by Orhan Pamuk
“We’ve learned the secret of the horse’s nostrils,” I said confidently.
“Ha!” he said. “Yes! The rest is up to Our Sultan and the Head Treasurer. Perhaps they will pardon us all.”
Would he name Stork as the murderer? I couldn’t even ask out of fear, for I worried he wouldn’t allow me to leave. Even worse, I had the recurring thought that he might accuse me.
“The plume needle Bihzad used to blind himself is missing,” he said.
“In all probability the dwarf put it back in its place,” I said. “The page before you is so magnificent!”
His face lit up like a child’s, and he smiled. “Hüsrev, burning with love, as he waits astride his horse for Shirin before her palace in the middle of the night,” he said. “Rendered in the style of the old masters of Herat.”
He was now gazing at the picture as if he could see it, but he hadn’t even taken the magnifying glass into his hand.
“Can you see the splendor in the leaves of the trees in the nighttime darkness, appearing one by one as if illuminated from within like stars or spring flowers, the humble patience implied by the wall ornamentation, the refinement in the use of gold leaf and the delicate balance in the entire painting’s composition? Handsome Hüsrev’s horse is as graceful and elegant as a woman. His beloved Shirin waits at the window above him, her neck bowed, but her face proud. It’s as if the lovers are to remain here eternally within the light emanating from the painting’s texture, skin and subtle colors which were applied lovingly by the miniaturist. You can see how their faces are turned ever so slightly toward one another while their bodies are half-turned toward us — for they know they’re in a painting and thus visible to us. This is why they don’t try to resemble exactly those figures which we see around us. Quite to the contrary, they signify that they’ve emerged from Allah’s memory. This is why time has stopped for them within that picture. No matter how fast the pace of the story they tell in the picture, they themselves will remain for all eternity there, like well-bred, polite, shy young maidens, without making any sudden gestures with their hands, arms, slight bodies or even eyes. For them, everything within the navy-blue night is frozen: The bird flies through the darkness, among the stars, with a fluttering like the racing hearts of the lovers themselves, and at the same time, remains fixed for all eternity as if nailed to the sky in this matchless moment. The old masters of Herat, who knew that God’s velvet blackness was lowering over their eyes like a curtain, also knew that if they went blind while staring motionless at such an illustration for days and weeks on end, their souls would at last mingle with the eternity of the picture.”
At the time of the evening prayer, when the portal of the Treasury was opened with the same ceremony and under the gaze of the same throng, Master Osman was still staring intently at the page before him, at the bird that floated motionless in the sky. But if you noticed the paleness in his pupils you’d also realize that he stared at the page quite oddly, as blind men sometimes incorrectly orient themselves to the food before them.
The officers of the Treasury detail, learning that Master Osman would stay inside and that Jezmi Agha was at the door, neglected to search me thoroughly and never found the plume needle I hid in my undergarment. When I emerged onto the streets of Istanbul from the palace courtyard, I slipped into a passageway and removed the terrifying object, with which the legendary Bihzad had blinded himself, from where it was, and stuck it into my sash. I practically ran through the streets.
The cold of the Treasury chambers had so penetrated my bones that it seemed as though the gentle weather of an early spring had settled over the city streets. As I passed the grocer, barber, herbalist, fruit and vegetable shop and firewood shop of the Old Caravansary Bazaar, which were shutting down one by one for the night, I slowed my pace and carefully examined the casks, cloth sheets, carrots and jars in the warm shops lit by oil lamps.
My Enishte’s street (I still couldn’t say “Shekure’s street” let alone “my street”) appeared even stranger and more distant after my two-day absence. But the joy of being reunited safe and sound with my Shekure, and the thought that I’d be able to enter my beloved’s bed tonight — since the murderer was as good as caught — made me feel so intimate with the whole world that upon seeing the pomegranate tree and the repaired and closed shutters, I had to restrain myself from shouting like a farmer hollering to someone across a stream. When I saw Shekure, I wanted the first words out of my mouth to be, “We know who the wretched murderer is!”
