A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Macide cried, “Suad, what are you saying? Don’t listen to him, for Allah’s sake. Take a look for yourselves, he’s covered in sweat.”

  Mümtaz looked at Macide, her face stark white, her eyes wide. She’d succumbed to a bout of nerves. But Suad didn’t heed her anguish: “Don’t worry, Macide. It’s not what you think. I didn’t actually steal. But I’ve thought of doing so a hundred times. I didn’t just think it, I imagined stealing. Maybe a hundred times, I was the last person to leave the bank. I imagined I was being pursued by men who would soon arrest me as I left, receding as I went. I walked over roads I’d never traveled before.”

  İhsan asked, “Okay, but why?”

  Suad only ever responded to Mümtaz: “For the very same reason I lived my life in the most absurd way, for the same reason I gallivanted, caroused, and finally married. To kill time. To live. To avoid rotting away!” He shrugged. “How should I know? I wanted to feel the extent of myself, that’s why! To fulfill the need to declare ‘I am’ to the void at each instant. Now do you understand why I want you to write this story? So that a shudder of alarm might travel up your spine! Your minds house a slew of words like ‘love’ and ‘suffering.’ You live through words. Whereas I want to fathom the meanings of those words. That’s why I did it. You should write to discover that you don’t love someone to the degree that you would kill. But you’re not acquainted with death, either, are you?” He laughed and chortled. “I’m quite certain that for you death means waiting eternally in a more pristine and essential state, like objects conserved in a museum after being fired in a kiln. Is that not true? And you’re not disgusted by death, but rather you see it as sister to beauty and love. Did you ever consider how disgusting death is? A revolting decay and stench! Maybe some of you believe in Allah. I’m certain you’ve embalmed this topic in silence and uncertainty. Because you exist only in words! Haven’t you just once wanted to talk to Allah? Had I been a believer, I would have liked to speak with Him, to experience Him.”

  Nuran protested. “Is all this necessary, Suad?” But he wasn’t listening. He was spewing as much as he possibly could. What Mümtaz had feared had come to pass. The crisis had begun.

  Mümtaz asked in the same childish voice, “Do you believe?”

  “No, dearest, I’m not a believer. I’m bereft of this joy. Had I been a man of faith, the issue would have been different. Had I known of the existence of Allah, I’d have no more claim against or quarrel with humanity. I’d then only struggle against Him. At every turn, I’d collar him somewhere and call Him to account. And I’d have assumed that He was obligated to provide a reckoning. I’d say, ‘Come. Come, and for a moment enter into the skin of one of your creations. Do what I do every day. Live twenty-four hours of one of our lives! There’s no need to select a particularly unfortunate specimen. You are the Creator; it’s impossible for you not to know or understand. Descend into the carcass of any one of them. Live your own lie for a moment along with us. Live as we do. Become a frog of small thirsts in this swamp for twenty-four hours!”

  İhsan laughed. “Fine, but only a devotee could say these things. You’re a believer all right! And more than any of us!”

  “No, I don’t believe. But, I am thinking through the thoughts of a genuine follower.” He shook his head. “And I’ll never believe, either. I’d rather die writhing on the ground from rheumatism.”

  They laughed awkwardly together. Mümtaz’s face was in a state of rigid attention. Suad noticed neither the laughter nor Mümtaz.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’d prefer to die writhing on the ground from rheumatism! If you like, let me tell the story. Among my relatives was a very naïve but decent man. A devout, earnest, saintly man. We loved him dearly. One couldn’t help being awestricken by his perseverance in life. He used to live around Topkapı. He’d come and go into the city by donkey. This donkey became one of the joys of my childhood. One day when we went to their house, we noticed that the donkey wasn’t in the yard as usual. ‘What happened?’ we asked. ‘The poor beast has rheumatism,’ they told us, and opened the barn door. They’d put the donkey’s saddle on upside down, suspending the animal from the ceiling by stirrups. In this way its fetlocks were eased from the humidity in the barn, and it no longer had to stand on all fours. You couldn’t imagine how comical the beast looked, its four legs hanging limply, its docile head lolling toward the floor. Pathetic and comic, the animal had effectively become humanized. At first I laughed considerably. But not afterward. Today every metaphysical system of thought reminds me of that animal’s pathetic and stupefied gaze from above.”

