Altai: A Novel (30 page)

12.

A sense of something imminent wore away at the hours, one after the other, from dawn till dusk, and again during the night, as we waited for the call from the Sultan. Instead, unexpectedly, we received one from the Grand Vizier.

Sokollu had never invited Nasi to a private meeting, and the novelty took us by surprise. Nasi asked Gomez to take charge of Palazzo Belvedere and wait there for news from the Seraglio. I would be the one who went with him to the audience. I was struck by that reversal of roles, and perhaps it didn’t leave Nasi’s trusted companion indifferent either.

Before I went out to join the boat, Gomez held me back. His olive face looked worried. “Stay close to him,” he said. “You and I are the only people he can still trust.”

I instinctively looked toward the east.

“There is one other. But he can’t help this time.”

Then I left him. I was about to meet the Giant again, and the thought didn’t make me feel any calmer. I climbed aboard the boat, and Nasi gave the order to set sail. We crossed the Golden Horn without exchanging a word and continued toward the Grand Vizier’s palace.

A page escorted us to the meeting rooms, watched over by armed men. We were introduced into a drawing room perfumed with incense and sandalwood. The Grand Vizier wore a dark green caftan and a white turban. Even when he was sitting down it was impossible not to notice his stature, which was such as to make the room around him look small. Beside him, at the desk, there was a short, slender man holding a roll of parchment under his nose, so long that it spilled over the edge of the table and covered his feet.

After the ritual pieties, the Grand Vizier congratulated us on the favorable outcome of the military expedition to Cyprus. Then he introduced the little man, who turned out to be the imperial Treasurer, and ordered him to read out the list of war expenses.

The parchment was rolled up again, and we listened in silence to the litany read out in the man’s croaking voice. It began with the 54,206 fallen soldiers of the Turkish army. It continued with the sunken ships; the number of injured, the cost of their treatments and the overall days of illness; the number of animals lost during the campaign; the pieces of damaged artillery; the exploded ammunition and the drams of black powder; the arrows fired; the
cantari
of food and wood consumed. He went on to list the tents that had been lost, the carts, even the wheels that had been damaged or broken during the year of siege. As the parchment unfolded at the treasurer’s feet, that mountain of men, animals and objects became visible and grew in front of our eyes, reaching the sky, tottering like a monstrous pyramid built with the most diverse materials. The last expense listed was two million nails.

After which, silence.

Mehmet Sokollu didn’t lose his old seraphic air for a minute. He merely welcomed the end of the list with a tilt of one side of his mouth. “Good. Very good. At the end of the day, Nasi Bey, your financial contribution to the Cyprus campaign covers only a tenth of what the imperial exchequer has spent on the venture. By our estimation, maintaining its current tribute to the empire, it will take Cyprus five hundred and two years to repay the entire sum.” He allowed himself a moment to observe our reactions. I tried not to let mine show, though I had a knot in my throat and my hands were trembling.

Sokollu continued in the same calm, irritating voice, “I just wanted to inform you, so that in case you were to receive from our Sultan, the shadow of God on earth, the ruling of the island, you might act accordingly.”

He paused again before continuing, “Although the military campaign has achieved its purpose, the war is not yet over. Our fleet is gathering at the mouth of the Adriatic to confront the Christian threat. The ships of the so-called Holy League are in the port of Messina, waiting to head toward the East. It’s a considerable fleet, captained by an intrepid young man, Don John of Austria, Philip II’s brother-in-law. Before putting himself at the head of their crusade, he showed his mettle by massacring the Muslims of Spain. Personally, I would have liked to send an expedition to their aid, but our navies were all busy with preparations for Cyprus.” He let us savor the poison of his words. “I think that man was spoiling for a fight. There are Spanish, Genoese, Pontifical, Maltese and especially Venetian galleys under his banners. The only ones missing are the French and Polish, our good allies.” He turned toward the treasurer. “We can consider ourselves lucky that England is no longer a power faithful to the pope and can’t use this war as a pretext to poke its nose into the Mediterranean, don’t you think?”

The little man chuckled, as my blood turned to ice. Why this reference to the English? Not so much as an accent in that man’s voice was squandered at random. I noticed Nasi’s unease; he too, like me, was busy trying to catch every nuance of the speech.

Sokollu went on speaking. “I do not doubt that our Muezzinzade Ali Pasha, with the help of God the Powerful, the Vengeful, will be able to stand up to the infidels and chase them back to where they came from.”

