Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you…”

“Has İhsan come?”

“Yes, and he’s with a relative of yours!”

“Who?”

“Somebody named Suad. A peculiar fellow. He’s staying at the sanatorium here!”

“He resembles a horse…”

Mümtaz said only, “I know him,” then turning to Nuri, “It’s true, he does look like a horse.” Though in his mind’s eye he conjured the way Nuran’s hair slipped frequently from her temples toward her eyes.

Orhan completed the analysis, “He’s something of a cannibal!”

“No, he’s only an assassin, or a frantic assassin, that is to say, suicidal!”

These terms referred to an in-joke that had begun at the university. One day at the Küllük coffeehouse, they learned how a renowned historian, Mükrimin Halil, had separated people into three main categories — “Lackeys of the Orient,” “Regulators of the World,” and “Thugs.” Then they’d furthered the categorization. “Cannibals” were fanatics of any ideology, whether on the right or the left. “Assassins” had certain hang-ups and discussed them with whomever they saw. “Frantic Assassins” subjectified these hang-ups to an extreme and were filled with feelings of revolt. And as for “Suicidals,” they turned these hang-ups into torturous double binds.

Arm in arm, as they had been years before, they occupied half the road and walked along laughing and talking. None of them noticed Mümtaz’s state of distraction.

At this afternoon hour, the restaurant filled with the presence of the sea. Suad and İhsan sat at a corner table. Light reflecting off the sea appeared to gather on Suad’s face. Since the last time he’d seen Suad, Mümtaz found him to be thinner and paler. His bones seemed to protrude.

İhsan said impatiently, “Don’t waste any time, come sit down.” İhsan drank quite infrequently. Rather than from any concern about health, he abstained in order to give alcohol its proper due in life. He’d say, “We shouldn’t let the secrets of alcohol lose their effect within us.” As for the times he did partake, he’d grow as impatient as a child. He’d picked this restaurant because it was near the ferry landing, and he’d eagerly awaited Mümtaz’s arrival. He abruptly turned to Mümtaz: “Your eyes are alight… What’s going on?”

Surprised, Mümtaz said, “Seeing Suad is quite a pleasure…” In fact, he hadn’t been pleased to see Suad, although he admired his intelligence and conversation. But there was something he couldn’t put his finger on that disturbed him about Suad.

“What a joy… There are people in this world who are pleased to see me.”

In response to his laughter, Mümtaz thought, You see, this is precisely why I like you! Actually, Suad’s laughter had a force that came from the heart yet negated everything. He laughed and his face abruptly appeared to be alien and antagonistic. Is he fed up with his own life or is he mocking me?

Fahri grinned at İhsan and said, “I told you he’d come. You didn’t believe me.”

“But he’s two ferries late.”

“No, I only missed one.”

“When did you get up?”

Mümtaz again recalled the great triumph of his evening, and said, “I finished the book last night. I went to bed late and couldn’t sleep. No matter what I tell her, I haven’t managed to get Sümbül to wake me at the right time!”

Sümbül was the maid who saw to Mümtaz’s domestic affairs in Emirgân.

Suad asked, “What have you been reading these days, Mümtaz?”

Gravely, Mümtaz examined the plates of appetizers being placed before him. He’d seated himself opposite the door despite knowing full well that the young lady whose acquaintance he’d just made wouldn’t appear. “Practically everything Turkish… Ahmet Cevdet’s History, Sicill-i Osmanî biographical entries, Taşköprüzade’s Şakâyık. . ”

Suad responded dismissively, “Disaster! Now how are we supposed to converse? Mümtaz and I used to discuss things easily enough in the past. First I’d ask him which writer he was reading, then I’d begin talking from that author’s perspective or through those concerns.” His inscrutable face cracked open with an abrupt, puerile laugh. Completing his earlier thought, Mümtaz mused, You see, this is also why I like him.

“Isn’t everyone more or less reading this way?” Nuri interjected. The four of them, inseparable friends from Galatasaray, were immensely fond of Mümtaz and couldn’t tolerate any innuendos made against him.

Suad gestured with his hand, “I meant to make a joke. I always needle Mümtaz this way. Of course, I know what he’s all about. We’re relatives. But to tell the truth, I often wonder whether everyone reads as much as we do.”

Fahri’s opinion took a different tack: “Europe reads much more than we do. And a number of languages at once. That’s not the point, but…”

“There’s another problem still. We’re not comfortable with what we read.”

İhsan was examining the transfiguration of ice in his glass, how the clear liquid slowly became clouded as if being enhanced by veins of marble. Now the glass was full of a less benign liquid.

“Bottoms up!” he said. Then he answered Suad. “The issue is this: The things we read don’t lead us anywhere. When we read what’s written about Turks, we realize that we’re wandering on the peripheries of life. A Westerner only satisfies us when he happens to remind us that we’re citizens of the world. In short, most of us read as if embarking on a voyage, as if escaping our own identities. Herein rests the problem. Meanwhile, we’re in the process of creating a new social expression particular to us. I believe this is what Suad is saying.”

“Indeed, with one leap to shake and cast out the old, the new, and everything else. Leaving neither Ronsard nor his contemporary in the East Fuzûli. .”

“Is this even in the realm of possibility?” And Mümtaz succumbed to Nuran’s locks again. Does her hair always fall that way, slightly… Does she always brush it back with her hand while lifting her head?

Suad listened, none the wiser about Nuran’s tresses. “Why shouldn’t it be a possibility?”

“It’s impossible because…” But what was impossible was his discussing such matters at present. I’m on this island and she’s here too… How distant we are from each other. It’s as if we are in the same house but in separate rooms. “Because, to begin with, we’d be creating a tabula rasa in vain. What do you think we’ll gain through such refutation besides the loss of our very selves?”

With a beatific look, Suad said, “The new… We’ll establish the myth of a new world, as in America and Soviet Russia.”

“And do you think they actually cast aside everything, all of it? If you ask me, neither our denial of the past nor our resolve to create can establish this new myth. If anything, it rests in the momentum of the New Life itself.”

“Then what d’you expect us to do?”

But Mümtaz didn’t answer. His mind was preoccupied with the episode between Nuran and her not-husband — it had to be Fâhir. How her face fell. She was upset enough to burst into tears herself. And suddenly, through a compassion that rose up within him, he promised to bring her happiness, for as long as he lived, to bring her happiness. And immediately at that instant he was ashamed of his childishness. So infantile! He acknowledged for the first time how sentimental he could let himself be.

“Don’t lose sight of the fact that both the United States and Russia are extensions of Europe.”

“Okay, then, what is it that should be done?”