“Shekure’s former husband is back.”

Black fell silent and stayed that way until we left the neighborhood. His face was ashen, the color of the waning day.

“Where are they?” he asked sometime later.

From this question I guessed that Shekure and her children weren’t at home. “They’re at their house,” I said. Because I meant Shekure’s previous home, and knew at once that this would singe Black’s heart, I opened a door of hope for him by tacking the word “probably” onto the end of my statement.

“Have you seen her newly returned husband?” he asked me, looking deep into my eyes.

“I haven’t seen him, neither did I see Shekure’s flight from the house.”

“How did you know they’d left?”

“From your face.”

“Tell me everything,” he said decisively.

Black was so troubled he didn’t understand that Esther-her eye eternally at the window, her ear eternally to the ground-could never “tell everything” if she wanted to continue to be the Esther who found husbands for so many dreamy maidens and knocked on the doors of so many unhappy homes.

“What I’ve heard,” I said, “is that the brother of Shekure’s former husband, Hasan, visited your house”-it heartened him when I said “your house”-“and told Shevket that his father was on his way home from war, that he would arrive around midafternoon, and that if he didn’t find Shevket’s mother and brother in their rightful home, he’d be very upset. Shevket told this to his mother, who acted cautiously, but couldn’t come to a decision. Toward midafternoon, Shevket left the house to be with his Uncle Hasan and his grandfather.”

“Where did you learn these things?”

“Hasn’t Shekure told you about Hasan’s schemes over the last two years to get her back to his house? There was a time when Hasan sent letters to Shekure through me.”

“Did she ever respond to them?”

“I know all the varieties of women in Istanbul,” I said proudly, “there’s no one who’s as bound to her house, her husband and her honor as Shekure is.”

“But I am her husband now.”

His voice bore that typically male uncertainty that always depressed me. Amazingly, to whichever side Shekure fled, the other side went to pieces.

“Hasan wrote a note and gave it to me to deliver to Shekure. It described how Shevket had come home to await the return of his father, how Shekure had been married in an illegitimate ceremony, how Shevket was very unhappy on account of the false husband who was supposed to be his new father and how he was never going back.”

“How did Shekure respond?”

“She waited for you all through the night with poor Orhan.”

“What about Hayriye?”

“Hayriye’s been waiting for years for the opportunity to drown your beautiful wife in a spoonful of water. This was why she began sleeping with your Enishte, may he rest in peace. When Hasan saw that Shekure was spending the night alone in fear of murderers and ghosts, he sent along another note through me.”

“What did he write?”

Thanks be to God that your unfortunate Esther can’t read or write, because when irate Effendis and irritable fathers ask this question, she can say: “I couldn’t read the letter, only the face of the beautiful maiden reading the letter.”

“What did you read in Shekure’s face?”

“Helplessness.”

For a long time we didn’t speak. Awaiting nightfall, an owl was perched on the dome of a small Greek church; runny-nosed neighborhood kids laughed at my clothes and bundle, and a mangy dog happily scratching himself loped down from the cemetery lined with cypresses to greet the night.

“Slow down!” I shouted at Black later, “I can’t get up these hills the way you can. Where are you taking me with my satchel like this?”

“Before you bring me to Hasan’s house, I’m taking you to some generous and brave young men so you can spread out your bundle and sell them some flowery handkerchiefs, silk sashes and purses with silver embroidery for their secret lovers.”

It was a good sign that Black could still make jokes in his pitiable state, but I could fathom the seriousness behind his mirth. “If you’re going to gather a posse, I’ll never take you to Hasan’s house,” I said. “I’m frightened to death of fights and brawls.”

“If you continue to be the intelligent Esther you’ve always been,” he said, “there’ll be neither fight nor brawl.”

We passed through Aksaray and entered the road heading back, straight toward the Langa gardens. On the upper part of the muddy road, in a neighborhood that had seen happier days, Black walked into a barbershop that was still open. I saw him talking to the master barber being shaved by an honest-looking boy with lovely hands by the light of an oil lamp. Before long, the barber, his handsome apprentice, and later, two more of his men joined up with us at Aksaray. They carried swords and axes. At a side street in Shehzadebashı, a theology student, whom I couldn’t picture involved in such rough affairs, joined us in the darkness, sword in hand.

“Do you plan on raiding a house in the middle of the city in broad daylight?” I said.

“It’s not day, it’s night,” said Black in a tone more pleased than joking.

“Don’t be so confident just because you’ve put together a gang,” I said. “Let’s hope the Janissaries don’t catch sight of this fully equipped little army wandering around.”

“No one will catch sight of us.”

“Yesterday the Erzurumis first raided a tavern and then the dervish house at Sağırkapı, beating up everyone they found in both places. An elderly man who took a blow to his head with a stick died. In this pitch blackness, they might think you’re of their lot.”

“I hear you went to dearly departed Elegant Effendi’s house, saw his wife, God bless her, and the horse sketches with the smeared ink before relaying it all to Shekure. Had Elegant Effendi been spending a lot of time with the henchmen of the preacher from Erzurum?”

“If I sounded out Elegant Effendi’s wife, it was because I thought it might ultimately help my poor Shekure,” I said. “Anyway, I’d gone there to show her the latest cloth which had come off the Flemish ship, not to involve myself in your legal and political affairs-which my poor brain couldn’t fathom anyway.”

As we entered the street, which ran behind Charshıkapı, my heart quickened with fear. The bare, wet branches of the chestnut and mulberry trees glimmered in the pale light of the half-moon. A breeze kicked up by jinns and the living dead rippled the laced edging of my satchel, whistled through the trees and carried the scent of our group to neighborhood dogs lying in wait. As they began to bark one by one, I pointed out the house to Black. We stared quietly at its dark roof and shutters. Black had the men take positions around the house: in the empty garden, on either side of the courtyard gate and behind the fig trees in back.

“In that entryway over there is a vile Tatar beggar,” I said. “He’s blind, but he’ll know who’s come and gone along this street better than the neighborhood headman does. He continually plays with himself as if he were one of the Sultan’s vulgar monkeys. Without letting your hand touch his, give him eight or ten silver pieces and he’ll tell you everything he knows.”

From a distance, I watched Black hand over the coins, then lay his sword against the throat of the beggar and begin to pressure him with questions. Next, I’m not sure how it happened, the barber’s apprentice, who I thought was simply watching the house, began to beat the Tatar with the butt of his axe. I watched for a while, thinking it wouldn’t last, but the Tatar was wailing. I ran over and pulled the beggar away before they killed him.

“He cursed my mother,” said the apprentice.

“He says that Hasan isn’t home,” Black said. “Can we trust what this blind man says?” He handed me a note that he’d quickly written. “Take this, bring it to the house, give it to Hasan, and if he’s not there, give it to his father,” he said.