“Listen, Mevla,” he said imploringly. “You’re in touch with Sirri Selim. Honestly, what was the disease carried by the rats we released during the attack? He ought to know!”
The chronicler shrugged his shoulders.
“I swear to you by Allah that I have no idea.”
“Could it be the plague?” the janissary asked anxiously.
“Plague? Have you gone crazy? Come on, now. How can you think of such a thing?”
“I feel dreadful.”
Çelebi could not think what else to say. The janissary moved off with his guard without saying farewell. The chronicler was glad their encounter had been brief. He walked away in the opposite direction, fearing that the janissary might retrace his steps. The fact that he had an escort was a bad omen. He had heard what had happened to the first soldiers who had been infected with the scourge. They went first to Sirri Selim’s “Death Row,” then were taken to a set of long sheds surrounded by a ring of lime, and left locked up there until they died.
Another one down, the chronicler thought. Like Sadedin. Like the astrologer. He recalled the night before the first attack, when the four of them had drunk raki from the same gourd. It seemed so long ago now, as if it had been in a different world.
His feet led him to the open area in front of the Pasha’s tent. As always, two sentries stood motionless with their lances at the ready beside the entrance to the tent. A gust of wind covered the guards’ faces, their lances and the brass emblem with a pall of dust. The whirling, scorching, yellow cloud formed bizarre shapes reminiscent of ancient legends. Mevla Çelebi felt dangerous associations of ideas beginning to emerge in his mind and in order to dispel them he turned on his heels. At that point he saw several members of the war council walking towards the commander-in-chief’s tent. Among them he could make out the Mufti, with a sanxhakbey beside him. Their orderlies, who had to stay outside, lay down on the grass a little way off.
Yet another meeting, the chronicler thought, and then halted. The Quartermaster General came along unaccompanied. He looked worried and passed without turning his head. A few moments later, Kara-Mukbil went by, looking glum. People said he’d been wounded again during the assault two days ago. Then along came Saruxha, a pair of sanxhakbeys, and Kurdisxhi, leaning on his two orderlies. Beneath his russet mop of hair, the latter looked stunned, sallow, almost wan, as he had never looked before. He had visibly just got out of bed, and in view of his serious physical condition, his attendance at the Pasha’s tent meant that the meeting must be of utmost importance. The cannon were roaring without interruption.
The Alaybey came alone. In his wake, one by one came deaf Tahanka, then Karaduman, Kapduk Agha and, behind him, scowling as if trying to hide some great pain, Old Tavxha. All of them, or almost all, looked worn out. Only Giaour the architect, who marched in last of all with a particularly regular stride, looked his usual, imperturbable self.
The dust whirling about Çelebi’s head failed to sidetrack the chronicler’s mind. The Empire was powerful. It was a great Empire even in adversity. The crescent of the Osmanlis would live on down the centuries. Strong and competent men were making decisions. They would think it through. They would not give up the citadel lightly. Now their grave words were clashing like weapons striking each other in battle, and the scribe was putting them down on paper. A bitter pang of jealousy suddenly shot through him. He was on the point of leaving once and for all when his eyes fell on the long visage of Sirri Selim. The doctor was standing as still as a pikestaff a few paces from the pavilion. He didn’t seem to have noticed the chronicler, which made the latter uneasy. He didn’t dare go away without greeting Sirri Selim, in case Selim had noticed his presence. On the other hand he was hesitant about being the first to speak, because the doctor’s elongated face and his bloodshot, insomniac eyes looked particularly intimidating that day. He decided to stay where he was until the doctor appeared to notice him. Selim looked petrified. The chronicler even wondered if he hadn’t fallen asleep standing up, and might collapse at any minute.
At last the doctor became aware of Çelebi’s presence. Blood rushed back to his pensive face.
“They’re making a decision in there,” he said, gesturing towards the Pasha’s tent.
The chronicler nodded.
“They didn’t ask for me,” Sirri Selim went on. The blush on his face and neck had turned purple in blotches. “They’re not pleased with me,” he added in a louder voice.
