by Orhan Pamuk
“Master Osman said you often acted as if apologizing for your talent and proficiency.”
“What else did he say about me?”
“That you’d paint absurd, minute pictures on grains of rice and fingernails so that others would be convinced you’d forsaken life for art. He said you were always trying to please others because you were embarrassed by the great gifts Allah had bestowed upon you.”
“Master Osman is on Bihzad’s level,” I said with sincerity. “What else?”
“He listed your faults without the slightest hesitation,” said the wretch.
“Let’s hear my faults then.”
“He said that despite your prodigious talent, you painted not for the love of art but to ingratiate yourself. Supposedly, what most motivated you while painting was imagining the pleasure an observer would feel; whereas, you should’ve painted for the pleasure of painting itself.”
It singed my heart that Master Osman so brazenly revealed what he thought about me to a man of such diminished spirit, one who devoted his life, not to art, but to being a clerk, writing letters and hollow flattery. Black continued:
“The great masters of old, Master Osman claimed, would never renounce the styles and methods they cultivated through self-sacrifice to art just for the sake of a new shah’s authority, the whims of a new prince or the tastes of a new age; thus, to avoid being forced to alter their styles and methods, they’d heroically blind themselves. Meanwhile, you’ve enthusiastically and dishonorably imitated the European masters for the pages of my Enishte’s book, with the excuse that it’s the will of Our Sultan.”
“The great Head Illuminator Master Osman most certainly meant no evil by this,” I said. “Allow me to put some linden tea on the boil for you, my dear guest.”
I passed into the adjoining room. My beloved tossed over my head the nightgown of Chinese silk she was wearing, which she’d purchased from Esther the clothier, then mockingly parroted me, “Allow me to put some linden tea on the boil for you, my dear guest,” and placed her hand on my cock.
I took out the agate-handled sword hidden among rose-scented sheets at the bottom of the chest on the floor nearest our roll-up mattress, which she’d hopefully spread out, and drew the weapon from its sheath. Its edge was so sharp that if you tossed a silk handkerchief over it, the sword would easily cut through it; if you placed a sheet of gold leaf upon it, the edges of the resulting pieces would be as straight as any cut with a ruler.
Concealing the sword as best I could, I returned to my atelier. Black Effendi was so pleased with his interrogation of me that he was still circling the red cushion, dagger in hand. I placed a half-finished illustration upon the cushion. “Take a look at this,” I said. He knelt out of curiosity, trying to understand the picture.
I stepped behind him, drew my sword and in one motion lowered him to the ground, pinning him with my weight. His dagger fell away. Grabbing him by the hair, I pushed his head against the ground and pressed my sword to his neck from below. I flattened out Black’s delicate body and pressed him facedown beneath my heavy body, using my chin and one free hand to push his head so it nearly touched the sharp point of the sword. My one hand was full of his dirty hair, the other held the sword to the delicate skin of his throat. Wisely, he didn’t move at all, because I could have finished him then and there. Being this close to his curly hair, to the nape of his neck — which might’ve invited an insulting slap at another time — and to his ugly ears enraged me all the more. “I’m using all my restraint to keep from doing away with you this instant,” I whispered into his ear as if divulging a secret.
That he listened to me like an obedient child without making a peep pleased me: “You’ll recognize this legend from the Book of Kings,” I whispered. “Feridun Shah, in error, bequeaths the worst of his lands to his two older sons and the best, Persia, to Iraj, the youngest. Tur, bent on revenge, dupes his younger brother, Iraj, of whom he is jealous; before he cuts Iraj’s throat, he grabs his hair just as I am doing now and lies on top of him with all his weight. Do you feel the weight of my body?”
He gave no answer, but from his eyes, which stared blankly like those of a sacrificial lamb, I could tell that he was listening, and I was struck with inspiration: “I’m not only faithful to Persian styles and methods in painting, but also in beheadings. I’ve also seen another version of this much loved scene that describes Shah Siyavush’s death.”
