Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Whether crude or repulsive, elevated or foolhardy, ascetic or purely sybaritic, everyone hurled toward unity of being. Some, however, simply existed in states of entropy. Like a melting chunk of ice tossed against a wall, they dispersed into unseen particles. Such people hadn’t yet seized upon the experience of their lives, or were so benign, they never would, dreamers and desperados who’d in fact, or due to the constraints of fate, remained in a stunning state of dormancy.

A young and naïve whore of swarthy skin and scrawny build, a forlorn waif resembling a corncob marinated in mud, propped an elbow on the knee of her paramour and crooned to him sotto voce. Her voice was like spoiled and fermented dough. She frequently hiccuped, her expression souring under the force of alcohol rising in her throat, though once the hiccuping ceased, she continued her song.

Farther ahead, three men sat together, conversing. The hands of one continuously kept tempo on the tabletop. The one in the center, a lout who was undoubtedly experiencing one of the triumphs of his life — a man in his fifties — in a tone that he tried to make measured and melodious, detailed something as he paused to rest upon each word; frequently, both his hands extended out over the plates of meze , without touching them, to mime his plans; after each comment, he stared into the faces of his two friends; what kind of make-believe project or never-to-be castle in the sky was taking root within? A man of ideas. What did it matter if he forgot about it tomorrow? By evening he’d be here again, at this table or another, where he’d be sure to rediscover it with more richness.

Mümtaz glanced at the face of the youth keeping tempo. His posture revealed that he maintained his distance, as much as possible, from this mine of truth. Evidently he envied the man of ideas, and was distressed that his own ideas didn’t meet muster. He listened in a state of distraction. More than the third man, who truly looked awed, he missed neither word nor gesture through his feigned lack of attention. He listened in hatred and envy, making separate, internal objections to each articulated word. Tomorrow the exact words would issue from his own mouth and the same gestures would be aped by him; any other outcome was impossible. Mümtaz once again glanced into the young blade’s face, overcast with derision. He resembled a closed palm, a category of things that functioned to take and hide. He framed a fierce and greedy emptiness.

A dame beside them, past her prime and wearing too much makeup, rested her head on the shoulder of a tom, listening intently to what he said. Sporadically, she laughed slowly in a voice that waxed coquettish, then grabbed her glass, took a few swigs, and once again rested her head on his shoulder. In the distance a garçon laughed at them through the experience of many years.

For Mümtaz, the voice of the floozy, alienated from her own experiences so that her crude face resembled a wall whose paint had blistered from humidity, and her sedated and saucy look lost all their tragic proportions through the garçon’s silent laughter and were reduced to nothing but a trifle. To be sure, the garçon was an appraiser, an appraiser of human beings… And under the terrible effect of this term, which he’d heard since his childhood, he was pushed to the verge. So then, one’s life experiences could foster cynical wisdom, which encouraged one to laugh derisively and cruelly before what should be pitied. So then, so-called humanism was the delusion of intellectuals, cockamamy mystics, and dupes who mistook the indistinct glimmers within themselves as the blazing sun of truth. Humanism wasn’t intrinsic to life; it was only a mode of thought. This notion transported him back a few months, to that fateful night in Emirgân and heated discussions with İhsan; in keeping with the conversation at the house, Mümtaz conjured a tableau of Plato with a copy of The Republic beneath his arm, on the path of exile.

His thoughts snapped. Nuran’s face appeared before him in the ambience of the tavern filled with cigarette smoke, the stench of alcohol, and tacky voices, as if she were unwilling to leave his mind in such a state of hüzün — not for an instant.

Once again he yearned to be on the street, to ramble aimlessly over roads, to bump up against passersby, to scarcely be saved from a fate beneath automobile tires, and to let his thoughts cavort wildly and aimlessly. The renewed thought of Nuran was so strong that he momentarily felt suffocated. Then he reached for his glass. Alcohol, alcohol should provide some relief. Humanist experiences devoid of humans indeed. . All decent, absolute, blissful, and lofty things like this were devoid of humanity. Profound and reasonable ideas were predicated on a single point: Death! Or else unrestrained chaos, that is, life itself!

Mümtaz stared at the door, wondering which of the two would enter: astounding and illogical Eros or the master of inevitability, Thanatos. The door opened. A young woman and three men entered and sat down at the neighboring table. Mümtaz couldn’t recall when this table had emptied out. Then he realized how his attention was skittering over surfaces. Perhaps none of what he thought he’d seen actually existed. His imaginative faculties could have conjured the waif who resembled a muddied corncob, the garçon and his plague-of-torment smile, and the middle-aged, painted lady with bracelets jangling like the bells of an old-world camel. With this thought, he looked about with trepidation. The waiter with the unctuous grin was yet preoccupied with the newcomers. Through hand gestures, which he tried to make polite and agile, he recommended haricots in olive oil, mixed pickles, salt bonito, and shish kebab to the young woman. He never varied his mimes such that these delicacies, whose procurement elsewhere was impossible, emerged from horizontal circles traced by a pair of coupled fingers beneath her nose. The waif continued to croon her song, though now tears welled in her eyes. The middle-aged harlot, from where she rested on her lover’s arm, requested a türkü from the one-eyed mandolin player.

What’s a young man like me doing in a place like this? Alcohol offered no consolation. He wasn’t one to attain the paradise of oblivion through drink. As for this lot. . Anyway, should he one day lose Nuran, by dint of circumstance, he’d sup in places like this, he’d adopt habits resembling those of the regulars in this crowd, and he’d desire the companionship of these women. Solely due to this eventuality, half delirious, he darted from his chair.

By the time he’d arrived home, the hour was approaching eleven o’clock. As he patted his pockets for keys in the entryway while contemplating the unseemliness of the night, the door opened by itself. Before him stood Nuran. At first he was alarmed, assuming that he was to receive bad news about Tevfik, her mother, or Fatma. But when he saw Nuran wearing the traditional folk dress that he’d purchased for her a week ago from a Kütahya native, he understood that this was simply an evening delight.

Evidently Nuran had set out on her way Friday to come to Mümtaz’s apartment at the appointed hour, but as she’d happened upon Suad just before the door, she couldn’t bring herself to make an entrance. For two weeks now she’d been running into Suad on this street. But this time Mümtaz’s relative had tightened the blockade and was having his shoes shined by a street urchin before the entrance. Reluctantly she’d turned back, and together they’d headed to Sabih’s, from where they’d decided to press on to Arnavutköy. The night described with such embellishment by Mümtaz’s friend had amounted to nothing more than this.