He accompanied his words by raising his hand in a sign of reverence toward God. For a moment he seemed to be holding back a thought, as if he were jealous of it, and then he released it with ostentatious indifference.

“A shame we can’t always face the Venetians on dry land, where the superiority of our army is devastating. Their power lies in their fleet.” He leaned forward slightly from his chair. “So we will postpone our accounts until we have also defeated their floating fortress,” he concluded. “
As-Salaam ’Alaykum
, gentlemen.”

The audience was over. No provision had been made for us to speak; he hadn’t even had the intention to talk to Nasi. He had just informed us of how things were. He had put us in check with a simple calculation of expenses.

I thought that on paper Sokollu was on the losing side; after all, Cyprus had fallen. And yet he seemed sure of himself, and we appeared before him silent and with no chance of appealing his verdict, just as we had before Selim.

“He knows about the agreement with the English,” I said, as we left the palace, heading toward the Golden Horn.

Nasi looked at me grimly. “He has suspicions and wants to put salt on our tails.”

“Suspicions? You mean spies. Yossef, in your house . . .”

“Reyna doesn’t know anything,” Nasi interrupted me irritably. “It is certainly no secret that Ralph Fitch is my guest.”

“Why do you trust her?”

The city passed slowly around us.

“She has done her duty by our family. She married me.”

I cursed under my breath. I had very bad presentiments: I was sure there was more trouble to come. “We’re missing something, Yossef.”

“That’s true,” he admitted. “Sokollu is keeping me at a distance from Selim. He wants to convince him that Cyprus was a bad business. But the Sultan still needs me.”

“Cyprus was madness,” I said.

He didn’t reply. I watched him from the corner of my eye, regretting having spoken.

For the first time, that great Jew struck me as alone and vulnerable.

13.

Hafiz and Mukhtar were washing their hands in the fountain. They flashed me a shy smile. A little way off, Ali finished his prayers, then got to his feet and rolled up his
sajjada
. They were here for their last farewell.

I had a great lump in my throat, and however much I tried to swallow, I couldn’t get rid of it. In the whirlwind of my life, I hadn’t had the time to understand, and it was only now that I realized, what they had become for me.

The people you go through hell with are friends.

The people you escape from hell with are friends.

These were my friends, and I would never see them again.

The bags were piled up in a corner of the drawing room. They covered the far edge of the mosaic: Sinai, Suez, the beginning of the Red Sea. I wondered if it was a coincidence or if they’d put them there for good luck. Among the bags and bundles sat the little boy. He looked less lost than he had on the day of the crossing.

Finally I saw Ismail. He was contemplating the portrait of Donna Gracia, as he had been the day I met him.

“So you’re returning to Mokha,” I said to his back. “It won’t be easy to look at Scutari from the window, and think that Ismail and his friends aren’t there any more.”

“The center of the empire isn’t a place for someone like me,” he replied even before he turned round. “I’m going back to where I can be useful.”

I approached, and we stood face to face.

“So you’ve had the confirmation you were looking for.”

“I’ve had it, but I hadn’t come here to look for it. I only tried to accept an invitation and honor a debt. I arrived too late.”

“Perhaps we all arrived too late.”

“Or too early, who knows. Perhaps men like Yossef look too far back, and see too far ahead. The present will always be a cage, for them and for the people who follow them.”

Ali had joined him. They said nothing more, but I understood their mute request.

“I can’t leave Yossef. Not now that things are taking a turn for the worse. He’s done a lot for me. He killed Emanuele De Zante, and saved Manuel Cardoso.”

Perhaps Ismail still had something to say, or perhaps he didn’t. A servant arrived and told us that Yossef was waiting in the library. Our last conversation ended with my name.

Limping, the old man made for the bags. I saw him picking up a bundle and putting it under his arm. A few moments later, he slipped through the doorway to the library. I was left on my own next to Ali. Hafiz and Mukhtar looked at each other in silence. Then Mukhtar spoke. In Turkish, so that I, too, would understand.

“Ali, tell them the story of the
khalifa
and the parasites.”

“Yes, tell it,” her brother joined in.

Ali looked at the girl. “You tell it, Mukhtar. Our friend is fed up with the sound of my voice.”

The warrior hesitated. “I’m not very good at telling stories.”

“That’s like saying you’re not good at breathing.”

“You have a lovely voice, Mukhtar,” her brother said. Mukhtar blushed slightly and a cheerful smile appeared on her face. She drew a deep breath, and a minute later I witnessed a transformation. The creature I had seen dancing and killing, but from whose lips I had heard only a few syllables, began telling the story, backing it up with expressive gestures.

