by Orhan Pamuk
The door opened and Hayriye entered carrying freshly baked bread whose aroma was irresistible. When she caught sight of me, I could tell from her expression of displeasure that after the death of Enishte Effendi, the poor thing — she couldn’t be sold, couldn’t be dismissed — had become a legacy of misery for Shekure. The scent of fresh bread filled the room, and I understood the truth of the matter as Shekure faced the children: Whether it be their real father, Hasan or Black, her problem wasn’t finding a husband she could love, her challenge was to find a father who would love these boys, both of whom were wide-eyed with fear. Shekure was ready, with the best of intentions, to love any good husband.
“You’re seeking what you want with your heart,” I said unthinkingly, “whereas you need to be making decisions with your mind.”
“I’m prepared to go back to Black immediately with the children,” she said, “but I have certain conditions!” She fell quiet. “He must treat Shevket and Orhan well. He shan’t inquire about my reasons for coming here. Above all, he must abide by our original conditions of marriage — he’ll know what I’m talking about. He left me all alone to fend for myself last night against murderers, thieves and Hasan.”
“He hasn’t yet found your father’s murderer, but he told me to tell you he has.”
“Should I go to him?”
Before I could answer, the former father-in-law, who’d long since finished reading the note, said, “Tell Black Effendi I can’t take the responsibility of handing over my daughter-in-law without my son being present.”
“Which son?” I said for the sake of being shrewish, but softly.
“Hasan,” he said. Since he was a man of etiquette, he blushed. “My oldest son is on his way back from Persia; there are witnesses.”
“Where’s Hasan?” I asked. I ate two spoonfuls of the soup Shekure had offered me.
“He went to gather the clerks, porters and other men of the Customs Office,” he said in the childish manner of decent yet dull men who cannot lie. “After what the Erzurumis did yesterday, the Janissaries are certain to be on the streets tonight.”
“We didn’t see anything of the sort,” I said as I walked toward the door. “Is this all you have to say?”
I asked this question of the father-in-law to intimidate him, but Shekure knew full well that I was really addressing her. Was her head truly this befuddled or was she hiding something; for example, was she awaiting the return of Hasan and his men? Oddly, I sensed that I liked her indecisiveness.
“We don’t want Black,” Shevket said confidently. “And make this your last visit, fat lady.”
“But then who’ll bring around the lace tablecloths, the handkerchiefs embroidered with flowers and birds that your pretty mother likes, and your favorite red shirt cloth?” I said, leaving my bundle in the middle of the room. “Until I return, you can open it up and take a look, try on, alter and sew whatever you like.”
I was saddened as I left. I’d never seen Shekure’s eyes so wet with tears. As soon as I adjusted to the cold outside, Black stopped me on the muddy road, sword in hand.
“Hasan’s not home,” I said. “Perhaps he’s gone to the market to buy wine to celebrate Shekure’s return. Perhaps he’ll soon be back with his men. In that case you’ll come to blows, because he’s crazy. And if he takes up that red sword of his, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“What did Shekure say?”
“The father-in-law said absolutely not, I won’t give up my daughter-in-law, but if I were you I wouldn’t worry about him, worry about Shekure. Your wife is confused. If you ask me, she took refuge here two days after her father perished for fear of the murderer, because of Hasan’s threats and your disappearance without a word. She knew she couldn’t spend another night in that same house plagued by the same fears. They also told her that you had a hand in her father’s death. But her first husband hasn’t come back or anything like that. Shevket, and it seems the father-in-law, believed Hasan’s lie. She wants to return to you, but she has certain conditions.”
Staring directly into Black’s eyes, I listed her conditions. He accepted at once with an official air as if he were speaking with a genuine ambassador.
“I, too, have a condition,” I said. “I’m heading back into the house again.” I pointed out the shutters of the window behind which the father-in-law sat. “In a little while attack from there and the front door. When I scream, that’ll be the signal for you to stop. If Hasan arrives, don’t hesitate to attack him.”
