A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Mümtaz desposited the bread crumbs on the windowsill and shut the window. Then he turned to Nuran. “Would Tevfik really agree to live with us?” He sincerely desired this. He was nearly as bound to the old man as Nuran was.

  “He’s hard to fathom ... But now he probably would. He’s even picked out a room.” She fell silent and looked out the window: The sparrows jostled on the sill as they pecked at crumbs.

  “Mümtaz, d’you really think we’ll manage this marriage?”

  Mümtaz took his eyes off the Arabic amentü billâhi vahdehü lâ şerike lehü calligraphy wall panel – “I believe in Allah alone, who has no peer.” He stared at Nuran for a time. “If you want to know the truth, no.”

  “Why? What are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing, or rather, whatever you’re afraid of, that’s what frightens me as well.”

  This dread had been with them since the day they’d come to Emirgân. Nuran stood and went to him.

  “Let’s go back to Istanbul . . . tomorrow! Can’t we?”

  “Okay, let’s head back!”

  It was the fifth day. That morning Mümtaz spoke by telephone with İhsan, who said that everything was going to plan and instructed them to be at the Fatih district marriage bureau at four o’clock sharp. “Without stopping back home, go to the marriage bureau! That’s how this will get taken care of. Come down from Emirgân and go directly to the license bureau . . .”

  Later, Mümtaz would profoundly regret not heeding İhsan’s advice.

  The next day they returned to Istanbul. Sümbül was to follow behind toward evening, after having straightened up the house. Beneath rain that fell in torrents, the pristine and eternal façade of winter scenery melted away in fragments. Overnight the winds had turned southerly. The ferry forged ahead, virtually tossing and rolling. The surrounding scenery lay behind an ashen shroud. Strangely, through a peculiar play of memory, this shroud further reminded them of the past summer. From time to time the view opened up so that woods, a mosque, or an old yalı would descend upon them. A black ship crossed their path as if to declare, “I, too, exist within the framework of your lives . . .” Next everything took on the same washed-out pallor, and the hard rain caused whatever it contacted to meld and merge.

  As they churned past Beylerbeyi, Nuran suddenly took hold of Mümtaz’s hand. “I’m afraid,” she said.

  “But why? I don’t understand. Not yet an hour ago we spoke to your relatives in Bursa. All of them are fine. Everything’s going to plan.”

  “No, I’m not thinking about them. I’m afraid of something else. Last night I dreamed of Suad.”

  Mümtaz regarded her with astonishment. Suad had also entered his dreams. Furthermore, it was an agonizing vision. Suad had taken the crystal lamp out of the hand of Mümtaz’s father before embarking on a caïque along with the village girl from his childhood. As Mümtaz flailed his arms frantically from the quayside – although he knew not where precisely – worried whether they had or would capsize, he awoke. Few dreams could be so terrifyingly vivid. Even now, on this ferry bench, he could clearly see the same pitch-black bargelike caïque, Suad’s long, bony face, the girl’s expression, and amid rough seas, the lantern dimming to the verge of going out.

  “Pay no mind, for five days we’ve talked of nothing but him!” Then he changed the subject: “Will you have a coffee?” He lit the young lady’s cigarette and began to make plans for coming days.

  But Nuran wasn’t listening. Finally she couldn’t restrain herself. “For God’s sake, let’s not build castles in the air! Once it’s all done and finalized, then, afterward . . .”

  They stepped out of the taxi before the apartment. Holding their bags in one hand, Mümtaz allowed Nuran to walk ahead through the door. The solitude of the building and the street had settled her nerves. The wife of the doorman mopped the tile floor in the foyer. Nuran briefly exchanged a few pleasantries with her. Before they’d left for Emirgân, Mümtaz had helped procure a treatment of diphtheria serum for her child. She learned that the boy had improved. Mümtaz, bags in hand, waited for Nuran on the bottommost step of the stairs. The surroundings had faded in the sepia light that fell in the wake of snowy weather. The foyer’s blue tiles appeared black beneath such illumination. A cat pressed its head to the casement window opening onto the air shaft and letting light into the stairwell, gazing at them with eyes so near the color of dried straw that they all but crackled. In the backyard the doorman’s eldest son sang his usual song in a feverish voice:Floodwaters have overtaken Erzincan A stranger has taken up with my girl

  Mümtaz had earlier resolved to give Nuran a kiss as they passed through the door. Before we enter ... on the threshold. And he smiled internally at this gesture of satisfaction. But when he climbed to the top of the stairs, he saw severe light fall onto the landing through the door’s small diamond-shaped window. Nuran, with the ball of one foot on the final step, stopped in her tracks.

