Ismail Kadare - The Ghost Rider

The foundry had been set up away from the camp in an area that was entirely fenced off and under heavy guard. It was separated from the stream by a hillock, and at twenty paces from the gate stood a sign saying: “Forbidden Zone”.

“It’s well guarded, day and night,” the engineer said. “Spies might try to steal our secret.”

The engineer acted as their tour guide through the long shack that had been thrown up and gave them copious explanations of what could be seen. The forge and the ovens had just been lit, and the flames gave off stifling heat. Shirtless, soot-blackened men dripping with sweat were busy at work.

Heaps of iron and bronze ingots and huge clay moulds covered most of the floor.

The engineer showed them the designs for the giant cannon.

The visitors looked with wonderment at the mass of straight lines, arcs and circles meticulously traced out on the blueprints.

“This one’s the biggest,” Saruxha said as he showed them one of the drawings. “My artificers have already dubbed it balyemeztop !”

“The gun that eats no honey? Why call it by such a strange name?” the Quartermaster asked.

“Because it prefers to eat men!” Saruxha replied. “It’s a whimsical cannon, if I may say, a bit like a spoiled child who says to its mother one fine morning, ‘I’m fed up with honey!’ … Now come and see the place where it will be cast,” he added as he moved off in another direction. “Here’s the great hole where the clay moulds will be laid down, and over there are the six furnaces where the metal will be melted. A standard cannon takes one furnace, but for this one, six will barely suffice! That’s one of the main secrets of the casting. All six furnaces have to produce molten metal at exactly the same degree of fusion at precisely the same time. If there’s the tiniest crack, the tiniest bubble, so to speak, then the cannon will burst apart when it’s fired.”

The Quartermaster General gave a whistle of astonishment.

Although he too was amazed at what he had heard, Mevla Çelebi was sufficiently astute not to turn his head towards the general in case the latter, once he had regained his poise, might feel annoyed at having been caught in a moment of weakness by a mere chronicler, or, in other words, at having let himself be seen to be astonished, when he was supposed to be far above such emotions.

But the Quartermaster General wasn’t trying to hide his bewilderment. The chronicler, for his part, trembled at the thought that Engineer Saruxha was engaged on God’s work, or else the Devil’s own, by having his furnaces produce a fiery liquid that Allah himself caused the earth to spew out through the mouths of volcanoes. Labour of that kind usually brought severe punishment.

As the engineer went on explaining how the casting would be done, in their eyes he slowly turned into a wizard, wrapped in his black cloak, about to perform some ancient, mysterious ritual.

“It is the first time that cannon of this kind are to be used in the whole military history of humankind,” Saruxha finally declared with pride. “An earthquake will sound like a lullaby next to their terrible thunder.”

They looked at him with admiration.

“This is where the most modern war the world has ever known is about to be waged,” he concluded, staring at the chronicler.

Çelebi was worried.

“The Padishah’s priority at present is to force the Balkans into submission,” the Quartermaster commented. “Obviously, he will spare no expense to achieve his aim.”

“This is my right-hand man,” Saruxha said as he turned towards a tall, pale and worn-out young man who was coming towards them.

The young man glanced nonchalantly at the visitors, made a gesture that could barely be understood as a greeting, and then whispered a few words in the engineer’s ear.

“You’re amazed I picked that lad as my first assistant, aren’t you?” Saruxha asked when the youngster had walked off. “Most people share your view. He doesn’t look the part, but he is extremely able.”

They said nothing.

“In this shed we will cast four other, smaller cannon, but they will be no less fearsome than the big one,” the engineer went on. “They are called mortars, and they shoot cannon-balls in a curved trajectory. Unlike cannon which hit the walls straight on, mortars can rain down on the castle’s inner parts from above, like a calamity falling from the heavens.”

He picked up a lump of coal and piece of board from the ground.

“Let’s suppose this is the castle wall. We put the cannon here. Its shot takes a relatively straight path” — he drew a line — “and hits the wall here. But the shot from the mortar or bombard rises high in the sky, almost innocently, if I may say so, as if it had no intention of hitting the wall — and then falls almost vertically behind it.” With his hand, which the chronicler thought he saw shaking a little, he made out the shape of the two arcs in the air. “Bombards make a noise that sounds like the moaning of a stormy sea.”

“Allah!” the chronicler cried out.

“Where did you learn how to do all this?” the Quartermaster General asked.

The engineer looked at him evasively.

“From my master, Saruhanli. I was his first assistant.”

“He’s in prison now, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Saruxha replied. “The Sultan had him put away in the fortress of Bogazkezen.”

“And nobody knows why?” the chronicler ventured timidly.

“I know why,” the engineer replied.

The Quartermaster General raised his eyes and glanced at Saruxha with surprise.

“Recently, the poor old man’s mind began to wander. He refused to make cannon of larger calibre. He claimed it was impossible, but in fact, as he told me, he didn’t want to do it. If we make them even bigger, he would say, then the cannon will become a terrible scourge that will decimate the human race. The monster has come into the world, he said by way of explanation, and we can’t put it back where it came from. The best we can do is to keep its barrel no bigger than it is now. If we enlarge it further, the cannon will devour the world. The old man stopped experimenting. That’s why the Sultan had him arrested.”

The engineer picked up a piece of clay and rubbed it until it turned to dust, and said, “That’s what’s happened to him.”

The other two men nodded.

“But I have a different view of the matter,” the engineer explained. “I think that if we give in to scruples of that kind, then science will come to a halt. War or no war, science must advance. I don’t really mind who uses this weapon, or against whom it is used. What matters to me is that it should hurl a cannon-ball along a path identical to my calculation of the trajectory. The rest of it is your business.” And on that abrupt note, he stopped.

“I’ve been given to understand that the money for making this weapon was donated by one of the Sultan’s wives for the salvation of her soul,” the Quartermaster General said, obviously intending to change the topic of conversation.

“For the salvation of her soul?” Çelebi asked, thinking the detail worthy of figuring in his chronicle. “Is it expensive?” he added after a pause, astounded at his own temerity.

“He’s the one to know,” the engineer said, pointing at the Quartermaster. “All I can tell you about is the gun’s range and firepower.”

The chronicler smiled.

“Oh yes, the big gun costs a lot of money,” the Quartermaster said. “A very great deal. Especially now that we are at war, and the price of bronze has soared.”

He narrowed his eyes and made a quick mental calculation.

“Two million silver aspers,” he blurted out.

The chronicler was awe-struck. But the figure made no impact whatever on the master caster.