The Time Regulation Institute

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Yet I wondered how I’d break the news at home. They were sure to take it badly. What’s more, they’d say it was my fault. I hadn’t even begun to think about how we were going to get by. That was the next step. Now I had to get through the “first moment.” It frightened me like a dangerous underpass. I found everyone at home in a storm of nervous energy and despair. They all had long faces; they were fighting off tears.

  So they knew. I wondered who might have told them. Where could they have heard the news?

  Calmly, I asked Pakize:

  “How did you hear?”

  She handed me the newspaper.

  Why would my recent dismissal be featured in the paper? I wasn’t that important a man. I was a run-of-the-mill secretary. No, this must be something else. I read the section she pointed out to me. Three jury members for that year’s beauty contest had resigned. Among them was Sabriye Hanım. My younger sister-in-law was in a flood of tears:

  “She promised me. She promised me she’d help.”

  I tried telling them again and again that it really wasn’t the end of the world, and that I’d been laid off, and that we now ran the risk of going hungry, and that this was what we needed to be thinking about. Impossible. They were far too deep into their own troubles.

  PART III

  TOWARD DAWN

  I

  Ismail the Lame—to whom I had, the previous night, after a tortuous argument with Pakize and her sisters, consented to give my daughter’s hand in marriage—was at the table next to mine, playing dominoes. Assaulted by his pug eyes; his dirty, swollen face; his ropey jaundiced flesh; and a stump of a nose that only served to accentuate his pockmarks, I lamented my ill fortune and the beautiful spring day it had poisoned.

  If Zehra had grown up in any other home, if she had received just a little kindness and attention, Ismail the Lame would never have been her one and only suitor. Despite her unkempt appearance and threadbare clothes, she was as beautiful as a fresh spring day. Sadly, my sisters-in-law—the music lover and the aspiring beauty queen—had conspired over the course of twelve years to convince my daughter she was ugly and disagreeable. At first Pakize had tried to soften the ill will they showed my daughter. But then during our darkest days she too turned on Zehra, as if blaming her for our misfortune.

  The night before, my older sister-in-law had scolded Zehra mercilessly so as to cover up a misdeed perpetrated by Pakize: for absolutely no reason, she had made Ahmet cry. Though Zehra suffered personal attacks in silence, she did not like anyone hurting Ahmet, so she had kicked up a frightful row with her stepmother. This is what I liked most about Zehra: the way something lying dormant deep inside her would suddenly come to life. She understood things I didn’t and could do what I could never dare: she could take a stand against injustice. Unfortunately, this particular act of rebellion did not play out in my favor. In such situations Pakize had but one tactic. For her, conflict with others was but a diversionary firefight behind the front lines, and she saw no need to hesitate in throwing all her adversarial strength against me in one main assault. This was just what happened. The fight lasted into the early hours. The grand finale saw my blanket and pillow hurled onto the living room divan before Pakize pushed me out of the bedroom.

  Pakize misjudged the effect this so called sanction had on me. She thought she caused me deep distress whenever she banished me to the divan. But the truth is that, despite her thirty-five years, she still didn’t sleep properly. So a night on the divan was a welcome change from my usual nightly struggle to keep my feet from hanging off the edge of the bed.

  Convinced that the divan was the worst possible punishment I could ever receive, Pakize refused to listen when I suggested we sleep separately.

  “Oh please! Heaven forbid,” she would say, dismissing my proposals, “I should sleep in the bedroom while my husband sleeps on the divan in the living room. I could never reconcile myself with that. Just the thought of you suffering such discomfort . . . I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.”

  But the most uncomfortable spot was right beside her. In her waking hours, my wife was so very calm, sweet, and listless—save when she was arguing or out at the cinema—but the moment she drifted off to sleep she became an acrobat, her legs and arms and hands multiplying to enhance the feats to be performed; as she lay facedown, her body would jerk in fits and starts, like a spider striking a wild variety of poses, swirling from modern dance into African ritual as her ever-growing limbs came flinging at me from all directions, poking and pushing and clinging to my body in the strangest formations before brutally thrusting me away.

