A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  “Don’t lose sight of the fact that both the United States and Russia are extensions of Europe.”

  “Okay, then, what is it that should be done?”

  İhsan raised his glass, “First we drink,” he said. “Then we partake of these fish that this sea of splendor has bequeathed to us. And we give thanks that we are before this sea, at this spring hour, in this restaurant. Later we’ll try to establish a new life particular to us and befitting our own idiom. Life is ours; we’ll give it the form that we desire. And as it assumes its form, it’ll sing its song. But we won’t meddle with art or ideas at all! We’ll set them free. For they demand freedom, absolute freedom. A myth, solely because we long for it, doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. No, it erupts from social life. But to cut our ties with the past and to close ourselves off from the West! Never! What do you think we are? We’re the essence of Easterners of taste and pleasure. Everything yearns for our persistence and continuity.”

  “Once you’ve let the past persist like that, why even bother with a New Life?”

  “Because our existence still hasn’t found its form, that’s why! In any case, life’s always in need of organization. Especially in our era.”

  “In that case we’re purging the past?”

  “Of course ... but only where needed. We’ll cast out dead roots; we’ll engage in a new enterprise and foster new people and society ...”

  “Where will we find the initiative to do this?”

  “From our own necessities and our own will to live; at any rate, we don’t need initiative, we need instruction. And reality itself will provide this, not vague notions of utopia!”

  Suad wiped his brow with his hand. “I’m not talking about utopia . . . but I want to hear the sounds of unadulterated folk songs. I want to look out upon the world through new eyes. Not just for Turkey, I want this for the entire world. I want to hear songs of tribute sung for the newly born.”

  “You want justice, you want rights.”

  “No, not like that! Those are meaningless words. The New Man won’t acknowledge a single remnant of the past ...”

  Mümtaz, with an eye on the customers entering through the door, said, “Do let us invite Suad to provide a description of this New Man!”

  “I can’t! He has yet to be born. But he will be born, of that I’m certain. The entire world is moaning from the labor of his birth. Take Spain for example!”

  İhsan: “If all you aspire to is that, rest assured, soon all of Europe, even the planet, will resemble Spain. But do you really think that some type of New Man has been born in Spain or Russia? To me, it seems rather that the ground is being prepared for human catastrophe.”

  “Are you making a prophecy?”

  “No, just an observation ... an observation that could be made by any reader of your average daily paper.”

  Suad fiddled for a while with his empty glass, then extending it to İbrahim, he said, “If you would, please.” Topping the rakı-filled glass with water, he took a first sip. “If this happened, what of it, anyway? It’s not that I oppose its occurrence. Humanity can only rid itself of obsolete life-molds through such a conflagration ...”

  “So it can be reduced to even more inferior molds. We all know the outcome of the last world war.”

  But Suad wasn’t listening: “Not to mention that war has become unavoidable now. Such convoluted accounts could only be settled through war.” Then he suddenly glanced toward İhsan. “You don’t actually hope for anything new from humanity, do you?”

  “Could one ever lose hope in humanity? I just don’t anticipate anything good from war. It’ll spell the end of civilization. I don’t expect anything worthwhile to emerge from war, revolution, or populist dictators. War means an absolute catastrophe for Europe, and maybe the world.” And as if speaking to himself, he continued: “I haven’t lost faith in humanity, but I don’t trust individuals. To begin with, once their ties are broken, they change completely; they become like programmed machines ... and suddenly it seems as if they resemble deaf and senseless forces of nature. The terrifying aspect of war and revolution is that it amounts to the sudden unleashing of a rudimentary force, one that we’d assumed we’d tamed through centuries of discipline, socialization, and culture.”

  “That is exactly what I want, revolution.”

  İhsan sighed, exasperated.

  “Meanwhile, we could hope for better. But what good is hope when humanity is this frail? Yes, it’s hard to trust humanity, but if we consider its fate, there isn’t a creature as pitiable as man.”