  Nuran: “It looks like someone’s home.”

  Mümtaz, to calm her: “Sümbül most likely forgot to switch off the light in her haste . . .” By the time they’d pushed open the door, he’d forgotten that he’d even hazarded such a guess. The image that they encountered would stay with them for the rest of their lives. In the hallway, beneath sharp electric light, a human form slowly swung toward the door. At a glance Mümtaz and Nuran both recognized Suad. His bony face was contorted into an expression of strange and daemonic ridicule. On his limp hands were patches of dried blood. As Mümtaz took a closer look, he noticed blood on the ceramic floor tiles. The couple stared dumbly for a moment. Then, in a state of coolheadedness that he’d never be able to muster again, Mümtaz shuffled Nuran, who verged on fainting, from the apartment. Unaware of what they were doing exactly, they descended flights of stairs. It had all occurred with such speed that their taxi was still idling before the entrance. Mümtaz, as in a dream, all but ignorant of the import of his actions, helped Nuran into the vehicle. He sat beside her. İhsan was home. As usual he’d gathered whoever else was there into his study. Neither he nor Macide had the opportunity to be startled by this impromptu visit.

  Through İhsan’s machinations, the incident was handled without either Nuran or Mümtaz appearing in the press. Suad’s note explained everything. Afife officially identified her husband’s handwriting. During a brief investigation, Mümtaz learned that Afife and Suad were on the brink of divorce. Nuran quickly departed for Bursa. In a letter to Mümtaz, she stated, “What remains for us to do, Mümtaz? Fate has ntervened! There’s a corpse between us. Don’t expect my return! The dream is over.”

  As soon as Mümtaz received the letter, he rushed to Bursa. There, he was confronted by Fâhir, who’d arrived sometime beforehand. He and Nuran still spoke at length. She now regarded love as nothing more than frivolous and farcical. “With regard to us, I shall always be your devoted friend. But don’t mention words like ‘love,’ ‘happiness,’ or ‘marriage’ to me! What I’ve witnessed has revolted me.”

  “But what fault is it of mine?”

  Nuran: “You don’t understand! I’m not blaming you. I’m only saying that our happiness is no longer possible.”

  In this fashion, they separated.

  One month later, upon Nuran’s return to Istanbul, Mümtaz’s hopes were somewhat rekindled. He met her a few times here and there. These encounters, however, didn’t produce any new developments. Nuran was disgusted by love. The horrific smirk on Suad’s face haunted her. In one instance she’d said, “I don’t think I even have the wherewithal to read a book that touches on love.”

  A devastating life began for Mümtaz. He existed as if trailing in Nuran’s footsteps, but he could never quite reach her. Their lives moved in parallel and nonintersecting courses. During infrequent chance encounters, he couldn’t match Nuran’s breeziness; he was nothing but an annoyance to her in his absentminded and irritable mental state, at times madly jealous, at times excessively subservient.

  One quickly loses sight of t
he impetus for one’s responses. Not to mention that one’s social circle interprets each event as isolated. And one’s imagination fabricates other causes for each incident. This was the case for Mümtaz. Despite their having shared the same misadventure together, he somehow couldn’t accept Nuran’s distance from him. Soon he sought out other reasons for her separation. He began to scrutinize her life with renewed suspicion. He attributed surreptitious causes to her devastation by Suad’s suicide; in short, he was jealous of a corpse.

  He hadn’t forgotten about Suad, however. His wretched demise or confrontation – for Suad’s death elsewhere, under other circumstances, wouldn’t have had the same impact – appended his death to Mümtaz’s life. He’d obtained a copy of Suad’s letter from the police. Occassionally he read it, trying to comprehend Suad’s underlying motivation.

