Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

She loved just one thing in life: the cinema. Films did not just educate her: they also mesmerized her. So enraptured was she by the silver screen, so engulfed was she in its world of fantasy, that she could no longer distinguish between her own life and the adventures she saw in films.

One day she informed me in all earnestness that she could no longer perform a certain Spanish dance. It was a Sunday morning in the second year of our marriage. Her hair was spread across her pillow, and she was lolling about in bed, waiting for a crane to hoist her out. Standing at the window, I was considering how happy I might have been if I had married a woman who was quicker to rise in the morning and a little more eager to have breakfast. Suddenly she called out to me:

“Hayri,” she said. “You know, I think I’ve forgotten that one Spanish dance number.”

I knew Pakize liked to dance, but I’d never known her to be familiar with Spanish dancing. One could hardly expect so much from a person whose great girth made it difficult for her even to walk properly, let alone see where she was placing her feet.

“You don’t say. Which Spanish dance is that?”

“I swear to God I can’t remember. I tried it yesterday, but I just couldn’t do it. How do you forget something you knew just three days ago?”

“I didn’t know you knew a Spanish dance.”

“But how could you forget, love? Wasn’t I just dancing it the other day? You know the one you really liked, at the club? Everyone cheered; then that officer came in and…”

Since our marriage we’d gone nowhere but the cinema. It was only later that I realized my wife had confused herself with Jeanette MacDonald, an actress we had recently seen in a film; in fact she’d transformed herself into the woman from the film. A few days later, I found her distressed when she couldn’t find her red dressing gown or my riding jacket. She collapsed into uncontrollable weeping when her white satin gown was nowhere to be found. Another morning she threw her arms around my neck and warned me repeatedly to take care on my way to the office.

I cannot tell you how strange it was to be married to a woman who did not just occasionally fancy herself as Jeanette MacDonald or Rosalind Russell but who also took me for Charles Boyer, Clark Gable, or William Powell. One day she even mistook one of our neighbor’s daughters for Marta Eggerth. Beckoning to her from our window, she asked, “Marta, my dear, where in the world are you going dressed like that?”

In truth it was a difficult thing to deal with. Dangerous misunderstandings could crop up at any moment of the day, with one version of events contradicting the next. But there were light moments too, and some of these even proved useful. My wife, as I have already said, was blissfully content within a world of cinema and thus impervious to life’s trials. My missing buttons were no longer replaced, as it was well-known that Adolphe Menjou had at least a hundred thirty suits. She didn’t even notice when my jacket wore out at the elbows. Everything she saw in films, she saw as ours: castles, diamonds, lush gardens, and noble and courteous friends. So it made no difference to her if we had our evening meal in the kitchen or not at all. In short, she had the key to a quick getaway. But even so, it would have been impossible for me not to worry about her just a little.

What cog had come loose in her brain to keep pulling her back into that world of make believe? Was it despair that sometimes turned her into a child? There had to be more to it than that — something deeply rooted in childhood must have set the stage. After a strong southerly wind had kept me up one night, I told Pakize I was going to take a twenty-minute nap. We had planned a picnic that day, and several of our neighbors were due to come over within the hour. Pakize may have been right to warn me that I wouldn’t be able to get up again if I went back to bed, but I protested, “Oh no, I’ll be fine. You’ll see. I’ll wake up right on time.” Fifteen or twenty minutes later — well before our guests had arrived — I woke up to the blare of the radio. My wife had turned it up to full volume and was astounded that I had managed to wake up. So, just to say something, I blurted out one of the odd historical tidbits I had picked up from God knows whom: “Napoléon had the same knack for timely napping!” The moment the words left my mouth, I saw a fine sparkle in her eyes and was filled with regret. But it was too late. From that day on, Pakize would compare me to Napoléon. Though she couldn’t have had much of an idea who Napoléon was, she knew me inside out, and as the adage goes, “We may not know Joseph, but we know you perfectly well.” As we sat nibbling stuffed grape leaves under the pine trees on Heybeliada, and later as we lounged about digesting them for hours on end, she entertained us with her list of similarities: the great military commander also relished sele olives; he was an avid fan of cowboy films; he always slept on his right side; and he snored in the morning just like me. And this was just the first stage. Three or four days later, she began to look for ways in which Napoléon took after me . She went to the attic and pulled out my reserve officer uniform, which she had cleaned and pressed before hanging it first in our bedroom and then in the guest room. The following day she insisted I put it on, come what may. “You forget who you are!” she remonstrated. Oh Lord! How beautiful she was when a silly whim like this overcame her. How her fair countenance would soften… Then finally there was my coronation. She was so excited she could hardly wait. This was the second, or rather the third, stage. As time went on she came to believe with all her heart that she was Joséphine de Beauharnais, and so she adopted her stepchildren, believing them the fruits of her first marriage. Yes, from that day forth she took Emine’s children for her own. And suddenly I was their stepfather. Perhaps those reading these memoirs will find something to laugh about in all this, but there is no denying the confusion it brought to my life. No, there was something not quite right about Pakize. Once I had come to accept this, I began to see the woman I held so dearly in my arms — the woman with whom I shared so many responsibilities — as impaired or only half-there. It was partly Pakize’s doing that I came to obey Cemal Bey so blindly and to fall so desperately in love with Selma Hanım.

Things changed somewhat after Pakize’s mother and father passed away. And her feet finally hit the ground when my sisters-in-law came to live with us. But changes in my wife would always make themselves known in the most awkward and unexpected ways. It was now her sisters’ turn to be the axis upon which our lives revolved, with my children and me, and even Pakize, relegated to the background. Pakize took such pity on these two orphan sisters — thirty-five and twenty-eight years old — that if anyone deserved pity over time, it was us. And slowly we sank into a wretched and precarious existence that lasted until my fortuitous meeting with Halit Ayarcı. I was being lowered into a bottomless well, every moment sinking a little deeper into the darkness. But I am getting ahead of myself: first I must describe my life at the Spiritualist Society.

IX

The Spiritualist Society differed in every respect from the Society for Psychoanalysis. At our lively and unruly meetings, we found common cause in the world beyond, from which dispatches arrived almost twice a week, and our deliberations on their possible meanings were not without merit. There was, additionally, an abundance of females. Though many were mediums, at least seven or eight attended purely out of interest. I was the association’s accountant and secretary, so I got into the habit of stopping by every evening after work, to keep abreast of my paperwork; I used my free time to collect the monthly dues and update the books. It was here — in this association that every day offered up a new surprise — that I first met Cemal Bey.