A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  “‘Seeing as we’re getting married’?”

  “Yes, my uncle insists on it. My mother does as well. D’you know, I’m afraid now, too . . .”

  Nuran sparkled like a jewel in the tight-fitting, ginger-colored, waistlength jacket over a purple velvet vest and matching baggy şalvars, all embellished with ornate silver thread and embroidery. She herself was quite taken with the costume, frequently looking into the mirror.

  “How did you manage to braid your hair and put it up like that?”

  “It’s not like there aren’t combs and mirrors in the house. Sümbül helped as well.” Sümbül smiled sweetly, revealing poor teeth. She existed in such a different world than Suad’s delirium or Yaşar’s afflictions.

  “Nuran, you realize that anyone who sets eyes upon you will assume they’re living in a fable?”

  Nuran longed to sing the türküs that she’d learned from her mother and grandmother, from lands she’d seen and traveled.

  Mümtaz felt he was living in a newly discovered dimension.

  “What name shall we give you now, Nuran?”

  “My real name is adequate.” Then she added, “It seems that the lives of our grandmothers weren’t so bad after all. For one, they dolled up quite nicely! Just have a look at this broadcloth.”

  Before the looking glass, from which she couldn’t pull herself away, Nuran gazed at the vision of herself.

  “Purely the early Renaissance of Pisanello! Or one of our own miniatures.”

  “How much do you suppose a new one would be?”

  Mümtaz guessed it would cost no less than a few hundred liras.

  “But I doubt whether another like it could be made. The looms and weavers used to make this material . . .” Then he remembered: A school friend from the south had a traditional woolen cloak woven to celebrate the liberation of cities in that region. That alone had cost him fifty gold coins.

  “Amazing!” Nuran nevertheless refused to relinquish her phantasy of time past: “Furthermore, their lifestyles were comfortable . . . They lived within a protective cocoon.”

  Mümtaz stared at Nuran’s face remorsefully and said, “It’s true. Despite all the liberties we’ve given to women, we’re tinkering with their minds, and not even women, with the minds of young girls . . . Each day we cast a slew of victims out into society!”

  Nuran nodded her head. “There’s nothing to be done. People aren’t interested in lives of ease now; they want to forge ahead on their own . . .”

  But tonight wasn’t the night to delve into such matters. Sümbül was summoning them to the table. After the evening meal Nuran sang türküs that matched the outfits she wore. Both of them greatly admired songs from Kozanoǧlu, though Nuran was saddened at not knowing any türküs from Kütahya.

  Early the next morning they went to see İhsan. Wearing his robe de chambre, he was conversing with two friends in his study. Mümtaz drew him aside and explained the situation. “Fine,” İhsan said. “It’ll be done within a week’s time . . . The district official in Fatih will handle it for me. I’ll inform him shortly. Give me your papers immediately, or have them delivered to me . . .”

  “In the afternoon, then . . .”

  İhsan, gazing at both of them, chuckled. “Nothing could have made me happier.” Nonetheless, he was preoccupied.

  Accompanied by Mümtaz, he returned to the company of his friends. Nuran went to help Macide bathe Sabiha. Sabiha’s bath recalled the protocol of an eighteenth-century queen. The little scamp loved the water madly, as well as the soap bubbles and ducklike fluttering in the tub. She had to fully savor each of these cherished things. Everything was done only with her consent. She might say, “Mother, I’m freezing to death,” or she might shout and feign annoyance, “Gracious, you’ve scalded me! You’ve startled me breathless!” From where he sat upstairs, Mümtaz heard cackling from the ground floor. Perhaps the last remnant of animal instinct in the species could be traced to the way little girls lived to be adored.

  İhsan continued from where he’d left off a short while before: “Aren’t we putting too much stock solely in the idea? Evidently we are. Meanwhile it’s forced to transform so drastically . . . Just like elements that lose their properties or transform completely when exposed to air. Just for the sake of an idea, social life won’t forgo its own order or lack thereof, or its continual state of becoming. And that’s the reason leaders everywhere don’t pursue only one idea, even if it’s their own. The idea, at times, paves the way for their coming to power. But it cannot reign in and of itself. What actually reigns and endures are episodes in history and, along with them, realities whose resilience doesn’t diminish unless the era is disregarded. This is why, whoever they might be, great men of action only represent one passing moment, or else a limited period. Every age has its golden hour. You see, the man of greatness represents that golden hour.

