Altai: A Novel (18 page)

22.

“Bartolomeo Nordio must have been proud of you.” Nasi received my account with these words, then asked me to help him assess what needed to be done. We had to get our hands on the bailiff’s letters and at the same time unmask Ashkenazi, while making sure that Sokollu didn’t get his clutches on our net and free the prey. That was why I hadn’t seized the letters at the hammam; if I had, the Jewish doctor would have coped, and his dealings with Traverso wouldn’t have come to light. Besides, Don Yossef added, we couldn’t carry out a large-scale action in the city, where we had neither men nor weapons. We had to make careful preparations, wait for Traverso’s first voyage and strike him on the sea.

“On the sea?” I asked. “How?”

“We’ll force Ashkenazi’s ship to make an unscheduled stopover. The ship will be inspected, and the rest you can imagine.”

“How will we force it to make a stopover?”

“Pirates. The waters between here and Candia are full of them.”

At first I thought he was joking. Just as when you’re a child and you make up a story, adding one character after another, Nasi had introduced sea-robbers into the tale, the same ones who were to act as a pretext for the war on Venice, the same ones that my father, Gioanbattista De Zante, had fought on countless expeditions. That Don Yossef could resort to pirates if necessary was a piece of information out of nowhere as far as I was concerned.

I showed my surprise, and the future King of Cyprus nodded with an inspired expression on his face. “Fortune willed that an old friend would decide to come back to town. Someone who has spent his whole life in the worst possible company. Ismail al-Mokhawi might be able to help us.”

Pirates and Anabaptists. That remark left me more baffled than ever. I remembered my mentor’s saturnine mood the day after his nighttime visit to his old friend.

Nasi guessed the nature of my reflections. “I know David talked to you about Ismail. You see, the man is a gentile, but to me he’s a brother. Have you ever had a brother?”

No, just a stillborn sister.
“Not that I know of,” I replied.

“There are a lot of proverbs about being brothers, but they say everything and its opposite. It’s a bond that no one can explain. ‘
Amor di fratelli, amor di coltelli
,’ they say in Italy. ‘Brotherly love is a matter of knives.’ ‘An offended brother is more unyielding than a fortified city,’ it says in the
Mishlê Shlomoh
.”

I found the image appropriate: thick walls of stone. I was ignorant about too many things, and the bond between Nasi and the man from Mokha was impenetrable to me.

“Ismail’s return filled me with joy, and yet knowing that he is here torments me. He’s a rock hanging above my head.”

“Why did he come back?”

“Gracia wrote to him.”

I didn’t tell him I knew about that already, for I wanted to keep Dana out of our conversation. Nasi went on, “She asked him to help me with one last mission. She said no more than that, and she’s no longer here to put our doubts to rest.”

The explanation struck me as obvious, so much so that I couldn’t help myself.

“Perhaps she wanted to see the two of you together at the conquest of Cyprus, building up the kingdom.”

Nasi shook his head doubtfully. “Ismail hates kingdoms, sovereigns and princes. Gracia knew that better than anyone. I set out our plan for him, but his heart remained cold.”

“If that’s the case, why do you want him to help you now?”

“Chiefly because he’s the right person. And because the rock’s hanging there. We know it’s going to fall, but we don’t know where or when. I don’t want to leave these decisions to a gust of wind. I want to be the one who does the pushing.”

“Will he agree?”

“There are two things
el Alemán
has never held back from: favors to friends and pranks played on the powerful.”

23.

The caïque bound for Üsküdar, propelled by four oars, was thin and pointed as a gondola. The Bosphorus looked like the Grand Canal of a vast rural Venice. The villages on the Asian shore were colored jewels, linked together by a chain of villas,
yali
, stilt-dwellings, wooden jetties. The dark water welcomed dozens of other fishing boats, as well as freighters, big merchant
mahonas
, a galley armed with cannon, feluccas, and punts that looked empty but concealed lovers busy swapping sweet endearments.

Once they had reached the opposite shore, the oarsmen moored the boat and we jumped out onto the uneven planks of the dock.

