A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  “Doesn’t the era itself contribute something?”

  “Of course. But the exception transcends the era. One might be tempted to assume that they lived lives of privilege. For example, neither of them attempted to reform the world. Meanwhile, your neighbor of fame, the seventeenth-century preacher Vanî Efendi, did just that, and in the process spoiled everybody’s peace of mind and contentment. He was defeated by despair ... My first two examples are artists who discovered the secret of living in a manner faithful to their inner selves. It seems to me that the others are but deluding themselves.”

  Mümtaz gazed about as if wanting to escape the convoluted diatribe into which he’d fallen. Dusk began a vast suite of traditional Ottoman music. Every instrument of light prepared to play the swan song of the sun. And every single entity was one such luculent instrument. Even Nuran’s face, even her hand fiddling with its coffee spoon ...

  “Do you think we should go somewhere from here?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Büyükdere or İstinye ...”

  The day was coming to a close now. But he didn’t want it to end. Maybe there, farther on, the sunlight would continue.

  “Why don’t you explain what you mean by despair, Mümtaz?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Despair is the consciousness of death, or rather the way death affects us ... the array of snares it sets in our lives ... the teeth of a vise that constricts our every move. Every act, regardless of type, is a result of despair. Particularly in this period of open fear that won’t scab over ... One by one, our continual rejection of cherished things. The fear of turning into one’s father. And, finally, the realization that whatever one does, death is inescapable. At least, they say, let death catch me at an extreme, while hurtling toward one of the poles: either while singing ‘the Internationale’ en masse or while goose-stepping ...”

  He himself, at this moment, was somewhat in the throes of this dread. A golden light shone in the house windows of the opposite shore and embellished the Bosphorus waves. He felt that this light alone saved them. Without it, they’d suffocate, they’d be interred at the base of this chinar. He was honestly content and wanted to act within this happiness. Though his old dilemma was afflicting him as well.

  Nuran no longer asked any questions. She’d become lost in her own thoughts, resigning herself to the will of the twilight. The fresh air had fatigued her. The following question confronted her ad nauseam: What will the end result of this ordeal be? The best thing to do was to forget, to not think about anything. She was experiencing the serene pleasure of surrendering herself to the moment. İclâl, however, ruminated. İclâl wasn’t affected by the will of the twilight. She hadn’t even once brought to mind the etiquette cultivated by death. The petite, innocent youth, dedicated to everything around her, simply lived. Countless days stretched before her, and she dressed them in her hopes like little puppets. She dressed all of them in the fabric and accoutrements of love, longing, a stable household, of work hours, expectations, and even, if necessary, of toil and of friendship. She knew just how they should be appointed. But she couldn’t see their faces; their faces were turned toward the wall known as the future. At the appropriate time, these faces turned backward one by one, faced İclâl and curtsied before her, then slowly and without remonstration removed those exquisite glittering garments, and said, pointing into the distance, “Apparently I’m not the one, it’s most certainly another in line,” before passing beside her and lining up next to all the rest that had gone beforehand. This very spring was also that way. Spring, the spring she’d so anticipated and longed for in the midst of winter ...

  “Should we visit the historic lodge?” İclâl had suggested this seeing as they were so close anyway.

  “At this hour of the evening?”

  “Why not? And besides, it’s not evening yet. We’re in a hollow, so it only seems that way to us. It isn’t even six o’clock. Not to mention all we’ve been talking about. It isn’t easy, I haven’t seen anyone for almost a week. So much detritus has accumulated in me.”

  Nuran conjured a vision of Mümtaz, this fellow who repudiated action, afloat in his caïque, blockading the ferry landing. An exertion made out of pure despair. But this neophyte knew how to insinuate himself into a woman’s life. She nurtured a strange feeling of compassion and admiration for him. Mümtaz knew how to summon his mate. But how lonely he must be to call out with such patience and force. He should have at least been able to clear his mind.

