A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Yet the incident of the evening that truly affected Mümtaz came afterward. Yaşar, instead of attending to the girl, turned to him and ever so slowly, in a snakelike hiss, said, “Unhand the child. You’ve done quite enough already ... Do you intend on killing her?”

  Mümtaz thought that he would sense the frigid presence of Yaşar’s glare on his back until the end of his days. He’d never witnessed the urge to lethal violence expose itself in a single glance. In comparison, a knife blade, a draught of poison, and even the voice that had hissed into his ear were innocent playthings. Mümtaz carried the girl downstairs to the room used during winter. After Yaşar had unburdened himself, he’d remained but an observer. Mümtaz laid the girl on the sofa and entrusted her to Nuran, following close behind him, and then he noticed a change in Yaşar as he stood by the doorframe. His face had become like white parchment and he was covered in perspiration. As if a vital coil had snapped, he was trembling, on the verge of collapsing to the ground. Involuntarily Mümtaz asked, “What’s happened? What’s wrong with you?” Without responding, Yaşar climbed the stairs.

  Mümtaz returned to the garden to discover Tevfik sitting right where he’d been. The elderly gentleman was tranquil, as if nothing had happened at all. Shortly thereafter, Nuran reemerged. But the trio couldn’t find the wherewithal to continue the evening.

  XIII

  Nuran arrived in Emirgân early the next morning, her first unannounced visit to Mümtaz’s house. She’d spent a sleepless night. Fatma’s intemperance had convinced her, if temporarily, that they must put their future hopes and plans on hold. Mümtaz still sensed Yaşar’s vengeful glance like something daemonic that had been sicced on him as he lifted Fatma from the ground.

  Yaşar, pitiful fool. Yet Nuran’s mother would heed him. They might soon enough sway Nuran against the marriage. A number of impediments existed. Sooner or later, Nuran would be forced to forgo Mümtaz or she’d do something misguided and their lives would be poisoned.

  Mümtaz hadn’t slept either. He didn’t even bother getting into bed, wandering and pacing until the wee hours of the morning before sitting in the downstairs hall till dawn perusing books to which he couldn’t fully give himself over.

  When Nuran appeared before him, everything changed. He loved her. One way or another they’d find a way out of the impasse. They chatted in the garden, one sitting on a small, recently painted flowerpot, the other standing and holding on to a tree branch. Mümtaz’s solution was straightforward. They should simply elope immediately. As soon as the legal waiting period ended – one month remained – they’d apply for a marriage certificate and resolve this predicament in one fell swoop. Faced with a fait accompli, neither Fatma nor Nuran’s mother could lodge objections. A child could cry for three days at most. Nuran knew that her uncle thought this way as well.

  “Don’t waste time ... for the sake of a child’s dream don’t risk your own happiness.”

  But Nuran feared her mother’s sorrow: “You mean unannounced? Not in this world, that day would be her last on earth,” she said. “She wouldn’t allow a chair to be moved from its place without being consulted first. Eloping would strike horror into her heart.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Not to mention Fatma. What if she were to do something rash? Our entire lives would be poisoned. I know about Fatma. I know about the characters in my household.”

  Nuran was a picture of pessimism.

  “You’ll see, Mümtaz, sooner or later they’ll ruin us.”

  Mümtaz didn’t want to cause her any more distress. At least they had some time. Anyway, he’d done nothing more than to survey a landscape with which they were already familiar.

  “Let’s wait,” he said. “As long as you don’t forsake me, we can find a solution to every problem.”

  Nuran staggered backward as if yet another abyss had opened up. “Mümtaz, don’t touch me,” she said. “My misfortune arises from others pressuring me. Accept that you’ll have to be by yourself if necessary. I’m in this very state due to people who can’t bear to be by themselves.”

  She knew her advice was futile. Mümtaz was one of those people. This was her fate: everybody became a burden on her miserable shoulders. She’d only yesterday received a letter from Fâhir: “Living without you has proven to be difficult. What would you say to letting bygones be bygones? Let’s start a new life for ourselves centered on our daughter!” This was most certainly Adile’s handiwork. Who knew the degree to which she’d incited his jealousy.

