The Time Regulation Institute

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Despite the fact that there was nothing even remotely resembling an inheritance, most of the potential heirs believed—among other far-fetched scenarios—that we had taken advantage of the old man’s dementia to trick him into thinking our daughter was his mother.

  And when we claimed, in self-defense, that the man had not been in full possession of his mental faculties during the last few years of his life, we were accused of disrespecting our dear benefactor and making a mockery of his memory. “Slander!” they cried. “Slander, defamation, ingratitude . . .” No sooner had we turned our backs than they interpreted everything in their favor: “Did you hear that? How they confessed to it all?”

  Good God! so much was jointly owned, and the legal formalities were endless. If ever a sixth, seventh, or even a tenth of a plot of land or property had gone up for sale, my late father-in-law had bought in. Who knows, perhaps he thought he might extract a profit when the prices rose. His drawers were crammed full of property deeds, but every year he accrued an equivalent bill of debt. His real estate was not a source of revenue but, rather, a kind of stamp collection. At first the judges we spoke with found humor in the thought of this grown man taking his adopted maid’s daughter for his mother, but with time the deceitful statements made by Abdüsselam Bey’s many heirs led them to suspect us of foul play. I did my best to explain the situation:

  “Sir, the late efendi was a playful man at heart. This is just the kind of little joke he liked to play on my daughter, whom he treated as his own child . . .”

  “Are you trying to say he played jokes on a three-year-old child?” the judge asked reproachfully. “First you say he treated her like his child, and now you’re saying he acted clownishly, taking her to be his own mother. Make up your mind!”

  “I am in no position to choose. The deceased availed himself of both techniques.”

  “Some of the wills date back to when she was only six months old. What is this? What part of this joke would a six-month-old baby understand?”

  “Nothing at all, absolutely nothing, but everyone does this sort of thing. Who doesn’t change his voice when speaking to a child? And we don’t limit this role-playing to children. Consider when we play with cats and dogs—we either stoop to their level or demand they rise to our own. In this regard the deceased had struck just the right balance. The parties were engaged in mutual dependency but were in fact independently at variance.”

  I had picked up some legal terminology.

  “Well fine, then. But how do you account for the child—or the mother, if you will—referring to the deceased as her son? The witnesses’ statements are quite clear: Since he passed away, the child weeps and cries out, ‘Oh, where’s my son?’”

  Indeed this was the case. Abdüsselam Bey had even managed to teach our daughter Zehra to address him as her son. Now the little girl drowned herself in tears as she cried out for her missing son. Again I did my best to interpret this conundrum for the court.

  “That’s right, sir. This is what he taught her. The two would spend the entire day together. Besides, isn’t that how all this started in the first place? In his last years, the poor man just wasn’t thinking very clearly . . .”

  Feelings were running so high by now that it was extremely difficult to speak without offending someone. Oh how happy and relieved I would have been if I could have just shouted at the top of my lungs that this man I had loved so dearly had gone senile. Had he not been demented, he would never have bombarded us with stories of incest as bizarre as any story ever told about the Egyptian pharaohs. In the end the will (which in any case had never been legally binding) was annulled, and I was merely reprimanded, first for showing disrespect to the memory of my guardian, and then for speaking nonsense in a court of law.

  By the time it looked as if the matter had been resolved, I had genuinely begun to fear that the words “guardian,” “father,” and “inheritance” would be my undoing. But it didn’t end there: next the public entered into the fray.

  III

  The annulment of the will left our small circle reeling. Everyone we knew, or at least a significant majority, claimed that we, and in particular my daughter, had been deprived of what was legally our due. By now I had left the Tünel for a private institution, and everyone in my office, as well as in my neighborhood, was up in arms about the injustice that had been visited upon us, with each of our supporters reacting in his own particular way. Some took pity on me and my daughter. Others forgot us altogether, so angry were they with the heirs for disrespecting their father’s last wishes at a time when he had only scant worldly possessions to his name. Others avowed that it was through my own foolish incompetence that the fortune had slipped from my grasp. In heated debates, the matter might be swept away with a quick gesture or built up into an avalanche or deemed to be of no significance whatsoever, depending on the speaker’s mood and inclination. Those who viewed the matter in moral terms had little concern for the fortune itself, preferring to leave it in the hands of God. And those who believed man to be inherently avaricious and conniving took pleasure in calculating our losses and my ineptitude.

  But they all had one thing in common: they never listened to what I had to say. It would have made no difference had I said, “But the man had no money. He was up to his ears in debt. I actually haven’t lost a thing. For there was nothing I ever wanted to begin with!”

  Even my employer was swept up in the tide of public opinion. So convinced was he that I’d been robbed that he offered me a sudden five-lira raise in consolation.

  My boss’s gesture of pity served only to deepen the compassion that surrounded me. Some even thought I had suffered a blow from which I would never recover. One night, as I left the office, a friend took me by the arm and said:

  “Come now, good Hayri. Let’s go round the corner and knock back a few glasses of rakı together. It’s the cure to all misery.”

