Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

With every passing minute, I felt degraded in a new way. With every hour, misfortune appeared before me in a new guise. Yet there was no reason for me to be suffering so. In no way had I brought this on myself. It all seemed to unfurl by its own logic.

At around this time, a young woman came forward, claiming she wanted to marry me — though I had made my situation clear. But, then again, it may have been my marital status that piqued her interest. I met all sorts of people by chance in those days, without ever considering the consequences. One of these creatures took to me. And there was absolutely nothing I could do beyond surrendering to her claws. I just couldn’t break free. A machine operated by some external hand was now controlling my life; at one point the engine picked up speed only to slow down a little later, and sometimes it stopped functioning altogether. When this happened, neither the saw nor the blade worked; and a fear took the place of my panic and pain. I trembled to think what might, as the saying goes, next be lying in store.

Toward the end of summer Cemal Bey went to Ankara for three days. It was nothing less than heaven. Though anxious as ever, I was spared the terrible burden of the man’s company. No longer was I submerged in a deep sea; no longer did I feel that horrific weight on my back or my bones nearly splintering beneath it. And then there was the rest of it: the daily hardships, the concomitant fatigue, pain, and suffering. Thus I came to understand the extent to which a single person can impinge upon the life of another.

Over those three days I couldn’t stop thinking about Cemal Bey. In a way nothing had changed. Everyone at the office had adopted his style, so I was more or less exposed to the same kind of treatment. Life at home was ever the same. I felt just a bit more comfortable and more relaxed. Yet this creature known as Cemal Bey still cast its looming shadow over my life; there was no escape.

And he wasn’t just a part of my life: he infused all that surrounded me.

My own life had taught me this: mankind’s hell is mankind. There might very well be hundreds of diseases that will end our lives, hundreds of paths that may lead to our undoing, but all these pale next to the devastation that can be wrought by another human being.

Now I was to discover that I wasn’t alone in this view. Before leaving for Ankara, Cemal Bey gave me a long list of errands. For one of these, I had to speak with his wife. So I stopped by their home. Selma Hanım did not greet me at all warmly; in fact she didn’t even seem happy to see me. Everything was just as it had always been. Yet something between us had changed. She seemed more at ease and sure of herself, and she was wearing an expression I’d never seen before. She seemed relieved.

She insisted that I stay for a coffee. She sat down opposite me in the living room, really not that far away, and I watched her fiddle with the folds on her skirt. She too was liberated but, like me, for a limited time only. She had the easy air of a child granted a reprieve from her governess. Or was it something more than that? She called to mind a young girl rescued from an evil witch in one of those fairy tales.

Surely Nevzat Hanım must have been the same. She had a new lightness of being, seemed more at ease.

At one point Selma Hanım asked me if I had seen Nevzat Hanım. To demonstrate my mastery of the intricacies of class distinction, I took care to endow Cemal Bey with the title beyefendi.

“The beyefendi has prohibited my association with her.”

At first it seemed that Selma Hanım hadn’t understood.

“It seems Nevzat Hanım isn’t feeling well. I haven’t been able to visit her either.”

Then all at once she looked me in the eyes as if she had just come to her senses. She wanted to say something but stopped. She had understood.

And so? What would that achieve? It would do nothing but poison the three days of freedom that chance had bestowed upon her. It was best not to think about it at all. Escape was the only way, to take flight into myself. But was there even such a place to take refuge? Indeed was I even there? This thing called “I” was no more than a mess of desire, pain, and fear.

This was why I was not so very upset when Cemal Bey relieved me of my position the moment he got back. If nothing else, I was finally free. I’d never see the wretch again. I’d never have to suffer his screeching voice. His oafish gestures and the revolting lines on his narrow little forehead would never again haunt my dreams. The nausea would finally cease. Anger and rage would no longer eat away my insides.

Yet I wondered how I’d break the news at home. They were sure to take it badly. What’s more, they’d say it was my fault. I hadn’t even begun to think about how we were going to get by. That was the next step. Now I had to get through the “first moment.” It frightened me like a dangerous underpass. I found everyone at home in a storm of nervous energy and despair. They all had long faces; they were fighting off tears.

So they knew. I wondered who might have told them. Where could they have heard the news?

Calmly, I asked Pakize:

“How did you hear?”

She handed me the newspaper.

Why would my recent dismissal be featured in the paper? I wasn’t that important a man. I was a run-of-the-mill secretary. No, this must be something else. I read the section she pointed out to me. Three jury members for that year’s beauty contest had resigned. Among them was Sabriye Hanım. My younger sister-in-law was in a flood of tears:

“She promised me. She promised me she’d help.”

I tried telling them again and again that it really wasn’t the end of the world, and that I’d been laid off, and that we now ran the risk of going hungry, and that this was what we needed to be thinking about. Impossible. They were far too deep into their own troubles.

I

Ismail the Lame — to whom I had, the previous night, after a tortuous argument with Pakize and her sisters, consented to give my daughter’s hand in marriage — was at the table next to mine, playing dominoes. Assaulted by his pug eyes; his dirty, swollen face; his ropey jaundiced flesh; and a stump of a nose that only served to accentuate his pockmarks, I lamented my ill fortune and the beautiful spring day it had poisoned.

If Zehra had grown up in any other home, if she had received just a little kindness and attention, Ismail the Lame would never have been her one and only suitor. Despite her unkempt appearance and threadbare clothes, she was as beautiful as a fresh spring day. Sadly, my sisters-in-law — the music lover and the aspiring beauty queen — had conspired over the course of twelve years to convince my daughter she was ugly and disagreeable. At first Pakize had tried to soften the ill will they showed my daughter. But then during our darkest days she too turned on Zehra, as if blaming her for our misfortune.

The night before, my older sister-in-law had scolded Zehra mercilessly so as to cover up a misdeed perpetrated by Pakize: for absolutely no reason, she had made Ahmet cry. Though Zehra suffered personal attacks in silence, she did not like anyone hurting Ahmet, so she had kicked up a frightful row with her stepmother. This is what I liked most about Zehra: the way something lying dormant deep inside her would suddenly come to life. She understood things I didn’t and could do what I could never dare: she could take a stand against injustice. Unfortunately, this particular act of rebellion did not play out in my favor. In such situations Pakize had but one tactic. For her, conflict with others was but a diversionary firefight behind the front lines, and she saw no need to hesitate in throwing all her adversarial strength against me in one main assault. This was just what happened. The fight lasted into the early hours. The grand finale saw my blanket and pillow hurled onto the living room divan before Pakize pushed me out of the bedroom.