Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

She lay in bed with a high fever for days, giving birth to Ahmet in that state.

One June morning eight years ago Zeynep had come with her grandmother Sabire to the hospital, only later to remember that she’d forgotten to bring her gift; without telling anyone, she went out to the front of the hospital to await her father, and in a moment of distraction, the girl, pondering God knows what, was spirited away by Death.

İhsan, who’d persuaded his wife to give birth in a hospital, under the sway of doctors claiming that she displayed truly severe symptoms, never forgave himself. He witnessed the devastation minutes after the fact, the body yet warm, still bloody, and he carried his daughter into the hospital only to witness the quiet passing of last hopes.

Fate had orchestrated the tragedy so that nobody bore responsibility. Not once had Macide wanted her daughter to visit the hospital. Sabire withstood the girl’s insistence and tears for two full days. İhsan hadn’t been able to find a single taxi to take him to the hospital in time and was forced to come by streetcar. Hoping against hope to locate an empty cab on the way, he’d even ridden on the trolley’s steps. Many held him responsible. But Ahmet lived with the burden of death more than the others did.

Mümtaz found Ahmet at the foot of his father’s bed, ready to scurry at the slightest gesture. Macide stood, fiddling absently with a loose strand of yarn from her wool cardigan.

On seeing Mümtaz, İhsan ws heartened, his face sanguine again. His chest rose and fell slowly. In the morning sunlight, to Mümtaz, he appeared much thinner than he actually was. His stubbled chin lent his face a strange mien. His condition seemed to imply, “I’m nearly done with being İhsan. Soon I’ll be something else or I’ll be nothing at all. I’m preparing for that eventuality!”

He made a vague sign with his infirm hand.

Mümtaz leaned toward the bed. “I haven’t read the papers yet. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” he said.

In truth, he was convinced of the approach of war. “When the world is about to slough its skin, mayhem is inevitable.” İhsan, with whom he always discussed current events, would often repeat this quote by Albert Sorel. To this warning, Mümtaz now added the bitter prediction of a poet he quite admired: “This is the end of Europe.” But he couldn’t discuss such things at present. İhsan lay ailing.

From where İhsan lay, he contemplated the situation. His hand fell to the quilt in a gesture of pleading and despair.

“How did he pass the night?”

“There’s been no change, Mümtaz,” Macide answered in her gentle voice like a dream of spring grass. “He’s always and forever the same.”

“Were you able to sleep at all?”

“I lay down here together with Sabiha. But I couldn’t sleep.”

She gestured to the divan with her hand, grinning. She might have indicated this spot where she’d slept for five days, as if pointing to a gallows with horror and a shudder. But for Macide, this astounding and exceedingly precious creature, her smile made up half her character. So much so, she was unrecognizable without it. Thank God those days are behind us! The days when Macide had lost her smile were over.

“Why don’t you sleep for a spell?”

“After you return… I couldn’t sleep all night for the train whistles. I wonder if troops are being mobilized or some such thing?”

Mümtaz recalled: I learned of the tragedy by telegram while I was in Kastamonu. I came immediately. Macide and baby Ahmet were in two separate rooms. Everyone was preoccupied with Macide. My aunt Sabire was frantic. İhsan was a mere shadow of himself. I’ll never forget that summer. If İhsan hadn’t maintained faith in life, what condition would Macide be in today?

İhsan pointed to Macide. “This one — ” He stopped as if powerless to finish his words. Then he mustered his strength and continued, “Give this one a word of advice.”

Good God, his labored speech. This man, who was the most articulate of anyone Mümtaz knew, whose classroom lectures, conversations, and repartees would stay with him for days, could barely string together these few words. But he was content nevertheless. Despite everything, the “old codger” — this was his expression — had come through. He’d been able to express himself. Mümtaz would, of course, find a way to keep Macide from exhausting herself; İhsan’s eyes, fixed as they were on the young gentleman’s face, lost all focus.

Stepping outside, Mümtaz stared at the street as if he were observing it in the wake of a long absence. At the entrance to the mosque opposite the house, an urchin toying with a length of twine gazed at fig branches lolling over the low wall. Perhaps he was contemplating the assault he’d soon make on the fig tree and the pleasures it promised. Just the way I sat and thought twenty years ago… but back then the mosque wasn’t in this condition. He completed his thought remorsefully, Neither was the neighborhood.

A street suffused in radiance. Mümtaz ever so absentmindedly studied the sunlight. Then he looked back at the urchin and at the fig branch and, above it, the dome of the mosque, whose lead sheathing had been commandeered for military supplies — slipped off like a glove from a hand or effortlessly peeled away like the skin of a fig from this very tree. The historic Mosque of Hazel-Eyed Mehmet Efendi, he thought. I’ll find out who that man is yet! The man had once endowed another mosque in Eyüp, where his tomb was located. But would Mümtaz ever be able to unearth the charter of this charitable trust to verify the fact?

Most of the addresses given to Mümtaz were false leads. A nurse named Fatma had never lived at the first house of his inquiry. The daughter of the family had simply begun a nursing course. The girl greeted him with a smile. “I signed up for the course so I could be of some use in case of war. But I haven’t learned anything yet.” She was solemn of voice. “My brother’s in the army… Thinking of him.” An actual nurse had lived in the second house he visited. But three months ago she’d left for a job she’d found in an Anatolian hospital. Her mother, greeting Mümtaz, said, “Let me look into it. When I see one of my daughter’s friends, I’ll pass the word.”

With the patience of one who didn’t want to spoil a charade, Mümtaz scribbled his address on a scrap of paper. The house was old and ramshackle. What do they do in winter? How do they keep warm? he thought as he walked away. Anyway, these questions were moot. On this late August morning, each street seized him in its ovenlike maw, then gobbled and swallowed him whole, before passing him on to the next one. An intermittent shady patch or a pocket of cool air at an intersection seemed to ease life’s toil. “İhsan, this summer I can’t avoid the libraries. I have to finish the first volume no matter what!” he’d said. The first volume… before his eyes Mümtaz saw pages crisscrossed with threads of writing: annotations in crimson ink, extensive marginalia, and scratched-out lines that resembled an argument with himself. Who knew, maybe the history would never be completed. Under the torment of this thought, he went from street to street, speaking to corner grocers and proprietors of coffeehouses. The only nurse he was able to locate at home said, “I’ve taken leave from work because my husband’s sick. It’s not that I’m unemployed. After admitting him to the hospital, I’ll return to my job.” The woman’s face was a veritable building on the verge of collapse.

Mümtaz, reluctantly: “What’s he have?”

“Paralysis from stroke. I wasn’t with him. They brought him home, half his body limp. If they’d had any sense, they’d have taken him to the hospital then and there. Now the doctors say we should wait ten days before moving him again. How many times I begged of that wench, ‘Let him out of your clutches, he doesn’t have a penny or a thing, he isn’t young or handsome, find someone better for yourself.’ No, it had to be him above all, and now I’m stuck with three kids.”