My Name is Red

I AM YOUR BELOVED UNCLE

A silence filled the room when he confessed he’d murdered Elegant Effendi. I assumed he’d kill me as well. My heart quickened. Had he come here to end my life or to confess and terrify me? Did he himself know what he wanted? I was afraid, realizing how absolutely unacquainted I was with the inner world of this magnificent artist whose splendid lines and magical use of color had been familiar to me for years. I could sense him standing stiffly behind me, there at the nape of my neck, holding that large inkpot reserved for red, but I didn’t turn to face him. I knew my silence would make him uneasy. “The dogs haven’t yet quieted down,” I said.

We fell silent again. This time, I knew that my death, or my somehow avoiding this misfortune, would depend on what I told him. All I knew aside from his work was that he was quite intelligent, and if you grant that an illustrator must never reveal his soul in his work, intelligence is, of course, an asset. How had he cornered me at home when no one else was here? My aged mind was furiously preoccupied with this question, but I was too confused to see myself out of this game. Where was Shekure?

“You knew it was me, didn’t you?” he asked.

I hadn’t known at all, not until he told me. In the back of my mind, I was even wondering whether he hadn’t done well by killing Elegant Effendi, and that the late miniaturist might’ve actually succumbed to his anxieties and made trouble for the rest of us.

I was ever so slightly grateful to this murderer, with whom I was alone in the empty house.

“I’m not surprised you killed him,” I said. Men like us who live with books and dream eternally of their pages fear only one thing in this world. What’s more, we’re struggling with something more forbidden and dangerous; that is, we’re struggling to make pictures in a Muslim city. As with Sheikh Muhammad of Isfahan, we miniaturists are inclined to feel guilty and regretful, we’re the first to blame ourselves before others do, to be ashamed and beg pardon of God and the community. We make our books in secret like shameful sinners. I know too well how submission to the endless attacks of hojas, preachers, judges and mystics who accuse us of blasphemy, how the endless guilt both deadens and nourishes the artist’s imagination.“

“You don’t fault me for murdering that idiotic miniaturist, do you then?”

“What attracts us to writing, illustrating and painting is bound up in this fear of retribution. It’s not only for money and favor that we kneel before our work from morning to evening, continuing by candlelight through the night to the point of blindness and sacrifice ourselves for pictures and books, it’s to escape the prattle of others, to escape the community, but in contrast to this passion to create, we also want those we’ve forsaken to see and appreciate the inspired pictures we’ve made-and if they should call us sinners? Oh, the suffering this brings upon the illustrator of genuine talent! Yet, genuine painting is hidden in the agony no one sees and no one creates. It’s contained in the picture, which on first sight, they’ll say is bad, incomplete, blasphemous or heretical. A genuine miniaturist knows he must reach that point, yet at the same time, he fears the loneliness that awaits him there. Who would accede to such a frightful, nerve-wracking existence? By blaming himself before anyone else does, the artist believes he’ll be spared what he’s feared for years. Others listen to him and believe him only when he admits his guilt, for which he is then condemned to burn in Hell-the illustrator of Isfahan lit these hellfires himself.”

“But you’re not a miniaturist,” he said. “I didn’t kill him out of fear.”

“You murdered him because you wanted to paint as you wished, without fear.”

For the first time in a long while, the miniaturist who aspired to be my murderer said something quite intelligent: “I know you’re explaining all this to distract me, to dupe me, to get yourself out of this situation,” and he added, “but what you’ve just said is the truth. I want you to understand, listen to me.”

I looked into his eyes. He’d completely forgotten the formality customary between us as he spoke: He’d been carried away by his own thoughts. But to where?

“Never fear, I won’t offend your honor,” he said. He laughed bitterly as he circled around to face me. “Even now,” he said, “as I’m doing this, it doesn’t seem to be me. It’s as if there’s something writhing within me compelling me to do its evil bidding. Yet I need that thing nonetheless. It’s that way with painting, too.”

“These are old wives’ tales about the Devil.”

“You think I’m lying, then?”

He didn’t have enough courage to murder me, so he wanted me to enrage him. “Nay, you’re not lying but you’re not acknowledging what you feel either.”

“I acknowledge very well what I feel. I’m suffering the torments of the grave without having died. Unawares, we’ve sunk to our necks in sin because of you, and now you’re preaching ”more courage.“ You’re the one who’s made me a murderer. Nusret Hoja’s rabid henchmen will kill us all.”

