My Name is Red Read online

  Hayriye returned from her morning errand. As she was laying out the low table for breakfast, and I was placing a portion of orange jam in the middle of it, I imagined how Esther was now calling at Black’s door. The snow had stopped and the sun had begun to shine.

  In the garden of the Hanged Jew, I encountered a familiar scene. The icicles hanging from the eaves and window casings were quickly shrinking, and the garden that smelled of mold and rotting leaves was eagerly absorbing the sun. I found Black waiting in the spot where I’d first seen him last night — it seemed so long ago, as if weeks had passed. I raised my veil and said:

  “You can be glad, if you feel the urge. My father’s objections and doubts will not come between us anymore. While you were craftily trying to lay your hands on me here last night, a devil-of-a-man broke into our empty house and murdered my father.”

  Rather than wondering about Black’s reaction, you’re probably puzzling over why I spoke so coldly and somewhat insincerely. I don’t quite know the answer myself. Maybe I thought I’d cry otherwise, provoking Black to embrace me, and I’d become intimate with him sooner than I wanted.

  “He destroyed our home with a thoroughness that clearly reveals anger and hatred. I don’t think his work is done either, I don’t expect this devil will calmly retire to some corner now. He stole the final picture. I’m calling on you to protect me — protect us — and keep my father’s book from him. Now tell me, under what arrangement and conditions will you see to our safety? This is what we have to resolve.”

  He made an overture to speak, but I easily silenced him with a look — as though this were something I’d done countless times before.

  “In the eyes of the judge, it is my husband and his family who succeed my father as my guardians. This was the case even before his death, for according to the judge my husband is still alive. It was only because Hasan tried to take advantage of me during his older brother’s absence, a failed assault that embarrassed my father-in-law, that I was allowed to return to my father’s home though not officially a widow. But now that my father is dead and I am without even a brother, there is no question that my only possible guardians are my husband’s brother and my father-in-law. They’ve already been scheming to have me returned to their home, coercing my father, and threatening me. Once they hear my father is dead, they won’t hesitate to take official action. My only hope to prevent this is to conceal my father’s death. Perhaps in vain, for they may be the ones behind the crime.”

  At that very moment, a thin beam of light gracefully filtered through the broken shutters and fell between Black and me, illuminating the ancient dust inside the room.

  “This isn’t the only reason I’m hiding my father’s death,” I said, fixing my gaze into Black’s eyes, in which I was gladdened to see attentiveness more than love. “I’m also afraid of being unable to prove my whereabouts at the time of my father’s murder. Though she’s a slave and her word might be discounted, I’m afraid that Hayriye is involved in these machinations, if not against me, then against my father’s book. And as long as I remain without a protector, the announcement of my father’s murder, while initially simplifying matters at home, might well, solely for the reasons I’ve enumerated, cause me great misfortune at her hand; for instance, what if Hayriye is aware that my father didn’t want me to marry you?”

  “Your father didn’t want you to marry me?” asked Black.

  “No, he didn’t, he was worried that you’d take me away from him. Since there’s no longer any danger of you doing such evil to him, let’s assume my dear unfortunate father has no further objection. Do you have any?”

  “None at all, my darling.”

  “Fine, then. My guardian has no claims of money or gold on you. Please excuse the impropriety of my discussing marital circumstances on my own behalf, but I have certain prerequisites that I must, unfortunately, explain to you.”

  As I fell silent for a while, Black said, “Yes,” in a manner that suggested an apology for his hesitation.

  “First,” I began, “you must swear before two witnesses that if you behave badly toward me in our marriage, to a degree that I find unbearable, or if you take a second wife, you will grant me a divorce with alimony. Second, you must swear before two witnesses that if for whatever reason you are absent from the house for more than a six-month period without a visit, I will also be granted a divorce with alimony. Third, after we are married, you will of course move into my home; however, until the villain who has murdered my father has been caught or until you find him — how I’d love to torture him myself! — and until Our Sultan’s book, completed under the guidance of your talents and efforts, has been honorably presented to Him, you will not share my bed. Fourth, you will love my sons, who do share my bed with me, as if they were your own children.”