  If you add to this the restless snoring, snorting, and mumbling (all consequences of her malfunctioning thyroid gland), you might just begin to have a sense of the mad festivities I was obliged to endure each night.

  Pakize also liked to jolt me awake in the middle of the night to give me passionate accounts of her dreams. That was how I came to learn that she experienced in her dreams all that she lacked in her waking hours. So no matter how wrenching an argument, I quietly rejoiced if it ended in my sleeping alone.

  So I was sleeping in the living room. After everyone had gone to sleep, my daughter tiptoed into the room and told me she had decided to marry Ismail the Lame. Her eyes were full of tears. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “I’ll take Ahmet with me—maybe the family can care for him. Ismail’s mother will be here again tomorrow. Every day she asks me if I’ll marry him. This time I’m going to say yes.” Muffling her sobs, she tiptoed out of the room as silently as she had come in.

  And now Ismail the Lame sat there before me. I saw him in all his ugliness. I saw how his vile disposition had eaten through his gross form, seeping into the depths of his mortal soul. He bore all the unsavory traits recorded in the science of phrenology: His forehead was so narrow it was hardly even there, meaning he was vain; he had gangly arms and stubby fingers, and the palms of his hand were deep, coarse, and crimson, as if they were festering wounds; his jutting lower lip and his eyes’ sideward glances showed him to be a cruel, moronic trickster and a liar; his voice grated like a steel brush, in itself enough to confirm that he was uncivilized and utterly lacking in social grace; and he had yellow, crooked teeth, all mashed one on top of another, a testament to his miserly nature and unfortunate fate. That he possessed every human flaw imaginable was clear beyond doubt. What business did poor Zehra have with such a man?

  It was getting harder and harder to keep calm. Every moment I felt like packing up and leaving the coffeehouse. But I was waiting for Dr. Ramiz and so was forced to endure the poisonous presence of my future son-in-law.

  His chin and upper lip twitched like cogs in a watch; his Adam’s apple jerked back and forth in his neck as he played cards. Worst of all were his hands: those thick, gnarled fingers, untouched by profession or trade, seemed to have been made expressly for crimes too egregious for a civilized mind even to contemplate.

  “I’ll take Ahmet with me,” Zehra had said the night before, as if to console me, but now the words horrified me. We were to sacrifice two people instead of just one. I brought my hand to my forehead. “Come now, Hayri Irdal, pull yourself together,” I thought. “There is no way you can care for this boy. It’s out of the question.” But what difference would it make? My fortune would stay the same, I thought, even as disaster loomed.

  Twice I tried to force myself to get up. Each time I was pushed back into my chair as if directed by my future son-in-law’s curses. How foul tempered and evil. How ugly and crude. No, sir, I was not going to give any daughter of mine to that man. Oh, and the way he played cards—such gruesome avarice. The game more than just a pastime playing itself out in the physical world: it took over his body, operating each part separately, pecking at this and probing at that. His right foot (inside a poorly patched shoe that exposed his shredded sock) pumped up and down like the pedal of a sewing machine; his Adam’s apple bulged now in
this direction and now in that; his hooklike fingers were either grasping at things or hanging from them; he wheezed in air between his teeth as his chin jutted forward as if to spit out whatever had just been sucked in; as he struggled to befoul all around him, he let out the most preposterous snarls.

  “Vile, I tell you, sir, utterly vile! Vile and moronic, moronic and beastly . . .”

  A hand fell onto my shoulder.

  “Daydreaming again?” asked Dr. Ramiz. He was smiling broadly. Next to him stood a man, probably forty-two, forty-three years old, tall, with light wheat-colored skin, smartly dressed, rather flamboyant, indeed a rather handsome man.