Çelebi looked around fearfully.
“They want everything to happen in a flash, but nothing happens like that. To be honest, I didn’t put much hope in the rabbits, the toads or the dogs. But the rats …” His voice almost broke with emotion. “I can’t hide it from you, Çelebi, the rats really let me down!”
The chronicler could hardly believe his eyes. This frightful beanstalk who had cut a man into little pieces in front of everyone was on the verge of tears!
“Maybe it’s not the poor dears’ fault … The enemy sets traps for them, and who knows how much they suffer before they pass away! They probably did take in the disease I entrusted to them, but nonetheless …”
He pulled himself together. His voice grew clearer and one of his eyes went bleary.
“All the same!” he said again. “All that trouble for an ordinary disease … Çelebi, they’re not giving me my head. Ah, if I could have things my way, you’d see what I can do … My dear friend, let me tell you a secret. I wrote a letter to the Padishah: ‘Let me have the plague, O my master!’ Yes, that’s what I wrote to him!”
A shiver ran down the chronicler’s spine. He recalled Tuz Okçan and the proverb about the two scourges, each more fearsome than the other.
“But the authorities are blocking it,” the doctor went on. “They bring up a host of objections. They won’t let me have either of the two sovereign maladies — neither plague nor cholera. I bet they’re keeping them for themselves!”
The chronicler butted in during a long sigh to ask the doctor what other maladies he had requested from on high. Sirri Selim reeled off a list, but most of the medical names meant nothing to him. Some of them rotted the gut, two or three of them made you blind, and another one drove men mad.
“But what’s the point?” Sirri Selim moaned. “Like I told you, those are common afflictions. The two sovereign maladies I mentioned are quite different. They wipe you out, they don’t just raise your temperature and make you retch.” He sighed once again, and his eyes began to gleam as if lit from within. “A plague-infested rat … Ah, if only I were given that … I would send that in, like a seven-tailed page, or pasha … Why are you making that face, Çelebi?”
“Oh no, I’m not making a face, Sirri Selim. How can you say such a thing?”
The doctor’s face hardened. His blush darkened.
“Well, that’s what you say, but I’m sure you’ll manage not to write about the rats in your chronicle!” he shouted, raising his voice all of a sudden.
The cannons fired again, in close sequence, and for no obvious reason Sirri Selim turned his back on the chronicler and strode away on his long legs. A moment later, he stopped, turned his head round, and shouted from afar: “Shall I tell you what I’ll do with your chronicle, Çelebi? Do you really want me to tell you?”
He then uttered words that left the chronicler quite flabbergasted …
Before coming on this campaign he had never heard so many or such varied expressions referring to the human posterior. He had often pretended not to hear them, even when raw recruits quite gratuitously called him an “old bum,” or, worse still, when in the half-light of dusk shameful propositions were hissed at him. “Hey, old man, you want a feel?” He comforted himself with the thought that if they knew the work he was doing, and how he was watching over them for their own good, they would be sorry for saying such things. He took even more solace in hearing that a man as eminent as Saruxha was also prey to this common fever, and never missed an opportunity to exclaim that whenever he relieved
himself all he wanted was to wipe his arse on the Mufti’s beard. But now a cultivated man, a colleague, and a most learned one to boot, had told him to his face and without so much as a smile that he intended to use the chronicle for the same purpose as the one to which Saruxha wanted to put the Mufti’s beard!
Feeling pained and unsteady on his legs, Çelebi walked away in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile in the Pasha’s tent the council had begun its debate. The sanxhakbeys reported in turn on the state of their units.
Suddenly, in the pause that followed the end of one of the reports, Tavxha gave a little scream of pain and put his hand to his legs.
He wanted to say something, but the silence grew more complete, and all eyes turned to the Pasha. Everyone knew that Tavxha had rheumatism, and his wail meant that his short and crooked limbs felt rain coming on. The cry had a sinister echo.
The Pasha’s eyes grew harsher.