  “I agree.”

  “Good. If all of the obstacles that still lie before us disappear this quickly, we’ll soon be wed.”

  “Yes, wed, but not in the same bed.”

  “The first step is marriage,” I said. “Let’s see to that first. Love comes after marriage. Don’t forget: Marriage douses love’s flame, leaving nothing but a barren and melancholy blackness. Of course, after marriage, love itself will vanish anyway; but happiness fills the void. Still, there are those hasty fools who fall in love before marrying and, burning with emotion, exhaust all their feeling, believing love to be the highest goal in life.”

  “What, then, is the truth of the matter?”

  “The truth is contentment. Love and marriage are but a means to obtaining it: a husband, a house, children, a book. Can’t you see that even in my state, with a missing husband and a deceased father, I’m better off than you in your isolation? I’d die without my sons, with whom I spend my days laughing, tussling and loving. Moreover, since you long for me even in my present predicament, since you secretly ache to spend the night with me — even if not in the same bed — under the same roof with my father’s body and my unruly children, you’re compelled to listen with all your heart to what I now have to say.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “There are various ways that I might secure a divorce. False witnesses could swear that before my husband set out on campaign, they witnessed him grant me a conditional divorce; for example, that he’d pledged that if he didn’t return within two years, I should be considered free. Or, more simply, they might swear they’d seen my husband’s corpse in the field of battle, citing various convincing and descriptive details. But taking my father’s body and the objections of my in-laws into consideration, to rely on false witnesses would be an unsound way to proceed, as no judge of any intelligence or caution would be persuaded. Considering that my husband left me without alimony and hasn’t returned from war for four years, even judges of our Hanefi creed couldn’t grant me a divorce. The Üsküdar judge, however, knowing how the number of women in my situation is increasing each day, is more sympathetic and so — with a nod from Our Excellency the Sultan and the Sheikhulislam — the judge occasionally allows his proxy of the Shafü creed to rule in his place, thereby granting divorces left and right to women like me, including conditions of alimony. Now, if you can find two witnesses to testify openly to my predicament, pay them off, cross the Bosphorus with them to the Üsküdar side, arrange for the judge, making certain that his proxy will sit in for him so the divorce might be granted by virtue of the witnesses, register the divorce in the judge’s ledger, obtain a certificate testifying to the proceeding, obtain written permission for my immediate remarriage, and if you can accomplish all of this and get back to this side of the Bosphorus by the afternoon, then — assuming no difficulty in finding a preacher who might marry us this evening — then, as my husband, you could spend this night with me and my children. Thereby, you’ll also spare us a sleepless night of hearing in every creaking of the house the steps of that devilish murderer. Moreover, you’ll save me from the wretchedness of being a poor unprotected woman when we announce the death of my fath
er in the morning.”

  “Yes,” said Black with good humor and somewhat childishly. “Yes. I agree to make you mine.”

  You remember how only recently I declared I didn’t know why I was speaking to Black in such a high-handed and insincere manner. Now I know: I’ve come to realize that only by assuming such a tone might I convince Black — who has yet to outgrow his childhood muddle-headedness — to believe in the possibility of events that even I have a hard time believing will come to pass.

  “We have a lot to do in fighting our enemies, those who would obstruct the completion of my father’s book and those who could contest my divorce and our marriage ceremony — which will be performed tonight, God willing. But I suppose I shouldn’t further confuse you, since you are already even more confused than I.”

  “You aren’t confused at all,” said Black.

  “Perhaps, but only because these aren’t my own ideas, I learned them from my father over the years.” I said this so he wouldn’t dismiss what I said, assuming that these plans had sprung from my feminine mind.

  Next, Black said what I’d heard from every man who wasn’t afraid to admit he found me very intelligent:

  “You’re very beautiful.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it pleases me to be praised for my intelligence. When I was a child, my father would often do so.”