  Nuran’s assumption was on the mark. But there was an additional factor. Emma had apparently separated from Fâhir and fled to Paris with the Swedish magnate. Emma, always bemoaning the intrusion of an unfortunate mishap into her vision of a stable life, hadn’t succumbed to the South American yacht captain this time, and had kept this alluring threat away from her new love.

  So Fâhir wanted to return to his ex-wife. He needed a woman whom he could shelter and whose companionship focused solely on him. Despite their carnal incompatibility, he’d acknowledged and cherished Nuran’s friendship. Now, in its absence, this warm intimacy came to life through a thousand phantoms. Not to mention that in just two or three chance encounters with Fâhir, Adile had conveyed how much Nuran loved Mümtaz, detailing her contentment: “Honestly, Fâhir, you don’t have to be upset on Nuran’s account. The girl is happy. And you’re happy, too. Anyway, you two couldn’t see eye to eye. But I worry about poor Fatma. She’ll be torn apart between the two of you.

  “They’re in love with each other. The entire Bosphorus is their oyster! If you could see her now, she’s not the old Nuran at all ... I’m just wondering about everything you did for her, it’s a pity, really, a pity.”

  Possessed of exceptional skills and methods in reawakening dormant desires or instigating a nervous breakdown, Adile, with two or three choice comments, by simply exposing Nuran in the setting of her new love affair, had succeeded in conjuring a fresh and completely unfamiliar figment of Fâhir’s once tiresome spouse whose bed he’d abandoned of his own free will. As Fâhir listened, he realized that he’d never truly acknowledged Nuran, and since Adile never broached the possibility of reconciliation, Nuran’s love became an eternal paradise lost. Furthermore, like the most sentimental of novelists, she dwelled on Fatma’s existence and fate, perpetually describing the girl’s misfortunes.

  But that wasn’t all. Nuran’s former classmate from her university years, Suad, had also corresponded with her. Writing that he’d come “from Konya sick and desperate,” and that he was recuperating in a sanatorium from where he’d recalled their onetime relationship, he declared, “You’re the only one who can return me to a state of health!”

  Nuran, aware that Suad had once harbored affections for her, assumed that by choosing Fâhir over him she’d effectively dispelled the affection between them. To add insult to injury, Suad was Mümtaz’s distant relative.

  “Come see me once in a while. For a decade I’ve lived for your sake. I’m at your mercy!” he wrote. There was nothing between Nuran and Suad; nonetheless, he was at her mercy ... Who would come to her aid? Who would provide her with yearned-for peace of mind? Half the city was putting upon her; meanwhile, nobody came to her side.

  “I’m not a nurse.”

  Mümtaz noticed that she was on the verge of tears and embraced her.

  “Trust me, you’ll see everything will straighten itself out.”

  “Nothing will straighten out, Mümtaz. Our lives will persist like this. You save yourself, I’m the one who’s condemned.”

  Mümtaz hadn’t ever seen her in such a state of lament. This couldn’t just be due to Fatma’s misbegotten behavior. They’d been experiencing that for some months now.

  “What’s going on with you? Is there something else?”

  “What d’you expect? I’m being imposed upon by everybody. Here, read.”

  She handed him the two letters. Fâhir’s letter was brief and filled with a slew of meaningless whinin
g. He conveyed a tone ready to overlook all indiscretions through a single longed-for amnesty. But Suad’s letter was bizarre. This married man, fully aware that Mümtaz and Nuran were involved and soon to be wed, expressed his feelings of love and extended an invitation, writing, “Come visit!” Along with his deteriorating liver, it was as if this decade-old or older love had erupted like a volcano, and in place of Koch bacilli spewed a magma of fiery words, gripes, and entreaties. He revealed the intimate details of his married life, explained the banality of his life outside of Istanbul, and repeatedly stated that he couldn’t be content with anyone but Nuran. Neither his wife nor his children were of any concern. “I’m at your mercy ... Without you I’ll be destroyed ... I’ve made a number of ventures in life, but because you weren’t by my side, today, you see, I’m nothing but a zero, a cipher, sıfır.”