  Nuran: “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Did it get well, at least?”

  “Ah, if only . . . It died within a few days, essentially by committing suicide. That is, it managed to get back down to the ground so as to die in contact with the earth. If it hadn’t been strung up like that, it would have died from rheumatism.”

  Mümtaz shrugged. “Nonsense . . .”

  But Suad was still laughing. Then he suddenly grew serious. “Perhaps,” he said. “But for me, this amounts to reality. Do you understand? For me, Allah is dead. I’m savoring my freedom. I’ve killed Allah within myself.”

  İhsan asked, “Do you actually believe that you’re free?”

  Suad looked at him spitefully. His face was covered in sweat. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to be free . . .”

  “No, you can’t be ...”

  “Why? Who can stop me any longer?”

  “The Allah that you’ve killed still exists within you. You’re no longer living your own life. In this state, you’re only a tomb, something like a coffin. You house a horrific, cruel death. What freedom could you possibly have? Yes, I, too, know that some people believe that ‘without Him, everything is permissible,’ and have gone on to plunder the site of His absence for the sake of humanity. I also know about the notion of the demigod, or ‘God-man.’ What of it? It’s only left us face-to-face with our own miseries. The fate of mankind is the same. One is still confronted with the same difficulties. One still suffers the same agonies. Honestly, what you perceive as a new dawn is but a conflagration . . . No, by toying with notions of Allah, you won’t be able to escape Him. No wound can heal while it’s being ministered to.” He paused for a while. “But d’you know, Suad, what a great theologian you would have made? Because what you’re expounding is nothing but a theology in reverse.”

  Suad said, “I don’t quite think so. In fact, not at all.”

  “As you wish, but in my opinion, that’s how it is.”

  Suad glanced at his watch, and lifting his glass toward the gathering, he downed his drink. Only Mümtaz watched him stare intently into the bottom of his empty glass before placing it back on the table.

  “I should be going! Farewell to one and all . . .”

  Mümtaz and Nuran objected. “Where to? How? The night’s still young, there are amusements yet in store.” But he didn’t listen.

  “No, I have the promise of an engagement! Though I’m a tad late, I should go. Good-bye, everyone!” With a gesture of his hand, he abruptly took leave of the gathering. Nuran and Mümtaz accompanied him to the doorway.

  Mümtaz, to Nuran: “Why don’t you insist that he stay?” As he said this, he felt a sense of dissolution within him. Whether Suad stayed was of no import to him anymore.

  Nuran, looking at Suad: “Insisting would be useless, he’s determined to go. Godspeed, Suad!” Before shaking his hand, she straightened his collar. “Would you like a scarf?”

  “Thanks, but my collar is quite broad. If need be, I’ll raise it ... Mümtaz will accompany me for a distance, won’t he?”

  The two gentlemen exited together.

  VII

  Under cover of night, Mümtaz breathed deeply. He felt so tired as to be unable to withstand anything more. In the humid night, they walked past a cluster of shadows, which he’d seen with different eyes a few hours before. The autumn night had engulfed the hilltops of Emirgân in a l
onely phantasm of impossibility. The lights of the Asian shore resembled futile distress signals within the desolation. As if unable to see in the darkness, Suad stumbled to the right and left. They proceeded in this way until the middle of the hill where Mümtaz’s houseguest said, “You turn back now . . .” But he couldn’t complete his words. He was seized by a bout of coughing.

  Mümtaz said, “If you’d like, let’s turn back. Stay here with us tonight! You won’t be able to find any means of transport now. There’s an extra bed!” Suad didn’t respond until his coughing subsided. He simply held on to Mümtaz’s hand firmly. When the coughing died down, he said, “No, I’d best be going. I’ve disturbed you enough anyway.”