In the last light of day, the fishermen sat mending nets against upturned hulls. A group of children ran about between the waterside and the alleyways, and women pulled in the clothes they had hung out in the morning. No one paid us much attention.

We reached the house where I’d spent my first night in Constantinople. Don Yossef called Ismail’s name from outside without getting a reply, and then the Indian girl appeared on the terrace. “Ismail?” asked Nasi.

“Over there.” She stretched out her arm, pointing to a spot in the distance. “At the top of the street.”

A cluster of houses climbed the side of a hill. We set off, and when we were behind the dwelling I saw the red-bearded Arab leaning against a wall. Beside him there was a door, closed only by a piece of blue fabric.

“
As-Salaam ’Alaykum
,” he said, poking out first his chin and then his forehead.

“
Wa ’Alaykum As-Salaam
,” Nasi replied. “We’re looking for Ismail al-Mokhawi.”

He leaned inside, and the old man’s head appeared a moment later. He barely glanced at me, greeted Nasi, and asked us to wait. Then he disappeared into the house again.

“What’s happening?” Nasi asked the Arab.

The other man replied in a foreign accent, “A child has a high fever, and his parents have sent for Ismail.”

We waited for half an hour, until the curtain opened again and the old man re-emerged from the darkness, followed by a short, squat man. They exchanged a few words, then said good-bye.

“So you became a sawbones as well, down in Mokha?” Nasi asked.

“I just got old,” Ismail replied in Turkish. “These people think my advice lengthens your life.” He turned to me. “Good evening, Sior Cardoso.” I replied, and he introduced the red-bearded Arab to me: “This is my friend Ali Hassan al-Najib, the man who promised God he would convert me to the Mohammedan faith.”

The Arab greeted me again with a nod of the head. Ismail asked him to step into the house ahead of us, and warn the others that there were guests for dinner.

On the open terrain by the water we bumped into a fisherman who gave the old man a few big sea bream, and an old woman with her face veiled handed him a basket of apricots. Ismail thanked her, exchanged a few words and chased away a gang of begging children, pretending to run after them with his stick. Then he turned on his heel and we went into the house.

The old man knelt down on the carpet, beside the brazier that had warmed me too. He put a pile of cushions between his back and the wall and gestured to us to make ourselves comfortable. He pointed to the Indian twins: “These are Hafiz and Mukhtar. They come from the Malabar coast of India.”

Hafiz, the boy, said something to him in Arabic, and the old man thanked him, using the only word I knew in that language: “
Shukraan
.” Then he returned to Turkish: “I’m listening.” I realized that he spoke that language instead of Italian because his friends were there and he didn’t want to exclude them from our conversation.

“The other evening we were left with a question,” Nasi announced, also in Turkish. “It concerned the last letter my aunt wrote to you. Perhaps it won’t be the answer you’re looking for, but here it is. A few days have passed, and already your help would be invaluable to me.” With a gesture of his hand he attracted my attention. “Master Cardoso will tell you what it’s about.”

I was careful not to be caught off guard by this investiture, and talked about the bailiff’s letters, the Jewish doctor’s slippers, Sokollu’s intrigues, Traverso and his voyages. The German listened in silence. When I’d finished, Nasi made one last remark: “Manuel has done an excellent job, and to bring it to the best possible conclusion we need a gang of pirates to board Ashkenazi’s ship and put it off course. I remember that you used to keep company with certain people, and I know that you could find them again.”

Hafiz set down a tray with three steaming cups in the middle of the room. It was the drink I had heard them describe at Palazzo Belvedere: shells that looked like nuts, but with the flavor of coffee, left to infuse in boiling water.

We each took one, being careful not to burn our fingers. Ismail al-Mokhawi smoothed his white beard and cleared his throat.

“If I’ve understood correctly, it’s a matter of putting the Grand Vizier, his secretary and the Venetian bailiff in check all at once.” Nasi nodded, the old man burned his lips with
kishir
and started talking again. “Wouldn’t it be enough to denounce Traverso as a spy and have him captured by the janissaries on Ashkenazi’s ship before it left the harbor?”

