Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

Arriving in Beyazıt Square, I fished about in my pockets for my watch, as usual. But of course it wasn’t there. I’d sold it eight months earlier. I looked up at the clocks in the square. One had stopped at half past three and the other seemed to be racing like a train that had been running late since eleven o’clock the night before, desperately trying to get back on schedule by evening. Just to make conversation, I said, “These clocks never tell the correct time.”

Having just cast off the memory of my future son-in-law like a dead snake, I felt comfortable in my own skin, so I added, “Do you know that no two city clocks ever tell the same time? If you like, just have a look at the clock in Eminönü, and then we’ll compare it with the one in Karaköy.”

No one replied. Both men seemed to be daydreaming. I shrugged my shoulders. What did I care? I was no longer under any obligation to give Zehra to that brute. Nothing else mattered. But, dear God, however was I going to provide for her?

To dispel my grief, I turned my thoughts back to the thrashing of Ismail the Lame, but to no avail; then I tried thinking about Selma Hanım, but that didn’t work either. The heaviness prevailed. Dr. Ramiz finally spoke when we reached Eminönü.

“You’re absolutely right, my good man. A difference of twenty-five minutes.”

In Karaköy, Halit Ayarcı added, “And here we’re half an hour ahead!”

The watchmaker was a rich Armenian obsessed with faux politesse. There was no way you could look at the man without marveling at his shirtmaker, and what a barber! As for the shine on his shoes, the scoundrel clearly slept in his footwear. Upon seeing Halit Ayarcı, he greeted him in a splattering of French, but his words went unnoticed. Taking out his watch, Halit Ayarcı turned to me and said:

“Would you kindly explain the matter to this gentleman, Hayri Bey?”

Agop Horlogian betrayed both compassion and contempt as he inspected me from head to toe, finally settling his fascinated eyes on my shoes. Surely if I had presented myself to this man in any other circumstance, he would have dismissed me, without a moment’s hesitation, as a beggar.

This was perhaps why I mustered my most imposing voice as I explained the condition of Halit Ayarcı’s watch.

“First of all,” I said, “you’ve dismantled this watch most brutishly on three occasions. These watches are delicate mechanisms that cannot sustain such crude handling. Look at the back of this piece. This wasn’t made on a factory line. It was painstakingly crafted by hand! It’s a letter from one master craftsman to another, but clearly it wasn’t written for you!”

And I pointed to the designs engraved on the inside of the front cover. Then I slowly pursed my lips and said: “It truly grieves me to see a craftsman’s place usurped by a merchant.”

Oh Nuri Efendi, my saintly master, may you rest in peace. You should have seen the state of the poor man as he listened to me. The victory was yours. Hearing just one of your words of wisdom, Horlogian’s eyes were released from my shoes, as if he had suddenly grasped that they hadn’t come to see him all by themselves, that surely they must have a master; it had finally occurred to him that the miserable man standing before him must also have a head, even a face.

No, I’ll never give my daughter to that hound!

Having thanked him with an almost courteous smile for having remembered to look up at my face, I continued.

“It seems your apprentices have misplaced this one particular stone while repairing the watch. So if you would attend to this…”

Nervously rubbing his hands, Horlogian muttered something unintelligible, but by then I had lost all my patience.

“You,” I cried, “will do what I say. Everything that I say! First you will demagnetize this timepiece.”

Then I turned to Halit Ayarcı and said, “Once upon a time this kind of work wasn’t done for mere financial reward. It was done by those who were apprenticed to the trade and by people who truly loved the work.”

I could almost hear Nuri Efendi’s voice echoing in my ear: “Bravo, my son.”

Had I not been so racked with other worries at the time, had I not felt swept away on a sea of misadventures, with only five liras in my pocket to feed my family that night, I doubt I would have been so sharp with the watchmaker Horlogian. At one point I looked the poor man in the eye. I was ashamed of my behavior, but I thought to myself, “Let him get what he deserves. He’s not worried about finding food for dinner tonight…”

By God, a man can be so snug behind a well-paid job. He can take on the entire world. Within a minute, Horlogian had pulled himself together. He could have handed us the watch and chased us out of his shop then and there.

Instead we stayed for an hour and a half. And over that time the grace of God and the spiritual presence of my master allowed me to bestow upon the watch merchant a precise and highly constructive lesson in the maintenance of a timepiece. When he replaced the stone, reestablishing the correct weight so as not to disturb the mechanics of the watch, I paid particular attention; the man’s face was drenched in sweat.

Finally I warned the merchant against using too much oil when working with timepieces of this caliber.

“You’re not roasting an eggplant! You’re repairing a watch. Stop using this kind of oil! These days it’s easy to find very light bone oil.”

Halit Ayarcı’s eyes were riveted on me the whole while. By the time we left the shop, Horlogian seemed to have forgotten his French. Feeling compelled to pay me a compliment, he asked, “Is the esteemed gentleman from Switzerland? Or perhaps just educated there?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It’s just that you have such an impressive understanding of timepieces.”

My answer was brief.

“I love them,” I said, “very much.”

Then I wished I hadn’t berated the fellow so harshly: he might have taken me on as an apprentice.

Dr. Ramiz and Halit Ayarcı were engaged in a lively dispute at the shop entrance. Where would they go that evening? Or, rather, where would we go?

Finally Halit Ayarcı announced, “Off we go then up the Bosphorus. And Hayri Efendi is to honor us with his presence. We’ll drink rakı together, won’t we, Beyefendi?”

“That makes four,” I said to myself. “In just one hour I have been addressed as beyefendi four times. What’s more, Ismail the Lame was beaten to a pulp before my eyes. And perhaps for that very reason he would never again ask for my daughter’s hand in marriage. And then, after that, I had ruffled the feathers of one of Istanbul’s eminent watchmakers for an hour and a half. And all this was happening to me. My family was at home, starving, and I was now riding in a car whose make I would never be able to divine, not even if it were mine. And to top it all off, we were on our way to Büyükdere to drink rakı.

My last visit to Büyükdere had been to attend the funeral of a relative of Selma Hanım. I will never forget how exhausted I was that day. My devotion to this woman was such that I nearly carried the casket on my back all by myself. And by the end I was on the verge of throwing myself into the grave with the deceased. What people won’t do for love…

My worst memory from that day was locking eyes with Cemal Bey; he was having a private laugh about the state I was in. He had pouted throughout the entire ceremony, as aggravated as if his shoe were pinching a painful corn on the bottom of his foot. His demeanor had set me so on edge that more than once I had considered shoving him into the grave as an escort to the deceased before making my escape. After which I would climb to the top of Hünkartepe and sing that folk song to the cool breeze, “My Lover at Sea.” Why not some other song? I don’t know. But naturally I’d done no such thing. To make matters worse, he’d asked me to take his arm on the way back, and I’d more or less had to carry the brute myself.