My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk Read Free Book Online Page B

coward,” Shevket said. “She’ll open it soon enough.”
    Mother opened the door. “Are you going to behave until the visitor leaves?” she said. “All right then, you’ll sit in the kitchen by the stove until Black takes his leave, and you’re not to go upstairs, do you understand?”
    “We’ll get bored in there,” Shevket said. “Where has Hayriye gone?”
    “Quit butting into everyone’s affairs,” my mother said.
    We heard a soft whinnying from one of the horses in the stable. The horse whinnied again. It wasn’t our grandfather’s horse, but Black’s. We were overcome with mirth, as if it were a fair day. Mother smiled, wanting us to smile as well. Taking two steps forward, she opened the stable door that faced us off the stairwell outside the kitchen.
    “Drrsss,” she said into the stable.
    She turned around and guided us into Hayriye’s greasy-smelling and mice-ridden kitchen. She forced us to sit down. “Don’t even consider standing until our guest leaves. And don’t fight with each other or else people will think you’re spoiled.”
    “Mother,” I said to her before she closed the kitchen door. “I want to say something, Mother: They’ve done our grandfather’s gilder in.”

I AM CALLED BLACK
    When I first laid eyes on her child, I knew at once what I’d long and mistakenly recalled about Shekure’s face. Like Orhan’s face, hers was thin, though her chin was longer than what I remembered. So, then the mouth of my beloved was surely smaller and narrower than I imagined it to be. For a dozen years, as I ventured from city to city, I’d widened Shekure’s mouth out of desire and had imagined her lips to be more pert, fleshy and irresistible, like a large, shiny cherry.
    Had I taken Shekure’s portrait with me, rendered in the style of the Venetian masters, I wouldn’t have felt such loss during my long travels when I could scarcely remember my beloved, whose face I’d left somewhere behind me. For if a lover’s face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home.
    Meeting Shekure’s youngest son and speaking with him, seeing his face up close and kissing him, aroused in me a restlessness peculiar to the luckless, to murderers and to sinners. An inner voice urged me on, “Be quick now, go and see her.”
    For a while, I considered silently quitting my Enishte’s presence and opening each of the doors along the wide hallway-I’d counted them out of the corner of my eye, five dark doors, one of which, naturally, opened onto the staircase-until I found Shekure. But, I’d been separated from my beloved for twelve years because I recklessly revealed what lay in my heart. I decided to wait discreetly, listening to my Enishte while admiring the objects that Shekure had touched and the large pillow upon which she’d reclined who knows how many times.
    He recounted to me that the Sultan wanted to have the book completed in time for the thousandth-year anniversary of the Hegira. Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, wanted to demonstrate that in the thousandth year of the Muslim calendar He and His state could make use of the styles of the Franks as well as the Franks themselves. Because He was also having a
Book of Festivities
made, the Sultan granted that the master miniaturists, whom He knew were quite busy, be permitted to sequester themselves at home to work in peace instead of among the crowds at the workshop. He was, of course, also aware that they all regularly paid clandestine visits to my Enishte.
    “You shall visit Head Illuminator Master Osman,” said my Enishte. “Some say he’s gone blind, others that he’s lost his senses. I think he’s blind and senile both.”
    Despite the fact that my Enishte didn’t have the standing of a master illustrator and that this wasn’t his field of artistic expertise at all, he did have control over an illustrated manuscript. This, in fact, was with the permission and encouragement of the Sultan, a situation that, of