  The lodge wasn’t as Nuran had anticipated. It had no grandeur. For his favorite beloved, Sultan Murat IV had merely had this small house built. It was barely large enough for her and Mümtaz to live ... And this thought endeared the lodge to her. She wanted to commit the floor plan to memory, because it might be of use one day. At least while lying in bed tonight as she thought of Mümtaz. Mümtaz informed them that this must be the Bosphorus overlook of the original structure. “Maybe the woods above had first belonged to this property.” Even if that wasn’t the case, another, larger manor house certainly once stood here.

  Nuran roamed about trying to read the old Ottoman calligraphy on the wall panels and watched her apparition hover in antique mirrors of time past. The peculiar redolence of the historic lingered everywhere. This, our scent within history, was so reminiscent of who we were.

  Nuran tasted of this elixir distilled from the alembic of ages. Mümtaz’s imagination churned elsewhere. It cast Nuran as a beloved of old, like a favorite odalisque of the age of Sultan Murat IV. Jewelry, shawls, fabric adorned with silver embroidery, Venetian tulle, rose-peach slippers ... a mound of cushions surrounding her. And he revealed his thoughts to her.

  “You mean, like an odalisque, is that so? You know, the kind painted by Matissse?” And she shook her head as she laughed. “No, thanks. I’m Nuran. I live in Kandilli, in the year 1938 and I wear more or less the fashions of my day. I have no desire to change my style or my identity. I’m not in a state of despair, not to mention that these mirrors give me a feeling of the forlorn.”

  Despite this, she didn’t want to leave. As she wandered the lodge, she acquired a taste for its pleasures. Here existed the beauty of simplicity. It wasn’t overwrought with excess and opulence like the châteaux at which she gazed in photographs in L’Ilustracion or English magazines. This was an abode of integrity. It was as overwhleming as the colors of an Indian sari, ornate and shimmering with unrefined gems, or the songs taught to her by her father ... and she heard the remorse of those songs within herself.

  They stepped outside. “What shall we do now?” said İclâl.

  “We’ll go home. This man overcome with despair will accompany us as far as the hill. As a reward for troubling him so, we’ll give him a little sustenance. He might have been dying of hunger over the last five days. Afterward, if he so desires, he can continue his blockade of the landing.”

  As she spoke, she watched Mümtaz’s expression, feeling viscerally the heat of the moment when they had kissed before a tarnished mirror awhile beforehand. Within the waters of the mirror – in whose depths slept reflections of the lives of hundreds of people she’d never known or seen – their heads and hands had unexpectedly united. So abruptly that it had startled them both. And Nuran’s jubilation arose somewhat from the desire to conceal this astonishment.

  Almost no further conversation passed in the caïque. Mümtaz’s feet rested in the hole at the stern as he skippered the motor. The Bosphorus was enveloped in dense silence, a quiet that seemed to embalm them. Instead of being engulfed by the setting sun, these three apparitions were wrapped in golden, honey yellow, and purple ribbons. Nuran disrupted the serenity first, perhaps aware of how brazen she actually was. Or maybe she wanted to further plumb the depths of the man who was attracted to her. “Honestly, you don’t have any aspirations to accomplish anything grand?”

  “Not grand ... but you know I have a job. I do that, nothing more.”

  He was intimidated by greatness. That w
as something quite sinister. Because more often than not it occurred by stepping beyond the bounds of life. Or else one lost the capacity for freedom of thought, becoming the plaything of historical events.

  “In that case, one gets lost in the tangled web of one’s own self or of events. In reality, in this concert performance of sorts there’s nothing grand or trivial. There’s only everything and everyone ... just like the current surroundings in which we find ourselves. Which of these waves or reflections of light could you dispense with? They glow and die out on their own ... They come and go, the loom weaves continuously. But why is it that you seek greatness and not just satisfaction?”

  Nuran’s response surprised him: “People are more comfortable engaging in such pursuits.”

  “But, then, those around them become more uncomfortable!” said Mümtaz.

