Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Toward daybreak he awoke fully to find himself in the arms of the woman, his jaw resting against her diminutive chin, in complete command of his senses with every ounce of his being, when her eyes suddenly opened with unnerving insistence. To avoid her gaze, he shut his eyes again, and rolled anxiously toward his mother.

His second memory wasn’t as convoluted. Around midafternoon, the carriage they rode left the rest of the column far behind. He was with his mother, three women, and two younger children. She was also there, crouched just behind the sprung seats.

The carriage driver announced that they’d approached B., constantly glancing inside the wagon. Mümtaz realized quite well that the driver’s need to chat and provide details had to do with her. But she didn’t say a single word either to him or to the mounted gendarme, who wouldn’t alter his horse’s gait beside them, or to anyone for that matter. Her moans of the previous night had ceased. Mümtaz was delirious with the desire to look at her, but because he didn’t dare turn his head, he couldn’t even see his mother. As night fell, he was intimidated by the woman’s presence, and from time to time, as she let her shoulder press against his, the sensation became rather merciless.

The contact was startling, devoid of the warm intensity of the night before, yet laden with memory; involuntarily, Mümtaz wanted the heat to approach, and within such anticipation, his shoulder nearly went stiff. During one spell of anticipation, his eyes fixed on the driver’s turquoise-beaded leather whip, waiting emptied of thought, he remembered his father with a distinct agony that far exceeded anything he’d ever felt, agony ready to hurdle every separation, diminishing every distance between them. He’d never see him again. He’d withdrawn from life forever. Mümtaz would never forget the moment of this epiphany. Everything lay spread before his eyes, in plain sight: The turquoise beads on the tip of the rawhide whip glimmered gloriously as they caught the autumn sunlight, some of them midair, some of them on the haunches of the horse before him. The horses sauntered, tossing their manes. From the top of a telegraph pole ahead, a broad-winged bird took to the air. Everything was mute in the washed-out landscape except for the sound of the wagons and the cries of a three-year-old girl; he sat next to the driver; the woman from the night before, who’d held him until morning and ignited mysterious desires in his naïve body, sat behind him; and just opposite her was his mother, who had no idea what was transpiring or, what’s more, what would transpire.

Unexpectedly, he saw his father, an imago before him, and this vision reminded him that he would never lay eyes on him again, that he’d be separated from his presence in perpetuity, with the sharp and insurmountable pain of departure, of never again hearing his voice, of never again being a part of his existence.

The village woman, perhaps realizing that Mümtaz verged on fainting, supported him from behind so he wouldn’t fall. The amazing sensuality of the night before united anew and inextricably with his father’s death. He felt deep inside that he’d sinned irrevocably; he felt guilty of unnamed transgressions. Had they interrogated him at that moment, he might have said, “I’m the one responsible for my father’s death.” It was a horrendous sensation that made him feel utterly deplorable. This paradox of mind would plague Mümtaz for years and trip him up at every step and turn. Even after he’d reached adolescence, Mümtaz wouldn’t be able to escape these feelings. The images that filled his dream-chambers, the confounding hesitations, anxieties, and the array of psychological states that comprised the agony and the ecstasy of his existence were all bound to this chance convergence.

The woman parted company with them at B. The carriage stopped within a vast stain of sunlight on one of the city’s half-ruined streets. Without uttering a word or looking at anyone, she leaped from the carriage. She dashed swiftly in front of the horses to the other side of the street, from where she glanced at Mümtaz one last time. Then, running again, she turned down an alleyway. For the first and last time, Mümtaz saw her luminous face. A freshly healed knife wound ran from her right temple to her chin. The scar lent her face a queer harshness; yet, while gazing at Mümtaz, her expression softened and her eyes smiled.

Two days later at twilight, Mümtaz and his mother arrived in A., at the house of a distant relative.

The Mediterranean: Mümtaz later learned through books how the White Sea embraced humanity with a life of leisure; how the sunlight, the crystalline weather, and the clarity — extending to the horizon and emblazoning each wave and crest into one’s vision — refined the self and filled the soul; in sum, how the quality of nature here permitted grapes and olives, mystical inspiration and rational thought, or the staunchest desire and the anxiety over individual satisfaction to coexist. Not having cognizance of these things at that age didn’t mean that Mümtaz failed to savor his experience of them. His sojourn here, despite life’s continuing misfortune, constituted a season of exception.

The feverish state that had scorched a stretch of their lives in S. persisted here as well. Each day the city was shaken with news; today there would be fearful word of a great rebellion to the north; tomorrow news of a victory would fill the streets with a celebration to be forgotten by nightfall. On almost every street corner raged heated debates, and at night the clandestine transport of troops and matériel continued. Daily, the hotel opposite their house filled up and emptied out anew.

Yet this all occurred beneath a sun as luminous as a diamond, within the intoxicating perfume of orange blossom, honeysuckle, and Arabian jasmine, and before a lapis lazuli sea that accepted him with his thousand frailties, transforming with him, a sea whose wrath, serenity, long bouts of listlessness, and delight always accompanied him.

No matter how angst-ridden he might be, before long the luminance would find a crack in the misery, through which it slithered like a golden serpent. Sunlight released him from his inner confines and described an array of possibilites as if recounting a fable, as if to say, “Have faith in me, I am the source of all miracles, I can do anything, I can turn earth to gold. I grab the dead by the forelock to rouse them from sleep. I can easily soften thoughts and make them resemble my essence. I am the efendi of life. Where I am there can be neither despair nor depression. I am the elation of wine and the sweetness of honey.”

Any life-form heeding this advice chirped and twittered merrily above every sorrow. Each day the cargo and passengers carried by one or two steamships, a horde of camels or beasts of burden were deposited in front of the hotel opposite their house, bundles were opened and repacked and reloaded, crates nailed shut, and metal straps cinched around wooden chests; travelers satin chairs before the entryway, conversing; as in a Futurist painting, simply an eye or a sole ear and its curiosity, or an eager female head, protruded through windows; out of idleness, brazen Italian soldiers of the Allied occupation played with children in door fronts for hours, calling out to them with repeated cara mio s, carried trays of raw pastries and baklava prepared by housewives to hot bakery ovens, and when they got a little fresh and met with a scolding, they bowed their heads as if quite ashamed and walked away jeering openly before wandering down a backstreet to reemerge. In front of the depot, enormous dromedaries, the world’s most pacific animals, were made to wrestle; everybody was gratified to see nature’s disproportioned and tranquil creatures succumb to the mind of mankind. At night boys and girls went to the Palisades district, or to other places beneath the moonlight or in pitch-blackness to route water to the gardens of their houses. Life was restricted, but nature was vast and inviting.