My Name is Red (17 page)

This was how I fell unwitting victim to the curses of the Tatar beggar. But I immediately pulled myself together. I softly dropped a small stone I’d picked off the ground into his handkerchief and said, “There you go, mangy Tatar.”

Without laughing, I watched his hand reach hopefully for the stone he thought was a coin. Ignoring his curses, I headed toward one of my “daughters,” whom I’d married off to a good husband.

That sweet “daughter” of mine served me a piece of spinach pie, a leftover, but still crisp. For the afternoon meal she was preparing lamb stew in a sauce heavy with beaten eggs and spiced with sour plum, just the way I like it. So as not to disappoint her, I waited and ate two full ladles with fresh bread. She’d also made a nice compote of stewed grapes. Without any hesitation, I requested some rose-petal jam, a spoonful of which I stirred into the compote before topping off my meal. Afterward, I went on to deliver the letters to my melancholy Shekure.

I was in the midst of folding and putting away the clothes that had been washed and hung out to dry yesterday when Hayriye announced Esther had come…or, this was what I planned to tell you. But why should I lie? All right then, when Esther arrived, I was spying on my father and Black through the closet peephole, impatiently waiting for the letters from Black and Hasan, and thus, my mind was preoccupied with her. Just as I sensed that my father’s fears of death were justified, I also knew Black’s interest in me wasn’t eternal. He was in love insofar as he wanted to be married, and because he wanted to be married, he easily fell in love. If not me, he’d love. If not me, he’d marry another, taking care to fall in love with her beforehand.

In the kitchen, Hayriye sat Esther in a corner and handed her a glass of rosewater sherbet, as she gave me a guilty look. I realized that since Hayriye had become my father’s mistress, she might be reporting to him everything she sees. I’m afraid that this may indeed be the case.

“My black-eyed girl, my dark-fortuned beauty, my stunning beauty of beauties, I was delayed because Nesim, my pig of a husband, kept me occupied with all sorts of nonsense,” said Esther. “You have no husband senselessly haranguing you, and I hope you know the value of this.”

She took out the letters; I snatched them from her hand. Hayriye withdrew to a corner where she wouldn’t be in the way, but could still hear everything that passed between us. So Esther wouldn’t be able to see my expression, I turned my back on her and read Black’s letter first. When I thought about the house of the Hanged Jew, I shuddered for a moment. “Don’t be afraid, Shekure, you can manage in any situation,” I said to myself and began reading Hasan’s letter. He was on the verge of madness:

Shekure, I’m burning with desire, yet I know you’re not in the least concerned. In my dreams, I see myself chasing you over deserted hilltops. Every time you leave one of my letters-that I know you read-unanswered, a three-feathered arrow pierces my heart. I’m writing in hopes that you’ll respond this time. The word is out, everyone’s spreading the news, even your children are saying it: You’ve dreamed that your husband has died, and now you claim that you’re free. I cannot say whether or not it’s true. What I do know is that you’re still married to my older brother and bound to this household. Now that my father finds me justified, we’re both going to the judge to have you returned here. We’ll be coming with a group of men we’ve assembled; so let your father be forewarned. Collect your things, you’re to come back to this house. Send your response with Esther immediately.

After reading the letter a second time, I pulled myself together and gazed at Esther with questioning eyes, but she told me nothing new about Hasan or Black.

I pulled out the reed pen that I kept hidden in a corner of the pantry, placed a sheet of paper on the breadboard and was about to begin writing a letter to Black when I froze.

Something came to mind. I turned toward Esther: She’d fallen upon the rosewater sherbet with the joy of a chubby child and so it seemed ridiculous to me that she could be aware of what was going through my mind.

“See how sweetly you’re smiling, my dear,” she said. “Don’t worry, in the end everything will be all right. Istanbul is rife with rich gentlemen and pashas who’d give their souls to be wed to a stunning beauty, possessed of so many talents like yourself.”

You understand what I’m talking about: Sometimes you’ll say something you’re convinced of, but no sooner do the words leave your mouth than you ask yourself, “Why did I say this so halfheartedly, even though I believe it through and through?” That was what happened when I said the following:

“But Esther, who’d want to marry a widow with two kids, for Heaven’s sake?”

“A widow like you? Plenty, a slew of men,” she said, conveying them all with a hand gesture.

I looked into her eyes. I was thinking I did not like her. I fell so silent that she knew I wasn’t going to give her a letter and even that it would be better if she left. After Esther had gone, I withdrew to my own corner of the house as though I could feel my silence-how should I put it-in my soul.

Leaning on the wall, for a long while I stood still in the blackness. I thought of myself, of what I should do, of the fear that was growing within me. All the while I could hear Shevket and Orhan chattering upstairs.

“And you’re as timid as a girl,” said Shevket. “You only attack from behind.”

“My tooth is loose,” said Orhan.

At the same time, another part of my mind was concentrating on what was transpiring between my father and Black.

The blue door of the workshop was open, and I could easily hear them: “After beholding the portraits of the Venetian masters, we realize with horror,” said my father, “that, in painting, eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face, always the same, but must be just like our own eyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well. Lips can no longer be a crack in the middle of faces flat as paper, but must be nodes of expression-each a different shade of red-fully expressing our joys, sorrows and spirits with their slightest contraction or relaxation. Our noses can no longer be a kind of wall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments with a form unique to each of us.”

Was Black as surprised as I was that my father referred to those infidel gentlemen who had their pictures made as “we”? When I looked through the peephole, I found Black’s face to be so pale that I was momentarily alarmed. My dark beloved, my troubled hero, were you unable to sleep for thinking of me the whole night? Is that why the blush has left your face?

Perhaps you aren’t aware that Black is a tall, thin and handsome man. He has a broad forehead, almond-shaped eyes and a strong, straight, elegant nose. As in his childhood, his hands are long and thin and his fingers are jittery and agile. He’s wiry, and stands straight and tall, with shoulders on the broad side, but not as broad as those of a water carrier. When he was younger, his body and his face hadn’t yet settled. Twelve years later, when I first laid eyes on him from this dark refuge of mine, I immediately saw that he’d attained a kind of perfection.

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.”

Suddenly something happened. Shevket slid down my lap and began to cry. Why was this child crying now? All right then, I confess, I must’ve been unable to control myself just then, and I slapped him. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was hard-hearted. But how could he say such nonsense about a man I’d been making arrangements to marry-and that, with the well-being of these boys in mind.