by Orhan Pamuk
“There is a prospect, sir,” I said.
“Who might that be?”
“It is I!”
“Come now! You’re the guardian’s representative!” said the judge’s proxy. “What line of work are you in?”
“In the eastern provinces, I served as secretary, chief secretary and assistant treasurer to various pashas. I completed a history of the Persian wars that I intend to present to Our Sultan. I’m a connoisseur of illustrating and decoration. I’ve been burning with love for this woman for twenty years.”
“Are you a relative of hers?”
I was so embarrassed at having fallen so abruptly and unexpectedly into groveling meekness before the judge’s proxy, at having bared my life like some dull object devoid of any mystery, that I fell completely silent.
“Instead of turning beet red, give me an answer, young man, lest I refuse to grant her a divorce.”
“She’s the daughter of my maternal aunt.”
“Hmmm, I see. Will you be able to make her happy?”
When he asked the question he made a vulgar hand gesture. The miniaturist should omit this indelicacy. It’d be enough for him to show how much I blushed.
“I make a decent living.”
“As I belong to the Shafü sect, there is nothing contrary to the Holy Book or my creed in my granting the divorce of this unfortunate Shekure, whose husband has been missing at the front for four years,” said the Proxy Effendi. “I grant the divorce. And I rule that her husband no longer has any superceding rights should he return.”
The subsequent illustration, that is, the fourth, ought to depict the proxy recording the divorce in the ledger, unleashing obedient armies of black-ink letters, before presenting me with the document declaring that my Shekure is now a widow and there is no obstacle to her immediate remarriage. Neither by painting the walls of the courtroom red, nor by situating the picture within bloodred borders could the blissful inner radiance I felt at that moment be expressed. Running back through the crowd of false witnesses and other men gathering before the judge’s door seeking divorces for their sisters, daughters or even aunts, I set out on my return journey.
After I crossed the Bosphorus and headed directly to the Yakutlar neighborhood, I dismissed both the considerate Imam Effendi, who wanted to perform the marriage ceremony, and his brother. Since I suspected everyone I saw on the street of hatching some mischief out of jealousy over the incredible happiness I was on the verge of attaining, I ran straight to Shekure’s street. How had the ominous crows divined the presence of a body in the house and taken to hopping around excitedly on the terra-cotta shingles? I was overcome by guilt because I hadn’t been able to grieve for my Enishte or even shed a single tear; even so, I knew from the tightly closed shutters and door of the house, from the silence, and even from the look of the pomegranate tree that everything was proceeding as planned.
I was acting intuitively in a great haste. I tossed a stone at the courtyard gate but missed! I tossed another at the house. It landed on the roof. Frustrated, I began pelting the house with stones. A window opened. It was the second-story window where four days ago, on Wednesday, I’d first seen Shekure through the branches of the pomegranate tree. Orhan appeared, and from the gap in the shutters I could hear Shekure scolding him. Then I saw her. For a moment, we gazed hopefully at each other, my fair lady and I. She was so beautiful and becoming. She made a gesture that I took to mean “wait” and shut the window.
There was still plenty of time before evening. I waited hopefully in the empty garden, awestruck by the beauty of the world, the trees and the muddy street. Before long, Hayriye came in, dressed and covered not like a servant, but rather, like a lady of the house. Without nearing each other, we removed ourselves to the cover of the fig trees.
“Everything is progressing as planned,” I said to her. I showed her the document I’d obtained from the proxy. “Shekure is divorced. As for the preacher from another neighborhood…” I was going to add, “I’ll see to that,” but instead blurted out, “He’s on his way. Shekure should be ready.”
“No matter how small, Shekure wants a bride’s procession, followed by a neighborhood reception with a wedding repast. We’ve prepared a stewpot of pilaf with almonds and dried apricots.”
In her excitement, she seemed prepared to tell me everything else she’d cooked but I cut her off. “If the wedding is going to be such an elaborate affair,” I cautioned, “Hasan and his men will hear of it; they’ll raid the house, disgrace us, have the marriage nullified and we’ll be able to do nothing about it. All our efforts will have been in vain. We need to protect ourselves not only from Hasan and his father, but from the devil who murdered Enishte Effendi as well. Aren’t you afraid?”
