Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

Lazybones Asaf was forever lethargic, and his sleep was the most sublime, the most innocent in all the world. When he closed his eyes, a gentle hum would fill the room, inviting reveries of a hundred angels with effervescent wings flittering about in the air above him, singing or softly whispering lullabies into his ear as they filled the honeycomb of his sleep with the ambrosia of innocent dreams.

Then all at once I felt a painful knot in my stomach. “Emine!” I cried, and I leapt from my chair and hurried home. She was ill. What the doctors had diagnosed as a minor case of fatigue had become a dangerous condition of fatal consequence. I had seen this coming long before the doctors did. I had known about it since I had dreamed that dream at the Department of Justice Medical Facility. The fatal alembic had boiled away before my eyes, and inside had been Emine’s face; she was always on the other end of my pillow, on my lips, and in the palms of my hands, but slowly slipping away from me, and staring at me with wide-open eyes. Let her speak to her heart’s content, I tried to say, let her laugh and dream about the future, and see Zehra marry one day, and Ahmet’s graduation from medical school, but still her face was fading into the distance, and still her eyes were looking at me, even from so far away, looking at me as if to say, “Try what you like, but there’s no cure!” It was hideous and cruel. Emine was falling into death as the tears fell from my eyes. And I could do nothing about it, nor could anyone else.

VII

Emine’s death sent me headlong into a void, as if the branch I’d been clutching had suddenly snapped. So overwhelmed was I by the loss that at first it made absolutely no sense to me. Nor could I grasp how deeply I’d been affected. All I felt was a dark and terrible heaviness deep inside me. But there was also something else — a sense of liberation. The ordeal had come to an end. Emine would never die again; she’d never have to suffer another illness. In my mind she’d remain as she was. No doubt other terrors awaited me; other catastrophes were in store. But my worst fear — that of losing Emine — was gone. No longer would I view the world through the prism of her pain and ill health; never again would fear well up inside me to smother my entire being.

Our home had been destroyed; left alone with our two children, I lost the will to work, and, even worse, I lost all faith. But I was no longer afraid. The worst that could happen had happened. Now I was free.

With no Emine to keep my feet on the ground, I was ready to be swept away by any passing current. And the closest current was the coffeehouse and my friends there. Just a week after Emine’s death, I found myself among the regulars once again. I sat there, in the second hall behind the shops on the main boulevard, with playing cards in one hand, a glass of rakı in the other, a cigarette in my mouth, and the din of stories in my ears; I was, in short, at ease with my surroundings, joking and smoking and for all appearances having a jolly good time. Had I forgotten everything? Was I really having fun? Absolutely not.

I felt anguish like never before. It wasn’t fear or pain but the grief suffered by only those who have betrayed themselves — an odd sensation I greeted with revulsion. It was on a day like this that it happened. All at once my reflection in the mirror melted into my impression of myself. The face I saw between the coats hanging on either side of the mirror was smug but hopeless, despicable and weak willed, irresolute and resigned to his fate, so much so that for a moment I thought the glass might vomit back my image and toss my head onto my feet. But no, nothing of the sort happened. On second and third glance I grew more comfortable with the apparition. A balance had been regained.

I hired an old woman to look after the children at home. When I managed to get myself up in the morning, I’d go to work, and after that it was straight to the coffeehouse before rolling out to a local meyhane , with Dr. Ramiz or some other companion, to drink the night away, returning home late. I’d be pleased to find the children already fast asleep, and on some nights I’d go straight to bed myself — another day done, and I had made it through unscathed. But all too often I found the children waiting up for me, huddled in a corner. Thus the most wrenching part of the day would begin.

I had to take them up in my arms and lift their spirits without once giving them the faintest idea of what was running through my head: I had to tousle their hair and dry their tears — make them laugh. Why were they so sad? Why did they cry so much? Why were they so needy? Didn’t their very existence make it difficult enough? Hadn’t they tied me to one place with their very presence, condemning me forever to circle like a workhorse around the same little spot?

The moment I saw them I’d crumble in compassion; cursing myself for my spinelessness and ill fortune, I’d fight the urge to pound my head against the wall for hours on end. At times like these Emine would appear from the shadows of the house and waft toward me, placing her hand on my shoulder, as she always did, and saying, “Pull yourself together!”

And I would do just that. Decisions, promises, and resolutions came one after the other: tears were shed in darkness. But to what end? I detested the life I was living but lacked the strength to start another. I had severed all ties. I had no bonds with the world save the compassion I felt for my children. I had no choice but to endure it all — or at least tolerate the world around me. The moment I set foot outside I was a prisoner of my wandering and endlessly colluding mind, which led me off to exotic worlds whose enticements beckoned, only to stay beyond my reach.

I was driven wild by letters and postcards from distant lands. They came from all over the world: Peru, Argentina, Canada, Egypt, and the Cape of Good Hope… The old Jewish woman who lived amid fleas in her single room just two streets down from us had a brother in Mexico, and her neighbor — the sister of a rabbi — traded in Argentinean furs. The son of the Greek grocer across the way lived in Egypt. And his nephew was a teacher in Chicago. When I saw their letters, my eyes would shut of their own volition — I became someone else, somewhere else. Oh, to leave everything behind and just go!

But no, I would have to be a different sort of man to do such a thing. I would have to push myself beyond the shackles of my habits and routines, not just run, move, jump, and desire but also persevere. Such things were not for me. I was a hopeless shadow: a miserable, slovenly shadow who followed any man who happened to brush by, who, the moment after breaking company with this man, found himself bound to his children, huddling in each other’s arms like kittens, laughing, crying, but most of all crying — a man who laughed when told to laugh, cried when told to cry, spoke when told to speak, wept when told to weep. I was a miserable creature who became interesting only when considered so by others, who existed on those rare days when people looked him in the eye.

This of course reminded me to hurry to the coffeehouse, where I could be among people whose lives were more or less different from my own and who, unlike me, did not suffer the gaze of others. When I was with them, I felt I had a life of my own; I could live and I could think.

But perhaps it wasn’t quite like that. There were other factors at play. I didn’t actually like the people there. I took refuge among them. I was like a man who flees a snowy night on the peak of a lonely mountain battered by heavy winds, to take refuge in one of those caravanserais that double as stables, where the warm aroma of manure mingles with the fragrance of freshly made tea and coffee amid the hum of human voices and the shuffling of horses’ hooves. It was this happy, saturated chaos that kept me warm.