My Name is Red (31 page)

You know about those ornery old men who’ve charitably devoted their lives to art. They’ll attack anyone who gets in their way. They’re usually gaunt, bony and tall. They’ll want the dwindling number of days before them to be just like the long period they’ve left behind. They’re short-tempered, and they complain about everything. They’ll try to grab the reins in all situations, causing everyone around them to throw up their hands in frustration; they don’t like anyone or anything. I know, because I’m one of them.

The master of masters Nurullah Selim Chelebi, with whom I had the honor of making illustrations knee to knee in the same workshop, was this way in his eighties, when I was but a sixteen-year-old apprentice (though he wasn’t as peevish as I am now). Blond Ali, the last of the great masters, laid to rest thirty years ago, was also this way (though he wasn’t as thin and tall as I am). Since the arrows of criticism aimed at these legendary masters, who directed the workshops of their day now frequently strike me in the back, I want you to know that the hackneyed accusations leveled at us are entirely unfounded. These are the facts:

1. The reason we don’t like anything innovative is that there is truly nothing new worth liking.

2. We treat most men like morons because, indeed, most men are morons, not because we’re poisoned by anger, unhappiness or some other flaw in character. (Granted, treating these people better would be more refined and sensible.)

3. The reason I forget and confuse so many names and faces-except those of the miniaturists I’ve loved and trained since their apprenticeships-is not senility, but because these names and faces are so lackluster and colorless as to be hardly worth remembering.

During the funeral of Enishte, whose soul was prematurely taken by God because of his own foolishness, I tried to forget that the deceased had at one time caused me unmentionable agony by forcing me to imitate the European masters. On the way back, I had the following thoughts: blindness and death, those gifts bestowed by God, are not so far from me now. Of course, I will be remembered only so long as my illustrations and manuscripts cause your eyes to prance and flowers of bliss to bloom in your hearts. But after my death let it be known that in my old age, at the very end of my life, there was still plenty that made me smile. For instance:

1. Children-They represent what is vital in the world.

2. Sweet memories of handsome boys, beautiful women, painting well and friendships.

3. Seeing the masterpieces of the old masters of Herat -this cannot be explained to the uninitiated.

The simple meaning of all of this: In Our Sultan’s workshop, which I direct, magnificent works of art can no longer be made as they once were-and the situation will only get worse, everything will dwindle and disappear. I am painfully aware that we quite rarely reach the sublime level of the old masters of Herat, despite having lovingly sacrificed our entire lives to this work. Humbly accepting this truth makes life easier. Indeed, it is precisely because it makes life easier that modesty is such a highly prized virtue in our part of the world.

With an air of such modesty I was touching up an illustration in the
Book of Festivities
, which described the circumcision ceremonies of our prince, wherein was depicted the Egyptian Governor-General’s presentation of the following gifts: a gold-chased sword decorated with rubies, emeralds, and turquoise on a swatch of red velvet and one of the Governor-General’s proud, lightning fast and spirited Arabian horses with a white blaze on its nose and a silvery, gleaming coat, fully appointed with a gold bit and reins, stirrups of pearl and greenish-yellow chrysoberyl, and a red velvet saddle embellished with silver thread and ruby rosettes. With a flick of my brush, here and there, I was touching up the illustration, whose composition I had arranged while delegating the rendering of the horse, the sword, the prince and the spectator-ambassadors to various apprentices. I applied purple to some of the leaves of the plane tree in the Hippodrome. I dabbed yellow upon the caftan-buttons of the Tatar Khan’s ambassador. As I was brushing a sparse amount of gold wash onto the horse’s reins, somebody knocked at the door. I quit what I was doing.

It was an imperial pageboy. The Head Treasurer had summoned me to the palace. My eyes ached ever so mildly. I placed my magnifying lens in my pocket, and left with the boy.

Oh, how nice it is to walk through the streets after having worked without a break for so long! At such times, the whole world strikes one as original and stunning, as if Allah had created it all the day before.

I noticed a dog, more meaningful than all the pictures of dogs I’d ever seen. I saw a horse, a lesser creation than what my master miniaturists might make. I spied a plane tree in the Hippodrome, the same tree whose leaves I’d just now accented with tones of purple.