The less confident he became, the more he raised his voice and the more fiercely he gripped the inkpot. Would somebody passing down the snowy street hear his shouting and enter the house?

“How did you kill him?” I asked, more to buy time than out of curiosity. “How did you chance to meet at the mouth of that well?”

“The night Elegant Effendi left your house, he came to me,” he said, with an unexpected desire to confess. “He said he’d seen the final double-leaf painting. I tried at length to dissuade him from making an issue out of it. I got him to walk over to the area ravaged by the fire. I told him I had money buried near the well. When he heard that, he believed me…What better proof that an illustrator is motivated by greed alone? That’s another reason I’m not sorry. He was a talented, but mediocre artist. The greedy oaf was ready to dig into the frozen earth with his fingernails. You see, if I truly had gold pieces buried beside that well, I wouldn’t have had to do away with him. Yes, you hired yourself quite a miserable wretch to do your gilding. The dearly departed had finesse, but his choice of color and application was ordinary, and his illuminations were uninspired. I didn’t leave a trace…Tell me, then, what is the essence of ”style“? Today, both the Franks and the Chinese talk about the character of a painter’s talent, what they call ”style.“ Should style distinguish a good artist from others or not?”

“Fear not,” I said, “a new style doesn’t spring from a miniaturist’s own desire. A prince dies, a shah loses a battle, a seemingly never-ending era ends, a workshop is closed and its members disband, searching for other homes and other bibliophiles to become their patrons. One day, a compassionate sultan will assemble these exiles, these bewildered but talented refugee miniaturists and calligraphers, in his own tent or palace and begin to establish his own book-arts workshop. Even if these artists, unaccustomed to one another, continue at first in their respective painting styles, over time, as with children who gradually become friends by roughhousing on the street, they’ll quarrel, bond, struggle and compromise. The birth of a new style is the result of years of disagreements, jealousies, rivalries and studies in color and painting. Generally, it’ll be the most gifted member of the workshop who fathers this form. Let’s also call him the most fortunate. To the rest of the miniaturists falls the singular duty of perfecting and refining this style through perpetual imitation.”

Unable to look me straight in the eye, he assumed an unexpected gentle manner, and begging my compassion as much as my honesty, he asked me, trembling like a maiden:

“Do I have a style of my own?”

I thought tears would flow from my eyes. With all the gentleness, sympathy and kindness I could muster, I hastened to tell him what I believed to be the truth:

“You are the most talented, divinely inspired artist with the most enchanted touch and eye for detail that I’ve seen in all my sixty years. If you put a painting before me which had seen the combined work of a thousand miniaturists, I’d still be able to recognize instantly the God-given magnificence of your pen.”

“Agreed, but I know you’re not wise enough to appreciate the mystery of my skill,” he said. “You’re lying, now, because you’re afraid of me. Describe, once again, the character of my methods.”

“Your pen selects the right line seemingly of its own accord, as if without your touch. What your pen draws is neither truthful nor frivolous! When you portray a crowded gathering, the tension emerging from the glances between figures, their positioning on the page and the meaning of the text metamorphose into an elegant eternal whisper. I return to your paintings again and again to hear that whisper, and each time, I realize with a smile that the meaning has changed, and how shall I put it, I begin to read the painting anew. When these layers of meaning are taken together, a depth emerges that surpasses even the perspectivism of the European masters.”

“Fine and well. Forget about the European masters. Start from the beginning.”

“You have such a truly magnificent and forceful line, that the observer believes in what you’ve painted rather than in reality itself. And just as your talent could create a picture that would force the most devout man to renounce his faith, it could also bring the most hopeless, unrepentant unbeliever to Allah’s path.”

“True, but I’m not sure that amounts to praise. Try again.”

“There’s no miniaturist who knows the consistency of paint and its secrets as well as you do. You always prepare and apply the glossiest, most vibrant, most genuine colors.”

“Yes, and what else?”

“You know you’re the greatest of painters after Bihzad and Mir Seyyid Ali.”

“Yes, I’m aware of this. If you are too, why are you making the book with that model of mediocrity Black Effendi?”

“First, the work he does doesn’t require a miniaturist’s skill,” I said. “Second, unlike yourself, he’s not a murderer.”