I opened the courtyard gate. I’m not sure if it was from the squeak of the gate, the carefree way the sparrow drank water from the well bucket, or the darkness of the house, but with the wolflike prescience of a man who’d lived alone for twelve years, I understood at once that nobody was home. Even bitterly realizing that one’s been left to his own devices, one will still open and close all of the doors, the cabinets and even lift the lids of pots, and that’s just what I did. I even looked inside the chests.
In this silence, the only sound I heard was the thudding of my own racing heart. Like an old man who’s done everything he will ever do, I felt consoled when I abruptly girded my sword, which I’d kept hidden at the bottom of the most out of the way chest. It was this ivory-handled sword which always provided me with inner peace and balance during all those years I worked with the pen. Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.
I went down to the courtyard. The sparrow had flown away. As if abandoning a sinking ship, I left the house to the silence of an impending darkness.
My heart, now more confident, told me to run and find them. I ran, but I slowed through crowded places and the mosque courtyards where dogs picked up my trail and joyously followed, anticipating some kind of amusement.
FIFTY-FOUR
I AM ESTHER
I was putting lentil soup on the boil for our evening meal when Nesim said, “There’s a visitor at the door.” I replied, “Make sure the soup doesn’t burn,” handing him the spoon and giving it a couple of turns in the pot while holding his aged hand. If you don’t show them, they’ll stand there for hours idly holding the spoon in the pot.
When I saw Black at the door I felt nothing but pity for him. There was such an expression on his face I was afraid to ask what had happened.
“Don’t bother to come inside,” I said, “I’ll be out as soon as I change clothes.”
I donned the pink and yellow garments that I wear when I’m invited to Ramadan festivities, wealthy banquets and lengthy weddings, and took up my holiday satchel. “I’ll have my soup when I get back,” I said to poor Nesim.
Black and I had crossed one street in my little Jewish neighborhood whose chimneys labor to expel their smoke, the way our kettles force out their steam, and I said:
“Shekure’s former husband is back.”
Black fell silent and stayed that way until we left the neighborhood. His face was ashen, the color of the waning day.
“Where are they?” he asked sometime later.
From this question I guessed that Shekure and her children weren’t at home. “They’re at their house,” I said. Because I meant Shekure’s previous home, and knew at once that this would singe Black’s heart, I opened a door of hope for him by tacking the word “probably” onto the end of my statement.
“Have you seen her newly returned husband?” he asked me, looking deep into my eyes.
“I haven’t seen him, neither did I see Shekure’s flight from the house.”
“How did you know they’d left?”
“From your face.”
“Tell me everything,” he said decisively.
Black was so troubled he didn’t understand that Esther — her eye eternally at the window, her ear eternally to the ground — could never “tell everything” if she wanted to continue to be the Esther who found husbands for so many dreamy maidens and knocked on the doors of so many unhappy homes.
“What I’ve heard,” I said, “is th
at the brother of Shekure’s former husband, Hasan, visited your house” — it heartened him when I said “your house” — “and told Shevket that his father was on his way home from war, that he would arrive around midafternoon, and that if he didn’t find Shevket’s mother and brother in their rightful home, he’d be very upset. Shevket told this to his mother, who acted cautiously, but couldn’t come to a decision. Toward midafternoon, Shevket left the house to be with his Uncle Hasan and his grandfather.”
“Where did you learn these things?”
“Hasn’t Shekure told you about Hasan’s schemes over the last two years to get her back to his house? There was a time when Hasan sent letters to Shekure through me.”
“Did she ever respond to them?”
“I know all the varieties of women in Istanbul,” I said proudly, “there’s no one who’s as bound to her house, her husband and her honor as Shekure is.”
“But I am her husband now.”
His voice bore that typically male uncertainty that always depressed me. Amazingly, to whichever side Shekure fled, the other side went to pieces.
