Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

“Perhaps she wants us to live in our new homes. But we are from Istanbul. It’s the only city we know. Even my father never wanted to leave. And all our friends are here.”

At the time when I became a keen regular at the Spiritualist Society (if only to escape the fractious mood swings of my wife and her sisters), Aphrodite had just come up with a new explanation. Every now and then she’d take the lace adorning the edge of her gown between her fingers and show it to us.

“If she loves me, how can she resent me so much?” she cried. “How can she hold a grudge? She must be tired. Or perhaps she couldn’t marry in the material world, at least not before she found us, but perhaps now she’s found someone in the world beyond and married him.”

If she could just about convince herself of this possibility, then she could be sure that her auntie was at peace with the world. She would laugh and sing and hug and kiss the men she fancied. But this free spirit could never forgive herself: she was the reason her aunt had never married, and she blamed herself mercilessly for having kept her aunt from living a full life. She believed that women should marry at all costs. Any other course was utter catastrophe, which is why she was delighted when my aunt made her late marriage.

“But of course!” she exclaimed. “Why wouldn’t she? We all must live!”

My aunt had remarried for her own selfish reasons, with no consideration for anyone but herself, but Aphrodite chose not to notice how mean and unjust the woman had been to us and gave the union her full blessing. And when Nasit Bey died, freeing my aunt to plan her third foray into marriage, Aphrodite measured one aunt against the other, and, finding a greater exuberance of willpower in mine, she judged her aunt to have lost the contest, brooding over her fate thereafter in the way a neighborhood boy might mourn the defeat of his rooster in a cock fight.

Aphrodite had been the most sought-after girl in all of Beyoglu since she was eighteen. Almost everyone in high society knew who she was; and in both Turkish and foreign circles. Invited to every event of consequence, she’d find herself surrounded by at least half a dozen suitors. Yet she never could bring herself to marry: perhaps her freedom was too dear. It was like looking at someone lingering in bed after waking, unable to shake free of the mood left by a final dream: she couldn’t bring herself to give up the freedom she had savored with such outrageous extravagance right up to her twentieth name day. And despite the many changes in her life over the previous five years, she still hoped to carry on as before.

She had suitors of all ages and showed each and every one the same kindness and generosity. They courted her as if possessed, and, suffice it to say, they were all fairly miserable. But after a time they either drifted away from the beautiful young girl, who seemed to have no notion of her gorgeous femininity (never mind its dangers), or they remained at her side, resigned to a life of spellbound intimacy and restless despair.

Aphrodite’s adventures were closely followed by every member of the association, male or female. She was as talked about as Nevzat Hanım’s Murat. When I first joined the association, hoping only to earn a little extra cash, I was under the impression that it had been founded for no other reason than to discuss the questions of Murat and the old woman, with members either doubting or accepting their existence.

Our official psychic, Sabriye Hanımefendi (who claimed to have been Aphrodite’s classmate and intimate at the French lycée Notre Dame de Sion, despite a ten-year age difference and an evident mutual distaste), maintained that the young lady was in no way a spiritual medium and never had been. The truth, according to Sabriye Hanim, was that she had had a passionate affair with a young Italian diplomat who had served two years at the embassy in Istanbul. The romance had captured the imagination of Istanbul’s upper echelons. Everyone — the entire foreign community as well as the Turkish elite that moved in the same circles — thought the Italian diplomat devastatingly handsome and rather sophisticated, and they followed each new development with rapture. But the romance took a fascinating turn after the young diplomat abruptly departed for his native land. That was when Aphrodite dreamed up the whole adventure, convincing her mother to travel with her to Italy so she could meet with her lover one last time and perhaps win his hand in marriage. This was why the matter of the inheritance was so quickly resolved. All had been orchestrated in advance. Was it possible that a matter as convoluted as an inheritance could have been resolved so easily, without divine intervention of this order?

Was there any truth in the story that Sabriye Hanım re-counted a little differently to each and every member of the association? No one could really say. But this much is certain: had there been so much as a hint of truth in her tale, it would not have found much favor with the association. For, like Nevzat Hanım’s Murat, Aphrodite’s aunt was one of the little group’s life buoys. The association needed its myths, imaginary or real: it was through these myths that its members communed with the mysteries of death resurrected.

The myth of Aphrodite was more than an extravagant and alluring adventure; with its promises and warnings, stern words and enticements, it gave life its meaning and its order. The spirit’s proclamations never once contradicted our beliefs, speaking a fluid truth that left its true form unknown. Aphrodite’s aunt and Nevzat Hanım’s Murat were our eternal companions; their essence seeping into ours. They lived out their lives as we lived out ours; they were real even though they were lies.

Our spiritual leader was not seeking the truth in such matters. She was interested only in facts. Well, for us Aphrodite’s aunt was a fact. And that was satisfactory enough! One could be sitting at home on a dark and snowy night when one of these amiable spirits suddenly tapped on the door and shuffled in like a guest, hanging his coat and scarf onto the stove for the icicles to snap and crackle over the heat, guiding us to a world that was so different from our own, unfurling before our very eyes, flaunting its aura for those with eyes to see.

The novelist Atiye Hanım understood all this perfectly, which is why she had no time for Sabriye Hanım and her logic and good sense. With such wild speculation whirling around about, it was useless for Aphrodite to try to deny anything. Deprived of her aunt, the poor girl drifted hopelessly among us, like a forlorn and banished queen fed only by the glory of her past. But perhaps this portrait was itself a product of Atiye Hanım’s imagination — for the real Aphrodite wasn’t in the least hopeless or despairing. It was simply that Atiye Hanım the novelist chose to see the matter in this light.

Whenever it came up in conversation, Atiye Hanım would change the subject, leaving no opportunity for objections before turning the conversation — I never really understood why — to Queen Christina , a film that had created quite a sensation in her youth. Then she would sink into confusion. Atiye Hanım dearly loved the film, representing as it did a turning point in her life as an artist. It had long been her dream to write the story of Kösem Sultan along the lines of this film. For her, Aphrodite became a living example of Kösem Sultan.

But for a long time life would stand in the way, for life had endowed Atiye Hanım with a wealth of material. Her tireless consumption of men had given her enough to fill sixteen rapid-fire romance novels; her current novel in progress dealt with events that had occurred ten years before. Over the last decade she’d gone through at least as many men again, and having suffered dearly for it, she was now bloated with sadness and a profusion of sensitivities. Life for her meant loving, making love, changing lovers, and suffering: she’d need at least another sixteen novels to recount all her new adventures. So her Kösem Sultan novel would just have to wait.