Altai: A Novel (27 page)

6.

For the first part of the night I didn’t sleep a wink. The Turks played horns and drums to stir up the besieging forces and unnerve their adversaries. I thought about what I would tell Yossef Nasi I had seen. I had in front of me an exhausted city, tattered like a worm-eaten scrap of wool, and all around an invaded, swarming countryside, turned upside-down by the hand of man, dug into trenches to provide shelter, heaped into bridges and embankments to be used as instruments of conquest.

Shortly before dawn, we were wakened by a handful of janissaries. Lala Mustafa, as he had promised, was inviting us to take part in his reconnaissance from above.

We got up and, still groggy, reached the pasha’s tent, where he was ready to lead a short march, at its head, accompanied by a select guard. Lala Mustafa greeted us proudly and gestured to us to arrange ourselves around him.

To our rear was a muddy river of men. The agony of the fortress had attracted people of every sort, waiting to pounce on the leftovers, to gnaw on the bones of the prey. Lala Mustafa held a flask of perfume under his nose to mask the worst of the stench.

Hidden by the trenches and the wall of men protecting us, we reached the foot of one of the towers that we had seen from the sea. It was an old fortification in wood, like a ghost castle, made of planks, faggots, wicker baskets full of stones, the whole thing barely held together by ships’ hawsers. The side exposed to the cannonballs was padded with cotton. Its bulk provided the only shadow for a radius of several yards.

Looking up from below, it seemed to me that the fortress was moving and about to fall on top of me. I worked out that this impression was created by the movement of the clouds.

We climbed the tower, leaving most of our escort at its foot. The wooden ladders led us easily upward. On the first floor stood falconets and culverins, ready to fire.

When we reached the top, I could see the entire city spread before me, no more than two hundred yards away. The Turks had opened various breeches in the counterscarp and climbed down into the moat. Lala Mustafa explained to us that covered pathways had been dug into it, so his soldiers could break down the defenses one stone at a time and lay mines without being shot at. They had raised barriers of masonry perpendicular to the moat and as high as the walls, to use as embankments and bridges, and as defenses so they could enter the moat without being shot from the side towers. I saw men using hooks and picks to shatter, one stone at a time, the stretches of the barrier already broken by cannon shot, shielding themselves with tables covered with wet skins.

Only a few defenders remained on the walls, and they were further up, behind a high barricade of barrels, wood, and cotton bales, sheltered by big tables bristling with nails and daggers.

The arsenal tower had collapsed at various points. The Ravelin, Famagusta’s land gate, was a terrifying pile of masonry. The city, inside the walls, had a desolate appearance, its buildings beaten down by months of cannonades.

Thick, black smoke rose outside the gates of Limassol. A huge, untidy pyre of planks and resinous tree trunks was being consumed by the flames, but I couldn’t work out to what end.

Devastation, as far as the eye could see.

I was stirred from my thoughts by the voice of Lala Mustafa.

“Bragadin is an obstinate man. And his commander, Baglioni, is a smart fighter. Even so, they haven’t a hope. Yesterday I made a request for surrender: They rejected it. Today I plan to dine on partridge pie.” He held out his right hand, palm upward. “In there.”

He lowered his arm and an explosion split the sky, shaking our emplacement like a fruit tree. A blast of rifle fire struck the ramparts and barricades that shielded the city’s defenders. The Turks’ war cries rang out three times.

Thousands of foot soldiers in leather and chain mail leaped from the trenches and launched themselves toward the walls.

The half-light of dawn faintly illumined a vast and terrible scene. A sea of banners flapped in the wind and war music sounded, strident and monotonous. I thought the Cypriot defenses would collapse under the pressure. The rage of that first assault seemed irresistible. Columns of pikemen, of foot soldiers carrying light weapons, of janissaries were attacking the masonry of the Ravelin and the Limassol gates. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and the blood thumped in my temples.

As the wind changed, the smells of battle reached my nostrils. Pitch, turpentine, saltpeter. Blood freshly spilled and clotted, guts, roasted bodies, like the smell of a slaughterhouse. The sickly smell of piles of bodies already decomposing.

I looked and looked, even though the scene kept repeating itself cyclically, monotonously: assault troops passing over the torn bodies of their companions to keep their appointment with death; Famagusta, a relic abandoned in the sand, still resisting.

