Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

“Are you taking the children and abandoning your old father? Do you realize that on account of our book”-yes, he said “our book”-“I was afraid of being murdered, but now that you want to take the children and leave, I welcome death.”

“My dear father, wasn’t it you who always said that only a divorce could save me from that good-for-nothing brother-in-law?”

“I don’t want you to abandon me. One day your husband might return. Even if he doesn’t, there’s no harm in your being married-so long as you live in this house with your father.”

“I want nothing more than to live in this house with you.”

“Darling, weren’t you just now saying that you wanted to get married as soon as possible?”

This is the dead end you reach by arguing with your father: In due course, you too will be convinced that you’re in the wrong.

“I was,” I said, gazing at the ground in front of me. Then, holding back my tears and encouraged by the truth of what came to mind, I said:

“All right then, shall I never be married again?”

“There’s a special place in my heart for the son-in-law who won’t take you far from me. Who is your suitor, would he be willing to live here with us in this house?”

I fell silent. We both knew, of course, that my father would never respect a son-in-law willing to live here together with us, and would gradually demean and stifle him. And as Father’s underhanded and expert belittling of the man who’d moved in with his bride’s family proceeded I would soon want to be that wife no more.

“Without a father’s approval, in your situation, you know that getting married is practically impossible, don’t you? I don’t want you to get married, and I refuse to grant you permission to do so-”

“I don’t want to get married, I want a divorce.”

“-because some thoughtless beast of a man who cares about nothing but his own concerns might hurt you. You know how much I love you, don’t you, my dear Shekure? Besides, we must finish this book.”

I said nothing. For if I were to speak-prompted by the Devil, who was aware of my anger-I would tell my father right to his face that I knew he slept with Hayriye at night. But would it befit a woman like me to admit that she knew that her elderly father slept with a slave girl?

“Who is it that wants to marry you?”

I gazed at the ground before me and was quiet, not out of embarrassment, but out of anger. And recognizing the extent of my anger, but not being able to respond in some manner made me even more furious. At that juncture, I imagined my father and Hayriye in bed in that ridiculous and disgusting position. I was on the verge of tears when I said:

“There’s zucchini on the stove, I don’t want it to burn.”

I crossed to the room beside the staircase, the one with the always-closed window that looked out onto the well. In the dark, quickly locating the roll-up mattress with my hands, I spread it open and lay down: Ah, what a wonderful feeling, to lie down and fall asleep in a fit of tears like a child who’s been wrongly chastised! And what agony it is to know that I’m the only person in the world who likes me. As I cry in my solitude, only you, who hear my sobs and moans, can come to my aid.

A while later, I found that Orhan had stretched out upon my bed. He placed his head between my breasts. I saw that he was sighing, and crying too. Pulling him close to me, I held him.

“Don’t cry, Mother,” he said later. “Father will return from the war.”

“How do you know?”

He didn’t answer. I loved him so, and pressed him to my bosom so that I forgot my own worries entirely. Before I cuddle up with my fine-boned, delicate Orhan and fall asleep, let me confess my only pressing concern: I regret having just now told you, out of spite, about the matter between my father and Hayriye. No, I wasn’t lying, but I’m still so embarrassed that it would be best if you forgot about it. Pretend I never mentioned anything, as if my father and Hayriye weren’t thus involved, please?

Alas, it’s difficult having a daughter, difficult. As she wept in the next room, I could hear her sobs, but I could do nothing but look at the pages of the book I held in my hands. On a page of the volume I was trying to read, the Book of the Apocalypse , it was written that three days after death, one’s soul, receiving permission from Allah, visited the body it formerly inhabited. Upon beholding the piteous state of its body, bloodied, decomposing and oozing, as it rested in the grave, the soul would sorrowfully, tearfully and mournfully grieve, “Lo, my miserable mortal coil, my dear wretched old body.” At once, I thought of Elegant Effendi’s bitter end at the bottom of the well, and how upset his soul naturally must have been upon visiting, and finding his body not at his grave, but in the well.

When Shekure’s sobs died down, I put aside the book on death. I donned an extra woolen undershirt, wound my thick wool sash tightly around my waist so as to warm my midriff, pulled on my shalwar pants lined with rabbit fur and, as I was leaving the house, turned to discover Shevket in the doorway.

“Where are you going, Grandfather?”

“You get back inside. To the funeral.”

I passed through snow-covered streets, between poor rotting houses leaning this way and that way, barely able to stand, and through fire-ravaged neighborhoods. I walked for a long time, taking the cautious steps of an aging man trying not to slip and fall on the ice. I passed through out-of-the-way neighborhoods and gardens and fields. I walked by shops that dealt in carriages and wheels and passed iron smiths, saddlers, harness makers and farriers on my way toward the walls of the city.

I’m not sure why they decided to start the funeral procession all the way at the Mihrimah Mosque near the city’s Edirne Gate. At the mosque, I embraced the big-headed and bewildered brothers of the deceased, who looked angry and obstinate. We miniaturists and calligraphers embraced each other and wept. As I was performing my prayers within a leaden fog that had suddenly descended and swallowed everything, my gaze fell on the coffin resting atop the mosque’s stone funeral block, and I felt such anger toward the miscreant who’d committed this crime, believe me, even the Allahümme Barik prayer became muddled in my mind.

After the prayers, while the congregation shouldered the coffin, I was still among all the miniaturists and calligraphers. Stork and I had forgotten that on some nights, when we sat in the dim light of oil lamps working until morning on my book, he’d tried to convince me of the inferiority of Elegant Effendi’s gilding work and of the lack of balance in his use of colors-he colored everything navy blue so it would look richer! We’d both forgotten that I’d actually given him credence, by allowing “But no one else is qualified to do this work,” and we embraced each other anyway, sobbing once more. Later, Olive gave me a friendly and respectful look before hugging me-a man who knows how to embrace is a good man-and these gestures so pleased me that I was reminded how of all the workshop artists, he was the one who most believed in my book.

On the stairs of the courtyard gate I found myself beside Head Illuminator Master Osman. We were both at a loss for words, a strange and tense moment. One of the deceased’s brothers began to cry and sob, and someone pompously shouted, “God is great.”

“To which cemetery?” Master Osman asked me for the sake of asking something.

To respond “I don’t know” seemed hostile for some reason. Flustered, and without thinking, I asked the same question of the man standing next to me on the stairs, “To which cemetery? The one by the Edirne Gate?”