Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

Life at the Spiritualist Society had worn me down. It was impossible for me to get home in time for dinner. I hadn’t been sleeping well at all; the association members had been taking up nearly all my time. The only break I’d ever had from them was when I was off running errands for Cemal Bey.

Before I left the association, I said good-bye to Nail Bey, and once again he listened to everything I had to say on the matter. Then he closed his eyes and intoned:

“Lutfullah.”

I cocked my head to indicate I hadn’t understood. Assuming he was only having me on, I answered:

“He’s in safe hands. Sabriye Hanım’s looking after him.”

Nail handed me a communiqué that had been distributed the day before. It warned of evil spirits plaguing the association and advised that Seyit Lutfullah was not to be summoned to any future gatherings.

Nail Bey leaned toward me and said:

“Seyit Lutfullah knows too much, he knows as much as Sabriye Hanım. And you’ve been asking him such misleading questions. So watch your step!”

Only much later did I fully grasp what Nail Bey was trying to tell me. Speaking with him then I was under the impression that I was leaving the association with my old friend Seyit Lutfullah by my side.

The work I was to do for Cemal Bey was simple and straightforward. After five o’clock I was free to do as I pleased. I had a new circle of friends. I no longer had to put up with the masses at the Fener post office or the mounting chorus of moans as they pushed and shoved their way to the one public telephone on a wooden table covered in cigarette burns. My new surroundings were comfortable and refined. I had a telephone that was for my use only. No longer did I need to jump up at the call of a bell. Now there were men jumping up when I rang for them. The first day I rang for the office boy eight times. The first time I asked him about the weather; the second time I asked him for the time; when he hurried up a third time, I asked for his help in putting on my coat; the fourth time I had him take it off; on his fifth trip I got his name; but by then the whole thing had become rather tedious for us both. Calling him up to see me for the sixth time, I offered him a cigarette and asked him to sit with me for a while; and on the seventh buzz I asked him to go away, until finally I rang for him to come back and keep me company.

You might not believe me, but I found it all to be a genuine delight. I had indeed stepped onto the first rung of the ladder!

I started meeting Dr. Ramiz in the coffeehouse in Sehzadebası again. But the place had lost its warm atmosphere; four years had passed and most of the regulars had moved on. But this was of little import, as the main characters were still there: Lazybones Asaf Bey, Dr. Ramiz, a few painters, a journalist. My recent exploits had made me a character in my own right. From time to time, the poet Ekrem Bey would come round to fill us in on the latest spiritualist gossip: Nevzat Hanım seemed discontent and hopelessly scatty, and Sabriye Hanım almost never came to meetings anymore.

One day at the office I received a telephone call from Sabriye Hanım. She invited me to a meeting at her home. I invented an excuse but she insisted. She left me no choice. When I told Cemal Bey later in the day, he flew into a terrible rage:

“Out of the question!” he croaked. “Absolutely not. I forbid you to go!”

So naturally I didn’t go.

Throughout my time in his employ, my personal relationship with Cemal Bey remained constant. He sent for me whenever there was something he needed; whether I was at the coffeehouse or at home, he would find me. But he was no longer the same man: day by day he grew increasingly petulant and no matter how carefully I carried out his precise commands he would accuse me of botching the job and scold me harshly. I ascribed his change in behavior to various problems that I knew to be causing him anxiety at the time. He was suffering from severe financial difficulties. Whenever we met, he was busy going over his accounts. On several occasions I watched him fish a wad of cash out of his pocket and sort the bills into separate piles before returning the small fortune to his wallet with a mournful look on his face.

“I won’t make it through the month!” he groaned.

With the money he had counted right under my nose, he could have sent the entire community at the customs bureau on the hajj. That year he spent the whole winter fretting over his accounts. Then suddenly his situation improved. The same could not be said of the way he treated me: I was still accountable for his misadventures with his tailor, cobbler, haberdasher, his butcher in Karaköy, and his landlord; I suffered them all and paid dearly with my sweat. But his financial woes had somehow disappeared.

It was around this time that something happened that seemed of little consequence. One evening Sabriye Hanım decided to call on us at home, in a car so enormous it blocked off our entire street. Together we revisited memories from the past, and in doing so she managed to squeeze out of me the odd piece of information regarding Cemal Bey’s private life. Then, after kissing my wife and my sister-in-laws good-bye, she took her leave.

Her visit had a devastating effect on the family morale. Her fashionable attire had left my wife and her sisters awestruck. In setting out at once to imitate her style, they failed to remember that dressing in such a way required money. To them, it was a simple matter of will; and all three began to tap it most aggressively. I had to spend three months’ wages in one month. But the spree continued unabated; there was still so much more they had to have. Before saying her farewells, Sabriye Hanım had declared my younger sister-in-law to be rather pretty; swept away by the compliment and convinced of its sincerity, she entered her first beauty contest that very year.

Two months later Nevzat Hanım somehow found my address and came to visit us, too. She was curious to find out just what Sabriye Hanım had asked me that night, and she was curious to know my personal opinion of Cemal Bey.

The three sisters were quick to conclude that Nevzat Hanım’s style was in fact the true embodiment of elegance. Everything — from all their gowns to their undergarments — had to be changed. All their old clothing was sold secondhand, for next to nothing. Thus we burned our way through two more months’ wages. To make matters worse, Pakize began to feel jealous; though she couldn’t have cared less about him until then, her husband had suddenly become a prized commodity. There had to be a reason why women of such quality would visit me so brazenly. She suspected we were up to something.

How had Cemal Bey heard about Nevzat Hanım’s visit? The very next day he was as cold as ice. No longer content to limit his criticism to the way I carried out his personal errands, he began to find fault with my work at the office. Nothing I did pleased him. He flung papers in my face and even shouted at me in front of the office boys. It was no longer the good life but a living hell. With each of Cemal’s remonstrations, I swallowed a bed of red-hot coals. And I’d had to sell my own clothes to keep up with the fashion revolution at home. I’d been reduced to wearing a suit covered in motley patches. But neither this sartorial disgrace nor my scraggly two-month-old beard did anything to lessen Pakize’s jealousy. I had no choice but to supply her with a running account for every minute of my day.

I have already told you that I am an ignorant man. All my life I’ve had to learn new words. At almost every stage, I was obliged to renew my lexicon with revisions based on real-life experience — with my own blood and toil. Through my adventures with the Sehzadebası Diamond, I came to understand the meaning of the word “absurd.” Till then I had understood the word to allude to things beyond my ken. Now it was part and parcel of my life. A fear I had never before experienced took root inside me. I lived each second of the day afraid of what awaited me around the next corner. I knew that within the next half hour either my wife or one of her sisters would come by the office to check up on me, and that Cemal Bey would call me in to chastise me, showing no mercy (all this while my visitors were still there), and that I would wrest myself free of him only to come face to face with one of my creditors.