The Black Book

by Orhan Pamuk

  Seeing that her story was received with some skepticism and, at times, with outright ridicule, the woman became cross and, saying her account was true, she called out to someone: the photographer who’d taken the innumerable dirty pictures showing the princess with her victims happened to be on the premises. The gray-haired photographer approached the table, and when the woman told him that in return for a good love story “our guests” would be happy to have their pictures taken, and compensate him liberally, the elderly photographer began to tell a story.

  Some thirty-odd years ago, a manservant had stopped by his tiny studio to summon him to a house in the posh quarter of Şişli on the streetcar route. Since he had made his mark as a nightclub photographer, as he went up to the house he wondered why he’d been chosen for the job when, in his opinion, another colleague of his was more appropriate for upper-class shindigs. There, a young and good-looking widow invited our photographer in and proposed a deal: in return for a sizable bit of cash, she wanted him to drop off in the morning copies of the hundreds of photos he snapped at the Beyoğlu clubs every night.

  The photographer, suspecting that there was some love entanglement behind this deal that he’d accepted somewhat out of curiosity, decided to keep an eye on the brown-haired woman, who had slightly crossed eyes, as best he could. After a couple of years, he realized the woman was not looking for the picture of a particular man she’d known or whose picture she’d seen before; neither the faces nor the ages of the men she chose from the hundreds she sifted through and wanted to see blown up or shown from other vantage points, were ever the same. In time the woman, having become familiar by virtue of their joint venture and more trusting by virtue of their shared secret, began to confide in the photographer.

  “It’s useless to bring me the photos of these vacant faces, these blank looks, these expressionless visages,” she said. “I cannot make them out; I cannot see any letters anywhere in their faces!” The vague meanings she could hardly read (she used this word insistently) in other exposures of the same face always left her disappointed, leading her to say: “If this is all we can get at the nightclubs frequented by the melancholic and the depressed, my God, how blank, how vacant their faces must be when they are at their places of business, behind store counters, sitting at office desks!”

  Yet it wasn’t as if they had not run into a couple of specimens that gave them both some hope. Once, the woman read a meaning that she dwelled on for some time in the terribly wrinkled face of an old man who, as they discovered later, was a jeweler, but the meaning was very ancient and quite stagnant. The wrinkles on his forehead and the abundance of letters under his eyes were nothing more than the final refrain of an obscure meaning that shed no light on the present but kept on repeating itself. Three years later they came across a face alive with muscular letters that did signify, they discovered, the meanings of the day. Excited by the stormy face, they had enlarged the photograph and soon learned that the subject was an accountant. On a dark morning, the woman showed the photographer a huge picture of the man that had appeared in all the papers with headlines like HE BILKED BANK OF TWENTY MILLIONS. Now that his fling with crime and transgression was over, the accountant’s relaxed face stared peacefully at the reader, as vacant as the henna-dyed face of a sacrificial sheep.

  The listeners had already decided, of course, whispering among themselves and signaling with their eyes and eyebrows, that the real love story was the one between the woman and the photographer, but at the end the hero turned out to be someone entirely different: one cool summer morning, the moment the woman clapped eyes on that incredible, brilliant face among all the meaningless faces in a photo of a crowded table at a nightclub, she realized that the search she had conducted for the past ten years had not been in vain. A very plain, simple, and clear meaning could be read in all the subsequent photos of that young and fabulous face, easily taken at the nightclub that very same night and enlarged: it was LOVE. The woman could read the four letters of the new Latin alphabet so effortlessly in the open and clear face of the thirty-three-year-old man, who as they found out later repaired watches in a small shop in Karagümrük, that she snapped at the photographer when he said he couldn’t make out any of the letters that he must be blind. She spent the following days trembling like a prospective bride being shown to matchmakers, already suffering like a lover who knows in the beginning that she’s slated for defeat, and splitting hairs as she imagined the possibility of happiness when she sensed the smallest flicker of hope. Within a week, the woman’s salon was plastered all over with hundreds of photos of the watch repairman, who had been tricked under various pretexts into having his picture taken many times.

  When the watch repairman with the incredible face stopped showing up at the club the night after the photographer managed to get closeups which showed him in more detail, the woman went berserk. She sent the photographer after the repairman in Karagümrük, but the man could not be found at his shop nor at his house pointed out by the neighbors. When he went back a week later, the shop was up for sale “as a going concern” and the house had been vacated. The woman was no longer interested in the photos the photographer brought from then on “for love”; she refused even to glance at intriguing faces other than the watch repairman’s. One of those windy mornings when autumn arrives early, he showed up at the woman’s door armed with a “piece” that he thought might pique her interest, only to be greeted by the nosy doorman who was pleased to tell him that the lady had moved to an undisclosed address. The photographer was sad that the story had come to an end—he had to confess to his listeners that he was indeed in love with the woman—but he told himself at the time that now he could perhaps embark on his own story, one he would construct by remembering the past.