  “What should a ruler do with ideas that serve no purpose but to bind him hand and arm in the face of real events? And just let him try to concentrate on a very bold and exclusive issue and to move beyond current events! Just let him give up trying to contain those small, incessant revolts! Then he’ll glimpse the fundamental matter. But do you think life, that is, the social context, would allow this to happen? How long do you think he could endure? Had I been a dramaturge, I’d have rewritten Wagner’s Rienzi, the hero who emerged from the masses only to be burned by them. Or else a character resembling him . . .”

  İhsan’s old schoolmate, a civil servant in his mid-fifties, staid and experienced, had been a member of parliament for three years now. “The entire catastrophe has to do with one’s repeated encounters with others, such that one’s ultimately unrecognizable to even his own self . . .”

  “Ideas suffer the same fate: after repeated encounters with society, they become unrecognizable. New concepts are bold, but they’re susceptible to the disaster of not meeting a countervaling force capable of resisting them. What might serve to restrain an idea? Nothing. But put it into practice and see what form it takes. It’ll change from moment to moment, no longer resembling its original shape at all. Here rests the history of great revolutions. There are few epics as grandiose and sublime as the French Revolution. Within a span of twenty or thirty years, mankind had discovered all the principles that might guide it for another two thousand years. However, in the beginning, who would have guessed that the end result would have been bourgeois rule?

  “Nothing simply accepts another entity the way it is: Agency resides within us. Outside us there are nothing but tools and means.”

  “Despite this, for the sake of an idea we witness revolts, revolutions, cruelties, massacres . . .”

  İhsan collected the hems of his robe de chambre. He was truly one beloved of oration. He glanced at Mümtaz as if to say, “Do pardon me!” before continuing. “Yes, it happens. But the outcome always changes. The arrow continually veers from its trajectory. As for our current times, it’s total horror. All our values and virtues are for sale at the bazaar. The carts have been upturned. On one hand there are engineers of revolution, the most grisly, most destructive legacy of the nineteenth century. Rest assured, as we speak there are ‘visionaries’ in Spain or Mexico preparing revolutions in random corners of the world based on nothing more than a city map, as if remotely planning any old public works project that intends to bring electricity to its citizens . . . Insurgents are identifying localities prone to provocation or susceptible to gangrene and instigating or inciting them.”

  The middle-aged parliamentarian interrupted, “İhsan, you appear to be of a rather modern cast. It seems to me that you’re not so fond of your generation, are you?”

  “I am not. Or rather, let my put it this way: I’m no advocate of revolution. But am I modern, truly? To be modern, I must be a man of the times in which I live. Meanwhile, I yearn for different things! To be modern, I should accept perpetual transformation along with the revolution. Whereas I’m one who admires consistency in certain ideas and cont
exts.”

  “But all revolutions aren’t this way. Take ours, for example . . .”

  “Our revolution is of another variety. In its natural form, revolution occurs when the masses or society transcends the state apparatus. With us, the masses and society, that is, the collective in question, is obligated to catch up to the state. Even including, more often than not, intellectuals and statesmen . . . Walking down a path blazed by an idea! At least since 1839 and the Tanzimat it’s been this way . . . That’s why our lives are so tiring. Not to mention that there’s an enormous legacy of socialization looming over us. Customs and moralities impeding all our efforts and virtually condemning us . . . We’re quick to relent: the prevailing characteristic of the Muslim East. The East relents. And not just in the face of hardship, it relents in the face of time, natural time . . . But how did we get onto this topic?” He shook his head. “That unfortunate, lamented gentle man ...”

  Mümtaz quickly recognized the change in İhsan’s tone. “What’s happened? Who?”

  “An old friend. You remember my schoolmate Hüseyin? He passed away last night. The funeral and obsequies are today . . .”

