Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

No doubt a day would come when I would forget the dissatisfaction I felt for the place and its people and leave myself entirely at their mercy. Already from time to time I’d say, “Ah, now this is life! Such peace and happiness… What a delightful cast of characters!” And I lived like this until my son Ahmet’s grave illness brought me back to my senses. My fear of losing him compelled me to accept my fate.

It was at around this time that Dr. Ramiz finally realized the project he’d been mulling over for the last six years: the Psychoanalytic Society. I was one of the twenty members of the society — none of whom, apart from Dr. Ramiz, were medical doctors; I was even made its director. So, yes, I must concede that when I was made deputy director at the Time Regulation Institute, I was not completely without experience. Before becoming director of the Society for Psychoanalysis, I’d been the accountant for the Spiritualist Society, which was more or less the same sort of organization. As director I was the holder of the key to the society’s meeting room, whose rent was paid over the years by my dear friend the founder of the organization. Only twice did the society open its doors to the public for conferences. At his first conference, Dr. Ramiz introduced me as the first patient he’d treated in Turkey, providing details that made my hair stand on end. It was thanks to these mentions that my second wife, Pakize, first took a shine to me. At his second conference, the doctor read a lithographed reproduction of an entire seventy-page-long dream manual, annotated with his own comparisons and explanations along the way.

It was summer; waves of hot air blew in through the society’s windows, singeing our faces and dragging us down to the depths where, yawning, we surrendered to the good intentions of the orator. A bee buzzing overhead seemed to be drilling through several layers of steel, belying its small size with the deafening roar of several diesel engines combined — at first smothering the voice of Dr. Ramiz, and then drowning it out altogether.

The first to drop off was Lazybones Asaf Bey, in the back row. In the role of honorary director, I sat just below the speaker, my hands politely poised on my knees as I tried to hide the gaping holes in my shoes — this was supposedly how it was done in Europe (I am referring to the seat I was assigned as director, and not to the shortcomings of my shoes). For a moment it seemed as if Lazybones Asaf, his arms sliding off the chairs he’d been using as his bed, had set his sights on the nape of a woman in a monstrous hat in the seat right in front of him. But then, as his head dove below the hat and out of sight, the divine hum of a thousand angels serenaded by violins rose from the back row. At around the third page of the dream manual, the divine hum and the buzzing bee became a small bay of cool and rippling waters over which the dreams of a young poet in our group might sail, to wage alone the epic sea battles of another age: the ship’s hawsers groaned, and the cannonballs roared out in blasts of black smoke as flames spread amid the charges and the battle cries. A woman of forty in the front row took advantage of the clamor to release a dozen ducklings she seemed to have stowed in her pocket, masking herself behind their quacking. And just beyond her someone else did the same and soon the meeting hall had become a draining bathtub insatiably gobbling up air.

By the tenth page almost everyone was fast asleep with the exception of those who’d already left for home to sleep in greater comfort. Once everyone was secured in slumber, each larynx settled into its usual repertoire, its racket and rhythm offering us swift and unadulterated consolation.

Dr. Ramiz fought as hard as he possibly could against this collective mutiny. Never before had I seen the man hold his own with such fortitude. His voice sprang from his chest like the roar of a lion, blowing back the soft grass and undergrowth freshly revived by Asaf Bey’s murmurings, lashing out erratically to either side, wrestling with unseen enemies, pouncing upon them, suffocating them once he got hold, and if not strangling them, then causing them to cower in terror.

His face was drenched in sweat, and his hands flew about as if to disperse the snores assaulting him from twenty different mouths. As he struggled to open a way for himself through the clamor, his words left his lips with the sharp snap of a whip, leaping across the room like a fiery temptress and spraying to the right and left like a fireman’s hose. But how could a single man struggle with so many enemies at once — enemies so high-minded, so evasive, so adept at hunkering down and metamorphosing?

Obstacles he’d presumed obliterated bounced back to life seconds later, and once again he was forced to set his ambush in the shadows as the ducks kept up their frantic quacking, as burst water pipes hissed like cobras, as the bathtub sucked all the water in the world down its drain, as trucks ground into low gear on insurmountable inclines, and as the noisiest of trains thundered past, one after the other.

But the voice of Dr. Ramiz was ever alert and ever vigilant, quickly tackling whatever crossed its path; it carried on promising, supplicating, threatening, and changing shape, concocting patterns of speech never before heard, to announce its state of siege.

Prying open my ever-heavier eyelids, and with my hands still on my knees, I marveled at Dr. Ramiz’s industry, courage, and power.

“Furthermore it is an ill omen if a lady sees an unbridled madman in her dream. Have her repent and beg God’s forgiveness.”

A young woman in the third row, whom I hadn’t noticed earlier, awoke from a deep slumber to release a long and deep “Ohhhhh,” before stretching out in her chair. Seizing upon this first sign of hope — and his last chance for salvation — Dr. Ramiz thundered on:

“And if this lunatic is a man, and if he is in the nude, the lady in question will commit adultery. Let her husband beware…”

The forty-year-old woman’s neck, now a large turtledove, began to coo. The ducklings were nowhere to be seen. Unfazed by these developments, the orator carried on.

“And it is indeed a bright omen if a man finds himself in his dream among a tribe of sleeping beauties — for he is the absolute actor, so obliged to explain himself to no one.”

Availing himself of the freedom evoked by these final words, Dr. Ramiz lowered his head and fell asleep.

VIII

At the time of Pakize’s and my marriage, her thyroid gland was still healthy, and she was neither moody nor short-tempered. Knowing nothing about real life, she was happy and good-natured. Both her mother and father were still alive. Indeed not a soul could have imagined their days would soon come to an end, for they were both so healthy and full of energy. Her sisters had not yet decided to come to live with us. My older sister-in-law’s musical talents were as yet undiscovered, while the younger one had yet to convince herself that a tenacious will was all she needed to become a beauty queen. I myself had not yet resigned from the post office in Fener, at the behest of Cemal Bey (whom I knew from the Spiritualist Society), to become an employee at the Bank of Miscellaneous Affairs, where Cemal Bey sat on the board of directors and would later become general manager. Put simply, I still had a steady job, and our lives were relatively safe and secure. And I had yet to fall in love with Selma Hanımefendi.

Yes, all this had yet to happen, which is why we were reasonably happy and snug in our little home during our first year of marriage, nestled under the tranquil gaze of the Blessed One. This life was certainly very different from the one I had led with Emine. My second wife had nothing in common with my first. Pakize lacked Emine’s contentment — a gift of her calm and generous nature — and Emine’s serene beauty. But Pakize was young and happy, with her own particular way of enjoying the world; she knew how to live in a world all her own.