  “I admire mankind. I admire its power to fight constraints. Fully aware of its fate yet engaging in life nevertheless, I admire that courage. Which of us on a starlit night doesn’t carry the weight of all Creation on our backs? Nothing could be as beautiful as the courage of humanity. Had I been a poet, I would have penned a single work, a grand epic describing the venture of humanity stretching from our first ancestors who stood on two legs to the present. Initial thoughts, initial fears, initial love, initial stirrings of intelligence gradually becoming cognizant of Creation, the integration of everything that had once existed independently, the myriad innovations with which we’ve augmented Nature ... our act of creating Allah around us and within us. Indeed, I’d write only one piece. I’d describe how I longed to sing the praises of humanity awakening matter from its sleep and subduing Creation with its own spirit. Oh language that embraces all exalted things! Oh words, come to my aid!”

  İhsan eyed his food skeptically: “That’s quite a display of exuberance there, isn’t it, Mümtaz? You sound just like one of those nineteenth-century disciples of civilization.”

  “No, on the contrary. Because I don’t believe that these problems can ever be resolved. We’ll always kill and be killed. We’ll always live under some type of threat. I admire tragedy itself. True greatness resides in the courage we display despite our consciousness of death.”

  “Mümtaz yearns to write a poem on evolution from gorilla to homo sapien.”

  “Yes, the evolution from gorilla to human. Thank you for reminding me. Meanwhile, the war you crave is the obliteration of this notion. Now, are we to revert from human being back to ape? Dostoyevsky best understood the predicament in which we find ourselves.” İhsan returned his glass to the table without drinking from it. “The war that you desire will take us there. After two more world wars, nothing will remain of culture or civilization. We’ll lose the ideal of freedom for all eternity.”

  “I know that much as well. But the bankruptcy of spirit within us and the misery surrounding us, our penchant for expending men like so much fodder and the environment of fear this gives rise to ... then just think about the calamity of people’s realization that this is an obligatory part of life! All of it foretells the approach of the end of an era. We expect it, even if it proves to be an apocalypse.”

  “Keep the change ...”

  Adile glared scornfully at her husband, and in a soft voice that nonetheless glinted sharply and blindingly with a desire for bloodletting, hissed, “It just grows on trees, doesn’t it?”

  Sabih cocked an eyebrow, casting a customary look of sweetness at his wife. He knew the reason she’d be annoyed by everything for the remainder of the day. I’ll just sit in a corner and stay out of the conversation. Let our hosts put up with her! Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to his wife the way one might get used to the quirks of an old jalopy. She stalled randomly, occasionally her brakes wouldn’t catch, her gears slipped unexpectedly, and without warning she sped off full throttle. Sabih’s task was to prevent the old rattletrap from causing an accident. In essence she was a fine woman; he’d grown used to her. And their life together was comfortable. Granted, Sabih had achieved this comfort through rather extreme sacrifices. In order to win her for himself, he’d virtually relinquished half his personality. And I’m not quite sure one can get on in the world with just half a self.

  The phaeton driver, pleased by the tip, traced a wi
de arc, making the wheat-colored wicker seats and pied canopy of his carriage sparkle beneath the sunlight as he brushed past Adile. She fleetingly contemplated whether to take as a personal affront this dynamic turn made by the well-groomed horses in their spring-morning ease, and walked briskly, stepping resolutely with her heels as if she intended to pierce the asphalt that had begun to soften in the sunlight. Before her appeared a very rocky, windy, downward slope that she’d have to descend. She paused and waited for Sabih to take her arm. In these high heels even! She’d only yesterday purchased this pair and wasn’t willing to have them torn apart on this stony path: At least he’s good for something in such circumstances! Sabih didn’t squander the opportunity presented by fate to make amends. Even though his thoughts remained on the hips of the sumptuous girl – exposed to the bikini line – lying out on a chaise lounge on the veranda of the roadside house, he didn’t neglect to gently squeeze his wife’s arm with provocative pressure and mastery gained from thirteen years of experience. In any case, we’re paying a social visit ... And he slowly whispered into her ear: “Mümtaz’s life’s in peril ... What d’you think?” He had no doubt about the effect this single statement would make on Adile. He knew quite well that presently his wife’s face was convulsing in a multitude of small tremors like an oyster squirted with lemon. And simply to compensate for the torment that he’d intentionally inflicted, he continued squeezing Adile’s arm, however much his affection for his wife was limited to such gestures. “In peril! Because it was certain that Nuran had a soft spot for Mümtaz as well.” With hard-hearted determination to take the torment to its extreme limit, he abruptly added, “Or had they met each other long beforehand and were just playing us for fools?”