Strolling through the Hippodrome, whose parades I’d illustrated over the last two years, was like stepping into my own painting. Let’s say we were to turn down a street: In a Frankish painting, this would result in our stepping outside both the frame and the painting; in a painting made following the example of the great masters of Herat, it’d bring us to the place from which Allah looks upon us; in a Chinese painting, we’d be trapped, because Chinese illustrations are infinite.

The pageboy, I discovered, wasn’t taking me to the Divan Chamber where I often met with the Head Treasurer to discuss one of the following: the manuscripts and ornamented ostrich eggs or other gifts my miniaturists were preparing for Our Sultan; the health of the illustrators or the Head Treasurer’s own constitution and peace of mind; the acquisition of paint, gold leaf or other materials; the usual complaints and requests; the desires, delights, demands and disposition of the Refuge of the World, Our Sultan; my eyesight, my looking glasses or my lumbago; or the Head Treasurer’s good-for-nothing son-in-law or the health of his tabby cat. Silently, we entered the Sultan’s Private Garden. As if committing a crime, but with great delicacy, we serenely descended toward the sea through the trees. “We’re nearing the Sea-Side Kiosk,” I thought, “this means I will see the Sultan. His Excellency must be here.” But we turned off the path. We walked ahead a few steps through the arched doorway of a stone building behind the rowboat and caïque sheds. I could smell the scent of baking bread wafting from the guard’s bakery before catching sight of the Imperial Guard themselves in their red uniforms.

The Head Treasurer and the Commander of the Imperial Guard were together in one room: Angel and Devil!

The Commander, who performed executions in the name of Our Sultan on the palace grounds-who tortured, interrogated, beat, blinded and administered the bastinado-smiled sweetly at me. It was as if some piddling lodger, with whom I was forced to share a caravansary cell, were going to recount a heart-warming story.

The Head Treasurer diffidently said, “Our Sultan, one year prior, charged me with having an illuminated manuscript prepared under conditions of the utmost privacy, a manuscript that would be included among the gifts meant for an ambassadorial delegation. In light of the secrecy of the book, His Excellency did not deem it appropriate that Master Lokman the Royal Historian be enlisted to write the manuscript. Similarly, He did not venture to involve you, whose artistry He quite admires. Indeed, He supposed that you were already fully engaged with the
Book of Festivities
.”

Upon entering this room I had abruptly assumed that some wretch had slandered me, claiming that I was committing heresy in such-and-such an illustration and that I’d lampooned the Sovereign in another; I imagined with horror that this tattler had been able to convince the Sovereign of my guilt and that I was about to be laid out for torture with no consideration for my age. And so to hear that the Head Treasurer was simply trying to make amends for Our Sultan’s having commissioned a manuscript from an outsider-these words were sweeter than honey indeed. Without learning anything new, I listened to an account of the manuscript, about which I was already well aware. I was privy to the rumors about Nusret Hoja of Erzurum, and naturally, to the intrigues within the workshop.

“Who is responsible for preparing the manuscript?” I asked.

“Enishte Effendi, as you know,” said the Head Treasurer. Fixing his gaze into my eyes, he added, “You were aware that he died an untimely death, that is to say, that he was murdered, weren’t you?”

“Nay,” I said simply, like a child, and fell quiet.

“Our Sultan is quite furious,” the Head Treasurer said.

That Enishte Effendi was a dunce. The master miniaturists always mocked him for being more pretentious than knowledgeable, more ambitious than intelligent. I knew something was rotten at the funeral anyway. How was he killed, I wondered?

The Head Treasurer explained exactly how. Appalling. Dear God protect us. Yet who could be responsible?

“The Sultan has decreed,” said the Head Treasurer, “that the book in question should be finished as soon as possible, as with the
Book of Festivities
manuscript…”

“He has also made a second decree,” said the Commander of the Imperial Guard. “If, indeed, this unspeakable murderer is one of the miniaturists, He wants the black-hearted devil found. He intends to sentence him to a punishment such as will stand as a deterrent to one and all.”

An expression of such excitement appeared on the face of the Commander as if to suggest he already knew the monstrous punishment Our Sultan had decreed.

I knew that Our Sultan had only recently charged these two men with this task, thereby forcing them to cooperate-on which account they couldn’t hide their distaste even now. Seeing this inspired in me a love for the Sultan that went beyond mere awe. A servant boy served coffee and we sat for a while.

