Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“Pay no mind, for five days we’ve talked of nothing but him!” Then he changed the subject: “Will you have a coffee?” He lit the young lady’s cigarette and began to make plans for coming days.

But Nuran wasn’t listening. Finally she couldn’t restrain herself. “For God’s sake, let’s not build castles in the air! Once it’s all done and finalized, then, afterward. .”

They stepped out of the taxi before the apartment. Holding their bags in one hand, Mümtaz allowed Nuran to walk ahead through the door. The solitude of the building and the street had settled her nerves. The wife of the doorman mopped the tile floor in the foyer. Nuran briefly exchanged a few pleasantries with her. Before they’d left for Emirgân, Mümtaz had helped procure a treatment of diphtheria serum for her child. She learned that the boy had improved. Mümtaz, bags in hand, waited for Nuran on the bottommost step of the stairs. The surroundings had faded in the sepia light that fell in the wake of snowy weather. The foyer’s blue tiles appeared black beneath such illumination. A cat pressed its head to the casement window opening onto the air shaft and letting light into the stairwell, gazing at them with eyes so near the color of dried straw that they all but crackled. In the backyard the doorman’s eldest son sang his usual song in a feverish voice:

Floodwaters have overtaken Erzincan A stranger has taken up with my girl

Mümtaz had earlier resolved to give Nuran a kiss as they passed through the door. Before we enter… on the threshold. And he smiled internally at this gesture of satisfaction. But when he climbed to the top of the stairs, he saw severe light fall onto the landing through the door’s small diamond-shaped window. Nuran, with the ball of one foot on the final step, stopped in her tracks.

Nuran: “It looks like someone’s home.”

Mümtaz, to calm her: “Sümbül most likely forgot to switch off the light in her haste. .” By the time they’d pushed open the door, he’d forgotten that he’d even hazarded such a guess. The image that they encountered would stay with them for the rest of their lives. In the hallway, beneath sharp electric light, a human form slowly swung toward the door. At a glance Mümtaz and Nuran both recognized Suad. His bony face was contorted into an expression of strange and daemonic ridicule. On his limp hands were patches of dried blood. As Mümtaz took a closer look, he noticed blood on the ceramic floor tiles. The couple stared dumbly for a moment. Then, in a state of coolheadedness that he’d never be able to muster again, Mümtaz shuffled Nuran, who verged on fainting, from the apartment. Unaware of what they were doing exactly, they descended flights of stairs. It had all occurred with such speed that their taxi was still idling before the entrance. Mümtaz, as in a dream, all but ignorant of the import of his actions, helped Nuran into the vehicle. He sat beside her. İhsan was home. As usual he’d gathered whoever else was there into his study. Neither he nor Macide had the opportunity to be startled by this impromptu visit.

Through İhsan’s machinations, the incident was handled without either Nuran or Mümtaz appearing in the press. Suad’s note explained everything. Afife officially identified her husband’s handwriting. During a brief investigation, Mümtaz learned that Afife and Suad were on the brink of divorce. Nuran quickly departed for Bursa. In a letter to Mümtaz, she stated, “What remains for us to do, Mümtaz? Fate has ntervened! There’s a corpse between us. Don’t expect my return! The dream is over.”

As soon as Mümtaz received the letter, he rushed to Bursa. There, he was confronted by Fâhir, who’d arrived sometime beforehand. He and Nuran still spoke at length. She now regarded love as nothing more than frivolous and farcical. “With regard to us, I shall always be your devoted friend. But don’t mention words like ‘love,’ ‘happiness,’ or ‘marriage’ to me! What I’ve witnessed has revolted me.”

“But what fault is it of mine?”

Nuran: “You don’t understand! I’m not blaming you. I’m only saying that our happiness is no longer possible.”

In this fashion, they separated.

One month later, upon Nuran’s return to Istanbul, Mümtaz’s hopes were somewhat rekindled. He met her a few times here and there. These encounters, however, didn’t produce any new developments. Nuran was disgusted by love. The horrific smirk on Suad’s face haunted her. In one instance she’d said, “I don’t think I even have the wherewithal to read a book that touches on love.”

A devastating life began for Mümtaz. He existed as if trailing in Nuran’s footsteps, but he could never quite reach her. Their lives moved in parallel and nonintersecting courses. During infrequent chance encounters, he couldn’t match Nuran’s breeziness; he was nothing but an annoyance to her in his absentminded and irritable mental state, at times madly jealous, at times excessively subservient.

One quickly loses sight of the impetus for one’s responses. Not to mention that one’s social circle interprets each event as isolated. And one’s imagination fabricates other causes for each incident. This was the case for Mümtaz. Despite their having shared the same misadventure together, he somehow couldn’t accept Nuran’s distance from him. Soon he sought out other reasons for her separation. He began to scrutinize her life with renewed suspicion. He attributed surreptitious causes to her devastation by Suad’s suicide; in short, he was jealous of a corpse.

He hadn’t forgotten about Suad, however. His wretched demise or confrontation — for Suad’s death elsewhere, under other circumstances, wouldn’t have had the same impact — appended his death to Mümtaz’s life. He’d obtained a copy of Suad’s letter from the police. Occassionally he read it, trying to comprehend Suad’s underlying motivation.

During nights, amid confounding dreams, Mümtaz almost always struggled against him. He was neither able to fathom Suad’s enmity, which rather verged on the obsessive, nor his denials or his torments. On occasion he discussed the matter with İhsan. For İhsan, the enigma of Suad was simple: “He was born with a rebellious streak. For such people, contentment is an impossibility, as is forgetting about themselves. .”

“What about his suicide?”

“That amounts to nothing more than the great act of provocation that he’d longed for his entire life. . but don’t try to put your finger on Suad through motivations of singular intent. He was a man of contradictions. He exhibited astounding hubris. He was sensual, rebellious, and in the final analysis. . he was disturbed.”

An April’s day: Mümtaz came down to Istanbul from Emirgân to visit İhsan and escape the memories besieging him from all sides as if to asphyxiate him. They conversed in İhsan’s study. As a twist of fate, the offshoot of a cypress tree that had sprouted atop the sheathless dome of the Hazel-Eyed Mehmet Efendi Mosque — a somber witness to his entire upbringing — all but mocked life and death from above this Muslim sanctuary. Meanwhile, spring had initiated an attack. It laughed, hollered “fools!”, grew incensed at everything that didn’t deplete itself in desire, and perpetually sang türküs of love accompanied by the vast orchestra of the empyrean.

İhsan shooed a bee that for some time had been tracing golden arcs about his head. Gazing out the window at the broom shrub that had taken root along the edge of the street, he said, “What have you done about the Shaykh Galip?”

Mümtaz rose. “That’s another problem altogether! All of the enchantment is gone… I’ve been grappling with it for three weeks. I haven’t even been able to write a single page! Evidently I don’t have the ability to finish. .”