A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  We aren’t just passive guests at a table; perhaps we’re always creating and producing the things in our midst. None of us accepts life as an arbitrary condition of material circumstances. Even thinkers devoted to analyzing this have stayed in the game until the very end. Everything comes from us, comes with us, happens through us.

  Neither death nor life exists. We exist. Both are inherent in us. All other things are just immense or tiny accidents passing in the mirror of time. A mountain on Mars erupts and disintegrates. Streams of molten rock harden on the lunar surface. New solar systems appear like the massive droplets of milk shimmering in the light of the sun amid the Milky Way. Coral reefs form at the bottom of the seas, and stars implode in colorful and fiery pyrotechnics in the shadow of the moon, like April flowers scattering in the wind. The bird eats the worm; in the bark of a tree, a hundred thousand larvae mature and a hundred thousand insects mingle into the earth. These are all phenomena that occur involuntarily. They’re refractions illuminating, and occasionally darkening, that vast, rare, matchless pearl we call Creation, that solitary blossom of time, that lotus of the ages.

  Only for mankind does time, monolithic and absolute, divide in two; and because time, this dim lantern, this sooty radiance, struggles to burn within us, because it introduces a complex calculus into the simplest things, because we measure its passing by our shadows on the ground, it divides life from death, and like a clock’s pendulum, our consciousness swings between the two polarities of our own creation. Humanity, this prisoner of time, is but desperate, trying to escape to the outside. Instead of losing itself in time, instead of flowing along with all else in a broad and continual riverrun, humanity tries to perceive time externally. Thus, time becomes a mechanism of torment. One lunge and we’re at the pole of death, everything’s over. Since we’ve split the unity of whole numbers, since we’ve consented to being fractions, we should resign ourselves to fragmentation. Momentum, however, sweeps us to the other pole; we’re in the midst of life, we’re full of vitality, we’re once again the plaything of our hurtling inertia; but yet again, by its very nature, the balance tips irrefutably toward death, and torments increase exponentially.

  Fate took shape intrinsically because humanity fled beyond the limits of time through the intellect, resisted the order of love, and sought stability in the midst of profound change. Humanity’s actual fate was being slave to the light cast by a small night-lamp used only for seeing in shadows; being slave to an apparatus that tended to turn the shadows and darkness into a dungeon; in other words, being slave and sycophant to a small disembodied homunculus of light. However, the essential homunculus was born of reaction and synthesis between fire and water. It had more insight. The experiences that formed it also made it cognizant of its regrets and of the impossibilities surrounding it. Thus, as Goethe wrote, it knew to crash into sea nymph Galatea’s carriage, to shatter its little glass-flask container, and to vanish into the vast and formless aether. But the small night-lamp had no such courage. It simply concocted a fable for itself; it believed in that fable and wanted to be the master of life. In turn, it was consumed by death, just like a stream that filled the first hole it chanced upon after diverging from the main source, where it would become the victim of all types of delusions, principal among them the desire to be itself. Nothing was as natural as humanity’s torment! It paid for existence, its genuine existence, through consciousness. But humanity didn’t leave it at that; next to this great, unchanging imperative, it created brand-new fates over and over again. Because it lived, it created various and sundry deaths. These deaths were always only the products of the anxiety of existence. For true death wasn’t torment but deliverance: I’m letting go of it all, leaving it all behind to unite with eternity. I’ve become that enormous pearl itself, glimmering where consciousness ceases; not just a single mote; rather, I’m the entire entity.At the frontiers of consciousness, where no illumination casts a shadow, I’m an enormous white lotus shining from within, burning brightly. But no, not at all, instead Mümtaz thought: I think therefore I am, cogito ergo sum. I perceive therefore I am. I struggle therefore I am. I suffer, therefore I am! I’m wretched, I am. I’m a fool, I am, I am, I am!

  VII

  Jumping frantically and involuntarily from one disordered thought to the next, he arrived in Eminönü. Now, if he could just board one of these ferries and set out on the Bosphorus. He hadn’t slept at his own house for a month. His house appeared in his mind’s eye; it was located in the interior of Emirgân, with an enclosed garden recalling the courtyards of old medreses, and a balcony from where the entire Bosphorus seascape, from Kandilli to Beykoz on the Asian shore, could be seen. The garden, filling with the sounds of bees and insects in the sunlight, contained a few fruit trees, a walnut tree, a chestnut tree before the door, and along the borders, a variety of flowers whose names escaped him; the door opened onto a glassed corridor that had once been a larder. This area led to a stone-paved anteroom that stayed cool in the summers and contained a large low table, a small liquor cabinet, and a large divan. The stairs were broad. Sometimes he and Nuran would recline there on two cushions. But she much preferred the upstairs, the large balcony, and the hall from where the view extended clear to Beykoz. He tried to distance himself from those days, days to which it was impossible to return. This wasn’t the time to think about it. İhsan lay bedridden; the disease within him, that nondescript bolus, had now assumed its full-fledged form.

