They took off my vest and shirt. One of the executioners sat on me, driving his knees into my shoulders. Another placed a cage over my head with all the practiced elegance of a woman preparing food and began slowly turning the screw at its front. Nay, it wasn’t a cage, but rather a vise that gradually squeezed my head.
I screamed at the top of my lungs. I begged, but incoherently. I cried, mostly because my nerves had given out.
They stopped momentarily and asked: “Were you the one who killed Enishte Effendi?”
I took a deep breath: “Nay.”
They began to tighten the vise again. It was excruciating.
They asked again.
“Nay.”
“Who then?”
“I don’t know!”
I wondered if I should just tell them I’d killed him. The world spun pleasantly about my head. I was overcome with reluctance. I asked myself if I were growing accustomed to the pain. My executioners and I stayed still for a moment. I felt no pain, I was simply terrified.
Just as I decided from the silver coin in my pocket that they weren’t going to kill me, they suddenly released me. They removed the viselike contraption that had actually done little damage to my head. The executioner who’d pinned me down stood up without even a hint of apology. I donned my shirt and vest.
There passed a very long silence.
At the other end of the room, I saw Head Illuminator Osman Effendi. I went to him and kissed his hand.
“Don’t be concerned, my child,” he said to me. “They were just testing you.”
I knew at once that I’d found a new father to replace Enishte, may he rest in peace.
“Our Sultan has ordered that you not be tortured at this time,” said the Commander. “He deemed it appropriate for you to help Head Illuminator Master Osman find the rogue who’s been killing His miniaturists and the loyal servants preparing His manuscripts. You have three days in which to interrogate the miniaturists, scrutinize the illuminated pages they’ve made and find the sly culprit. The Sovereign is quite appalled by the rumors being spread by mischief makers about His miniaturists and illuminated manuscripts. Both the Head Treasurer Hazım Agha and I will help you find this scoundrel, as the Sultan has decreed. One of you has been very close to Enishte Effendi, and has thus heard his recitations and knows about the miniaturists who visited him at night and the story behind the book. The other is a great master who takes pride in knowing all the miniaturists of the workshop like the back of his hand. Within three days, if you fail to produce that swine along with the missing page he stole-about which much gossip is flying-it is Our Just Sultan’s express desire that you, my child Black Effendi, be the first to undergo torture and interrogation. Afterward, let there be no doubt, each of the other master miniaturists will have his turn.”
I could detect no secret gestures or signs between these two old friends, who’d worked together for years: Head Treasurer Hazım Agha, who commissioned the work, and Head Illuminator Master Osman Effendi, who received the funds and materials through him from the treasury.
“Everyone knows, whenever a crime is committed within Our Sultan’s wards, regiments and divisions, that the entire group is considered guilty until one among them is identified and turned in. A section that fails to name the murderer in its midst goes down in the judicial records as a ”division of murderers,“ including its officer or master, and is punished accordingly,” said the Commander. “Therefore, our Head Illuminator Master Osman will keep a sharp watch, scrutinize each of the illustrations with his penetrating gaze, uncover the devilry, ruse, mischief and instigation that has set the innocent miniaturists at each other’s throats, and remand the guilty party to the unwavering justice of the Refuge of the World, Our Sultan, thereby clearing the good name of his guild. To this end, we’ve ordered that whatsoever Master Osman may require be granted to him. My men are at this moment confiscating each of the manuscript pages that the master miniaturists have been illuminating in the privacy of their homes.”
IT IS I, MASTER OSMAN
The Commader of the Imperial Guard and the Head Treasurer reiterated Our Sultan’s decrees before leaving the two of us alone. Of course, Black was exhausted by fear, crying and the ruse of torture. He fell quiet like a boy. I knew I would come to like him, and I didn’t disturb his peace.
I had three days to examine the pages that the Commander’s men collected from the homes of my calligraphers and master miniaturists, and to determine who had worked on them. You all know how disgusted I was when I first laid eyes on the paintings prepared for Enishte Effendi’s book, and how Black had given them to the Head Treasurer Hazım Agha to clear his name. Granted, there must be something to those pages for them to arouse such violent disgust and hatred in a miniaturist like myself who’s devoted his life to artistry; merely bad art wouldn’t provoke such a reaction. So, with newfound curiosity, I began to reexamine the nine pages that the deceased fool had commissioned from the miniaturists who came to him under cover of night.
I saw a tree in the middle of a blank page, situated within poor Elegant’s border design and gilding work, which gracefully framed every page. I tried to conjure the scene and story to which the tree belonged. If I had told my illustrators to draw a tree, dear Butterfly, wise Stork and wily Olive would have begun by conceiving of this tree as part of a story so they might draw the image with confidence. If I were then to scrutinize that tree, I’d be able to determine which tale the illustrator had in mind based on its branches and leaves. This, however, was a miserable, solitary tree; behind it, there was a quite high horizon line that hearkened back to the style of the oldest masters of Shiraz and accentuated the feeling of isolation. There was nothing at all, however, filling the area created by raising the horizon. The desire to depict a tree simply as such, as the Venetian masters did, was here combined with the Persian way of seeing the world from above, and the result was a miserable painting that was neither Venetian nor Persian. This was how a tree at the edge of the world would look. Attempting to combine two separate styles, my miniaturists and the barren mind of that deceased clown had created a work devoid of any skill whatsoever. But it wasn’t that the illustration was informed by two different worldviews so much as the lack of skill that incurred my wrath.
I felt the same way as I looked at the other pictures, at the perfect dream horse and the woman with the bowed head. The choice of subject matter also iritated me, whether it was the two wandering dervishes or Satan. It was obvious that my illustrators had coyly inserted these inferior pictures into Our Sultan’s illuminated manuscript. I felt renewed awe at exalted Allah’s judgment in taking Enishte’s life before the book had been finished. Needless to say, I had no desire whatsoever to complete this manuscript.
Who wouldn’t be annoyed by this dog, drawn from above but staring at me from just beneath my nose as if it were my brother? On the one hand, I was astounded by the plainness of the dog’s positioning, the beauty of its threatening sidelong glance, head lowered to the ground, and the violent whiteness of its teeth, in short, by the talent of the miniaturists who’d depicted it (I was on the verge of determining precisely who’d worked on the picture); on the other hand, I couldn’t forgive the way this talent had been harnessed by the absurd logic of an inscrutable will. Neither the desire to imitate the Europeans nor the excuse that the book Our Sultan had commissioned as a present for the Doge ought to make use of techniques familiar to the Venetians was adequate to explain the fawning pretension in these pictures.