Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

He said some quite lovely things in this vein, stories of looking at an illustration and falling in love and of how he’d suffered desperately for me. I noticed the way he slowly approached; and his every word flitted through my conscious mind and alighted somewhere in my memory. Later, I would muse over these words one by one. But at the time my appreciation of the magic of what he said was purely visceral and it bound me to him. I felt guilty for having caused him such pain for twelve years. What a honey-tongued man! What a good person this Black was! Like an innocent child! I could read all of this from his eyes. The fact that he loved me so much made me trust him.

We embraced. This so pleased me that I felt no guilt. I let myself be borne away by sweet emotion. I hugged him tighter. I let him kiss me, and I kissed him back. And as we kissed, it was as if the entire world had entered a gentle twilight. I wished everybody could embrace each other the way we did. I faintly recalled that love was supposed to be like this. He put his tongue into my mouth. I was so content with what I was doing, it was as if the whole world were engulfed in blissful light; I could think of nothing bad.

Let me describe for you how our embrace might’ve been depicted by the master miniaturists of Herat, if this tragic story of mine were one day recorded in a book. There are certain amazing illustrations that my father has shown me wherein the thrill of the script’s flow matches the swaying of the leaves, the wall ornamentation is echoed in the design of the border gilding and the joy of the swallow’s matchless wings piercing the picture’s border suggests the elation of the lovers. Exchanging glances from afar and tormenting each other with suggestive phrases, the lovers would be depicted so small, so far in the distance, that for a moment it’d seem like the story wasn’t about them at all, but had to do with the starry night, the dark trees, the exquisite palace where they met, its courtyard and its wonderful garden whose every leaf was lovingly and particularly rendered. If, however, one paid very close attention to the secret symmetry of the colors, which the miniaturist could only convey with total resignation to his art, and to the mysterious light infusing the entire painting, the careful observer would immediately see that the secret behind these illustrations is that they’re created by love itself. It’s as if a light were emanating from the lovers, from the very depths of the illustration. And when Black and I embraced, well-being flooded the world in the very same manner.

Thank God I’ve seen enough of life to know that such well-being never lasts for long. Black sweetly took my large breasts into his hands. This felt good and, forgetting all, I longed for him to suck on my nipples. But he couldn’t quite manage it, because he wasn’t all that sure of what he was doing, though his uncertainty didn’t prevent him from wanting more. Gradually, fear and embarrassment came between us the longer we embraced. But when he grabbed my thighs to pull me close, pressing his large hardened manliness against my stomach, I liked it at first; I was curious. I wasn’t embarrassed. I told myself that an embrace such as we’d had would naturally lead to another such as this. And though I turned my head away, I couldn’t take my widening eyes off its size.

Later still, when he abruptly tried to force me to perform that vulgar act that even Kipchak women and concubines who tell stories at the public baths wouldn’t do, I froze in astonishment and indecision.

“Don’t furrow your brow, my dear,” he begged.

I stood up, pushed him away and began shouting at him without paying the slightest mind to his disappointment.

Within the darkness of the house of the Hanged Jew, Shekure furrowed her brow and began raving that I might easily stick the monstrosity I held in my hands into the mouths of Circassian girls I’d met in Tiflis, Kipchak harlots, poor brides sold at inns, Turkmen and Persian widows, common prostitutes whose numbers were increasing in Istanbul, lecherous Mingerians, coquettish Abkhazians, Armenian shrews, Genoese and Syrian hags, thespians passing as women and insatiable boys, but it would not go into hers. She angrily accused me of having lost all sense of decorum and self-control by sleeping with all manner of cheap, pathetic riffraff-from Persia to Baghdad and from the alleyways of small hot Arabian towns to the shores of the Caspian-and of having forgotten that some women still took pains to maintain their honor. All my words of love, she charged, were insincere.

I respectfully listened to my beloved’s outburst, which caused the guilty member in my hand to fade, and though I was thoroughly embarrassed by the situation and the rejection I was suffering, two things pleased me: 1. that I refrained from lowering myself to match Shekure’s wrath with a response of similar hue, as I often had reacted viciously to other women in similar situations, and 2. that I discovered Shekure’s particular awareness of my travels, proof that she’d thought of me much more than I’d assumed.

Seeing how downcast I’d become at being unable to carry out my desires, she’d already begun to pity me.

“If you truly loved me, passionately and obsessively,” she said as if trying to excuse herself, “you’d try to control yourself like a gentleman. You wouldn’t try to offend the honor of the woman toward whom you entertained serious intentions. You’re not the only man who’s making motions to marry me. Did anyone see you on your way here?”

“Nay.”

As if she heard someone walking in the dark and snow-covered garden, she turned her sweet face, which for twelve years I hadn’t been able to recall, toward the door and gave me the pleasure of seeing her profile. When we heard a momentary clattering, we both waited in silence, but nobody entered. I recalled how even when she was only twelve, Shekure had aroused in me an odd feeling because she knew more than I did.

“The ghost of the Hanged Jew haunts this place,” she said.

“Do you ever come here?”

“Jinns, phantoms, the living dead…they come with the wind, possess objects and make sounds out of silence. Everything speaks. I don’t have to come all the way here. I can hear them.”

“Shevket brought me here to show me the dead cat, but it was gone.”

“I understand you told him that you killed his father.”

“Not exactly. Is that the way my words were twisted? Not that I killed his father, rather that I’d like to become his father.”

“Why did you say that you’d killed his father?”

“He’d asked me first if I’d ever killed a man. I told him the truth, that I’d killed two men.”

“In order to boast?”

“To boast, and to impress a child whose mother I love, because I realized that this mother comforted those two little brigands by exaggerating the wartime heroics of their father and by showing off the remnants of his plunder in the house.”

“Go on boasting then! They don’t like you.”

“Shevket doesn’t like me, but Orhan does,” I said, in the prideful glow of having caught my beloved’s error. “Yet, I shall become father to them both.”

We shuddered anxiously and trembled in the half-light as though the shadow of some nonexistent thing had passed between us. I pulled myself together and saw that Shekure was crying with tiny sobs.

“My ill-fated husband has a brother named Hasan. As I waited for my husband’s return, I lived two years in the same house with him and my father-in-law. He fell in love with me. Lately, he’s suspicious of what might be going on. He’s furious imagining that I might marry somebody else, you perhaps. He sent word declaring that he wants to take me back to their house by force. They say that since I’m not a widow in the eyes of the judge, they’re going to force me back there in the name of my husband. They might raid our house at any time. My father doesn’t want me to be declared a widow by verdict of the judge either. If I am granted a divorce, he thinks I’ll find myself a new husband and abandon him. By returning home with my children, I brought him great happiness in the loneliness he suffered after the death of my mother. Would you agree to live with us?”