A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  When Mümtaz gazed upon his inamorata, he’d invariably think of this day, and ponder at length which of the forces of fate had united them.

  He wondered where and in which unfathomable depths it had been conjured: all decency, beauty, and simple essence, the soft suppleness of skin, the heavy breathing summoning arcana from the occult of genesis concealed in her body, and her physical presence in its substantiation cascading toward him from the darkness of mysteries; now tenderness, now caress, now stupor like another simulacrum of death, and then facets that were the pleasure and elation of resuscitation and resurrection under the orient of the sun; that is to say, contractions, spasms, and depletions that resembled the self-worship of her being in the Mihrab of the Sun. These profound unions, and upon their release the wellspring of yearning, couldn’t be contained by a single existence alone. They could only be the result of forces conjured in a remote and dark epoch before human cognizance or even existence. Nature on its own couldn’t achieve this intimacy. Happenstance alone wasn’t enough to enable the discovery of another within one with such impact.

  Nuran’s every aspect drove Mümtaz wild on that day. Her amorous surrender to love in expectation of pleasure, a moored vessel in calm harbor waters; her face veiled like a somnolent Istanbul morning; smiles emerging seemingly from beyond the present moment; each constituted a distinct delicacy and as he partook of them, the infinity manifest in one being awed and surprised him, as did the suddenly changing, incrementally waning rhythm of time: the consecutive descent of eternities. From that day onward, within him, a peculiar feeling of devotion transcending all other feelings began toward the woman whose greatest secret rested in simplicity. He discovered her slowly and gradually, like a landscape, and as he did so his admiration and worship intensified.

  Mümtaz never thought he could be so amorous and Nuran, so adored. Sümbül the maid had made all preparations the night before, leaving early the next morning. They took their meal downstairs in the kitchen, after which Nuran prepared demitasses of coffee. Catching sight of her in the old kimono – which Mümtaz didn’t realize had been in the house, though it was certainly Macide’s – of her skin through parting folds, and of the statuesque form of her figure; watching her as a luculent form in one or another posture ... these amounted to gradual and sweet inebriations.

  Mümtaz had planned an after-dinner tour by rowboat, but the young lady deemed it inappropriate to appear together in public. Not to mention that Mümtaz was besotted by Nuran’s nakedness, as were the very mirrors within the silent house that they had all to themselves. The walls, the ceilings, each piece of furniture seemed to have taken benediction from a sacrosanct visit.

  Besides Nuran’s semblances of beauty, Mümtaz savored the pleasures of observing her appropriate the household.

  “From the first day I came, I liked it,” she said.

  Finally, toward nightfall, they resigned themselves to parting company. Mümtaz accompanied her half the way back. According to Nuran, his presence beside her would be a risk. So-and-so might see them. When her shadow disappeared at the bend in the road, Mümtaz shuddered not knowing what he would do next.

  That summer was the apex, the pinnacle, the crowning jewel of Mümtaz’s short life. Nuran wasn’t only becoming, affectionate, and the object of his attentions, she was a friend and confidant. She displayed uncanny skills of perception and tried new things with grace and discernment. She understood music well and had a voice filled with swaths of sunlight, lucid and nearly bass.

  Beyond these qualities, Mümtaz was enraptured by her peculiar shyness and purity of spirit which no sin or sybaritic pleasure could undo. At the end of the season, even when she most assuredly belonged to him, their love remained as novel as during initial days, and the particular embarrassment of couples who’d just become acquainted still entered into their intimacy. Mümtaz spared no effort to prevent the dissipation of her bashfulness and innocence.

  Not to say that Nuran recoiled before life or exhibited timidity in the true sense. On just her second visit, she’d learned about his research interests. Mümtaz enjoyed debating every aspect of life with her. This same graceful reticence, along with the sense of measure that constituted one of Nuran’s main attributes, was also at play here. Nuran hadn’t tried to manage Mümtaz’s existence in any respect. She didn’t want affection to be a violation of freedom. As Mümtaz made a gift of his life and presence, she, like benevolent Abbasid caliphs of yore, accepted them promptly before returning them in turn. “It belongs to me but shall stay with you ...” Meanwhile, the possessor of this elegant restraint had relinquished her entire existence to Mümtaz, as she had her days, without even mentioning it or raising the issue. Even so, Mümtaz sensed that accompanying this generosity was an inner fortress that no force, not even love, could breach: a notion of independence, or at least a desire to be true to oneself and to avoid hypocrisy.