  “Not at all. But you’re not well!”

  “True, I’m not, not at all . . . but it’ll pass!” And he let go of Mümtaz’s hand, which he’d been clasping tightly with two hands. Laughing, he said, “Haydi! Go on, have fun ...” In the darkness he sensed that Suad’s eyes sought out his own, and Mümtaz looked away involuntarily. But Suad didn’t go; grabbing the collar of Mümtaz’s jacket, he accosted him in a low voice, “I’ve written Nuran a letter. Are you aware of this? A love letter!”

  Mümtaz, startled in the face of this lunge, stuttered, “I-I know. She showed it to me. Did you know that we’ll soon be getting married?”

  “I knew you were involved.”

  “In that case?”

  “There is no case. Just another senseless act . . . a half hour before I’d written it, I hadn’t thought of Nuran for months.”

  Mümtaz, in a collected tone, as if there were no matter relating to him in the balance, said, “But with respect to me, with respect to your old friend, I don’t know, it wasn’t the right thing to do, now, was it?” They came eye to eye. An agonizing grimace overcame Suad’s face.

  “You wouldn’t understand, would you, how impulses, strange and inappropriate, at times overtake one? Perhaps you’ll never understand. Because you uphold your measured actions, above all desiring predictable causes and effects. You seek out the logic in all things! But what’s done is done! Don’t let me detain you for nothing. I only wanted to inform you even if it’s an impropriety. Fare thee well.” And he began to hastily descend the hill.

  Mümtaz cried after him, “Everybody’s this same way, so don’t be slavish to your damn cause!”

  “Good-bye.” Suad descended with quick steps.

  Mümtaz stood listening to Suad’s footsteps sounding a deeper clack in the night and to his gut-wrenching cough. Then he headed slowly back to the house, pleased that his hand was now free of the large, bony, and clammy vise of Suad’s palms. Within this eerie night, seeing his own hand in Suad’s had alarmed him. This tacky vise had given him the dread of a possession that seemed to penetrate clear through to his soul; maybe this was why he’d avoided Suad’s eyes. As he recalled this, he grew angry at himself; he’d been intimidated by a sick man. Nonetheless, his sense of salvation was so profound that he raised his hand aloft in the dark and watched it like a beloved keepsake with which he’d been reunited. Suad’s hands, with their sticky warmth, seemed to suck away a potent, rather essential and vital element from the skin of Mümtaz’s palm and fingertips. He asked himself repeatedly, Why is he so tormented? Why is he so cruel? Mümtaz knew that he’d descended into a mental state that he hadn’t experienced since he’d met Nuran. I’m a hundred steps away from him, and I’m still trembling on this road. Everyone he considered a part of his social circle was present in the house, but at that moment he thought neither of Nuran, İhsan, nor the houseguests.

  On the crest of the hill, he stopped again and looked about. The autumn night, as if resting behind a black and highly polished glass pane, its scattered lights penetrating deeply into him, glimmered in a state beyond any and all potential for change. In the distance, the Bosphorus had become a glowing ashen ribbon. The hazy street lamps beyond, in astral stillness mimicking starlight, illuminated their own silence rather than the existences that surrounded them. Yet, all of it, everything in the environs, the ambient nocturnal sounds, the occasional peeping bird or buzzing insect, as well as the susurrus of branches, was in something of suspended animation.

  And what if everything he said was true? Allah, what if all he said was true? Under this trepidation, he raised his head and watched the dome of sky. A debris of stars, luculent pulses that made the darkness of the firmament more aggressive, gleamed like windows of hope, anguish, and dread in houses of the afflicted. Involuntarily he thought, He’s not dead yet . . . The torment within him was so great that he wanted to escape, to take refuge somewhere. But where could he go? In this black night laden with radiant caravans of infinite time no crack existed into which the human soul might seep. The sated black night wouldn’t accommodate one more thing, rejecting every living being and coalescing around him like a bejeweled carapace. Élan vital, the secret laughing and speaking through all matter, had withdrawn behind a thick gem-studded shroud. Somewhere some thing rustled, the edge of the horizon stirred. The heavy-laden, fierce night glided overhead like a large turquoise and gilt bird, though its wings maintained their rigidity.

