East-West Encounter in Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle
III
Never was the East-West encounter so masterfully portrayed as in The White Castle. Couched in elegant prose, the novel intricately plays on this theme with rare delicacy and subtlety. On the surface it appears to be a historical novel, but history remains obstinately at the backdrop, revealing only specters of the savagery and brutality of the Ottoman Turkish society. On a close reading one will find the tone of the novel is one of an importunate entreaty to treat man as man, Easterner or Westerner, which perhaps is also its thematic focus. Set in the 17th century Ottoman empire, the novel purports to tell the story of a young Venetian scholar (the unnamed narrator) who, while sailing from Venice to Naples, was taken prisoner by Turkish pirates and put in a slave camp in Istanbul.
The Venetian scholar refused to be treated as an ordinary slave. He used his European ingenuity and claimed knowledge of medicine and astronomy, and asserted that his services could be better used as a doctor than a slave. He treated some injured Turks using his commonsense: “after I had treated a few Turks, using my commonsense rather than knowledge of anatomy, and their wounds had healed by themselves; every one believed I was a doctor” (Pamuk, The White Castle, 8). Though he still lived in the slave prison, the misconception that he was a doctor gave him a little preferential treatment. He treated the prisoners and collected fees, and spent a large part of those fees on bribing the guards, who smuggled him outside and brought him food. With the rest of the money, he took lessons in Turkish.
His fame as a doctor reached the ears of the Pasha, who one day sent for him. The Pasha had a breathing problem which no doctor could cure, and, in the words of the narrator, “hearing of me, he had wanted to put me to test”(Pamuk 10). Seeing the symptoms of the Pasha’s ailment—the shortness of breath and cough—the narrator prepared a simple mint-flavored sweet syrup with whatever he could lay his hands on in the Pasha’s kitchen, and administered the potion to him, hoping that the gentle, cool north wind would cure him.
A month later he was again called for by the Pasha in the middle of the night. He went with trepidation, but was relieved to see that the Pasha was “up on his feet and in good spirits” (Pamuk 10). The Pasha said that he was cured of his illness and said that “I was good doctor” (Pamuk 10). When the Pasha wanted him to ask a favor in return, he only begged him to free him from the prison and explained, “. . . I was being worn out pointlessly with heavy labour when I could be more useful if I were occupied with Astronomy and medicine” (Pamuk 11).
A week later, an officer came and freed him of the shackles and warned him not to try to escape. Three days later the officer came again and gave him new clothes. He was still to go to work like the other slaves, but they treated him with a little respect. By now he was earning good money as a doctor, but the prospects of his freedom from prison seemed remote, and the waiting was interminable.
Seasons passed, and during the following autumn he was once again summoned to the Pasha’s mansion. There he was shocked to see a person who was his mirror-image—his double: “the resemblance between myself and the man who entered the room was incredible! It was me there . . . for the first instant this was what I thought” (Pamuk 11). This man, whom the Pasha called Hoja (master), was given custody of the Venetian scholar. The Pasha ordered them both to make a unique fireworks display for the wedding he had planned.
From here on the novel takes a post-modernist twist, playing intricately on the doppelganger theme. Hoja, the master, wanted his European slave to instruct him in Western science and technology, medicine, and pyrotechnics. But his curiosity was not satiated at that; he wanted to know more from him. He even contemplated whether, given knowledge of each other’s most intimate secrets, they could exchange their identities.
Over the years their relationship changed—the master and the slave alternating domination of each other. The author takes full advantage of the look-alike characters and deftly plays them against each other. The master-slave duo became fairly popular as scientists in Istanbul, which drew the attention of the sultan. One day the young sovereign summoned them to his palace and ordered them to develop a war-machine to aid him in his war against the Poles. The two developed a cumbersome engine, which hindered more than it helped the sultan’s army, crushing the soldiers who were employed to run it. At the most critical juncture, when the sultan’s army was about to launch an assault, the weapon foundered in a swamp under its own weight and became ineffective:
I knew only too well that when we joined the siege in the morning Our weapon would founder in the swamp leaving the men inside and around it to die, that as a result there would be voices demanding my head to silence the rumour of a curse, the fear, and the grumbling of soldiers, and I knew Hoja realized as much (Pamuk 128-29).
The weapon’s failure and the gossip about its bringing bad luck sent a chill down Hoja’s spine. He remembered painfully that the former imperial astrologer was put to death under similar circumstances. Hoja panicked, though he maintained an outward veneer of cool composure. He had decided to escape to Italy, but guarded the secret very closely. The Venetian slave, being his alter ego, however, could guess what was passing in Hoja’s mind: “At the time he explained nothing to me, he was rushing like someone about to leave on a journey. He said there was a thick fog outside. I understood” (Pamuk 129). He even seemed to feel intuitively what Hoja would need to camouflage his identity in Italy without rousing suspicion:
We exchanged clothes without haste and without speaking. I gave him my ring and the medallion I managed to keep from him all these years. Inside it there was picture of my grand mother’s mother and a lock of my fiancée’s hair that had gone white; I believed he liked it, he put it around his neck. Then he left the tent and was gone. I watched him slowly disappear in the silent fog (Pamuk 130).
Taking advantage of the thick fog, he escaped to Italy, where he successfully acted as a proxy for the Venetian, about whose childhood, relatives, and other intimate details he knew. Later the Venetian received reports confirming that Hoja was doing well in Italy. He was lecturing, writing books, and living a life of peace and prosperity. It was now the Venetian’s turn to pretend as the Hoja in Istanbul, and to convince the sultan and the gossip-mongers that he was the real Hoja.
For the next seven years he kept the secret close to his chest before he realized that it did not really matter who he was. At times he suspected that the sultan had discovered his secret, especially when he asked searching questions about his identity. But by now he was experienced enough to handle such questions without betraying the slightest sign of nervousness, and he answered them with a philosophical evasion: “. . . of what importance is it who a man is? The important thing is what we have done or will do”(Pamuk 134). In all those years he had amassed a lot of wealth as the imperial astrologer. He had been happily married and fathered four children. But being in the profession of astrology, he had gained an insight into the future and foresaw trouble. He therefore gave up his position in the court and moved to Gebeze, another Turkish town away from Istanbul, to live peacefully and pursue his favorite pastime: reading books and writing stories.
