My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk Read Free Book Online

upper part of the small hallway window facing the street; this was the window whose lower shutters were never opened, which I’d recently paned over with a piece of cloth dipped in beeswax.
    “There was a miniaturist,” I said. “He would come here just like the other artists for the sake of Our Sultan’s secret book, and we would work together till dawn. He did the best of the gilding. That unfortunate Elegant Effendi, he left here one night never to arrive at home. I’m afraid they might have done him in, that poor master gilder of mine.”

I AM ORHAN
    Black asked: “Have they indeed killed him?”
    This Black was tall, skinny and a little frightening. I was walking toward them where they sat talking in the second-floor workshop with the blue door when my grandfather said, “They might have done him in.” Then he caught sight of me. “What are you doing here?”
    He looked at me in such a way that I climbed onto his lap without answering. Then he put me back down right away.
    “Kiss Black’s hand,” he said.
    I kissed the back of his hand and touched it to my forehead. It had no smell.
    “He’s quite charming,” Black said and kissed me on my cheek. “One day he’ll be a brave young man.”
    “This is Orhan, he’s six. There’s also an older one, Shevket, who’s seven. That one’s quite a stubborn little child.”
    “I went back to the old street in Aksaray,” said Black. “It was cold, everything was covered in snow and ice. But it was as if nothing had changed at all.”
    “Alas! Everything has changed, everything has become worse,” my grandfather said. “Significantly worse.” He turned to me. “Where’s your brother?”
    “He’s with our mentor, the master binder.”
    “So, what are you doing here?”
    “The master said, ”Fine work, you can go now“ to me.”
    “You made your way back here alone?” asked my grandfather. “Your older brother ought to have accompanied you.” Then he said to Black: “There’s a binder friend of mine with whom they work twice a week after their Koran school. They serve as his apprentices, learning the art of binding.”
    “Do you like to make illustrations like your grandfather?” asked Black.
    I gave him no answer.
    “All right then,” said my grandfather. “Leave us be, now.”
    The heat from the open brazier that warmed the room was so nice that I didn’t want to leave. Smelling the paint and glue, I stood still for a moment. I could also smell coffee.
    “Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?” my grandfather began. “This is the reason why they’ve murdered that poor gilder despite the fact that he worked in the old style. I’m not even certain he’s been killed, only that he’s missing. They’re illustrating a commemorative story in verse, a
Book of Festivities
, for Our Sultan by order of the Head Illuminator Master Osman. Each of the miniaturists works at his own home. Master Osman, however, occupies himself at the palace book-arts workshop. To begin with, I want you to go there and observe everything. I worry that the others, that is, the miniaturists, have ended up falling out with and slaying one another. They go by the workshop names that Head Illuminator Master Osman gave them years ago: ”Butterfly,“ ”Olive,“ ”Stork“…You’re also to go and observe them as they work in their homes.”
    Instead of heading downstairs, I spun around. There was a noise coming from the next room with the built-in closet where Hayriye slept. I went in. Inside there was no Hayriye, just my mother. She was embarrassed to see me. She stood half in the closet.
    “Where have you been?” she asked.
    But she knew where I’d been. In the back of the closet there was a peephole through which you could see my grandfather’s workshop, and if its door were open, the wide hallway and my grandfather’s bedroom across the hall by the staircase-if, of course, his bedroom door were open.
    “I was with