Altai: A Novel (23 page)

36.

The water of the Bosphorus was cloudy and agitated, stirred by the wind that passed up the straits from the south. The dock at Ortaköy echoed with shouts, orders given in Turkish and Ladino. Gulls wheeled between the sea and the clouds, in the hope of taking advantage of the gathering.

I took up my position behind a salt-encrusted shed, a storeroom for nets and sails. At the end of a wooden walkway I recognized a
mahona
belonging to the Nasis, the same one that had dropped off a cargo of refugees on this shore months previously.

She wasn’t there. Perhaps she had already boarded her ship, and I was too late. I had followed a different road from the usual one, slightly longer. I had calculated, or rather hoped, that I would get there just as Dana had emerged from the labyrinth of streets into the open space in front of the slipway. But there was nothing. I stopped to contemplate the scene of dockland life, as if it were a memory.

Then, on the other side of the open ground, a crowd began arriving. Servants from the Palazzo Belvedere were pushing a cart. Lying on it, its roots wrapped in a jute bag, Dana’s carob faced its second move.

She came after it, a leather bag in one hand and the goldfinch’s cage in the other. She was dressed in her smartest clothes, a highly embroidered, sand-colored dress and a silk shawl that covered her shoulders. I admired her proud bearing, not very appropriate to the life of a chambermaid, or a peasant girl in a remote colony. I wondered why she was wearing such a sumptuous dress, and the answer passed through my mind.

If the stuff of which your limbs are molded is good, if your heart and mind are sound, the vicissitudes of fate will be received like guests of honor. That was what Dana was saying.

She climbed onto the ship and cast a glance around, her last before she left the capital. I had a sense that she had seen me, and instead of hiding, I took a step forward, into the open, but she had just disappeared behind a curtain that was to serve as a shelter for her, stretched between a bulwark and the mainmast.

I stood there motionless, trying to imagine her behind that veil. Was she sitting down, or kneeling in prayer? Was she looking to the south, toward the sea that the Turks call White?

I wondered what our fate together might have been. A house, a serene existence, far from the struggles that consume the world. The goldfinch chirruped, suggesting my reply.

Amid a salvo of curses, the
mahona
pulled away from the shore. Someone on the jetty was waving. The cries of the gulls became shriller, a screech, as if something had been taken away from them.

37.

I endured gloomy days, forcing myself to think about what awaited us. Ahead of me lay a great task, but having lost Dana, I felt as if I were facing it after shedding a limb. I had to stir myself. The generally unfocused enthusiasm of the people around me was impressive enough to overcome my feeling of deprivation and discomfort.

The Sultan’s troops had to be below the walls of Nicosia now, in the teeth of Marcantonio Barbaro and Sokollu Mehmet Pasha. It would all be over soon, and then there would be a kingdom to be governed. We needed to prepare.

Solomon Ashkenazi was studying the revenue of Cyprus, the income from vines and olives, for the future king of the island. Nasi seemed to live in his carriage, between the Palazzo Belvedere and the Seraglio. There had been no sign, on the other hand, from Ismail, since he returned from Bandirma. Nasi told me the old man was writing his memoirs.

Because of my somber mood, the doubts that the German had instilled in me were about to spill out with great violence. They dampened the enthusiasm that I needed to cauterize my self-inflicted wound. That weird old man from a far-off place had placed a little wedge in Nasi’s great edifice, enough to open it up a crack. The story of Joseph began to torment me again. Showered with honors by the pharaoh, he had made the Jews prosper in Egypt, but when that pharaoh died, his successor had enslaved the people of Israel.

What would happen if Selim were suddenly to die? What guarantees did we have that the new sultan would go on protecting us? We didn’t have a Jewish army; we had no weapons. How could we defend the new Zion?

When I set out my doubts, Nasi heard in them my cry for help. I wanted him to startle me again, to take me up a mountain and let me see even further. And my mentor did exactly that.

The place he took me to was the laboratory of the greatest inventor on earth. Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma’ruf al-Shami al-Asadi, whom the Turks called more simply Takiyuddin. He was a Syrian who had grown up in Egypt, a man of faith and science, a judge and mathematician, an engineer and astronomer. He had come to the city on the invitation of the Sultan. Selim intended to finance his studies and his inventions, and there was already talk of a huge astronomical observatory, even bigger than the one in Samarkand.

The gray beard and the wrinkles beside his laughing eyes revealed that Takiyuddin was even older than Nasi. I noticed how similar the two men were, though very different in feature. The affinity was intellectual: two geniuses confronting one another.

The precise order that reigned in Takiyuddin’s laboratory did not seem dictated only by practical considerations. Mathematics and geometry also desire to enchant the eye, as happens in the most successful architecture. The desks, the equipment and the machines formed an arabesque that filled the vast room, made of wheels and pulleys, hoists and ladders. Forming a colored backdrop were shelves filled with jars, boxes, powders and liquids. Takiyuddin welcomed us, and with his arms spread wide he introduced us to his creations.