  From the first days of their acquaintance, adoration transfigured her open and simple countenance, with its hermetic contentment, into something of a riddle for Mümtaz. Without giving it much thought, trepidation of sorts mingled into the awe, the sense of worship he felt toward Nuran, recasting his existence as the tempest of a starry night.

  VII

  Adile hadn’t stepped foot outside of her Taksim apartment that summer. She didn’t want to ruin her select and newly assembled inner circle, nor to lose the men and women she’d gathered with such difficulty. Not to mention that Istanbul, even if it was summer, still seemed exceptional. Everybody went away, ventured out and about, yet always returned. And they even came around more frequently, because resorts and outings broke urban habits and forced those who couldn’t go anywhere closer together. Even one such as Mümtaz, who hadn’t shown himself for months, rang Adile’s apartment door around four o’clock one afternoon. As soon as she saw him, she was overjoyed. A smile appeared on her lips that nearly resembled a cry of victory. He’d returned at last. The lambie that had strayed from the flock had wandered and returned. But how transformed and reticent. Beneath his reserve rested a bewildering sparkle, as if ecstasy itself were being suppressed. He all but evoked entertainments of the harem after the premises had been shuttered tight and the windows had been draped with swathes of brocade to prevent the intrusion of unwanted eyes and ears. Not to mention that Adile wasn’t able to ascertain anything, that is, until such time as Nuran’s arrival. When she entered, the matter changed. Perhaps for the first time, Mümtaz saw the outfit of the lady of his affections appointed with such care. Though they’d belonged to each other for more or less a month, he hadn’t assumed that Nuran could transform through dress and attire alone. How everything had changed with her entry! And they’d been together only yesterday; yesterday he’d been in her embrace. While wearing her usual colorful blue summer dress cut from inexpensive cloth, she seemed to say, “I’m at the end of my means; this is all I can afford.” Presently, with her carefully collected hair, made-up face, and white linen dress, she assumed a different persona. Mümtaz feared receiving a greeting fit for a distant relative. With the calmness of one who plays her hand openly, the young lady asked him, “I’m not too late, am I?” In this way, she’d all but announced their involvement. Adile seemed to be oblivious to this blow.

  Sabih, simply beside himself, hadn’t cornered anybody of late with whom to debate political issues. His modus operandi resembled the way predatory animals stalked and hunted. He didn’t begin a diatribe immediately; after sizing up his kill, he crouched and withdrew to a corner, giving his prey its liberty in order to increase the effect of surprise. When the unsuspecting victim was most comfortable within an illusion of freedom, Sabih pounced, not allowing his prey to move a muscle. One after another, ad infinitum, he began to explain everything he’d read about world affairs in European papers over the entire week or, perhaps, month. His interests encompassed the whole of the globe like longitudinal and latitudinal lines. Everything from China to America, from British petroleum politics to the scheme
s of Hungarian landowners, from Hitler to King Zogu of Albania and Reza Shah Pahlavi, from Central Asia to Gandhi’s fasts, everything having to do with man’s fate interested this keenly perceptive mind. As Mümtaz listened to Sabih talk, he mused ponderously, What monstrous state would we be in if our digestive systems worked this way? Only if one turned orange by eating carrots and red from eating beets, only if people who ate rice, drank milk, liked fried mussels, assumed the smell, hue, or characteristics of these blessings of Nature in the most obvious places like an incriminating mark, only then might an entity emerge resembling these commentaries that were the very fruit and essence of Sabih’s long immersions of research. Tonight Sabih appeared quieter and more comfortable than usual. When Mümtaz arrived, he took the opportunity to gather up the newspapers and put them on the shelves. Such portents could never bode well. Mümtaz knew perfectly well that Sabih would soon fall into a convoluted web of incidents and a tangle of contradictions to which he would have to resign himself without recourse.

  “You’ll be spending the evening with us, isn’t that so, my dear sister?”

  Pleased at having lopped eight or ten years off her own age through her use of the word “sister,” Adile awaited Nuran’s answer. Nuran tried to explain that she’d only planned to stop in for a short visit and that she had to leave but neither Adile nor Sabih was having any of it.