  But the real end of the story came many years later when he was absentmindedly reading a picture caption: “She Doused His Face with Nitric Acid!” Neither the name, the face, nor the age of the jealous woman armed with nitric acid was consistent with the lady who lived in Şişli, and the husband whose face got splashed with nitric acid was not a watch repairman but a public prosecutor in the Central Anatolian town where the news had originated. Nevertheless, although none of the details jibed with the characteristics of either his dream woman or the handsome watch repairman, the moment he saw the words “nitric acid” our photographer had intuited that this couple was none other than “them,” and he figured out that they’d been together all these years, that he’d been part of their game plan to elope, and that they’d used the ploy to eliminate many an unhappy fellow like himself who came between them. He realized how right he was when he bought another scandal sheet that day and saw the watch repairman’s face which, having completely melted away, had been altogether relieved of any letters and meaning.

  The photographer, who could see that the story he had told while looking expressly at the foreign journalists was received with approval and interest, offered up a final detail, as if imparting a military secret that would crown his victory: the same scandal sheet had printed the same melted face (once again, many years later), claiming that it was the picture of the last victim of a Middle East war that had gone on much too long, with the following caption: “As they say, all is for love, after all.”

  The company at the table was pleased to pose for the photographer. Among them were a couple of journalists and an adman Galip knew slightly, along with a bald-headed man who looked familiar and several foreigners who sat gingerly at one end. The sort of fortuitous friendship and curiosity that forms among people who share an inn for a night or a small accident had also developed at the table. Since most of the patrons had left, the club had become quiet, and the stage lights had been turned off some time ago.

  Galip had a feeling the club might have been the actual location of My Disorderly Babe in which Türkan Şoray had played a call girl; so he put the question to the elderly waiter whom he’d summoned to the table. The waiter, perhaps because everyone had turned toward him, or else
spurred on by the stories he’d been overhearing, told a brief story himself.

  No, his story didn’t concern the movie that was mentioned but another, older movie that had been filmed at this very club in which he’d watched himself fourteen times during the week it played at the Rüya Theater. Since both the producer and the beautiful woman who played the lead had requested that he take part in a couple of the scenes, the waiter had been happy to oblige. When he saw the movie several months later, he recognized his face and his hands as his own, but his back, shoulders, and neck in another scene belonged to someone else; each time he watched the film, the waiter, though spooked by this, also tingled with an odd pleasure. What’s more, he could not get used to hearing someone else’s voice come out of his own mouth, a voice that he was to hear again in many other films. His friends and relations who saw the film were not as interested as he was in the hair-raising, mind-boggling, dreamlike substitutions, nor were they aware of any trick photography. Even more important, they never knew that a small trick could fool one into believing that one was someone else, or that someone else was oneself.

  The waiter had waited in vain for years, hoping they’d show the film in which he appeared briefly when they played double features at the Beyoğlu theaters during the summer months. Had he been able to see the film once more, he believed he could have embarked on a new life, not because he would again meet himself as a young man but because of the other “obvious” reason that his friends didn’t comprehend but would be comprehensible to the distinguished company present.

  The subject of “the obvious reason” was discussed extensively behind the waiter’s back. For most, the reason was, of course, love; the waiter was in love with himself, or with the world he saw in himself, or else with the “art of the cinema.” The B-girl put the kibosh on the subject by saying the waiter, like all ex-wrestlers, was nothing but a fag, seeing how he had been caught stark naked abusing himself looking in the mirror, as well as putting the pinch on the bus boys in the kitchen.

  The bald-headed man who looked familiar to Galip opposed the B-girl’s “unfounded allegation” against our wrestlers who practice the sport of our ancestors and began recounting his own observations concerning the exemplary family lives of these exceptional people he had once followed closely during his stay in Thrace. In the meantime, İskender clued Galip in as to who the old guy was: he had run into this bald man in the lobby of the Pera Palas Hotel at the height of the commotion when İskender was tearing out his hair trying to make an itinerary for the British journalists and hoping to locate Jelal—yes, it was possible that he’d called Galip that same evening. The old guy had joined in the quest saying that he knew Jelal, and that he also needed to find him for a personal reason. In the days that followed, he’d cropped up here and there, not only in search of Jelal but also to help him and the British journalists with small details thanks to his large circle of influence (he was a retired army officer). The guy got a real kick out of putting his limited English into use. Obviously, he was the sort of retiree who wanted to do something useful for the country with his time; he liked making friends and knew Istanbul quite well. After he got through talking about the Thracian wrestlers, the old guy began to narrate his own story.

