Nasi cursed between his teeth. He looked as distraught as I felt. Gomez clenched his jaw, his face pale.
“Are these the foundations of the New Zion?” I asked. “Slaughter, torture and shame?” I didn’t expect a reply, so I continued. “One day you said you wanted to heal the world, and I certainly didn’t expect the suture to be painless. But now the wound is bigger than it was before, and infected, and I don’t see what could cure it.”
Yossef Nasi sat supporting his bearded chin with the fingers of his right hand. David Gomez shook his head in disbelief, muttering to himself. In that same room we had praised the courage of the defenders of Famagusta. Now magnanimity was only a memory.
“Marcantonio Bragadin was a fanatic,” said Nasi. “He sacrificed everything to his own pride. If he had surrendered six months ago, none of this would have happened. Nonetheless, I shall say this to you, Manueclass="underline" There isn’t a kingdom on earth that hasn’t been born from the blood of the conquered. The first furrow in Rome was watered by an act of fratricide. The Lord’s hand helped our forefathers to scatter and annihilate the people of Canaan. Their cities were destroyed and the inhabitants put to the sword.”
I clenched my fists until my hands hurt. “At least our forefathers took the land themselves. They knew what they were doing, and they carried the weight of the dead on their own shoulders. We carried out our massacres through the janissaries, heedless of the evil that would come.”
Yossef’s voice assumed a feverish tone. “Manuel, Manuel, in a hundred years none of the young people of Cyprus will give the slightest importance to what happened. From today, this war is over. Our kingdom is the future. The future of all our people. I expect a summons to the Seraglio very shortly. Will you be with me?”
I didn’t reply. I felt the need to go outside, to be in the open air. I reached the garden and walked down the avenue, as I hadn’t done for months. When I reached the little clearing surrounded by bushes, I stopped and sat down on the grass. A circle of disturbed and barren earth still marked the place where the carob tree had grown.
It was there that Nasi found me. He sat down next to me, to contemplate the same empty space. He gripped my shoulder to give me courage, but I had the impression that he was the one clinging to me.
He asked me about Ismail, about his reactions to what we had seen and experienced on Cyprus. I replied that the old man had saved my life. It was only thanks to him that I had come back.
“Gracia didn’t call him back in vain,” he observed. “May the Lord bless him.”
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.