  They pressed onward, to where the Bosphorus met the Black Sea, taking in the nightfall to its fullest extent. İclâl had sunk into daydreams. A house of her own, work, considerable work, responsibility, accounting, long waits, children’s clothes, food and meals ... From time to time she’d escape them all to contemplate Muazzez. Nuran and Mümtaz were involved. She’d gathered this much. Would she reveal this to Muazzez? Her good friend might actually harbor a fondness for Mümtaz. The only place she herself could permit such affections was in her soul, filled only with the lives of others ... No, I can’t tell her anything! But the news was exceptional. For once in my life I’d have outdone her with this tidbit.

  That night Mümtaz wasn’t able to lay eyes on Nuran’s house, which he’d so often conjured in his mind’s eye. On the walk back, Nuran, taking advantage of İclâl’s fiddling with her shoe, had discreetly conveyed to Mümtaz that it wouldn’t be fitting for him to come to the house. Her earlier boldness vanished when they entered her neighborhood.

  “I’ll phone and come pay a visit,” she said. But to stay with him a while longer, she suggested he accompany her to the pistachio trees, where they waited together for night to descend fully. There, Mümtaz listened once more to Nuran’s rendition of Talât’s remorseful “Song in Mahur,” along with a piece by İsmail Dede Efendi in the Sultanîyegâh makam.

  VI

  Nuran arrived on the appointed day. Mümtaz recalled that day many times afterward. Its memory was both a dagger twisted into his chest as well as a garden of the purest gold. He hadn’t forgotten a single detail. During days of torment, or times he noticed Nuran’s indifference toward him, one by one he’d recount these details, reliving them.

  Till then he’d only regarded Nuran from a distance as an alluring apparition. But from the moment she’d whispered into his ear on the road, “Don’t come now, I’ll phone and pay a visit,” this alluring apparition, this creature of distances had suddenly transfigured. As if these words, percolated into his ear, were an occult spell, feelings that had a second beforehand functioned solely to embellish, deepen, and enrich each passing moment abruptly assumed the force of fiery humors.

  Until that moment, the young man was satisfied simply by the presence of this beautiful woman, and when she departed, melancholy descended over him, yet he couldn’t imagine her as a part of his life. His feelings for her had only recently met with the catalyst of his imagination. These feelings amounted to elegant phantasies, trivial infatuations, posturings, and passing lusts. And a relationship could be established, one could love and go his separate way like this. Encounters of this variety included eating a table d’hôte meal, sleeping in rooms of the same hotel, traveling together by car, or laughing and being amused by a play or film.

  Mümtaz had had his share of these types of relations. But everything had changed the moment he’d felt Nuran’s face and lips pressed to his ear and, in such proximity, sensed her voice inflected by desire. From that moment onward, his imagination blazed. That large and astonishing forge, each second and within his very person, fired and produced an array of semblances of Nuran. These spasms amounted to a process of discovering himself within a state of shock or a new order and harmony.

  Nuran’s breath surging through his veins ushered in a chain of balmy, redolent springs; desire and lust for life flowed from him toward her, like herds of thirsty animals migrating to cool springs in midafter-noon swelter.

  Harboring the mystery of existence, organelles whose very presence was beyond doubt had come alive within the body. Mümtaz, respresenting an iota of being, now felt himself to be as vast and infinite as all Creation. Through Nuran’s presence he’d discovered his own existence.

  He lived in a universe made up of an array of mirrors, and in each he saw another Nuran who constituted but another facet of himself. The trees, the water, the light, the wind, Bosphorus villages, old make-believe masals, the books he read, the roads he wandered, the friends with whom he spoke, the covey of pigeons that fluttered above him, the buzzing summer insects whose bodies, colors, and life cycles mystified him were all manifestations emanating from Nuran. It all belonged to her. In fact, he languished under the sway of a spell conjured by his being and his imagination. Simply because that bewildering and opulent feminine creature, that profound nature so different from man, had momentarily transferred the heat of her being through his ear.