“I don’t trust the janissaries, my friend. Sokollu could easily manipulate them, get rid of the evidence.”

“And yet,” Ismail remarked, “before I came here I was in Tiberias and I saw janissaries on every street corner. And your kingdom of Cyprus, won’t the janissaries and Selim’s troops be the ones to conquer it?”

This time Nasi spread his arms in a gesture of impatience. “And how could it be otherwise? We Jews, in the Ottoman Empire, can’t even go around with a razor blade. That’s why we need the Sultan and the janissaries. At least for the time being.”

I tried to work out what he could be talking about, but Ismail’s words started troubling me again.

“Isn’t that how it started, the enslavement of your people in Egypt? A Jewish dreamer who was a friend of the Pharaoh, covered with honors and prestigious duties? Then the Pharaoh died and the Jews were enslaved for four hundred years.”

The reference to Joseph hit me like a slap. A few days before, I myself had superimposed that image over Don Yossef, like a grid over a coded message, but I had stopped at the first lines, and the message I had drawn from it was totally different.

“I like it when you quote my people’s history,” Nasi replied. “Joseph was a man of God, but I hope to do as Judith did, when she went to Holofernes’s banquet and cut his head off. If you like, you could help me sharpen the sword.”

Nasi was playing a game of chance. I thought of the time, in the stinking cell in Ragusa, when I had thrown my rough dice and they had replied, “Live.” Here, every phrase from my mentor was a throw of the dice. Pause, check the result, roll again.

That last throw clattered away down the room, without giving any sign of stopping.

“Fine,” the old man said at last. “I just hope you have a firm grip on your sword.”

Nasi moved his hand up and down as if to say
Give me time, have trust
.

Ismail summoned Ali and the twins. He asked if they’d understood what we’d asked them to do, and added that we’d need a few days of research and may even have to leave the city.

The three of them consulted in low-voiced Arabic, then signaled their agreement with a nod of the head. Nasi thanked them, and then turned back to his friend.

“I’d like you to take Manuel. It’s thanks to his intuitions that you’ve got this far.”

“Yes, and you have to keep an eye on me.” The old man stung him, and I couldn’t work out whether he was joking or not. Then, looking at me, “I was right, about that poplar pollen and the hill of Pera. Well, the appointment’s fixed for tomorrow, after the first prayer, at the caravanserai of the Suleymaniye Mosque. I’ll show you ambushes of a different kind.”

24.

We left the caravanserai on five haggard-looking bay horses. I was wearing Muslim clothes, to get round the law against infidels riding horses like everyone else. To my right was an Indian girl disguised as a man, then a man who looked like a girl, and finally a German in a cloak and turban. I wondered if the Moor Ali, behind his red beard, mightn’t be hiding unexpected features.

We went down the third hill of the New Rome, the one upon which stood the Suleymaniye Mosque, and reached the Imperial Road. In spite of his age, Ismail sat straight in the saddle and rode at a good pace. I spurred my horse to catch up with him.

“Where are we going?”

“Out of the city,” he replied crisply.

We headed westward, the only direction on the peninsula that doesn’t lead to the sea.

“We’re visiting a pirate, not a peasant,” I said, in a bid to melt the old man’s reticence.

Ismail raised his chin. “We’re not going to see him, we’re going to see the man who can tell us where to find him.”

By now we were near the Column of Arcadius, and the voices from the Grand Bazaar drowned out our words. As we crossed the square, I noticed with surprise that they were female voices, and that behind the stalls and shops selling henna, candles, flowers and yogurt, there were veiled women, most of them peasants, and that the clientele was made up of women, too.

Once we were out of the crowd, I learned from Ismail that this was
Avrat Pazari
, the only market in the city where Muslim women could buy and sell in peace, without servants or brothers keeping an eye on them.