  “In all honesty, I don’t know, but I doubt it ... Is there any trace of such cunning in those two? Not to mention, why should they even attempt such a charade?”

  “But were you paying attention? The little girl also noticed.”

  “Naturally, the unfortunate dear!” And Adile, her heart in shreds out of compassion for Nuran’s daughter, hung on to Sabih with the weight of her entire corpus. What’s interesting is that at will Sabih can step into the cozy cadence of our engagement ... strange creatures these women, my word ... I swear that poor fool Mümtaz is senselessly snaring trouble for himself.

  Sabih felt a peculiar affection toward Mümtaz. Meanwhile, running over the strategies for calculating distances that his driving instructor had imparted to him, he gauged the remaining distance between their present location and the entryway of their destination as he gently stroked Adile’s forearm: “Whoa! Go easy now, dear!”

  Emma, with the measured coquetry of a woman who’d assumed familiarity with the male soul, expressed her delight: “Oh, they have lobster.” She was on the verge of clapping with joy. “You are aware, Fâhir, that yesterday’s lobster was exceptional!” Her voice was peculiar, like a cucumber marinated in mustard, and her tongue transformed Turkish words with jarring crispness. Despite this, she had almost no trace of an accent.

  Fâhir stared at her vigorous chin and stark white teeth with alarm: “And the next course?”

  She answered wearing one of her most endearing smiles: “Let’s think about that after the lobster.” But remembering how bored – naturally, like all Turks – the man with whom she lived grew waiting at the table for food, she added: “Maybe a schnitzel or a steak.”

  “Fine, a schnitzel or a steak for you.” He turned toward the waiter: “Which do you recommend?”

  The Greek waiter momentarily turned into Buridan’s ass, immobilized between the superiority of schnitzel and the nobility of steak.

  “But it won’t do if you don’t have any.” Emma’s voice verged on shattering out of compassion like a piece of glass in fire.

  In response to this affection and its cold assault, Fâhir tensed with a shiver emanating from his coccyx.

  “You absolutely must have some!” Emma insisted, displaying maternal tenderness and canny concern – for every man was partly a child in need of guidance: “And this morning you forgot to do your calisthenics!”

  On the beach in Constantsa, around the time they first began these calisthenics, neither her voice nor her insistence bothered Fâhir overly much. Back then the interest that she showed in him excited him, and he found unimaginable pleasures in this measured and controlled friendship.

  “Fine, I’ll have some too!” In this way, at least, he’d prevent her from talking. And with an odd determination, which she, too, noticed, he buried his head in the menu and tried to avoid seeing Emma’s teeth, her sturdy body, her broad chest that defied masculine strength, and all the features of this top-notch machine of gratification that had at one time driven him mad with pleasure, and now did so with impatience and even anger.

  Since returning to Istanbul, Fâhir had grown alarmed by Emma’s teeth. These pearly whites, unblemished and stark, resembling a mechanism that churned incessantly inside its rather exaggerated facial housing, left him with the impression of some sort of grinder that could reduce whatever it encountered to a pulp. This grinder would pulverize the lobster and afterward chew up the Viennese schnitzel. Ever so slowly ...

  “Wine or water?”

  “Rakı.”

  Fâhir, truly caught off guard, gazed briefly in astonishment at the woman sitting opposite him. Emma, however, had lost herself in distant seas that stretched out in tropical azure between the first mimosa blooms.

  “You’ve never had a taste for rakı.”

  “I’ve gotten used to its taste now!” Then she faced Fâhir with a gaze of affection: “You are aware, I’m an Istanbulite now!”

