After reading the letter a second time, I pulled myself together and gazed at Esther with questioning eyes, but she told me nothing new about Hasan or Black.

I pulled out the reed pen that I kept hidden in a corner of the pantry, placed a sheet of paper on the breadboard and was about to begin writing a letter to Black when I froze.

Something came to mind. I turned toward Esther: She’d fallen upon the rosewater sherbet with the joy of a chubby child and so it seemed ridiculous to me that she could be aware of what was going through my mind.

“See how sweetly you’re smiling, my dear,” she said. “Don’t worry, in the end everything will be all right. Istanbul is rife with rich gentlemen and pashas who’d give their souls to be wed to a stunning beauty, possessed of so many talents like yourself.”

You understand what I’m talking about: Sometimes you’ll say something you’re convinced of, but no sooner do the words leave your mouth than you ask yourself, “Why did I say this so halfheartedly, even though I believe it through and through?” That was what happened when I said the following:

“But Esther, who’d want to marry a widow with two kids, for Heaven’s sake?”

“A widow like you? Plenty, a slew of men,” she said, conveying them all with a hand gesture.

I looked into her eyes. I was thinking I did not like her. I fell so silent that she knew I wasn’t going to give her a letter and even that it would be better if she left. After Esther had gone, I withdrew to my own corner of the house as though I could feel my silence-how should I put it-in my soul.

Leaning on the wall, for a long while I stood still in the blackness. I thought of myself, of what I should do, of the fear that was growing within me. All the while I could hear Shevket and Orhan chattering upstairs.

“And you’re as timid as a girl,” said Shevket. “You only attack from behind.”

“My tooth is loose,” said Orhan.

At the same time, another part of my mind was concentrating on what was transpiring between my father and Black.

The blue door of the workshop was open, and I could easily hear them: “After beholding the portraits of the Venetian masters, we realize with horror,” said my father, “that, in painting, eyes can no longer simply be holes in a face, always the same, but must be just like our own eyes, which reflect light like a mirror and absorb it like a well. Lips can no longer be a crack in the middle of faces flat as paper, but must be nodes of expression-each a different shade of red-fully expressing our joys, sorrows and spirits with their slightest contraction or relaxation. Our noses can no longer be a kind of wall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments with a form unique to each of us.”

Was Black as surprised as I was that my father referred to those infidel gentlemen who had their pictures made as “we”? When I looked through the peephole, I found Black’s face to be so pale that I was momentarily alarmed. My dark beloved, my troubled hero, were you unable to sleep for thinking of me the whole night? Is that why the blush has left your face?

Perhaps you aren’t aware that Black is a tall, thin and handsome man. He has a broad forehead, almond-shaped eyes and a strong, straight, elegant nose. As in his childhood, his hands are long and thin and his fingers are jittery and agile. He’s wiry, and stands straight and tall, with shoulders on the broad side, but not as broad as those of a water carrier. When he was younger, his body and his face hadn’t yet settled. Twelve years later, when I first laid eyes on him from this dark refuge of mine, I immediately saw that he’d attained a kind of perfection.

Now, when I bring my eye right up to the hole, I see on his face the worry that plagues him. I felt at once guilty and proud that he’d suffered so on my account. Black listened to what my father said, gazing upon an illustration made for the book, with a look completely innocent and childlike. Just then, when I saw that he’d opened his pink mouth as a child would have, I unexpectedly felt, yes, like putting my breast into it. With my fingers on his nape and tangled in his hair, Black would place his head between my breasts, and as my own children used to do, he’d roll his eyes back into his head with pleasure as he sucked on my nipple: After understanding that only through my compassion would he find peace, he’d become completely bound to me.

I perspired faintly and imagined Black marveling at the size of my breasts with surprise and intensity-rather than studying the illustration of the Devil that my father was actually showing him. Not only my breasts, but as if drunk with the vision of me, he was gazing at my hair, my neck, at all of me. He was so attracted to me that he was giving voice to those sweet nothings he couldn’t summon as a youth; from his glances, I realized how he was in awe of my proud demeanor, my manners, my upbringing, the way I waited patiently and bravely for my husband, and the beauty of the letter I’d written him.

I felt anger toward my father, who was setting things up so I wouldn’t be able to marry again. I was also fed up with those illustrations he was having the miniaturists make in imitation of the Frankish masters, and I was sick of his recollections of Venice.

When I closed my eyes again-Allah, it wasn’t my own desire-in my thoughts, Black had approached me so sweetly that in the dark I could feel him beside me. Suddenly, I sensed that he’d come up from behind me, he was kissing the nape of my neck, the back of my ears, and I could feel how strong he was. He was solid, large and hard, and I could lean on him. I felt secure. My nape tingled, my nipples were stiffening. It seemed as if there in the dark, with my eyes closed, I could feel his enlarged member behind me, close to me. My head spun. What was Black’s like? I wondered.

At times in my dreams, my husband in his agony shows his to me. I come to the awareness that my husband is struggling to keep his bloody body, lanced and shot with Persian arrows, walking upright as he approaches. But sadly, there is a river between us. As he calls to me from the opposite bank, covered in blood and suffering terribly, I notice that he has become erect. If it’s true what the Georgian bride said at the public bath, and if there’s truth to what the old hags say, “Yes, it grows that large,” then my husband’s wasn’t so big. If Black’s is bigger, if that enormous thing I saw under Black’s belt when he took up the empty piece of paper I’d sent by Shevket yesterday; if that was actually it-and it surely was-I’m afraid I’ll suffer great pain, if it even fits inside me at all.

“Mother, Shevket is mocking me.”

I left the black corner of the closet, quietly passing into the room across the hall, where I removed the red broadcloth vest from the chest and put it on. They’d spread out my mattress and were shouting and frolicking on it.

“Didn’t I warn you that when Black visits you aren’t to shout, did I not?”

“Mama, why did you put that red vest on?” Shevket asked.

“But Mother, Shevket was mocking me,” Orhan said.

“Didn’t I tell you not to mock him? And what’s this foul thing doing here?” Off to the side there was a piece of animal hide.

“It’s a carcass,” Orhan said. “Shevket found it on the street.”

“Quick, take it and throw it back where you found it, now.”

“Let Shevket do it.”

“I said now!”

As I would do before I slapped them, I bit my lower lip angrily, and seeing how serious I really was, they fled in fright. I hope they return soon so they don’t catch cold.

Of all the miniaturists, I liked Black the best. He liked me more than the others did and I understood his soul. I took out pen and paper, and in one sitting, without having to think, I wrote the following:

All right then, before the evening prayer is called, I’ll meet you at the house of the Hanged Jew. Finish my father’s book as soon as possible.