  To Mümtaz, this letter was more threatening than the former because he knew Suad well. He’d periodically accosted Mümtaz since childhood. The entire household knew how Suad couldn’t stand Mümtaz, who nonetheless displayed some affection toward him; He’s jealous of me on account of Ihsan ... Clearly Suad displayed certain virtues. He was well-read and a bold thinker. Mümtaz also knew that Suad wasn’t quite content in his marriage. Despite his continuous mockery of, and his delight in shocking, Mümtaz, at times displaying open enmity through his quizzical temperament, and despite his attempts to devastate him psychologically, Mümtaz still liked him. He admired and feared Suad. But he never expected such audacity. When Nuran and Fâhir became involved, Suad immediately married and moved far away. Mümtaz realized that the renewal of this love also bore a desire to contaminate others that had been brought on by the disease itself. The letter, full of impatience, pessimism, and protest seen only in that variety of affliction, filled him with greater dread. Yet another factor alarmed Mümtaz: Nuran’s vulnerability to those in her circle. No other conclusion could to be drawn from her excessive reaction to these letters. Mümtaz was certain that one locus of Nuran’s thoughts rested with Fâhir while the other dwelled beside Suad’s sickbed. Within this oppressive anxiety, Mümtaz couldn’t even look at his beloved’s face out of the fear of reading her every thought.

  And perhaps as a result, for the sake of doing something, anything, he slowly shredded the letters.

  From where she sat, Nuran watched, as if from a vast distance, the destruction of pages pleading for her intercession.

  “What I do know is that Suad was sick at the start of summer; he must have regained his health by now.”

  She looked at the painted flowerpot upon which she sat, at the plants wet from the night’s rain, and at the chestnut’s wizened leaves. A viscous sunshine of well-blended tincture, rich with mystery, filled the garden. The season had changed. Aspects of their existence constituted solely by love and diversion or simply by daydream and joy had been depleted. The remainder would be shouldered like a burden. Yet so many loads were being extended that she didn’t know which to bear. The best option was to surrender herself to the nearest, most endearing beloved. With Mümtaz’s arm about her shoulders, Nuran walked through the garden where she’d once been so satisfied, over whose every hand span of earth she’d cultivated a separate vision, and entered the house.

  For Mümtaz, that day was more unbearable than the previous one. They weren’t going to give Nuran any peace. He knew this. She had a side that was vulnerable to others. They ought to marry at all costs. However ...

  Will I be able to find the strength to compel her? He absolutely had no conviction. He couldn’t venture a single move for his own sake. He’d become conscious of the extent of his own feebleness.

  The day was miserable. They spoke as if amid great crowds, over distances, or through a shroud. It seemed to Mümtaz that Nuran’s voice was reaching him from afar, as though large amplifiers positioned between them perpetually broadcasted the mind-sets of Fatma, Yaşar, Fâhir, and Suad.

  He found himself in an odd, disconcerted state. Till yesterday he’d lived only among those he loved; whereas today, like mushrooms sprouting overnight, a horde of enemies surrounded him. Fâhir, whose accounts he’d thought had been settled and canceled, had reappeared. Suad, father of two in Konya, from a hospital corner, amid coughs, phlegm, and dried blood, had begun penning epic letters to poison his life. Fatma, whom he’d wanted to adopt, to whom he’d been so attached, had orchestrated a full-fledged drama to antagonize him, to publicly announce that she didn’t care for him, and to cast him as scapegoat and orphan. Not to mention she’d collapsed at the mouth of the well after making three trial runs. And then that gray-haired buffon Yaşar, that demented fool, had declared his hostility for no apparent reason whatsoever. Who else and what else would emerge? Worse was the slow and gradual birth of opposition in Mümtaz toward these expressions of enmity. Before then he hadn’t even felt anger toward the Greek palikaria who’d murdered his father. Now vengeance took root within him, as well.

