by Orhan Pamuk
Let’s consider a piece by Bihzad, the master of masters, patron saint of all miniaturists. I happened across this masterpiece, which also nicely pertains to my situation because it’s a depiction of murder, among the pages of a flawless ninety-year-old book of the Herat school. It emerged from the library of a Persian prince killed in a merciless battle of succession and recounts the story of Hüsrev and Shirin. You, of course, know the fate of Hüsrev and Shirin, I refer to Nizami’s version, not Firdusi’s:
The two lovers finally marry after a host of trials and tribulations; however, the young and diabolical Shiruye, Hüsrev’s son by his previous wife, won’t give them any peace. The prince has his eye on not only his father’s throne but also his father’s young wife, Shirin. Shiruye, of whom Nizami writes, “His breath had the stench of a lion’s mouth,” by hook or crook imprisons his father and succeeds to the throne. One night, entering the bedchamber of his father and Shirin, he feels his way in the dark, and on finding the pair in bed, stabs his father in the chest with his dagger. Thus, the father’s blood flows till dawn and he slowly dies in the bed that he shares with the beautiful Shirin, who remains sleeping peacefully beside him.
This picture by the great master Bihzad, as much as the tale itself, addresses a grave fear I’ve carried within me for years: The horror of waking in the black of night to realize there’s a stranger making faint sounds as he creeps about the blackness of the room! Imagine that the intruder wields a dagger in one hand as he strangles you with the other. Every detail, the finely wrought wall, window and frame ornamentation, the curves and circular designs in the red rug, the color of the silent scream emanating from your clamped throat and the yellow and purple flowers embroidered with incredible finesse and vigor on the magnificent quilt upon which the bare and vile foot of your murderer mercilessly steps as he ends your life, all of these details serve the same purpose: While augmenting the beauty of the painting, they remind you just how exquisite are the room in which you will soon die and the world you will soon leave. The indifference of the painting’s beauty and of the world to your death, the fact of your being totally alone in death despite the presence of your wife, this is the inescapable meaning that strikes you.
“This is by Bihzad,” the aging master said twenty years ago as we examined the book I held in my trembling hands. His face was illuminated not by the nearby candle, but by the pleasure of observation itself. “This is so Bihzad that there’s no need for a signature.”
Bihzad was so well aware of this fact that he didn’t hide his signature anywhere in the painting. And according to the elderly master, there was a sense of embarrassment and a feeling of shame in this decision of his. Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
Fearing for my life, I murdered my unfortunate victim in an ordinary and crude manner. As I returned to this fire-ravaged area night after night to ascertain whether I’d left behind any traces that might betray me, questions of style increasingly arose in my head. What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
I could’ve located this place even without the brilliance of the falling snow, for this spot, razed by fire, was where I’d ended the life of my companion of twenty-five years. Now, snow covered and erased all the clues that might have been interpreted as signature, proving that Allah concurred with Bihzad and me on the issue of style and signature. If we actually committed an unpardonable sin by illustrating that book — as that half-wit had maintained four days ago — even if we had done so unawares, Allah wouldn’t have bestowed this favor upon us miniaturists.
That night, when Elegant Effendi and I came here, the snow hadn’t yet begun to fall. We could hear the howling of mongrels echo in the distance.
“Pray, for what reason have we come here?” the unfortunate one had asked. “What do you plan to show me out here at this late hour?”
“Just ahead lies a well, twelve paces beyond which I’ve buried the money I’ve been saving for years,” I said. “If you keep everything I’ve explained to you secret, Enishte Effendi and I will see that you are happily rewarded.”
“Am I to understand that you admit you knew what you were doing from the beginning?” he said in agitation.
“I admit it,” I lied obligingly.
“You acknowledge the picture you’ve made is in fact a desecration, don’t you?” he said innocently. “It’s heresy, a sacrilege that no decent man would have the gall to commit. You’re going to burn in the pits of Hell. Your suffering and pain will never diminish — and you’ve made me an accomplice.”
As I listened to him, I sensed with horror how his words had such strength and gravity that, willingly or not, people would heed them, hoping that they would prove true about miserable creatures other than themselves. Many rumors like this about Enishte Effendi had begun to fly due to the secrecy of the book he was making and the money he was willing to pay — and because Master Osman, the Head Illuminator, despised him. It occurred to me that perhaps my brother gilder, Elegant, had with sly intent used these facts to buttress his false accusations. To what degree was he being honest?
I had him repeat the claims that pitted us against each other, and as he spoke, he didn’t mince his words. He seemed to be provoking me to cover up a mistake, as during our apprentice years, when the goal was to avoid a beating by Master Osman. Back then, I found his sincerity convincing. As an apprentice, his eyes would widen as they did now, but back then they hadn’t yet dimmed from the labor of embellishing. But finally I hardened my heart; he was prepared to confess everything to everyone.