  “In any case, you and Mümtaz are friends from over Bosphorus seas. Even if you’re going to leave, you’ll leave late. Let’s have a rakı.”

  “It’d be better for us to leave early. İclâl and friends will be coming by tomorrow ...”

  Only after he’d received assurances that they wouldn’t go did Sabih begin to delve into his repertoire about recent developments in Germany: In his good opinion, the German economy was in shambles. War was a forgone conclusion. Yet his austere and perhaps truthful judgments depended upon such long-winded proofs arrived at by such convoluted means!

  Excursuses gaped open like large cisterns or grottos; then he’d start again from the very beginning, making analogies and comparisons and sketches of contrasting situations in the air. Opposite Sabih, Mümtaz took the only precaution available to keep the monologue as short as possible: he neither asked questions nor responded, but only made occasional nods of agreement and waited like one beneath eaves during a downpour. These eaves might at times be Nuran’s pearls crossing the small indentation at her throat called the Bosphorus, or the cleft in her chin, which he so admired, or at times the puerile gestures and hesitations of her hands. He couldn’t fathom how a creature of such beauty had entered his life, and in this regard he had no faith in fortune. He listened to Sabih for hours as he sat in a state of enchantment brought on by the bashful, staccato laughter that transfigured Nuran’s face into a rose blossom beneath water.

  In Mümtaz’s esteem, Sabih was like the flailing tail-end of that baffling and fabled creature the newspapers called public opinion, hydra-headed vox populi whose actual number of minds remained a mystery. He understood that one lived through current events. Like a boulder washed by waves, he was content as long as he could feel events passing over him. Sabih had no need for an idea of his own; there was always the newspaper. Genera of papers constituted both his ship and his seas, both his compass and his captain. Excluding an occasional change in temperament, he seemed to issue hot off the press along with the editions and extras he read each day. Yet, as he spoke, associations multiplied, memories deepened, and ultimately he’d mutate into a beast of four or five ideas at once. Tonight was such a night. To begin with, he was a democrat, next he became a very fiery revolutionary. Then he sank into boundless love for humanity and, finally, into the austere need for law and order.

  Thank goodness for Adile. A number of items needed to be fetched from the shops. The maid was off and the doorman was ill.

  Amid these tirades and the delicious reveries of Nuran that greeted him, Mümtaz surreptitiously wondered how Adile would upset Nuran’s pleasure, what details she’d impart, which relic of bygone days she’d uncover; in short, the type of impasses she’d point out to forestall their love. He knew that Adile didn’t much care for Nuran in light of her open fraternizing with Mümtaz on the island ferry, her gracious manner with the young lady notwithstanding. A few days after that chance encounter, in the coffee-house they’d entered upon Sabih’s insistence, she’d said, “You have no idea, Mümtaz, what a heartless woman she is. Heartless and cruel ...” Adile knew quite well how worldly Nuran was and with what constant lack of means she’d walled off the will of her heart. Back then Mümtaz had ignored this broadside attack and changed the subject. What Mümtaz wondered now was how this woman, who only concerned herself with her milieu, would try to disturb their peace.

  Adile didn’t keep Mümtaz waiting long. With a wave of sincerity that gathered momentum with the second glass, she first praised Nuran’s beauty then described the automobile of a girlhood friend, her fur coat, and the evening banquets she hosted at her house. Finally, when her heart had drained itself of compassion, she revealed her sincere hopes for Nuran. From that mysterious wellspring called fate, she wished for everything that Mümtaz couldn’t possibly provide: ermine furs, jewelry, rubies, and the most luxurious automobiles passed before Nuran’s eyes, astonished by the abundance, as Adile concluded: “Vallahi! Honestly, my dear Nuran, when I think about all that you suffer to keep an ill child from being distraught! I could never display such patience. You realize these are your best years ... D’you have any idea what it’s like from here on out?”

  In this manner, after listing all of life’s possibilities to Nuran, she’d reminded her, by mentioning Fatma’s illness, that her actual duty was to maternal concerns, before advising her, despite everything, to live her life to the fullest. Only one possible meaning could be deduced from this advice. Had Nuran perchance understood? “Either be the mother of your daughter, or arrange a good future for yourself. You’re wasting time with this buffoon.” Even if she had, she wouldn’t have let on.