He smiled sweetly under the influence of my joke. With this, I thought I might be able to escape this nightmare thanks to a new expression-this word “style.” Upon my broaching the subject, we began a pleasant discussion concerning the bronze Mongol inkpot he held, not like father and son, but like two curious and experienced old men. The weight of the bronze, the balance of the inkpot, the depth of its neck, the length of old calligraphy reed pens and the mysteries of red ink, whose consistency he could feel as he gently swung the inkpot before me…We agreed that if the Mongols hadn’t brought the secrets of red paint-which they’d learned from Chinese masters-to Khorasan, Bukhara and Herat, we in Istanbul couldn’t make these paintings at all. As we talked, the consistency of time, like that of the paint, seemed to change, to flow ever more quickly. In a corner of my mind I was wondering why no one had yet returned home. If only he’d put down that weighty object.

With our customary workaday ease, he asked me, “When your book is finished, will those who see my work appreciate my skill?”

“If we can, God willing, finish this book without interference, Our Sultan will look it over, of course, checking first to see whether we used enough gold leaf in the appropriate places. Then, as if reading a description of Himself, as any sultan would, He’ll stare at his own portrait, struck by His own likeness rather than by our magnificent illustrations; thereafter, if He takes the time to examine the spectacle we’ve painstakingly and devotedly created at the expense of the light of our eyes, so much the better. You know, as well as I, that barring a miracle, He’ll lock the book away in His treasury without even asking who made the frame or the gilded illuminations, who painted this man or that horse-and like all skillful artisans, we’ll go back to painting, ever hopeful that one day a miracle of acknowledgment will find us.”

We were silent for a while, as if patiently waiting for something.

“When will that miracle happen?” he asked. “When will all those paintings we’ve worked on until we could no longer see straight truly be appreciated? When will they give me, give us, the respect we deserve?”

“Never!”

“How so?”

“They’ll never give you what you want,” I said. “In the future, you’ll be even less appreciated.”

“Books last for centuries,” he said proudly but without confidence.

“Believe me, none of the Venetian masters have your poetic sensibility, your conviction, your sensitivity, the purity and brightness of your colors, yet their paintings are more compelling because they more closely resemble life itself. They don’t paint the world as seen from the balcony of a minaret, ignoring what they call perspective; they depict what’s seen at street level, or from the inside of a prince’s room, taking in his bed, quilt, desk, mirror, his tiger, his daughter and his coins. They include it all, as you know. I’m not persuaded by everything they do. Attempting to imitate the world directly through painting seems dishonorable to me. I resent it. But there’s an undeniable allure to the paintings they make by those new methods. They depict what the eye sees just as the eye sees it. Indeed, they paint what they see, whereas we paint what we look at. Beholding their work, one comes to realize that the only way to have one’s face immortalized is through the Frankish style. And it’s not only the inhabitants of Venice who are captured by this notion, but all the tailors, butchers, soldiers, priests and grocers in all the Frankish lands…They all have their portraits made this way. Just a glance at those paintings and you too would want to see yourself this way, you’d want to believe that you’re different from all others, a unique, special and particuliar human being. Painting people, not as they are perceived by the mind, but as they are actually seen by the naked eye, painting in the new method, allows for this possibility. One day everyone will paint as they do. When ”painting“ is mentioned, the world will think of their work! Even a poor foolish tailor who understands nothing of illustrating will want such a portrait so he might be convinced, upon seeing the unique curve of his nose, that he’s not an ordinary simpleton, but an extraordinary man.”

“So? We can make that portrait, as well,” quipped the witty assassin.