Our riding party carried on past the Cannon Gate, leaving the Byzantine walls behind. We passed through the suburbs and found ourselves in the open countryside. Low hills followed one after the other, run through with waves of green. I saw snakes darting in and out by the side of the track. Ali told me not to worry, because none of them were poisonous. And the horses remained calm.

Then the countryside assumed tones of yellow and ocher, as sunflower fields filled the horizon. Sparrows and bee-eaters chirped on the branches of the few trees. Their rainbow feathers filled me with unexpected joy. At about midday, Ismail made an announcement.

“Here we are, Cardoso. Nearly there.”

The landscape was unchanged. Grass and sunflowers as far as the eye could see; nothing else. We crested a hill, and on the slope of the next one I spotted a group of men on horseback. Around them, a dance of birds flying in high circles and plunging in dives. They were falconers.

Years before, I had been the guest of a nobleman in the Trevisan marches, carrying out a task for my old bosses. Hunting with falcons was his great passion, but I could hardly say it was mine. I was pursuing different prey. On that occasion I had been bored, and had soon tired of standing with my nose in the air following the movements of the raptors. The nobleman had then bored me further with a long litany of complaints about the decadence of
tempora
and
mores
, which put such distinguished birds of prey on the forearms of unworthy priests and courtesans, though they were meant only for men of quite different status. In the end, thank God, he gave me the information I was looking for.

Ismail raised his right hand in greeting and called out a name in a loud voice.

Young men with thin beards replied with profuse salutations and low bows. One of them said he was the son of the man we were looking for, and that his father would be delighted by our visit.

So they guided us to his presence. He was a man of Ali’s age, tall and handsome, who towered above his mount and emanated a calm, mild strength. He got off his horse and we did the same. The hooded falcon perched on his right arm stayed obediently in its place.

From the tone of the greetings and the brief allusions to old memories, I understood that Ismail had been close to the man who was welcoming us. As he introduced him to us, he listed all of his titles, and at last I knew who he was. Hassan Agha, the Great Falconer and second chief huntsman to the Sultan. That evening, back in Palazzo Belvedere, I would discover that he was the husband of Princess Shah, daughter of Selim, and remember with surprise his simple, cordial manners. His friendship with Ismail was doubtless the true motive for that attitude, but perhaps another factor was his habit of living among fields and bushes, in close contact with animals, and not in the halls of a lordly palace, surrounded by deference and submission.

It was thus that I learned that Ismail, during his years in Constantinople, had taken part in Hassan Agha’s hunting parties, along with some illustrious lovers of the sport, one of whom was the fifth vizier, Lala Mustafa, whom I had met at the Divan.

We got back on our horses, and reached the top of a hill, the highest in the area. Below us, beyond a grove of willows and flowering bulrushes, the calls of ducks and toads revealed the presence of a stretch of water.

The falconer removed the hood from his bird, and the creature took flight with a nervous flutter of wings. It soared to a high altitude and began playing in the gusts of wind. Hassan Agha’s men came down among the marsh grasses, beating the ground with their sticks. A flock of ducks rose from the depths.

The falcon flew a few more turns, then fell in a vertiginous dive upon its prey, which it grabbed with its claws. The victim’s flight was cut short in a cloud of down and feathers. The young horsemen hurled themselves toward the spot where it had fallen, and came back to us bearing the falcon, which still gripped the duck in its claws. Hassan Agha drew it to his arm with a big piece of meat. While the falcon was eating, he slipped the prey from its clutches and put it in his bag.

“You Europeans like the company of dogs,” he said, stroking the bird with a finger. “Submissive creatures, anxious to please man, as devoted servants desire to please their master. Hunting with a falcon, on the other hand, is a matter of trust and mutual self-interest.”

The bird’s bright white plumage was streaked with a rainy pattern of dark grey patches. I had never seen an animal like it, and as politely as I could I asked the falconer what kind of bird it was.

“They say that its mother comes from the icy marshes at the edge of the world,” he replied, “and its father from the deserts of central Asia, the cradle of our people. Two different breeds, but similar enough to be able to mate, laying the eggs on the slopes of the Altai, the Mountains of Gold, which give their name to this hybrid.”

