Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

Within the quieting of nerves fostered by his reunion with Nuran, Mümtaz again began to occupy himself with the Shaykh Galip. He again outlined the entire novel. He discarded everything he’d written beforehand, starting anew.

On the third day of their assignation, he said, “I can clearly see the book now!”

“And I can see the missing button on your blazer.”

“Are you doing it on purpose, for goodness sake?”

“Why should I be? I’m preparing for married life. Haven’t we divvied up the chores?”

Through the window the evening twilight cast a faint and nostalgic pastel blush over the snow-covered hilltops above the Asian shore. All things out there swam in dreamlike buoyancy beneath a tulle-thin hue. Fog had descended. Snow was in the forecast. Ferryboat horns occasionally sought and found them in the corners of their seclusion, filling them with the mournful hüzün of shores abandoned to desolate waves, empty seafront yali s, wind-lashed public squares near ferry landings, and roads as gloomy as a catacomb and abstracted from active life.

The panorama made for a rare Istanbul snowscape. Winter, which had ever so lackadaisically squandered its entire season, duped by the faux summer of southerlies, broke out at the end of February in true Eastern-style haste and, determined to make up for all its shortcomings, paralyzed the city within a few days, using every means at its disposal from storms to fogs and snowfalls to blizzards. The previous day, everything had frozen, up to and including the water in the pipes of the pump. The trees in the garden, large icicles hanging from their branches, resembled, in the emptiness of evening, grave and aged apparitions belonging to a realm of absolute difference.

This âlem had overtaken them. For two days Mümtaz couldn’t get his fill of the panorama that recalled an unwritten poem, a truth as of yet untainted by the poison of doubt, a totality that hadn’t been fragmented by life’s shortcomings. He existed in an immaculate dimension of Creation that had overwhelmed his own perceptions and abilities. The couple lived in a world bleached white, as if in the center of a brilliant diamond. Rare silence: Everything, the entire summer, their own lives, their acquaintances, their thoughts, all of it lay beneath a shroud of silence. On pure white pages of silence, each memory could be detailed and each gesture could be described; from whiteness, every description might issue forth without tainting the gesso or disturbing the measured peace of the totality. They passed half their time reminiscing about summer. Mümtaz, half of whose life had been spent in quest of bygone days, was surprised that Nuran resembled him in this diversion, and he asked, “Are you just imitating me?” Oddly enough, since they’d stepped foot in Emirgân, Mümtaz had been preoccupied with Suad rather than their recent past. Mümtaz couldn’t forget his words, disposition, laughter, and bizarre point of view from that fateful night. What had he meant to say? he asked himself perpetually. About eight or ten times since, he’d been in Suad’s company for a few hours. Yet Suad hadn’t revisited such dire subjects. Had he actually recounted what he believed, or. . Whenever he brought the matter up to Nuran, she grew livid.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do, go down and get some breadcrumbs for the sparrows.”

Mümtaz plodded toward the door. But thoughts of Suad didn’t leave his head. Why is he in pursuit of Nuran to this extent? I’m certain he doesn’t love her. What is it? What’s he after? The entire episode recalled the vagaries of fate. And for this reason he was afraid. At the kitchen table, as he broke apart the soft white insides of bread loaves, he continued to ponder such questions.

The first morning of their arrival, they’d noticed a graceful teeming around the windows, as elegant as lace, inviting, and atwitter. Nuran cried, “Oh my! The sparrows have arrived…” From that moment onward she’d assumed responsibility for feeding them. Not the slightest is known about the sense of taste of these birds. Nuran, were it within her power, would have had special meals prepared for the little creatures. That day, toward nightfall, the population of the old house was augmented by one. The snowy, icy weather must have been unbearable and tedious for Emirgân’s black bitch, seeing as Mümtaz’s previous invitations, toward which she displayed excessive demurral, were now met with great delight as she entered. She cleaned herself beside the stove and cast desirous glances toward Nuran’s winged companions, preparing — within the comfort of a dream — to taste this twittering bounty that all but mocked her from its protective sanctuary.

Mümtaz desposited the bread crumbs on the windowsill and shut the window. Then he turned to Nuran. “Would Tevfik really agree to live with us?” He sincerely desired this. He was nearly as bound to the old man as Nuran was.

“He’s hard to fathom… But now he probably would. He’s even picked out a room.” She fell silent and looked out the window: The sparrows jostled on the sill as they pecked at crumbs.

“Mümtaz, d’you really think we’ll manage this marriage?”

Mümtaz took his eyes off the Arabic amentü billâhi vahdehü lâ şerike lehü calligraphy wall panel — “I believe in Allah alone, who has no peer.” He stared at Nuran for a time. “If you want to know the truth, no.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing, or rather, whatever you’re afraid of, that’s what frightens me as well.”

This dread had been with them since the day they’d come to Emirgân. Nuran stood and went to him.

“Let’s go back to Istanbul. . tomorrow! Can’t we?”

“Okay, let’s head back!”

It was the fifth day. That morning Mümtaz spoke by telephone with İhsan, who said that everything was going to plan and instructed them to be at the Fatih district marriage bureau at four o’clock sharp. “Without stopping back home, go to the marriage bureau! That’s how this will get taken care of. Come down from Emirgân and go directly to the license bureau. .”

Later, Mümtaz would profoundly regret not heeding İhsan’s advice.

The next day they returned to Istanbul. Sümbül was to follow behind toward evening, after having straightened up the house. Beneath rain that fell in torrents, the pristine and eternal façade of winter scenery melted away in fragments. Overnight the winds had turned southerly. The ferry forged ahead, virtually tossing and rolling. The surrounding scenery lay behind an ashen shroud. Strangely, through a peculiar play of memory, this shroud further reminded them of the past summer. From time to time the view opened up so that woods, a mosque, or an old yalı would descend upon them. A black ship crossed their path as if to declare, “I, too, exist within the framework of your lives. .” Next everything took on the same washed-out pallor, and the hard rain caused whatever it contacted to meld and merge.

As they churned past Beylerbeyi, Nuran suddenly took hold of Mümtaz’s hand. “I’m afraid,” she said.

“But why? I don’t understand. Not yet an hour ago we spoke to your relatives in Bursa. All of them are fine. Everything’s going to plan.”

“No, I’m not thinking about them. I’m afraid of something else. Last night I dreamed of Suad.”

Mümtaz regarded her with astonishment. Suad had also entered his dreams. Furthermore, it was an agonizing vision. Suad had taken the crystal lamp out of the hand of Mümtaz’s father before embarking on a caïque along with the village girl from his childhood. As Mümtaz flailed his arms frantically from the quayside — although he knew not where precisely — worried whether they had or would capsize, he awoke. Few dreams could be so terrifyingly vivid. Even now, on this ferry bench, he could clearly see the same pitch-black bargelike caïque, Suad’s long, bony face, the girl’s expression, and amid rough seas, the lantern dimming to the verge of going out.