  “Let’s drink, yes, let’s have a drink, but not out of misery, for I’m not at all troubled. We’ll drink for the pleasure of the drink itself. But if you like, why not come to our house? We can drink there. It wouldn’t be right for me to leave my wife alone at a time like this.”

  My wife was then pregnant with our second child, Ahmet. But Sabri Bey was set on misinterpreting everything I said:

  “Of course . . . You’ve both suffered a terrible blow. The poor woman has every right to feel . . .”

  And so he used all his powers to persuade me. He wouldn’t come home with me as he didn’t want to put us out any further; he was determined to console me in a meyhane, and I agreed, hoping this might give me a chance to explain how the inheritance had been misunderstood. At least in a public tavern he’d have to relinquish his grip on my arm when he sat across from me at the table. Sabri was a rather ugly man, but his great bulk was somehow reassuring.

  When at last we were settled in the meyhane, I did my best to explain how I’d landed in this predicament:

  “I loved the man like my own father. And I was a witness to his many kind deeds. But I never expected more from him—I had no right. Anyway he’s been penniless for the past six years. He survived on loans. As for the will and all that, well that’s just what happens when a man loses his mind. If there had been anything like a real inheritance, I doubt I’d ever have been able to sleep at night, but the man was so deep in debt . . .”

  And so on and so forth. But Sabri Bey pursued the issue:

  “But, then, how could he keep taking out new loans?”

  “By pawning odds and ends. And I’m sure he contracted other debts too.”

  I offered one explanation after another, still hoping I could convince him. He nodded as I spoke but always returned to the same question:

  “Yes, but why would they keep giving the man more if they knew he was already in debt? What I mean is, just how did he deceive them?”

  By then my patience had run out:
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br />   “How should I know? Perhaps he had a method of some kind . . . a system . . .”

  Sabri Bey’s ear pricked up at the idea. Clearly he was after such a system for himself, because the moment the magic word fell from my lips he called out for the second bottle of rakı:

  “My dear friend, there’s nothing strange in all this. There was hardly anyone Abdüsselam Bey didn’t know. Perhaps he was relying on an inheritance of his own . . . or there was land somewhere, in Tunisia, Algeria . . .”

  “No, no, too far away. There must have been something else.”

  “Then perhaps there was something he could never sell, something everyone knew about, at least all the creditors. Something extremely valuable . . . A diamond, for example . . .”

  His curiosity had unlocked my imagination. A vision of Seyit Lutfullah flashed before my eyes. Once while speaking of the treasure of the emperor Andronikos, he had told me its many jewels would include the rare and priceless Serbetçibası, or Head Sherbet Maker’s, Diamond.

  Could I not enjoy a little joke on this fool who had dragged me into this tavern out of errant pity and was now trying to uncover some new way to deceive people?

  “Imagine if he had the Serbetçibası. Then surely he could’ve said to his creditors something to the effect of, ‘I’ll never sell it. It’s an heirloom. But it will repay all my debts when my children eventually do sell it!’”

  “That’s right!” Sabri Bey cried. “That’s exactly what must have happened.”

  And he called for a third bottle. He leaned over the table, his face dripping with sweat from the summer heat, and asked, “The Serbetçibası . . .” His eyes flashed with curiosity. “Have you ever seen it?”

  “My good fellow, I just made the thing up. Didn’t we just do so together? I mean, weren’t we just speculating?”

  “But you know the name!”

  “Think about it: I may have heard of such a jewel in a fairy tale from my childhood. Or perhaps someone mentioned something like it to me once. It could’ve just popped into my mind when you mentioned diamonds. Whereas in reality . . .”

  “But that’s simply not possible. No doubt it’s something like the Kasıkçı, the Spoon Maker’s, Diamond. The same size and value . . . Don’t you think?”

  He filled up our glasses again, and we drank.

  “Naturally he showed it to you?”

  “What?”

  “The Serbetçibası.”

  Suddenly it dawned on me what sort of trouble I had brought upon myself with this practical joke. I called the waiter and handed him the last twenty-five lira note I had in my pocket. Sabri Bey watched me in silence. His eyes narrowed. Clearly there was more he wanted to know, but I flew out the door without so much as a good-bye.

  A terrible pain swept through me, as if I’d accidentally cut off my own arm or leg, as if I had committed a grave error that would cause me or, even worse, my children, immense suffering—it was one of those wild fears that turn your life upside down.

  “Why in the world did you ever agree to drink rakı with that fool?” Emine scolded me, before adding in consolation, “But there’s really nothing to worry about. Just forget it. What could come of such a thing anyway? Can’t a person joke now and again? A man might say anything when he’s drunk.”

  The next day was a holiday. I spent all day at home, tinkering with the old watches that Abdüsselam Bey’s children had given us as compensation for our share of the inheritance. I hadn’t touched a watch or clock since returning from the war.

  By evening I felt a little more at peace. I had convinced myself that Sabri Bey must have forgotten about the whole thing.

  But the next day he jumped up from his seat the moment I stepped foot in the office, scurrying over to me to hiss these ominous words into my ear:

  “The diamond.”

  There was that same flickering light in his squinting eyes. Who knows what he was trying to tell me.

