimed solemnly:

“These people, who are said to have been born of eagles, will probably die of a rat.”

He had honed that sentence for months, intending to come out with it at the meeting of the war council, but he hadn’t had the opportunity.

The Quartermaster General easily guessed that the doctor was well acquainted with Mevla Çelebi.

Sirri Selim walked back with them for a while, then they all took their leave and went their separate ways to their own tents. The Quartermaster General saw the chronicler walking in the opposite direction, which confirmed his intuition about the relationship between him and the medical man.

“Are you off to see Sirri?” he asked.

Çelebi thought he detected a touch of irony in his friend’s voice.

“Yes, I am,” he replied. Under his breath he muttered: “May my legs shrivel up on the spot!”

“I’ve just been there,” the Quartermaster went on. “Walk with me a while. I’m bored.”

The chronicler furrowed his brow. “You aren’t ill, are you?”

“No, thank you,” the Quartermaster said, smiling gently. “I was at Sirri’s for a quite different reason. How’s your chronicle going?”

It was Çelebi’s turn to smile. “Quite well.”

The pathways they took were full of soldiers returning from training or else from the spectacle of the astrologer’s punishment. They made way for the Quartermaster. Many men were lying flat on the ground beside their tents.

“They’re stressed,” the Quartermaster said. “The last attack drained them.”

“They must be at their wits’ end over there, too,” Çelebi said, gesturing towards the apparently deserted castle wall, now pockmarked with breaches and draped with streaks of pitch that reached down almost as far as the ground.

The Quartermaster did not answer.

“They say their pupils have gone dark from peering day and night from the battlements at all the paths along which help might come,” Çelebi said.

The Quartermaster seemed to be thinking about something else.

“Look, here comes our blind poet,” he said sarcastically as he pointed at Sadedin. “Isn’t he another one of your friends?”

This time Çelebi said nothing.

Sadedin was on his own, tapping the ground with his cane. In any other circumstance the chronicler would have been sorry for his unfortunate friend, but on this occasion he felt as if the man had appeared on purpose in order to discredit him, and he felt cross. Other officers hailed the poet as he passed. And as the blind man turned round to return the greetings, the Quartermaster slackened his pace so as to hear what the poet was going to say.

“What is there to see in the world?” Sadedin cried out in a rough voice as he turned his empty sockets towards them. “If I still had my eyes, I would pluck them out so as not to see such shame.”

Seeing the Quartermaster General, the officers bowed obsequiously, wishing they had not prompted the poet. But it was too late now.

“May the bread of the Padishah choke you!”

Sadedin turned his empty eyes all around, apparently astonished at the sudden lack of response.

“What is there to see in the world?” he boomed again. “An orphanage for fallen stars and nothing else!”

He turned around and walked back, tapping the ground with his cane as if he was afraid of an abyss opening up before him at every step.

The officers stood still and silent. The Quartermaster didn’t so much as glance at them as he walked on his way with the chronicler at his side.

“It’s hot,” he said. “It would be nice to be at the seaside.”

“Apparently the coast is not far from here.”

“Yes, there’s a very beautiful sea quite near, though it has a complicated name.”

“Ka-dri-a-tik,” Çelebi spelled out. “I think that’s what it’s called.”

The Quartermaster burst out laughing.

“At least you managed not to say ‘Ka-dri-bey’! Now listen carefully: A-dri-a-tic, the Adriatic …”

Çelebi was mortified.

“Yes, it really would be lovely to be at the seaside right now,” the Quartermaster went on. “They say the Padishah has gone to take a rest at Magnesia, in Anatolia.”

Çelebi didn’t know what to say. His friend was talking quite casually about people and things he wouldn’t have dared let himself think about.

“Apparently he’s spending his time on religious questions, on important points of doctrine.”

“May Allah give him long life,” Çelebi said, regretting having used up the only phrase he had in store for circumstances of this kind.

He cheered up when he saw the Quartermaster’s great tent not too far off. He was hoping that once they had got there his friend, feeling on home ground as it were, would drop his ironical tone, which he found disturbing.

“Sit down,” the Quartermaster said once they were inside. “Now I’ll tell you a secret.”

He revealed to the chronicler that diseased animals were going to be released in the castle during the next assault. Çelebi listened in astonishment, but he also felt reassured that he was once again being treated as trustworthy. In spite of himself he recalled the treacherous words of people he would gladly trample to death like snakes. So now their war-hardened lions and tigers were going to rise up against the citadel accompanied by fleas, grasshoppers, toads and rats … Ah, you mangy dog, he said to himself, don’t complain if you’re subjected to torture afterwards!

“It’s our last try, Mevla,” the Quartermaster said. “We have done all that was in our power, but fate has hardly smiled on us. This is our last chance.”

There was not a trace of irony in the Quartermaster’s words that Çelebi could make out. The declaration seemed deadly serious.

“The fighting season is near its end,” the Quartermaster mumbled, almost melancholically. “Like your chronicle, there are not many pages left to write.”