The Time Regulation Institute

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  “My dear doctor, there are already books covering these topics. A brief wander through the bookstalls in Beyazıt will make that all too clear. You can purchase a stack of such tomes for less than ten liras!”

  “But first you must explain it to me. Then of course we shall consult the books. But science, you see, is an oral tradition. Marvel at how I taught you psychoanalysis in only a few days.”

  Thank God just around that time the judge responsible for my case finally read through my file with a little more care and found that my statements agreed with those of Abdüsselam’s daughter and son-in-law, and determined, at least in terms of the articles of the case that applied to me, that enough evidence had been compiled. On one of those days when Dr. Ramiz made no reference to the report he was to write on the condition of my health (so consumed was he by his work in his new field of dream interpretation), the judge came to the miraculous conclusion that I had been cured and was to be acquitted of all charges or, better put, that I was to remain outside the realm of the case.

  Good and evil are interchangeable. And they travel in pairs. The night before my acquittal was announced, I succeeded in conjuring up a dream that would very much have pleased Dr. Ramiz, a dream that will forever cause me to question my personality and that will poison my thoughts each time I remember it.

  V

  I dreamt I was in the laboratory behind Aristidi Efendi’s pharmacy. Almost everyone I knew was there—Nuri Efendi, Seyit Lutfullah, Abdüsselam Bey and his eldest son, and Dr. Ramiz—and they were all eagerly observing one of Aristidi Efendi’s experiments. But was it the laboratory or the children’s room in our home? I couldn’t see the enormous heap of furniture, the mirrors, dressers, or cradles. Yet somehow it was the children’s room and the laboratory at the same time. And all those people weren’t really there, but I knew they were—I knew we were all there together, for suddenly we were all peering into that strange mirror that startled me whenever I crept into the children’s room at night, the light from the corridor revealing my reflection in the glass. The alembic and the mirror had become one, or was it that the tube was bubbling inside the frame? A terra-cotta-colored mixture was boiling furiously in the alembic, and a blackish cloud of smoke with veins the color of sulfur swelled up and down inside the tube.

  I heard a shout beside me:

  “They’re about to separate. Watch out!”

  And with ever-increasing agitation, we stared at the mud- and earth-colored cloud of smoke hovering above the alembic as it coiled like some strange creature.

  Suddenly I heard Seyit Lutfullah’s voice.

  “Aha! That’s it . . . It’s done!”

  And just then a bright-green light flashed above the alembic, and the black cloud collapsed inside the tube like a clod of mud. A feathery vapor rose slowly from the center of the sulfurous light. My heart pounding in fear, I leaned over as far as I could, as if I were stepping into the mirror.

  “That’s it . . . Oh yes! Now, now . . . ,” Lutfullah cried, and then continued with his strange incantations.

  My heart was still racing and it seemed as if somehow I knew what was about to happen. I begged him: “Don’t do it. Abort the plan. Don’t do it!”

  Suddenly the white cloud changed shape, and I saw Emine’s face, her hair aflame in the sulfurous cloud, her lips pale, and her eyes open wide. “Save me!” she cried. I tried to leap toward the alembic or the mirror, but I couldn’t move; it seemed like hundreds of hands were holding me down, and I just couldn’t move. Horrified, torn by love and despair and pity, half-crazed, I struggled to reach her, and I begged them to let me go.

  “Save me, save me,” Emine gasped.

  And Seyit Lutfullah turned to me and said, “Oh no, and after all that effort . . .” Then he threw himself at me, shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

  They all had a hold on me. Inside the alembic, with her eyes wide with fear and her hair in flames, Emine was still begging me to help her. I was desperately struggling to reach her, but Seyit Lutfullah’s hands had latched onto me like hooks. How many did he have? What a terrible hold he had on me! It was as if every piece of my body were clamped in a vice. I couldn’t breathe; I felt like I was suffocating. “Let me go! Let me go!” I begged as I wrestled to get free. But I knew they’d never let go, that I’d never be able to free myself from them. Still I struggled and flailed about desperately. “She’s gone. Oh, I’m finished. Let me go!” I cried.

  The image of Emine in the mirror had begun to change.

  A moment later nothing but her two eyes remained—two eyes staring straight at me, wide with fear. Two enormous terrified and accusing eyes bore into me through a continuous swirl of harsh, pale-green light, mouthing the words, “This is all your fault.” They were Emine’s eyes.