  A rising fury told him so. Mümtaz, too, would become the sworn enemy of select individuals all due to the fact that he loved and was loved in return.

  All this was due to an emotion as lofty and noble as love, which ought to be one’s sole savior, from which one might expect all types of salvation in this fallen world. These afreets were born of love. Maybe tomorrow his own heart would turn into a crucible of lethal poisons like that of Fatma, Yaşar, and Fâhir, and he’d wander in their midsts hissing like a snake. Reading Suad’s letter, he could imagine his fingers, yellowed by fever, crawling over the pages. It was daemonic, an act of evil. From a hospital corner, a man struggling against tuberculosis was attempting to afflict others on the outside. This letter wouldn’t be the only attempt, of course. What other acts would arise from a desire to contaminate? Was this the way the disease targeted health, joy, and decency, or simply an act of hostility?

  Fate had directed Suad’s afflicted mind to believe that Nuran represented everything he pined for while recuperating in the sanatorium; consequently Mümtaz, now spiteful of an ailing and needy man, wanted nothing more than to pummel his face and protruding bones. This was one nexus of mankind’s fate.

  Fate is what confronts us, he thought. What we wrestle against without being able to overcome it.

  Oh, how mankind, enemy of the sublime, unknowingly desired the destruction of its own happiness as well as that of others; humankind, enemy of peace and decency, enemy of its own self.

  And perhaps Suad, during his days of illness, in a letter received from Istanbul, had learned of Nuran’s separation from her husband and recognized the opportunity for one last conquest. The desire to settle an old account. Seeing that I’ll be going to Istanbul, I’ll take care of this business as well. A lonely woman, an old friend, and so many memories between us.

  A day of rain followed; Mümtaz descended to the old city. He had to attend to a number of small errands. Afterward he stopped at İhsans’ house in Şehzadebaşı to inquire about Suad. Despite having spent a distressing night thanks to him, he also wondered about his present state of health. One by one, the topics they’d discussed together at the start of summer at the island restaurant came to mind, along with Suad’s gestures, his derisive and mordant laughter, and his bizarre glances that made one forgive his every affront.

  It was as he’d feared. Stopping by the house, he noticed Ahmet and Sabiha at play with two girls, then he caught sight of Macide’s relative Afife in the parlor, eyes swollen, face distraught, in the midst of confiding trouble and woe. A becoming, well-dressed, and polite lady, her demeanor, more than anguish per se, bespoke the pain of wounded pride. As Mümtaz listened to her, he remembered the letter Nuran had received. Hearing but a single sentence from those eight pages, directed toward her, would have revived this devastated woman, remaking her into a new person. But Suad wasn’t interested in his wife. He thought only of Nuran. Out of some perverse logic, his afflicted head had turned to face and fixate upon Nuran. Suad likely thought of Nuran while committing the trivial indiscretions that Afi
fe presently enumerated or even while trying to seduce his secretaries. He’d again thought of her while vomiting blood into the basin held by these woebegone hands and while signing the consent form.

  As soon as he’d been admitted to the hospice, he’d told himself, I must write to her this very evening, and with eyes trained on the ceiling, his face tense with fever, his chest wheezing as it rose and fell, he’d pondered over and again the sentences that would make up the letter.

  Mümtaz lent an ear to Afife’s testimonial as he thought to himself, Disgusting ... Disgusting ... Everything was reprehensible. Nothing simple and comfortable could exist between people. Mankind, the enemy of contentment, struck wherever happiness appeared or made its presence felt. He quit the house in a strange state of revulsion. He walked briskly down the street. Yet Afife’s voice persisted, cursing her fate: “He’s destroyed himself. I ache for him, Macide. If you only knew how my heart aches for him. It’s just my fate.”

  Revolting. Her pity and consciousness of fate revolted him. Her attachment and complaint revolted him. All of it revolted him: the way Suad fell into his life like a stone crashing through a window, the way he wrote to Nuran, the way Mümtaz perpetually thought about this ailing man as if he were now an inseparable aspect of his existence.