“Speak!” he said.
The Mufti rose to take the floor. He spoke of the dead and of their souls now tasting the glorious nectar of martyrs in the gardens of paradise.
The Pasha was not really listening to anything they said. He only noticed the way his subordinates’ eyes looked away each time his glance met theirs. He realised that this evasiveness was the first but infallible sign that, as from that instant, they were separating their own fate from his. There they were in front of him, sitting in a half-moon, cheek by jowl, with their worry-beads between their fingers, bearing their insignia of office and the decorations they never forgot to display. He thought back to the day last spring when he was planning the expedition and first looked carefully at the list of his general staff, which he had to submit to the Grand Vizier for approval. All their names were on it. Some of them he knew personally, others by repute; and others he had never heard of had been warmly recommended to him. All had been in and out of the Sultan’s favour at different times, and had had careers filled with expeditions, hard campaigns, long-drawn-out sieges, wounds, garrisons taken by stealth or by valour, enemies vanquished and regions laid waste, where not even grass would ever grow again. At that time he had hoped they would all get along, which was always easier between men of quality. To begin with they had in fact had good working relationships. But now, rather sooner than he had expected, the days of shifty glances had come. Contrary to what might have been expected, he was now the one to be consumed with envy. The campaign was coming to an end, and whatever its outcome, their careers would go on, they would fight another day, they would pitch their tents before castles new, they would climb up or slide down the rungs of the military or administrative hierarchy. He would not. His own path ended at the foot of these ramparts. What awaited him now was either the peak of honour or descent into the abyss. This they knew, which was why their eyes kept racing towards the back corner of the tent, as far as possible from his own. And that was also why silence fell upon them all when Old Tavxha’s limbs (which the Pasha found so short as to be deformed) foretold rain. It suddenly occurred to him that not only did none of them fear the rain any more, but that they actually wanted it to pour. They were weary and wanted to get back to their harems. In their eyes the commander-in-chief was getting more detrimental to their interests with every day that passed. Like a drowning man who clings to anything still afloat, he might drag them down with him to the grave.
Gradually and progressively, he formulated all that in his mind. They were trying to step aside. To drop him. But he was still their commander-in-chief and he was not going to let them get away as easily as that. He would show them what a real leader was capable of in a desperate situation. They were expecting a shower. Like idol-worshippers, they venerated the misshapen legs of Old Tavxha that had anticipated rain. They had their ears open for the sound of the rain drums. Fine and good. He would fulfil their wishes, he would give them rain! He would drench them with rain — of a kind they were not expecting.
The great muster drum banged away outside. Its muffled thudding blanked out all other sounds, overwhelming everything like a tidal wave.
The last speech was ending. The Pasha looked at all those closed faces. He announced that the attack would take place shortly. He said that the full complement of the entire army would be deployed in successive waves of attackers. He added that none should imagine that the start of rain would affect the assault in any way. Of course he knew that the first drop would finish everything off, irremediably, and he found it hard to hold back words that could not be easily spoken either. Instead, raising his head in a threatening manner, he announced:
“Today I shall take part in the fighting myself.”
Nobody said a word. They all understood what that statement meant. It meant that all of them without exception, from the Mufti to the architect, had to join in the fighting. A smile lit up Old Tavxha’s face.
“Tell the soldiery that members of council will join them in battle, in person,” the Pasha said, and stood up.
All bowed low as they left the tent.
The great muster drum had stopped. One of the commander-in-chief’s orderlies had brought him his white horse and was holding it by the bridle.
Meanwhile all the units had assembled. The great plain was covered with men, further than the eye could see. Never before had this army assembled such a huge number of soldiers for an attack. The hot wind that made the innumerable standards flutter and wave seemed intent on registering all the images that their emblems ever inspired in poets and chroniclers.
