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me. He began to cry. But with one final effort he succeeded in surrendering

himself to Black’s lap. Black, clever enough to have earned the right to be

father to my children, didn’t panic to find Orhan crying unaccountably on his

lap and he checked to see if there was anything in the boy’s hands.

Orhan returned beneath the startled gaze of my father, and I ran to meet

him and took him onto my lap, kissing him at length. I brought him

downstairs to the kitchen, and filled his mouth with the raisins he liked so

much.

“Hayriye, take the boys to Galleon Harbor and buy some gray mullet

suitable for soup from Kosta’s place. Take these silver coins and with the

change from the fish, buy Orhan some dried yellow figs and cherries on the

way back. Buy Shevket roasted chickpeas and sweetmeat sausage with walnuts.

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Walk them around to wherever they want to go until the evening prayers are

called, but be careful they don’t catch cold.”

After they’d bundled up and left, the quiet in the house pleased me. I went

upstairs and took out the little mirror that my father-in-law had made and my

husband had given me as a gift. I kept it hidden away between pillowcases that

smelled of lavender. I hung it up. If I looked at myself in the mirror from a

distance, and moved oh so delicately, I could see my whole body. My vest of

red broadcloth suited me, but I also wanted to don my mother’s purple

blouse which had been part of her trousseau. I took out the long pistachio-

colored robe my grandmother had embroidered with flowers, and tried it on,

but it didn’t please me. As I was trying it on under the purple blouse, I felt a

chill; I shuddered, and the candle flame trembled with me. Over it all, of

course, I was going to wear my fox fur–lined street robe, but at the last minute

I changed my mind, and silently crossing the hall, I removed the very long and

loose azure-colored woolen robe that my mother had given me and put it on.

Just then I heard a noise at the door and fell into a panic: Black was leaving! I

quickly removed my mother’s old robe and put on the fur-lined red one: It

was tight around the bustline, but I liked it. I then donned the softest and

whitest veil, lowering it over my face.

Black Effendi hadn’t left yet, of course; I’d let my apprehension deceive me.

If I go out now, I can tell my father that I went to buy fish with the children. I

padded down the stairs like a cat.

I closed the door—click—like a ghost. I quietly passed through the

courtyard and when I was out on the street, momentarily turned and looked

back at the house. From behind my veil it seemed as if it wasn’t our house at

all.

There was no one in the street, not even any cats. Flakes of snow danced in

the air. With a shudder, I entered the abandoned garden where sunlight never

fell. It smelled of rotten leaves, dampness and death; yet, when I entered the

house of the Hanged Jew, I felt as though I were in my own home. They say

that jinns meet here at night, light the stove and make merry. I was startled to

hear my footsteps in the empty house. I waited, stock-still. I heard a sound in

the garden, but then everything was overcome by silence. I heard a dog bark

nearby. I recognize all the dogs in our neighborhood from their barks, but I

couldn’t place this one.

During the next silence I sensed that there was somebody else in the house

and I stood dead still so he wouldn’t hear my footsteps. Strangers talked as

they passed on the street. I thought of Hayriye and the children. I hoped to

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God that they wouldn’t catch cold. In the silence that followed, I was gradually

overcome by regret. Black wasn’t coming. I’d made a mistake, and I ought to

return home before my pride was damaged even further. Terrified, I imagined

that Hasan was watching me, and then I heard movement in the garden. The

door opened.

I abruptly changed my position. I didn’t know why I did so, but when I

stood to the left of the window through which a faint light from the garden

was filtering, I realized that Black would be able to see me, to borrow a phrase

from my father, “within the mysteries of shadow.” I covered my face with my

veil and waited, listening to his footsteps.

Black passed through the doorway and saw me, then took a few more steps

and stopped. We stood five paces apart and beheld each other. He looked

healthier and stronger than he’d appeared through the peephole. There was a

silence.

“Remove your veil,” he said in a whisper. “Please.”

“I’m married. I’m awaiting my husband’s return.”

“Remove your veil,” he said in the same tone. “Your husband won’t ever

come back.”

“Have you arranged to meet me here to tell me this?”

“Nay, I’ve done so to be able to see you. I’ve been thinking of you for twelve

years. Remove your veil, my darling, let me look at you just once.”

I removed it. I was pleased as he silently studied my face and stared at

length into the depths of my eyes.

“Marriage and motherhood have made you even more beautiful. And your

face has become entirely different than what I remembered.”

“How had you remembered me?”

“With agony, because when I thought of you, I couldn’t help but think that

what I was remembering wasn’t you but a fantasy. In our childhood, you

remember how we used to discuss Hüsrev and Shirin, who fell in love after

seeing images of each other, don’t you? Why was it that Shirin hadn’t fallen in

love with handsome Hüsrev when first she saw his picture hanging from a tree

branch but had to see that image three times before falling in love? You used

to say that in fairy tales everything happens thrice. I would argue that love

ought to have blossomed when she first saw the picture. But who could have

depicted Hüsrev realistically enough for her to fall in love with him, and

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precisely enough that she would recognize him? We never talked about this.

Over these last twelve years, if I had such a realistic portrait of your matchless

face, perhaps I wouldn’t have suffered so.”

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.

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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.

164

I AM CALLED BLACK

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.

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“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