Altai: A Novel (14 page)

11.

Imagine a village in the heart of the Balkans and a little boy called Bajica grazing the family herd. He’s only ten years old, but everyone around knows him, because of his giant stature and his alert mind. So, when the moment of the blood tax arrives, the Ottomans come and find him on the mountains and carry him away, or perhaps it’s his father who points him out to the Sultan’s officials, to spare his intelligent son a future of hunger. Be that as it may, Bajica is brought up by a family of Muslim peasants. He learns the language, converts to Islam and takes the name of Mehmed. At the age of fifteen, when he is sent to Adrianopolis to become a janissary, he is already more than six feet tall. At thirty-seven he commands the imperial guard and three years later he is made the Great Admiral, replacing the legendary Ariadeno Barbarossa, lord of Algiers. He is then appointed governor of Rumelia, the province where he was born and where once again he hugs his mother, who says she recognizes him by a birthmark on his face. At fifty, he is third vizier, then he becomes second; finally, when he is on the brink of sixty, Suleyman the Magnificent appoints him Grand Vizier.

So it is that a Serbian child has become the most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire after Sultan Selim II, one of whose daughters he married. In the course of his incredible rise he led the army against the Hapsburgs, the Shah of Persia and the Tsar. He repressed revolts and thwarted plots. He designed a canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and another between the Volga and the Caspian Sea. Now his emissaries keep him in contact with the whole world, from the Moriscos of Spain to the Sultan of Aceh on the island of Sumatra. He speaks Serbian, Turkish,
Š
tokavian, Arabic, Persian, Italian and Latin. He is Sokollu Mehmed Pasha. The Giant. The man who summoned us one winter day to appear before the Divan.

At that time, much about Mehmed Pasha was still unknown to me. But I did know the legend of his destiny, and I couldn’t help comparing it to mine. Both renegades, converts, loyal to those who had given us a new life. Except that I had had to conceal my origins, because the Repubblica Serenissima would never allow them. By contrast, the Great Turk, who in the eyes of the Venetians was a cruel tyrant, had had no difficulty entrusting his empire to a convert. Nasi told me that Sokollu, for his part, maintained excellent relations with his brother, who, thanks to him, had become a patriarch of the Orthodox Church.

With that thought in mind, I climbed into the carriage that awaited us at the Fishmongers’ Gate. In Constantinople, Nasi was one of the very few Jews who were allowed to use carriages or sedan chairs, or even move around on the back of a mule. He owed that privilege to his own influence, which had won him a dispensation from the Sultan. We sat in silence, and soon we arrived at the Seraglio.

The walls of the palace were so long that they looked like another city, separate from and protected by the first. The impression became even stronger once you had entered the first courtyard, where craftsmen, dockyard workers and petitioners formed a long and orderly queue to obtain a colloquy with the vizier of the Dome.

We got out of the carriage near the stables and proceeded on foot toward another door, yet more imposing than the first and flanked by two stout towers.

Beyond that threshold, which only the Sultan could cross on horseback, there was a second courtyard, entirely enclosed by a colonnade. Peacocks and gazelles wandered among hedges and cypress trees. On the right, the kitchen chimneys gave off smells of roast mutton. A central meadow, gleaming like a silk carpet, had four paths running across it. A single path of black cobblestones traversed it lengthwise, leading to a third portal. Instead, we took one of the side paths, which brought us to a spot below a marble loggia, where we were told, with a gesture, to wait.

We sat down on a long porphyry bench softened by comfortable cushions. Absolute silence reigned, a silence that would have made any speech sound vulgar and disrespectful. And yet speech would have been a great help to me. The instructions that Nasi had given me did not seem sufficient to face such a crucial trial.

I knew that the Divan had been in deadlock for years on the question of attacking Cyprus. I knew that there had been provocations, periodic visits by the Turkish fleet, some artillery fire supposedly aimed at pirates. I knew that the Divan was divided into two factions. The one opposed to war was the smaller, but its chief supporter was the Grand Vizier. The larger party, led by the Great Admiral and the viziers who came from the army, was seeking a definitive argument for war that would overcome all objections at a stroke.

Supplying that argument was my task for the morning.

I stirred myself: Nasi was approaching me and beckoning me in. I hadn’t even noticed that he had got up from the bench and had already accomplished the formalities decreed by etiquette.