Behind the parapet that protected us, Hafiz and Mukhtar prayed along with Ali. Ismail stood motionless, leaning on his stick, his lower lip between his teeth. Lala Mustafa stopped frantically issuing orders and listening to information and turned to us. “You don’t need to worry,” he said. “This fort isn’t a useful target for the Venetians. They have very little gunpowder, hardly any ammunition, and they’ve got to concentrate on the attack.”

He had just finished speaking when a big boulder, after bouncing crookedly, raked a trench right below us, mangling legs and heads.

Bodies fell into the moat, slipped back into the dust, and others trampled them, stumbled and climbed toward the barricaded fortresses, where the enemy maintained its resistance in spite of everything: an enemy that had sent a whole generation to the other world on that hideous plain and went on fighting, throwing down fiery bucketfuls of pitch, shattering the masonry of the Ravelin with three-pointed nails, shouting
Long live Saint Mark
and firing again, and again preparing to fight with knives and swords.

A group of foot soldiers tried to enter at the side, where the fastnesses of the Venetians, though bristling with knives and daggers, seemed less well armed. A rain of bottles filled with inflammatory fluids drenched them, like sauce on cooked meat. The Turks fled in all directions, turned to human torches. Some of them dove into half barrels full of water. One headed straight toward us, running across the plain, under the sun, the fire disfiguring his skin and flesh. He looked as if he were swelling, growing. I saw his face devoured by the flames. His eyes were those of a living man, and they were screaming things that a mouth and lungs can’t say. His body was impelled past its own inanition, like an automaton. Another few steps and he fell, face down. The fire finally consumed him.

Then, suddenly as it had begun, the battle ceased.

It must have been about one o’clock in the afternoon; the sun was high, more than halfway through its course, and the heat was suffocating. Breathing burned the lungs. The sudden silence, after hours of hubbub and shouting, hurt the ears.

Lala Mustafa was vexed. His plans for lunch had been thwarted. “In a few hours we will resume the attack,” he said to us. “If you wish, you can still be my valued guests at the shacks on the Mount of Jews.” He pointed to the first hill below the fortress and took his leave. I stood gazing, unable to take my eyes off the vision of the apocalypse.

At last we came down from the tower, escorted by our janissaries, and we asked them to accompany us to the Beach of Gardens, across the battlefield.

My eyes met those of a soldier who was yelling at his fellows, his right hand stretching upward, clutching a scimitar. I knew that veil in his eyes. Hashish. Intoxicating cannabis resin, the sublime ingredient of the sweets I had eaten with Dana.

I knew that warlike rage needed to be helped, sustained, induced. Behind the lines, if you act like a coward, punishment awaits you. In the front, the defenders rake the enemy and death is almost certain. I wondered what Bragadin was doing to lift the mood of his soldiers. The supplies of wine in there must have been endless.

We passed by the point where, until a few hours previously, the thin outline of the Ravelin had still stood. The Turks had filled the moat with earth and with the corpses of their own comrades. The unburied dead numbered in the thousands. Some of them had lost their lives a few hours before; others had been dead for days. The stench of putrefaction was unbearable.

I could hear a faint buzz, getting louder. I didn’t know what its source was, nor from what direction it was coming. Then I realized that it was climbing from the moat, just fifty yards away from us. Flies. A black whirlwind spinning over the corpses. The pestilential stink reached us with a terrible intensity.

I felt a desperate urge to vomit. Ismail took me by the arm and dragged me away, far from the stench of death. He fixed his gray eyes on me.

“Have you seen enough now?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to do. I started breathing again; I tried to stand firmly on my feet and turned around once more. Ali was a few feet behind us. He advanced through the carnage as if nothing were happening, as if he were untouched by events. Before he caught up with us, he knelt to close the eyes of a corpse.

I asked him what the point of that gesture was, in a hell like this.

He replied that it had a point to him, and that should be enough.

7.

We’d hardly reached the beach when cannons, arquebuses and human throats started roaring again. Lala Mustafa must have finished his lunch, albeit not where he had expected, and the assault began afresh.

We spent the rest of the day on the ship, without saying a word, listening to the noises of battle. At sunset, when the attack was over and the plain rang only with the wails of the wounded, a sudden explosion brought down the tower of the arsenal. The Turks must have detonated a mine below the walls. The rampart split in two, leaving an abyss. The southern walls were now broken at several points, and the city’s hours were numbered.

I couldn’t shake off that nauseating smell: Every pore of my skin was filled with it. I went down to the beach to swim in the sea, hoping that the saltwater might erase it. However much I rubbed myself with water and sand, it kept coming back.

Later, under the stars, I saw Ismail walking on the quarterdeck and exchanging a few words with the commander before he lay down.

