Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

“But, Doctor, can dreams be ordered up in such way? A prescription for dreams…? This is impossible.”

“This is a forward-thinking science, my good friend. No objections allowed!”

All this contributed to my moving that much closer to bona fide insanity, and without recourse to any of the spurious fire and light shows that my lawyer had recommended if I ever needed to prove I was insane. But really I had no choice. It was thanks to my illness that I was not sharing an overcrowded cell with madmen, murderers, and opium addicts and instead spending my days in the company of this intelligent, well-mannered, knowledgeable, warmhearted, and most humane man, having as many cigarettes and cups of coffee as I desired, or, rather, as many as he desired.

Naturally I wanted to give at least something in return for all the kindness the doctor had shown me. So before going to bed I did everything in my power to conjure up thoughts of my father, recalling him in all the various stages of my life. But as if to spite me, he never appeared in my dreams, or if so, only as one of Dr. Ramiz’s symbols. I would see in my dreams either a dangerously narrow bridge nearing collapse or a smashed sidewalk covered with mud puddles, or occasionally I was in a little canoe being tossed by rough seas, a pitch-black ferry bearing down on me. I would wake up fearful that I hadn’t followed the doctor’s orders, and, squeezing my eyes shut, I’d concentrate on my father’s face. Having exhausted this method, I would drift back to sleep where — as the doctor put it — I exhibited an absence of self-control and had dreams of a different nature.

The truth was that I couldn’t stop worrying about my family’s future or Emine’s worsening health. Asleep or awake I thought only of Emine. Plagued by visions of misery and chaos that belied my actual state of mind, I would wake up to her pale face and reproachful eyes. Dr. Ramiz was angry with me for this and elaborated on his techniques:

“I am using the very latest methods with you, a personal method I discovered myself. I call it the ‘directed dream’ method. After diagnosing a patient according to his or her prior dreams, the treatment begins with the examination of subsequent dreams that are strictly guided and controlled. Though you were the patient that inspired the method, you are now showing no effort to help the treatment succeed. What a strange person you are! Have you no willpower whatsoever? Are you concerned only with the present day? Try thinking about your life as a unified whole.”

Sadly, I lacked sufficient willpower for the treatment. In fact the problem was universal. But willpower was everything (if nothing else). According to Dr. Ramiz, willpower was the one thing that could be placed alongside psychoanalysis, fit to share a life with it, as a king might share his reign with his queen. All the great philosophers spoke of it, which of course meant all the names came flooding in, names that might be seen as willpower embodied: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer… And because Dr. Ramiz assumed I had read them all, he would make vague references to their work and apply models drawn from their books to daily life, to his own life, to my life, and to the matters facing our country; and from there we moved on to German music. According to him — later I learned that most people who had studied in Germany were the same — it was mandatory to be as familiar with Beethoven as with the man who lived around the corner. As for Wagner, well, there was no doubt in his mind that we were both related to the man. We would often finish our discussions by listening to either the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth or the “Grand March” from Tannhäuser , followed by the doctor’s personal reflections on his past. His reminiscing complete, he would jump to his feet and stand above me like a god poised to create the world out of the abyss, intoning once again that powerful and mysterious word that could save humanity from the void:

“Will!” he boomed. “Do you understand? Will… Everything lies in this very word.”

And with his raincoat and briefcase tucked under his arm, he would bound out of the room, whistling either the “Grand March” or “Ode to Joy,” and leaving me alone with the mysterious word he had entrusted to me.

Alone in the room with my head between my hands, I repeated the words over and over in numb confusion: “Beethoven, Nietzsche, willpower, Schopenhauer, psychoanalysis… Oh, words and names and the happiness that comes to us through our belief in them…”

That night I was attacked by a lion in my dream. Thank God, I escaped unscathed. In my childhood, well before I became the thief of the Serbetçibası Diamond, a swindler of inheritances, or a patient of Dr. Ramiz, when I was happy and in good health, we would all share at the breakfast table the dreams we had had the night before. That’s how I learned that — at least according to the prevailing interpretation of the time — a lion represented justice. The lion I had seen in my dream never touched me, which certainly meant I would be saved. In the morning I greeted Dr. Ramiz with the wonderful news and recounted my dream to him. At first he seemed pleased.

“Yes…”

Then he stepped past me without a word, whereupon his expression abruptly changed.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all. I woke up immediately, in a terrible fright, but not without some joy, as a lion symbolizes justice or political power.”

But he wasn’t listening:

“How unfortunate! You’ve missed a golden opportunity. What a terrible shame!”

Thinking a little more on the matter, he added: “You should have fed yourself to the lion.”

Shivers went down my spine:

“Dear Lord, Doctor!”

“Yes, it’s true… Or you should have slain the beast and donned its fur. Either way, somehow you should have lost yourself inside the creature so you could be reincarnated later on. Only then would everything be resolved. Haven’t you noticed how this works in fairy tales? People get lost… they get lost — that is to say, they die before being born anew. There’s no more certain way to break free from a complex than this. But you were unable to do so. Indeed you failed to do so. You missed your chance!”

Wringing his hands, he paced the room, sadness and despair written all over his face.

“You were unable to do it. You have ruined all my efforts. You were to be reborn, but you have remained exactly the same.”

I did the best I possibly could to console him.

“Please don’t be discouraged by this, Doctor. I shall try hard tonight. Besides, the beast never really went away. Perhaps he will return tonight.”

“There’s no use. With such incompetence… don’t even bother!”

Then he set his eyes on mine again and with obvious despair said: “My dear friend, let us not deceive each other any longer. You simply do not want to get better! How could the creature ever return? Does the departed ever return?”

He had a point; he must have understood that the lion, just like my father, would never again appear in my dreams.

Nevertheless, the lion had somehow brought me a little peace of mind. A day later Dr. Ramiz asked me, “You said the lion in your dream symbolized justice. What did you mean by that?” And I told him about our old dream-interpretation manuals.

“Our forebears considered the interpretation of dreams to be of the utmost importance. But not as in psychoanalysis, nothing at all like that…”

“You mean we have our own manual for dream interpretation?”

“No, no, not just a manual… A whole book! With descriptions and analysis for everything you might dream about.”

Dr. Ramiz was always charmed by things that were particular to our country, but they troubled him too — not because he had lived abroad for several years, but because they lit up the void he inhabited, suspended between two lives. “That’s right, yes. That’s right,” he muttered, and as he recalled the aforementioned dream-interpretation books, he began nodding his head.