My Name is Red (34 page)

5. Mounted Tatar messengers brought word that the Persian Shah’s armies had begun to mobilize for another campaign against the Ottomans, who thereupon razed to the ground the exquisite observation kiosk of the Persian ambassador who’d repeatedly affirmed to Our Sultan, Refuge of the World, in a cascade of pleasantries, that the Shah was His friend and harbored nothing but brotherly affection for Him. During this episode of wrath and destruction, water bearers ran out to settle the dust raised in the Hippodrome, and a group of men appeared shouldering leather sacks full of linseed oil to pour over a mob ready to attack the ambassador, in hopes of pacifying it. The raised feet of the water bearers and of the men carrying sacks of linseed oil were made by the same artist who painted the raised feet of charging soldiers in the depiction of Red: also the work of Butterfly.

I wasn’t the one who made this last discovery as I directed our search for clues, moving the magnifying lens right and left, to that picture then this one; rather it was Black, who opened his eyes wide and scarcely blinked gripped by the fear of torture and the hope of returning to his wife who awaited him at home. Using the “courtesan method,” it took an entire afternoon to sort out which of our miniaturists worked on each of the nine pictures left by the late Enishte, and later, to interpret that information.

Black’s late Enishte didn’t limit any single page to the artistic talent of just one miniaturist; all three of my master miniaturists worked on most of the illustrations. This meant that the pictures were moved from house to house with great frequency. In addition to the work I recognized, I noticed the amateurish strokes of a fifth artist, but as I grew angry at the dearth of talent shown by this disgraceful murderer, Black determined from the cautious brush strokes that it was indeed the work of his Enishte-thereby saving us from following a false lead. If we discounted poor Elegant Effendi, who’d done almost the same gilding for Enishte’s book and our
Book of Festivities
(yes, this of course broke my heart) and who, I gathered, had occasionally lowered his brush to execute a few walls, leaves and clouds, it was evident that only my three most brilliant master miniaturists had contributed to these illustrations. They were the darlings I’d lovingly trained since their apprenticeships, my three beloved talents: Olive, Butterfly and Stork.

Discussing their talents, mastery and temperaments to the end of finding the clue we were looking for inevitably led to a discussion of my own life as well:

The Attributes of Olive

His given name was Velijan. If he had a nickname besides the one I’d given him, I don’t know it, because I never saw him sign any of his work. When he was an apprentice, he’d come get me from my home on Tuesday mornings. He was very proud, and so if he ever lowered himself to sign his work, he’d want this signature to be plain and recognizable; he wouldn’t try to conceal it anywhere. Allah had quite generously endowed him with excess ability. He could readily and easily do anything from gilding to ruling and his work was superb. He was the workshop’s most brilliant creator of trees, animals and the human face. Velijan’s father, who brought him to Istanbul when he was, I believe, ten years old, was trained by Siyavush, the famous illustrator specializing in faces in the Persian Shah’s Tabriz workshop. He hails from a long line of masters whose genealogy goes back to the Mongols, and just like the elderly masters who bore a Mongol-Chinese influence and settled in Samarkand, Bukhara and Herat 150 years ago, he rendered moon-faced young lovers as if they were Chinese. Neither during his apprenticeship nor during his time as a master was I able to lead this stubborn artist to other styles. How I would’ve liked him to transcend the styles and models of the Mongol, Chinese and Herat masters billeted deep in his soul, or even for him to forget about them entirely. When I told him this, he replied that like many miniaturists who’d moved from workshop to workshop and country to country, he’d forgotten these old styles, if he’d ever actually learned them. Though the value of many miniaturists resides precisely in the splendid models of form they’ve committed to memory, had Velijan truly forgotten them, he’d have become an even greater illustrator. Still, there were two benefits, of which he wasn’t even aware, to harboring the teachings of his mentors in the depths of his soul like a pair of unconfessed sins: 1. For such a gifted miniaturist, clinging to old forms inevitably stirred feelings of guilt and alienation that would spur his talent to maturity. 2. In a moment of difficulty, he could always recall what he claimed to have forgotten, and thus, he could successfully complete any new subject, history or scene by recourse to one of the old Herat models. With his keen eye, he knew how to harmonize what he’d learned from the old forms and Shah Tahmasp’s old masters in new pictures. Herat painting and Istanbul ornamentation happily merged in Olive.