“Just look, my friends. These machines speak for themselves.”

Immediately twelve chimes confirmed his assertion. They came from a clock to my right, the size of a double-doored cabinet, like the one I had seen in the library at Palazzo Belvedere. Judging by the inscriptions, this one was capable of recording not only the hour and the calendar date, but also the time of day, the phases of the moon, and the positions of signs of the zodiac.

It reminded me, though much smaller in form, of the clock that dominates Saint Mark’s Square, with the two Moors striking the bell.

Takiyuddin came up beside me, holding a glass ball the size of an orange. A thin gold chain held it around his neck like a pendant. He looked first at it and then at the clock, and at last he nodded with satisfaction. Within the sphere I glimpsed a numbered dial. I had heard of clocks so small that you could wear them on your person, but I had assumed they were legends. Now, on the other hand, I was seeing one close up, and I couldn’t work out how weights and counterweights could be contained, going up and down, in such a tiny space. Neither could I understand what use such an object might be. Perhaps to a country squire, because in a city like Venice or Constantinople, church bells or muezzins were more than enough to help mark out the day, the same for everyone.

Takiyuddin opened a door below the wall clock and took out a peg the size of a finger. Then he slipped it into one of many holes that ran around the main dial and said only that in a quarter of an hour, at the sound of the alarm bell, he would have to say good-bye, having been summoned to the Sultan’s palace.

Spellbound, I stared at the numbers and pointers. I imagined that the metal arrow that told the hour would continue its course around the dial until it struck the peg inserted by Takiyuddin, setting off the alarm mechanism. I would have stayed there watching for the whole quarter hour, to see whether my hypothesis was correct, but a strong smell of roasted meat drew my attention toward the fireplace, where a spit laden with chickens was turning over the embers, without anyone there to move it.

Suspended just behind the birds, where the flames were high, was a big copper teakettle with a narrow spout. Above that was the chimney flue, and if you lowered your head a little, you could see a paddle wheel right in the opening. The kettle, with an impetuous puff, shot steam from its spout, and the hot, powerful exhalation struck the paddles. They turned, and a system of arms, serrated wheels and pulleys communicated that circular motion to the spit. “Would you ever have thought that a teakettle could roast chickens?” remarked Don Yossef. The sight of such ingenious machines had a cheering effect, and I certainly needed that, but I was beginning to wonder why Nasi had brought me there.

Before I could ask him, he put in my hands a metal tube with a lens fixed in each end. He told me to put it to one eye and look through it, out of the window, toward a faraway object. I chose a minaret on the Mosque of Suleyman.

The effect took my breath away. I could see the little window from which the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer as if it were only a few feet away from us. I instinctively thought of how useful and at the same time how dangerous such a tool would be if it were made accessible to everyone. Spies would be able to look into people’s houses from a comfortable distance. Governments would be able to control the activities of their subjects. An invention of this kind would change the practice of my trade completely.

I was about to convince myself that this was the reason for our visit, when the bell of the clock started striking over and over again, making a diabolical racket.

Takiyuddin apologized, saying that he couldn’t keep the Sultan waiting. And besides, he knew that we, too, had another appointment.

It was only then that I became aware of the presence of a person in the darkest corner of the big laboratory. I recognized the amused expression of Master Fitch. That day he was wearing his usual leather jacket and dark breeches, but he had allowed himself the affectation of a white feather in his hat.

Coming forward and bowing, the young Englishman invited us to approach an object covered by a gray cloth. I couldn’t imagine what new contraption it might be.

“This is the proof you wanted,” he said in his comical accent. He lithely slipped the cover off to reveal an ordinary piece of artillery mounted on a wooden gun carriage.

38.

“The scale is reduced,” Fitch said, “but the proportions are correct. The iron was smelted in Takiyuddin’s foundry, as you requested. He himself can guarantee the success of the propulsion and the resilience of the weapon.”

“Good,” murmured Nasi, stroking the gun carriage. He slipped his hand and the whole of his forearm inside the mouth of the weapon, exploring its inner surfaces. “Very good,” he repeated. Then he turned to me.

“This, my friend, is the answer to the doubts that are gnawing at your soul.” I was about to say something, but he raised a hand and stopped me. “A kingdom cannot say it is free until it is capable of defending its own freedom. That is an incontrovertible truth. But where the strength of an army cannot reach, ingenuity can.”

The ceremonies were starting to get on my nerves. In my life, I had always taken the trouble to ensure that I was not left in the dark about anything. Perhaps in returning to my trade I was also reacquiring my old obsessions. “How many cannon do you think it would take to defend an island the size of Cyprus?”

The tone of the question betrayed my state of mind, but Nasi didn’t turn a hair.

“Hundreds.”

