Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

He held my hand with his cold fingers, caressed my forearm and touched my face. His strength and age seemed to pass through his fingers into me. I, again, thought of Shekure who awaited me at home.

Standing still that way for a time, pages opened before us, it was as if my lavish praise and his self-admiration and self-pity had so fatigued us that we were resting. We’d become embarrassed of each other.

“Where’s that dwarf gone to?” he asked again.

I was certain that the wily dwarf was hiding in some niche watching us. As if I were searching him out, I turned my shoulders right and left, but kept my eyes trained attentively on Master Osman. Was he truly blind or was he trying to convince the world, including himself, that he was blind? I’d heard that some untalented and incompetent old masters from Shiraz feigned blindness in their old age to curry respect and to prevent others from mentioning their failures.

“I would like to die here,” he said.

“My great master, my dear sir,” I fawned, “in this age when value is placed not on painting but on the money one can earn from it, not on the old masters but on imitators of the Franks, I so well understand what you’re saying that it brings tears to my eyes. Yet it is also your duty to protect your master illustrators from their enemies. Please tell me, what conclusions have you drawn from the ”courtesan method“? Who is the miniaturist who painted that horse?”

“Olive.”

He’d said this with such ease that I had no chance to be surprised.

He fell silent.

“But I’m also certain that Olive wasn’t the one who murdered your Enishte or unfortunate Elegant Effendi,” he said calmly. “I believe that Olive drew the horse because he’s the one who’s most bound to the old masters, who knows most intimately the legends and styles of Herat and whose master-apprentice genealogy stretches back to Samarkand. Now I know you won’t ask me, ”Why haven’t we encountered these nostrils in the other horses that Olive drew over the years?“ since I’ve already mentioned how at times a detail-the wing of a bird, the way a leaf is attached to a tree-can be preserved in memory for generations, passing from master to apprentice, and yet might not manifest on the page due to the influence of a moody or rigid master or on account of the particular tastes and whims of a particular workshop or sultan. So then, this is the horse that dear Olive, in his childhood, learned directly from the Persian masters without ever being able to forget it. The fact that the horse suddenly appeared for the sake of Enishte’s book is a cruel trick of Allah’s. Hadn’t all of us taken the old masters of Herat as our models? Just like the Turkmen illustrators for whom the face of a beautiful woman meant one with Chinese features, didn’t we think exclusively of the masterpieces of Herat when we thought of well-executed pictures? We are all their devoted admirers. Nourishing all great art is the Herat of Bihzad, and supporting this Herat are the Mongol horsemen and the Chinese. Why should Olive, thoroughly bound to the legends of Herat, murder poor Elegant Effendi, who was even more bound-even blindly devoted-to the same old methods?”

“Who then?” I said. “Butterfly?”

“Stork!” he said. “This is what I know in my heart of hearts, for I am well acquainted with his greed and fury. Listen, in all probability while gilding for your Enishte, who foolishly and clumsily imitated Frankish methods, poor Elegant Effendi came to believe that this venture might somehow be dangerous. Since he was enough of a dolt to listen earnestly to the drivel of that foolish preacher from Erzurum-unfortunately, masters of gilding, though closer to God than painters, are also boring and stupid-and moreover, because he knew your silly Enishte’s book was an important project of the Sultan, his fears and doubts clashed: Should he believe in his Sultan or in the preacher from Erzurum? Any other time this unfortunate child, whom I knew like the back of my hand, would’ve come to me about a dilemma that was eating away at him. But even he, with his bird brain, knew very well that the act of gilding for your Enishte, that mimic of the Franks, amounted to a betrayal of me and our guild; and so he sought another confidant. He confided in the wily and ambitious Stork and made the mistake of letting himself be awed by the intellect and morality of a man whose talent impressed him. I’ve seen plenty of times how Stork manipulated Elegant Effendi by taking advantage of the poor gilder’s admiration. Whatever argument took place between them, it resulted in Elegant Effendi’s murder at Stork’s hands. And since the deceased long ago confided his worries to the Erzurumis, they, in a fit of vengeance and to demonstrate their power, went on to kill your Frankophile Enishte, whom they held responsible for the death of their companion. I can’t say that I’m all that sorry about the whole matter. Years ago, your Enishte duped Our Sultan into having a Venetian painter-his name was Sebastiano-make a portrait of His Excellency in the Frankish style as if He were an infidel king. Not satisfied with that, in a disgraceful affront to my dignity, he had this shameful work given to me as a model to be copied; and out of dire fear of Our Sultan, I dishonorably copied that picture which was made using infidel methods. Had I not been forced to do that, perhaps I could grieve for your Enishte, and today help find the scoundrel who killed him. But my concern is not for your Enishte, it’s for my workshop. Your Enishte is responsible for the way my master miniaturists-whom I love more than if they were my own children, whom I trained with doting attention for twenty-five years-betrayed me and our entire artistic tradition; he’s to blame for their enthusiastic imitation of European masters with the justification that ”it is the will of Our Sultan.“ Each of those disgraceful masters deserves nothing but torture! If we, the society of miniaturists, learn to serve foremost our own talent and art instead of Our Sultan who provides us with work, we shall have earned entry through the Gates of Heaven. Now then, I’d like to study this book alone.”

Master Osman uttered this last statement like the last wish of a disconsolate weary pasha who was responsible for military defeat and condemned to beheading. He opened the book Jezmi Agha placed before him and in a scolding voice ordered the dwarf to turn to the pages he wanted. With this accusatory tone, he instantly became the Head Illuminator with whom the entire workshop was familiar.

I withdrew into a corner among cushions embroidered with pearls, rusty-barreled rifles with jewel-studded butts and cabinets, and began eyeing Master Osman. The doubt gnawing away at me spread throughout my entire being: If he wished to stop the creation of Our Sultan’s book, it made perfect sense that Master Osman might’ve orchestrated the murders of poor Elegant Effendi and, afterward, of my Enishte-I reprimanded myself for just now feeling such awe toward him. On the other hand, I couldn’t restrain myself from feeling profound respect for this great master who now gave himself over to the picture before him and, blind or half blind, was peering at it closely as if looking with the countless wrinkles of his old face. It dawned on me that to preserve the old style and the regimen of the miniaturists’ workshop, to rid himself of Enishte’s book and to become again the Sultan’s only favorite, he would gladly surrender any one of his master miniaturists, and me as well, to the torturers of the Commander of the Imperial Guard. I furiously began to think of freeing myself from the love that bound me to him over the last two days.

Much later, I was still completely confused. I stared randomly at the illuminated pages of the volumes I extracted from chests solely to appease the demons that had risen within me and to distract my jinns of indecision.