Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

The commotion made by the Erzurumis and those pursuing them could still be heard on the streets, but no one noticed us. We were quick to arrive at Olive’s house. We knocked on the courtyard door, the door of the house, and impatiently upon the shutters. Nobody was home; we made so much noise that we were certain he wasn’t sleeping. Black gave voice to what we both were thinking: “Shall we go inside?”

I twisted the metal loop of the door lock using the blunt edge of Black’s dagger, then inserting it into the space between door and jamb and levering it with all our weight, we broke the lock. We were met by the stench of dampness, dirt and loneliness, which had accumulated over years. By the light of the lamp, we noticed an unmade bed, sashes tossed randomly upon cushions, vests, two turbans, undershirts, Nimetullah Effendi the Nakshibendi’s Persian dictionary, a wooden turban stand, broadcloth, needle and thread, a small copper pan full of apple peels, quite a few cushions, a velvet bedspread, his paints, his brushes and all of his supplies. I was on the verge of rifling through the writing paper, the layer upon layer of carefully trimmed Hindustan paper, and the illuminated pages on his small desk, but I restrained myself both because Black was more enthusiastic than I, and because I knew full well how a master miniaturist would incur nothing but bad luck if he went through the belongings of a less talented miniaturist. Olive is not as talented as is assumed, he’s merely eager. He tries to cover up for his lack of talent with adoration of the old masters. The old legends, however, only rouse an artist’s imagination; it’s the hand that does the painting.

As Black was searching meticulously through all the chests and boxes, going as far as to check the bottoms of laundry baskets, without touching anything I glanced at Olive’s Bursa towels, his ebony comb, his dirty bath hand towel, his rosewater bottles, a ridiculous waist cloth with an Indian block-print pattern, quilted jackets, a heavy, dirty women’s robe with a slit, a dented copper tray, filthy carpets and other furnishings too cheap and slovenly for the money he earned. Olive was either very stingy and salting his money away or he was squandering it somehow…

“The house of a murderer, precisely,” I said later. “There isn’t even a prayer rug.” But this wasn’t what I was thinking. I concentrated. “These are the belongings of a man who doesn’t know how to be happy…” I said. Yet, in a corner of my mind, I thought sadly about how misery and proximity to the Devil nursed painting.

“Despite knowing what it takes to be content, a man might still be unhappy,” said Black.

He placed before me a series of pictures drawn on coarse Samarkand paper, backed with heavy sheets, which he’d removed from the depths of a chest. We studied the pictures: a delightful Satan all the way from Khorasan that had emerged from beneath the ground, a tree, a beautiful woman, a dog and the picture of Death I myself had drawn. These were the illustrations that the murdered storyteller hung up each night he told one of his disgraceful stories. Prompted by Black’s question, I pointed out the picture of Death I had drawn.

“The same pictures are in my Enishte’s book,” he said.

“Both the storyteller and the proprietor of the coffeehouse realized the wisdom of having the miniaturists render the illustrations each night. The storyteller would have one of us quickly dash off an illustration on one of these coarse sheets, ask us a little about the story and about our in jokes and then, adding some of his own material, he’d start the evening’s performance.”

“Why did you make the same picture of Death for him that you made for my Enishte’s book?”

“Upon the request of the storyteller, it was a lone figure on the page. But I didn’t draw it with attention and effort the way I had for Enishte’s book; I drew it quickly, the way my hand felt like drawing it. The others too, perhaps trying to be witty, drew for the storyteller in a cruder and simpler manner what they had made for that secret book.”

“Who made the horse,” he asked, “with the slit nostrils?”

Lowering the lamp we watched the horse in wonder. It resembled the horse made for Enishte’s book, but it was quicker, more careless and catered to a simpler taste, as if somebody had not only paid the illustrator less money and made him work faster, but also forced him to make a rougher and, I suppose precisely for this reason, more realistic horse.

“Stork would know best who made this horse,” I said. “He’s a conceited fool who can’t last a day without listening to the gossip of miniaturists, that’s why he visits the coffeehouse every night. Yes, most certainly, Stork drew this horse.”

Butterfly and Black arrived in the middle of the night; they spread the pictures on the floor before me, and asked me to tell them who’d made which illustration. It reminded me of the game “Whose Turban” we used to play when we were children: You’d draw the various headdresses of a hoja, a cavalryman, a judge, an executioner, a head treasurer and secretary and try to match them with the corresponding names written on other facedown sheets.

I told them I’d made the dog myself. We’d told its story to the storyteller. I said that gentle Butterfly, who held a dagger to my throat, must’ve drawn Death, over which the light of the lamp wavered pleasantly. I remembered that Olive had rendered Satan with great enthusiasm, whose story was spun entirely by the dearly departed storyteller. I’d started the tree whose leaves were drawn by all of us who came to the coffeehouse that night. We came up with the story as well. So it was with Red, too: Some red ink had splattered onto a page and the stingy storyteller asked if we could make a picture of it. We dribbled some more red ink onto the page, then each of us sketched the image of something red in a corner and told the story of his image so the storyteller might recount it. Olive made this exquisite horse here-praised be his talent-and I think it was Butterfly who drew the melancholy woman. Just then Butterfly removed the dagger from my throat and told Black that, yes, he now remembered how he’d drawn the woman. We all contributed to the gold coin in the bazaar, and Olive, a descendant of Kalenderis himself, drew the two dervishes. The sect of the Kalenderis is based on buggering young boys and begging and their sheikh, Evhad-üd Dini Kirmani wrote the sect’s sacred book 250 years ago, revealing in verse that he’d seen God’s perfection manifested in beautiful faces.

I asked the forgiveness of my master artist brethren for the disheveled state of our house, offering the excuse that we’d been caught unprepared, and I told them how sorry I was that we could offer them neither fragrant coffee nor sweet oranges because my wife was still asleep in the inner room. I said this so they wouldn’t barge in there and I wouldn’t have to wreak bloody havoc upon them when they didn’t find what they were looking for among the canvas, drawstring cloth, summer sashes of Indian silk and fine muslin, Persian prints and dolmans in the baskets and trunks they eagerly rummaged through, under the carpets and cushions, among the illuminated pages I’d prepared for various books, and within the pages of bound volumes.

Nevertheless, I must confess that it gave me a certain pleasure to behave as if I were afraid of them. An artist’s skill depends on carefully attending to the beauty of the present moment, taking everything down to the minutest detail seriously while, at the same time, stepping back from the world, which takes itself too seriously, and as if looking into a mirror, allowing for the distance and eloquence of a jest.