  Actually, it was more of a conundrum than a story: an old shepherd comes home at midday in pursuit of his flock which, on account of an eclipse of the sun, make for home on their own; so, after securing the sheep in the pen, he goes in the house only to find his beloved wife in bed with her lover. After a moment of hesitation, he gets hold of a knife and kills them both. He gives himself up, and he defends himself in front of the judge, putting forth a logic that sounds simple when he says that he didn’t kill his wife and her lover but some unknown woman and her paramour whom he’d caught in his own bed. Since it was impossible for the “woman” whom he knew, trusted, and with whom he cohabitated lovingly for many years, to do this to “him,” both the woman in the bed and he “himself” were two other people. The shepherd had no trouble believing this astounding substitution, seeing how the supernatural omen of the eclipse had bolstered his conviction. Naturally, the shepherd was ready to take the rap for the other self he remembered assuming momentarily, but he wanted the man and the woman he killed in his own bed to be considered a pair of thieves who’d broken into his house and shamelessly took advantage of his bed. After he did his time, no matter how long, he intended to set out on the road in search of his wife whom he hadn’t seen since the day of the eclipse; once he found her, and perhaps with her help, he would begin to look for his own lost self.

  So, what was the punishment the judge meted out to the shepherd?

  Galip listened to the solutions the company offered the retired colonel, thinking he had read or heard this old chestnut somewhere before but he just couldn’t remember where. As he examined one of the pictures the photographer had developed and handed out to the company, he thought for a moment that he would be able to remember just how it was that he knew the bald man and his story; he felt as if he’d then be able to inform the man of his real identity and that, just at that moment, the mystery of another illegible face would also be solved as it was in the photographer’s story about faces. When his turn came, while Galip concluded that it was necessary for the judge to forgive the shepherd, he was also considering that he might have solved the hidden meaning in the retired colonel’s face: it was as if the retired soldier had been one person when he began to tell his story, and when he finished it, he was another. What had happened to him as he told the story? What had changed him when he was through telling it?

  Taking his turn to tell a story, Galip began an account which he said he had heard from a columnist, concerning the obsession of an elderly newsman who was single. This fellow had spent his entire life working for the Babıali dailies, doing translations for magazines, and writing film and theater criticism. Since he was interested in women’s wear and jewelry rather than the women themselves, he had never married. He lived in a small two-room apartment on a backstreet in Beyoğlu, keeping company only with his tabby, who seemed even older and lonelier than himself. The only rub in his uneventful life was toward the end when he began reading Marcel Proust’s seemingly endless book in search of time past.

  The elderly journalist loved the book so much that for a long time he didn’t want to talk about anything else, but not only was he unable to find someone willing to invest himself as he had in the struggle to read all those beloved volumes in French, he didn’t even chance upon someone with whom to share his zeal. As a result, he became introverted and began retelling himself all the stories and the scenes in those volumes that he had read so many times that he’d lost count. All day long, whenever he met with adversity, or had to put up with rudeness and ruthlessness from unfeeling, unrefined, and greedy people whose sort also tended to be “uncultured” as well, he said to himself, “I am not here; I am at home now, in my bedroom, and I am thinking of my Albertine sleeping, or waking, in the next room, or else I am listening with pleasure and joy to Albertine’s soft and gentle footsteps padding around the apartment!” Whenever he was walking, out on the street, and feeling miserable, he imagined, like the narrator in Proust’s novel, that a beautiful young woman was waiting at home, that Albertine, even a casual meeting with whom he would have once considered a great happiness, was waiting for him, and he fantasized about Albertine’s movements while she waited. When the elderly journalist returned to his two rooms where the stove never put out enough heat, he would remember with sorrow other pages in which Albertine left Proust, internalizing the feeling of sadness that pervaded the forsaken rooms, and he would keep on recollecting things, as if he were both Proust and also his mistress Albertine: how it was just here that he and Albertine talked, laughing together; how she would visit him only after ringing the bell; his own endless fits of jealousy; the dreams of the trip to Venice that they’d take together—until tears of joy and sorrow flowed out of his eyes.

  On Sunday mornin
gs, spent in the company of his tabby cat, when he was irritated with the coarse stories published by the paper, or remembered the words of ridicule spoken by curious neighbors, insensitive distant relatives, and sharp-tongued rude children, he’d pretend he had found a ring in a compartment in his old chest, imagining it was the ring Albertine had left behind which his maid Françoise had found in a drawer in the rosewood desk; and then, turning to the imaginary maid, “No, Françoise,” he’d say loud enough for only the tabby to hear, “Albertine did not forget it; returning the ring would be futile, since Albertine will soon be coming back.”

  What a pathetic and miserable country we live in, the old journalist reflected, where no one has come upon Albertine or knows Proust. The day someone who can understand Proust and Albertine appears will be the day, yes, when those poor mustachioed fellows in the street can perhaps begin to live better lives; perhaps then, instead of knifing each other at the first hint of jealousy, they too, like Proust, will reflect on reveries in which they bring to life the images of their lovers. All those writers and translators, who were given work at the newspapers since they were supposed to be literate, were as mean and obtuse as they were because they did not read Proust, did not know Albertine, and had no idea that the old journalist had read Proust, nor comprehended that he was personally both Proust and Albertine.