The room we entered was rather bare, intimate, and protected by a dome. The light entered through a big window screened by a shutter, and a red fabric sofa ran along three walls. On this divan sat the ministers of the Ottoman government. They wore turbans of different shapes and styles, some high and long, others puffy and round. The differences clearly were significant, but I was, sadly, unable to interpret them. The central place, raised slightly above the others, was occupied by a bearded giant, who was rendered still more majestic by a turban that sprouted from his head like a great white tulip. Higher up, a golden grille covered an opening in the wall. Nasi had explained to me that the Sultan often followed the viziers’ meetings from there.

I tried to spot a shadow through the golden mesh, but caught only a very vague impression. I bowed deeply and kissed the hem of the Grand Vizier’s robe. He welcomed me in my language, calling me “Signor De Zante.”

A man on my right, who must have been the chancellor, began reading from a register in a neutral, formal voice. The dragoman translated his words for me, because the language used by the dignitaries is very different from that of the people, stuffed with archaic Arabic and Persian terms. There is as much difference between plain Turkish and its Ottoman form as there is between the dialect of Chioggia and Cicero’s Latin.

“In the first instance, the Imperial Council wishes to know from the gentleman convened the extent of the damage done to the Venice Arsenal by the recent explosion of a powder house and the fire that followed from it.”

Nasi had predicted this request, and had advised me to stick to the facts. Certainly, to say that the fleet of Venice had been destroyed, as many patrons of the café maintained, would have helped the case for war against Cyprus. At any rate, four months after the event it was unimaginable that the Ottoman viziers had no clear information on the matter. So I had to prove myself to be honest and trustworthy. I described in detail what I had seen in my investigation. When I finished, the chancellor read again from his register.

“Secondly, the Imperial Council wishes to know the information in possession of the gentleman convened concerning the defenses of Nicosia and their alleged inadequacy.”

I described the map of the city that I had seen drawn by Savorgnan: a star with eleven bastions and three gates. I told them what I knew about the hundreds of families forcibly moved to make way for new barrages and the big trench. I said that Giulio Savorgnan had finished the work in the incredible time of eight months, and when he returned to Venice all he had left to do was the refacing of the bastions.

Here one of the viziers interrupted, in a fluting voice that matched oddly with the thick black mustache that framed it. I imagined he must be the Great Admiral, Ali Pasha, known as Muezzinzade, or son of the muezzin, because that was the profession of his father and it had been his own as well for many years, in a mosque very close to the Seraglio.

“Do you believe,” Muezzinzade asked, “that these bastions are still unfinished?”

“Savorgnan told me that he had made arrangements for them to be completed in his absence, but that for want of funds at least two of them had been left unfaced: Constanzo and D’Avila.”

The Great Admiral smoothed his mustache and smiled with satisfaction, exchanging a glance of agreement with a bearded old man who, judging by Nasi’s description, must have been Lala Mustafa Pasha, the fifth vizier, general of the land forces.

“We will have to hurry,” murmured another vizier, striking his hands on his knees, “before they have time to collect additional funds and properly complete the job.”

Sokollu turned toward him and gave him an icy stare. “Haste is never good advice, Piyale Pasha. This information is precious, but we need to assess the cost and the time needed for this campaign. Remember Malta.”

As soon as the Grand Vizier finished speaking, three sharp blows rang out against the golden grille above his head. The Giant froze, and so did the other dignitaries.

Then Sokollu Mehmed Pasha dismissed me with words of thanks, to which Muezzinzade added a personal encomium, in Italian, for the “
straordinario servigio
” that I had rendered the Sultan. Seven other viziers showed their approval, nodding their turbaned heads vigorously, like a clump of crocuses bent by the wind. And so ended my audience below the dome of the Divan.

When we were outside again, a radiant and emotional Nasi hugged me.

He explained that on a few occasions the Sultan resorted to striking the grille, to suspend the meeting so he might speak in private with the Grand Vizier. About what the two men were speaking to one another as we climbed back into our carriage, Yossef had no doubt. It was not within the power of the Grand Vizier to oppose the war, but he could still delay it.