I explained to Black, who listened silently, how Siyavush made preparations for avenging his brothers, how he burned down his entire palace, all his belongings and property, how he forgivingly parted from his wife, mounted his steed and went to war, how he lost the battle and was dragged by his hair along the ground before being laid out facedown “just as you are now,” and how a knife was pressed against his throat, how there erupted an argument between his friends and enemies over whether they should kill him or let him free and how the defeated king, his face in the dirt, listened to his captors. Then I asked him, “Are you fond of that illustration? Geruy comes up behind Siyavush, as I have to you, gets on top of him, rests his sword against his neck, grabs a fistful of hair and cuts his throat. Your red blood, soon to flow, makes black dust rise from the dry earth, where later still, a flower will bloom.”
I fell quiet and from distant streets we could hear the Erzurumis screaming as they ran. The terror outside at once brought the two of us, lying one on top of the other, closer.
“But in all those pictures,” I added, pulling harder on Black’s hair, “one can sense the difficulty of elegantly drawing two men who despise each other yet whose bodies, like ours, have become as one. It’s as if the chaos of treachery, envy and battle that comes just before the magical and magnificent moment of beheading has too fully permeated those pictures. Even the greatest masters of Kazvin would have difficulty drawing two men on top of each other; they’d confuse everything. Whereas you and I, see for yourself, we’re much more tidy and elegant.”
“The blade is cutting,” he whimpered.
“I’m much obliged for your polite words, my dear man, but it’s doing no such thing. I’m being quite careful. I wouldn’t do anything to ruin the beauty of our pose. In the scenes of love, death and war, wherein the great masters of old rendered intertwined bodies as if they were one, they were able to elicit only our tears. See for yourself: My head rests upon the nape of your neck as if it were a part of your body. I can smell your hair and the scent of your neck. My legs, on either side of yours, are stretched out in such harmony with yours, that an onlooker might mistake us for an elegant four-legged beast. Do you feel the balance of my weight on your back and buttocks?” Another silence, but I didn’t press the sword upward, because it would indeed have cut his throat. “If you’re not going to speak, I might be provoked to bite your ear,” I said, whispering into that very ear.
When I noticed in his eyes that he was prepared to speak, I asked the same question again: “Do you feel the balance of my weight upon your body?”
“Aye.”
“Do you like it?” I said. “Are we beautiful?” I asked. “Are we as beautiful as the legendary heroes who slay each other with such elegance in the masterpieces of the old masters?”
“I don’t know,” said Black, “I can’t see us in the mirror.”
When I imagined how my wife saw us from the other room in the light cast by the coffeehouse’s oil lamp resting on the floor only a short distance away, I thought I might actually bite Black’s ear out of excitement.
“Black Effendi, you, who have forced your way into my home and have disturbed my privacy, dagger in hand, in order to interrogate me,” I said, “do you now feel my strength?”
“Yes, I also sense that you’re truly in the right.”
“Then proceed, once again, to ask me what you want to know.”
“Describe how Master Osman would caress you.”
“As an apprentice, I was much more lithe, delicate and beautiful than I am now, and he would mount me then
the way I have mounted you. He would caress my arms, at times he would even hurt me, but because I was in awe of his knowledge, his talent and strength, what he did pleased me, and I never harbored any ill will toward him, because I loved him. Loving Master Osman enabled me to love art, colors, paper, the beauty of painting and illumination and everything that was painted, and thereby to love the world itself and God. Master Osman is more than a father to me.”
“Would he beat you often?” he asked.
“In the role of a father, he beat me with an appropriate sense of justice; as a master, he beat me painfully so that I might learn from the punishment. Thanks to the pain and the fear of a ruler whacking my fingernails I learned many things better and faster than I would’ve alone. So he wouldn’t grab me by my hair and bang my head against the wall when I was an apprentice, I’d never spill paint, never waste his gold wash, would quickly memorize, for example, the curve of a horse’s foreleg, cover up the mistakes of the master limner, clean my brushes regularly and focus my attention and spirit on the page before me. Since I owe my talent and mastery to the beatings I received, I, in turn, beat my own apprentices without a guilty conscience. What’s more, I know that even a beating given without just cause, if it doesn’t break the spirit of the apprentice, will ultimately benefit him.”
