Ismail Kadare: The Ghost Rider

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.”

“Not at all!” the Quartermaster interrupted. “Your trade is most honourable: you are a historian. Only the uneducated could fail to grant you their esteem. Now, my dear friend, are you going to read me a few passages from your work, as you promised?”

Çelebi would have blushed with contentment had he not been so scared. After the whole exchange of courtesies, the chronicler, who knew the start of his work by heart, began to recite slowly as follows:

“At the behest of the Padishah, master of the universe, to whom men and genies owe total obedience, a myriad harems were abandoned and the lions set forth for the land of the Shqipetars …”

The Quartermaster General explained that this overture was not entirely lacking in poetry, but he would have preferred the idea of abandoned harems to be linked to some more basic element of human life, something more vital to the economy, such as, for example, the plough or the vine. He added that a few figures would give it more substance.

At that moment the general’s secretary appeared at the tent door. His master signalled to him to come nearer, and the servant whispered something in the general’s ear. The Quartermaster said “yes” several times, and “no” an equal number of times.

“What were we saying?” he asked the chronicler as soon as the secretary had left. “Ah yes, figures! But you mustn’t take too much notice of me on this issue, because I’m obsessed with numbers. All day long I do nothing but count and reckon!”

The secretary reappeared.

“A messenger from the Pasha,” he blurted out as soon as he saw his master scowl.

The courier came close to the general, bent down to speak in his ear, and went on whispering in that position for a long while. Then he put his own ear to the Quartermaster’s mouth to collect the reply.

“Let’s go out,” the Quartermaster suggested when the courier had left. “We’ll have a better chance to talk outdoors. Otherwise the thorns of everyday business will throttle the violet of our conversation!”

Dusk was falling. The camp was in a state of lively activity. Akinxhis were coming from all directions, leading their horses to water. Standards rustled in the wind from the tips of the tent poles. With the addition of a handful of flowers to add their smell, the many-coloured camp would have looked less like a military installation than a blooming garden. The chronicler remembered that none of his colleagues had ever described an army as a flower garden — a gulistan — but that was what he was going to do. He would liken it to a meadow, or else to a polychrome kilim, but one from which, as soon as the order to move forward was given, would emerge the black fringes of death.

They had almost reached the centre-point of the camp when they ran into the engineer, Saruxha. He was wandering around looking absent-minded.

“Is the meeting over?” the Quartermaster General enquired.

“Yes, it’s just ended. I’m dead tired,” Saruxha replied, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. “We’ve not had a wink of sleep for three nights in a row. Today the Pasha gave us final orders to ready the cannon for next week … In eight days, he said, he wants to hear their blast.”

“Will you manage?”

“I don’t know. We might. But you can’t imagine how difficult the work will be. Especially as we’re using a new kind of weapon, one which has never been made before, so I have to attend to every detail of manufacture.”

“I understand,” the Quartermaster said.

“Do you want to have a look at the foundry?” Saruxha asked, and, without waiting for an answer, he led them off across waste ground.

The chronicler was delighted to be given so much trust. Before leaving the capital he had heard all kinds of rumours about the new weapon. People spoke of it alternately with admiration and horror, as is normal with a secret weapon. They said its roar would make you deaf for the rest of your life, and its blast would topple everything around it within a radius of several leagues.

During the long march he had noticed the camels that were alleged to be carrying pieces of the barrel destined to serve the big cannon. The soldiers who marched silently alongside never took their eyes off the rain-soaked black tarpaulins hiding the mortal secret.

Çelebi itched to learn more about the camels’ packs but he was frightened of arousing suspicion. When at last he overcame his shyness and questioned the Quartermaster, whom he had just got to know, the latter burst out laughing, with his hands on hips. Those heavy packs, he said, don’t have any tubes in them at all. All that was in them were bars of iron and bronze, and a special kind of coal. “So you’re going to ask me, where then is the secret weapon? I’ll tell you, Mevla Çelebi. The big, fearsome cannon are in a tiny little satchel … as tiny as the one over my shoulder, here … Don’t look at me like that, I’m not pulling your leg!” Now he whispered it into Mevla’s ear, nodding towards a waxen-faced man wrapped in a black cloak: “The secret cannon really is in a satchel.” It took the chronicler a little while to grasp that in that wan figure’s shoulder bag were to be found secret designs and formulae that would be used for casting the big gun.