Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“But you’re so distraught… If it were me…”

“If it were you… but you’re not a woman, are you?”

“True, I suppose, as long as you don’t consider that too great a drawback.” He genuinely wanted to share in Nuran’s fate and he was extremely ashamed and distressed that he couldn’t. This particular affect of his made Nuran laugh. They’d established a friendship of sorts. And this friendship resembled a voyage whose course had been predetermined long beforehand. Their lives were so close to each other.

“You’re an odd bird. Are you doing it for fun or do you always have such a childlike nature?” If he isn’t actually a fool. Mümtaz didn’t answer, but smiled.

Later he said, “Would you recite the ‘Song in Mahur’ for me one day? I know you have the voice.” His thoughts were always with the “Song in Mahur,” with this ironic and tragic union of love and death. Nuran quickly responded, “All right… I’ll sing it for you one day.” Then she added, “You know, I don’t consider you a stranger at all. We have so many acquaintances in common.”

“I feel the same. If our friendship continues, its course will seem preordained.”

Then they spoke of completely different things. Mümtaz found her laughter wondrous. He wanted to savor it to the utmost. He recounted an array of stories to her. And he realized, as he spoke, that he was poaching from İhsan’s repertoire. So, I’m still living on the surface… I haven’t been able to find myself… In fact, he was crossing a vast threshold.

This woman of experience, elegance, and beauty had a quality that was thoroughly radiant and enchanting, as if she were the garden of the sun itself; a realm that he hadn’t experienced beforehand, one that he’d assumed had been denied him, but had only actually been dormant and was now prepared to be filled and emptied by her presence. Each notion transformed in the awareness of a brisk awakening, and the small and mysterious contractions emanating from the depths of his being sang forgotten songs of life. This music of silence existed in both, rising to their faces from deep within, and Nuran, frantic to suppress it, appeared more crestfallen than she actually was, while in contrast, Mümtaz, yearning to mask the shyness of his character, forced himself to be bolder and more carefree.

Till now Mümtaz’s experiences in love hadn’t gone beyond a few random escapades and exploits that were attempts at scattering himself to the four winds. Rather than being instances of the advent of a woman’s presence in his life, they amounted to small flings and trivial crushes — various dimensions of his own ennui and passing lust. He hadn’t even yet sensed the urge for anything more in his imagination, which centered on himself alone. To him, a woman meant Macide’s companionship and the compassion of his aunt, things absent from his life and fulfilled by the two of them between the time of his mother’s death and his adjustment to İhsan’s household.

Now, sitting before Nuran, Mümtaz noted her sublime attributes with a gaze that transcended petty flings, crushes, lusts, and other commonplaces, and he contemplated how spending his life together with a woman of uncommon beauty seemed impossible. His eyes roamed over her face and hands with a forwardness fostered by a kind of indescribable despair. Nuran attempted to evade these bold glances. Each time he allowed her a moment’s peace, she withdrew into her shell embarrassed, as if she’d been suddenly caught stark naked, and to hide herself from the man before her, she frequently opened her purse and powdered her cheeks. Each sensed that a particular fate was being concocted for them and they spoke to each other in intimacies.

Open seas in the offing near Üsküdar had become the waterborne manse of southerlies at eventide. In places between Leander’s Tower and the open Sea of Marmara, copper sheets covered with the glitter of an array of hammer-wrought gems had been layered into the watery depths. At times these copper sheets floated to the surface as jeweled rafts; at other times they opened up great, bright crimson abysses filled with yearning and the desire to ascend to a truth like the distant vanishing point wherein light merged in representations of divine grace and absolution by painters of the French Primitif school.

Presently, warm colors attempted every possibility of being, from a spectacle for the eyes to an ascension, a Mi’raj of the Soul.

“It’s a very beautiful night,” said Mümtaz.

Nuran, not wanting to appear surprised, said, “It’s the right season!”

“Its being the right season shouldn’t diminish our awe.” Your beauty issues from your youth, but I’m awed nonetheless. But was she truly beautiful? He wanted to view her at a remove from their present exhilaration. No, he wouldn’t say anything. He couldn’t even see straight anymore. He couldn’t see a thing apart from his own bedazzlement. Not to mention that he’d stumbled upon the mirror of awe within himself. Through this talismanic mirror, he observed what lay inside him, the gradual stirring of desire.

Nuran understood that this response was directed at her and that the invitation that had long been secreted in darkness had now emerged into plain sight.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant to say that from now on we’d share evenings as lovely as this one.” She grew frustrated with herself because she’d knowingly uttered this double entendre.

Time remained before the second ferry that would take them up the Bosphorus. They stopped in front of Kemal the bookseller’s stand. Nuran bought a few newspapers and novels. Mümtaz observed her as she opened her purse and removed cash. These gestures, repeated daily, now seemed exceptional to him. Not to mention that the bridge had transformed as had the bookseller and the act of buying and reading books. He was seemingly living in a fable, a world in which animated lines and bright colors rejuvenated all, giving everything a meaning that approached the most generous state of grace, where every movement shimmied and wriggled to infinity like the play of light in a still expanse of water. The bookseller returned her change.

Carrying in his arms his own gift and whatever else she’d purchased, they walked toward the Bosphorus ferry landing. They walked in tandem. He’d just come ashore in Istanbul with a woman whom he’d only recognized from afar yesterday on the morning ferry, whose acquaintance he’d made by chance; yet they’d be traveling up the Bosphorus together on another ferry. For him, this was unfathomable. Granted, it was of the variety of everyday events that happened repeatedly; granted, hundreds of thousands of people might experience such feelings once or a hundred times in their lives; it made no difference. He, too, realized that it was a commonplace to fall in love, to achieve happiness, to be acquainted before falling in love, and after having loved, to forget one another, or to even become enemies. But sea bathing was this way, too, as was sleeping. Everything was this way for everybody. That the experience was neither new nor the first of its kind didn’t diminish the fervor in his soul. Because it happened to be a first occurrence for him, because his body and soul had come to act in unison for the first time, they’d achieved the satisfaction of complete synthesis and symbiosis. Thus, it was exceptional. But did she think the same way? Was she content as well? Did she yearn? Or was she only humoring him? This anxiety, this doubt, made Mümtaz feel wretched. Why was she so silent? Like one whose feet get entangled in string drawn across a dark path, such a battery of questions prevented him from walking straight. Ah, if only she’d say something!