“Do listen to me,” I said with forced exasperation. “We make illuminations, create border designs, draw frames onto pages, we brightly ornament page after page with lovely tones of gold, we make the greatest of paintings, we adorn armoires and boxes. We’ve done nothing else for years. It is our calling. They commission paintings from us, ordering us to arrange a ship, an antelope or a sultan within the borders of a particular frame, demanding a certain style of bird, a certain type of figure, take this particular scene from the story, forget about such-and-such. Whatever it is they demand, we do it. “Listen,” Enishte Effendi said to me, “here, draw a horse of your own imagining, right here.” For three days, like the great artists of old, I sketched hundreds of horses so I might come to know exactly what “a horse of my own imagining” was. To accustom my hand, I drew a series of horses on a coarse sheet of Samarkand paper.”
I took these sketches out and showed them to Elegant. He looked at them with interest and, leaning close to the paper, began to study the black and white horses in the faint moonlight. “The old masters of Shiraz and Herat,” I said, “claimed that a miniaturist would have to sketch horses unceasingly for fifty years to be able to truly depict the horse that Allah envisioned and desired. They claimed that the best picture of a horse should be drawn in the dark, since a true miniaturist would go blind working over that fifty-year period, but in the process, his hand would memorize the horse.”
The innocent expression on his face, the one I’d also seen long ago, when we were children, told me that he’d become completely absorbed in my horses.
“They hire us, and we try to make the most mysterious, the most unattainable horse, just as the old masters did. There’s nothing more to it. It’s unjust of them to hold us responsible for anything more than the illustration.”
“I’m not sure that’s correct,” he said. “We, too, have responsibilities and our own will. I fear no one but Allah. It was He who provided us with reason that we might distinguish Good from Evil.”
It was an appropriate response.
“Allah sees and knows all…” I said in Arabic. “He’ll know that you and I, we’ve done this work without being aware of what we were doing. Who will you notify about Enishte Effendi? Aren’t you aware that behind this affair rests the will of His Excellency Our Sultan?”
Silence.
I wondered whether he was really such a buffoon or whether his loss of composure and ranting had sprung out of a sincere fear of Allah.
We stopped at the mouth of the well. In the darkness, I vaguely caught sight of his eyes and could see that he was scared. I pitied him. But it was too late for that. I prayed to God to give me one more sign that the man standing before me was not only a dim-witted coward, but an unredeemable disgrace.
“Count off twelve steps and dig,” I said.
“Then, what will you do?”
“I’ll explain it all to Enishte Effendi, and he’ll burn the pictures. What other recourse is there? If one of Nusret Hoja’s followers hears of such an allegation, nothing will remain of us or the book-arts workshop. Are you familiar with any of the Erzurumis? Accept this money so that we can be certain you won’t inform on us.”
“What is the money contained in?”
“There are seventy-five Venetian gold pieces inside an old ceramic pickle jar.”
The Venetian ducats made good sense, but where had I come up with the ceramic pickle jar? It was so foolish it was believable. I was thereby reassured that God was with me and had given me a sign. My old companion apprentice, who’d grown greedier with each passing year, had already started excitedly counting off the twelve steps in the direction I indicated.
There were two things on my mind at that moment. First of all, there were no Venetian coins or anything of the sort buried there! If I didn’t come up with some money this buffoon would destroy us. I suddenly felt like embracing the oaf and kissing his cheeks as I sometimes did when we were apprentices, but the years had come between us! Second, I was preoccupied with figuring out how we were going to dig. With our fingernails? But this contemplation, if you could call it that, lasted only a wink in time.
Panicking, I grabbed a stone that lay beside the well. While he was still on the seventh or eighth step, I caught up to him and struck him on the back of his head with all my strength. I struck him so swiftly and brutally that I was momentarily startled, as if the blow had landed on my own head. Aye, I felt his pain.
Instead of anguishing over what I’d done, I wanted to finish the job quickly. He’d begun thrashing about on the ground and my panic deepened further.
Long after I’d dropped him into the well, I contemplated how the crudeness of my deed did not in the least befit the grace of a miniaturist.
FIVE
I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE
I am Black’s maternal uncle, his enishte, but others also call me “Enishte.” There was a time when Black’s mother encouraged him to address me as “Enishte Effendi,” and later, not only Black, but everyone began referring to me that way. Thirty years ago, after we’d moved to the dark and humid street shaded by chestnut and linden trees beyond the Aksaray district, Black began to make frequent visits to our house. That was our residence before this one. If I were away on summer campaign with Mahmut Pasha, I’d return in the autumn to discover that Black and his mother had taken refuge in our home. Black’s mother, may she rest in peace, was the older sister of my dearly departed wife. There were times on winter evenings I’d come home to find my wife and his mother embracing and tearfully consoling each other. Black’s father, who could never maintain his teaching posts at the remote little religious schools where he taught, was ill-tempered, angry and had a weakness for drink. Black was six years old at the time; he’d cry when his mother cried, quiet down when his mother fell silent and regarded me, his Enishte, with apprehension.