  I was about to add that once I’d grown up my father ceased to praise my intelligence, but I began to weep. As I cried, it was as if I’d left myself and was becoming another, entirely separate woman. Like some reader troubled by a sad picture in the pages of a book, I saw my life from the outside and pitied what I saw. There’s something so innocent in crying over one’s troubles, as though they were another’s, that when Black embraced me, a sense of well-being spread over us both. Yet, this time, as we hugged, this sense of comfort remained there between us, unable to affect the adversaries circling us.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I AM CALLED BLACK

  Widowed, abandoned and aggrieved, my beloved Shekure fled with featherlike steps, and I stood as if stunned in the stillness of the house of the Hanged Jew, amid the aroma of almonds and dreams of marriage she’d left in her wake. I was bewildered, but my mind was churning so fast it almost hurt. Without even a chance to grieve properly over my Enishte’s death, I swiftly returned home. On the one hand, a worm of doubt was gnawing at me: Was Shekure using me as a pawn in a grand scheme, was she duping me? On the other hand, fantasies of a blissful marriage stubbornly played before my eyes.

  After making conversation with my landlady who interrogated me at the front door as to where I’d gone and whence I was coming at this morning hour, I went to my room and removed the twenty-two Venetian gold pieces from the lining of the sash I’d hidden in my mattress, placing them in my money purse with trembling fingers. When I returned to the street, I knew immediately I’d see Shekure’s dark, teary, troubled eyes for the rest of the day.

  I changed five of the Venetian Lions at a perpetually smiling Jewish money changer. Next, deep in thought, I entered the neighborhood whose name I’ve yet to mention because I’m not fond of it: Yakutlar, where my deceased Enishte and Shekure, along with her children, awaited me at their house. As I made my way along the streets almost running, a tall plane tree seemed to reproach me for being overjoyed by dreams and plans of marriage on the very day my Enishte had passed away. Next, as the ice had melted, a street fountain hissed into my ear: “Don’t take matters too seriously, see to your own affairs and your own happiness.” “That’s all fine and good,” objected an ill-omened black cat licking himself on the corner, “but everybody, yourself included, suspects you had a hand in your uncle’s murder.”

  The cat left off licking himself as I suddenly caught sight of its bewitching eyes. I don’t have to tell you how brazen these Istanbul cats get when the locals spoil them.

  I found the Imam Effendi, whose droopy eyelids and large black eyes gave him a perpetually sleepy look, not at his house, but in the courtyard of the neighborhood mosque, and there I asked him quite a trivial legal question: “When is one obligated to testify in court?” I raised my eyebrows as I listened to his haughty answer as if I were hearing this information for the first time. “Bearing witness is optional if other witnesses are present,” explained the Imam Effendi, “but, in situations where there was only one witness, it is the will of God that one bear witness.”

  “That’s just the predicament I find myself in now,” I said, taking up the conversation. “In a situation everyone knows about, all the witnesses have shirked their responsibilities and avoided going to court with the excuse that “it’s only voluntary,” and as a result the pressing concerns of those I’m trying to help are being completely disregarded.”

  “Well,” said the Imam Effendi, “why don’t you loosen your purse-strings a little more?”

  I took out my pouch and showed him the Venetian gold pieces huddled within: The broad space of the mosque courtyard, the face of the preacher, everything was suddenly illuminated by the glimmer of gold. He asked me what my dilemma was all about.

  I explained who I was. “Enishte Effendi is ill,” I confided. “Before he dies, he wants his daughter’s widowhood certified and an alimony to be instituted.”

  I didn’t even have to mention the proxy of the Üsküdar judge. The Imam Effendi understood at once and said the entire neighborhood had long been troubled over the fate of hapless Shekure, adding that the situation had already persisted too long. Instead of searching for a second witness required for a legal separation at the door of the Üsküdar judge, the Imam Effendi suggested his brother. Now, if I were to offer an additional gold piece to the brother, who lived in the neighborhood and was familiar with the predicament of Shekure and her darling children, I’d be doing a good pious turn. After all, for only two gold coins the Imam Effendi was giving me a deal on the second witness. We immediately agreed. The Imam Effendi went to fetch his brother.

