Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

Now, when I bring my eye right up to the hole, I see on his face the worry that plagues him. I felt at once guilty and proud that he’d suffered so on my account. Black listened to what my father said, gazing upon an illustration made for the book, with a look completely innocent and childlike. Just then, when I saw that he’d opened his pink mouth as a child would have, I unexpectedly felt, yes, like putting my breast into it. With my fingers on his nape and tangled in his hair, Black would place his head between my breasts, and as my own children used to do, he’d roll his eyes back into his head with pleasure as he sucked on my nipple: After understanding that only through my compassion would he find peace, he’d become completely bound to me.

I perspired faintly and imagined Black marveling at the size of my breasts with surprise and intensity-rather than studying the illustration of the Devil that my father was actually showing him. Not only my breasts, but as if drunk with the vision of me, he was gazing at my hair, my neck, at all of me. He was so attracted to me that he was giving voice to those sweet nothings he couldn’t summon as a youth; from his glances, I realized how he was in awe of my proud demeanor, my manners, my upbringing, the way I waited patiently and bravely for my husband, and the beauty of the letter I’d written him.

I felt anger toward my father, who was setting things up so I wouldn’t be able to marry again. I was also fed up with those illustrations he was having the miniaturists make in imitation of the Frankish masters, and I was sick of his recollections of Venice.

When I closed my eyes again-Allah, it wasn’t my own desire-in my thoughts, Black had approached me so sweetly that in the dark I could feel him beside me. Suddenly, I sensed that he’d come up from behind me, he was kissing the nape of my neck, the back of my ears, and I could feel how strong he was. He was solid, large and hard, and I could lean on him. I felt secure. My nape tingled, my nipples were stiffening. It seemed as if there in the dark, with my eyes closed, I could feel his enlarged member behind me, close to me. My head spun. What was Black’s like? I wondered.

At times in my dreams, my husband in his agony shows his to me. I come to the awareness that my husband is struggling to keep his bloody body, lanced and shot with Persian arrows, walking upright as he approaches. But sadly, there is a river between us. As he calls to me from the opposite bank, covered in blood and suffering terribly, I notice that he has become erect. If it’s true what the Georgian bride said at the public bath, and if there’s truth to what the old hags say, “Yes, it grows that large,” then my husband’s wasn’t so big. If Black’s is bigger, if that enormous thing I saw under Black’s belt when he took up the empty piece of paper I’d sent by Shevket yesterday; if that was actually it-and it surely was-I’m afraid I’ll suffer great pain, if it even fits inside me at all.

“Mother, Shevket is mocking me.”

I left the black corner of the closet, quietly passing into the room across the hall, where I removed the red broadcloth vest from the chest and put it on. They’d spread out my mattress and were shouting and frolicking on it.

“Didn’t I warn you that when Black visits you aren’t to shout, did I not?”

“Mama, why did you put that red vest on?” Shevket asked.

“But Mother, Shevket was mocking me,” Orhan said.

“Didn’t I tell you not to mock him? And what’s this foul thing doing here?” Off to the side there was a piece of animal hide.

“It’s a carcass,” Orhan said. “Shevket found it on the street.”

“Quick, take it and throw it back where you found it, now.”

“Let Shevket do it.”

“I said now!”

As I would do before I slapped them, I bit my lower lip angrily, and seeing how serious I really was, they fled in fright. I hope they return soon so they don’t catch cold.

Of all the miniaturists, I liked Black the best. He liked me more than the others did and I understood his soul. I took out pen and paper, and in one sitting, without having to think, I wrote the following:

All right then, before the evening prayer is called, I’ll meet you at the house of the Hanged Jew. Finish my father’s book as soon as possible.

I did not reply to Hasan. Even if he was actually going to the judge today, I didn’t believe that the men he and his father were assembling would raid our house immediately. If he were indeed ready to take such action he’d have done so without writing a letter or awaiting my reply. He’s surely awaiting my response, and, when it doesn’t arrive, it’ll drive him mad. Only then will he begin assembling people and prepare to abduct me. Don’t think I’m not afraid of him at all. But, I’m counting on Black to protect me. Anyway, let me tell you what’s going on in my heart just now: I believe I’m not so afraid of Hasan because I love him as well.

If you object and think to yourselves, “Now what is this love about?” I’d find you justified. It’s not that I failed to notice during the years we waited under the same roof for my husband’s return, how pitiful, weak and selfish this man was. But now that Esther tells me he earns a lot of money-and I can always tell when she’s being truthful from her raised eyebrows-since he has money, and with it self-confidence, the overbearing Hasan has surely disappeared, exposing the dark, jinnlike peculiarity that attracts me to him. I discovered this side of him through the letters he stubbornly sent to me.

Both Black and Hasan have suffered for their love of me. Black disappeared, traveling for twelve years. The other, Hasan, sent me letters every day, in the corners of which he’d illustrated birds and gazelles. At first I was frightened of him, but later, I loved to read his letters again and again.

As I well knew that Hasan was thoroughly curious about everything having to do with me, I wasn’t surprised that he knew I’d seen my husband’s corpse in a dream. What I suspected was that Esther was letting Hasan read the letters I’d sent to Black. That’s why I sent no response to Black by way of Esther. You know better than I whether my suspicions are justified.

“Where were you?” I said to the children when they returned.

They quickly understood that I wasn’t really angry. Discreetly, I pulled Shevket aside, to the edge of the darkened closet. I lifted him onto my lap. I kissed his head and the nape of his neck.

“You’re cold, my dear,” I said. “Give me those pretty hands of yours so Mother can warm them up…”

His hands had a foul smell, but I didn’t comment. Pressing his head to my bosom, I gave him a long hug. In a short time he warmed up, relaxing like a kitten, sweetly mewling with pleasure.

“So then, you love your mother quite a lot, don’t you?”

“Ummmhmmm.”

“Is that a ”yes“?”

“Yes.”

“More than anybody else?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m going to tell you something,” I said as if divulging a secret. “But you won’t tell anyone, all right?” I whispered in his ear: “I love you more than anyone, you know that?”

“More than Orhan, even?”

“More than Orhan, even. Orhan’s young, like a small bird, he doesn’t understand anything. You’re smarter, you’re able to understand.” I kissed and smelled his hair. “So, I’m going to ask you a favor. Remember how you secretly brought Black a blank piece of paper yesterday? You’ll do the same today, all right?”

“He’s the one who killed Father.”

“What?”

“He killed my father. He himself said so yesterday in the house of the Hanged Jew.”

“What did he say?”

“”I killed your father,“ he said. ”I’ve killed plenty of men,“ he said.”