  Bizarre visions plagued him through the night. He was to marry Nuran. Such a love couldn’t just be left to chance. Mentally, he prepared his house. He sought out additional means of support. Finally, when on the verge of completing a long European travel itinerary, his eyes closed in Norway to apparitions of them arm in arm, watching the Mi’raj of Light in a fjord. But were they actually in Norway or in another spot in the world? Moreover, it seemed to him that they were passing by Anadoluhisarı on the Bosphorus, and he jerked awake in uncertainty. After that, he slept through a chain of similar fitful spells of lost consciousness. Nuran’s face, her smile, or unforgettable aspects of her mannerisms disrupted the nuances of a new dream, at which point Mümtaz would shudder awake, and the phantasies that he’d conjured in his previous interlude of wakefulness persisted. In this fashion, he passed the night living a novel that paralleled his own life.

  Unable to keep still, he rose at whiles, roamed about the room, smoked a cigarette, or read a page or two of a book. Then he’d get back into bed and try to sleep. Soon the same apparition appeared before his eyes with the same clarity, breaking the flow of the dream that he couldn’t comprehend, and Nuran would emerge abruptly from the downstairs foyer mirror, or the plum tree in the yard would assume her form, or he’d encounter her in one of the rooms of his childhood and when her face assumed its full definitiveness, he’d find himself awake in his bed with the following thought: Tomorrow she will come ...

  Before then Mümtaz hadn’t fully savored the magic of the word tomorrow. His life had only passed in present days. After the serious illness he’d suffered while a student at Galatasaray, thoughts of the past that had poisoned his childhood had diminished. Now, the word sparkled like a jewel within him: Tomorrow. Mümtaz sensed a spiritual opulence within, as if the sun, a golden egg within his own self, would bring creation itself to light from his own being ...

  Tomorrow ... an astounding, enchanted portal. A gateway that opened onto age twenty-seven, upon whose threshold he slept tonight. No wonder he was so frantic. For behind this door also loomed Nuran. She possessed both mysterious and familiar allures ... a gentle voice, a warm laugh, and other aspects whose elixir she dispensed at will – one as scarlet as murder, as searing as fire, and, oddly, as soul-stirring as light cascading from multicolored panes along with Koranic chants in ancient mosques. Beyond that was her life, into whose intimacy he desired access, his existence poised to merge with hers. The breezes of how many mountaintops, the waters of how many rivers and springs, how much longing and eternity would thereby achieve a union complete?

  He could withstand it no more. As if he didn’t want to miss a second of this vast and peerless tomorrow, he sprung from bed. He opened the balcony door; dawn had broken. Fog covered all. Creation was yet worki
ng the loom of genesis within the pearl of time. Only the opposite hilltops – removed from actual realities as hermetic forms and giving the sensation, as one gazed, that they might reveal the secret cipher of the origins of all things – floated above this shroud of icy sparkle like a phantom ship. Farther in the distance, a cluster of trees shimmered with more grace and flourish than they actually bore under the first shafts of sunlight that managed to reach them through an atmosphere thick with humidity.

  But the Bosphorus remained hidden. It flowed quietly beneath a thick foglike shroud of genesis. Toward the seafront of the village of Beykoz, this shroud accumulated more density.

  By the time he sauntered down to the ferry landing, it was at least seven o’clock. The proprietor of the teahouse waited until the sun made its full appearance before setting out tables and chairs. The seawaters were crystal clear. In places within the sea, whorls of light that resembled the memory of color more than color per se constituted a realm of unadulterated, crystalline essence.

  Into this twilight world a crimson motorboat, whose flat stern indicated that it had been made in Sürmene on the Black Sea, appeared unexpectedly before him only to vanish within a sense of detachment caused by having issued from the indeterminate. Calmly, the phantom of a more fantastic, narrower-hulled caïque followed in its wake as if it were a manifestation of spirit in a world of ideal forms. Like all phantasms and ideas born of the moment, they appeared ephemerally, then, as if the celluloid of the mind had snapped to be spliced elsewhere, another snippet began to play. Most disconcerting of all was the commencement and cessation of voice and sound.