I thanked him for the attention he had given me, but he went on talking, as if the answer were a very long one. “He’s a very robust falcon, faithful, easy to train. You don’t have to do anything with an Altai, and a good falconer does as little as possible. It’s the falcon’s nature that impels it to fly and makes it grip the prey with its claws. If you want him to do that for you, you just have to show him why it’s to his advantage.”

The Great Falconer paused again, and then told the story of Prince Temujin, who after losing a battle came home across the desert with a friend. The two men hadn’t eaten for days, when they saw an Altai falcon flying high above them. The friend suggested that Temujin keep an eye on it, to take its prey away from it. The other man replied that you have to earn your food, and caught the falcon to teach it to hunt for them. Two years later, the princes finally came home. If they hadn’t trained that Altai they would have died of hunger and the world would not have known Temujin, or Genghis Khan, the greatest leader of all time.

At the end of the tale he bowed deeply, as Ismail complimented his friend on his storytelling gifts. A little way away, the young men were whirling quail carcasses on a long string to train the falcons to seize them in flight. Hafiz and Mukhtar observed the scene carefully, as if committing to memory the gestures of a ritual.

At that point, Ismail judged that it would not be impolite to pose the question that had brought us all there, half a day’s ride from the old walls.

“I was wondering, my friend, what happened to Mimi Reis. I lost trace of him, I have had no news of him, and I would like to see him as I have seen you.”

The falconer nodded. “He had a few problems, so he decided to leave the city. You will find him in Bandirma, on the Sea of Marmara, doing exactly what he has always done. Mimi Reis will always navigate the sea, even if he has only a cardamom pod as a boat and a cup of coffee as the only available sea.”

The two men laughed. I had never heard Ismail’s laugh. It was sonorous, and sounded like the laughter of a young man, but it left a melancholy echo behind.

I would have liked to know more about the past that linked the old man to our host and to the pirate we were looking for, but instead the two friends’ words flowed together into rumors about imminent war.

“They say our Sultan wants to terminate the construction of the Edirne mosque,” the Turk explained. “He needs lots of money, and the Grand Mufti has told him that for the glory of God it is better to use the booty from a holy war than the taxes of subject Muslims.”

That was an opinion that I hadn’t heard before. The vox populi said that Selim needed to inaugurate his reign with a conquest, lest he be seen as inferior to his predecessors.

Ismail’s comment was somewhat broad, and I tried to work out what he was trying to imply. “The men seem to be going off to war like dogs crowding around a carcass. But the causes are complex, hard to discern. That’s why the humble people experience wars as natural disasters, like floods or plagues. They see cannons of bronze, not the gold that originated them. In the lands I come from, the cannon smelters and the money coiners were the same people.”

“The point of view of the humble folk is not ours, Ismail,” said the falconer. “You know what impels the powerful men of this city. And it’s the ambition of powerful men that drives wars. There is no need to seek other reasons.”

With those words, he gestured to his attendant to summon the others. The hunting day was over, and Hassan Agha invited us to his palace, which was not far away.

As we road among the grassy hills, I felt free, just as I had felt when I arrived in Constantinople, when I saw the city from the deck of the ship.

Even in the saddle, pages and boys made their raptors fly. The little ones, sparrow-hawks, kestrels and honey buzzards, perched on the arms of the youngest boys, sped into the air until they had a good view of the ground below, and then, with the wind supporting their wings, stopped in midair, waiting to plunge down on their earthly quarry. I remembered that this attitude was called, in Italian lands, the Holy Spirit. Like Tuota’s dog, in Ragusa.

Then, once again, it was the moment of the falcon that Hassan Agha had called an Altai. I was drawn to the creature; it had a fierce and noble appearance, and yet it was serene, as if its fellowship with man came from the very distant past, as if it had always known the voice and arm of its wingless companion.

The Altai flew high over the countryside. We went on, each in his own disguise, still not suspecting the carnival that would see us dancing together.