Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

He slowly whispered. “Suad,” he said. “Why have you come? Why don’t you leave me alone? All day and night you’ve been harassing me! Enough already! Let me be.” As he spoke, his trepidation left him, to be replaced by a bewildering feeling of revolt. “Just leave me alone already!” Then he regretted having addressed a dead man with such irreverence.

“Why shouldn’t I come, Mümtaz? I’ve never left your side anyway!”

Mümtaz nodded his head. “Indeed, you haven’t! You’ve been a veritable plague on me. But more intensely since yesterday. Last night I saw you on that hill. And in my dreams. Do you have any idea how strange it was? I was watching the nightfall. More exactly, evening was falling and frantic preparations were being made. Purple, red, pink, and lilac-colored boards and beams were brought out and assembled on the horizon. Then they raised the sun with ropes and pulleys. Yet, you know, it wasn’t the sun at all, but you. Your face was beautiful, as it is now, and because it was more sorrowful, you appeared even more sublime. Then they just crucified you there like some sort of Jesus. .” He suddenly began to cackle. “If you only knew how bizarre it was, your state of sorrow like that, and your crucifixion like Jesus. . You, a man who believes in nothing, a man who mocks everything. .” And he laughed at length again.

Suad, his eyes fixed on Mümtaz, listened.

“As I said. . I’ve never forsaken you. I’m always by your side!”

Mümtaz continued walking for a while without saying a thing. He had the sensation that he was walking in the glow of the one beside him rather than the light of daybreak. And this was quite distressing.

“Very well then, what is it that you want from me? What’s the reason for this insistence?”

“It’s not insistence. . but obligation. It’s my obligation to be with you. I’ve now become your Guardian Angel.”

Mümtaz laughed yet again, though at the same time he recognized that his laughter was rather strained.

“This can’t be!” he said. “You’re a dead man. That is, you’re a person.” He felt the need to further clarify his thoughts. “It’s so difficult to converse with the deceased. . I mean to say that you were a person. Meanwhile, this business is actually the concern of angels.”

“No, they can no longer keep up. In recent years the earth’s population has greatly increased. The politics of population growth is on the rise. Now angels are having the dead see to these matters. .”

At first Mümtaz didn’t respond at all. Then he objected. “You’re lying!” he said. “You can’t be an angel. It’s impossible. You’re the very devil himself!” And it rent his heart to speak to a dead man in this manner. Despite this, he continued. “For the sake of deceiving me, you’ve put on these airs. I’m onto your game.”

Suad gazed at his face in a state of sorrow: “Were I the devil, I’d have whispered from within you. You wouldn’t be able to see me.”

“However,” Mümtaz began, “do you know how pleased I am to see you? I’m overjoyed even.” Then he again looked at Suad’s face fearfully.

“How beautiful you’ve become! Exceptionally beautiful! This sorrow suits you. Do you want to know what you resemble? The angels of Botticelli… you know, the ones that give Jesus three nails during the Passion — ”

Suad interrupted him: “Stop making these absurd comparisons. . Can’t you speak without comparing one thing to another? Haven’t you yet realized how you’ve made matters worse due to this vile habit?”

Like a child, Mümtaz begged: “Don’t scold. . I’ve suffered so much. I haven’t done anything all that indecent. I’ve only found you beautiful. How have you become so sublime?”

“Things that exist in the mind are always sublime.”

At first Mümtaz wanted to protest. “Just now you said, ‘Were I the devil, I’d have whispered from within you’!” but suddenly another idea entered his mind. I’m unable to follow the train of my thoughts. . How dismal! “But I can now see you with my own eyes. Not to mention that I’m conversing with you. .”

“Yes, you see me through your own eyes! And you’re conversing. .”

A notion passed through Mümtaz’s mind at lightning speed. “And I can touch you, can I not?”

“Of course. .” Suad had now passed before him and had raised his arms as if to say, “Go ahead and examine me,” and laughed at Mümtaz within the sparkle emanating from his presence. Mümtaz turned his bedazzled eyes away.

“If you so desire and if you have no fear!”

“Why should I fear? I’m no longer afraid of anything! But he was reluctant to extend his hands toward Suad. He thrust them back into his pockets as if to say, “In case of any eventualities!”

Suad laughed the way he had that night in Emirgân. “I knew you’d be afraid,” he said. “Why don’t you inform that porter so he can come and touch me! Or Mehmet, or the coffeehouse apprentice in Boyacıköy! The people that you’ve condemned to death today.”

Mümtaz staggered. “What business could they possibly have with us?”

“They’d touch me in your stead.”

“I’m not sending them off to war alone. I’m going as well.”

“But without taking your death into account. You’ve seen their deaths as an absolute certainty and you’ve duped them into dying.”

“No! Not at all. .”

“Yes, indeed. .” Suad leaned over him with a cruel jeer, chastising him. “Or the wife of the porter. Let her touch me in your place.”

“No, I’m telling you. I intended to go as well. I will go. I don’t see them any differently than I see myself.”

“But you do, you do. You were bargaining over their deaths. You were trying to dupe them!”

“Lies. . you’re lying.”

Mümtaz came to his senses. This argument was futile. İhsan was waiting at the house. He pleaded like a child: “Suad,” he said, “İhsan is very ill! Be so kind as to let me pass and be on my way already!”

Suad laughed fitfully. “But how quickly you’ve grown tired of me!”

“No, I haven’t grown tired. But there’s a sick man awaiting me at home. I’m exhausted, not to mention that you’re no longer one of our kind. I was dishonest with you previously. I do fear you. And furthermore, just get out of my damn way. The streets will soon become crowded! You’re an anomaly in the world of the living. You’re a glaring ghost, why roam in our midst? Isn’t what we suffer from our own enough?”

“Weren’t we in each other’s company only yesterday?”

“Yes, but you’re no longer the progeny of the sun!”

“Don’t worry about that. Since last night, all the dead have been out and about.”

Mümtaz gazed down the street, trembling. They were only twenty-five or thirty steps from the house.

“Why is that? What good does that do? This is the realm of the living. Everything here is for the sake of life! At the very least, all of you dead should quit haranguing us!”

“Impossible,” he said. “I can’t let you be. You’re coming with me.” He spoke with bitter derision.

“Without Nuran, in the midst of such misery. . impossible.” And Suad spread his arms and tried to embrace him. Mümtaz stepped backward.

“Come. .” His summons was pierced by a blood-curdling laugh.

Mümtaz implored, “At least don’t laugh! Please, stop!”

“How is it possible? You’ve reduced everything to the limits of your own self to such a degree; everything resembles you. . You’re so bound by your puny existence and its concerns. Not to mention your limited devotion to life, your measured compassion, your trivial torments, your hopes, your states of withdrawal and worship. .”