My words, of course, did not befit an ambassador, to whom no harm should come, but I let myself get carried away, you see. This time, as soon as I yelled “Clothierrr,” the door opened. I went directly to the father-in-law.
“The entire neighborhood, and the judge who presides over these parts, that is everyone, knows that Shekure has long been divorced and properly remarried in keeping with the dictates of the Koran,” I said. “Even if your son, who has long since passed away, came back to life and returned here to you from Heaven in the company of the Prophet Moses, it’d be of no use for he’s divorced from Shekure. You’ve abducted a married woman and are holding her here against her will. Black requested that I tell you he and his men will see to your punishment for this crime before the judge can.”
“Then he will have made a grave mistake,” said the father-in-law delicately. “We didn’t abduct Shekure at all! I’m the grandfather of these children, praise be to God. Hasan is their uncle. When Shekure was left all alone, what choice did she have but to seek shelter here? If she wants, she can leave now and take her children with her. But never forget that this is her first home, where she gave birth to her children and happily raised them.”
“Shekure,” I said unthinkingly, “do you want to return to your father’s house?”
She’d begun to cry on account of the “happy hearth” speech. “I have no father,” she said, or was that how I heard it? Her children first embraced her legs, then sat her down and hugged her; the three of them hugged one another in a large ball and wept. But Esther is no idiot: I knew full well that Shekure’s tears were meant to appease both sides without her having to make a decision. But I also knew they were genuine tears, because they moved me to cry, too. A while later, I noticed that Hayriye, that snake, was also crying.
As if to pay back the green-eyed father-in-law for being the sole person in the room who wasn’t crying, Black and his men began their attack on the house that very moment by banging on the shutters and forcing the door. Two men were at the front door with a battering ram whose blows sounded like cannonfire through the house.
“You’re an experienced and dignified man,” I said, encouraged by my own tears, “open the door and tell those rabid mongrels out there that Shekure is on her way.”
“Would you send an unprotected woman, your daughter-in-law no less, who’d taken refuge in your house, out onto the streets with those dogs?”
“She herself wants to go,” I said. With my purple handkerchief I wiped my nose, which had stuffed up from crying.
“In that case she’s free to open the door and leave,” he said.
I sat down beside Shekure and her children. At each new blow, the terrifying noise made by the men forcing the door became yet another excuse for yet more tears, the children began to cry louder, which in turn increased Shekure’s wailing and mine as well. Still, even taking into account the threatening cries from outside and the blows of the battering ram that seemed on the verge of destroying the house, both of us knew we were crying to gain time.
“My beautiful Shekure,” I said, “your father-in-law has given you permission and your husband Black has accepted all of your terms, he’s waiting for you lovingly, you no longer have any business in this house. Put on your cloak, don your veil, take your belongings and your children, and open the door so we can go quietly back to your house.”
This statement of mine made the children wail even more, and caused Shekure to open her eyes in shock.
“I’m afraid of Hasan,” she said, “his revenge will be horrible. He’s wild. Remember, I came here on my own.”
“This doesn’t cancel out your new marriage,” I said. “You were left helpless, of course you were going to take refuge somewhere. Your husband’s forgiven you, he’s prepared to take you back. As for Hasan, we’ll deal with him the way we have for years.” I smiled.
“But I’m not going to open the door,” she said, “because then I’ll have returned to him of my own free will.”
“My dearest Shekure, I cannot open the door either,” I said. “You know as well as I that this would mean I’ve meddled in your affairs. They’d bitterly avenge such meddling.”
I could see from her eyes that she understood. “Then no one will open the door,” she said. “Let’s wait for them to break it down and take us by force.”
I knew at once this would be the best alternative for Shekure and her children, and I was afraid. “But that means blood will be spilled,” I said. “If the judge isn’t involved in this affair, blood will flow, and a blood feud will last for years. No honorable man could stand by and watch as his house was broken into and raided to abduct a woman residing there.”
