Karakterler

Frau van Tiedemann (Frau Döppke)

A Dutch widow staying at the boarding house where Raif Efendi lived in Berlin. She is a lascivious woman with a penchant for sexual desires. She tries to deceive and draw Raif to herself, and on New Year's Eve, she takes advantage of a drunken moment to kiss him in a clinging manner, which causes a scene as it happens in front of Maria Puder. It is revealed at the end of the text that she married Herr Döppke, went to Prague, and passed the news of Maria's death to Raif while passing through Ankara.

Hamdi

The narrator's high school friend. Once a lazy student, he has reached an executive level at a large company dealing with machinery and forestry. He is a self-confident bourgeois figure who finds satisfaction in acting patronizingly toward those around him. He hires the narrator but despises Raif Efendi, who works in the same room, and takes a strange, poisonous pleasure in constantly belittling him.

Unnamed Narrator

The character who tells the first part of the novel. After being fired from the bank, he wanders the streets of Ankara in despair until he finds a new job thanks to a friend from high school (Hamdi). He is a young and observant man, devoid of ostentation, trying to hold on to life. He discovers that Raif Efendi, who sits across from him in the office, is not a meaningless or silent person, but possesses a hidden wealth inside while drawing that wonderful sketch (Hamdi's caricature). He grows closer to Raif, becomes the only person to look after him during his illness, and immortalizes the story of 'Madonna in a Fur Coat' by reading the black-bound notebook.

Maria Puder

Living in Berlin, she is the daughter of a Czech-Jewish father and a German mother. She is the creator and the living embodiment of the self-portrait 'Madonna in a Fur Coat' ('Kürk Mantolu Madonna') at an art exhibition Raif Efendi attended. While she is a painter in her own right by day, she earns her living by playing the violin and singing at a cabaret called Atlantik by night. Having been stung by the arrogant, sarcastic, and predatory attitudes of men, she has built a steel wall around herself. She meets Raif by chance and, realizing he is not demanding and selfish like other men, slowly and hesitantly surrenders her soul to him. In the meeting of two wounded souls, she is the strong one who makes the decisions. After going to Prague, she learns she is pregnant and dies during a severe illness and childbirth, leaving behind a massive void regarding her mysterious lost love whose secrets she kept.

Mihriye Hanım

She is Raif Efendi's wife and the mother of Necla and Nurten. A woman who has withered before even reaching the age of 40, exhausted by housework and the endless cleaning rituals of a crowded household. There is no love or attempt at understanding between her and her husband, Raif Efendi. Life has numbed her and put her on autopilot to such an extent that she finds no fault in her relatives acting as if they are the true masters of the house.

Raif Efendi

He is the main hero of the novel and the author of the black-covered notebook. Initially introduced as a man who works at a bank in Ankara, completely detached from the outside world, a quiet and introverted man whom everyone belittles and mocks. However, it is revealed through his secret diary that while he was in Germany in his youth to learn the soap-making business, he actually dedicated his life to art, museums, and books. He becomes profoundly captivated by the 'Madonna in a Fur Coat' painting he sees at an art exhibition, and subsequently by the painting's creator, Maria Puder. Having managed to escape his loneliness and unite his soul with another's for the first time in his life, he loses her due to the webs of fate and his own timid misunderstandings. Following the confrontation with the grim reality of death, he spends the rest of his life in silent penance, as a living dead man buried within himself.