I touched Ali, who was lying beside me, on the shoulder, and noticed that he too was awake. I didn’t need to say anything to him.

“He’s seen it all before,” the Arab murmured. “Tonight he hates himself for being forced to live through it again.”

“If he knew what we were going to find here, why did he agree to come?”

“Because he refuses to surrender. Even now, there’s a struggle going on inside him. The same one that has inspired him all his life. I hope he finds peace one day.”

I looked at the old man’s dark silhouette, then got up and joined him, as I had done on the White Sea, when we went to enlist Mimi Reis. The mood couldn’t be the same; the images of the day just past were still vivid, indelibly fixed in the mind.

Ismail’s grim appearance would have dissuaded anyone from addressing him, but I did so anyway. “What will happen now?”

He didn’t answer straight away, busy as he was studying the massive bulk of the dying fortress. Then he said, “Lala will give them time to decide. Whether to obey their pride or save those who can still be saved.”

“Bragadin can’t be as insane as that,” I said. “He must know by now that neither God nor the Christian fleet will save him.”

I was trying to convince myself.

Ismail stared at the stars. “It’s not over yet.”

The next day Lala Mustafa ordered a few half-hearted assaults, to wear out the last forces of the defenders, then suspended hostilities and waited. One more dawn and sunset, and then, on the ninth day of the month of Rabi’ al-Awwal, a white flag appeared on the shattered walls.

I greeted it with relief and thought that Ismail might have been wrong, that the war was finally coming to an end. Fate had brought us there at exactly the right time.

Information started coming in quickly. To guarantee respect for the truce, Lala Mustafa established an exchange of hostages. Negotiations over treaties of surrender were under way.

We passed another day on the ship, at the mercy of the heat and our impatience. At last the conditions of the capitulation were made known. All the Italians were free to leave for Candia with their families and their belongings. The same applied to those Greeks who wished to leave. The Turks would put the necessary ships at their disposal, if the last three Venetian galleys weren’t enough. On the other hand, those who had decided to stay wouldn’t be subjected to reprisals or similar vexations. The Venetians had asked to take away their artillery and Lala Mustafa had met this condition with a denial. He granted the conquered men permission to have only five cannons of their choice. Finally, he ordered the evacuation of the fortress by the fifth of the Christian month of August.

I told Ismail that in my opinion it was a good agreement: it preserved the honor of the vanquished and permitted them a safe way out. The old man didn’t reply, but went on thoughtfully staring at the defeated fortress, and I wondered whether he had noticed the anxiety in my voice.

From our mooring place, in the Beach of Gardens, we couldn’t see the embarkation of the surviving population, which took place on the following day. The chain that closed the port was withdrawn, and the Ottoman ships entered the roads. That same evening, around a bonfire, a Turkish sailor told us of the exodus that he had witnessed. As far as he could tell, there were still a lot of “useless mouths” in the city, people who hadn’t wanted to leave at the beginning of the year, unable to put their whole life behind them. A column of men, women and children, laden with bundles and goods and chattels, had embarked on the vessel. They would spend the night there, waiting to weigh anchor.

The next day, what remained of the garrison had to board the ship as well. Operations proceeded slowly, beneath a ruthless sun. The Turks carried water and food to the refugees, but their presence filled the air with a gloomy tension.

The worst moment seemed to be imminent when a gang of looters tried to slip into the city to set about sacking it. The Venetians took up arms, but it was the janissaries who reestablished order. I blessed the wisdom and the firm hand of Lala Mustafa.

Another day and at last it would be over. And yet I couldn’t wipe out the river of blood that I had seen flowing; I would carry it with me for ever. We would have to cleanse that earth and ensure that those men had not died in vain. Who could tell whether I really believed we could, as I formulated those thoughts, or whether I was just looking for a way to accept the reality of those deaths.

On the last evening I tried to look at Famagusta with new eyes. Once Jewish rule was established, we would rebuild the fortress. Under the enlightened guidance of Nasi, it would become yet more beautiful and more secure. The English cannons would crown the bastions, making them impregnable. Ships from all over the Mediterranean would moor in the port, laden with precious merchandise; trade would flourish. As for the trees, we would replant them, and the whole island would be a garden. I thought with regret of the carob tree. For just a moment I tried to convince myself that when the New Zion was sound and flourishing, perhaps I could . . . but no, no one can go back. It was forward that I must look, and I forced myself to do so, with a mixture of hope and trepidation that troubled my soul.

One more day. Just one day.