Ismail Kadare: The Siege

Çelebi put his hand on his heart and bowed low once more.

“You do me great honour.”

Being invited into the tent to talk about history and philosophy once more, as he had done a few days ago, filled him with a joy that evaporated instantly at the fear of disappointing his eminent friend.

“My head’s bursting,” the high official said, “and I need some respite. I’ve still got a pile of things to settle.”

The chronicler listened to him with a guilty air.

“It’s very odd,” the Quartermaster said. “You historians usually attribute all the glory of conquest to military leaders. But mark my words, Mevla, mark them well: after the commander-in-chief’s, it’s this here head,” he said, tapping his forehead with his index finger, “that has more worries than any other.”

Çelebi bowed in homage.

“Supplying food to an army is the key problem in war,” the Quartermaster went on, in a tone close to irritation. “Anybody can wave a sword about, but keeping forty thousand men fed and watered in a foreign, unpopulated and uncultivated land, now that’s a hard nut to crack.”

“How very true,” the chronicler commented.

“Shall I tell you a secret?” the Quartermaster said all of a sudden. “The army you can see camped all around you has got supplies for only fifteen days!”

Çelebi raised his eyebrows, but thought they were insufficiently bushy to give adequate expression to his amazement.

“According to the plan,” the officer went on, “supply trains are supposed to leave Edirne every two weeks. Granted, but given the huge distance they have to cover, can I rely on them? Provisions … If you ever hear that I’ve gone out of my mind, you’ll know why!”

The chronicler wanted to protest: Whatever are you saying? He nodded his head, even raised his arms — but they seemed too short to say what he now wanted to say.

“So all the responsibility falls on our shoulders,” the other man went on. “If the cooks come and say one fine day that they’ve nothing left to fill their pots, who is the Pasha going to call to order? Obviously not Kurdisxhi, nor old Tavxha, nor any other captain. Only me!” And he stuck a finger into his breast as if it was a dagger.

Çelebi’s face, on which deference and attentiveness were painted like a mask, now also expressed commiseration, which wasn’t difficult, seeing that in its normal state it was deeply lined and wrinkled.

The Quartermaster General’s tent was pitched at the very heart of the camp so that as they drew nearer to it they were walking among throngs of soldiers. Some of them were sitting outside their tents undoing their packs, others were picking their fleas without the slightest embarrassment. Çelebi recalled that no chronicle ever mentioned the tying and untying of soldier’s backpacks. As for flea hunting, that was never spoken of either.

“What about the akinxhis ?” he enquired, trying to banish all reprehensible thoughts from his mind. “Aren’t they going to be allowed to pillage in the environs?”

“Of course they are,” the officer replied. “However, the booty they take usually covers less than a fifth of the needs of the troops. And only in the early stages of a siege.”

“That’s odd …” the chronicler opined.

“There’s only one solution: Venice.”

Çelebi started with surprise.

“The Sultan has made an agreement with the Serenissima. Venetian merchants are supposed to supply us with food and matériel .”

The chronicler was astounded, but nodded his head.

“I understand why you are amazed,” the Quartermaster said. “You must find it bizarre that we accuse Skanderbeg of being in the pay of Westerners while we do deals with Venice behind Skanderbeg’s back. If I were in your shoes, I admit I would find that shocking.”

The Quartermaster General put a formal smile on his lips, but his eyes were not smiling at all.

“That’s politics for you, Mevla!”

The chronicler lowered his head. It was his way of taking cover whenever a conversation wandered into dangerous terrain.

A long line of azabs went past, carrying rushes on their backs.

The Quartermaster watched them go by.

“That’s what they use, I believe, to weave the screens the soldiers use to shield themselves from burning projectiles. Have you really never seen a siege before?”

The chronicler blushed and said, “I have not had that good fortune.”

“Oh! It’s an impressive sight.”

“I can imagine.”

“Believe me,” the general said in a more informal way. “I’ve taken part in many sieges, but this,” he waved towards the castle walls, “is where the most fearful carnage of our times will take place. And you surely know as well as I do that great massacres always give birth to great books.” He took a deep breath. “You really do have an opportunity to write a thundering chronicle redolent with pitch and blood, and it will be utterly different from the graceful whines composed at the fireside by squealers who never went to war.”

Çelebi blushed again as he recalled the opening of his chronicle. “One day, if you like, I could read you some passages from what I have written,” he said. “I would like to hope they will not disappoint you.”

“Accepted! You know how much I like history.”

A squad of janissaries marched past noisily.

“They’re in a good mood,” the Quartermaster said. “Today is pay day.”

Çelebi remembered that pay was also never mentioned in that kind of narrative.

Troopers were setting out some oval tents. Further off, carters were unloading beams and rushes beside a ditch that had just been dug. The camp looked less like military quarters than a construction site.

“Look, there are the old hags from Rumelia,” the Quartermaster said.

The chronicler turned his head to the left, where he could see a score and more of old women in an enclosure; they were busying themselves with pots hung over a campfire.

“What are they cooking up?” Çelebi asked.

“Balms for wounds, especially burns.”

The chronicler looked at the tanned, impassive and aged faces of the women.

“Our warriors are going to suffer horrible injuries,” the Quartermaster said sadly. “But they don’t yet know the real function of the Rumelian women. They’re reputed to be witches.”

Çelebi looked away so as not to see the soldiers picking out their fleas. Many of them were in fact sitting cross-legged so as to examine the corns on the soles of their feet.

“Their feet are sore from the long march,” the Quartermaster said with sympathy. “I’ve still never read a historical work that even mentions soldiers’ feet.”

The chronicler was sorry to have displayed his distaste, but the harm was done now.

“In truth, the vast Empire of which we are all so proud was enlarged only by these blistered and torn feet,” the officer said with a touch of grandiloquence. “A friend often said to me: I am willing to kneel and kiss these stinking feet.”

The chronicler didn’t know what to do with himself. Fortunately for him, they had just got to the Quartermaster General’s tent.

“So here’s my den,” the general said in a different tone of voice. “Come in, Mevla Çelebi. Do you like pomegranate syrup? In such scorching weather there’s nothing better than the juice of a pomegranate to cool you down. And then, a conversation with a friend on matters of high interest is like a violet blooming among thorns. Isn’t that so, Çelebi?”

The chronicler’s mind flashed back to the soldiers’ blisters and filthy feet, but he soon took solace in the thought that man is so great that all can be permitted him.

“I am overwhelmed by the friendship you bestow on me, a mere chronicler.”