That night Tuota wandered along the deck of the kalita. Or perhaps it was Ismail. I saw him closing his eyes at the sight of a battle-slain infantryman, and telling off our dog, Holy Ghost, for biting the feet of a corpse. At last he spoke.
The difference between the sleep of the just and the sleep of the idiot is that the idiot doesn’t wake up again.
I woke with a start. It wasn’t yet dawn. I got up, avoided the bodies sleeping in the hold, and began strolling along the deck, wondering whether Tuota wasn’t actually with us on the ship. I spent the rest of the day helping the sailors with their habitual tasks and asking fate to let us accomplish everything in time.
In the bows, I stopped often to look at the bronze cannon, the chief weapon on the kalita. There were other, smaller guns, for which Mimi Reis showed a strange predilection.
“This one comes from Flanders,” he said. “The other one from Brescia. They cost me an arm and a leg.”
Metal. Copper and brass to make bronze. Iron. Gold. The fate of my people was bound up with English iron. The gold turned into cannons, and the fire and stone vomited up by these artifacts turned again, sooner or later, into gold. Solve et coagula. Mimi Reis’s cannon belonged to a game that stretched across the sea, over the oceans to the south and the west, to the very edges of the world.
The Puglian pirate had asked me only once for news of Ismail. I had had to reply that he had left, that he had gone home. Mimi, clearly, was displeased. When he saw me in Bandirma, and I asked him to join the Sultan’s fleet, he had hoped that the old man would be coming along.
On the morning of 12 Jumada al-Awwal we encountered a Barbary caïque. Drawing up alongside, Mimi Reis asked for news of the fleets and received important confirmation: the Christian fleet had rounded the White Cape and was in sight of Cephalonia. The Turkish fleet, on the other hand, lay at anchor in Lepanto. Mimi Reis gave me a nudge.
“What did I tell you?”
He estimated that we would encounter the Christian fleet between October 17 and 18, in five or six days, near the islands of the Echinades, which the Venetians call Curzolari. Perhaps we would manage to slip past to warn Muezzinzade Ali and the other admirals before they took up the gauntlet.
We were drawing nearer our destiny. In my mind I ran through the speech that I had prepared, seeking the most important terms in Turkish, an appropriate rhetoric to address to those who must listen to and believe this Jew who insisted on interfering with their war. I was worried that they wouldn’t believe me, and the closer we came to the moment of truth, the more desperate our mission seemed to me.
Over the days that followed our meeting with the caïque, I often heard Mimi Reis cursing the ship we were on for its slowness, which was beginning to exasperate us. Then, all of a sudden, his mood improved. I saw him walking to the prow, talking to his beloved cast-iron cannons, stroking their barrels and breeches with the palm of his right hand.
18
On deck they were flaying a sheep, because the crew needed meat, especially the oarsmen, who had for many hours been helping the wind to spur us on our way. I was watching the blood forming a puddle and the flies swarming, when a voice shouted that there were sails in view. On the horizon, the fleet was a long black line.
Takiyuddin’s optical instrument allowed me to review a whole side of the formation.
Western galleys, some Genovese, others Tuscan, many Spanish. There were also thin Venetian vessels. There was a huge galleass, pulled by other galleys, foists and galliots.
The galleass bristled with guns. They covered the whole of its perimeter — the bows, the sides, the high poop deck. I pointed the tube farther away and saw the Turkish ships advancing. A little beyond them, toward the coast, I could make out the bluish outlines of Oxia.
The Ottoman fleet looked like a forest emerging from the Gulf of Corinth. Closer to us, the Christians were beginning to maneuver. I had the sense that one flank was retreating, or else preparing for flight. I asked the captain his opinion.
Mimi Reis peered awkwardly through the tube. He looked up and returned his eye to the lens a number of times. “God is great,” he murmured. Then he looked for a long time. At last he handed the instrument back to me. “Flight? They’re getting into battle formation.”
“Then let’s go up to them. We can still do it.”
He nodded and gave the order.
Under full sail, with all the oarsmen on their benches, the kalita started speeding toward the Ottoman fleet, passing beyond the right flank of the Christian forces.
“They’re aiming at us. We’re too close,” I said.
“They’re too busy looking at what’s right in front of them, and even if they see us, they don’t know who we are. And even if they do know, they’re not going to break formation to follow us.”
I heard a cannon shot. It was a signal from the Christians.
Mimi Reis ordered food and weapons to be carried on deck. Pikes, bows, arquebuses, leather corsets and helmets were piled up and arranged neatly along the whole of the ship, ready for use. So were biscuits, oranges, cheese, dates, dried figs, barrels of fresh water: Fighting drains the strength; you need to have food and drink within reach. Then Mimi Reis hoisted a long black standard, Moorish characters embroidered on it in gold.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“The Christian religion is a false religion. But I would need to write it in Italian for that lot to understand.”
He pointed to the left wing of the Ottoman fleet, and the closer we got, the wider Mimi’s smile became. “Chin up, my friend.” He extended his hand toward the open sea. “You see? All the best captains are over there. There’s Ucciali, from Calabria. There’s Caracoggia, and Commander Scirocco. There’s the Muezzin’s son; he’s certainly no coward. And Mimi Reis will be there, too, all’anima di chi v’ha mmuerte.”
I pointed Takiyuddin’s instrument at the Christian ships. The galleasses advanced first. They were allowed to advance on their own, far ahead of the rest of the fleet. Six fat morsels, bait to excite Muezzinzade Ali’s thirst for victory.
A wave of unease surged through me. Now there was no way to reach the Ottoman flagship and warn Muezzinzade of the imminent danger to his fleet. I was late once again.
The sun was high in the sky by the time we found ourselves on the line that divided the fleets and saw the Turkish ships launching themselves forward. Clearly Muezzinzade’s plan was to pass between the boats that seemed least threatening, and attack the heart of the Christian fleet. The Venetians’ trap was about to snap shut.
Beside me, Mimi was waving his arms around as if he could be seen from the Ottoman flagship. “Head for the open sea, Muezzinzade! Vattinn’!”
I held my breath.
The ships of the first Turkish line arrived between one galleass and the other. The burst of gunfire nearly deafened us, the first shot immediately followed by a second, and shortly after by a third. The cannons on the sides of the galleasses crushed lifeboats, felled masts, smashed decks and gangways. I had never seen anything like it.
Mimi Reis spewed a stream of insults at the Venetians, calling down the rage of God and Saint Nicholas on them. I imagined the Turks’ surprise, their grief, their rage. We were too late, we had to go on, leaving the most battered ships behind.