第 65 页

so slightly toward one another while their bodies are half-turned toward us—

for they know they’re in a painting and thus visible to us. This is why they

don’t try to resemble exactly those figures which we see around us. Quite to

the contrary, they signify that they’ve emerged from Allah’s memory. This is

why time has stopped for them within that picture. No matter how fast the

pace of the story they tell in the picture, they themselves will remain for all

eternity there, like well-bred, polite, shy young maidens, without making any

sudden gestures with their hands, arms, slight bodies or even eyes. For them,

everything within the navy-blue night is frozen: The bird flies through the

darkness, among the stars, with a fluttering like the racing hearts of the lovers

themselves, and at the same time, remains fixed for all eternity as if nailed to

the sky in this matchless moment. The old masters of Herat, who knew that

God’s velvet blackness was lowering over their eyes like a curtain, also knew

that if they went blind while staring motionless at such an illustration for days

365

and weeks on end, their souls would at last mingle with the eternity of the

picture.”

At the time of the evening prayer, when the portal of the Treasury was

opened with the same ceremony and under the gaze of the same throng,

Master Osman was still staring intently at the page before him, at the bird

that floated motionless in the sky. But if you noticed the paleness in his pupils

you’d also realize that he stared at the page quite oddly, as blind men

sometimes incorrectly orient themselves to the food before them.

The officers of the Treasury detail, learning that Master Osman would stay

inside and that Jezmi Agha was at the door, neglected to search me thoroughly

and never found the plume needle I hid in my undergarment. When I emerged

onto the streets of Istanbul from the palace courtyard, I slipped into a

passageway and removed the terrifying object, with which the legendary

Bihzad had blinded himself, from where it was, and stuck it into my sash. I

practically ran through the streets.

The cold of the Treasury chambers had so penetrated my bones that it

seemed as though the gentle weather of an early spring had settled over the

city streets. As I passed the grocer, barber, herbalist, fruit and vegetable shop

and firewood shop of the Old Caravansary Bazaar, which were shutting down

one by one for the night, I slowed my pace and carefully examined the casks,

cloth sheets, carrots and jars in the warm shops lit by oil lamps.

My Enishte’s street (I still couldn’t say “Shekure’s street” let alone “my

street”) appeared even stranger and more distant after my two-day absence.

But the joy of being reunited safe and sound with my Shekure, and the

thought that I’d be able to enter my beloved’s bed tonight—since the

murderer was as good as caught—made me feel so intimate with the whole

world that upon seeing the pomegranate tree and the repaired and closed

shutters, I had to restrain myself from shouting like a farmer hollering to

someone across a stream. When I saw Shekure, I wanted the first words out of

my mouth to be, “We know who the wretched murderer is!”

I opened the courtyard gate. I’m not sure if it was from the squeak of the

gate, the carefree way the sparrow drank water from the well bucket, or the

darkness of the house, but with the wolflike prescience of a man who’d lived

alone for twelve years, I understood at once that nobody was home. Even

bitterly realizing that one’s been left to his own devices, one will still open and

close all of the doors, the cabinets and even lift the lids of pots, and that’s just

what I did. I even looked inside the chests.

366

In this silence, the only sound I heard was the thudding of my own racing

heart. Like an old man who’s done everything he will ever do, I felt consoled

when I abruptly girded my sword, which I’d kept hidden at the bottom of the

most out of the way chest. It was this ivory-handled sword which always

provided me with inner peace and balance during all those years I worked

with the pen. Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our

sorrow.

I went down to the courtyard. The sparrow had flown away. As if

abandoning a sinking ship, I left the house to the silence of an impending

darkness.

My heart, now more confident, told me to run and find them. I ran, but I

slowed through crowded places and the mosque courtyards where dogs picked

up my trail and joyously followed, anticipating some kind of amusement.

367

I AM ESTHER

I was putting lentil soup on the boil for our evening meal when Nesim said,

“There’s a visitor at the door.” I replied, “Make sure the soup doesn’t burn,”

handing him the spoon and giving it a couple of turns in the pot while

holding his aged hand. If you don’t show them, they’ll stand there for hours

idly holding the spoon in the pot.

When I saw Black at the door I felt nothing but pity for him. There was such

an expression on his face I was afraid to ask what had happened.

“Don’t bother to come inside,” I said, “I’ll be out as soon as I change

clothes.”

I donned the pink and yellow garments that I wear when I’m invited to

Ramadan festivities, wealthy banquets and lengthy weddings, and took up my

holiday satchel. “I’ll have my soup when I get back,” I said to poor Nesim.

Black and I had crossed one street in my little Jewish neighborhood whose

chimneys labor to expel their smoke, the way our kettles force out their steam,

and I said:

“Shekure’s former husband is back.”

Black fell silent and stayed that way until we left the neighborhood. His face

was ashen, the color of the waning day.

“Where are they?” he asked sometime later.

From this question I guessed that Shekure and her children weren’t at

home. “They’re at their house,” I said. Because I meant Shekure’s previous

home, and knew at once that this would singe Black’s heart, I opened a door

of hope for him by tacking the word “probably” onto the end of my

statement.

“Have you seen her newly returned husband?” he asked me, looking deep

into my eyes.

“I haven’t seen him, neither did I see Shekure’s flight from the house.”

“How did you know they’d left?”

“From your face.”

“Tell me everything,” he said decisively.

Black was so troubled he didn’t understand that Esther—her eye eternally

at the window, her ear eternally to the ground—could never “tell everything”

368

if she wanted to continue to be the Esther who found husbands for so many

dreamy maidens and knocked on the doors of so many unhappy homes.