The Pasha came out of his tent. He raised his head. Low, pregnant clouds hovered uncertainly in the sky. He mounted, and with his orderlies and his aides-de-camp beside him, rode to the vantage point from which he usually observed the battles. A few moments later, he followed his custom of raising his right hand, the hand on which he wore his ring, and this gave the signal to start the attack. The air filled immediately with the sound of a thousand drums. With his weary, indifferent eyes he followed the first wave of volunteers as they went up to the wall, then the successive waves of azabs. It all went on in the ordinary way except that the battalions surging forwards were more numerous than before. The units reached the foot of the ramparts, and from their midst rose hundreds of ladders, like long wooden arms slowly falling (as in a dream, so it seemed) to lean against the walls. Then an impetuous flood of eshkinxhis overran the hacked and harried azabs in their rush towards the embankment. It was all proceeding as in previous assaults, and the thought that this was but a repetition plunged the Pasha into a mood of depression. He gave an order, then another. Then a third. The officer who had transmitted the first order came back. Then the second one returned. The third officer, on his return, looked very glum.
Over there beneath the wall, men could feel Death itself moving among them. The shiver that swept through the body of troops was a sure sign of the first blow of the reaper’s scythe. Then the men grew more hardened. The army’s reactions slowed down and became sluggish even as ever harsher blows fell upon it.
The Pasha understood all this, just as he instinctively respected the natural order of things and their necessary sequence.
The janissary units began to move, with their customarily grim faces and a whole firmament of stars and crescents waving above their heads. But hadn’t he sent them forward too soon?
He shook his head from side to side as if trying to dispel something that seemed like a fit of drowsiness. Everything was taking place at the proper pace, but in his mind a certain number of fixed points emerged which allowed him to measure the acceleration of time.
He was almost astonished to watch the elite dalkiliç troops surge forwards, as if it had not been by his own order that they were moving up to the front line of the assault.
He rubbed his forehead and nearly shouted out aloud, “There’s no need to hurry!” This impression of haste was prompted by a kind of sleepiness hovering in the air.
The death squad … They were still there in his mind, which was the starting point for everything. Th
e squad, or rather, its anthem: “We are the grooms who wed Death!” That day he felt as he had never felt before how closely his own destiny resembled theirs. We have signed a pact with death, he said over to himself as he shouted aloud:
“The soldiers of death!”
After them, there was nothing left to throw into the fray, save the dome of the temple — in other words, himself.
He motioned to his orderly to hand him his breast-plate and his yatagan, then he lowered the visor of his helmet and cantered towards the rampart, followed by his aides-de-camp and a detachment of Moroccan desert warriors.
Every stride of his horse shortened the distance between him and the wall. He felt no fear. He just had a dry and sour taste in his mouth.
The wall came nearer. The nearer it came the higher it seemed to be, and the breaches looked ever more frightening. The battlements above, like the bared fangs of a monster, had begun crushing bodies. Between those implacable teeth his own bloody fate still struggled, and on them it hung.
The citadel came closer. It was the first time he had seen it so close up. Its shrouds of black pitch fluttered before his eyes. They covered whole stretches of wall and great lumps of stone, but they could not veil the entire body of the keep. Last spring, during the long march towards it, he had seen the castle in his dreams. It had come to him as a woman, maybe because the writers of ancient chronicles of war often tried to make their glorious captains’ thirst for conquest more convincing by depicting citadels in terms and images usually reserved for women. So the keep had come to him as a difficult woman. He embraced it, sweating from head to toe, but still she refused to yield to him. Her walls, towers, gates, limbs and eyes obsessed him, but they slipped through his fingers and got him in their grip in the end, so as to strangle him. Oddly, her sexual organ was not the main way in, as might have been expected, but was somewhere lower down, and probably in the beyond.
The huzzahs of tens of thousands of fighters hailing his arrival at the foot of the ramparts jerked him out of his torpor. Surrounded by his guards and the detachment of Moroccans, he joined the assault force. The wall was now close by. Sinister black drapes of congealed pitch swung around his head. Hundreds of janissaries, sipahis, azabs, volunteers, eshkinxhis, dalkiliç and müslümans were scrambling up flaming ladders.