Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

In the garden of the dervish lodge we were greeted by the calm of proud cypresses, indifferent to the rain and the stench of rotting leaves. I brought my eye up to one of the cracks between the wooden planks of the dervish-lodge walls, and later, to the shutter of a small window, whereupon, by the light of an oil lamp, I saw the menacing shadow of a man performing his prayers-or perhaps, a man pretending, for our sake, to pray.

Was it more fitting for me to abandon my prayers, spring to my feet and open the door for them or to keep them waiting in the rain until I’d finished? When I realized they were watching me, I completed my prayers in a somewhat distracted state. I opened the door, and there they were-Butterfly, Stork and Black. I gave a cry of joy and embraced Butterfly.

“Alas, what we’ve had to bear of late!” I lamented, burying my head into his shoulder. “What do they want from us? Why are they killing us?”

Each of them displayed the panic of being separated from the herd, which I’d seen from time to time in every master painter over the span of my life. Even here in the lodge, they were loath to separate from one another.

“We can safely take refuge here for days.”

“We worry,” Black said, “that the person we should fear is perhaps in our very midst.”

“I, too, grow anxious,” I said. “For I have heard such rumors as well.”

There were rumors, spreading from the officers of the Imperial Guard to the division of miniaturists, claiming that the mystery about the murderer of Elegant Effendi and late Enishte was solved: He was one of us who’d labored over that book.

Black inquired as to how many pictures I’d drawn for Enishte’s book.

“The first one I made was Satan. It was of the variety of underground demon common to the old masters in the workshops of the Whitesheep. The storyteller and I were of the same Sufi path; that’s why I made the two dervishes. I was the one who suggested to Enishte that he include them in his book, convincing him that there was a special place for these dervishes in the lands of the Ottomans.”

“Is that all?” asked Black.

When I told him, “Yes, that’s all,” he went to the door with the superior air of a master who caught an apprentice stealing; he brought in a roll of paper untouched by the rain, and placed it before us three artists like a mother cat bringing a wounded bird to her kittens.

I recognized the pages while they were still under his arm: They were the illustrations I’d rescued from the coffeehouse during the raid. I didn’t deign to ask how these men had entered my house and located them. Nevertheless, Butterfly, Stork and I each placidly owned up to the pictures we made for the storyteller, may he rest in peace. Afterward, only the horse, an exquisite horse, remained unclaimed off to the side, its head lowered. Believe me, I didn’t even realize that a horse had been drawn.

“You weren’t the one who made this horse?” said Black like a teacher holding a switch.

“I wasn’t,” I said.

“What about the one in my Enishte’s book?”

“I didn’t make that one either.”

“Based on the style of the horse, however, it’s been determined that you’re the one who drew it,” he said. “Furthermore, it was Master Osman who came to this conclusion.”

“But I have no style whatsoever,” I said. “I’m not saying this out of pride to counter the latest tastes. Neither am I saying so to prove my innocence. For me, having a style would be worse than being a murderer.”

“You have a distinct quality that distinguishes you from the old masters and the others,” said Black.

I smiled at him. He started to relate things that I’m sure you all know by now. I listened intently to how Our Sultan, in consultation with the Head Treasurer, sought a solution to the murders, to the matter of Master Osman’s three days, to the “courtesan method,” to the peculiarity in the noses of the horses and to Black’s miraculous admittance to the Royal Private Quarters for the sake of actually examining those superlative books. There are moments in all our lives when we realize, even as we experience them, that we are living through events we will never forget, even long afterward. A melancholy rain was falling. As if upset by the rain, Butterfly mournfully gripped his dagger. Olive, the backside of whose armor was white with flour, was courageously forging into the heart of the dervish lodge, lamp in hand. These master artists, whose shadows roamed the walls like ghosts, were my brethren, and how I loved them! I was delighted to be a miniaturist.

“Could you appreciate your good fortune as you gazed at the great works of the old masters for days on end with Master Osman at your side?” I asked Black. “Did he kiss you? Did he caress your handsome face? Did he hold your hand? Were you awed by his talent and knowledge?”

“There among the great works of the old masters he showed me how you had a style,” said Black. “He taught me how the hidden fault of ”style“ isn’t something the artist selects of his own volition, but is determined by the artist’s past and his forgotten memories. He also showed me how these secret faults, weaknesses and defects, at one time such a source of shame they were concealed so we wouldn’t be estranged from the old masters, will henceforth emerge to be praised as ”personal characteristics’ or “style,” because the European masters have spread them over the world. Henceforth, thanks to fools who take pride in their own shortcomings, the world will be a more colorful and more stupid and, of course, a much more imperfect place.“

The fact that Black confidently believed in what he said proved that he was one of the new breed of fools.

“Was Master Osman able to explain why, for years, I drew hundreds of horses with regular nostrils in Our Sultan’s books?” I asked.

“It was due to the love and beatings he gave all of you in your childhood. Because he was both father and beloved to you all, he doesn’t see that he associates all of you with himself and each of you with the others. He didn’t want you each to have a style of your own, he wanted the royal atelier as a whole to have a style. Because of the awesome shadow he cast over all of you, you forgot what came from within, the imperfections, the elements and differences that fell outside the confines of standard forms. Only when you painted for other books and other pages, which Master Osman’s eyes would never see, did you draw the horse that had lain within you all those years.”

“My mother, may she rest in peace, was more intelligent than my father,” I said. “One night I was at home, in tears, determined never again to return to the workshop because I was daunted not only by Master Osman’s beatings, but by those of the other harsh and irritable masters and by those of the division head who always intimidated us with a ruler. In consolation, my dearly departed mother advised me that there were two types of people in the world: those who were cowed and crushed by their childhood beatings, forever downtrodden, she said, because the beatings had the desired effect of killing the inner devils; and those fortunate ones for whom the beatings frightened and tamed the devil within without killing him off. Though the latter group would never forget these painful childhood memories-she’d warned me not to tell this to anybody-the beatings would in time enable them to develop cunning, to fathom the unknown, to make friends, to identify enemies, to sense plots being hatched behind their backs and, let me hasten to add, to paint better than anyone else. Because I wasn’t able to draw the branches of a tree harmoniously, Master Osman would slap me so hard that, amid bitter tears, forests would burgeon before me. After angrily striking me in the head because I couldn’t see the errors at the bottoms of pages, he lovingly took up a mirror and placed it before the page so I could see the work as if for the first time. Then pressing his cheek to mine, he so lovingly identified the mistakes that magically appeared in the mirror image of the picture that I never forgot either the love or the ritual. The morning after a night spent weeping in my bed, my pride violated because he chastised me with a ruler before everyone, he came and kissed my arms so tenderly that I passionately knew I’d one day become a legendary miniaturist. Nay, it was not I who drew that horse.”