Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

The car came to an abrupt halt in front of the restaurant. The mullet in the display window glittered red and blue, reflecting the last remnants of our journey up the Bosphorus.

“After you, Beyefendi.”

“Oh no, please, sir, I insist…”

The proprietor greeted us in the courtyard and took Halit Ayarcı by the hand. So this was the custom. I’d do the same if I had money. But not like that, no, I couldn’t. How could I ever be so confident? This was not just a greeting at the door of a restaurant — it was more along the lines of regal conquest. If shaking hands like this had been the custom in their day, then surely Alexander the Great would have done the same in Egypt, and Darius in Greece. The restaurant seemed to expand with our every step. Or perhaps not, for at the same time it was narrowing its focus, galloping toward us en masse. All eyes were fixed on us, except for those of a rather attractive woman in the corner who had buried her head in her plate. If only I could have seen her face just then. But I was just a little too late. I couldn’t tell if I knew her or not. But I understand why Halit turned his back to the sea — he didn’t want to disturb her. But who is she? He had me sit down opposite him. The woman lifted her head up from her plate, her face stripped of joy.

Beyond us the sea and the night — a rich blue night that swims through a man like a fish from a dream whose silence has settled inside him.

“Soon the moon will rise just over the opposite shore.”

Halit Bey ordered like he was firing celebratory gunshots at a wedding.

“Rakı—but not Kulüp. One of those… You know, the ones I brought the other night!”

Another brand apart from Kulüp rakı! But why not? There are premium grades of everything. Weren’t women the same? First Selma Hanım, then Nevzat Hanım, Pakize, and last my older sister-in-law, even though she is Pakize’s sister — they were all different grades. And then so many more. The universe is like a huge head of cabbage, layer upon layer.

The headwaiter gave us the menu.

Halit Bey turned to me and said, “Do us the honor of selecting the meze!”

I pulled myself together.

“You are more familiar with this restaurant than I, Your Grace. I am only familiar with stuffed mussels. I once sold them in the Balıkpazarı…”

I could have gone on: “I’m a poor man. If you hadn’t brought me here, I could have done no more than walk past this establishment’s front door. Perhaps they have dishes I wouldn’t even know. I am Hayri Irdal, the man whose youngest daughter was carried to her grave by the cemetery guard just five years ago. You must understand that I am a miserable wretch. And tomorrow I’ll give my eldest daughter to Ismail the Lame, the very scoundrel who had the impertinence to receive that thrashing before Your Excellency’s very eyes.”

But what good would all that have done? Why ruin an evening that had started out so beautifully? That night fortune made me Hayri Beyefendi. Best to make the most of it.

Crossing my legs, I looked about the place with studied nonchalance. Or at least I think I did. Perhaps my face seemed racked with confusion, because (as I am sure you are already aware) I am like any other wretched soul, trundling about this world with my mortal burden borne on the hump of my back.

The headwaiter waited patiently. Good God, he gazed upon Halit Ayarcı with such compassion, such love! It was as if joy itself had attached Gabriel’s wings to the waiter’s torso. And when his eyes were graced by the gaze of Halit Ayarcı, it seemed he might fly through the window, over the sea, and up into the sky still holding the tray of mezes, maybe even taking the entire restaurant with him. But no, he wouldn’t make it so far; for he would be absorbed into the windowpanes, like the angels in the frescoes of the domes of the Hagia Sophia. And from there he would cry out to Halit Ayarcı: “Ah! the blood in my veins! Oh! the light of my eyes!”

“A toast to you, Doctor! And you too, Beyefendi.”

The customs of such places were second nature to him. His voice was made for giving orders. I wondered if he didn’t have a bit of the actor in him. But no, this wasn’t acting; this was on another scale. He is so comfortable in his own skin. He has never suffered defeat.

“Some ice? Just a bit more? Now, we will down the first few glasses in haste, and then we’ll slow down. And so we’ll be able to enjoy ourselves for as long as we like.”

Sitting at this table in a restaurant was far more pleasant than standing behind the counter in my corner shop. There was time to drink rakı with due attention. The melting ice turned a milky gray, swirling down my glass like liquid marble. This must have been how God created light on the second day. Then the pleasure of the second sip. I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth oh so gently, to taste the hint of mastic. What a change from those forty-fives I used to drink! With the second sip and the third, a weight bore down on me, a lid slamming shut, and a strange new warmth coursed through each and every fiber in my body. I felt myself in the echoing inner chamber of a hammam. My fourth sip emptied the glass. Was it right to be drinking so quickly? Shouldn’t I have savored it? This evening would never repeat itself: never again would I enjoy such food or drink!

Halit Ayarcı refilled my glass. Ah, if only everyone loved his watch as much as this man does; if only they all could be friends with Dr. Ramiz… The ice in my glass turned the rakı into veined marble.

“Aren’t you eating, Hayri Beyefendi?”

I’d lost track of how many glasses I’d had. There was no use trying to remember. “No, thank you,” I said. When all the food was laid out on the table before me, I suddenly felt full — that’s just the way I am. Dr. Ramiz is another story. He was devouring the food as if he’d no memory of all the advice he’d given me about polite eating whenever he’d invited me to eat at that little meyhane in Sehzadebası. Plates kept circling back to him as if he were the official checkpoint. And as I viewed him through a huge and melting cube of ice, I fancied myself behind a vast pane of glass.

“Psychoanalysis is the most important discovery of the age.”

Halit Ayarcı’s voice suddenly went sharp.

“Enough of your psychoanalysis, Doctor. For God’s sake! We’re drinking rakı.”

Dr. Ramiz dropped the subject at once, turning his attention to his lobster. To tell you the truth, I’d spent ten long years — our entire acquaintance — longing to tell the doctor just that. But whenever we’d gone to a meyhane , psychoanalysis had been the only topic allowed.

“You really taught Horlogian a good thing or two!”

“Perhaps I went a bit too far. But the man did deserve it.”

“He did indeed. Very much so, I would say!”

Once again Halit Ayarcı was looking me over as if deciding whether to buy me.

“Hayri Bey, just where did you learn about watches and clocks?”

“As a child — when I was still a child — I met an esteemed religious time setter by the name of Nuri Efendi. He was a friend of my father’s…”

I was unable to finish my story as a procession of ten or more people poured into the restaurant. Everyone turned to watch them. At the head of the party was a lavishly dressed, large man — the kind whose photograph often appeared in the newspapers; from across the room he waved to Halit Ayarcı, who returned the greeting by half rising to his feet in a most dignified manner. Extra tables were pulled out and chairs swung into place. Waiters ricocheted about the restaurant like billiard balls. Then the lavishly dressed man came over to see us, while the others in his party stayed behind, talking and joking among themselves as they waited for their table to be set. Though they seemed reasonably relaxed, they each kept an eye on the man approaching our table, while giving the same attention to the seat he would soon occupy at theirs, as if resigned, on such occasions, to suffer split vision.