As with all of my miniaturists, I once paid an unannounced visit to his home. Unlike my work area and that of many other master miniaturists, his was a filthy confusion of paints, brushes, burnishing shells, his folding worktable and other objects. It was a mystery to me, but he wasn’t even embarrassed by it. He took no outside jobs to earn a few extra silver coins. After I related these facts, Black said it was Olive who showed the most enthusiasm for and the most ease with the styles of the Frankish masters admired by his late Enishte. I understood this to be praise from the deceased fool’s point of view, mistaken though it was. I can’t say whether Olive was more deeply and secretly bound to the Herat styles-which went back to his father’s mentor Siyavush and Siyavush’s mentor Muzaffer, back to the era of Bihzad and the old masters-than he appeared to be, but it always made me wonder whether Olive harbored other hidden tendencies. Of my miniaturists (I told myself spontaneously), he was the most quiet and sensitive, but also the most guilty and traitorous, and by far the most devious. When I thought about the Commander’s torture chambers, he was the first to come to mind. (I both wanted and didn’t want him to be tortured.) He had the eyes of a jinn; he noticed and took account of everything, including my own shortcomings; however, with the reserve of an exile able to accommodate himself to any situation, he’d rarely open his mouth to point out mistakes. He was wily, yes, but not in my opinion a murderer. (I didn’t tell Black this.) Olive didn’t believe in anything. He had no faith in money, but he’d nervously squirrel it away. Contrary to what is commonly believed, all murderers are men of extreme faith rather than unbelievers. Manuscript illumination leads to painting, and painting, in turn, leads to-God forbid-challenging Allah. Everybody knows this. Therefore, to judge by his lack of faith, Olive is a genuine artist. Nevertheless, I believe that his God-given gifts fall short of Butterfly’s, or even Stork’s. I would’ve wanted Olive to be my son. As I said this, I wanted to incur Black’s jealousy, but he only responded by opening his dark eyes and staring with childlike curiosity. Then I said Olive was magnificent when he worked in black ink, when he rendered, for pasting in albums, warriors, hunting scenes, Chinese-inspired landscapes full of storks and cranes, pretty boys gathered beneath a tree reciting verse and playing lutes, and when he depicted the sorrow of legendary lovers, the wrath of a sword-bearing, enraged shah, and a hero’s expression of fear as he dodged the attack of a dragon.

“Perhaps Enishte wanted Olive to do the last picture that would show in great detail, in the style of the Europeans, Our Sultan’s face and manner of sitting,” Black said.

Was he trying to confuse me?

“Supposing this were the case, after Olive killed Enishte, why would he abscond with a picture he was already familiar with?” I said. “Or, if you like, why would he murder Enishte in order to see that picture?”

We both pondered these questions for a while.

“Because there’s something missing in that painting,” said Black. “Or because he regrets something he did and is scared by it. Or even…” he thought for a while. “Or, having killed Enishte, he might’ve taken the painting to do further harm, for the sake of having a memento, or even for no reason at all. Olive is, after all, a great illustrator who’d naturally have a lot of respect for a beautiful painting.”

“We’ve already discussed in what ways Olive is a great illustrator,” I said, growing angry. “But none of Enishte’s illustrations is beautiful.”

“We haven’t yet seen the last painting,” Black said boldly.

The Attributes of Butterfly

He is known as Hasan Chelebi from the Gunpowder Factory district, but to me he’s always been “Butterfly.” This nickname always reminds me of the beauty of his boyhood and youth: He was so handsome that those who saw him didn’t believe their eyes and wanted a second look. I’ve always been astonished by the miracle of his being as talented as he is handsome. He’s a master of color and this is his greatest strength; he painted passionately, reeling with the pleasure of applying color. But I cautioned Black that Butterfly was flighty, aimless and indecisive. Anxious to be just, I added: He’s a genuine miniaturist who paints from the heart. If the arts of ornamentation are not meant to cater to intelligence, to speak to the animal within us, or to bolster the pride of the Sultan; that is, if this art is meant to be only a festival for the eyes, then Butterfly is indeed a true miniaturist. He makes wide, easy, blithe curves, as if he’d taken lessons from the masters of Kazvin forty years ago; he confidently applies his bright, pure colors, and there’s always a gentle circularity hidden in the arrangement of his paintings; but I’m the one who trained him, not those long-dead masters of Kazvin. Maybe it’s for this reason that I love him like a son, nay, more than a son-but I never felt any awe toward him. As with all of my apprentices, in his boyhood and adolescence, I beat him freely with brush handles, rulers and even pieces of wood, but this doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. Though I beat Stork frequently with rulers, I respect him too. In contrast to what the casual onlooker might assume, a master’s beating doesn’t rid the young apprentice of jinns of talent and the Devil, but only suppresses them temporarily. If it happens to be a good beating, and deserved, later on the jinns and the Devil will rise up and stimulate the developing miniaturist’s resolve to work. As for the beatings I administered to Butterfly, they shaped him into a content and obedient artist.