“We won’t!” I replied. “Haven’t you learned from your victim, the late Elegant Effendi, how afraid we are of being labeled imitators of the Franks? Even if we venture bravely to paint like them, it’ll amount to the same thing. In the end, our methods will die out, our colors will fade. No one will care about our books and our paintings, and those who do express interest will ask with a sneer, with no understanding whatsoever, why there’s no perspective-or else they won’t be able to find the manuscripts at all. Indifference, time and disaster will destroy our art. The Arabian glue used in the bindings contains fish, honey and bone, and the pages are sized and polished with a finish made from egg white and starch. Greedy, shameless mice will nibble these pages away; termites, worms and a thousand varieties of insect will gnaw our manuscripts out of existence. Bindings will fall apart and pages will drop out. Women lighting their stoves, thieves, indifferent servants and children will thoughtlessly tear out the pages and pictures. Child princes will scrawl over the illustrations with toy pens. They’ll blacken people’s eyes, wipe their runny noses on the pages, doodle in the margins with black ink. And religious censors will blacken out whatever is left. They’ll tear and cut up our paintings, perhaps use them to make other pictures or for games and such entertainment. While mothers destroy the illustrations they consider obscene, fathers and older brothers will jack off onto the pictures of women and the pages will stick together, not only because of this, but also due to being smeared with mud, water, bad glue, spit and all manner of filth and food. Stains of mold and dirt will blossom like flowers where the pages have stuck together. Rain, leaky roofs, floods and dirt will ruin our books. Of course, together with the tattered, faded and unreadable pages, which water, humidity, bugs and neglect will have reduced to pulp, the one last volume to emerge intact, like a miracle, from the bottom of a bone-dry chest will also one day disappear, swallowed up in the flames of a merciless fire. Is there a neighborhood in Istanbul that hasn’t been burned to the ground at least once every twenty years that we might expect such a book to survive? In this city, where every three years more books and libraries disappear than those the Mongols burned and plundered in Baghdad, what painter could possibly imagine that his masterpiece might last more than a century, or that one day his pictures might be seen, and he revered like Bihzad? Not only our own art, but every single work made in this world over the years will vanish in fires, be destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect: Shirin proudly watching Hüsrev from a window; Hüsrev delightfully spying on Shirin as she bathes by moonlight; lovers gazing at each other with grace and subtlety; Rüstem’s wrestling a white demon to death at the bottom of a well; the anguished state of a lovelorn Mejnun befriending a white tiger and a mountain goat in the desert; the capture and hanging of a deceitful shepherd dog who presents a sheep from his flock to the she-wolf he mates with each night; the flower, angel, leafy twig, bird and teardrop border illuminations; the lute players that embellish Hafiz’s enigmatic poems; the wall ornamentations that have ruined the eyes of thousands, nay tens of thousands of miniaturist apprentices; the small plaques hung above doors and on walls; the couplets secretly written between the embedded borders of illustrations; the humble signatures hidden at the bases of walls, in corners, in facade embellishments, under the soles of feet, beneath shrubbery and between rocks; the flower-covered quilts covering lovers; the severed infidel heads patiently awaiting Our Sultan’s late grandfather as he victoriously marches upon an enemy fortress; the cannon, guns and tents that even in your youth you helped illustrate and that appeared in the background as the ambassador of the infidels kissed the feet of Our Sultan’s great-grandfather; the devils, with and without horns, with and without tails, with pointed teeth and with pointed nails; the thousands of varieties of birds including Solomon’s wise hoopoe, the jumping swallow, the dodo and the singing nightingale; the serene cats and restless dogs; fast-moving clouds; the small charming blades of grass reproduced in thousands of pictures; the amateurish shadows falling across rocks and tens of thousands of cypress, plane and pomegranate trees whose leaves were drawn one after another with the patience of Job; the palaces-and their hundreds of thousands of bricks-which were modeled on palaces from the time of Tamerlane or Shah Tahmasp but accompanied stories from much earlier eras; the tens of thousands of melancholy princes listening to music played by beautiful women and boys sitting on magnificent carpets in fields of flowers and beneath flowering trees; the extraordinary pictures of ceramics and carpets that owe their perfection to the thousands of apprentice illustrators from Samarkand to Islambol beaten to the point of tears over the last one hundred fifty years; the sublime gardens and the soaring black kites that you still depict with your old enthusiasm, your astounding scenes of death and war, your graceful hunting sultans, and with the same finesse, your startled fleeing gazelles, your dying shahs, your prisoners of war, your infidel galleons and your rival cities, your shiny dark nights that glimmer as if night itself had flowed from your pen, your stars, your ghostlike cypresses, your red-tinted pictures of love and death, yours and all the rest, all of it will vanish…”

Raising the inkpot, he struck me on the head with all his strength.

I tottered forward under the force of the blow. I felt a horrible pain that I could never even hope to describe. The entire world was wrapped in my pain and faded to yellow. A large portion of my mind assumed that this attack was intentional; yet, along with the blow-or perhaps because of it-another, faltering part of my mind, in a sad show of goodwill, wanted to say to the madman who aspired to be my murderer: “Have mercy, you’ve attacked me in error.”