“One fine day, a
khalifa
encounters a group of men, all sitting doing nothing. He asks them who they are, and they reply, ‘We’re the ones who trust in the will of God. He, the Merciful and the Compassionate, will support us, because we have faith in Him,’ ‘You’re just lazy parasites!’ the
khalifa
says, shaking his fist in the face of the one who spoke. ‘For people like you, I feel only disgust.’ ‘Why are you talking so harshly?’ asks the one who spoke. ‘He who has faith in God,’ the
khalifa
explains, ‘first plants seeds in the ground, and only then does he trust to His will.’”

Mukhtar declaimed the last phrase, gave the hint of a bow, then raised her head.

“And here ends the story.”

“Thank you, Mukhtar,” I said.

The idea came as an impulse. I rummaged in my pocket and took them out, the least expected objects. The dice carved at the mouth of the Po. I put them in Mukhtar’s hand, an incongruous destination.

Mukhtar showed them to the others. Ali looked at the twelve faces, the Roman numerals I, V, III . . . “The Book prohibits games of chance,” he said.

“Games of chance are over. I no longer consign myself to fate with my eyes closed.”

Then I pointed to the tiny figure of the little boy, in the middle of the bundles. “What will become of him?”

“We’ll take him with us,” Ali replied.

“We’ve got another brother now,” Hafiz added.

The little boy looked at us with confusion, as if he had understood that we were talking about him. I silently wished him good luck. I exchanged hugs with the others and started toward the door.

My throat tightened as I crossed the threshold. I swallowed hard, and it was right then that the tears started flowing.

14.

Many autumns before the Hejira, during the migration toward the hot lands, a family of ducks had taken a break on the waters of a river on the borders of Absurdistan. All the local animals had their own territory, and the ducks hadn’t had time to settle anywhere before a snake or a frog came to reclaim the place and chase them away. The poor birds were about to resume their journey without settling again, when they saw a big tree trunk floating on the water. It was green with algae and moss, and because no one claimed it, the ducks chose it as their resting place, quacking contentedly, but immediately afterward they began arguing about who should occupy the most comfortable positions. They were so busily engaged in their disputes that only one of them saw the tree trunk open its mouth wide, but he didn’t have time to escape. A moment later he and all his fellows ended up in the belly of the crocodile.

Gomez wasn’t there to distill the words of the storyteller Meddah Masun for me, in the
kahvehane
on the Golden Horn where I had spent many afternoons, while I was still getting to know the capital of the empire. The Egyptian Yassir and a friend of his from Bursa tried to translate and explain, but I hadn’t come to listen to fables about animals.

After Ismail and his friends left, I went back to walking the streets of the city, and Galata in particular, to listen to rumors and pick up information, the only medicine I knew to cure my obsession, the sense of loss that lurked in my soul, the suspicion that I was irremediably missing something.

I had frequented that café while waiting for my audience at the Divan, my first encounter with the Giant. Now I was coming back, after seeing him for a second time, and it was that old Bosnian who dominated my thoughts.

Sokollu Mehmet Pasha. I couldn’t help thinking that the presumption with which he had received us, reeling off figures and reminding us that the war wasn’t over, contained a threat. Since the day of our meeting, that suspicion had never left me. Every tiny detail I encountered spoke to me of him, reflected his face, like a skillfully positioned little mirror. Even the story about the ducks related by the storyteller.

The migrating birds were us, the Jews, the wandering people. The rotten tree trunk on which we would settle was Cyprus. Yossef Nasi was in search of a kingdom, and he had instead been presented with a list of debts. In seeking his island of vines and olives, he had financed its sacking and destruction.

Lala Mustafa and Piyale Pasha had also settled on it, in search of redemption for their defeat in Malta, but they had found only a Pyrrhic victory. Cyprus had drained the imperial coffers. Now the grand admiral Muezzinzade Ali Pasha was preparing to face the Christian fleet, with the support of the Grand Vizier.

All of Sokollu’s political adversaries were engaged in an expensive conflict whose outcome was uncertain. They had wanted it, craved for it, in the face of all his resistance. Now all they could do was take it to its conclusion. Just like me.

Sokollu knew this. He had let us all embroil ourselves in the fate of the military venture, and now he was waiting for the test of truth on the surface of the water.

He was the crocodile and I was the bird who saw him opening his mouth too late.