I once again understood regretfully how deceptive and calculating this Shekure was as she embraced her two boys and wailed with all her being rather than answer. A voice was telling me to forget everything and leave, but I could no longer walk back through the door, which was being battered to the breaking point. Actually, I was afraid of both what would happen if they broke down the door and came through and what would happen if they didn’t; I kept thinking that Black’s men, who trusted in me, were worried about going too far and might retreat at any moment, which would, in turn, embolden the father-in-law. When he went to Shekure’s side, I knew he’d begun to cry fake tears, but what’s worse, he was trembling in a way that couldn’t be feigned.
Stepping toward the door, I screamed with all my strength, “Stop, that’s enough!”
The commotion outside and the wailing inside ended in a heartbeat.
“Mother, have Orhan open the door,” I said in a moment of inspiration and in a sweet voice, as if I were speaking to the boy. “He wants to go home, no one will take issue with that.”
The words had hardly left my mouth when Orhan freed himself from his mother’s loosening arms, and like somebody who’d lived here for years, slid open the bolt, lifted the wooden bar, then unfastened the latch, and moved backward two steps. The cold from outside entered as the door yawned open. There was such a silence that all of us heard a lazy dog bark off in the distance. Shekure kissed Orhan, who was back in his mother’s lap, and Shevket said, “I’m going to tell Uncle Hasan.”
I saw Shekure stand, take up her cloak and prepare her bundle to leave, and I was so greatly relieved, I was afraid I might laugh. I seated myself and had two more spoonfuls of the lentil soup.
Black was intelligent enough not to come anywhere near the door of the house. For a time, Shevket locked himself in his late father’s room, and even though we called for Black’s help, neither he nor his men came. After Shekure agreed to let Shevket take along his Uncle Hasan’s ruby-handled dagger, the boy was willing to leave the house with us.
“Be afraid of Hasan and his red sword,” said the father-in-law with genuine worry rather than an air of defeat and vengeance. He kissed each of his grandchildren, sniffing their heads. He also whispered into Shekure’s ear.
When I saw Shekure gazing one last time at the door, walls and stove of the house, I remembered once again how this was where she spent the happiest years of her life with her first husband. But could she also tell that this same house was the refuge of two miserable and lonely men, and that it bore the stench of death? I didn’t walk with her on the way back for she had broken my heart by coming back here.
It wasn’t the cold and blackness of the night that brought together the two fatherless children and three women — one servant, one Jewess and one widow — it was the strange neighborhoods, the nearly impassable streets and the fear of Hasan. Our crowded company was under the protection of Black’s men, and just like a caravan carrying treasure, we walked over out-of-the-way roads, backstreets and solitary, seldom-visited neighborhoods, so as to avoid running into guards, Janissaries, curious neighborhood thugs, thieves or Hasan. At times, through blackness in which you couldn’t see your hand before your face, we groped our way, perpetually bumping against each other and the walls. We walked clinging to one another, overcome by the sensation that the living dead, jinns and demons would surely emerge from underground and abduct us into the night. Just behind the walls and closed shutters, which we felt blindly with our hands, we heard the snoring and coughing of people in the nighttime cold as well as the lowing of beasts in their stables.
Even Esther, no stranger to the poorest and worst districts, who’d walked all the streets of Istanbul — that is excluding those neighborhoods wherein migrants and the members of various unfortunate communities congregated — occasionally felt that we would vanish on these streets, which twisted and turned without end through an endless blackness. Yet I could still make out certain street corners that I’d patiently passed in the daytime toting my satchel; for example, I recognized the walls of Head Tailor’s Street, the sharp smell of manure — which for some reason reminded me of cinnamon — coming from the stable adjacent to Nurullah Hoja’s property, the fire-ravaged sites on Acrobats Street and the Falconers Arcade that led into the square with the Blind Haji Fountain, and thus I knew we weren’t heading toward the house of Shekure’s late father at all, but to some other, mysterious destination.