  During nights, amid confounding dreams, Mümtaz almost always struggled against him. He was neither able to fathom Suad’s enmity, which rather verged on the obsessive, nor his denials or his torments. On occasion he discussed the matter with İhsan. For İhsan, the enigma of Suad was simple: “He was born with a rebellious streak. For such people, contentment is an impossibility, as is forgetting about themselves . . .”

  “What about his suicide?”

  “That amounts to nothing more than the great act of provocation that he’d longed for his entire life . . . but don’t try to put your finger on Suad through motivations of singular intent. He was a man of contradictions. He exhibited astounding hubris. He was sensual, rebellious, and in the final analysis . . . he was disturbed.”

  XIII

  An April’s day: Mümtaz came down to Istanbul from Emirgân to visit İhsan and escape the memories besieging him from all sides as if to asphyxiate him. They conversed in İhsan’s study. As a twist of fate, the offshoot of a cypress tree that had sprouted atop the sheathless dome of the Hazel-Eyed Mehmet Efendi Mosque – a somber witness to his entire upbringing – all but mocked life and death from above this Muslim sanctuary. Meanwhile, spring had initiated an attack. It laughed, hollered “fools!”, grew incensed at everything that didn’t deplete itself in desire, and perpetually sang türküs of love accompanied by the vast orchestra of the empyrean.

  İhsan shooed a bee that for some time had been tracing golden arcs about his head. Gazing out the window at the broom shrub that had taken root along the edge of the street, he said, “What have you done about the Shaykh Galip?”

  Mümtaz rose. “That’s another problem altogether! All of the enchantment is gone ... I’ve been grappling with it for three weeks. I haven’t even been able to write a single page! Evidently I don’t have the ability to finish . . .”

  Along with Nuran’s absence, his intellectual life had effectively ceased. She had absconded with all of the vibrant and sublime aspects of this vision of time past, leaving in its place an ashen heap much like Mümtaz’s own existence. All of the protagonists that he’d drawn with such care, and with whom he’d lived, had been reduced to nothing but silhouettes, attenuated and limp puppets with no chance of returning to life.

  İhsan made an ambiguous hand gesture. “Don’t dwell on it, it’ll pass . . .” Then he abruptly stated what he’d actually wanted to say, “You’ve been looking at them through the light of your own emotions. You were projecting what you’d envisioned in your own life onto them! You cherished them not for what they were in and of themselves, but for your own sake, as part of your life. Had you sought them out through the particular historical era that you’d chosen, everything would have been different. Whereas you were trying to gather the world around a single individual.”

  Mümtaz, grasping the edge of the chair, listened carefully.

  “But I was attuned to the concerns of the times.”

  “No, you were simply preoccupied with your beloved, Nuran.” Then his face softened. “And this was quite natural. You passed through an experience that’s the shared destiny of everyone. Now you’ll open up to life! You must become a man of your convictions, not of your emotions! Suad destroyed himself because he’d fixated upon your state of happiness with Nuran. We have no right to create providence for ourselves out of just anything. Existence is so vast and mankind is in the midst of such profound dilemmas . . . To seize life we must be free in our thoughts and our lives.” Then, in a lower voice: “Become a man of convictions whose responsibilities you can shoulder! Nurture them like a tree within your own being. Toil around them, patiently and carefully, like a gardener!”

  “You realize you’re chastising me, don’t you?”

  “No, I’m not chastising you. Nuran exposed you to a spectrum of inspiration. Others might have arrived there by different means. That’s not important. But thoughts of her shouldn’t impede you any longer! You can’t wallow in the aura of a sole person too long . . . People resemble wells. We’re susceptible to sinking into our own depths and drowning. Just pass beside them. Test the free play of your thoughts through the context of an idea . . .”

  But İhsan didn’t understand one point. Mümtaz didn’t see Nuran’s love as just an experience. She was part and parcel of his life, and profoundly so. Through her he’d savored an insight shared by few people, a reconciliation that sanctified both love and the self. This constituted his contentment, which he wasn’t willing to sacrifice. As they parted company, he thought, They don’t understand . . . They can’t seem to fathom . . .