  “Allow me to introduce to you my good friend Hayri Bey,” Dr. Ramiz said to the man. “He’s quite an interesting fellow. Don’t be fooled by his attire!” And then, turning to me, he said:

  “Halit Ayarcı, a friend of mine from school.” There followed the usual polite exchange. As the doctor continued to quiz me about this and that, his eyes kept drifting to the empty table beyond me.

  Humans are such strange creatures. At the time I thought it unfortunate that Halit Ayarcı had chosen just this moment to arrive: his appearance had made it impossible for me to ask Dr. Ramiz for the few liras he owed me. How could I have known then that this man accompanying Dr. Ramiz to the coffeehouse was the harbinger of my good fortune? He brought with him the prosperity of my children and a future for my wife and her sisters.

  “What an arrogant man,” I thought. “He sizes people up as if he might buy them.” Thus my anger toward this stranger was doubled. Yet his eyes brought no discomfort; his gaze was like no other’s; I could find in it not the slightest hint of contempt or mockery. He studied people with the same detachment he might accord an object. He wished only to understand the thing before his eyes, nothing more.

  We were preparing to part company; I was sinking into my chair, ruefully aware that the chance for demanding those liras had come and gone: meanwhile Dr. Ramiz was turning toward the table he’d been eyeing in the distance, even as he went through the usual motions, giving me a thorough looking over while slapping my shoulder, pinching my cheeks, and chucking my chin (this being the standard routine in the coffeehouse at the time, no one ever took his leave without first taking a thorough inventory of my attire). Then he stopped and said to his friend:

  “Weren’t you having problems with your watch? Why don’t you let Hayri Bey have a look at it? He’s quite remarkable with watches and clocks.”

  With the passing of the years Dr. Ramiz was ever more inclined to excessive chatter.

  “I’ll have you know the man’s one of a kind, a truly magnanimous soul. He might not have his own shop, but he most certainly has a keen grasp on watches and clocks, yes, sir . . .”

  In a high-flown voice he added:

  “Won’t you join us, Hayri Bey? Let’s all have a coffee together.”

  And then, to show Halit Ayarcı just how much he cared for his old classmate, despite the stark differences between us in education, manners, station, rank, wealth, and well-being, he embraced me from behind, throwing his arms right over my hunchback.

  This is how it had been for five years. My old friends felt compelled to demonstrate their lasting affection, in spite of all that had passed. And Dr. Ramiz was the most pure-hearted of the lot. We made our way to the empty table, where the doctor began to enumerate my talents, at the same time subjecting his teeth to a vigorous cleaning, sucking individually on each one in his mouth.

  “What is there Hayri Bey doesn’t know? The science of physiology, phrenology, alchemy, numerology, cleromancy, arithmancy, divine wizardry . . . You name it—he knows them all, not to mention the ancient sciences. Why, just the other day he put forward a diagnosis that surprised even yours truly!”

  The truth of the matter is that I had been making ends meet for five years by recycling material from Seyit Lutfullah’s repertoire.

  As he listened to Dr. Ramiz, Halit Bey sized me up with an expression that said, “If I come into some money, I’ll definitely swing by and purchase this creature, now that I know where to find him. But how could I make use of him?” Except when interacting with others, Halit Bey seemed almost absent. This was why his gaze never disturbed. To him people were no more than objects occupying space.

  Suddenly, he asked, “Do you really have such experience with timepieces?”

  I knew as much about alchemy, cleromancy, and the ancient sciences as I knew about timepieces, and I was no more magnanimous than a member of a secret religious sect, though I did have a certain look of the dervish: I wore a scraggly beard and my hair had recently turned white. But I had grown accustomed to lying. There was no other way for me to survive this meager silver piece I called my life. This was how people wanted me to be. I was a liar. Was there any other choice but to say I knew all there was to know about watches? But there were at least thirty-five different ways to say this. I could say the same thing quite differently to Cemal Bey or Dr. Ramiz, Selma Hanım or Sabriye Hanım, or Lazybones Asaf. I paused to look at this Halit Ayarcı. But no, the time had come to act. In the calmest manner I could muster, I said, “Let’s have a look, then.”