“Hasan wrote a note and gave it to me to deliver to Shekure. It described how Shevket had come home to await the return of his father, how Shekure had been married in an illegitimate ceremony, how Shevket was very unhappy on account of the false husband who was supposed to be his new father and how he was never going back.”
“How did Shekure respond?”
“She waited for you all through the night with poor Orhan.”
“What about Hayriye?”
“Hayriye’s been waiting for years for the opportunity to drown your beautiful wife in a spoonful of water. This was why she began sleeping with your Enishte, may he rest in peace. When Hasan saw that Shekure was spending the night alone in fear of murderers and ghosts, he sent along another note through me.”
“What did he write?”
Thanks be to God that your unfortunate Esther can’t read or write, because when irate Effendis and irritable fathers ask this question, she can say: “I couldn’t read the letter, only the face of the beautiful maiden reading the letter.”
“What did you read in Shekure’s face?”
“Helplessness.”
For a long time we didn’t speak. Awaiting nightfall, an owl was perched on the dome of a small Greek church; runny-nosed neighborhood kids laughed at my clothes and bundle, and a mangy dog happily scratching himself loped down from the cemetery lined with cypresses to greet the night.
“Slow down!” I shouted at Black later, “I can’t get up these hills the way you can. Where are you taking me with my satchel like this?”
“Before you bring me to Hasan’s house, I’m taking you to some generous and brave young men so you can spread out your bundle and sell them some flowery handkerchiefs, silk sashes and purses with silver embroidery for their secret lovers.”
It was a good sign that Black could still make jokes in his pitiable state, but I could fathom the seriousness behind his mirth. “If you’re going to gather a posse, I’ll never take you to Hasan’s house,” I said. “I’m frightened to death of fights and brawls.”
“If you continue to be the intelligent Esther you’ve always been,” he said, “there’ll be neither fight nor brawl.”
We passed through Aksaray and entered the road heading back, straight toward the Langa gardens. On the upper part of the muddy road, in a neighborhood that had seen happier days, Black walked into a barbershop that was still open. I saw him talking to the master barber being shaved by an honest-looking boy with lovely hands by the light of an oil lamp. Before long, the barber, his handsome apprentice, and later, two more of his men joined up with us at Aksaray. They carried swords and axes. At a side street in Shehzadebashi, a theology student, whom I couldn’t picture involved in such rough affairs, joined us in the darkness, sword in hand.
“Do you plan on raiding a house in the middle of the city in broad daylight?” I said.
“It’s not day, it’s night,” said Black in a tone more pleased than joking.
“Don’t be so confident just because you’ve put together a gang,” I said. “Let’s hope the Janissaries don’t catch sight of this fully equipped little army wandering around.”
“No one will catch sight of us.”
“Yesterday the Erzurumis first raided a tavern and then the dervish house at Sağirkapi, beating up everyone they found in both places. An elderly man who took a blow to his head with a stick died. In this pitch blackness, they might think you’re of their lot.”
“I hear you went to dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s house, saw his wife, God bless her, and the horse sketches with the smeared ink before relaying it all to Shekure. Had Elegant Effendi been spending a lot of time with the henchmen of the preacher from Erzurum?”
“If I sounded out Elegant Effendi’s wife, it was because I thought it might ultimately help my poor Shekure,” I said. “Anyway, I’d gone there to show her the latest cloth which had come off the Flemish ship, not to involve myself in your legal and political affairs — which my poor brain couldn’t fathom anyway.”
As we entered the street, which ran behind Charshikapi, my heart quickened with fear. The bare, wet branches of the chestnut and mulberry trees glimmered in the pale light of the half-moon. A breeze kicked up by jinns and the living dead rippled the laced edging of my satchel, whistled through the trees and carried the scent of our group to neighborhood dogs lying in wait. As they began to bark one by one, I pointed out the house to Black. We stared quietly at its dark roof and shutters. Black had the men take positions around the house: in the empty garden, on either side of the courtyard gate and behind the fig trees in back.