  Then I saw something more horrifying still. A great gust of wind sent everything flying up into the air, and in less than an instant the roof was blown off the house and the walls collapsed and we were all swept away by the wind.

  A little later I found myself walking down a hill in the darkness of night. Dr. Ramiz was beside me. He was mumbling something as he led me, his arm in mine, down the cliff. At the bottom there was a brightly illuminated house. But I knew that the road ahead of us was long and that even if I did reach the end, it wouldn’t matter. Still I stumbled frantically forward, telling the doctor, “Just hold on a little longer, Doctor, just a little more . . .” Suddenly a shadow loomed over us, and as it grew before our eyes we realized it was Seyit Lutfullah’s tortoise, Çesminigâr. Truly a gruesome sight to behold, it was slowly expanding, like dough, like water, like wind, swelling up to smother everything around it. Nothing could stop it. Growing larger and larger every second, it buzzed like a swarm of locusts. My teeth chattered as I whimpered, “It will grow and grow and fill up all the earth and sky!” Terrified, I woke up.

  I was drenched in sweat. My teeth still tightly clenched, I looked around the room, listening to my pounding heart. It was still night, and there was a strange silence in the air. Like a capsized ship undulating in dead waters, the enormous building seemed almost to be swimming in a silence that blacked out all around it. But at least my feet were on firm ground. The horror I had just suffered was nothing but a dream. I lit a cigarette. I took a few deep drags and got out of bed and sat down at the desk, repeating to myself that it was nothing but a dream. Still I couldn’t get the image of Emine’s screaming face out of my mind, and so I closed my eyes, hoping to rid myself of those eyes. Suddenly I was woken by a sharp jolt. I had fallen asleep with my cigarette still in my mouth, and the butt had burned my lips. I tossed it to the floor, put on my slippers, and shut my eyes.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. Confused, I looked up at a face I couldn’t at first recognize. Soon I realized it was Dr. Ramiz’s warden. It was ten o’clock, and the director wanted to see me. I got dressed, still badly shaken by the dream. Convinced I would be given the same bad news, I didn’t even bother to ask the warden why I had been summoned. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. It was all over.

  Upstairs in his office, the director beamed as he read to me the court decision. He announced that I was now entirely free to go. My eyes were fixed on him as if to say, “But what will I do once I get home? I’ve already lost Emine . . .” I feared reopening an old wound even though it had been dressed and bandaged long ago; I feared seeing the gaping and untreatable wound that would never fully heal.

  Finally the director asked, “But what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m just afraid. Afraid of everything.”

  He was a fatherly man and knew the workings of the human soul.

  “All that will pass,” he said. “You’re now free! No need to worry about a thing!”

  And he rose to his feet and told me his side of the story.

  “Well, we’ve sent your report to the committee.”

  Down in his office, Dr. Ramiz thr
ew his arms around me and cried, “We’ll continue our work elsewhere! Besides, your treatment is over, more or less. We’ll just do a few more sessions and that’s that. And then we’ll prepare that report.”

  I suddenly lost my temper. “What report?” I cried.

  “My dear, the report for the congress . . . the formal submission, as they call it, about the interpretation manuals.”

  Oh dear!

  He helped me pack my things. And he insisted on driving me all the way home. What a kind man! There was now no doubt in my mind that he was genuinely fond of me. Yet for six whole weeks he never made the least effort to submit the other report he’d promised me since the beginning.

  Now all this was forgotten: happy as a child, he nattered on about new projects to be conducted in the name of our friendship. Sadly, I was unable to share in his joy, so I couldn’t really answer any of his questions. The whole time he spoke I could think only of that terrible dream.

  Finally I was seized by a desperate impatience. “Yes, right away, as soon as we can,” I muttered.

  Everything and everyone I passed on the streets wore the ghostly pallor of the nightmare that by now had invaded my entire being. I made my way through the streets of my neighborhood, living among the living, until we arrived at my home and I knocked on the door with dread.

  The dread persisted right up until I saw with my own eyes Emine’s face lighting up in joy. You might say I didn’t really wake up until I saw her. She’d become a little thin, but the same warmth was there in her neck and in her hands. And there she was, really and truly standing before me, smiling with her usual warmth and good cheer. Her smile brought back all I thought I had lost.

  I went upstairs with Dr. Ramiz, who suddenly cried, “The Blessed One!” He ran over to the family heirloom: immaculate and shining, it was standing triumphantly in its rightful place once again.

  I looked at my wife in surprise.

