Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

A hand on each temple, sitting on a corner of a man’s bed, a man whose acquaintance he’d only just made, Mümtaz tried to recollect his dream. No, he hadn’t listened to the concerto, but he did dream of Suad. And in a very bizarre way. I was at the Bosphorus, on the quay of a yalı. Before me, the evening was being erected just like a theater set. First large boards were carried in — but in an array of colors. Purple, red, navy blue, pink, and green. . Then these were nailed together.“We’re going to hang the sun here,” they said. I was shaking my head, saying, “The sun doesn’t shine in a dream. Neither sun nor moon. Sleep is the sibling of Death.” But nobody heeded my words. Finally they raised the sun with ropes and pulleys. Only it wasn’t the sun. It was Suad. Yet how stunning and multihued he was. As the ropes cut into his flesh, the smile on his face grew more intense. Then they stretched him out over the evening that they’d built. He must have been the setting sun! Then pulleys and other mechanisms that I knew nothing of were set into motion. The ropes that bound Suad grew increasingly taut. I realized that th ey were cutting into his muscles, and I was frantic with his suffering from where I watched. But Suad continued laughing, as if he felt no pain; he was surrounded by color and brilliance. The more he suffered, the more he laughed. Next, I’m not sure how it happened. Suad began tossing down part of himself that had been rent asunder. It was as if he’d become a shadow puppet whose binding strings had snapped. In the seawater before me, I could see the colorful body parts that he’d cast away. Suddenly a voice sounded beside me: “See? See what a fate I bear? Suad threw an arm at me!” I turned toward the voice. It was Adile. She was doubled over laughing. Then I woke up. Macide came in and informed me that I˙hsan’s condition had worsened.

Mümtaz wiped his forehead and looked about. I wonder what the doctor will think of me? Here I sit, listening to music. Who knows what kind of crazy gestures I’ve made? Then he returned to the subject of the dream. Maybe that was the voice of the sea. .

When the seventy-eight finished, the doctor let the remainder of the concerto resonate. But when he noticed Mümtaz’s woebegotten face, he said, “Tell me then, what troubles you, my young man?”

Mümtaz implored, “Please, let’s be on our way, doctor.”

“Going is easy, my son. But where are we going, just tell me that. .”

“Wouldn’t it do if I told you on the way, good doctor?” he said.

Smiling, the doctor put on his jacket, which had been hanging on the wall. He grabbed his cap and walked toward the door without fastening any buttons. In wardly Mümtaz said, What a strange night, Allah. What an endless, inexhaustible night. It’s as if I’m trying to fill a bottomless pit.

As soon as they entered the street, the portly doctor began breathing heavily. Mümtaz briefly explained İhsan’s condition, the attack he’d suffered that night, and the injection. The doctor translated huile de camphre as if wanting to satisfy the spirits of ancestors: “Camphor oil. . camphor oil. . camphor oil is one of the remedies that has done honor to the field of medicine. But only for the heart. Meanwhile, you didn’t need to let the matter go this far. My good man, some colleagues are reticent to take responsibility. With sulfamide, pneumonia can be inhibited from the start. You could have done this as well. Eight Ultraseptil every four hours. . It’ll clear up the affliction. Nonetheless, we’ve set out on our way. Let’s have a look at him. Who’s the patient in question?”

“My cousin on my father’s side. He’s older than I am and like a brother to me. Others expect a great deal of him.”

“Does he have any relations besides you?”

“His mother, wife, two children. . But his wife. .” Mümtaz hesitated about whether to tell him, as if Macide, wearing her usual expression, had appeared before him and, with a finger over her lips, said, “Don’t divulge my secrets!”

“What happened to his wife?”

“Since the day an automobile struck their oldest child. .” When he stumbled upon the phrase “mental faculties,” he was able to finish easily. “She’s not quite in control of her mental faculties, or rather, from time to time she’ll suffer a lapse.”

“Was she pregnant at the time?”

“Yes, in the last days of the pregnancy. . Then the fever started, and the child was born in that fever.”

The doctor turned into a housewife reciting a recipe: “Slight and persistent melancholy, endearing attention to detail and a childlike demeanor, extended silent withdrawals, abrupt bouts of elation… My good man, trivial and profound lapses of memory. Oh, the telltale symptoms of that puerperal pyrexia!”

He’d declared this last phrase bombastically, his chest puffed out, as if emulating a Vefik Pasha translation of Molière. Then, without invitation, he hooked arms with Mümtaz.

“Slow down, slow down. The time you’ll save by having me rush, I’ll cost you by sitting down on the first step of the stairs. I’m not a bad man, but despite my large size, I have modest whims.” He fell silent for a time. He removed his hand from Mümtaz’s arm, and Mümtaz found life a little more bearable once he’d been relieved of this burden. The doctor searched his pockets before unfolding the layers of a broad colorful handkerchief. He wiped his sweat and took a deep breath. “I don’t tire of working. But this weight. Even Varashilov’s apple diet didn’t do me any good. . First, mind that a condition doesn’t become chronic…”

Mümtaz understood that the topic would now turn to politics. “Mind that a condition doesn’t become chronic.” What a horrible judgment. Yet the doctor changed the subject as if he didn’t have the courage to pass through a door he himself had opened.

“I see you’re a connoisseur of music!”

“Indeed.”

“Only European?”

“No, Turkish as well. But not as the same person.”

The doctor looked at Mümtaz’s face as if to say he appeared to be something of an odd bird. “My child, you’ve expressed a genuine truth,” he said. “So very true. The matter goes far beyond music. East is East and West is West. We wanted to merge the two in Turkey. And we even presume that we’ve discovered something new in this. Meanwhile, the attempt has always been made and it has always given rise to creatures with two faces.”

Mümtaz imagined himself, at this pre-dawn hour, as a Siamese twin, one face looking East and the other West, with two bodies and four legs, scuttling sideways.

“Isn’t it terrible, doctor? But,” he added, “I don’t think with two heads, only with one.”

The doctor had also conjured an image like the one that came to Mümtaz. Grinning, he said, “But you think in two ways. And even more astounding, you perceive in two modes. Pitiful, isn’t it?

“Just as we will always have our Mediterranean aspect, we will also always have an Eastern aspect, one exposed to the sun, ex oriente lux . Forever sensing the sharp prod of piercing mirror shards in one’s soul. . ”

“This is our country’s paramount issue, I suppose.”

“And it also emerges from geography, that is, from the genius of history. It existed before us and will exist afterward. Does your cousin love his wife?”

“Insanely so. But it isn’t possible not to love Macide. After the illness they had another child.”

“Their situation has returned to normal then.”

The doctor followed the train of his own thoughts: “A life of normalcy within abnormality. You’ve seen firsthand how many things in the world that we think are impossible do indeed happen. Should there be war, in the midst of this conflagration, it would be something like the continued presence of the sick and needy, of prisoners who are obligated to complete prison terms, of our hunger at regular intervals.”