However, Muezzinzade Ali could still crush the Christians and consolidate the expensive victory of Cyprus. In that case, Yossef Nasi might yet have a hope of getting back into Selim’s good graces and being readmitted to his presence.

According to reliable sources, the Sultan now had more ships than the Holy League. A little Ottoman boat with black sails had infiltrated the port of Messina at night and recorded that aside from the war galleys, the Christians had all kinds of vessels on the roads, anything that was fit to sail, even eleven Venetian galleasses. Venice had decided to put those clumsy giants back in the water, a choice that seemed strange to me.

But superiority of numbers might be meaningless. The Persian wars would have taught them that. Xerxes’s army, the biggest of all time, had lost against little Greece and . . .

I felt a shock; my thoughts began rearranging and channeling themselves into a new direction. In Famagusta, Ismail had compared Bragadin to Leonidas.

After defeating the sovereign of Sparta, the Persians had faced the Athenian Themistocles. Thermopylae had been followed by the battle of Salamis. Xerxes’s fleet was destroyed in that stretch of water. Themistocles lured them into the straits, where the skill of the Persian and Phoenician pilots proved to be useless. He allowed himself to be pursued there, pretending to abandon camp, before launching his surprise attack. Deception had been the key to victory. The Athenian
wooden walls
had resisted, as predicted by Apollo through the mouth of the Pythia.

I wondered which oracle Sokollu had consulted, which priestesses. I thought of the women, of the whirl of messages that flowed along an invisible bridge between Constantinople and Venice.

I picked up the kettle in front of me and poured hot water on the tea leaves at the bottom of my cup. I had had enough coffee, and the hubbub of my reflections was enough to keep me awake. I remembered the kettle in Takiyuddin’s office, the one that turned the spit with its puffs of steam. Man can come up with strange machines. I remembered Nasi’s quip: “Would you ever have thought that a kettle could roast chickens?”

I watched Yassir and his friend talking to each other and realized that I wasn’t being the best dinner companion. I kept quiet, drinking my tea and pursuing abstruse lines of thought. Then I excused myself, left some coins on the table and went outside.

It wasn’t yet dark, and Galata was already filling up with noisy crowds. I crossed the Golden Horn by the usual caïque and started to climb the imperial road. The Old City was more silent and tranquil, apart from the packs of dogs wandering about the gardens and alleyways.

I arrived near the hippodrome, where I had seen the army filing past as they left for Cyprus. I remembered the huge bombard that had closed the parade. The symbol of the power of Turkish fire, forged by a Christian engineer in 1453. It was said that Orban had offered his services first to the Byzantine emperor and after being refused had turned to Mehmed II, who without demur had agreed to finance the work. The frightened features of Anton Varadian, the Armenian I met in Venice, assembled themselves in my mind. He, too, had passed from one side to the other. Before establishing himself on the lagoon, he had served the Sultan. Craftsmen care little for the destinies of states, or for faith: They go wherever they will find a patron willing to subsidize their craft. Just so, Takiyuddin had moved to Constantinople because the Sultan wanted to put him under his protection and finance his contraptions. I smiled to myself, thinking again of his incredible kettle.

A moment later I stopped in the middle of the street, transfixed by a thought, oblivious of the passersby who were hurrying home.

Who would come up with the idea of using a kettle to make anything but tea? A man of ingenuity. An engineer. Varadian had left Constantinople because the Turks weren’t willing to finance his experiments.

“Don’t undervalue machines,” Nasi had said when I arrived at Palazzo Belvedere. The phrase started buzzing incessantly around in my head. I noticed a mangy dog sniffing my leg, gave it a kick and started walking again, retracing my steps. Faster, this time, following the rhythm of my thoughts.

Varadian carried out experiments at the Lido. I had seen them. He was studying ways of making cannons more stable at the moment of firing. It was his obsession.

What had Fitch said when introducing his cannon? I tried to remember. His words were there, in my trained mind, and I just had to find them.

“You could arm a whole fleet with them, if it weren’t for the recoil that prevents their being used on ships.”

The recoil. The backward momentum of discharge. A cannon needs space, exactly what is missing on ships. The Turks aren’t interested in that. The Turks venerate the Big Cannon, they want huge pieces of artillery, to be used on the ground, to blow out the bellies of fortresses.

But the Venetians are interested in recoil. “Their power lies in the fleet.” Sokollu’s voice quickened my pace still further, merging with Nasi’s: “Where the force of an army can’t reach, ingenuity can.”