“How could we not be?” she said and began to cry.
“You’re not to tell anyone a thing,” I said. “Dress Enishte in his nightclothes, spread out his mattress and lay him upon it, not as a dead man, but as though he were sick. Arrange glasses and bottles of syrup by his head, and draw the shutters closed. Make certain there are no lamps in his room so that he can act as Shekure’s guardian, her sick father, during the ceremony. There’s no place now for a bride’s procession. You can invite a handful of neighbors at the last minute, that’s all. While you’re inviting them, say that this was Enishte Effendi’s last wish…It won’t be a joyous wedding, but a melancholy one. If we don’t see ourselves through this affair, they’ll destroy us, and they’ll punish you as well. You understand, don’t you?”
She nodded as she wept. Mounting my white horse, I said I’d secure the witnesses and return before long, that Shekure ought to be ready, that hereafter, I would be master of the house, and that I was going to the barber. I hadn’t thought through any of this beforehand. As I spoke, the details came to me, and just as I’d felt during battles from time to time, I had the conviction that I was a cherished and favored servant of God and He was protecting me; thus, everything was going to turn out fine. When you feel this trust, do whatever comes to mind, follow your intuition and your actions will prove correct.
I rode four blocks toward the Golden Horn from the Yakutlar neighborhood to find the black-bearded, radiant-faced preacher of the mosque in Yasin Pasha, the adjacent neighborhood; broom in hand, he was shooing shameless dogs out of the muddy courtyard. I told him about my predicament. By the will of God, I explained, my Enishte’s time was upon him, and according to his last wish, I was to marry his daughter, who, by decision of the Üsküdar judge, had just been granted a divorce from a husband lost at war. The preacher objected that by the dictates of Islamic law a divorced woman must wait a month before remarrying, but I countered by explaining that Shekure’s former husband had been absent for four years; and so, there was no chance she was pregnant by him. I hastened to add that the Üsküdar judge granted a divorce this morning to allow Shekure to remarry, and I showed him the certifying document. “My exalted Imam Effendi, you may rest assured that there’s no obstacle to the marriage,” I said. True, she was a blood relation, but being maternal cousins is not an obstacle; her previous marriage had been nullified; there were no religious, social or monetary differences between us. And if he accepted the gold pieces I offered him up front, if he performed the ceremony at the wedding scheduled to take place before the entire neighborhood, he’d also be accomplishing a pious act before God for the fatherless children of a widowed woman. Did the Imam Effendi, I inquired, enjoy pilaf with almonds and dried apricots?
He did, but he was still preoccupied with the dogs at the gate. He took the gold coins. He said he’d don his wedding robes, straighten up his appearance, see to his turban and arrive in time to perform the nuptials. He asked the way to the house and I told him.
No matter how rushed a wedding might be — even one that the groom has dreamed about for twelve years — what could be more natural than his forgetting his worries and troubles and surrendering to the affectionate hands and gentle banter of a barber for a prenuptial shave and ha
ircut? The barber’s, where my feet took me, was located near the market, on the street of the run-down house in Aksaray, which my late Enishte, my aunt and fair Shekure had quitted years after our childhood. This was the barber I’d faced five days ago, my first day back. When I entered he embraced me and as any good Istanbul barber would do, rather than asking where the last dozen years had gone, launched into the latest neighborhood gossip, concluding the conversation with an allusion to the place we would all go at the end of this meaningful journey called life.