He raised the inkpot again and brought it down upon my head.

This time, even the faltering part of my mind understood that this was no mistake, but madness and wrath that might very well end in my death. I was so terrified by this state of affairs that I began to raise my voice, howling with all my strength and suffering. The color of this howl would be verdigris, and in the blackness of evening on the empty streets, no one would be able to hear its hue; I knew I was all alone.

He was startled by my wail and hesitated. We momentarily came eye to eye. I could tell from his pupils that, despite his horror and embarrassment, he’d resigned himself to what he was doing. He was no longer the master miniaturist I knew, but an unfamiliar and ill-willed stranger who didn’t speak my language, and this sensation protracted my momentary isolation for centuries. I wanted to hold his hand, as if to embrace this world; it was of no use. I begged, or thought I did: “My child, my dear child, please do not end my life.” As if in a dream, he seemed not to hear.

He lowered the inkpot onto my head again.

My thoughts, what I saw, my memories, my eyes, all of it, merging together, became fear. I could see no one color and realized that all colors had become red. What I thought was my blood was red ink; what I thought was ink on his hands was my flowing blood.

How unjust, cruel, and merciless I found it to be dying at that instant. Yet, this was the conclusion that my aged and bloody head was slowly coming to. Then I saw it. My recollections were stark white, like the snow outside. My heart ached as it throbbed as if within my mouth.

I shall now describe my death. Perhaps you’ve understood this long ago: Death is not the end, this is certain. However, as it is written everywhere in books, death is something painful beyond comprehension. It was as if not only my shattered skull and brain but every part of me, merging together, was burning and racked with torment. Withstanding this boundless suffering was so difficult that a portion of my mind reacted-as if this were its only option-by forgetting the agony and seeking a gentle sleep.

Before I died, I remembered the Assyrian legend that I heard as an adolescent. An old man, living alone, rises from his bed in the middle of the night and drinks a glass of water. He places the glass upon the end table to discover the candle that had been there is missing. Where had it gone? A fine thread of light is filtering from within. He follows the light, retracing his steps back to his bedroom to find that somebody is lying in his bed holding the candle. “Who might you be?” he asks. “I am Death,” says the stranger. The old man is overcome by a mysterious silence. Then he says, “So, you’ve come.” “Yes,” responds Death haughtily. “No,” the old man says firmly, “you’re but an unfinished dream of mine.” The old man abruptly blows out the candle in the stranger’s hand and everything vanishes in blackness. The old man enters his own empty bed, goes to sleep and lives for another twenty years.

I knew this was not to be my fate. He brought the inkpot down onto my head once again. I was in such a state of profound torment that I could only vaguely discern the impact. He, the inkpot and the room illuminated faintly by the candle had already begun to fade.

Yet, I was still alive. My desire to cling to this world, to run away and escape him, the flailing of my hands and arms in an attempt to protect my face and bloody head, the way, I believe, I bit his wrist at one time, and the inkpot striking my face made me aware of this.

We struggled for a while, if you can call it that. He was very strong and very agitated. He laid me out flat on my back. Pressing his knees onto my shoulders, he practically nailed me to the ground while he raved on in a very disrespectful tone, accosting me, a dying old man. Perhaps because I could neither understand nor listen to him, perhaps because I took no pleasure in looking into his bloodshot eyes, he struck my head once more. His face and his entire body had become bright red from the ink splattering out of the inkpot, and I suppose, from the blood splattering out of me.

Saddened that the last thing I’d ever see in this world was this man who would be my enemy, I closed my eyes. Thereupon, I saw a soft, gentle light. The light was as sweet and enticing as the sleep I thought would straightaway ease all my pains. I saw a figure within the light and as a child might, I asked, “Who are you?”

“It is I, Azrael, the Angel of Death,” he said. “I am the one who ends man’s journey in this world. I am the one who separates children from their mothers, wives from their husbands, lovers from each other and fathers from their daughters. No mortal in this world avoids meeting me.”

When I knew death was unavoidable, I wept.