  A deep well yawned open before Mümtaz. His own elation, İhsan’s ideas, Sabiha’s multi-hued, crisp laughter rising from below like fireworks, and a few steps beyond them all: mortal remains being cleansed and shrouded for interment.

  XII

  Rainfall, having begun the previous night, now turned to snow. Nuran adored the Bosphorus under snow. During the summer she’d spun a phantasy about the winters they would spend in Emirgân, and didn’t leave it at that but had Mümtaz buy two ceramic tile woodstoves that she’d happened upon at the Bedesten. On another occasion she’d insisted on a portable gas heater: “This should be available in case of any eventualities!” After having delivered their papers to İhsan and having informed Tevfik by letter of the new developments, she inquired, “Mümtaz, we have a week before us, can’t we head off to Emirgân? But we’ll freeze from the cold, won’t we?”

  And Nuran shivered before the stove.

  “Why should we freeze? We’ve got all that wood and those twigs. Or have you already forgotten about the stoves you had me buy?”

  “Not at all, we’re rich in stoves, but . . . who’s going to light them? I mean, that large tiled one? The one we purchased in the Bedesten. I wouldn’t be able to figure it out for the life of me.” Here in the study, they’d set up a stove salvaged from a former pasha’s estate.

  Mümtaz, ponderously: “As soon as we’ve decided to marry, without even waiting to see it through, the first thing we do is change our plans!”

  “Don’t forget about Sümbül . . .”

  “Sümbül will be staying at İhsan’s tonight!”

  “We’ll drop a letter and she’ll come tomorrow. She’s been pining madly for Emirgân.”

  “Fine, but what about tonight?”

  “I’ll light the damn stove . . . C’mon, let’s go.” He, too, yearned for the Bosphorus. Though it didn’t please him in the least that Suad had learned the whereabouts of his apartment.

  Nuran, half teasing, insisted, “You’ll always rise to the occasion, won’t you, Mümtaz? You’ll see to the things that I’m unable to, won’t you?”

  “We’re not even married and you’re designating chores . . .”

  Nuran responded solemnly, “For the sake of our comfort and future peace . . .”

  Mümtaz didn’t want to let a careless aside slip his lips. He hadn’t been able to get used to this apartment building. He’d suffered so much within these walls.

  “Let’s go! We’ll just take what food’s available here. Tomorrow, when Sümbül comes, everything will return to normal.”

  “You light the stove. Food is no problem. I like to improvise in the kitchen. It’s a skill that runs in the family.”

  By the time they descended to the ferry landing, nightfall loomed. Within the span of a few hours, snow had accumulated along the Bosphorus, which was shrouded in mist.

  Nuran, gleeful as a child, hadn’t been in Emirgân since the evening of Emin Dede’s performance. “I wonder what state the garden’s in?” The first day that she’d come to the house, Mümtaz had introduced yet-blooming fruit trees to her as “your handmaidens . . .” Thereafter it became an in-joke, and together with Mümtaz she’d given them traditional Ottoman servant names. Presently, recalling each by name, she wondered how they were faring.

  It astonished Mümtaz that Nuran hadn’t forgotten these sobriquets amid the countless episodes that had so distressed him this winter. Even worse, he didn’t conceal his surprise. Nuran said, “How peculiar, you actually think I’ve been estranged from you! Next you’ll thank me for not inquiring after your name!” And she continued listing the trees vociferously. “I wonder what state head maidservant Razıdil is in? She’ll have a bit of a chill, won’t she, now? Poor little dear, Razıdil, she’s the solitaire of the garden.”

  That week constituted the last of Mümtaz’s halcyon days. From the gloom of winter, they’d reemerged into sublime days of summer. During this week he tasted of the full zest of that initial seasonal fruit called satisfaction, of all things that filled human existence with poetry and enchantment, forging nothing less than a pièce de résistance out of life. Both of them had succumbed to ennui over recent months. For this reason their pleasure resembled a fever of recuperation. As if they’d returned to health and vitality after long illnesses, they clung to each other’s presence.