The master barber had aged. The straight-edged razor he held in his freckled hand trembled as he made it dance across my cheek. He’d given himself over to drinking and had taken on a pink-complexioned, full-lipped, green-eyed boy-apprentice — who looked upon his master with awe. Compared with twelve years ago, the shop was cleaner and more orderly. After filling the hanging basin, which hung from the ceiling on a new chain, with boiling water, he carefully washed my hair and face with water from the brass faucet at the bottom of the basin. The old broad basins were newly tinned with no signs of rust, the heating braziers were clean, and the agate-handled razors were sharp. He wore an immaculate silk waistcoat, something he was loath to wear twelve years ago. I assumed that the elegant apprentice, tall for his age and of slender build, had helped bring some order to the shop and its owner, and surrendering myself to the soapy, rose-scented and steamy pleasures of a shave, I couldn’t help thinking how marriage not only brought new vitality and prosperity to a bachelor’s home, but to his work and his shop as well.
I’m not certain how much time had passed. I melted into the warmth of the brazier that gently heated the small shop and the barber’s adept fingers. With life having suddenly presented me the greatest of gifts today, as if for free, and after so much suffering, I felt a profound thanks toward exalted Allah. I felt an intense curiosity, wondering out of what mysterious balance this world of His had emerged, and I felt sadness and pity for Enishte, who lay dead in the house where, a while later, I would become master. I was readying myself to spring into action when there was a commotion at the always-open door of the barbershop: Shevket!
Flustered, but with his usual self-confidence, he held out a piece of paper. Unable to speak and expecting the worst, my insides were chilled as if by an icy draft as I read:
If there isn’t going to be a bride’s procession, I’m not getting married — Shekure.
Grabbing Shevket by the arm, I lifted him onto my lap. I would’ve liked to have responded to my dear Shekure by writing, “As you wish, my love!” but what would pen and ink be doing in the shop of an illiterate barber? So, with a calculated reserve, I whispered my response into the boy’s ear: “All right.” Still whispering, I asked him how his grandfather was doing.
“He’s sleeping.”
I now sense that Shevket, the barber and even you are suspicious about me and my Enishte’s death (Shevket, of course, suspects other things as well). What a pity! I forced a kiss upon him, and he quickly left, displeased. During the wedding, dressed in his holiday clothes, he glared at me with hostility from a distance.
Since Shekure wouldn’t be leaving her father’s house for mine, and I would be moving into the paternal home as bridegroom, the bridal procession was only fitting. Naturally, I was in no position to bedeck my wealthy friends and relatives and have them wait at Shekure’s front gate mounted on their horses as others might have done. Even so, I invited two of my childhood friends whom I’d run into during my six days back in Istanbul (one had become a clerk like myself and the other was running a bath house) as well as my dear barber, whose eyes had watered as he wished me happiness during my shave and haircut. Mounted upon my white horse, which I’d been riding that first day, I knocked at my beloved Shekure’s gate as if poised to take her to another house and another life.
To Hayriye, who opened the gate, I presented a generous tip. Shekure, dressed in a bright-red wedding gown with pink bridal streamers flowing from her hair to her feet, emerged amid cries, sobs, sighs (a woman scolded the children), outbursts, and shouts of “May God protect her,” and gracefully mounted a second white horse which we’d brought with us. As a hand-drummer and shrill zurna piper, kindly arranged by the barber for me at the last minute, began to play a slow bride’s melody, our poor, melancholy, yet proud procession set out on its way.
As our horses began to saunter, I understood that Shekure, with her usual cunning, had arranged this spectacle for the sake of safeguarding the nuptials. Our procession, having announced our wedding to the entire neighborhood, even if only at the last moment, had essentially secured everyone’s approval, thereby neutralizing any future objections to our marriage. Nevertheless, announcing that we were on the verge of marriage, and having a public wedding — as if to challenge our enemies, Shekure’s former husband and his family — further endangered the whole affair. Had it been left to me, I’d have held the ceremony in secret, without telling a soul, without a wedding celebration; I’d have preferred becoming her husband first and defending the marriage afterward.