“Even so, you understand that while drubbing a handsome-faced, sweet-eyed, angelic apprentice, now and then, you get carried away by the sheer pleasure of it, and you know that Master Osman probably experienced the same sensation with you, don’t you?”
“Sometimes he’d take a marble burnishing stone and strike me with such force behind the ear that my ear would ring for days, and I’d walk around half stunned. Sometimes he’d slap me so hard that for weeks my cheek would ache, enough to bring continual tears to my eyes. I shall never forget, yet I still love my mentor.”
“Nay,” said Black, “you were furious with him. You took revenge for the anger that silently accumulated deep within you by making illustrations for my Enishte’s Frankish-imitation book.”
“The opposite is true. The beatings that a young miniaturist receives from his master bind him to his master with a profound respect until the day he dies.”
“The cruel and treacherous cutting of the throats of Iraj and Siyavush from behind, as you are doing to me, arose out of sibling rivalry, and sibling rivalry, as in the Book of Kings, is always provoked by an unjust father.”
“True.”
“The unjust father of you master miniaturists, the one who set you at each other’s throats, is now preparing to betray you,” he said brazenly. “Ahh, I beg of you, it is cutting,” he whimpered. He cried in agony a bit longer. Then he went on, “True, cutting my throat and spilling my blood like a sacrificial lamb would be but the work of an instant, but if you do this without listening to what I’m about to explain — I don’t think you’ll do it anyway, ahh, please, enough — you’ll forever wonder what I was going to say. Please, move the blade away slightly.” I did so. “Master Osman, who followed your every step and your every breath since childhood, who happily watched your God-given talent bloom into artistry like a spring flower under his care, has now turned his back on you in order to save his workshop and its style, to which he has devoted his entire life.”
“I recounted three parables to you the day we buried Elegant Effendi so you might know how disgusting this thing they call “style” truly is.”
“Those stories pertained to a miniaturist’s individual style,” said Black carefully, “whereas Master Osman is concerned with preserving the style of the entire workshop.”
He explained how the Sultan attached great importance to finding the murderer of Elegant Effendi and his Enishte, how He’d even let them inspect the Royal Treasury to this end, and how Master Osman was using this opportunity to sabotage his Enishte’s book and punish those who betrayed him by imitating the Europeans. Black added that based on style, Master Osman suspected Olive was responsible for the horse with the clipped nostrils, but as Head Illuminator, he was convinced of Stork’s guilt and would turn him over to the executioners. I could sense he was telling the truth under the pressure of my sword, and I felt like kissing him because he gave himself over to what he was saying like a child. What I heard didn’t worry me, having Stork out of the way meant I’d become Head Illuminator after Master Osman’s death — may God grant him long life.
I wasn’t disturbed that what he said might happen, but by the possibility that it might not. Reading between the lines of Black’s account, I was able to glean that Master Osman was willing not only to sacrifice Stork, but me as well. Considering this incredible possibility made my heart quicken and drew me toward the horror of complete abandonment felt by a child who’s suddenly lost his father. Each time this came to mind, I had to restrain myself from cutting Black’s throat. I didn’t attempt to argue the point with Black or myself: Why should the fact that we made a few foolish illustrations inspired by European masters lower us to the level of traitors? Once again, I thought that behind Elegant’s death stood Stork and Olive and their schemes against me. I removed the sword from Black’s throat.
“Let’s go to Olive’s house together, and search it from top to bottom,” I said. “If the last picture is with him, at least we’ll know whom to fear. If not, we’ll take him with us as support and go on to raid Stork’s house.”