  Within the quieting of nerves fostered by his reunion with Nuran, Mümtaz again began to occupy himself with the Shaykh Galip. He again outlined the entire novel. He discarded everything he’d written beforehand, starting anew.

  On the third day of their assignation, he said, “I can clearly see the book now!”

  “And I can see the missing button on your blazer.”

  “Are you doing it on purpose, for goodness sake?”

  “Why should I be? I’m preparing for married life. Haven’t we divvied up the chores?”

  Through the window the evening twilight cast a faint and nostalgic pastel blush over the snow-covered hilltops above the Asian shore. All things out there swam in dreamlike buoyancy beneath a tulle-thin hue. Fog had descended. Snow was in the forecast. Ferryboat horns occasionally sought and found them in the corners of their seclusion, filling them with the mournful hüzün of shores abandoned to desolate waves, empty seafront yalis, wind-lashed public squares near ferry landings, and roads as gloomy as a catacomb and abstracted from active life.

  The panorama made for a rare Istanbul snowscape. Winter, which had ever so lackadaisically squandered its entire season, duped by the faux summer of southerlies, broke out at the end of February in true Eastern-style haste and, determined to make up for all its shortcomings, paralyzed the city within a few days, using every means at its disposal from storms to fogs and snowfalls to blizzards. The previous day, everything had frozen, up to and including the water in the pipes of the pump. The trees in the garden, large icicles hanging from their branches, resembled, in the emptiness of evening, grave and aged apparitions belonging to a realm of absolute difference.

  This âlem had overtaken them. For two days Mümtaz couldn’t get his fill of the panorama that recalled an unwritten poem, a truth as of yet untainted by the poison of doubt, a totality that hadn’t been fragmented by life’s shortcomings. He existed in an immaculate dimension of Creation that had overwhelmed his own perceptions and abilities. The couple lived in a world bleached white, as if in the center of a brilliant diamond. Rare silence: Everything, the entire summer, their own lives, their acquaintances, their thoughts, all of it lay beneath a shroud of silence. On pure white pages of silence, each memory could be detailed and each gesture could be described; from whiteness, every description might issue forth without tainting the gesso or disturbing the measured peace of the totality. They passed half their time reminiscing about summer. Mümtaz, half of whose life had been spent in quest of bygone days, was surp
rised that Nuran resembled him in this diversion, and he asked, “Are you just imitating me?” Oddly enough, since they’d stepped foot in Emirgân, Mümtaz had been preoccupied with Suad rather than their recent past. Mümtaz couldn’t forget his words, disposition, laughter, and bizarre point of view from that fateful night. What had he meant to say? he asked himself perpetually. About eight or ten times since, he’d been in Suad’s company for a few hours. Yet Suad hadn’t revisited such dire subjects. Had he actually recounted what he believed, or . . . Whenever he brought the matter up to Nuran, she grew livid.

  “If you’ve got nothing better to do, go down and get some breadcrumbs for the sparrows.”

  Mümtaz plodded toward the door. But thoughts of Suad didn’t leave his head. Why is he in pursuit of Nuran to this extent? I’m certain he doesn’t love her. What is it? What’s he after? The entire episode recalled the vagaries of fate. And for this reason he was afraid. At the kitchen table, as he broke apart the soft white insides of bread loaves, he continued to ponder such questions.

  The first morning of their arrival, they’d noticed a graceful teeming around the windows, as elegant as lace, inviting, and atwitter. Nuran cried, “Oh my! The sparrows have arrived ...” From that moment onward she’d assumed responsibility for feeding them. Not the slightest is known about the sense of taste of these birds. Nuran, were it within her power, would have had special meals prepared for the little creatures. That day, toward nightfall, the population of the old house was augmented by one. The snowy, icy weather must have been unbearable and tedious for Emirgân’s black bitch, seeing as Mümtaz’s previous invitations, toward which she displayed excessive demurral, were now met with great delight as she entered. She cleaned herself beside the stove and cast desirous glances toward Nuran’s winged companions, preparing – within the comfort of a dream – to taste this twittering bounty that all but mocked her from its protective sanctuary.