Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

The character of the place derived from its proprietor, who would eventually go bankrupt. Not once in his life had the man bothered to take life seriously, though he did seem to know half of Istanbul. He needed to meet a man only once to become his lifelong friend. And thanks to him the coffeehouse became a kind of clubhouse.

He was handsome, well built, and devilishly charming. He might well have become a high-flying businessman had he not considered the domain of the eccentric the only place worth living. He had concocted a language all his own, as affected and artificial as his attire, both of which vacillated between old and new, and he wore a little pointed goatee in the French fashion. With his ridiculous attire and his pretentious little beard, he gossiped from morning till night, spinning tales of unimaginable slander with his bogus turns of phrase, while always taking care not to implicate himself. And if he was really at a loss for something to talk about, he would draw from his personal arsenal, telling tales that would have been best left untold. He was forever falling in love, and since he chose women who seemed incapable of ever loving anyone but him, he was obliged to marry each in due course, and was thus eternally entangled in burdensome divorce suits. The fact of the matter was that he lived in a glass jar, which is to say very much exposed to the public eye.

The coffeehouse was frequented by all sorts: the sons of old money, tradesmen both bankrupt and successful, unsung poets, journalists, painters, high officials, masters of chess and backgammon and other games, former wrestlers, actors and musicians, and the usual gang of university professors and students; all told, there was someone from nearly every walk of life. And though each belonged to a clique, they also gave the impression of living as one. You were on intimate terms with any of them the day after meeting him for the first time. There were no secrets. The laundry — dirty or clean — was hung out for everyone to see. Each garment was openly fingered, examined, and even sniffed, and any elements deemed interesting were promptly paraded about. Here every good deed, every moment of despair, every shocking piece of scandalous news was judged with the same severity, or if need be, compassion, before gaining official acceptance. Pederasty, unwarranted philandering, hoodwinks large and small — all was laid bare to be bandied about by the crowd.

Every coffeehouse regular, even the proprietor, was assigned a nickname, and the moment any given character stepped foot in the establishment, someone in the crowd would tell a story or two about him, polishing each detail as he went.

I’d been around most of these people almost all my life. Some I knew from work, and others I’d met in their homes. Later a good number of them worked with me, and by that I mean they worked at the Time Regulation Institute. All were more or less honorable, or at least they were willing to risk anything to appear that way. And some had already attained important posts. Not one was unhappy with his lot in life; in fact the great majority seemed rather content. But of course there were a few who encouraged their friends to make jokes at their expense, so afraid were they of being forgotten.

What wasn’t discussed in the coffeehouse? History, the philosophy of Bergson, Aristotelian logic, Greek poetry, psychoanalysis, spiritualism, everyday gossip, lewd adventures, tales of terror and intrigue, the political events of the day — all gathered up into one swollen conversation that burst like a spring deluge, carrying away everything in its path, as surprising as it was senseless, one topic seething forward before the other was finished. But, then, of course, nothing was ever discussed in detail. In the coffeehouse a story would rise up as if from a long slumber, or like a faint memory of the ancient echo of a death. As conversation turned deliriously from one subject to the next, Alexander the Great would join forces with Hannibal or the Kantian imperative, all to serve as antidotes to daily life. With even the most benign adventure, the pleasure was in the retelling. The patrons had listened to one another for so long that they could guess more or less what would happen in any story. Conversation was merely a platform for the speaker to display his eloquence; it was more like a play, or the recitation of a dearly loved work, for the exchanges were executed according to predetermined conditions — not at all unlike the traditional Turkish mime theater, ortaoyunu. The story would be interrupted by the same interjections, and laughter would follow; if certain members of the crowd were directly involved in the tale, they would make their defining pronouncements at just the right moment. If the narrator introduced new details, he would be cut off at once with, “You made that up!” But it was these new twists that people came to enjoy most in later recitations. And no one ever found the endless — and mandatory — repetitions tedious. In fact it was only the out of the ordinary that met with some resistance. New ideas were at first humored out of courtesy and a slight curiosity, but they would remain unaddressed until the crowd’s ever-vigilant imagination had recast them as pleasantries, thus assimilating them to their own idiom. This is what happened to any attempt at serious conversation. A new story was accepted into the repertory only once it had been reduced to a base sexual escapade, a tale of pederasty, a piece of slapstick shadow-puppet humor, or the replica of an ortaoyunu . There was a specific name given to those who discussed serious matters: they were known as the “world regulators,” the aristocrats who busied themselves with the regulation of the world. Below them was a larger group called the “Eastern Plebeians.” Armed with only just enough culture to be active members of the coffeehouse commune, they had little to say about life’s simple pleasures or even the hardships of making ends meet, preferring instead to indulge in an innocuous flair for the comical by drawing attention to the imperfections of others around them. Finally there were the “irregulars”; devoid of social refinement and utterly ill at ease in the urban environment, they were men still in thrall to their primal urges. An irregular could pick a fight with anyone, but a plebian or a regulator would fight in earnest only if confronted by an irregular. To some degree the irregulars represented the primitive element, and perhaps because they were largest in number, they were the only ones with a subgroup: the “pseudo-irregulars.”

At first this bizarre crowd and the life that came with it rather bored me; the people seemed like traditional meddah , or fugitives from improvisatory performances of ortaoyunu or shadow-puppet theater. It filled me with terror just to enter such a world, seeing as I suffered from a diagnosed medical condition and from the assorted inscrutable personality quirks that came with it. But by the third day people were asking earnestly after the Blessed One, going almost so far as to ask whether the clock was a bachelor or enjoyed conjugal life. My memories of Abdüsselam Bey, Seyit Lutfullah, and Nuri Efendi were refreshed the moment I walked in — they had all lived in this neighborhood, and almost all the coffeehouse regulars had known the latter two personally.

That Lutfullah had entrusted me with the treasure of the emperor Andronikos — that it was now entirely in my possession — had not escaped their attention. In fact my reputation in the coffeehouse preceded me, although I had never wished for or sought such recognition. Certainly no other community would have welcomed me with the same warmth. The week following my arrival with Dr. Ramiz, everyone heatedly discussed — in my presence — just which group I should be assigned to. My reserved demeanor, my preoccupation with my personal affairs, and the seriousness with which I approached these deliberations seemed to place me with the world regulators. But following Emine’s death, any balance in my life became seriously disrupted, and my standing in this esteemed company suffered. So slowly but surely I was relegated to the Eastern Plebeians. And they were right to place me there!