I was told that Enishte Effendi had a nephew named Black Effendi whom he’d cultivated, a man trained in illumination and book arts. Had I met him? I remained silent. A short while ago, upon the invitation of his Enishte, Black had returned from the Persian front, where he was under Serhat Pasha’s command-the Commander shot me a look of suspicion. Here, in Istanbul, he worked himself into his Enishte’s good graces and learned the story of the book whose creation Enishte was overseeing. Black claimed that after Elegant Effendi was killed, Enishte suspected one of the master miniaturists who visited him at night to work on this manuscript. He’d seen the illustrations these masters had made and said that Enishte’s murderer-the selfsame painter who stole the Sultan’s illustration with the lion’s share of gold leaf-was one of them. For two days, this young Black Effendi had concealed the death of Enishte from the palace and the Head Treasurer. Within that very two-day period, he’d rushed ahead with a marriage to Enishte’s daughter, an ethically and religiously dubious affair, and settled into Enishte’s house; thus, both the men before me considered Black a suspect.

“If their houses and workplaces are searched and the missing page turns up with one of my master miniaturists, Black’s innocence will be established at once,” I said. “Frankly, however, I can tell you that my dearest children, my divinely inspired miniaturists, whom I’ve known since they were apprentices, are incapable of taking the life of another man.”

“As for Olive, Stork and Butterfly,” said the Commander, mockingly using the nicknames I’d affectionately given to them, “we intend to comb their homes, haunts, places of work and, if applicable, shops, leaving no stone unturned. And that includes Black…” His expression bespoke resignation: “Given such troublesome circumstances, thank God, the judge has granted us permission to resort to torture if necessary during the interrogation of Black Effendi. Torture was deemed lawfully permissible because a second murder had been committed against someone with a link to the miniaturists guild, making suspects of them all, from apprentice to master.”

I mulled this over silently: 1. The phrase “lawfully permissible” made clear that Our Sultan wasn’t the one who’d granted the permission for torture. 2. Because all the miniaturists were under suspicion of double murder in the eyes of the judge, and because I, though Head Illuminator, had been unable to identify the criminal in our midst, I, too, was suspect. 3. I understood that they wanted my explicit or implicit approval to go ahead with the torture of my beloved Butterfly, Olive, Stork and the others, all of whom, in recent years, had betrayed me.

“Since Our Sultan desires both the satisfactory completion of the
Book of Festivities
and this book-which is evidently only half finished,” said the Head Treasurer, “we’re worried that torture might damage the masters’ hands and eyes, destroying their agility.” He faced me. “Isn’t this so?”

“There was similar worry over another incident recently,” said the Commander brusquely. “A goldsmith and a jeweler who did repairs fell sway to the Devil. They were childishly enchanted with a ruby-handled coffee cup belonging to Our Sultan’s younger sister Nejmiye Sultan, and ended up stealing it. Since the theft of the cup, which overwhelmed Our Sultan’s sister with grief-she was quite fond of the piece-occurred in the Üsküdar Palace, the Sovereign appointed me to investigate. It became apparent that both Our Sultan and Nejmiye Sultan wanted no harm to come to the eyes and fingers of the master gold- and jewelry smiths lest their skills be affected. So, I had all the master jewelry smiths stripped naked and thrown into the freezing pool in the yard among pieces of ice and frogs. Periodically, I’d have them taken out and lashed forcefully, taking care that their faces and hands remained unharmed. Within a short period, the jeweler who’d been duped by the Devil confessed and accepted his punishment. Despite the ice-cold water, the frozen air and all the lashings, no lasting injury came to the eyes and fingers of the master jewelers because they were pure of heart. Even the Sultan mentioned that His sister was quite pleased with my work and that the jewelers were working with more zeal now that the bad apple was out of the barrel.”

I was certain that the Commander would treat my master illustrators more severely than he had the jewelers. Though he had respect for Our Sultan’s enthusiasm for illuminated manuscripts, like many others, he deemed calligraphy the only respectable art form, belittling embellishment and illustration as flirtations with heresy, fit for women and deserving of nothing but rebuke. In order to provoke me, he said, “While you’ve been absorbed in your work, your beloved miniaturists have already begun scheming to see who’ll become Head Miniaturist upon your death.”