“In that entryway over there is a vile Tatar beggar,” I said. “He’s blind, but he’ll know who’s come and gone along this street better than the neighborhood headman does. He continually plays with himself as if he were one of the Sultan’s vulgar monkeys. Without letting your hand touch his, give him eight or ten silver pieces and he’ll tell you everything he knows.”
From a distance, I watched Black hand over the coins, then lay his sword against the throat of the beggar and begin to pressure him with questions. Next, I’m not sure how it happened, the barber’s apprentice, who I thought was simply watching the house, began to beat the Tatar with the butt of his axe. I watched for a while, thinking it wouldn’t last, but the Tatar was wailing. I ran over and pulled the beggar away before they killed him.
“He cursed my mother,” said the apprentice.
“He says that Hasan isn’t home,” Black said. “Can we trust what this blind man says?” He handed me a note that he’d quickly written. “Take this, bring it to the house, give it to Hasan, and if he’s not there, give it to his father,” he said.
“Haven’t you written anything for Shekure?” I asked as I took the note.
“If I send her a separate note, it’ll incite the men of the house even more,” Black said. “Tell her I’ve found her father’s vile murderer.”
“Is this true?”
“Just tell her.”
Chastising the Tatar, who was still crying and complaining, I quieted him down. “Don’t forget what I’ve done for you,” I said, coming to the realization that I’d drawn out the incident so I wouldn’t have to leave.
Why had I stuck my nose into this affair? Two years ago in the Edirne Gate neighborhood they’d killed a clothes peddlar — after cutting off her ears — because the maiden she’d promised to one man married another. My grandmother used to tell me that Turks would often kill a man for no reason. I longed to be with my dearest Nesim, at home having lentil soup. Even though my feet resisted, I thought about how Shekure would be there, and walked to the house. Curiosity was eating at me.
“Clothierrr! I have new Chinese silks for holiday outfits.”
I sensed the orangish light filtering out between the shutters move. The door opened. Hasan’s polite father invited me inside. The house was warm, like the
houses of the rich. When Shekure, who was seated at a low dining table with her boys saw me, she rose to her feet.
“Shekure,” I said, “your husband’s here.”
“Which one?”
“The newer,” I said. “He’s surrounded the house with his band of armed men. They’re prepared to fight Hasan.”
“Hasan isn’t here,” said the polite father-in-law.
“How fortunate. Take a look at this,” I said, giving him Black’s note like a proud ambassador of the Sultan executing His merciless will.
As the gentlemanly father-in-law read the note, Shekure said, “Esther, come and let me pour you a bowl of lentil soup to warm you up.”
“I don’t like lentil soup,” I said at first. I didn’t like the way she spoke as if she were mistress of the house. But when I understood that she wanted to be alone with me, I grabbed the spoon and rushed after her.
“Tell Black that it’s all because of Shevket,” she whispered. “Last night I waited all night alone with Orhan deathly afraid of the murderer. Orhan trembled with fright until morning. My children had been separated! What kind of mother could remain apart from her child? When Black failed to come back, they told me that Our Sultan’s torturers had made him talk and that he’d a hand in my father’s death.”
“Wasn’t Black with you when your father was being killed?”
“Esther,” she said, opening her beautiful black eyes wide, “I beg of you, help me.”
“Then tell me why you’ve come back here so I might understand and help.”
“Do you think I know why I’ve returned?” she said. She seemed on the verge of tears. “Black was rough with my poor Shevket,” she said. “And when Hasan said that the children’s real father had returned, I believed him.”
But I could tell from her eyes that she was lying, and she knew I could tell. “I was duped by Hasan!” she whispered, and I sensed that she wanted me to infer from this that she loved Hasan. But did Shekure realize that she was thinking more and more about Hasan because she had married Black?