  He wandered along the old Theodosian ramparts till twilight. He ambled, disassociated from his self, hopeless, unaware of even his own fatigue, taking refuge in the torment of his abandonment. At times he could see reality clearly: I’m senselessly blaming Nuran.

  This arose out of his sentimentality, an emotion that weakened the entire structure. We’re all overly romantic, he told himself. Myself, and Ihsan, and Suad as well . . . We couldn’t do anything to help him! There’s something in us that weakens others! On account of it, the semblance of miraculous love had gradually withered away.

  In a more balanced man this love couldn’t have been attained. He stopped short. Would someone more stable have been able to express love this way? Or could he have even loved at all?

  He was standing before a dilapidated tomb that had taken on exceptional beauty through the aesthetic of a terebinth tree growing out of its center. From the epitaph, Mümtaz learned that here rested Shaykh Sinanî Erdibli.

  The fifteenth century, more or less at the end of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror’s reign. He was face-to-face with one of the city’s oldest inhabitants. A waif of ten or eleven, her entire being covered in whelks and wounds, sat in the middle of the grave collecting candle butts from the surrounding stones.

  When she noticed Mümtaz’s attention, she said, “Tie just one votive and your wish will come true.”

  At this age even, she displayed a posture that was prepared to sell everything for five or ten cents. Mümtaz was saddened, assuming that she’d extend her palms to beg. But, as if reading something on Mümtaz’s face, the girl said, “You’re upset. You might as well offer a prayer to him, he has experience!”

  Mümtaz realized the frivolity of his previous thought, and the superiority of this sick little girl with her faith and conviction. Mümtaz gave alms to the boy playing at her feet with a bone, perhaps one belonging to a corpse. The girl said she lived with seven siblings in a house below the Merkez Efendi Mosque. Their mother was a charwoman, and this was how they survived.

  Maybe İhsan does have a point! This society wants ideas and maybe even a struggle out of me. Not romantic posturing! Suddenly a feeling of rebellion rose within him. But to achieve this end, must I forget about Nuran? And why should he forget her? Why should he impoverish himself? He walked onward beneath the sun, wiping his sweat and talking to himself. Resentment against İhsan knotted within him. As if I’m to forgo Nuran for the sake of this urchin and others like her! And will they themselves, in their own lives, reciprocate through similar sacrifices?

  He sensed a base and crude human throng prol
iferating to unseen and unknown horizons around him, having abandoned itself to its own urges, covetous of what it assumed were its rights, and ready to transgress all cultures and social etiquettes.

  But do I even have the right to demand this sacrifice from them? If I give myself over to them, shouldn’t I do so without expecting anything in return?

  He entered the city through a gate in the ramparts that he didn’t recognize. An Armenian woman crouching beside a small concrete police kiosk stretched out a hand. “My son, help me so I might stand up . . .”

  After gazing at her as if to say, “Do you really need to get up?” he lent her a hand. The elderly woman stood with difficulty.

  “There’s a church nearby. It’s a sacred place. It’s worn down, though . . . If you have the desire to make an offering, go ahead and do so . . . It’ll be granted. I’m heading there myself!”

  Mümtaz continued to wander down streets that more resembled abandoned lots and by houses, most of which resembled gramophone cases: Yes, those who want to benefit social life should devote themselves to it generously. Yet thoughts of Nuran recast this sentence: Those who genuinely love do so without expecting anything in return . . .

  He couldn’t deliver himself of the notion that he’d been unjust to Nuran, and he couldn’t endure living apart from her.

  İhsan’s always rambling on about conviction . . . But I’m so damn miserable . . . He again felt the same ire and resentment toward İhsan.

  Why don’t those advocating for society understand people?

  Man and life were separate entities. The former created the latter through flesh, bone, sweat, and thought. But they weren’t commensurate. It was necessary to be partial to one or the other. Yet Mümtaz knew he’d remain in a perpetual state of ambivalence between them. He’d neither be able to forgo his individual contentment nor forget about the terrible needs of the society that surrounded him, including the hapless ten-year-old girl attending to a saint’s tomb and the aged Armenian woman.