The reply had come from Fitch. His pointed moustache and the beard on his chin looked like sharpened swords. “Please, Master Fitch, do continue,” said my mentor.

The Englishman thanked him. “Do you know where Sussex is, Signor Cardoso?”

“In England, I suppose.”

“Indeed it is,” he agreed. “It is a region of forests, oak for the most part, with land rich in iron and springs. Water, wood, metal: even the ancient Romans smelted swords and coins over there. But they didn’t know that the iron in Sussex is of a particular kind.” He struck his hand on the breech of the cannon. “Very malleable. The first person to notice this peculiarity was the Reverend William Levett, vicar of Buxted, a man who has spent the whole of his life cultivating two great passions: Jesus Christ and artillery.”

It occurred to me that the juxtaposition wasn’t too bold. The foundries of La Serenissima chiefly produced bells and cannon.

“The Reverend Levett,” Fitch continued, “wanted to resolve the age-old problem of iron cannon. Unlike bronze, which allows guns to be forged in a single casting, iron can only be turned into smoothed bars, which are then pressed together into a series of rings. Obviously, with wear and tear cannons of this kind tend to fall apart after a short time.”

What the Englishman said was true, as I myself had witnessed. I had been present at the forging of cannon at the Arsenal in Venice, and at shooting tests on the Lido beach, under the direction of the engineer Varadian. The Armenian’s practice was to try out different guns of various lengths and calibers. Iron cannons were the worst: They cracked, and sometimes they exploded. One bombardier had had an arm sheared off by a flying splinter.

Fitch walked around the cannon and then rested his hand on it.

“As I am sure you will know, bronze is an alloy of brass and copper, two minerals that are in short supply in Europe. This makes bronze cannons extremely expensive. The Reverend Levett, God bless him, wanted to find the perfect match between resilience and convenience. And he managed to do so, thanks to this iron from Sussex—” and he repeated the strange gesture of resting his hand on the cannon as if introducing an old friend. “After a series of experiments, thirty years ago he produced the first English cannon in cast iron, in the royal foundries at Newbridge. A weapon made all in one piece, at a cost five times lower than any bronze cannon. Thirty years of experience since then have allowed our craftsmen to discover all the tricks for improving these weapons. The lifetime of these cannons remains shorter, in fact, but that doesn’t mean they are not advantageous, given the reduced cost. One could arm an entire fleet with these, were it not for the recoil that prevents them from being used on ships. And as to their weight, it is a hindrance if they have to be transported, but not if they are placed on a rampart and not moved from there.”

He paused, as if waiting for a question, but I was still too confused. From clocks with alarms to a tube that intensified eyesight, from a self-propelled spit to cast-iron cannons, that morning my journey through the world of machines had been a headlong trip.

“Her Majesty Elizabeth I,” Fitch continued, “is so jealous of the Sussex cannons that she is thinking of preventing them by law from being sold to Catholic states, but there is no prohibition on their being purchased by a Jewish king.”

A masterpiece of diplomacy. England was looking for a commercial outlet in the East. England had excellent cannons at the lowest prices on the market. Yossef would become king of an island in the eastern Mediterranean.
Do ut des
.

Fitch resumed his thread. “The future kingdom of Cyprus will receive an annual supply of one hundred cast-iron cannons, in exchange for exclusive commercial capitulations for English vessels in the ports of Larnaca, Limassol, Paphos and Famagusta.”

“What are your credentials for such an agreement?” I asked.

Fitch remained unflappable. “The word of Her Majesty Elizabeth I, whose envoy I am pleased to declare myself. And I guarantee, Signor Cardoso, that Her Majesty does not waste her breath. She is willing to seal the agreement as soon as Yossef Nasi is king of Cyprus.”

A long silence followed, after which it was Nasi who spoke. His words were directed at me alone. “When everything is concluded we will continue to maintain good relations with the Sultan. We will pay the annual tribute and fill his cellars with the most excellent wine, but we will defend ourselves on our own, and remain independent. Cyprus will become the commercial base for trade between the Ottoman Empire and England. And when Sokollu’s plan to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Suez is realized, our kingdom will be the crossroads of trade between three continents.” He rested his hand on my shoulder. “Wealth, strength, freedom. We should put it on our flags.”

I looked down at the cannon and touched it with my fingers. Yossef Nasi had just shown me that his plans were not molded from the stuff of dreams. They were forged from English iron.

At last I understood the true difference between the two men who had guided my steps as an adult. Consigliere Nordio had forced me to hunt for him like a bloodhound, muzzle lowered along the narrow
calli
of Venice. Nasi, on the other hand, had made me lift my head and fly like a falcon, like the Altai that I had seen taking flight from the arm of Hassan Agha and soaring proudly above the fields. He had put in my hands one of those tubes invented by Takiyuddin, and with it I could see Cyprus and the world, and read fate in the stars.