  Laughing, she confessed: “What can I say? So much has happened to us that even I began believing in these things. I took it out last week. Doesn’t look too bad, eh? That spot seemed so empty without him.”

  Dr. Ramiz had forgotten all about us; unaware that little Zehra had wobbled up to him, her hand extended for a kiss, he was down on his knees, engrossed in the old clock. Written on his face was the joy of being reunited with a long-lost love. Emine smiled, looking first at me and then at him, as if to ask, “Where did you find this one?” I shrugged my shoulders and took advantage of our new uncle’s reverie to embrace my daughter once again. All was right in the world.

  VI

  With the passage of time, Emine’s courage and good cheer soothed my rattled nerves, and I began to forget about our strange misadventure. And perhaps more importantly, the shock and terror of that frightful dream faded away. Even the rage I felt toward Dr. Ramiz eventually dwindled; how many days had he wasted and to what absurd lengths had he gone only to pester me into having a particular kind of dream? But when he examined Emine and told me there was nothing wrong with her, I felt nothing but gratitude toward him.

  Of course I spent my first few days of freedom seeking employment. I believe I already mentioned that the moment my trial began, my position was filled and I was made redundant. But one day I ran into an old teacher of mine, who suggested I visit the director of the post office in Fener. “A position has just become available,” he said. And he was right. I started work that very day, before the opening was even posted. The salary was much reduced from that of my previous job. But it wouldn’t matter at all. As long as we tightened our belts, we’d manage fine. I’d regained my freedom, my home, my children, and a world filled with people who led good and decent lives. Even the oddities and idiosyncrasies of Dr. Ramiz didn’t trouble me as they had before. And, besides, from my first week of freedom he had pulled me into a new world so bizarre that I lost the capacity to see anything strange in his behavior or disposition.

  Dr. Ramiz liked to spend his time in one of the larger coffeehouses in Sehzadebası. During my stay in the Department of Justice Medical Facility, my dear friend had spoken warmly of me to all his friends at the coffeehouse—praising my various talents, my knowledge of our old ways, and my proficiency in repairing watches and clocks—and he had given them a poignant account of my life’s adventures, highlighting in particular the details pertaining to my illness, so that when I stepped foot in the establishment, a cry of joy exploded from the patrons.

  I was welcomed as an old friend and hero of the day. Dr. Ramiz stopped everyone who passed by our table, introducing me by saying, “This man here has conquered a true father complex. You see before you the most important patient of my career,” whereupon he would tell the whole story again in full detail.

  “Now the man understands both his disease and its treatment. Truly an extraordinary individual, and one who has an impressive store of cultural knowledge, not to mention his tremendous willpower—oh dear me—thanks to which he conjured such a dream!” He would say all this while vigorously rubbing my back, and then he’d launch into his absurd rendition of my life.

  One might expect he’d finish his exposé with “Come now and take a few steps for your uncle,” or “Haven’t you memorized a new poem? Why don’t you recite it for these nice gentlemen?”

  At first I was really quite flustered by all the attention and rather fearful of the consequences. But indeed this was a very strange place, one where no one ever seemed surprised by anything and no subject was ever explored for very long. Here a man was accepted for who he was, with all his idiosyncrasies, shortcomings, and defects. And the more flaws the better, although this didn’t mean you were absolved of anything. On the contrary, nothing was ever forgotten: events and details were lodged forever in the collective memory of the group. Indeed this communal information became as immutable as the traits of an uncompromising personality, as defiant as a name or date of birth inscribed in a passport. Years later we saw one of these coffeehouse acquaintances win a seat in the National Assembly. His success as a politician was most alarming, but in this peculiar coffeehouse he remained a fixture in the collective memory of the place; when his name came up in conversation everyone still remembered the same old things and passed the same judgments.

  The character of the place derived from its proprietor, who would eventually go bankrupt. Not once in his life had the man bothered to take life seriously, though he did seem to know half of Istanbul. He needed to meet a man only once to become his lifelong friend. And thanks to him the coffeehouse became a kind of clubhouse.

  He was handsome, well built, and devilishly charming. He might well have become a high-flying businessman had he not considered the domain of the eccentric the only place worth living. He had concocted a language all his own, as affected and artificial as his attire, both of which vacillated between old and new, and he wore a little pointed goatee in the French fashion. With his ridiculous attire and his pretentious little beard, he gossiped from morning till night, spinning tales of unimaginable slander with his bogus turns of phrase, while always taking care not to implicate himself. And if he was really at a loss for something to talk about, he would draw from his personal arsenal, telling tales that would have been best left untold. He was forever falling in love, and since he chose women who seemed incapable of ever loving anyone but him, he was obliged to marry each in due course, and was thus eternally entangled in burdensome divorce suits. The fact of the matter was that he lived in a glass jar, which is to say very much exposed to the public eye.

