From the muddy ground upon which my head had fallen, I could neither see my murderer nor my satchel full of gold pieces and pictures, which I still wanted to cling to tightly. These things were behind me, in the direction of the hill leading down to the sea and Galleon Harbor which I would never reach. My head would never again turn and see them, or the rest of the world. I forgot about them and let my thoughts take me away.

This is what occurred to me the moment before I was beheaded: The ship shall depart from the harbor; this was joined in my mind with a command to hurry; it was the way my mother would say “hurry” when I was a child. Mother, my neck aches and all is still.

This is what they call death.

But I knew that I wasn’t dead yet. My punctured pupils were motionless, but I could still see quite well through my open eyes.

What I saw from ground level filled my thoughts: The road inclining slightly upward, the wall, the arch, the roof of the workshop, the sky…this is how the picture receded.

It seemed as if this moment of observation went on and on and I realized seeing had become a variety of memory. I was reminded of what I thought when staring for hours at a beautiful picture: If you stare long enough your mind enters the time of the painting.

All time had now become this time.

It seemed as if no one would see me, as my thoughts faded away, my mud-covered head would go on staring at this melancholy incline, the stone wall and the nearby yet unattainable mulberry and chestnut trees for years.

This endless waiting suddenly assumed such bitter and tedious proportions, I wanted nothing more than to quit this time.

I, SHEKURE

Black had hidden us away in the house of a distant relative, where I spent a sleepless night. In the bed where I curled up with Hayriye and the children, I was occasionally able to nod off amid the sounds of snoring and coughing, but in my restless dreams, I saw strange creatures and women whose arms and legs had been severed and randomly reattached; they wouldn’t stop chasing me and continually woke me. Toward morning, the cold roused me and I covered Shevket and Orhan, embracing them, kissing their heads and begging Allah for pleasant dreams, such as I’d enjoyed during the blissful days when I slept in peace under my late father’s roof.

I couldn’t sleep, however. After the morning prayers, looking out on the street through the shutters of the window in the small, dark room, I saw what I’d always seen in my happy dreams: A ghostly man, exhausted from warring and the wounds he’d received, brandishing a stick as if it were a sword, longingly approach me with familiar steps. In my dream, whenever I was on the verge of embracing this man, I’d awake in tears. When I saw the man in the street was Black, the scream that would never leave my throat in dreams sounded.

I ran and opened the door.

His face was swollen and bruised purple from fighting. His nose was mangled and covered in blood. He had a large gash from his shoulder to his neck. His shirt had turned bright red from the blood. Like the husband of my dreams, Black smiled at me faintly because he had, in the end, successfully returned.

“Get inside,” I said.

“Call for the children,” he said. “We’re going home.”

“You’re in no condition to return home.”

“There’s no reason to fear him anymore,” he said. “The murderer is Velijan Effendi, the Persian.”

“Olive…” I said. “Did you kill that miserable rogue?”

“He’s fled to India on the ship that departed from Galleon Harbor,” he said and avoided my eyes, knowing that he hadn’t properly accomplished his task.

“Will you be able to walk back to our house?” I said. “Shall we have them bring a horse for you?”

I sensed that he would die upon arriving home and I pitied him. Not because he would die alone, but because he’d never known any true happiness. I could see from the sorrow and determination in his eyes that he wished not to be in this strange house, and that he actually wanted to disappear without being seen by anybody in this horrible state. With some difficulty, they mounted him on a horse.

During our trip back, as we passed through side streets clinging to our bundles, the children were at first too frightened to look Black in the face. But from astride the slowly ambling horse, Black was still able to describe how he foiled the schemes of the wretched murderer who’d killed their grandfather and how he challenged him to a sword fight. I could see that the children had warmed up to him somewhat, and I prayed to Allah: Please, don’t let him die!

When we reached the house, Orhan shouted, “We’re home!” with such joy I had the intuition that Azrael, the Angel of Death, pitied us and Allah would grant Black more time. But I knew from experience that one could never tell when exalted Allah would take one’s soul, and I wasn’t overly hopeful.

We helped Black down from the horse. We brought him upstairs, and settled him into the bed in my father’s room, the one with the blue door. Hayriye boiled water and brought it upstairs. Hayriye and I undressed him, tearing his clothes and cutting them with scissors, removing the bloodied shirt stuck to his flesh, his sash, his shoes and his underclothes. When we opened the shutters, the soft winter sunlight playing on the branches in the garden filled the room, reflected off the ewers, pots, glue boxes, inkwells, pieces of glass and penknives, and illuminated Black’s deathly pale skin, and his flesh- and sour-cherry-colored wounds.

I soaked pieces of bedding in hot water and rubbed them with soap. Then I wiped clean Black’s body, carefully as though cleaning a valuable antique carpet, and affectionately and eagerly as though caring for one of my boys. Without pressing on the bruises that covered his face, without jarring the cut in his nostril, I cleansed the horrible wound on his shoulder as a doctor might. As I’d do when bathing the children when they were babies, I cooed to him in a singsong voice. There were cuts on his chest and arms as well. The fingers of his left hand were purple from being bitten. The rags I used to wipe his body were soon bloodsoaked. I touched his chest; I felt the softness of his abdomen with my hand; I looked at his cock for a long time. The sounds of the children were coming from the courtyard below. Why did some poets call this thing a “reed pen”?

I could hear Esther enter the kitchen with that joyous voice and mysterious air she adopted when she brought news, and I went down to greet her.

She was so excited she began without embracing or kissing me: Olive’s severed head was found in front of the workshop; the pictures proving his guilt in the crimes and his satchel had also been recovered. He was intending to flee to Hindustan, but had decided first to call at the workshop one last time.

There were witnesses to the ordeal: Hasan, encountering Olive, had drawn his red sword and cut off Olive’s head in a single stroke.

As she recounted, I thought about where my unfortunate father was. Learning that the murderer had received his due punishment at first put my fears to rest. And revenge lent me a feeling of comfort and justice. At that instant, I wondered intensely whether my now-dead father could experience this feeling; suddenly, it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room.

“Don’t cry, my dear,” said Esther. “You see, in the end everything has turned out fine.”

I gave her four gold coins. She took them, one at a time, into her mouth and bit down upon them crudely with eagerness and longing.