  From his pocket he pulled a small gold watch, which he placed in my hand. It was missing its chain, but it was so finely crafted that I felt as if there were a little sun in my palm. No, I wasn’t lost entirely. There were still things in this world that I loved.

  Fearful that the watch might elude my grasp, I closed my fingers around it as Halit Ayarcı explained:

  “It’s hasn’t been working for two months. It’s a family heirloom, passed down to me from my father, which is why it’s so dear to me. What do you think is the problem?”

  “There’s a problem, yes, and a grave one at that. Of course it isn’t ticking. A watch without a chain is like an animal without a halter, a woman without an altar. If someone truly cares for a watch, he will first and foremost attach it to himself with a chain.”

  I uttered these words to buy myself a little time and also to take stock of my companions.

  Halit Ayarcı studied my face carefully:

  “You’re absolutely right! I’ve dropped it not once but twice.”

  “How unfortunate,” I replied. “For it’s a magnificent piece, and extremely rare nowadays. English make, middle of the nineteenth century. A masterpiece, as I’m sure you know.”

  The watch was truly beautiful. I nearly forgot all about my troubles with Ismail and my daughter. It had been years since I’d touched a watch of such beauty. Not since I’d repaired Selma Hanım’s watch had I seen a piece this fine. I was in heaven.

  “But I don’t have any tools here. If I can just find my penknife . . .”

  And after thrusting my hand into the first pocket, I quickly retracted it in shame. My penknife was with Ali Efendi, the peddler in the Malta Bazaar. This state of affairs had become quite common of late. Whenever we needed something at home and couldn’t find it (and that meant just about anything in the house save those things that belonged to my sisters-in-law), we were at once reminded of the Flea Market, or rather the Malta Bazaar. Or even worse, we were haunted by the peddler’s face, with its snub nose and maddening, greedy leer. This grotesque vision rose up to haunt us relentlessly—in our beds and at the dinner table, as we dressed, undressed, and conversed. Each absent object had its own story, but all were replaced by a single face that refused us any hope of peace.

  Dr. Ramiz opened his briefcase and removed his penknife. With a mournful expression, he studied the sorry state of his fingernails before handing the knife over. A slight smile lit up Halit Ayarcı’s face. Yes, indeed, this man knew not just how to look but to see.

  I opened the watch. There was no need for a magnifying glass, nor did the watch require any intricate treatment for repair. It had merely become magnetized.

  Halit Ayarcı was looking on with such fixed attention that one
might have thought I was examining his child.

  “Oh, there’s nothing at all to worry about,” I said. “The watch has become magnetized—that’s all. By no means have it dismantled. There’s no need. There’s a particular instrument for just this sort of thing, which any serious major watchmaker should have. It would take no more than half an hour to fix.”

  Nodding his head, Halit Ayarcı asked, “How could they not have identified the problem before?”

  “They tend not to. Or rather they don’t pay attention to such things. A timepiece is like the human body. Doctors look for the illnesses that are most common. But there’s a difference in treatment. In the human body, organs sometimes cease to function, and not all can be replaced, whereas the parts of a watch or a clock can be.”

  Dr. Ramiz was beside himself with joy, so much so that he looked deranged. I had risen to heights he had never dreamed possible: I was speaking clearly and concisely, and receiving due respect.

  “Have they actually replaced a part in this watch?” Halit Ayarcı asked. “I can’t believe it. I’ve known that man for years . . .”

  Was the sixth sense that the spiritualists always talked of finally coming to life inside me? Or was I simply trying to capture this man’s attention? Perhaps I had tired of the coffeehouse; perhaps I wanted to reach out and embrace this most humane of new acquaintances. I spoke with all the eloquence I could muster:

  “You must go back to the man and first have him replace the stone that was removed from this spot here, or at least have him find a replacement of equal weight. This might not seem of great importance, but you have to have a balancing weight here. The craftsmen who made this watch would not have set a lentil between two ruby stones. Then have him demagnetize the piece. And finally have him replace this wire.”