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somewhat distracted state. I opened the door, and there they were—Butterfly,

Stork and Black. I gave a cry of joy and embraced Butterfly.

“Alas, what we’ve had to bear of late!” I lamented, burying my head into

his shoulder. “What do they want from us? Why are they killing us?”

Each of them displayed the panic of being separated from the herd, which

I’d seen from time to time in every master painter over the span of my life.

Even here in the lodge, they were loath to separate from one another.

“We can safely take refuge here for days.”

“We worry,” Black said, “that the person we should fear is perhaps in our

very midst.”

“I, too, grow anxious,” I said. “For I have heard such rumors as well.”

There were rumors, spreading from the officers of the Imperial Guard to

the division of miniaturists, claiming that the mystery about the murderer of

Elegant Effendi and late Enishte was solved: He was one of us who’d labored

over that book.

Black inquired as to how many pictures I’d drawn for Enishte’s book.

“The first one I made was Satan. It was of the variety of underground

demon common to the old masters in the workshops of the Whitesheep. The

storyteller and I were of the same Sufi path; that’s why I made the two

dervishes. I was the one who suggested to Enishte that he include them in his

book, convincing him that there was a special place for these dervishes in the

lands of the Ottomans.”

“Is that all?” asked Black.

When I told him, “Yes, that’s all,” he went to the door with the superior air

of a master who caught an apprentice stealing; he brought in a roll of paper

untouched by the rain, and placed it before us three artists like a mother cat

bringing a wounded bird to her kittens.

I recognized the pages while they were still under his arm: They were the

illustrations I’d rescued from the coffeehouse during the raid. I didn’t deign to

ask how these men had entered my house and located them. Nevertheless,

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Butterfly, Stork and I each placidly owned up to the pictures we made for the

storyteller, may he rest in peace. Afterward, only the horse, an exquisite horse,

remained unclaimed off to the side, its head lowered. Believe me, I didn’t even

realize that a horse had been drawn.

“You weren’t the one who made this horse?” said Black like a teacher

holding a switch.

“I wasn’t,” I said.

“What about the one in my Enishte’s book?”

“I didn’t make that one either.”

“Based on the style of the horse, however, it’s been determined that you’re

the one who drew it,” he said. “Furthermore, it was Master Osman who came

to this conclusion.”

“But I have no style whatsoever,” I said. “I’m not saying this out of pride to

counter the latest tastes. Neither am I saying so to prove my innocence. For

me, having a style would be worse than being a murderer.”

“You have a distinct quality that distinguishes you from the old masters and

the others,” said Black.

I smiled at him. He started to relate things that I’m sure you all know by

now. I listened intently to how Our Sultan, in consultation with the Head

Treasurer, sought a solution to the murders, to the matter of Master Osman’s

three days, to the “courtesan method,” to the peculiarity in the noses of the

horses and to Black’s miraculous admittance to the Royal Private Quarters for

the sake of actually examining those superlative books. There are moments in

all our lives when we realize, even as we experience them, that we are living

through events we will never forget, even long afterward. A melancholy rain

was falling. As if upset by the rain, Butterfly mournfully gripped his dagger.

Olive, the backside of whose armor was white with flour, was courageously

forging into the heart of the dervish lodge, lamp in hand. These master artists,

whose shadows roamed the walls like ghosts, were my brethren, and how I

loved them! I was delighted to be a miniaturist.

“Could you appreciate your good fortune as you gazed at the great works of

the old masters for days on end with Master Osman at your side?” I asked

Black. “Did he kiss you? Did he caress your handsome face? Did he hold your

hand? Were you awed by his talent and knowledge?”

“There among the great works of the old masters he showed me how you

had a style,” said Black. “He taught me how the hidden fault of ”style‘ isn’t

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something the artist selects of his own volition, but is determined by the

artist’s past and his forgotten memories. He also showed me how these secret

faults, weaknesses and defects, at one time such a source of shame they were

concealed so we wouldn’t be estranged from the old masters, will henceforth

emerge to be praised as “personal characteristics’ or ”style,“ because the

European masters have spread them over the world. Henceforth, thanks to

fools who take pride in their own shortcomings, the world will be a more

colorful and more stupid and, of course, a much more imperfect place.”

The fact that Black confidently believed in what he said proved that he was

one of the new breed of fools.

“Was Master Osman able to explain why, for years, I drew hundreds of

horses with regular nostrils in Our Sultan’s books?” I asked.

“It was due to the love and beatings he gave all of you in your childhood.

Because he was both father and beloved to you all, he doesn’t see that he

associates all of you with himself and each of you with the others. He didn’t

want you each to have a style of your own, he wanted the royal atelier as a

whole to have a style. Because of the awesome shadow he cast over all of you,

you forgot what came from within, the imperfections, the elements and

differences that fell outside the confines of standard forms. Only when you

painted for other books and other pages, which Master Osman’s eyes would

never see, did you draw the horse that had lain within you all those years.”

