Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Mümtaz adored this old-world philanderer, who, around the time of Mümtaz’s birth, declared his love for the neighborhood ladies five times a day as if it were an inseparable part of the call to salvation sounded to the entire neighborhood from the minaret of the quaint mosque. Tevfik was possessed of a gentlemanly Epicureanism that found open expression only in the subdued air of satisfaction that collected in his eyes when he wiped his grayed mustache with the back of his hand.

A gentleman of rare experience, he facilitated Nuran and Mümtaz’s appreciation of Bosphorus bluefish outings and their understanding of the role of ardor in human experience. From the very first day, he’d taken Mümtaz under his wing, diminishing the atmosphere of animosity in the household created by Fatma’s jealousy — which had found a most fertile ground under Yaşar’s wardship. Mümtaz was quite cognizant of the part Tevfik’s friendship played in his amicable reception by Nuran’s mother in the Kandilli household. Even when most resistant toward Mümtaz’s visitations, she couldn’t withstand her brother’s enthusiasm and was oftentimes swayed by him.

That this salty philanderer regarded their love so earnestly astounded Mümtaz. Tevfik’s profligate life contained little that might indicate his admiration for such passion. At first Mümtaz assumed that Tevfik’s mask of approval concealed expressions of mockery toward his inexperience, or that he took Mümtaz seriously only out of respect for the feelings of his dearest beloved niece. Later, as Tevfik gradually entered Mümtaz’s life, he realized that his rakish, extravagant, and at times brutal existence obscured bewildering pangs of nostalgia. One day Nuran’s uncle casually confided to him that most ladies’ men — objects of envy during a reckoning of one’s life, or whilst one wallowed in depression after a missed opportunity for gratification due to a bankrupt phantasy — hadn’t had the chance to love a woman fully or had lost this chance and attempted to make up for it by chasing after contingencies, an ideal, or an array of tired repetitions of the same experience… In short, men like Mümtaz who lived through a single beloved were the objects of genuine envy.

In Tevfik’s estimation, it was impossible to be in love before a couple knew each other’s physical natures. Most novelists made the mistake of concluding stories where they ought to actually begin. Genuine love was predicated on the experience of the body and persisted through it. People who’d been betrayed by fortune in their first experiences of the flesh would fumble through frustrating ventures till the end of their days should the inaugural experience remain untempered by others.

It pleased Mümtaz to find variant strains of his own ideas in Tevfik’s notions of romance, although he didn’t confuse this business with metaphysical colorings the way Mümtaz did; he saw only the realities.

This was like a human soul reincarnated in the body of a turtle that nonetheless continues to bear and recollect his former condition without ever revealing so in form, habit, or need. As with men in political and social life who goaded genuine ideals despite a base and carnal existence, there were those who goaded feelings of the eternal in matters of romance while nevertheless knocking on every available door.

It was likely Tevfik was one such profligate, though still bound to aesthetic beauty, the eternal, the pure, and the decent.

He more or less admitted this himself: “Don’t end up like me, I’m stranded between forking paths.”

As he spoke, sorrowful life experiences could be intimated in the shadows of his face. He was a man who’d paused at least once before every wellspring, overcome by the phantasy of cooling himself only there, but as soon as his lips touched refreshing waters, without even slaking his thirst, he trotted off, saying, “She wasn’t the one, it must certainly be another.” Like a wayward soul condemned to chase his own body in the indeterminacy of an ârâf windswept by chill breezes, he possessed body after body without remaining beside any for long, and now after the collapse of ventures, he’d come to warm his bones at the aşk burning between Mümtaz and Nuran.

For a decade, as he’d formerly done, Tevfik hadn’t ventured out onto the Bosphorus properly, hadn’t crooned aloud, hadn’t attended reveries of debauchery, and hadn’t sent letters of invitation here and there to the inhabitants of Bosphorus residences. Such dedicated renunciation in a man with such a weakness for social diversions surprised one and all. Some attributed it to the misery he suffered upon his wife’s death; some claimed, “He’s suffering from a guilty conscience,” and others, within the justified incredulity arising from his decade of reclusion, were prepared to completely whitewash the past of which he boasted furtively and recollected with relish, concluding, “Maybe they’ve mistakenly accused the poor man and wrongfully slandered him. Could a man so bound to his wife commit such indiscretions?” According to the former group, Tevfik hadn’t refrained from a single act of cruelty against his wife. The latter group, however, believed he was nothing but a victim of gossip and slander. Actually, Tevfik hadn’t ever really loved the long-jealous, overly sensitive, and haughty wife who’d gifted him with Yaşar’s psychological impairments — it was his son after all — and who’d been self-sacrificing and steadfast in her attempts to exact compensation a thousand times over for every act of decency. And he’d only mourned her passing as much as any stranger despite their long, shared life. He performed the traditional rituals of benefaction in homage to her soul within the spiritual security created by knowing that she resided in a distant place of no return. Had she been willing to live apart from him as he’d so desired, he’d have spared no expense to ensure her comfort and contentment, and thus in like manner, he made outlays for her lamented memory. When his wife was alive, Tevfik would have entertained any price for a separation, and he recognized such deliverance as a blessing — even if it had only effectively come toward the end of his days — repaying it as fully as he possibly could. But where the dear lady presently resided, she didn’t need one red cent. And each year the few diligently arranged recitations of the Koran or recitals of the Prophet’s birth epic were negligible expenses compared to the money he’d once set aside.

Tevfik’s decade-long seclusion, his withdrawal from the world of dalliance and diversion, arose for different reasons. Due to old age, he didn’t want to be relegated to the secondary, tertiary, or lesser tier of a lifestyle in which he’d once reigned supreme. Tevfik, who’d always lived in moderation despite his wanton social life, gave himself an age limit when he noticed his waning prowess, and of his own volition chose to recuse himself. Like a Roman consul who’d emerged victorious from battles to later step down from his post and busy himself with vineyard and orchard in a secluded village, Tevfik lived in the Kandilli household through his reminiscences. Now, in the new atmosphere fostered by Nuran and Mümtaz, a completely different Tevfik once again went out on bluefish outings, wandered along the seaside, and at least observed from the sidelines the diversions that he’d once so loved.

The day Mümtaz realized this he also understood that the sparkle of satisfaction shining in Tevfik’s eyes as he frequently groomed his whitened mustache with the back of his hand contained a complete life philosophy. This gesture, a glyph of silence, amounted to erasure of the self and simple withdrawal when nothing remained to be accomplished. Whenever he straightened his mustache in this way, he said for better or worse that he’d lived his life and could now distance himself. Because this Don Juan didn’t disappear amid lightning and gale in a climax befitting his past grandeur as in the tragic legend, he’d simply interred himself in nothing but this curt and curious gesture.