I at once felt the need to praise him to Black: “Butterfly’s artistry,” I said, “is solid proof that the picture of bliss, which the celebrated poet ponders in his masnawi, is only possible through a God-given gift for understanding and applying color. When I realized this, I also realized what Butterfly lacked: He hadn’t known that momentary loss of faith that Jami refers to in his poetry as ”the dark night of the soul.“ Like an illustrator painting in the great happiness of Heaven, he sets to his work with conviction and contentment, believing that he can make a blissful painting, which he does succeed in doing. Our armies besieging Doppio castle, the Hungarian ambassador kissing the feet of Our Sultan, Our Prophet ascending through the seven heavens, these are of course all inherently happy scenes, but rendered by Butterfly, they become flights of ecstasy springing from the page. In an illustration of mine, if the darkness of death or the seriousness of a government session weighs heavy, I’ll tell Butterfly to ”color it as you see fit,“ and thereupon, the outfits, leaves, flags and sea that lay there muted as if sprinkled with dirt meant to fill a grave begin to ripple in the breeze. There are times when I think Allah wants the world to be seen the way Butterfly illustrates it, that He wants life to be jubilation. Indeed, this is a realm where colors harmoniously recite magnificent ghazals to each other, where time stops, where the Devil never appears.”

However, even Butterfly knows this isn’t enough. Someone must have quite rightly-yes, in good measure-whispered to him that in his work everything was as joyous as a holiday, but devoid of depth. Child princes and senile old harem women on the verge of death enjoy his paintings, not men of the world forced to struggle with evil. Because Butterfly is well aware of these criticisms, poor man, he at times grows jealous of average miniaturists who though much less talented than he are possessed of demons and jinns. What he mistakenly believes to be devilry and the work of jinns is more often than not straightforward evil and envy.

He aggravates me because when he paints, he doesn’t lose himself in that wondrous world, surrendering to its ecstasy, but only reaches that height when he imagines his work will please others. He aggravates me because he thinks about the money he’ll earn. It’s another of life’s ironies: There are many artists with much less talent yet more able than Butterfly to surrender themselves to their art.

In his need to make up for his shortcomings, Butterfly is preoccupied with proving that he has sacrificed himself to art. Like those birdbrained miniaturists who paint on fingernails and pieces of rice, pictures almost invisible to the naked eye, he’s engrossed with minute and delicate craftsmanship. I’d once asked him whether he gave himself over to this ambition, which has blinded many illustrators at an early age, because he was ashamed of the excessive talent Allah had granted him. Only inept miniaturists paint each leaf of a tree they’ve drawn on a grain of rice to make an easy name for themselves and to gain importance in the eyes of dense patrons.

Butterfly’s inclination to design and illustrate for other people’s pleasure rather than for his own, his uncontrollable need to please others, made him, more than any of the others, a slave to praise. And so it follows that an uncertain Butterfly wants to ensure his standing by becoming Head Illuminator. It was Black who had raised this subject.

“Yes,” I said, “I know he’s been scheming to succeed me after I die.”

“Do you think this would drive him to murder his miniaturist brethren?”

“It might. He’s a great master, but he’s not aware of this, and he can’t leave the world behind when he paints.”

I said this, whereupon I grasped that in truth I, too, wanted Butterfly to assume leadership of the workshop after me. I couldn’t trust Olive, and in the end Stork would unwittingly become slave to the Venetian style. Butterfly’s need to be admired-I was upset at the thought that he could take a life-would be vital in handling both the workshop and the Sultan. Only Butterfly’s sensitivity and faith in his own palette could resist the Venetian artistry that duped the viewer by trying to depict reality itself rather than its representation, in all its detail: pictures, shadows included, of cardinals, bridges, rowboats, candlesticks, churches and stables, oxen and carriage wheels, as if all of them were of the same importance to Allah.