Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

After so much suffering, a calm overcame me. Death did not cause me the pain I’d feared; on the contrary, I relaxed, quickly realizing that my present situation was a permanent one, whereas the constraints I’d felt in life were only temporary. This was how it would be from now on, for century upon century, until the end of the universe. This neither upset nor gladdened me. Events I’d once endured briskly and sequentially were now spread over infinite space and existed simultaneously. As in one of those large double-leaf paintings wherein a witty miniaturist has painted a number of unrelated things in each corner-many things were happening all at once.

It was snowing so hard that snowflakes occasionally passed right through my veil into my eyes. I picked my way through the garden covered in rotting grass, mud and broken branches, then quickened my pace once I’d exited onto the street. I know you’re all wondering what I’m thinking. How much do I trust Black? Let me be frank with you, then. I myself don’t know what to think. You do understand, don’t you? I’m confused. This much, however, I do know: As always, I’ll fall into the routine of meals, children, my father and errands, and before long my heart, without even having to be asked, will whisper the truth to me of its own accord. Tomorrow, before noon, I’ll know whom I am to marry.

I want to share something with you before I arrive home. No! Come off it, now, it’s not about the size of that monstrosity Black showed me. If you want we can talk about that later. What I was going to discuss was Black’s haste. It’s not that he seems to think only of satisfying his lust. To be honest, it’d make no difference if he did. What surprises me is his stupidity! I suppose it never crossed his mind that he could frighten and abduct me, play with my honor and put me off, or open the door to even more dangerous outcomes. I can tell from his innocent expression how much he loves and desires me. But after waiting twelve years, why can’t he play the game according to the rules and wait another twelve days?

Do you know I have the sinking feeling I’ve fallen in love with his incompetence and his melancholy childlike glances? At a time when it would’ve been more appropriate to be irate with him, instead, I pitied him. “Oh, my poor child,” a voice inside me said, “you suffer such torment and are still so utterly incompetent.” I felt so protective of him that I might’ve even made a mistake, I might’ve actually given myself to that spoiled little boy.

Thinking of my unfortunate children, I quickened my steps. Just then, in the early darkness and blinding snow, I thought a phantom of a man would run right over me. Ducking my head, I slipped by him.

Upon entering through the courtyard gate, I knew that Hayriye and the children hadn’t yet returned. Very well then, I’d come back in time, the evening prayers hadn’t yet been called. I climbed the stairs, the house smelled of orange jam. My father was in his darkened room with the blue door; my feet were freezing. I entered my room to the right beside the stairs holding a lamp, and when I saw that the cabinet had been opened, that the cushions had fallen out and the room had been ransacked, I assumed it was the naughty work of Shevket and Orhan. There was a silence in the house, not unusual, yet unlike the usual silence. I donned my house clothes and sat alone in the darkness, and as I gave myself over to momentary daydreaming, my mind registered a noise coming from below, directly below me, not from the kitchen but from the large room next to the stable, used in summertime as the illustrating workshop. Had my father gone down there, in this cold? I didn’t remember seeing the light of an oil lamp there; suddenly, I heard the squeak of the front door between the stone walkway and the courtyard, and afterward, the cursed and ominous barking of the pesky dogs roaming past the courtyard gate-I was alarmed, to put it mildly.

“Hayriye,” I shouted. “Shevket, Orhan…”

I felt a cold draft. My father’s brazier must be burning; I ought to sit with him and warm up. As I went to be with him, holding an oil lamp aloft, my thoughts weren’t with Black any longer, but with the children.

I crossed the wide hall diagonally, wondering if I should set water to boil on the downstairs brazier for the gray mullet soup. I entered the room with the blue door. Everything was in shambles. Without thinking, I was about to say, “What has my father done?”

Then I saw him on the floor.

I screamed, overcome with horror. Then I screamed again. Gazing at my father’s body, I fell silent.

Listen, I can tell by your tight-lipped and cold-blooded reaction that you’ve known for some time what’s happened in this room. If not everything, then quite a lot. What you’re wondering about now is my reaction to what I’ve seen, what I feel. As readers sometimes do when studying a picture, you’re trying to discern the pain of the hero and thinking about the events in the story leading up to this agonizing moment. And then, having considered my reaction, you’ll take pleasure in trying to imagine, not my pain, but what you’d feel in my place, had it been your father murdered like this. I know this is what you’re so craftily trying to do.

Yes, I returned home in the evening to discover that someone had killed my father. Yes, I tore out my hair. Yes, as I would do in my childhood, I hugged him with all my might and smelled his skin. Yes, I trembled and I couldn’t breathe. Yes, I begged Allah to raise him up and have him sit silently in his corner among his books as he always did. Get up, Father, get up, don’t die. His bloodied head was crushed. More than the torn papers and books, more than the breaking and tossing about of the end tables, paint sets and inkpots, more than the wild destruction of cushions, worktables and writing boards, and the ransacking of everything, more even than the anger that had killed my father, I feared the hatred that had destroyed the room and everything within it. I was no longer crying. A couple passed down the street outside, laughing and talking in the blackness; meanwhile, I could hear the infinite silence of the world in my mind; with my hands I wiped my running nose and the tears off my cheeks. For a long long time I thought about the children and our lives.

I listened to the silence. I ran, I grabbed my father by the ankles and dragged him into the hallway. For whatever reason, he felt heavier out there, but without paying any mind to this, I began to pull him down the stairs. Halfway down, my strength gave out and I sat on a step. I was on the verge of tears again when I heard a noise that made me assume that Hayriye and the children had returned. I grabbed my father by the ankles, and pressing them into my armpits, I continued to descend, faster this time. My dear father’s head had been so crushed and was so soaked in blood that it made the sound of a wrung-out mop as it struck each step. At the base of the stairs, I turned his body, which now seemed to have grown lighter, and with one great effort, dragging him across the stone floor, I took him into the summer painting room. In order to see within the pitch-black room, I hastened back out to the stove in the kitchen. When I returned with a candle I saw how thoroughly the room where I’d dragged my father had been pillaged. I was dumbstruck.

Who is it, my God, which one of them?

My mind was churning. Closing the door tightly, I left my father in the demolished room. I grabbed a bucket from the kitchen, and filled it with water from the well. I climbed the stairs, and by the light of an oil lamp, I quickly wiped away the blood in the hallway, on the staircase and everywhere else. I went back upstairs to my room, removed my bloodied clothes and put on clean clothes. Carrying the bucket and rag, I was about to enter the room with the blue door when I heard the courtyard gate swing open. The evening call to prayer had begun. I mustered all my strength, and holding the oil lamp in my hand, I waited for them at the top of the stairs.