Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

As night fell, Mümtaz found a nip of winter yet in the air. With an unsettling sense of cold, he recoiled into himself.

“In winter the Bosphorus has a separate beauty,” he said. “An eerie loneliness.”

“But you can’t quite endure it.”

“No, I can’t. In order to withstand it, one either has to be thoroughly rooted in life or has to live extravagantly. I mean, one has to have had a sufficient degree of experience. As for me — ”

He cut himself off; he was about to say, “I’m still like a child.” What was there in his life besides a menagerie of dreams? Tomorrow, won’t you, too, become a dream?

“You know what one of my favorite things is? Since I was a little girl, closed, darkened windows facing the Bosphorus upon whose panes the light plays… lights moving with the ferry and changing from window to window sometimes form arcs of fire… but don’t bother looking now, since you haven’t noticed. Look for them from a good vantage, a little farther on.”

Mümtaz was surprised that he hadn’t noticed a detail so simple. “The nighttime map of the Bosphorus is a bit like these lights for me. Like what you said… One lives here as if in a dream, sometimes becoming part of a fable…”

The sentimentality into which they’d fallen threatened to embarrass Mümtaz. The grand sultanate of the night began after Üsküdar. Large blocks of houses, their boundaries marked by street lamps burning bright, were separated by black abysses that made them more foreboding, mysterious, and fabulous than they actually were. This harmony was broken by the lights in public squares before ferry landings that alluded to a life of greater comfort. With almost each of its windows illuminated, a vintage Bosphorus residence passed before them like a behemoth that had long been submerged, having relinquished its mass and density.

“There are quite a few people in there,” he said.

In fact, each window framed a few heads. They were huddled together, watching the ferry. The sound of a horn.

“The horns haven’t yet reached their summertime pitch…”

They shared their observations with one another. They were like two small children. Each observed what passed separately, and spoke only occasionally. Nuran pointed to an unshuttered and blackened window: “See,” she said, “how it becomes woven like moiré cloth… then the arcs… there goes another one, like a falling star… a little farther on, close to our house, fishermen’s lanterns mingle into these reflections. But the most beautiful of all are these arcs: a calculus of light.”

Later they straightened themselves as if from a tome over which they both had been poring and stared at each other. Both were smiling.

“I’ll walk with you as far as your house,” he said.

“On the condition that you turn back at the head of the street… unless you want to give my mother a heart attack.”

Mümtaz grew inwardly annoyed. Her mother… Allah, how many obstacles must I overcome? he thought.

As if reading Mümtaz’s mind, she said, “There’s nothing much to be done about it; we have to accept our lives as they are. One cannot just do as one wishes… D’you know that even at my age I have to give an account of my whereabouts? Had Mother known that I was on my way home, she would have been mad with worry by now. She would have conjured seventy-five different catastrophes for this beloved daughter of hers.” Then she abruptly changed the subject. “Do you only like traditional music?”

“No, all of it… of course as much as I understand… My memory for music is limited and I never studied it. You’re also fond of it, aren’t you?”

“Exceptionally so… In our family traditional music is something of an heirloom,” she said. “We belong to the Mevlevî tradition on my father’s side and to the Bektashi on my mother’s side. Early in the nineteenth century, they say Sultan Mahmut II even exiled my mother’s grandfather to Manastır in Macedonia for his involvement in the Sufi order. When I was a girl, every night there were musical gatherings and lots of entertainment.”

“I’m aware,” he said. “I once saw an old photograph of you dressed in Mevlevî robes. It’d been taken without your father’s knowledge.”

He took care to avoid uttering İclâl’s name. An indication of his timidity. Not to mention that he didn’t want to constantly mention another woman’s name.

“Of course, İclâl was also…,” she said. For the grace of God, there was nothing sacred to that girl. Those who knew her lived in houses of glass.

Mümtaz: “But she wasn’t the one who showed me the photograph. And, moreover, I myself guessed it was you in the picture.”

Nuran never imagined that this memory would transport her clear back to those days. She pictured her father holding a ney and sitting on the divan in the large upstairs foyer. “Come, sit down,” he gestured, as if inviting her to his side.

Her entire girlhood had passed in a birdcage of melodies made by that flute. The world, which manifested for others through a thousand sensations, manifested for her purely through sound and music. Nuran had embarked on life through a realm of pure imagination like the reflections in the orb of pale glass called “New World” that hung beneath the chandelier in that same foyer. “When that photograph was taken, my father was still alive. Only we weren’t living along the Bosphorus then. We were staying in Libadiye. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Çamlıca district?”

But Mümtaz couldn’t take his thoughts off the photograph. “That’s a striking picture. You resemble depictions in old miniatures. Granted, the outfit isn’t the same, but you somehow recall a youth proffering a goblet of wine to Ali Şîr Nevaî.” He added, laughing, “Where’d you learn to sit like that?”

“Like I said, a legacy from my ancestors. It’s part of my being. I was born with it.”

Shortly thereafter the third significant event of the day occurred. They disembarked together at Kandilli. As if this was how it regularly happened, they strode together across the wooden planks of the landing. Mümtaz handed the official at the exit both of their tickets at once, and the man took them without a hitch. They continued together across the square. They began to walk up the hill. As they walked, they embraced one another’s presence. Nuran’s shoe caught on a stone; Mümtaz took her by the arm. They turned left into an alleyway. Next they climbed another small incline. At the mouth of a narrow path he and Nuran parted. “This is our garden… The house is on the opposite side. It’s best if you turn back,” she said.

A street lamp above them illuminated a large chinar as though from within. Beneath this fragrant radiance showering them leaf by leaf, and beside the splashing of a fountain and the peeping of frogs, they took leave of one another. Mümtaz regreted not asking her whether they would soon be able to meet. Within him lurked the dread of never again laying eyes on her. Beneath the burden of such misgivings, he returned the way they had come, slightly remorseful, though enriched countless times over by Nuran’s allure, his heart yawning open to companionship of an indeterminate order.

Days later Nuran watched İclâl enter the house, giddy and amused. She’d run into Mümtaz at the ferry landing, where they’d sat and had demitasses of coffee together. Afterward Mümtaz accompanied her halfway to the house.

While stepping into the house, she was still laughing at the cock-and-bull story Mümtaz had made up.

Mümtaz, figuring that he was certain to run into one of the two of them there, had practically encamped before Kandilli for five days. Of course, had he wanted to, he could have directly requested a favor of İclâl; or by way of İhsan, they could have arranged to visit Tevfik. However, as he didn’t want to bare his emotions to a third party, he preferred to slyly lay siege to the Kandilli shore. It wasn’t quite sailing season. But taking a caïque out on the Bosphorus didn’t depend on any season. That time-honored means of Bosphorus transport was the solution to any problem at any hour and was sport and entertainment for all. Though a New Yorker born without a Ford or other automobile might seem natural, a child of the Bosphorus born without a rowboat of some sort still seemed an anomaly. For this reason no one was surprised to see Mümtaz in his rowboat drifting around the Kandilli landing. As soon as he woke, he’d jump into the boat, by turns hoist a sail or use the motor to travel to the landing, where he’d try to fish, read a book at the coffeehouse, converse with the elderly gardeners and the neighborhood old-timers, and when he grew bored and couldn’t find anything to do on the water, he’d head up the hill, and with the understanding that he would keep his distance from Nuran’s house, he’d roam among wildflowers and plants, rambling in the austere winds of the Bosphorus spring.