  The rest of our day rather resembled the “cat-and-mouse” stories that I’d watched storytellers in Aleppo coffeehouses act out. Because of all the adventure and trickery, such stories written up as narrative poems and bound were never taken seriously even if presented in fine calligraphy; that is, they were never illustrated. I, on the other hand, was quite pleased to divide our daylong adventure into four scenes, imagining each in the illustrated pages of my mind.

  In the first scene, the miniaturist ought to depict us amid mustachioed and muscled oarsmen, forging our way across the blue Bosphorus toward Üsküdar in the four-oared red longboat we’d boarded in Unkapani. The preacher and his skinny dark-complexioned brother, pleased with the surprise voyage, are engaging the oarsmen in friendly chatter. Meanwhile, amid blithe dreams of marriage that play ceaselessly before my eyes, I stare deep into the waters of the Bosphorus, flowing clearer than usual on this sunny winter morning, on guard for an ominous sign within its currents. I’m afraid, for example, that I might see the wreck of a pirate ship below. Thus, no matter how joyously the miniaturist colors the sea and clouds, he ought to include something equivalent to the darkness of my fears and as intense as my dreams of happiness — a terrifying-looking fish, for example — in the depths of the water so the reader of my adventure won’t assume all is rosy.

  Our second picture ought to show the palaces of sultans, the meetings of the Divan Council of State, the reception of European ambassadors, and detailed and carefully composed crowded interiors of a subtlety worthy of Bihzad; that is, the picture ought to partake of playful tricks and irony. Thereby, while the Kadi Effendi apparently makes an open-handed “halt” gesture indicating “never” or “no” to my bribe, with his other hand he ought to be shown obligingly pocketing my Venetian gold coins, and the ultimate result of this bribe should be depicted in the same picture: Shahap Effendi, the Shafü proxy presiding in place of the Üsküdar judge. The simultaneous depiction of sequential events could only be achieved through an intelligent miniaturist’s cunning facility in page c
omposition. Thus, when the observer, who first sees me giving a bribe, notices elsewhere in the painting that the man sitting cross-legged on the judge’s cushion is the proxy, he’ll realize, even if he hasn’t read the story, that the honorable judge has temporarily given up his office so his proxy might grant Shekure a divorce.

  The third illustration should show the same scene, but this time the wall ornamentation should be darker and rendered in the Chinese style, the curly branches being more intricate and dense, and colorful clouds should appear above the judge’s proxy so the chicanery in the story might be apparent. Though the Imam Effendi and his brother have actually testified separately before the judge’s proxy, in the illustration they are shown together explaining how the husband of anguished Shekure hasn’t returned from war for four years, how she is in a state of destitution without a husband to look after her, how her two fatherless children are perpetually in tears and hungry, how there is no prospect for remarriage because she’s still considered married, and how in this state she can’t even receive a loan without permission from her husband. They’re so convincing that even a man as deaf as a stone would grant her a divorce through a cascade of tears. The heartless proxy, however, having none of it, asks about Shekure’s legal guardian. After a moment of hesitation, I immediately interrupt, declaring that her esteemed father, who has served as herald and ambassador for Our Sultan, is still alive.

  “Until he testifies in court, I’ll never grant her a divorce!” said the proxy.

  Thereupon, thoroughly flustered, I explained how my Enishte Effendi was ill, bed-ridden and struggling for his life, how his last wish to God was to see his daughter divorced, and how I was his representative.

  “What does she want with a divorce?” asked the proxy. “Why would a dying man want to see his daughter divorced from her husband who’s long vanished at war anyway? Listen, I’d understand if there were a good, trustworthy candidate for son-in-law, because then he wouldn’t pass away with his wish unfulfilled.”