“What I’ve heard,” I said, “is that the brother of Shekure’s former husband,

Hasan, visited your house”—it heartened him when I said “your house”—

“and told Shevket that his father was on his way home from war, that he

would arrive around midafternoon, and that if he didn’t find Shevket’s

mother and brother in their rightful home, he’d be very upset. Shevket told

this to his mother, who acted cautiously, but couldn’t come to a decision.

Toward midafternoon, Shevket left the house to be with his Uncle Hasan and

his grandfather.”

“Where did you learn these things?”

“Hasn’t Shekure told you about Hasan’s schemes over the last two years to

get her back to his house? There was a time when Hasan sent letters to Shekure

through me.”

“Did she ever respond to them?”

“I know all the varieties of women in Istanbul,” I said proudly, “there’s no

one who’s as bound to her house, her husband and her honor as Shekure is.”

“But I am her husband now.”

His voice bore that typically male uncertainty that always depressed me.

Amazingly, to whichever side Shekure fled, the other side went to pieces.

“Hasan wrote a note and gave it to me to deliver to Shekure. It described

how Shevket had come home to await the return of his father, how Shekure

had been married in an illegitimate ceremony, how Shevket was very unhappy

on account of the false husband who was supposed to be his new father and

how he was never going back.”

“How did Shekure respond?”

“She waited for you all through the night with poor Orhan.”

“What about Hayriye?”

“Hayriye’s been waiting for years for the opportunity to drown your

beautiful wife in a spoonful of water. This was why she began sleeping with

your Enishte, may he rest in peace. When Hasan saw that Shekure was

spending the night alone in fear of murderers and ghosts, he sent along

another note through me.”

“What did he write?”

369

Thanks be to God that your unfortunate Esther can’t read or write, because

when irate Effendis and irritable fathers ask this question, she can say: “I

couldn’t read the letter, only the face of the beautiful maiden reading the

letter.”

“What did you read in Shekure’s face?”

“Helplessness.”

For a long time we didn’t speak. Awaiting nightfall, an owl was perched on

the dome of a small Greek church; runny-nosed neighborhood kids laughed at

my clothes and bundle, and a mangy dog happily scratching himself loped

down from the cemetery lined with cypresses to greet the night.

“Slow down!” I shouted at Black later, “I can’t get up these hills the way

you can. Where are you taking me with my satchel like this?”

“Before you bring me to Hasan’s house, I’m taking you to some generous

and brave young men so you can spread out your bundle and sell them some

flowery handkerchiefs, silk sashes and purses with silver embroidery for their

secret lovers.”

It was a good sign that Black could still make jokes in his pitiable state, but I

could fathom the seriousness behind his mirth. “If you’re going to gather a

posse, I’ll never take you to Hasan’s house,” I said. “I’m frightened to death of

fights and brawls.”

“If you continue to be the intelligent Esther you’ve always been,” he said,

“there’ll be neither fight nor brawl.”

We passed through Aksaray and entered the road heading back, straight

toward the Langa gardens. On the upper part of the muddy road, in a

neighborhood that had seen happier days, Black walked into a barbershop that

was still open. I saw him talking to the master barber being shaved by an

honest-looking boy with lovely hands by the light of an oil lamp. Before long,

the barber, his handsome apprentice, and later, two more of his men joined up

with us at Aksaray. They carried swords and axes. At a side street in

Shehzadebash?, a theology student, whom I couldn’t picture involved in such

rough affairs, joined us in the darkness, sword in hand.

“Do you plan on raiding a house in the middle of the city in broad

daylight?” I said.

“It’s not day, it’s night,” said Black in a tone more pleased than joking.

370

“Don’t be so confident just because you’ve put together a gang,” I said.

“Let’s hope the Janissaries don’t catch sight of this fully equipped little army

wandering around.”

“No one will catch sight of us.”

“Yesterday the Erzurumis first raided a tavern and then the dervish house

at Sa　rkap?, beating up everyone they found in both places. An elderly man

who took a blow to his head with a stick died. In this pitch blackness, they

might think you’re of their lot.”

“I hear you went to dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s house, saw his wife,

God bless her, and the horse sketches with the smeared ink before relaying it

all to Shekure. Had Elegant Effendi been spending a lot of time with the

henchmen of the preacher from Erzurum?”

“If I sounded out Elegant Effendi’s wife, it was because I thought it might

ultimately help my poor Shekure,” I said. “Anyway, I’d gone there to show her

the latest cloth which had come off the Flemish ship, not to involve myself in

your legal and political affairs—which my poor brain couldn’t fathom

anyway.”

As we entered the street, which ran behind Charsh?kap?, my heart

quickened with fear. The bare, wet branches of the chestnut and mulberry trees

glimmered in the pale light of the half-moon. A breeze kicked up by jinns and

the living dead rippled the laced edging of my satchel, whistled through the

trees and carried the scent of our group to neighborhood dogs lying in wait. As

they began to bark one by one, I pointed out the house to Black. We stared

quietly at its dark roof and shutters. Black had the men take positions around

the house: in the empty garden, on either side of the courtyard gate and

behind the fig trees in back.

“In that entryway over there is a vile Tatar beggar,” I said. “He’s blind, but

he’ll know who’s come and gone along this street better than the

neighborhood headman does. He continually plays with himself as if he were

one of the Sultan’s vulgar monkeys. Without letting your hand touch his, give

him eight or ten silver pieces and he’ll tell you everything he knows.”

From a distance, I watched Black hand over the coins, then lay his sword

against the throat of the beggar and begin to pressure him with questions.

Next, I’m not sure how it happened, the barber’s apprentice, who I thought

was simply watching the house, began to beat the Tatar with the butt of his

axe. I watched for a while, thinking it wouldn’t last, but the Tatar was wailing.

I ran over and pulled the beggar away before they killed him.

371

“He cursed my mother,” said the apprentice.

“He says that Hasan isn’t home,” Black said. “Can we trust what this blind