I led the parade astride my fickle white fairy-tale horse, and as we moved through the neighborhood, I nervously watched for Hasan and his men, whom I expected to ambush us from an alleyway or a shadowy courtyard gate. I noticed how young men, the elders of the neighborhood and strangers stopped and waved from door fronts, without completely understanding all that was transpiring. In the small market area we’d unintentionally entered, I figured out that Shekure had masterfully activated her grapevine, and that her divorce and marriage to me was quickly winning acceptance in the neighborhood. This was evident from the excitement of the fruit-and-vegetable seller, who without leaving his colorful quinces, carrots and apples for too long, joined us for a few strides shouting “Praise be to God, may He protect you both,” and from the smile of the woeful shopkeeper and from the approving glances of the baker, who was having his apprentice scrape away the burnt residue in his pans. Still, I was anxious, maintaining my vigil against a sudden raid, or even a word of vulgar heckling. For this reason, I wasn’t at all disturbed by the commotion of the crowd of money-seeking children that had formed behind us as we left the bazaar. I understood from the smiles of women I glimpsed behind windows, bars and shutters that the enthusiasm of this noisy throng of children protected and supported us.
As I gazed at the road along which we’d advanced and were now, thank God, finally winding our way back toward the house, my heart was with Shekure and her sorrow. Actually, it wasn’t her misfortune in having to wed within a day of her father’s murder that saddened me, it was that the wedding was so unadorned and meager. My dear Shekure was worthy of horses with silver reins and ornamented saddles, mounted riders outfitted in sable and silk with gold embroidery, and hundreds of carriages laden with gifts and dowry; she deserved to lead an endless procession of pasha’s daughters, sultans and carriages full of elderly harem women chattering about the extravagances of days bygone. But Shekure’s wedding lacked even the four pole bearers to hold aloft the red silk canopy that ordinarily protected rich maidens from prying eyes; for that matter, there wasn’t even one servant to lead the procession bearing large wedding candles and tree-shaped decorations ornamented with fruit, gold, silver leaf and polished stones. More than embarrassment, I felt a sadness that threatened to fill my eyes with tears each time the disrespectful hand-drum and zurna players simply stopped playing when our procession got swallowed up in crowds of market-goers or servants fetching water from the fountain in the square because we had no one clearing the way with shouts of “Here comes the bride.” As we were nearing the house, I mustered the courage to turn in my saddle and gaze at her, and was relieved that beneath her pink bride’s tinsel and red veil, far from being saddened by all these pitiful shortcomings, she seemed heartened to know that we’d concluded our procession and our journey with neither accident nor mishap. So, like all grooms, I lowered my beautiful bride, whom I would shortly wed, from her horse, took her by the arm, and handful by handf
ul, slowly emptied a bag of silver coins over her head before the gleeful crowd. While the children who’d followed behind our meager parade scrambled for the coins, Shekure and I entered the courtyard and crossed the stone walkway, and as soon as we entered the house, we were struck not only by the heat, but the horror of the heavy smell of decay.
While the throng from the procession was making itself comfortable in the house, Shekure and the crowd of elders, women and children (Orhan was glaring suspiciously at me from the corner) carried on as if nothing were amiss, and momentarily I doubted my senses; but I knew how corpses left under the sun after battle, their clothes tattered, boots and belts stolen, and their faces, their eyes and lips ravaged by wolves and birds smelled. It was a stench that had so often filled my mouth and lungs to the point of suffocation that I could not mistake it.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I asked Hayriye about Enishte Effendi’s body, aware that I was speaking to her for the first time as master of the house.
“As you asked, we laid out his mattress, dressed him in his nightclothes, drew his quilt over him and placed bottles of syrup beside him. If he’s giving off an unpleasant smell, it’s probably due to the heat from the brazier in the room,” the woman said through tears.
One or two of her tears fell, sizzling into the pot she was using to fry the mutton. From the way she was crying, I supposed that Enishte Effendi had been taking her into his bed at night. Esther, who was quietly and proudly sitting in a corner of the kitchen, swallowed what she was chewing and stood.
“Make her happiness your foremost concern,” she said. “Recognize her worth.”
In my thoughts I heard the lute I’d heard on the street the first day I’d come to Istanbul. More than sadness, there was vigor in its melody. I heard the melody of that music again later, in the half-darkened room where my Enishte lay in his white nightgown, as the Imam Effendi married us.