  The coffeehouse was frequented by all sorts: the sons of old money, tradesmen both bankrupt and successful, unsung poets, journalists, painters, high officials, masters of chess and backgammon and other games, former wrestlers, actors and musicians, and the usual gang of university professors and students; all told, there was someone from nearly every walk of life. And though each belonged to a clique, they also gave the impression of living as one. You
were on intimate terms with any of them the day after meeting him for the first time. There were no secrets. The laundry—dirty or clean—was hung out for everyone to see. Each garment was openly fingered, examined, and even sniffed, and any elements deemed interesting were promptly paraded about. Here every good deed, every moment of despair, every shocking piece of scandalous news was judged with the same severity, or if need be, compassion, before gaining official acceptance. Pederasty, unwarranted philandering, hoodwinks large and small—all was laid bare to be bandied about by the crowd.

  Every coffeehouse regular, even the proprietor, was assigned a nickname, and the moment any given character stepped foot in the establishment, someone in the crowd would tell a story or two about him, polishing each detail as he went.

  I’d been around most of these people almost all my life. Some I knew from work, and others I’d met in their homes. Later a good number of them worked with me, and by that I mean they worked at the Time Regulation Institute. All were more or less honorable, or at least they were willing to risk anything to appear that way. And some had already attained important posts. Not one was unhappy with his lot in life; in fact the great majority seemed rather content. But of course there were a few who encouraged their friends to make jokes at their expense, so afraid were they of being forgotten.

  What wasn’t discussed in the coffeehouse? History, the philosophy of Bergson, Aristotelian logic, Greek poetry, psychoanalysis, spiritualism, everyday gossip, lewd adventures, tales of terror and intrigue, the political events of the day—all gathered up into one swollen conversation that burst like a spring deluge, carrying away everything in its path, as surprising as it was senseless, one topic seething forward before the other was finished. But, then, of course, nothing was ever discussed in detail. In the coffeehouse a story would rise up as if from a long slumber, or like a faint memory of the ancient echo of a death. As conversation turned deliriously from one subject to the next, Alexander the Great would join forces with Hannibal or the Kantian imperative, all to serve as antidotes to daily life. With even the most benign adventure, the pleasure was in the retelling. The patrons had listened to one another for so long that they could guess more or less what would happen in any story. Conversation was merely a platform for the speaker to display his eloquence; it was more like a play, or the recitation of a dearly loved work, for the exchanges were executed according to predetermined conditions—not at all unlike the traditional Turkish mime theater, ortaoyunu. The story would be interrupted by the same interjections, and laughter would follow; if certain members of the crowd were directly involved in the tale, they would make their defining pronouncements at just the right moment. If the narrator introduced new details, he would be cut off at once with, “You made that up!” But it was these new twists that people came to enjoy most in later recitations. And no one ever found the endless—and mandatory—repetitions tedious. In fact it was only the out of the ordinary that met with some resistance. New ideas were at first humored out of courtesy and a slight curiosity, but they would remain unaddressed until the crowd’s ever-vigilant imagination had recast them as pleasantries, thus assimilating them to their own idiom. This is what happened to any attempt at serious conversation. A new story was accepted into the repertory only once it had been reduced to a base sexual escapade, a tale of pederasty, a piece of slapstick shadow-puppet humor, or the replica of an ortaoyunu. There was a specific name given to those who discussed serious matters: they were known as the “world regulators,” the aristocrats who busied themselves with the regulation of the world. Below them was a larger group called the “Eastern Plebeians.” Armed with only just enough culture to be active members of the coffeehouse commune, they had little to say about life’s simple pleasures or even the hardships of making ends meet, preferring instead to indulge in an innocuous flair for the comical by drawing attention to the imperfections of others around them. Finally there were the “irregulars”; devoid of social refinement and utterly ill at ease in the urban environment, they were men still in thrall to their primal urges. An irregular could pick a fight with anyone, but a plebian or a regulator would fight in earnest only if confronted by an irregular. To some degree the irregulars represented the primitive element, and perhaps because they were largest in number, they were the only ones with a subgroup: the “pseudo-irregulars.”