Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

“I don’t know,” I answered him. “Best to put it out of your mind. After all, they are private homes, and they can have them built whichever way they like. We’ll wish them all the best and that will be that.”

He looked at my face stubbornly, imploringly.

“Why don’t you understand me?” he asked. “Somewhere I went wrong!”

Smiling, I tried to console him.

“Perhaps it’s the fault of my architectural wizardry!” I said. “But you must admit, I know nothing about such work, and I could never…”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“What difference does that make?”

“We’ve played with everyone a bit too much. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He looked at my face again and said:

“No, we didn’t play with them. We did nothing of the sort. They were the ones who deceived us. We placed too much confidence in them.”

He stood up and began pacing about the room.

“This institute is no longer mine! Now I’m just like everyone else here,” he said.

And he left without taking his hat.

This was the first bout of depression that seized Halit Ayarcı. The whole matter flared up out of nothing really. Yet it didn’t last for long. The old Halit Ayarcı was back when our building was inaugurated at the congress of the International Time Regulation Institute. The congress was in awe of this radiant, kind, noble, and true gentleman. He spoke for two hours at the closing ceremony, receiving one furious wave of applause after another.

But still, as someone who knew him intimately, I could tell that this wasn’t the same Halit Ayarcı.

There is no doubt that his decline contributed to the altogether unexpected and sudden liquidation of the institute. Had he been able to maintain the same force and enthusiasm, we never would have come to such a tragic and unexpected end.

If Halit Ayarcı had been at the institute on the day of the event that led to liquidation, things would have turned out very differently, for Halit always knew how to behave in just such situations. But he wasn’t there. It had been months since he’d visited the institute. I was the only one present when the foreign delegation arrived. And, sadly, in spite of all my experience, I failed to grasp just how important this particular delegation was. What’s more, by that point I no longer harbored doubts about the institute. I had slowly but surely come to believe what Halit Ayarcı had so long insisted: that the institute was a viable modern organization conducting truly indispensible work. Having been inundated with love and admiration for the new building and our many other achievements, I had lost all my former doubts. It was in this frame of mind that I gave the delegation a full tour of our adored institute, explaining in some detail precisely what we did.

Sadly this delegation was nothing like its predecessors. The symbolic clock over the front door, the strange floors and extraneous stairs, the synchronized typing of our seventy typists, exerting a startling degree of rhythmic control under the direction of our chief secretary as she waved her baton at the head of our grand typing salon — none of this impressed them. Though affable enough at the start of the visit, they showed nothing but indifference toward our work.

When we returned to my office, the head of the delegation refused my offer of an alcoholic beverage, heading straight to the phone to dial 0135 before asking me for the time. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he turned to me and asked:

“When it’s that easy to ascertain the time, where is the need for such an institute?”

This was more or less the same question I had been asking Halit Ayarcı since the day the institute was established. And every time I did, he gave me the same grave and reasoned reply, which, if not entirely convincing, succeeded in silencing me. But sadly I wasn’t Halit Ayarcı. I had neither his eloquence nor his incisive powers of reason, and the man who had asked me this question had no desire to be persuaded. Thus he didn’t really listen to any of the answers I gave him. Every time I opened my mouth he interrupted me with the same question:

“Where is the need for such an institute?”

Finally I told him that such institutes existed all over the world, after which I outlined our system of fixed and relative remuneration. In the end the man got up and left without even saying good-bye.

I never doubted this strange visit would end the way it did. But to err on the safe side, I called Halit Ayarcı. He wasn’t at home. I asked around as to his whereabouts, but I couldn’t find him. Three days later we received the order to liquidate the institute. In a way this really wasn’t such a terrible shock for me. For some time, I had been preparing myself for our enterprise to come to an end. It was after this American fellow’s visit that I began to think our time had come. The Time Regulation Institute had played out its role.

All the same, it had become a part of my life. We had put so much into it. And I was quite fond of my office in the new building, which I had designed especially for myself, and the relaxation room just beside it in which I’d sometimes spend the night. My little American bar, my bathroom, my furniture, my pictures on the wall — I was so very fond of it all. I absolutely loved the garden I also had designed to suit my own particular taste. I would no longer be able to follow the growth of the trees I’d planted with my own hands.

I called Halit Ayarcı the moment I received the order. They were expecting him to be home in half an hour. I sat at my desk, with my hand still on the phone, thinking. Perhaps one day this institute would be of some use. Halit Bey always said, “It will create its own function!” What a shame it never had the chance to do so. On the other hand, there were nearly three hundred staff members whose futures weren’t as bright.

I was worried about those futures. What would happen to these people? How would they find work? What were we going to do now? No matter how absurd it is, a job is still a job. Well, yes, I could write my memoirs, but what were these other people going to do?

Half an hour later I had Halit Ayarcı on the telephone. When I explained the situation, he teased me, saying:

“I imagine you’re quite upset.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“No,” he said. “As you know I no longer have the same relationship with the institute. It rejected me.”

“If you’d been here, perhaps you could have stopped this.”

“But I wasn’t there,” he said. “And doesn’t the fact that I was absent show that the old ties have been severed?”

“But this doesn’t concern just us! All our friends, the staff… We are nearly three hundred people.”

For a moment it seemed he was thinking.

“Yes, all of them!” he said.

“Can I see you tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied and hung up the phone.

This wasn’t an answer. The old rage welled up inside me. I hoped he would come see me in the evening. But there was no sign of him. The following day I stopped by his place. They told me he had left on a trip early that morning. I spent nearly all that week dealing with the liquidation.

That weekend there was a social event that had been scheduled many months earlier. Given the bitter circumstances, I wanted to cancel it, but I just couldn’t convince my wife.

This final gathering at the Clock Villa did not get off to a brilliant start. For the last six months, our employees (who were either already relatives or had by now married each other) had been living together, day and night, in the same neighborhood, and various hostilities had emerged. It had become so bad that they tolerated social gatherings and even everyday neighborly visits only because it offered them an opportunity to insult and criticize one another or wage war by innuendo. Though their suppressed anger and bad manners made such shows of decorum rare, our gatherings would, even if peaceful, provide the fodder for future gossip and backstabbing.