Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

“Your Enishte was murdered because he was afraid,” I said. “Just like you, he’d begun to claim that illustration, which he was doing himself, wasn’t contrary to the religion or the sacred book…This was exactly the pretext sought by the Erzurumis, who were desperate to find an aspect contrary to the religion. Elegant Effendi and your Enishte were a perfect match for each other.”

“And you’re the one who killed them both, isn’t that so?” said Black.

I thought for a moment that he would hit me, and in that instant, I also knew beautiful Shekure’s new husband really had nothing to complain about in the murder of his Enishte. He wouldn’t strike me, and even if he did, it made no difference to me any longer.

“In actuality, as much as Our Sultan wanted to have a book prepared under the influence of the Frankish artists,” I continued stubbornly, “your Enishte wanted to prepare a provocative book whose taint of illicitness would feed his own pride. He felt a slavish awe toward the pictures of the Frankish masters he’d seen during his travels, and he’d fallen completely for the artistry that he regaled us about for days on end-you too must have heard that nonsense about perspective and portraiture. If you ask me, there was nothing damaging or sacrilegious in the book we were preparing…Since he was well aware of this, he pretended that he was preparing a forbidden book and this gave him great satisfaction…Being involved in such a dangerous venture with the Sultan’s personal permission was as important to him as the pictures of the Frankish masters. True, if we’d made a painting with the intent of exhibiting it, that would’ve been sacrilege. Yet in none of those pieces could I sense anything contrary to religion, any faithlessness, impiety or even the vaguest illicitness. Did you sense anything of the sort?”

My eyes had almost imperceptibly lost strength, but thank God, I could see enough to know that my question gave them pause.

“You cannot be certain, can you?” I said, gloating. “Even if you secretly believe that the blemish of blasphemy or the shadow of sacrilege exists in the pictures we’ve made, you could never accept this belief and express it, because this would be equivalent to giving credence to the zealots and Erzurumis who oppose and accuse you. On the other hand, you cannot claim with any conviction that you’re as innocent as freshly fallen snow, because this would mean giving up both the dizzying pride and refined self-congratulation of engaging in a secretive, mysterious and forbidden act. Do you know how I became aware that I was behaving pretentiously in this way? By bringing poor Elegant Effendi to this dervish lodge in the middle of the night! I brought him here with the excuse that we’d nearly frozen walking the streets so long. In actuality, it pleased me to show him I was a free-thinking Kalenderi throwback, or worse yet, that I aspired to be a Kalenderi. When Elegant understood I was the last of the followers of a dervish order based on pederasty, hashish consumption, vagrancy and all manner of aberrant behavior, I thought he’d fear and respect me even more, and in turn, be intimidated into silence. As fate would have it, the exact opposite happened. Our dim-witted boyhood friend disliked it here, and he quickly decided the accusations of blasphemy he’d learned from your Enishte were quite on the mark. So, our beloved apprenticeship companion, who’d at first implored, ”Help me, convince me that we won’t go to Hell so I might sleep in peace tonight,“ in a newfound, threatening tone, began to insist that ”this will end in nothing but evil.“ He was convinced the preacher hoja from Erzurum would hear the rumors that in the final picture we’d veered from the orders of Our Sultan, who’d never forgive this transgression. Convincing him everything was clear skies and sunshine was nearly impossible. He’d tell all to the preacher’s dull congregation, exaggerating Enishte’s absurdities, the anxieties about affronts to the religion and rendering the Devil in a favorable light, and they’d naturally believe every slanderous word. I don’t have to tell you how, not only the artisans, but the entire society of craftsmen have grown jealous of us since we’ve become the intense focus of Our Sultan’s attention. Now all of them will gleefully declare in unison ”the miniaturists are mired in heresy.“ Furthermore, the cooperation between Enishte and Elegant Effendi would prove this slander true. I say ”slander“ because I don’t believe in what my brother Elegant said about the book and the last picture. Even then, I would hear nothing against your late Enishte. I found it quite appropriate that Our Sultan turn his favors from Master Osman to Enishte Effendi, and I even believed, if not to the same degree, what Enishte described to me at length about the Frankish masters and their artistry. I used to believe quite sincerely that we Ottoman artists could comfortably take from this or that aspect of the Frankish methods as much as our hearts desired or as much as could be seen during a visit abroad-without bartering with the Devil or bringing any great harm upon us. Life was easy; your Enishte, may he rest in peace, had succeeded Master Osman, and was a new father to me in this new life.”

“Let’s not discuss that point yet,” said Black. “First describe how you murdered Elegant.”

“This deed,” I said, recognizing that I couldn’t use the word “murder,” “I committed this deed not only for us, to save us, but for the salvation of the entire workshop. Elegant Effendi knew he posed a powerful threat. I prayed to Almighty God, begging him to give me a sign showing me how despicable this scoundrel really was. My prayers were answered when I offered Elegant money. God had shown me how wretched he really was. These gold pieces came to mind, but by divine inspiration, I lied. I said the gold pieces weren’t here in the lodge, but I’d hidden them elsewhere. We went out. I walked him through empty streets and out-of-the-way neighborhoods without any consideration for where we were going. I had no idea what I would do, and in short, I was afraid. At the end of our wandering, after we’d come to a street we’d passed earlier, our brother Elegant Effendi the gilder, who devoted his entire life to form and repetition, grew suspicious. But God provided me with an empty lot ravaged by fire, and nearby, a dry well.”

At this point I knew I couldn’t go on and I told them so. “If you were in my shoes, you would’ve considered the salvation of your artist brethren and done the same thing,” I said confidently.

When I heard them agree with me, I felt like crying. I was going to say it was because their compassion, which I hardly deserved, softened my heart, but no. I was going to say it was because I again heard the thud of his body hitting the bottom of the well wherein I dropped him after killing him, but no. I was going to say it was because I remembered how happy I was before becoming a murderer, how I’d been like everybody else, but no. The blind man who used to pass through our neighborhood in my childhood appeared in my mind’s eye: He’d take a dirty metal water dipper out of his even dirtier clothes, and would call out to us neighborhood kids who watched him from a distance, there by the local water fountain, “My children, which of you will fill this blind old man’s drinking cup with water from the fountain?” When no one went to his aid, he’d say, “It’d be a good turn, my children, a pious deed!” The color of his irises had faded and they were nearly the same color as the whites of his eyes.

Agitated by the thought of resembling that blind old man, I confessed how I did away with Enishte Effendi hurriedly, without savoring any of it. I was neither too honest nor too insincere with them: I found a medium consistency, such that the story wouldn’t trouble my heart too much, and they’d be assured I hadn’t gone to Enishte’s house to murder him. I wanted to make clear that it wasn’t a premeditated murder, which intent they gathered when I reminded them of the following while trying to absolve myself: “Without harboring bad intentions, one never goes to Hell.”