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  After a while Daville began to take these surprises in stride and grew accustomed to the ebb-and-flow pattern in their relationship.

  Von Mitterer’s attempts to gain the Vizier’s ear with gifts and to squeeze Daville out remained fruitless. He obtained an elegant carriage from Slavonski Brod and presented it to the Vizier. It was the first genuine, luxuriously appointed fiacre Travnik had ever seen. The Vizier accepted the gift with thanks, and the townspeople trooped to the Residency to have a look at the black and shiny lacquered coach. However, the Vizier showed no great enthusiasm for it, and von Mitterer felt deeply humiliated by the fact—which he kept out of his official reports—that Ibrahim Pasha never once sat in the carriage and rode out in it. The fiacre was left standing in the middle of the courtyard of the Residency, a cold, resplendent, and unwelcome gift.

  About the same time Daville, whose funds were considerably more modest and whose influence with his government was nowhere as great as von Mitterer’s, managed to obtain from Paris, as gifts for the Vizier, a small telescope and an astrolabe, an instrument for observing the position and altitude of stars on the horizon. The Consul was hard put to explain the proper use of the telescope, indeed it looked to him as if some parts were missing or defective; but the Vizier accepted the gift with his usual grace. To him, in any case, all objects were dead and meaningless and he valued them only in relation to the person or the intent of the person who gave them. But the telescope served to launch them on a fresh discussion of celestial bodies and the human fortune that is written in the stars and of the changes and catastrophes which they foretell.

  In that first year of his rule at Travnik the Vizier suffered a grave new blow that almost crushed him, if indeed he needed any more crushing.

  Some time during the summer the Vizier had set out with a large escort toward the Serbian frontier on the river Drina. He intended, by his presence there, to encourage the Bosnian troupes to stay put as long as possible and to keep them from dispersing, ahead of time, to their winter quarters in Bosnia. Chances were he might have succeeded in this, but at Zvornik news reached him of a new coup d’état at Istanbul and of the tragic death of the former Sultan, Selim III.

  The courier who brought the details of all that had taken place at Istanbul at the end of July, not knowing that the Vizier was at the front, had come first to Travnik; from there he was immediately dispatched to Zvornik. Through the same courier, Daville sent the Vizier a box of fresh lemons from Dalmatia, with a few friendly lines that made no allusion to the recent events at Istanbul but which were clearly intended as a token of attention and sympathy toward the Vizier in the misfortune that had overtaken his master. When the same courier returned to Travnik, he brought a letter from the Vizier thanking Daville for the gift and saying only that a gift from a sincere friend was a great joy and that “the Angel of Light guides the steps of the gift giver.” Daville, who realized only too well what a heavy blow Selim’s terrible death was for the Vizier, stood amazed and thoughtful over the cordial, all but serene letter. It was one of those baffling surprises that a person meets with in the Orient. There seemed to be no connection whatever between the man’s actual inner life and his written words.

  The Consul’s wonder would have been still greater if he could have seen the Vizier right after he got the news from Istanbul. The tents of the Vizier and his suite were on a strip of level ground below an abandoned mine. Here, even on sultry summer nights, the air was always cool, because all night long a steady breeze wafted the freshness of water and brook willows through the narrow valley. The Vizier at once retired to his tent and allowed no one except his nearest and most loyal friends near him. Tahir Beg gave orders that everything should be made ready for the return to Travnik, but the Vizier’s condition made it impossible even to think of an immediate start on such a rough journey.