It pleases me to see him before me now, a determined, mature and respectful nephew. The respect he shows me, the care with which he kisses my hand and presses it to his forehead, the way, for example, he said, “Purely for red,” when he presented me with the Mongol inkpot as a gift, and his polite and demure habit of sitting before me with his knees mindfully together; all of this not only announces that he is the sensible grown man he aspires to be, but it reminds me that I am indeed the venerable elder I aspire to be.
He shares a likeness with his father, whom I’ve seen once or twice: He’s tall and thin, and makes slightly nervous yet becoming gestures with his arms and hands. His custom of placing his hands on his knees or of staring deeply and intently into my eyes as if to say, “I understand, I’m listening to you with reverence” when I tell him something of import, or the way he nods his head with a subtle rhythm matching the measure of my words are all quite appropriate. Now that I’ve reached this age, I know that true respect arises not from the heart, but from discrete rules and deference.
During the years Black’s mother brought him frequently to our house under every pretense because she anticipated a future for him here, I understood that books pleased him, and this brought us together. As those in the house used to put it, he would serve as my “apprentice.” I explained to him how miniaturists in Shiraz had created a new style by raising the horizon line clear to the top of the border, and that while everyone depicted Mejnun in a wretched state in the desert, crazed with love for his Leyla, the great master Bihzad was better able to convey Mejnun’s loneliness by portraying him walking among groups of women cooking, attempting to ignite logs by blowing on them or walking between tents. I remarked how absurd it was that most of the illustrators who depicted the moment when Hüsrev spied the naked Shirin bathing in a lake at midnight had whimsically colored the lovers’ horses and clothes without having read Nizami’s poem, my point being that a miniaturist who took up a brush without the care and diligence to read the text he was illustrating was motivated by nothing more than greed.
I’m delighted now to see that Black has acquired another essential virtue: To avoid disappointment in art, one mustn’t treat it as a career. Despite whatever great artistic sense and talent a man might possess, he ought to seek money and power elsewhere to avoid forsaking his art when he fails to receive proper compensation for his gifts and efforts.
Black recounted how he’d met one by one all of the master illustrators and calligraphers of Tabriz by making books for pashas, wealthy Istanbulites and patrons in the provinces. All these artists, I learned, were impoverished and overcome by the futility of their lot. Not only in Tabriz, but in Mashhad and Aleppo, many miniaturists had abandoned working on books and begun making odd single-leaf pictures — curiosities that would please European travelers — even obscene drawings. Rumor has it that the illuminated manuscript Shah Abbas presented to Our Sultan during the Tabriz peace treaty has already been taken apart so its pages could be used for another book. Supposedly, the Emperor of Hindustan, Akbar, was throwing so much money around for a large new book that the most gifted illustrators of Tabriz and Kazvin quit what they were doing and flocked to his palace.
As he told me all of this, he pleasantly interjected other stories as well; for example, he described with a smile the entertaining story of a Mehdi forgery or the frenzy that erupted among the Uzbeks when the idiot prince sent to them by the Safavids as a hostage to peace fell feverishly ill and dropped dead within three days. Even so, I could tell from the shadow that fell across his face that the dilemma to which neither of us referred, but which troubled us both, had yet to be resolved.
Naturally, Black, like every young man who frequented our house or heard what others had to say about us, or who knew about my beautiful daughter, Shekure, from hearsay, had fallen in love with her. Perhaps I didn’t consider it dangerous enough to warrant my attention back then, but everyone — including many who’d never laid eyes on her — fell in love with my daughter, that belle of belles. Black’s affliction was the overwhelming passion of an ill-fated youth who had free access to our house, who was accepted and well liked in our home and who had the opportunity actually to see Shekure. He did not bury his love, as I hoped he would, but made the mistake of revealing his extreme passion to my daughter.
As a result, he was forced to quit our house completely.
I assumed that Black now also knew how three years after he’d left Istanbul, m
y daughter married a spahi cavalryman, at the height of her loveliness, and that this soldier, having fathered two boys but still bereft of any common sense, had gone off on a campaign never to return again. No one had heard from the cavalryman in four years. I gathered he was aware of this, not only because such gossip spreads fast in Istanbul, but because during the silences that passed between us, I felt he’d learned the whole story long ago, judging by the way he looked into my eyes. Even at this moment, as he casts an eye at the Book of the Soul, which stands open on the folding X-shaped reading stand, I know he’s listening for the sounds of her children running through the house; I know he’s aware that my daughter has returned here to her father’s house with her two sons.
I’ve neglected to mention the new house I had built in Black’s absence. Most likely, Black, like any young fellow who’d set his mind to becoming a man of wealth and prestige, considered it quite discourteous to broach such a subject. Still, when we entered, I told him on the staircase that the second floor was always less humid, and that moving upstairs had served to ease the pains in my joints. When I said “the second floor,” I felt oddly embarrassed, but let me tell you: Men with much less money than I, even simple spahi cavalrymen with tiny military fiefs, will soon be able to build two-story houses.
We were in the room with the blue door that I used as the painting workshop in winter, and I sensed that Black was aware of Shekure’s presence in the adjacent room. I at once disclosed to him the matter that inspired the letter I’d sent to Tabriz, inviting him to Istanbul.