  İhsan spoke through the language and torment of his affliction. It extended its countless tentacles like an octopus, latching on to everything. The illness was inside and outside him. Until Mümtaz was again at his side, this situation would persist. Until he took İhsan’s hands into his palms, asked “How are you feeling, brother?” until their eyes met, only then would the situation change, allowing him to pass back into Nuran’s time. There the world of separation began; the world of one who found everything estranging, who felt himself to be in eternal exile and whose spine shuddered from loneliness, the world of a man without a woman. A world made up of a host of heartrending absences. For a long time now, he had lived in interconnected rooms, passing from one to the next.

  The one to whom it was impossible to return had no intention of leaving him alone: She now appeared before him in the figure of two young ladies. They stood before him, one all tulle and folds in a printed silk dress whose reds were dominant, and the other flustered and panting in a low-cut yellow dress whose single ornamental button at the shoulder clashed with the simplicity of the design, giving the impression that it had just then been wrapped hastily around her body in as best a fashion as circumstances allowed.

  “Oh, Mümtaz, you’re happily met, how fortunate to run into you.”

  “Where have you been, for heaven’s sake? You’ve been out of sight and out of touch.”

  Both were pleased by this chance encounter.

  “Have I got some news for you,” said Muazzez.

  Nuran’s cousin İclâl wanted to change the subject, but no pressure could prevent Muazzez from confessing everything she knew to Mümtaz.

  Muazzez, however, didn’t know where to begin. Mümtaz still found the sweet thing likable despite her inability to keep anything to herself; she’d be injecting venom of this sort for the first time in her short life, both describing what she knew and also taking years of revenge on him. She wanted to savor the moment, but there was yet a third matter; she had to convey the news such that Mümtaz, despite all of his buffoonery – Allah, how dense he was, how had she fallen for such an idiot? – understood that she still cherished him and was immediately available to console him. But no ideas, nothing came to her mind. All she could do was stare at Mümtaz and grin, revealing the tips of her incisors.

  “Go on and say it already, what’s happened?” Mümtaz laughed as he asked.

  She actually had an attractive aspect. She was curt, spoiled, selfish, and senseless, yet beautiful. As sweet and appealing as a piece of fruit. He needed no con
vincing to like her, desire her, or love her. All it would take was to draw her face toward him from the ever-changing, ever-wavy framework of sandy brown hair and to extinguish the glint of her teeth by kissing her and biting her lips. A bright and delicious moment deep as a well. To expect anything else, to seek a further horizon was meaningless. Muazzez began and ended with herself. To the degree that one could forgo the possibilities that she openly and impulsively conjured, and continue on one’s way. At least, that’s how it is for me ...

  She would soon strike. She would tell him that Nuran was to be married.

  İclâl could stand it no longer; the charade had gone on too long; evidently the young lady didn’t want a matter having to do with her relative and their family to be exposed in this way. Nuran had reconciled with her ex-husband; what need was there for hesitation and evocative glances due to such a commonplace, everyday occurrence? As if surrendering herself to a void, she explained: “Maybe you’ve already gotten word, sweetheart. It isn’t breaking news or anything that Fâhir and Nuran have made up. They’re traveling to İzmir tomorrow. The marriage ceremony will take place there.” She stopped as if to gaze at the route she’d just taken and blushed immediately.

  Was there any need to speak to Mümtaz in such a clipped way? What else could she have done to defend Nuran against Muazzez? She softened her voice and added: “If you could only see how happy Fatma is ... She’s running around wildly shouting, ‘Papa’s coming back! Papa’s coming and he won’t be going away again!’”

  No vengeance remained to be had. She took a deep breath as if she’d been relieved of a huge burden. She waited for Mümtaz to respond so that she could relax fully.

  With difficulty, Mümtaz said, “May God bless them.” How had he groped for these four words and strung them together? How had he uttered the syllables from his dry throat? He didn’t know. But he was heartened by the fact that his voice wasn’t too hoarse. When he saw İclâl looking at him as if to say, “Say more, something more ... Save me from this snake,” he commented that Fatma had a great love for her father. Then he passed on to another topic. He was gradually gaining momentum. If he exerted a little more effort, he’d be able to act naturally. As he spoke, İclâl’s usual smile came to her lips. Her eyes laughed. With this expression, her eyebrows virtually merged with her listless eyes, making a languid and alluring shadow below her forehead. This much was certain, İclâl was one who lived the season of her womanhood naturally. She lived a life as modest and satisfied as a cat. It was enough that those around her were cordial toward each other; of course, this served her as well. Mümtaz knew what she’d been thinking for the past few minutes. She was content now. They were all satisfied; after so many destructive episodes, Fâhir was content with his wife, Nuran with her daughter, İclâl with her sense of family, Muazzez because she’d informed Mümtaz more or less on her own that his horizon of joy had been obliterated; indeed, they were all satisfied and now free to go their separate ways.

  “I’d walk with you to the ferry, but I have so much to do.”

  “Oh, thanks, and we missed the 5:05 on your account ...”

  Mümtaz didn’t want to mention that İhsan was at home, sick. It’d only rouse their pity for naught.

  “I really do have business to attend to,” he said, and departed.