  Having received the bad news with an expressionless face, the Vizier, without a glance at those present, and with the same unruffled calm, intoned a Koran prayer for the dead and invoked the peace of Allah on the soul of the man he had loved more than anything or anyone in the world. Then, with that slow step of a phantom in the deep of night, he walked to his tent and, as soon as the heavy flap had closed behind him, fell like a log on the cushions and began to tear off his equipment and his dress like a man who is choking for air. His old manservant, a mute since birth, tried in vain to undress him and cover him, but the Vizier would not allow himself to be touched, as if every touch, even the lightest, gave him inexpressible pain. He pushed away the glass of sherbet with a convulsive movement. Then, like a stone hurtled from a great height, he lay with his eyes shut and his lips pressed together. The color of his skin changed rapidly: from yellow to green and then to an earthy brown, in a sudden access of gall. He lay dumb and unmoving like this for several hours. It was only toward evening that he began, first to moan softly, and then to make long, monotonous groaning sounds, with rare and brief intermissions. If anyone had dared to come near the tent, he might have thought that some weak foolish lamb, born only the day before, had strayed into the tent and was bleating for its mother. But except for the Secretary and the old manservant no one was allowed to come near or even to see and hear the Vizier from a distance.

  For a whole day and night the Vizier lay like this, refusing all help, not opening his eyes, making that throaty, drawn-out monotone sound of a subdued animal wail: “E-e-e-e-e . . . !”

  It was only at dawn of the second day that Tahir Beg managed to bring him around and coax him to talk. Once the spell was broken, the Vizier quickly came to himself; he dressed and became his old self again. It was as if in putting on his clothes he also put on his habitual stiffness and recovered his old sparing movements. Even the greatest calamity found nothing more to change in him. He gave instructions for an immediate departure, but was obliged to travel slowly, in short stages, from one camp site to another.

  When the Vizier returned to Travnik, Daville sent him, by way of welcome, another box of lemons, but did not ask for an audience, as he thought it wiser to let the grief-stricken man decide about it himself; yet he was most anxious, all the same, to meet him and hear him so as to tell his Ambassador in Istanbul about his impressions of Selim’s former Grand Vizier and his comments. Daville was doubly pleased with his shrewd decision when he learned that the Austrian Consul had at once asked for an audience and had been received, but in a cool and unfriendly manner, and that the Vizier had refused to say a word in answer to his queries about the events at Istanbul. A few short days later, Daville reaped the fruits of his wise restraint.

  The Vizier invited the French Consul on a Thursday, ostensibly to inform him, after his visit to the front, about the course of operations against the rebels in Serbia. He received him warmly and did, in fact, begin by talking of what he had seen at the front. To hear him describe it, it was all rather trivial and without significance. The undertone of contempt in his deep dull voice seemed to apply equally to the insurgents and to the Bosnian army that was sent against them.

  “I saw what I had to see, and now my presence in those frontier districts has become unnecessary. The Russians who helped the rebels to carry out the operations have left Serbia. What remains now are the disgruntled, misguided bands of peasantry. It is beneath the dignity of the Ottoman Empire that a former grand vizier should be directly involved with them. These are poor devils, bickering among themselves, who will bleed each other and then fall at our feet. One should not dirty one’s hands there. . . .”

  In admiration, Daville gazed at this statue of grief that was lying with such imperturbable dignity. What the Vizier had said was in utter contradiction to reality, but the calm and dignity with which he said it were themselves a potent and undeniable reality.

  “There you are!” Daville’s old reflection rose up in his mind, while the interpreter was winding up his translation. “There . . . the course of life doesn’t really depend on us at all, or at least very little, but the way we react to events does dep
end on us to a great extent, so there’s no point in wasting one’s strength and diverting one’s attention.”

  Very shortly after the Vizier’s contemptuous reference to the Serbian rebellion and the Bosnian army that was supposed to have crushed it, the conversation turned automatically to Selim’s death. Here too there was no change in the Vizier’s voice or expression. It was as if all of him were saturated with a fatal grief that permitted no shading or modulation.

  For a while they were alone in the great divan on the first floor. Even the chibouk bearers had vanished at a secret signal. There were only the Vizier and the Consul and between them, on a slightly lower level, bent forward over his crossed legs, with folded arms and downcast eyes, D’Avenat, who seemed to have shrunk down to a bare voice, a quiet monotone, almost a whisper, in which he translated for the Consul.