I told him to trust me and that his dagger was enough weaponry for the two of us. I apologized for not even having offered him a glass of linden tea. As I lifted the oil lamp from the floor, we both stared meaningfully at the cushion upon which I’d flattened him. I approached him with the lamp in my hand and told him how the ever-so-faint cut on his throat would be a mark of our friendship. He bled only slightly.
The commotion made by the Erzurumis and those pursuing them could still be heard on the streets, but no one noticed us. We were quick to arrive at Olive’s house. We knocked on the courtyard door, the door of the house, and impatiently upon the shutters. Nobody was home; we made so much noise that we were certain he wasn’t sleeping. Black gave voice to what we both were thinking: “Shall we go inside?”
I twisted the metal loop of the door lock using the blunt edge of Black’s dagger, then inserting it into the space between door and jamb and levering it with all our weight, we broke the lock. We were met by the stench of dampness, dirt and loneliness, which had accumulated over years. By the light of the lamp, we noticed an unmade bed, sashes tossed randomly upon cushions, vests, two turbans, undershirts, Nimetullah Effendi the Nakshibendi’s Persian dictionary, a wooden turban stand, broadcloth, needle and thread, a small copper pan full of apple peels, quite a few cushions, a velvet bedspread, his paints, his brushes and all of his supplies. I was on the verge of rifling through the writing paper, the layer upon layer of carefully trimmed Hindustan paper, and the illuminated pages on his small desk, but I restrained myself both because Black was more enthusiastic than I, and because I knew full well how a master miniaturist would incur nothing but bad luck if he went through the belongings of a less talented miniaturist. Olive is not as talented as is assumed, he’s merely eager. He tries to cover up for his lack of talent with adoration of the old masters. The old legends, however, only rouse an artist’s imagination; it’s the hand that does the painting.
As Black was searching meticulously through all the chests and boxes, going as far as to check the bottoms of laundry baskets, without touching anything I glanced at Olive’s Bursa towels, his ebony comb, his dirty bath hand towel, his rosewater bottles, a ridiculous waist cloth with an Indian block-print pattern, quilted jackets, a heavy, dirty women’s robe with a slit, a dented copper tray, filthy carpets and other furnishings too cheap and slovenly for the money he earned. Olive was either very stingy and salting his money away or he was squandering it somehow…
“The house of a murderer, precisely,” I said later. “There isn’t even a prayer rug.” But this wasn’t what I was thinking. I concentrated. “These are the belong
ings of a man who doesn’t know how to be happy…” I said. Yet, in a corner of my mind, I thought sadly about how misery and proximity to the Devil nursed painting.
“Despite knowing what it takes to be content, a man might still be unhappy,” said Black.
He placed before me a series of pictures drawn on coarse Samarkand paper, backed with heavy sheets, which he’d removed from the depths of a chest. We studied the pictures: a delightful Satan all the way from Khorasan that had emerged from beneath the ground, a tree, a beautiful woman, a dog and the picture of Death I myself had drawn. These were the illustrations that the murdered storyteller hung up each night he told one of his disgraceful stories. Prompted by Black’s question, I pointed out the picture of Death I had drawn.
“The same pictures are in my Enishte’s book,” he said.
“Both the storyteller and the proprietor of the coffeehouse realized the wisdom of having the miniaturists render the illustrations each night. The storyteller would have one of us quickly dash off an illustration on one of these coarse sheets, ask us a little about the story and about our in jokes and then, adding some of his own material, he’d start the evening’s performance.”
“Why did you make the same picture of Death for him that you made for my Enishte’s book?”
“Upon the request of the storyteller, it was a lone figure on the page. But I didn’t draw it with attention and effort the way I had for Enishte’s book; I drew it quickly, the way my hand felt like drawing it. The others too, perhaps trying to be witty, drew for the storyteller in a cruder and simpler manner what they had made for that secret book.”
“Who made the horse,” he asked, “with the slit nostrils?”