Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

“Almost everyone who works with Halit Bey adopts his manner, insomuch as they are able. Halit Bey isn’t fond of me, perhaps because I know him a little too well. But, myself, I am very fond of him.”

I told Sabriye Hanım that Halit Ayarcı was also thinking of hiring Nevzat Hanım, Cemal Bey, and Selma Hanım. She smiled when she heard Selma Hanım’s name, as if she had been expecting as much.

“Selma Hanım will agree,” she said. “In fact she’ll be quite tickled that you thought of her. I imagine she needs the work too, but for reasons different from my own. It seems things aren’t going very well for Cemal Bey. His financial affairs are in a terrible state, and he’s burdened with all sorts of other problems too. But I’m not too sure about Nevzat.”

“Why’s that?”

“Nevzat isn’t the old Nevzat anymore. You’ll find Selma Hanım very much changed as well. Nevzat’s become more and more detached of late. She’s cut off all contact with her friends. She lives as if she’s atoning for a sin. She’s become deeply religious. She does nothing but read the Koran, from morning till night, and she prays five times a day. In fact she’s even stopped all communication with the spiritual world.”

“What’s happened to Murat?”

“He’s disappeared. Like I said, she’s no longer the same Nevzat Hanım.”

Then she quickly changed the subject.

“Why, do you know who I recently befriended? Your aunt. What a wonderful woman, so vibrant and alive, and what vigor for her age! To be honest I feel bad you two have drifted apart, for your sake that is. Such an open-minded, clear-sighted human being… And do you know she has a keen interest in Sufi mysticism too? In fact she’s even written several ecstatic love poems. Tomorrow I’m invited to her house for tea.”

It was clear that the conversation was going to get boring, and so I left the house, promising Sabriye Hanım I’d telephone her as soon as I could.

I was really quite moved by what Sabriye Hanım had said about Selma Hanım. That’s probably why I called her from the first corner shop I could find. I planned to hang up if Cemal Bey answered. Just to hear Sabriye Hanım say just those few words about Selma Hanım had set me alight, though I hadn’t thought about her for the last five years, and could hardly recall her face, on account of all that I had suffered, and it had to happen now, just as my life was just starting to get on track and I had entered into a sort of second honeymoon with Pakize.

Selma Hanım picked up.

“And where have you been hiding, old friend! I kept asking Cemal Bey about you and he’d say, ‘Oh, who can tell with Hayri Bey. He resigned and never came back.’ I begged him to look for you, and I assume he asked around everywhere he could. But to no avail…”

Her smooth, crystalline voice was infused with a childlike exuberance. So that’s what happened, then. Cemal Bey had told her I’d resigned. I was an unreliable character. He’d looked all over for me, did he? But somehow just couldn’t find me.

I told her about my current situation, and I asked her if she would be willing to help. She loved the name:

“The Time Regulation Institute. What does that mean, my dear?” she asked. “This must be a joke. Really, is this some kind of lark? “Well, then, tell what it’s all about.”

I did my very best to explain the institute to her, and then I told her what we were asking her to do. She agreed to come the next morning. This was when Zehra was still new in the office, so I decided to meet her in Halit Bey’s room. Straightaway I noticed that many things about her had indeed changed. She was elegant and beautiful as before, and completely in control of all her movements. But although her smiles lit the room like a fireworks display, there seemed to be something wrong with the launching device. She had lost her usual good cheer. It was clear she had gone through some ordeal. It was as if she were speaking through sorrowful, dark thoughts and perhaps even a fear we couldn’t know. There was something sad or thoughtful in her voice that I had never noticed before, perhaps even fear. I had lived with fear all my life; I knew the viper all too well. Once it’s coiled up inside you, your soul is at its mercy. But what was she afraid of? Why did she seem so ill at ease? I just couldn’t understand.

First she asked me to describe the job. And she kept saying, affecting an air of childlike innocence, “Oh, how could little old me manage such a thing?” And her gestures were so enchanting that I spent the rest of our conversation waiting most impatiently for their return.

“It’s not quite what you may be thinking,” I said. “You’ll just offer suggestions to the institute. There’s nothing to it really. And you can do this better than anyone, as you have such impeccable taste.”

Finally she agreed, figuring that it would be an entertaining job. Fashion was just her thing, after all. All that remained was to consult with Cemal Bey.

“Perhaps he’ll say no,” she said. “So I can’t promise anything right away. I don’t want to create problems.”

“Problems? Of course not. I can’t imagine Cemal Bey objecting to anything you really wanted to do!”

I made a point of saying this, and she nodded.

“Cemal hasn’t been his usual self lately.”

This woman who was usually so self-contained was on the brink of tears. I felt a knot in my stomach.

What shocked me was to see Selma Hanım’s entire life behind these words. So she’d never understood Cemal Bey and never doubted him; she’d been hopelessly blind. All her life she’d seen him as a paragon of maturity and loved him for it. And that wasn’t all — she was attached to him. She was under his command. She loved him, she was jealous of him, and she feared him. I had loved this woman until then, but at one remove from her life. I’d known she was married to Cemal Bey, and I’d accepted that. But I’d never thought very much about their relationship. In my mind I could never link Cemal Bey to Selma Hanım, nor did I feel compelled to do the reverse. She suffered her husband in very much the same way she might suffer a chronic illness.

Now that I realized I was indeed jealous of him, the situation suddenly changed. Till now I had simply despised Cemal Bey. I’d harbored untold rancor toward the man, but I had never been jealous of him. Now suddenly I was jealous. Blood racing through my veins, I said, “Well then, ask him. I hope he doesn’t refuse.”

The true catastrophe that day was the harsh reality I had to face: this woman I had loved so dearly now seemed just like any woman moaning about her life. But there was something even stranger, even absurd in all this: Once I’d freed myself from my troubles I’d simply gone and replaced them. Just after finding myself in a new job, I’d gone right back to my obsession with Selma Hanım; I was like a swimmer who loses focus after lifting his head above the wave to look at the opposite shore. “Why should I be surprised?” I thought to myself. “I’m just slowly reverting to my old self.”

After we’d discussed her employment, Selma Hanım was curious to know about the last five years of my life. First she asked me why I had resigned from Cemal’s service.

“You know, in those days Cemal Bey was always saying he planned to raise your salary.”

For a moment, I stared blankly into her face. I was about to tell her everything. But why should I rush into such things? Perhaps she wouldn’t even believe me. Or I’d just be adding yet another sorrow to her life. Best would be to wiggle out with a white lie:

“I was out of Istanbul,” I said.

“But people saw you here…”

“Well, that’s not to say I didn’t come back from time to time while I was staying in Izmir.”