  The Vizier asked Daville if he knew the details of the tragedy at Istanbul. The Consul told him he did not, but would like to know them as soon as possible, since all Frenchmen were distressed over the death of so sincere a friend and so remarkable a ruler as Selim had been.

  “You are right,” the Vizier said pensively. “The Sultan—may he rest in peace and enjoy the splendors of paradise—truly loved and esteemed your country and your Emperor. All right-thinking and noble-minded people, without distinction, have lost a great friend in him.”

  The Vizier spoke in a low hushed voice, as if the dead Sultan lay in the next room, and confined himself to actual facts and details, as if deliberately avoiding the main and gravest aspect of the matter.

  “No one who didn’t know him well could possibly have any idea of what a loss it is!” said the Vizier. “He was a many-sided man, consummate in every field of endeavor. He sought the company of learned men. He even wrote himself, under the name of ‘Il Khani’—Inspired—and his verses were a joy to those who could appreciate them. And I can remember the poem he composed on the morning he ascended the throne. ‘Allah’s grace has accorded me the throne of Suleiman the Magnificent,’ was how it began, I think. But his real passion was architecture and mathematics. He personally collaborated on the reforms of the administration and the tax system. He went around the schools, questioned the students, and distributed rewards. He climbed the buildings with an ivory ruler in his hand and supervised the methods of work, the quality and cost of the structure. He wanted to see and know everything. He loved work and was healthy in body, strong and nimble, and no one could match him with a sword or a lance. I have seen him with my own eyes cut three rams with a single blow of his sword. They must have taken him by surprise, by some ruse, when he was unarmed, because with a sword in his hand he was afraid of no one. Ah, he was too noble, too trusting, too gullible!”

  The only way one could tell that the subject was a dead man was the Vizier’s use of the past tense in speaking of his beloved master. Apart from this, either from fear or superstition, he never so much as mentioned the death and the disappearance of the Sultan.

  He spoke fast and absently, as though he wanted to outrace another conversation inside himself.

  D’Avenat translated quietly, trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible with his voice and presence. Once, near the end of the translation, the Vizier started all of a sudden, as if only just discovering and noticing the interpreter, and turning toward him with his whole body, slowly and stiffly, like a statue manipulated by unseen hands, fixed his terrible ghoul-like eyes, the eyes of a stone man, on the interpreter, whose voice quailed and whose spine bent still lower.

  That was the end of the conversation for that day. The Consul and his interpreter came out as if emerging from a funeral chamber. D’Avenat was deathly pale and there were beads of cold sweat on his forehead. Daville was silent all the way home. But he put down the spectral movement of that living statue as among his most fearsome experiences at Travnik.

  Nevertheless, the death of the former Sultan Selim also helped to create a stronger bond between the Vizier and the Consul, who was a good listener and knew how to show interest in the doleful talks of the Vizier, with restraint and discretion.

  Several days later, the Consul was summoned to another audience. Ibrahim Pasha had received further news from Istanbul, from a servant who had witnessed the death of Selim, and he evidently wished to tell the Consul about it.

  The Vizier’s outward appearance gave no clue of what had gone on inside him during those last ten days, but one could see from his talk that he had begun to reconcile himself to the loss and was learning how to live with his pain. He now spoke about that death as something that was finished and done with.

  In the next fifteen days Daville met the Vizier three times; twice in the divan, and once when they went to the Vizier’s new foundry to watch the casting of new field guns. Each time Daville came with an agenda of petitions and items of current business. Everything was settled quickly and almost always in his favor. Immediately afterwards, with a grim and passionate eagerness, the Vizier turned to the subject of Selim’s tragic death, the causes and details of that event. His need to talk about it was great and compulsive, and the French Consul happened to be the only person he thought worthy of such conversation. By asking a tactful question now and then, Daville helped and encouraged him, while demonstrating his sympathy; that was how he learned the full details of the last act of Selim’s, and in fact the Vizier’s own, tragedy. And he could see that the Vizier felt a strong need to dwell on these details at great length.