  Farther ahead, he turned around. The yellow outfit and the red silk print were still side by side; with small grazes, Muazzez’s skirts still caressed İclâl’s dress, but the pair was no longer arm in arm, their steps no longer knitting in the rhythm of mutual thought.

  Part II

  Nuran

  I

  Here follows the simplest love story ever told, so simple as to recall an algebraic equation.

  Mümtaz and Nuran had made each other’s acquaintance on the ferry to the Princes Islands one morning last May. That week an outbreak of illness had afflicted the neighborhood children. Nuran, accepting that she couldn’t ensure that her daughter, Fatma, stayed indoors, resolved to take her to her aunt’s house on the main island, Büyükada. Since divorcing her husband at the onset of winter, Nuran had led an existence solitary and withdrawn. The entire winter she’d returned to Istanbul just three or four times, and then only for necessities. Despite the divorce being the mutual wish of both parties – Nuran had made one last gesture of goodwill, agreeing to Fâhir’s request to initiate proceedings jointly based on incompatibility – the length of the legal process had left her all but exhausted.

  The whole affair had been a matter of disgrace besides: seven years after they’d wed, the father of her child, the man whom she’d loved and trusted, abandoning his home and family for two years in pursuit of a Romanian woman of questionable repute whom he’d met while traveling, had gallivanted about before one day informing Nuran that they could no longer be together and must divorce.

  Truthfully, this had been no union of contentment from the start. The couple had been extremely fond of one another but shared no physical chemistry; an ornery and jaded Fâhir and a simply resigned Nuran lived like two fluke inmates of fate, side by side yet shut off from each other, though cooperative when it came to matters of everyday concern. Fatma’s birth, at first, seemed to somewhat temper this sequestered and nearly joyless lifestyle. Though Fâhir loved his daughter immensely, domestic life had always annoyed him, and he found his wife’s introversion, silent and docile, forever confounding. In his opinion, Nuran was lazy of spirit. Meanwhile, she’d actually waited seven years for him to rouse her from her stupor.

  A feminine life, luxuriant enough to be precarious, pregnant to all possibilities, and fecund in every sense, simply persisted like an overgrown acre within feelings of inferiority in which Nuran blamed herself for the causes of a half-dreamy, half-fallow existence caused by nothing more than the absence of a cultivating force. Fâhir, a man overcome by his sense of possession, stifled all wants and desires. Thus, without having discovered this mine of wealth, he lived beside Nuran almost in sterility, nonetheless awaiting her passionate awakenings that would excite his instincts. And his intermittent returns to his wife, because they weren’t deeply nurturing and because he’d always been superficial with women, passed over Nuran like a wave cresting over a boulder without eliciting the slightest response. This nature of his might be aroused by a love affair focused on matters of the flesh, or rather by an escapade that fell into his lap. Emma, who’d encountered Fâhir on the beaches of Constantsa, entered his life through such a route. This handsome man was incapable of connecting carnally with a woman. However, Emma’s fifteen-year stint as something of a trollop was enough to overcome this lack.

  In the throes of jealousy, garrulous scenes, a guilty conscience, and frenzy – in short, improprieties of all stripes – Fâhir began to see himself in a new light. For two years he pursued his mistress, gasping and panting as if in a race, and when he realized that he couldn’t catch or surpass her, he just surrendered the reins.

  As a result Mümtaz met Nuran – the woman who would transfigure his life from alpha to omega – at a time when isolation had overcome her. Rather than be interred in the gloom of the lower deck, he preferred to sit on the upper deck, knowing full well that he’d be somewhat less comfortable. But what Istanbulite could keep from wondering who else had boarded the same ferry – especially with no risk of being left without a seat? He couldn’t bring himself to go upstairs without first peeping below, where he happened to see Sabih, a long-lost friend sitting with his wife, Adile; complaining inwardly, Couldn’t you have shown yourselves on any other day? Mümtaz went and sat beside them, and before long Nuran entered, clutching a few packages and a handbag in one hand and a flaxen-haired girl of about seven in the other. This husband-and-wife pair welcomed the new arrival with jubilation, exactly as they’d greeted Mümtaz.

  From the very first, Mümtaz admired the young lady’s handsome and well-formed profile, both her figure and face, which conjured a phantasy in white. As soon as she spoke, he thought, She’s most certainly f
rom Istanbul, and when she declared, “One doesn’t easily forgo familiar places, but the Bosphorus does become tedious at times,” he understood what she represented. For Mümtaz, there were two fundamental and requisite criteria for female beauty: principally, to hail from Istanbul; and secondly, to be raised along the Bosphorus. If not on that same day, Mümtaz learned in the coming weeks that the third, though perhaps superseding, factor was to resemble Nuran herself: to speak Turkish liltingly as she did; to face her interlocutor with the insistence she carried in her eyes; to lean toward one, when addressed, by cocking her sandy brown head; to make similar gestures of hand; to simply blush, moments after making a retort, astonished at her own pluck; to ply through the midst of life in a calm and nourishing manner, forever her own woman, like a river without pretension or anxiety, vast and wide – whose waters were clear enough to see all the way to the bottom.