“Sokollu knows full well that it is not such a simple matter to unleash this conflict. There is a peace treaty between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, signed by Suleyman and confirmed by Selim. At least two things would be needed to break it. First of all a
fatwa
from the Grand Mufti, justifying the war on religious grounds. Then they would need a
casus belli
, a political pretext. The island of Cyprus pays a regular tribute to the Sultan. No Ottoman subject has been mistreated or offended. The only excuse seems to be the pirates.”

“What pirates?” I asked in surprise.

“In the peace treaty,” he explained to me, “it is written that when the Cypriots capture Muslim pirates, they must send them for trial to Constantinople.”

The carriage passed through the outer walls of the palace and set off down the hill toward the Golden Horn.

“I have never heard of such a practice.”

“Indeed. That demonstrates how seldom the clause is honored. It is a feeble pretext, but the only one there is.” He cracked his fingers. “The game has begun, Manuel,” he said, with a complicit glance. “Let us prepare our moves.”

12.

That night, I didn’t hear Dana when she came in to bring me my evening meal. I was looking at the sky, turning the constellations into a firmament of thoughts. Orion and his dog Sirius were confronting the Bull, and I wondered what hunting strategy Nasi had in mind, and what my intended place was in the chase. I had revealed the information in my possession to the Divan, and at least on paper, my job in the city was done. And yet Nasi’s words after the audience seemed to allude to new prospects. I didn’t know the city well, I spoke its language with an Italian accent, and I was a foreigner, a Jew, forbidden to carry weapons. What use could I be to him now?

Dana’s voice distracted me from the stars.

“I’ve brought you something to eat.” She had already set it down on the desk and poured wine into a copper beaker. In a bowl I noticed some sweets that I had never seen before, like the ones that the Turks call
halva
but with a more spicy, pungent aroma.

Dana’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “After a day like that, I thought you might want some comfort to calm your mind. These sweets will help you to find it.”

I thanked her for her solicitousness and sat down to eat. She went on, “It’s very cold tonight. Do you want me to revive the fire?” I gave another gesture of agreement and started soberly eating, as I always did in the evening. Dana knelt in front of the stove, filled it with wood and blew on the embers to encourage the flames. I saw her breasts swelling beneath her blouse. The curve of her buttocks on her heels made me sigh, and without realizing I was doing so I found myself stroking the table as if it were the smooth skin of a woman’s back.

When she had finished, Dana stood up and made as if to leave.

I asked her to stay and invited her to come and sit next to me. She looked me in the eyes and made herself comfortable on the cushions. We divided the sweets that she had brought, savoring on our tongues the taste of pistachios and a resin with a strange relaxing effect. My body was filled with languor, a light, diffuse intoxication. The effect of the drug on Dana seemed less intense.

Our eyes met again. Like men at arms following orders in perfect concurrence, we approached one another. I embraced her; our mouths met. Filled with a delicious frenzy, we began freeing ourselves of our clothes, which in the land of the Turks are rather more easily and quickly unlaced. The wide breeches fell, and the shirts. I heard a metallic sound. Something had slipped to the floor. I gave it a sidelong glance.

The dagger, which the skin of my throat had felt weeks before. The bronze handle glinted blood-red.

Dana. Through her strong, myrtle-scented flesh, I reached a place that had long been closed to me, an earthly paradise where I had dwelt with Arianna in a past life.

Our bed is green with leaves, the beams of our house are of cedar, our walls are cypress trees.

The rise and fall, the dip of the groin, the mounds of buttocks and breasts: I enjoyed Dana, her every facet and gesture, her voice and her taut, young, lithe body. Sweet war, whose gestures are acts that some would call bestial. In the end I discharged my male burden with a long groan. Dana put her hand over my mouth.

“Don’t make too much noise. No one must know.”

I reassured her and rested her head on my chest, then began to stroke her, my mind empty, as our breathing subsided. I let my eye wander over her body and mine. Her left leg concealed my manhood. It was the first time I had lain with a woman of my people.

It was the first time I hadn’t paid for a woman’s favors.

I studied the dagger, abandoned among the clothes, on the floor. “At our first meeting, you threatened to kill me if I touched you. Today you should take a thousand lives from me.”

Dana smiled, and without saying a word, she roused herself, collected her clothes and hastily dressed. When she reached the door, before closing it behind her, she turned.

“I was a thousand times more harmless to you when I held my dagger.”