  Doubtless, Adile wouldn’t content herself with such subtle innuendo alone; she’d also make assaults of broader scope. But, two belated guests changed the composition of the night: a friend of Nuran’s father who’d given her tanbur-lute lessons at one time and a neighborhood friend of Sabih’s, a musician who’d be staying the night. With their arrival, the evening became a song-and-drink revelry.

  Since Nuran couldn’t possibly oppose the insistence of her former mentor, she resigned herself to this new turn.

  Though the musicians greatly admired a la turca music, they rarely ventured beyond the makams of the Ferahfezâ, the Acemaşiran, the Beyatî, the Sultanîyegâh, the Nühüft, and the Mahur, which were essentially climes of the soul ... But within these makams, they didn’t recite each piece simply as it was. According to Mümtaz, a la turca music resembled Ottoman classical poetry. In that case as well, one had to decide between genuine art and simple imitation. More precisely, pieces selected with today’s level of discernment, the criteria of Western tastes, could be deemed to be rather beautiful. In addition to these makams, they played Hüseynî: a few works of Tab’î Mustafa Efendi’s caliber and some of İsmail Dede Efendi’s songs; in the Hicaz makam, they played Haji Halil Efendi’s famous semâi; and they considered Haji Arif’s two famous pieces and the Suzidilârâ makam, entwined with the fate of the modernizer Sultan Selim III, to represent a pinnacle.

  These passions were rounded out by a few ecstatic pieces of rare vintage from the nineteenth-century reigns of Sultan Abdülmecit and Sultan Abdülaziz, saz semâi instrumentals, makam vocal medleys called kâr-ı nâtık, along with the works of present-day masters like Emin Dede, who kept alive the purest of classical tastes in the present like a belated spring or an exotic plant that adapted well to new soil. Mümtaz maintained that these works showed how classical Ottoman music merged with modern sensibilities and tastes. What he discovered in the old masters of schools of painting, considered to be “modern” now for the past fi
fty or sixty years, who were trained between 1400 and 1500, that is, a genuine innovation in aesthetics and sensibility, he also found in these musical genres, the beste, the semâi and the şarkı, and languid, gilded songs called kâr that resembled variegated and intricately carved wood ceilings or, rather, conjured Bosphorus panoramas as might be seen from sixteen-oared caïques, bejeweled and regal. In addition to these pieces, of course, there was the bark, the seed, the branch, and the tree roots; in other words, an entire assemblage of arboreal growth. Notwithstanding, what flourished here was the essential delicacy, the bloom of satisfaction, the absolute idea and the invigorating sap, the vision that was a rare vagary of chance, namely, the true reign, namely, the sultanate of the soul.

  In this musical dalliance of Nuran’s, her distinction from her beloved Mümtaz was that she loved gazel vocal improvisations, perhaps with the corporeal attachment of her muliebrity to the deep masculine voice, to its sorrow and its melancholia approaching primitivism. For her, a gazel-song that filled a summer’s night was an articulation of beauty, perhaps constituting an art form distinct from music itself. Furthermore, Nuran knew the strains and folk songs that she’d heard and learned from her grandmother, a well-traveled, experienced old Bektashi. A sparkling new horizon opened for Mümtaz through the way this daughter and scion of an established family, raised along the Bosphorus, admired, like an İsmail Dede Efendi or Hafız Post, and recited, with an expression particular to each piece, village dirges, türküs from Rumeli, Kozan, and Afşar, traditional dance music of Kastamonu and Trabzon, old Bektashi lyricals, and Kadiri naat-odes to the Prophet. On a number of occasions, while she recited these pieces, Mümtaz felt that Nuran was a daughter of an Eastern tribal clan or a young Kütahya bride going to a maidens’ celebration bedecked in pied velvets, atlas silks, sashes, and silver-threaded slippers. Truly baffling was his discovery, in this refined cosmopolitan, of a shared intimacy with the people whose lilts she’d appropriated – as if she were one of them. As days passed, it all constituted a force that transformed and completed Mümtaz’s dulcinea before his eyes, giving their love a panorama of the order of the soul.