  Emma hadn’t grown accustomed to rakı at all. And she didn’t want Fâhir to drink anything, perhaps simply as an exercise of her own authority. But the encounter at the ferry landing with Nuran and, particularly, with her daughter, forced her to forgo some of her principles for a few days. In case of any eventualities, she thought it best to appear more ingratiating and docile for a spell. Till she came to better know the wealthy Swedish yachtsman whom they’d recently met, she needed Fâhir’s attentions. She repeated to herself: One month at the least ... Yes, she needed to remain close with Fâhir for a month at least. And then a Mediterranean voyage on a private yacht with such distinguished guests ... Not to mention that it was just the season. Athens, Sicily, Marseille ... She didn’t think about anything more. Because whether summer or winter, whatever the season, above all, she longed for Paris. She ought to go there, certainly. The previous trip to Paris, which she took before meeting Fâhir, was a waste. A miserable room, a humble restaurant that resembled something of a neighborhood kitchen, the tinkling of a piano coming from the next room till the evening, a few pieces of furniture bought on a limited budget ... Doubtless, she’d enjoyed herself immensely in carnal terms; but even for that, she could no longer stand certain deprivations. Not to mention that the time had come for her to settle down and start a family. She didn’t want to miss this opportunity. But fate always played odd tricks on Emma. This time around it happened as well. The elderly and wealthy Swede hadn’t just arrived on the scene alone. In tow was a young, dark youth who happened to be the yacht’s captain. Worst of all, this young man behaved as if he knew all of Emma’s proclivities by heart, arranging trysts for them, which she couldn’t bring herself to resist, and after giving her a languorous, lingering glance with his black, olive-shaped eyes, seeing no need to stand on formality ... This was how it had been last night at sea. How quickly he’d taken advantage of the general state of drunkenness, the moonlit night, and the silence. Along with being angry at her own shortfalls, she was happy to recall that intimacy again, and closed her eyes.

  But she didn’t waste time with this vision of contentment. These were all passing fancies. She mustn’t lose sight of essentials. Right now, that was Fâhir. She was quite curious about the effects of the morning encounter on him. She’d only been able to see Nuran for a minute at most, and she was jealous from her v
antage in life as a paramour. Nuran exuded more beauty than her in a different, deeper way. Despite this, she wasn’t curious about her; their presences were foreign to each other. What frightened Emma was the daughter herself.

  “You are aware, Fâhir, you behaved atrociously with Fatma!”

  Fâhir assumed a voice that she didn’t recognize at all: “I know ...” This is the third time! Always, “You are aware.”

  He was oddly upset. Never before had he found Nuran to be as beautiful. She was neither the Nuran that he’d seen during the months of fatigue during which they’d arranged for their divorce, nor was she the fiancée who appeared like a white dream behind the mists of years. She was a different woman altogether, one he didn’t know, a complete stranger, a woman he didn’t recognize despite having lived with her for a decade. I was so surprised that ... I wasn’t able to speak properly with Fatma ... I acted as if she were someone else’s child. But was this the real reason he’d behaved so coldly toward his daughter, or was it because of Emma and his fear of aggravating her? I’m so weak that I’m susceptible to any base folly . . .

  He raised his head and was met by Emma’s eyes, which seemingly read from memory everything he’d been thinking. She said: “I understand, Fâhir, if you want to make up with them. I’d never want to come between you and your daughter.” And in order to emphasize the resoluteness of this decision, Emma, as if announcing a general strike in the midst of the day shift, rested her fork at the edge of her plate. Her entire face bespoke forfeit and reverence for human emotion. With a habit that came from a lifetime of only pitying herself, her expression changed and contorted.

  Emma never asked. She just took. Her experiences as a fallen woman had absolutely forbidden her from asking for anything outright. Take it, grab it, lay siege, don’t let it catch its breath! But above all don’t ask! This was her motto. Begin with friendship! Always be understanding and patient! A man should sense that you understand him. Then spread your wings, don’t give him a chance to catch his breath . . . but ask? Never. The rich Swede was gradually sensing in his flesh Emma’s understanding, her wise compassion, and her generous companionship.