  The next evening the boss called me into his office. He wanted to hear the story of the Serbetçibası Diamond from the source. I told him what had happened. He seemed somewhat convinced. But soon the story spread, and eventually everyone I knew had heard it. Everyone I bumped into would latch onto me and say:

  “Good man, you never told me about this diamond of yours! You can’t just keep such an enticing story all to yourself . . .”

  It got to the point where I couldn’t even pass by the neighborhood coffeehouses because all sorts of people would leap up with backgammon pieces, dice, cards, dominoes still in their hands to stop me in the middle of the street, and say, “Wouldn’t you like a tea?” before pulling me inside. They wanted to hear about the Serbetçibası. Some admired my honor and humility in denying the diamond’s existence, but others found me wanting in resolve and would carp behind my back the moment I left the room.

  Before long they were all claiming to have heard the diamond’s story; drawing upon every scrap of ancient lore they could summon, they proceeded to solder together the legend behind a diamond that had never existed. My wife I and were distraught.

  It was around this time that a number of creditors holding bonds for various items pawned by Abdüsselam Bey began legal proceedings against the heirs. Almost all of them had heard the story of the diamond. And most wanted compensation from this undeclared inheritance. I had no choice but to become embroiled in their lawsuits.

  IV

  First I was presented to the court as just another witness whose personal opinion might help to clarify matters. Then suddenly I was the centerpiece of the entire case. Because we had lived with the old man until his death, it was assumed we’d had perfect knowledge of all his possessions and so must know where the diamond was hidden. At this stage they were only a few steps away from concluding that the Serbetçibası Diamond was indeed in our possession. Just a few more statements about probabilities and likely consequences and the gap would close. As indeed it did. Several hearings later the court was unanimous in believing we had the diamond. To make matters worse, Abdüsselam Bey had used rather vague and suggestive language in his will: “the remainder of my fortune following the completion of my debts,” or “what remains of my estate.” Similar wording appeared in the letters he wrote to his creditors. And of course I myself had openly alluded to the diamond (if only in jest).

  Sabri Bey became the hero of the proceedings, just as he had been in the investigations about me prior to the trial. His statements stuck like olive oil stains and did not cease. At almost every hearing he came up with another detail I was meant to have divulged to him that night. Despite his cordiality throughout the trial, he pursued his version of the truth with extraordinary vigor. After extended interrogations running over several hearings, we all (myself included) came to learn that the wily princess Saliha Sultan had finagled the Serbetçibası away from the Head Sherbet Maker himself, that after her death it had been housed in the imperial treasury, and that later still Abdülhamid I had offered it to one of his most prized courtesans.

  But of course no one had the slightest interest in the relationship between the Serbetçibası and Saliha Sultan. All they cared to know was that the diamond, after centuries of being lost and rediscovered, had at last come into the possession of Abdüsselam’s family. When asked to confirm this story, I said:

  “No, the diamond was part of the treasure of the emperor Andronikos!”

  My answer didn’t please them one bit: they put it down as an attempt to appear mentally unfit.

  My aunt’s husband, Nasit Bey, was one of the creditors. He kept an attentive eye on me, assuming the air of a close relative. He was extremely conscientious in answering questions. But he didn’t know me; he didn’t know me at all. No, Abdüsselam Bey had never spoken to him of such a diamond. He had once promised him that he would repay him “when things got better.” And the old man had once told him, “I am richer than you might imagine.
” They had known each other for a long time. And indeed Abdüsselam Bey was a rich man. As for the diamond, Nasit Bey went on to say that such an heirloom might exist in an old family of this repute: “A dynasty stretching back a hundred fifty years . . .” And they seemed satisfied that my own intentions in the matter were good. At least that is what they said. My aunt herself had said as much during the trial. My father, she said, had paid little attention to my upbringing. He’d always had his eye on making money; he’d thought of little else. He had even tried to stop my aunt from marrying Nasit Bey, asking Seyit Lutfullah to work his magic on them. So my aunt had said to Nasit Bey, “Yes, let’s get married. I absolutely must save Hayri from the grip of his money-grubbing father!” But my aunt had thoroughly despised me from the moment my father, taking advantage of her temporary loss of consciousness, had tried to bury her, using me as an accomplice.

  “The truth is the whole family is a little greedy. My wife is the only generous one—she at least is endowed with a humane touch,” Nasit Bey said at one point during the trial.

  Of course we also heard about the mosque whose construction had been handed down to us by Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer, but the story was horribly mangled in the telling: According to this version, my father had squandered all the money his grandfather had put aside for the mosque.

  Nasit Bey paused repeatedly to pull his handkerchief from his pocket and clean the lenses of his spectacles or mop the sweat from his brow. He kept calm, speaking at a slow and steady pace and offering prompt answers, but only when addressed. Even so, he spoke in such a way as to leave a certain ambiguity in the air, as if to invite further interrogation about other family concerns that had yet to be addressed, even as he swore it had never been his intention to bring any of these matters into question in the first place. It was by following this strategy that he was at last able to bring up the temporary death of my aunt. It was like watching a man dispatch a polished object across a smooth table with only the slightest flick of his finger.