“My mother, may she rest in peace, was more intelligent than my father,” I

said. “One night I was at home, in tears, determined never again to return to

the workshop because I was daunted not only by Master Osman’s beatings,

but by those of the other harsh and irritable masters and by those of the

division head who always intimidated us with a ruler. In consolation, my

dearly departed mother advised me that there were two types of people in the

world: those who were cowed and crushed by their childhood beatings, forever

downtrodden, she said, because the beatings had the desired effect of killing

the inner devils; and those fortunate ones for whom the beatings frightened

and tamed the devil within without killing him off. Though the latter group

would never forget these painful childhood memories—she’d warned me not

to tell this to anybody—the beatings would in time enable them to develop

cunning, to fathom the unknown, to make friends, to identify enemies, to

sense plots being hatched behind their backs and, let me hasten to add, to

paint better than anyone else. Because I wasn’t able to draw the branches of a

tree harmoniously, Master Osman would slap me so hard that, amid bitter

tears, forests would burgeon before me. After angrily striking me in the head

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because I couldn’t see the errors at the bottoms of pages, he lovingly took up a

mirror and placed it before the page so I could see the work as if for the first

time. Then pressing his cheek to mine, he so lovingly identified the mistakes

that magically appeared in the mirror image of the picture that I never forgot

either the love or the ritual. The morning after a night spent weeping in my

bed, my pride violated because he chastised me with a ruler before everyone,

he came and kissed my arms so tenderly that I passionately knew I’d one day

become a legendary miniaturist. Nay, it was not I who drew that horse.”

“We,” Black was referring to Stork and himself, “will search the dervish

house for the last picture which was stolen by the accursed man who

murdered my Enishte. Did you ever see that last picture?”

“It is nothing that could be accepted by Our Sultan, illuminators like us

bound to the old masters or by Muslims bound to their faith,” I said and fell

silent.

My statement made him more eager. He and Stork began their search of the

premises, turning the whole place upside down. A few times, simply to make

their work easier, I went to them. In one of the dervish cells with a leaky

ceiling, I pointed out the hole in the floor so they wouldn’t fall and could

search it if they so desired. I gave them the large key to the small room in

which the sheikh lived thirty years ago, before the adherents of this lodge

joined up with the Bektashis and dispersed. They entered eagerly, but when

they saw that an entire wall was missing and the room was open to the rain,

they didn’t even bother to search it.

It pleased me that Butterfly wasn’t with them, but if evidence implicating

me were found, he, too, would join their ranks. Stork was of the same mind as

Black, who was afraid that Master Osman would turn us over to the torturers,

and maintained that we must support one another and must be united in

confronting the Head Treasurer. I sensed Black was not only motivated by the

desire to give Shekure a genuine wedding present by finding his Enisthe’s

murderer, he also intended to set Ottoman miniaturists on the path of

European masters by paying them with the Sultan’s money in order to finish

his Enishte’s book in imitation of the Franks (which was not only sacrilegious,

but ridiculous). I also understood, with some certainty, that at the root of this

scheme was Stork’s desire to be rid of us and even of Master Osman, for he

dreamt of being Head Illuminator and (since everyone guessed that Master

Osman preferred Butterfly) he was prepared to try anything to increase his

chances. I was momentarily confused. Listening to the rain, I deliberated at

length. Next, like a man who breaks away from the crowd and struggles to give

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his petition to the sovereign and grand vizier as they pass on horseback, I had

the sudden inspiration to endear myself to Stork and Black. Leading them

through a dark hallway and large portal, I took them to a frightening room

that was once the kitchen. I asked them if they were able to find anything here

among the ruins. Of course, they hadn’t. There was no trace of the kettles, the

pots and pans and the bellows that were once used to prepare food for the

forsaken and the poor. I never even attempted to clean up this ghastly room

covered in cobwebs, dust, mud, debris and the excrement of dogs and cats. As

always, a strong wind, rising up as if out of nowhere, dimmed the lamp—

making our shadows now lighter, now darker.

“You searched and searched but you couldn’t find my hidden treasure,” I

said.

Out of habit, I used the back of my hand as a broom to sweep away the

ashes in what used to be a hearth and when an old stove emerged, I lifted up

its iron lid with a creak. I held the lamp to the small mouth of the stove. I shall

never forget how Stork leapt forward and greedily grabbed the leather pouches

within before Black could act. He was about to open the pouches right there in

the mouth of the oven, but as I had returned to the large salon, followed by

Black who was afraid of remaining here, Stork bounded after us on his long

thin legs.

When they saw that one pouch contained a pair of clean woolen socks, my

drawstring trousers, my red underwear, the nicest of my undershirts, my silk

shirt, my straight razor, my comb and other belongings, they were

momentarily at a loss. Out of the other pouch, which Black opened, emerged

fifty-three Venetian gold coins, pieces of gold leaf that I’d stolen from the

workshop in recent years, my sketchbook of model forms which I concealed

from everybody, more stolen gold leaf hidden between the pages, indecent

pictures—some of which I’d drawn myself and some I’d collected—a keepsake

agate ring from my dear mother along with a lock of her white hair, and my

best pens and brushes.

“If I were truly a murderer as you suspect,” I said with stupid pride, “the

final picture would’ve emerged from my secret treasury, not these things.”

“Why these things?” asked Stork.

“When the Imperial Guard searched my house, as they did yours, they

shamelessly pilfered two of these gold pieces that I’ve spent my entire life

collecting. I thought about how we’d be searched again on account of this

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wretched murderer—and I was right. If that last picture were with me, it

would be here.”

It was a mistake to utter this last sentence; nevertheless, I could sense that

they were put at ease and no longer afraid that I’d strangle them in a dark

corner of the lodge. Have I gained your trust as well?

At this time, however, I was overwhelmed by a severe restlessness; no, it

wasn’t that my illuminator friends, whom I’d known since childhood, saw

how I’d been greedily squirreling money away for years, how I bought and

saved gold, or even that they learned about my sketchbooks and obscene

pictures. In truth, I regretted having shown them all of these things in a

moment of panic. Only the mysteries of a man who lived quite aimlessly could

be exposed so easily.

“Nonetheless,” said Black much later, “we must come to a consensus about

what we will say under torture if Master Osman happens to turn us over

without any forewarning.”