My Name is Red 精彩片段：
I AM CALLED “BUTTERFLY”
I saw the mob and knew the Erzurumis had begun slaying us witty miniaturists.
Black was also in the crowd watching the attack. I saw him holding a dagger accompanied by a group of odd-looking men, the well-known Esther the clothier and other women carrying cloth sacks. I had an urge to flee after seeing the establishment cruelly wrecked and the coffeehouse-goers beaten mercilessly as they tried to leave. Later, another mob, perhaps the Janissaries, arrived. The Erzurumis snuffed out their torches and fled.
There was nobody at the dark entrance of the coffeehouse, and no one was looking. I walked inside. Everything was in shambles. I stepped on the shattered cups, plates, glasses and bowls. An oil lamp hanging from a nail high on the wall hadn’t died out during the turmoil but only illuminated the soot marks on the ceiling, leaving in darkness the floor strewn with the boards of wrecked wood benches, broken low tables and other debris.
Stacking long cushions atop one another, I reached up and grabbed hold of the oil lamp. Within its circle of light, I noticed bodies lying on the floor. When I saw that one face was covered in blood, I turned away, and went to the next. The second body was moaning, and upon seeing my lamp, made a childlike noise.
Someone else entered. At first I was alarmed, though I could sense it was Black. The both of us leaned over the third body sprawled on the floor. As I lowered the lamp to his head, we saw what we’d suspected: They’d killed the storyteller.
There was no trace of blood on his face, which was made up like a woman’s, but his chin, brow and rouge-covered mouth were battered, and judging by his neck, covered in bruises, he’d been throttled. His hands were cast backward over his head on either side. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that one of them held the old man’s arms behind his back while the others beat him in the face before strangling him. I wonder, had they said, “Cut out his tongue so he never again slanders his Excellency the Preacher Hoja Effendi,” and then set about doing so?
“Bring the lamp here,” said Black. Near the stove, the light of the lamp struck broken coffee grinders, sieves, scales and pieces of broken coffee cups lying in the mud of spilled coffee. In the corner where the storyteller hung his pictures each night, Black was searching for the performer’s props, sash, magician’s handkerchief and popping stick. Black said he was after the pictures and held the lamp he’d taken from me to my face: Yes, of course I’d drawn two of them out of a sense of fraternity. We could find nothing but the Persian skullcap that the deceased wore over his perfectly shaved head.
Seeing no one else, we exited into the blackness of night through a narrow passageway that led away from the back door. During the raid much of the crowd and the artists within probably escaped through this door, but the knocked-over planters and bags of coffee strewn everywhere indicated that there was a struggle here as well.
The fact that the coffeehouse was raided and the master storyteller murdered, coupled with the terrifying blackness of night, brought Black and I closer together. This was also what caused the silence between us. We passed two more streets. Black handed the lamp back to me, then he drew his dagger and pressed it to my throat.
“We’re going to your house,” he said. “I want to search it so I can put my mind at ease.”
“It’s already been searched.”
Rather than be offended by him, I had the urge to tease him. Didn’t Black’s belief in the disgraceful rumors about me simply prove he was also jealous of me? He held the dagger without much confidence.
My house was opposite the direction we were heading along the road leading away from the coffeehouse. We tacked right and left down neighborhood streets and passed through empty gardens that bore the depressing scent of damp and lonely trees as we traced a wide arc back toward my house. We’d covered more than half the route, when Black stopped and said:“For two days, Master Osman and I examined the masterpieces of the legendary masters in the Treasury.”
Much later, nearly screaming, I said, “After a certain age, even if a painter shares a worktable with Bihzad, what he sees may please his eyes and bring contentment and excitement to his soul, but it won’t