  The movement supporting the dethroned Sultan Selim III had been spearheaded by one Mustapha Bariaktar, one of the best commanders in the army, an honest but impulsive and illiterate man. He set out from Wallachia with his Albanian troops and marched on Istanbul, planning to overturn the unworthy government and Sultan, Mustapha, and then to free Selim from his imprisonment at the Serai and reinstate him. He was acclaimed all along the route and at last came to Istanbul, where he was greeted as victor and liberator. He managed to reach the Serai and penetrate the outer courtyard, but here the guards succeeded in shutting the strong inner gate in his face. It was then that the brave but simple and clumsy Bariaktar made a fatal mistake. He began to shout and demand the immediate release of the dethroned but lawful Sultan, Selim. Hearing this and realizing that Bariaktar was master of the situation, the stupid but cunning and brutal Sultan Mustapha ordered the immediate execution of Selim. A slave woman betrayed the luckless Sultan, who had just knelt for his afternoon prayer when the Chief Eunuch and four of his assistants entered the apartment. For a second they hesitated in confusion, then the Chief Eunuch threw himself on Selim, who at that moment was bowed over his knees and touching his forehead to the prayer rug. The other eunuchs helped their Chief, one seizing the arms of Selim, the other his legs, while a third chased out the servants with a drawn knife.

  The Consul felt a cold shiver run down his spine. Listening only with half an ear, he imagined suddenly that he had a madman before him and the Vizier’s inner mind was even stranger and more deranged than his weird exterior. D’Avenat translated with difficulty, omitting words and skipping whole sentences. “He is mad, there could be no doubt about it!” The Consul told himself. “He’s mad!”

  Imperturbably the Vizier went on with his tale, in a kind of intonation, as though he were not talking to a man beside him but carrying on a private dialogue. His account grew more and more precise, detailed, and meticulous, as if that were of tremendous importance, as if he were weaving a spell and by that spell hoped to save the Sultan who was no longer to be saved. Driven by his mysterious but irresistible need, he was bent on repeating aloud everything he had heard from the escaped witness, everything that now oppressed his mind. Clearly he was determined to relive the days of his own temporary insanity. It was a kind of obsession, the cause and center of which was the fall of Selim III, and he gained at least some partial relief from his agony by baring the whole drama to a well-disposed stranger.

  Daville could picture the fatal tussle in the Serai only too vividly; against his w
ill, he was obliged to follow it in all its grisly details, which made him shudder afresh every other moment.

  In the struggle which took place, the Vizier went on, Selim managed to wrench himself free and send the fat Chief Eunuch reeling to the floor with a powerful blow. He stood in the middle of the room, flailing out with his hands and feet. The Negro eunuchs went at him from all sides, ducking his blows as well as they could. One of them had a strung bow and was trying to catch his victim’s head in it, to garrote him with the bowstring. “He had no sword—if he’d had it, it would have been a very different matter,” the Vizier repeated sorrowfully. Selim was so intent on warding off the bowstring that he lost sight of the fallen Chief Eunuch. The fat and powerful Negro rose to his knees unobserved and with one lightning movement caught the straddled Selim by his testicles. The Sultan cried out in pain and bent down so low that his head was level with the sweaty and blood-smeared face of the Chief Eunuch. At this short range he could not swing back and hit the man, who rolled about on the carpet and didn’t let go of his victim. One of the slaves took advantage of that moment and succeeded in throwing the bowstring over Selim’s head. His hands clutched a few more times at his neck, but weakly and helplessly, then all of him grew limp and folded, first at the knees, then in the waist, then the neck, and he slumped down against the wall and remained hunched like that, half-sitting, twitching no more, as if he had never lived and defended himself.

  The corpse was immediately laid on a carpet and carried in it, as in a stretcher, to Sultan Mustapha. Outside, Bariaktar was banging at the closed gate and shouting impatiently: “Open up, you bitches and sons of bitches! Let out the true Sultan or there won’t be a head left among you!”