My tears made me profoundly thirsty. On the one hand there was the stupefying agony of my face and eyes drenched in blood; on the other hand there was the place where frenzy and cruelty ceased, yet that place was strange and terrifying. I knew it to be that illumined realm, the Land of the Dead, to which Azrael beckoned me, and I was frightened. Even so, I knew I couldn’t long remain in this world that caused me to writhe and howl in agony. In this land of frightful pain and torment, there was no place for me to take solace. To stay, I’d have to resign myself to this unbearable torment and this was impossible in my elderly condition.

Just before I died, I actually longed for my death, and at the same time, I understood the answer to the question that I’d spent my entire life pondering, the answer I couldn’t find in books: How was it that everybody, without exception, succeeded in dying? It was precisely through this simple desire to pass on. I also understood that death would make me a wiser man.

Nonetheless, I was overcome with the indecision of a man about to take a long journey and unable to refrain from taking one last glance at his room, at his belongings and his home. In a panic I wished to see my daughter one last time. I wanted this so badly I was prepared to grit my teeth for a while longer and endure the pain and my increasing thirst, to wait for Shekure’s return.

And thus, the deathly and gentle light before me faded somewhat, and my mind opened itself up to the sounds and noises of the world in which I lay dying. I could hear my murderer roaming around the room, opening the cabinet, rifling through my papers and searching intently for the last picture. When he came up empty-handed, I heard him pry open my paint set and kick the chests, boxes, inkpots and folding worktable. I sensed that I was groaning now and then and making odd twitching gestures with my old arms and tired legs. And I waited.

My pain was not abating in the least. I grew increasingly silent and could no longer stand to grit my teeth, but again, I held on, waiting.

Then it occurred to me, if Shekure came home, she might encounter my ruthless murderer. I didn’t want to even think about this. At that instant, I sensed that my murderer had exited the room. He’d probably found the last painting.

I’d become excessively thirsty but still I waited. Come now, dear daughter, my pretty Shekure, show yourself.

She did not come.

I no longer had strength to withstand the suffering. I knew I would die without seeing her. This seemed so bitter I wanted to die of misery. Afterward, a face I’d never seen before appeared to my left, and smiling all the while, he kindly offered me a glass of water.

Forgetting all else, I greedily reached for the water.

He pulled the glass back: “Denounce the Prophet Muhammad as a liar,” he said. “Deny all that he has said.”

It was Satan. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t even afraid of him. Since I never once believed that painting amounted to being duped by him, I waited confidently. I dreamed of the endless journey that awaited me and of my future.

Meanwhile, as I was approached by the illuminated angel whom I’d just seen, Satan vanished. Part of me knew that this glowing angel who had caused Satan to flee was Azrael. But another rebellious part of my mind remembered that in the Book of the Apocalypse it was written that Azrael was an angel with one thousand wings spanning East and West and that he held the whole world in his hands.

As I grew more confused, the angel bathed in light approached as if coming to my aid, and yes, just as Gazzali had stated in Pearls of Magnificence, he sweetly said:

“Open your mouth so that your soul might leave.”

“Nothing but the besmele prayer ever leaves my mouth,” I answered him.

This was just one last excuse however. I knew I could no longer resist, that my time had now come. For a moment I was embarrassed at having to leave my bloodied and ugly body in this miserable condition for my daughter, whom I’d never see again. But I wanted to leave this world, shedding it like some tight-fitting garment that pinched.

I opened my mouth and abruptly all was color just as in the pictures of Our Prophet’s Miraj journey, during which he visited Heaven. Everything was flooded in exquisite brightness as if generously painted with gold wash. Painful tears flowed from my eyes. A strained exhalation passed from my lungs through my mouth. All was subsumed in wondrous silence.

I could see now that my soul had left my body and that I was cupped in Azrael’s hand. My soul, the size of a bee, was bathed in light, and it shuddered as it left my body and continued to tremble like mercury in Azrael’s palm. My thoughts were not of this, however, but of the unfamiliar new world I’d just been born into.

After so much suffering, a calm overcame me. Death did not cause me the pain I’d feared; on the contrary, I relaxed, quickly realizing that my present situation was a permanent one, whereas the constraints I’d felt in life were only temporary. This was how it would be from now on, for century upon century, until the end of the universe. This neither upset nor gladdened me. Events I’d once endured briskly and sequentially were now spread over infinite space and existed simultaneously. As in one of those large double-leaf paintings wherein a witty miniaturist has painted a number of unrelated things in each corner-many things were happening all at once.