  If only it would take me along ...

  Had it been another time, within this night constituted by immaculate gems, by veins of ore not yet roused from pristine hibernation, by granite and black marble, Mümtaz would have found the purest facet of his pleasurable and poetic realms. But now he was rather miserable and closed off to his entire aesthetic world. Great intimations of dread had colonized him.

  “It’s as if a part of me has collapsed,” he said to himself.

  Within the house at the top of the street, a lamp burned, transfiguring every receding intimacy on such nights into a sweet reverie; and a window, out of the pure and profound silence into which it had sunk, as if afflicted by the infirmity of existence, approached him together with the glimmering silhouette of the tree before it, like bloody excisions from the vast and opulent silence. Mümtaz remembered that he was neglecting his houseguests. Nuran would worry. He quickened his pace. But this minor snag had only spun him around to face his own dimension of time; it hadn’t done away with his inner sense of isolation or the agonizing constriction that afflicted him.

  Apart of him was still walking through a void. Why is there such an expanse between my head and my body?

  He stopped and thought. Is this what I really meant to say? Maybe what he felt was more exacerbating, more ineffable. He wasn’t angry, though he knew what Suad had done was wrong. But he withheld from passing judgment. He’d stopped passing judgment on others. Suad, by exposing his misery, had spoiled their pleasure. The depth of Suad’s abjection, or rather, the disarray of his existence, which caused such depravity, astonished Mümtaz. He was obviously in torment. Throughout the evening, as Mümtaz listened to him, he recollected exhausting and semi-nightmarish conversations, phantasms of clenched teeth during fitful nights of sleep. Suad resembled nothing more than a man in the midst of a nightmare.

  VIII

  The table talk among the houseguests centered on Suad. When Mümtaz entered, Nuran glanced at him as if to say, “Where have you been?” To conceal his misery, he smiled with a furtive pucker, pleased that Nuran wasn’t offended by this offhand public display.

  “Might I request a glass as well?”

  Nuran: “As much as you’d like, Mümtaz dear! We’re starting the evening over anyway.”

  She was pleased to be rid of Suad too. Eager to continue from where he’d been interrupted, İhsan paused in annoyance, waiting for Mümtaz’s glass to be filled. That’s how he was; he detested being interrupted and he expected the interference to stop immediately.

  Looking at Nuran through his glass, Mümtaz said, “In that case, health to one and all ...”

  “Regrettably, the world has already lived through and dispensed with this variety of angst a century ago. Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marx have come and gone. Dostoyevsky suffered this anguish eighty years prior. Do you know what’s new in our
case? It’s neither Éluard’s surrealist poetry nor the torments of Nikolai Stavrogin. What’s new for us today is the murder, land dispute, or divorce scandal unfolding in the smallest Turkish village in the most desolate corner of Anatolia. I’m not sure if you catch my drift, fully. I’m not accusing Suad. I’m just saying that his concerns can’t be taken within the framework of our present circumstances.”

  Mümtaz emptied his glass. “But you’re overlooking one point! Suad is genuinely in torment . . .”

  With a flick of his hand, İhsan distanced something unseen from his person. “He might be . . . but what’s it to me? I don’t have time to chase idiosyncrasies. I’m occupied with social concerns. Let the mother of the sheep who strays from the flock weep in its absence! Did I mention that one day at an auction I discovered a number of old menus, the table d’hôte menus of I’m not sure which restaurant. Probably from the midst of the Hamidian reign. Near the top were written the names of that night’s singers. Suad’s problems have the same effect on me. Bygone relics . . . Anyone can turn an idea into an exacerbating problem. But to what end? It does nothing but make us dizzy. We’re people who have responsibilities and work to accomplish.”