There was no telling what Hasan would do if angered, and I knew Black had found another place to hide his family from him — and from that devil of a murderer. If I could’ve made out where that place was, I would tell you, now, and Hasan tomorrow morning — not out of spite, but because I’m convinced that Shekure will again want to have Hasan’s interest. But Black, intelligent as he was, no longer trusted me.
We were walking down a dark street behind the slave market when a commotion of cries and wails erupted at the far end of the street. We heard the sounds of a scuffle, and I recognized with fear the clamorous start of a fight: the clash of axes, swords and sticks and the bellow of bitter pain.
Black handed his own large sword to one of his most trusted men, forcibly took the dagger from Shevket, causing the boy to cry, and had the barber’s apprentice and two other men move Shekure, Hayriye and the children a safe distance away. The theology student told me he’d take me home by way of a shortcut; that is, he didn’t let me stay with the others. Was this a twist of fate or some cunning attempt to keep secret the whereabouts of their hideout?
There was a shop, which I understood to be a coffeehouse, at the end of this narrow street we were passing down. Perhaps the swordfight stopped as soon as it’d begun. Crowds of men were hooting as they entered and left; at first I thought they were looting, but no, they were destroying the coffeehouse. They carefully took out all of the ceramic cups, brass pots, glasses and low tables under the light of the torches of the onlookers and destroyed them all as a warning. They roughed up a man who tried to stop them, but he was able to get away. Originally, I thought their target was only coffee, as they themselves claimed. They were condemning its ill effects, how it harmed the sight and the stomach, how it dulled the intellect and caused men to lose their faith, how it was the poison of the Franks and how Exalted Muhammad had turned down coffee even though it was offered to him by a beautiful woman — Satan in disguise. It was as if this were the theatrics for a night of instruction in moral etiquette, and if I finally made it home, I thought I might even scold Nesim, warning him not to drink too much of that poison.
Since there were quite a few rooming houses and cheap inns nearby, a curious crowd formed in no time, made up of idle wanderers, homeless men and no-good mongrels who’d snuck illegally into the city, and they emboldened these enemies of coffee. It was
then I understood that these men were the henchmen of Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum. They intended to clean up all the dens of wine, prostitution and coffee in Istanbul and punish severely those who veered from the path of Exalted Muhammad; those who, for example, used dervish ceremonies as an excuse for belly-dancing to music. They railed against the enemies of religion, men who collaborated with the Devil, pagans, unbelievers and illustrators. I suddenly recalled this was the coffeehouse on whose walls drawings were hung, where religion and the hoja from Erzurum were maligned and where disrespect knew no bounds.
A coffee maker’s apprentice, his face spattered with blood, emerged from inside, and I thought he might collapse, but he wiped the blood from his forehead and cheeks with the cuff of his shirt, melded in with our group and began to watch the raid. The crowd pulled back a little out of fear. I noticed Black recognize somebody and hesitate. By the way the Erzurumis began to collect together, I knew that the Janissaries or some other band armed with clubs was on its way. The torches were extinguished and the crowd became a confused mob.
Black grabbed me by the arm and had the theology student take me away. “Go by way of the backstreets,” he said. “He’ll see you to your house.” The student wanted to slip away as soon as possible and we were almost running as we departed. My thoughts were with Black, but if Esther’s taken out of the scene, she can’t possibly continue with the story, can she now?
FIFTY-FIVE
I AM A WOMAN
I can hear your objections already: “My dear Storyteller Effendi, you might be able to imitate anyone or anything, but never a woman!” Yet I beg to differ. True, I’ve wandered from city to city, imitating everything into the wee hours of the night at weddings, festivals and coffeehouses until my voice gave out, and thus it was never my lot to marry, but this doesn’t mean I’m unacquainted with womenfolk.