Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

I went down to the courtyard. The sparrow had flown away. As if abandoning a sinking ship, I left the house to the silence of an impending darkness.

My heart, now more confident, told me to run and find them. I ran, but I slowed through crowded places and the mosque courtyards where dogs picked up my trail and joyously followed, anticipating some kind of amusement.

I was putting lentil soup on the boil for our evening meal when Nesim said, “There’s a visitor at the door.” I replied, “Make sure the soup doesn’t burn,” handing him the spoon and giving it a couple of turns in the pot while holding his aged hand. If you don’t show them, they’ll stand there for hours idly holding the spoon in the pot.

When I saw Black at the door I felt nothing but pity for him. There was such an expression on his face I was afraid to ask what had happened.

“Don’t bother to come inside,” I said, “I’ll be out as soon as I change clothes.”

I donned the pink and yellow garments that I wear when I’m invited to Ramadan festivities, wealthy banquets and lengthy weddings, and took up my holiday satchel. “I’ll have my soup when I get back,” I said to poor Nesim.

Black and I had crossed one street in my little Jewish neighborhood whose chimneys labor to expel their smoke, the way our kettles force out their steam, and I said:

“Shekure’s former husband is back.”

Black fell silent and stayed that way until we left the neighborhood. His face was ashen, the color of the waning day.

“Where are they?” he asked sometime later.

From this question I guessed that Shekure and her children weren’t at home. “They’re at their house,” I said. Because I meant Shekure’s previous home, and knew at once that this would singe Black’s heart, I opened a door of hope for him by tacking the word “probably” onto the end of my statement.

“Have you seen her newly returned husband?” he asked me, looking deep into my eyes.

“I haven’t seen him, neither did I see Shekure’s flight from the house.”

“How did you know they’d left?”

“From your face.”

“Tell me everything,” he said decisively.

Black was so troubled he didn’t understand that Esther-her eye eternally at the window, her ear eternally to the ground-could never “tell everything” if she wanted to continue to be the Esther who found husbands for so many dreamy maidens and knocked on the doors of so many unhappy homes.

“What I’ve heard,” I said, “is that the brother of Shekure’s former husband, Hasan, visited your house”-it heartened him when I said “your house”-“and told Shevket that his father was on his way home from war, that he would arrive around midafternoon, and that if he didn’t find Shevket’s mother and brother in their rightful home, he’d be very upset. Shevket told this to his mother, who acted cautiously, but couldn’t come to a decision. Toward midafternoon, Shevket left the house to be with his Uncle Hasan and his grandfather.”

“Where did you learn these things?”

“Hasn’t Shekure told you about Hasan’s schemes over the last two years to get her back to his house? There was a time when Hasan sent letters to Shekure through me.”

“Did she ever respond to them?”

“I know all the varieties of women in Istanbul,” I said proudly, “there’s no one who’s as bound to her house, her husband and her honor as Shekure is.”

“But I am her husband now.”

His voice bore that typically male uncertainty that always depressed me. Amazingly, to whichever side Shekure fled, the other side went to pieces.

“Hasan wrote a note and gave it to me to deliver to Shekure. It described how Shevket had come home to await the return of his father, how Shekure had been married in an illegitimate ceremony, how Shevket was very unhappy on account of the false husband who was supposed to be his new father and how he was never going back.”

“How did Shekure respond?”

“She waited for you all through the night with poor Orhan.”

“What about Hayriye?”

“Hayriye’s been waiting for years for the opportunity to drown your beautiful wife in a spoonful of water. This was why she began sleeping with your Enishte, may he rest in peace. When Hasan saw that Shekure was spending the night alone in fear of murderers and ghosts, he sent along another note through me.”

“What did he write?”

Thanks be to God that your unfortunate Esther can’t read or write, because when irate Effendis and irritable fathers ask this question, she can say: “I couldn’t read the letter, only the face of the beautiful maiden reading the letter.”

“What did you read in Shekure’s face?”

“Helplessness.”

For a long time we didn’t speak. Awaiting nightfall, an owl was perched on the dome of a small Greek church; runny-nosed neighborhood kids laughed at my clothes and bundle, and a mangy dog happily scratching himself loped down from the cemetery lined with cypresses to greet the night.

“Slow down!” I shouted at Black later, “I can’t get up these hills the way you can. Where are you taking me with my satchel like this?”

“Before you bring me to Hasan’s house, I’m taking you to some generous and brave young men so you can spread out your bundle and sell them some flowery handkerchiefs, silk sashes and purses with silver embroidery for their secret lovers.”

It was a good sign that Black could still make jokes in his pitiable state, but I could fathom the seriousness behind his mirth. “If you’re going to gather a posse, I’ll never take you to Hasan’s house,” I said. “I’m frightened to death of fights and brawls.”

“If you continue to be the intelligent Esther you’ve always been,” he said, “there’ll be neither fight nor brawl.”

We passed through Aksaray and entered the road heading back, straight toward the Langa gardens. On the upper part of the muddy road, in a neighborhood that had seen happier days, Black walked into a barbershop that was still open. I saw him talking to the master barber being shaved by an honest-looking boy with lovely hands by the light of an oil lamp. Before long, the barber, his handsome apprentice, and later, two more of his men joined up with us at Aksaray. They carried swords and axes. At a side street in Shehzadebashı, a theology student, whom I couldn’t picture involved in such rough affairs, joined us in the darkness, sword in hand.

“Do you plan on raiding a house in the middle of the city in broad daylight?” I said.

“It’s not day, it’s night,” said Black in a tone more pleased than joking.

“Don’t be so confident just because you’ve put together a gang,” I said. “Let’s hope the Janissaries don’t catch sight of this fully equipped little army wandering around.”

“No one will catch sight of us.”

“Yesterday the Erzurumis first raided a tavern and then the dervish house at Sağırkapı, beating up everyone they found in both places. An elderly man who took a blow to his head with a stick died. In this pitch blackness, they might think you’re of their lot.”

“I hear you went to dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s house, saw his wife, God bless her, and the horse sketches with the smeared ink before relaying it all to Shekure. Had Elegant Effendi been spending a lot of time with the henchmen of the preacher from Erzurum?”

“If I sounded out Elegant Effendi’s wife, it was because I thought it might ultimately help my poor Shekure,” I said. “Anyway, I’d gone there to show her the latest cloth which had come off the Flemish ship, not to involve myself in your legal and political affairs-which my poor brain couldn’t fathom anyway.”