Ahmet Tanpinar - The Time Regulation Institute

I made the adjustments as requested, but I couldn’t help but ask him what use there was in doing so. He looked at me with a grave expression on his face.

“To know is to be one step ahead.”

We returned to the matter at hand.

“How will you know which applicants have absolutely no experience?”

“Well, for example, those who have never held a job before.”

“But such people will have the experience of inexperience. They will be more difficult. Managing such people is bound to be difficult. Impossible.”

“Then?”

“There remains but one solution: a list of applicants, a list for everyone save those we’ve already accepted. Better yet, a list of applicants that follows no particular order — if it skips around then no one will see it as coincidence. This will also increase our chances. Do you see what I mean? You accept the first in your book, then skip the second, then accept the third, and so on… In fact we could have variations: for example, after the third person you’ll skip the fourth, fifth, and sixth, and then accept number ten. Who was your first choice again?”

“Asaf Bey, as you already know. Now he’s receiving casual remuneration, but he hasn’t been assigned a position yet!”

Halit Ayarcı scrunched up his face.

“Asaf Bey’s a sloth of a fellow,” he said. “I don’t take well to lazy people. At an institute such as ours, which likes to assign predetermined positions to its staff, which champions personal freedom and expects its employees to increase their range and efficacy through exercise of their own creative powers, the lazy are always dangerous. Does he come in every day?”

“He is always the first to arrive!”

And it was indeed the truth: Asaf Bey came to work the earliest and was the last to leave.

“What does he do?”

“Right now, nothing. He just reads the papers. As a matter of fact, you yourself ordered him to do so!”

“Well, is he reading them?”

“No, but Nermin Hanım is reading them for him.”

“Have him carry on, then.”

“Fine, but we’ll have to move him to the permanent payroll once the budget for temporary salaries is exhausted.”

Halit Ayarcı paused to give the matter more thought.

“Find a job that suits this friend of ours,” he said. “A job that doesn’t require work, that will suit this lazy creature perfectly, and that will benefit the institute. Then the problem’s solved.”

“Isn’t it a little strange to set aside staff for such a job?”

“No,” he said. “In fact I really don’t know. I have no idea whatsoever. But I imagine that within such a vast institute such a position can be found. Perhaps an office to which we can transfer all work that needs to be deferred. Indeed I have no doubt that, given your dear friend’s affinities, we shall see certain jobs not just deferred but never done at all!”

“But what about the name? What would the title of such a post be?”

“Is there any need? Ah, such formalities… They give those who are actually trying to get things done no room for maneuver. How is one meant to work under such tight restrictions, such rigid formalities?”

He paced up and down the room, and then stopped just in front of me.

“Do we really need a name?”

“I would think so.”

He let out a mournful and despairing sigh.

“My dear friend Hayri Bey, if one day I must walk away from this institute I created with such passion, and so dearly love, be sure that formalities such as these will be the sole cause. This isn’t just about the name of one particular position. I made arrangements for that some time ago. But why waste our time on such trifling matters? This is what truly saddens me. To waste so much precious time, and in a Time Regulation Institute! Now, that is a terrible tragedy…”

Then he rang the service bell. Dervis Aga stepped into the office:

“Please tell Ekrem Bey to report to the Ping-Pong Room! We’ll play a set. And you’ll join us too?”

Halit Ayarcı, who loved playing Ping-Pong, had arranged a room on the top floor for just this purpose. As I was often up there, I’d had a separate table set up, so that I could play solitaire if I was bored.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Putting his arm in mine, he almost yanked me out of the room.

“Yes,” he said, “we waste far too much time. We can budget our time more carefully just by circumventing obstacles such as these. I’ll draw up a chart. Don’t forget that we’ve been invited to your aunt’s tonight.”

“Yes, of course… But the name?”

“Ah, yes! The Completion Department! Do you understand? That’s where we’ll transfer all the work we want to put on hold. Two secretaries will suffice. But please, let’s not appoint too many people there.”

“In fact one should be enough!”

“No, let’s say two. One is a young man who has already been recommended by your aunt, and the other is a very refined young lady of my own acquaintance. But if you like, we could transfer the young fellow that your aunt recommended to another office and send in the woman instead. Two women together would make a more industrious pair. That’s to say, they would feel more at ease.”

The matter settled, we left for the Ping-Pong Room, there to while away our time, for that was how things worked in the Time Regulation Institute, whose sole and earnest aim was to find new ways to economize on time.

X

I loved watching Halit Ayarcı and Ekrem Bey play Ping-Pong. They were both handsome men, and despite their age difference they both had the same agility and athleticism, not to mention a certain grace. Devoid as I was of such attributes, I never failed to be surprised by the harmony of their movements as they together formed a shape while still remaining separate. To watch them afforded me a strange pleasure, as if I were taking revenge on my own body — though I did feel the odd pang of jealousy.

I had always been extremely fond of Ekrem. Like me, he was obliged to rely on other people and what they had to offer him. His affection for me over the last seven years had been constant. He’d shown me kindness even in my darkest moments and always treated me as a friend. He never charged me with ignorance or poor understanding. If ever he found me in one of my more temperamental moods, he would just give me a strange smile. I was quite pleased to have found a job for him at the institute, one that I recommended he leave at the first opportunity. I wasn’t frightened by Halit Bey’s affection for him. For Halit Bey lived in a world that was far beyond our ken; we both knew we had no chance of ever influencing him.

Ekrem was playing quite badly that day. He wasn’t himself. He was what they call a changed man. His movements were awkward, he lacked concentration, his responses were slow, and his timing was all off. With every attack it seemed his hand was a little too far ahead of his body, hanging hesitantly in midair. His thoughts were clearly with Nevzat Hanım, and he couldn’t coordinate them with his body. Who knows just what he was thinking then? The terrible pain of losing a loved one forever, the gruesome manner of her demise, and the agony he and the community had had to bear — his grief had undone him.

He had seen Nevzat Hanim as a being remote from the real world, a being content in a sphere of her own making — but now, alas, she must have taken on a new meaning in his mind. At long last he had begun to fathom that fixed smile of hers. It was the kind of smile you saw on the lips of a trapeze artist as she leaped into the void with her arms extended toward her partner, knowing all too well that the success of such a feat was measured in millimeters and that any miscalculation meant plummeting to her death. It was not an empty smile; it was heroic. Throughout her life, it masked her suffering. Poor Ekrem: in contemplating her smile, he might have at last understood that Nevzat Hanım was not just the shadow of the woman he loved and read about in books, but a human being. And perhaps this was why he seemed so full of regret. For her quiet smile seemed now a cry for help, drawing his attention above all others.