A Mind at Peace (21 page)

Nuran politely listened to this harsh tirade within herself for three days. On the evening of the third day, after concluding,
I’m not obligated to give an account of my actions to anyone!
she called Mümtaz. And the next morning, so as not to keep him waiting, she left the house at an early hour. In the end, Eros, like Thanatos, was one of the formative forces of life. On the way there, amid visions of Mümtaz, she began to murmur the “Song in Mahur”:

Recollecting the song’s ill fortune, however, she didn’t continue on to the second verse. She even forewent singing the middle part and the refrain, which she so loved. At the ferry landing, a petite, muddy-faced street waif approached. She wore a filthy, torn print dress and stretched out her hand like a wooden spoon spattered with drying food. Piping, “May Allah bless your beloved!” the urchin asked for change. As Nuran opened her purse, she thought,
I wonder if everyone can read where I’m going from my face?
She verged on tears. She was in the midst of doing something she hadn’t done in her adolescence or youth.
Should I return?
she thought, roaming before the ticket window. But love tempted her through the mystery of the unknown. “I’ve bought some new Debussy. You have to come ...” he’d said on the telephone. To admire Debussy and Wagner yet to live the “Song in Mahur” was the fate of being a Turk. As she waited for the ferry, she recalled what İclâl had imparted to her that night after she’d parted from Mümtaz. “If he’d let himself relax, he could be a lot of fun, because he’s likable. But he seems to jumble and confuse everything together: love, art, history, and physical pleasure! He could only be enamored of a woman like you.” So, then, İclâl had sensed this as well. As Nuran waited, she gauged her impatience.
Is it because I’m bored that I’m doing this? Or is it only a matter of physical desire?
But she couldn’t recall being bored at any moment since they’d met. She was comfortable, completely at ease. As she boarded the ferry, she thought,
Come what may, I won’t be defeated by myself!
And only by dint of this resolve did she smile at love and the image of Mümtaz.

She gazed out the window at Akıntıburnu. Here and there hovered slight patches of mist. But the Bosphorus slid by like a soaring bird. She watched the elation of waters beneath vernal sunlight.
I’m so reckless! The whole family’s foolhardy! Great-grandmother and great-granddaughter, we’ve fallen for two jesters, two aimless men. One
can
structure life through one’s volition ...

For Mümtaz, the day delivered delicacies he’d never before tasted. For the first time in his life, a woman revealed the mystique of her intimacy to him. She was neither a goddess nor just any creature with a passion for the tryst. She relinquished all of herself, surrendered the measure of her essence like a garden, to the mate her body had chosen, and laid bare her every secret and potential with a “there you have it, this is who I am ...” Still, what she was, this self, constituted a realm opulent and exceptional – how many would die without discovering such sublimity. Neither undersea treasures nor the opulence of fables could have been so extensive and astounding. Later Mümtaz would frequently recall when he first caught sight of her stark-naked figure in the twilight of the tightly shuttered room. She delivered starlight and the sparkle of bejeweled affluence. This bacchanal of light, both its eulogy and its worship, was constituted by moments of bedazzlement and blaze in which the fire stirred and leapt into flames a thousand times over from its own ashes. It was a Mi’raj of Harmony made by the corporeal in concert with the soul – such that one sensed the ascension without being cognizant of the heavens to be attained.

When Mümtaz gazed upon his inamorata, he’d invariably think of this day, and ponder at length which of the forces of fate had united them.

He wondered where and in which unfathomable depths it had been conjured: all decency, beauty, and simple essence, the soft suppleness of skin, the heavy breathing summoning arcana from the occult of genesis concealed in her body, and her physical presence in its substantiation cascading toward him from the darkness of mysteries; now tenderness, now caress, now stupor like another simulacrum of death, and then facets that were the pleasure and elation of resuscitation and resurrection under the orient of the sun; that is to say, contractions, spasms, and depletions that resembled the self-worship of her being in the Mihrab of the Sun. These profound unions, and upon their release the wellspring of yearning, couldn’t be contained by a single existence alone. They could only be the result of forces conjured in a remote and dark epoch before human cognizance or even existence. Nature on its own couldn’t achieve this intimacy. Happenstance alone wasn’t enough to enable the discovery of another within one with such impact.

Nuran’s every aspect drove Mümtaz wild on that day. Her amorous surrender to love in expectation of pleasure, a moored vessel in calm harbor waters; her face veiled like a somnolent Istanbul morning; smiles emerging seemingly from beyond the present moment; each constituted a distinct delicacy and as he partook of them, the infinity manifest in one being awed and surprised him, as did the suddenly changing, incrementally waning rhythm of time: the consecutive descent of eternities. From that day onward, within him, a peculiar feeling of devotion transcending all other feelings began toward the woman whose greatest secret rested in simplicity. He discovered her slowly and gradually, like a landscape, and as he did so his admiration and worship intensified.

Mümtaz never thought he could be so amorous and Nuran, so adored. Sümbül the maid had made all preparations the night before, leaving early the next morning. They took their meal downstairs in the kitchen, after which Nuran prepared demitasses of coffee. Catching sight of her in the old kimono – which Mümtaz didn’t realize had been in the house, though it was certainly Macide’s – of her skin through parting folds, and of the statuesque form of her figure; watching her as a luculent form in one or another posture ... these amounted to gradual and sweet inebriations.

Mümtaz had planned an after-dinner tour by rowboat, but the young lady deemed it inappropriate to appear together in public. Not to mention that Mümtaz was besotted by Nuran’s nakedness, as were the very mirrors within the silent house that they had all to themselves. The walls, the ceilings, each piece of furniture seemed to have taken benediction from a sacrosanct visit.

Besides Nuran’s semblances of beauty, Mümtaz savored the pleasures of observing her appropriate the household.

“From the first day I came, I liked it,” she said.

Finally, toward nightfall, they resigned themselves to parting company. Mümtaz accompanied her half the way back. According to Nuran, his presence beside her would be a risk. So-and-so might see them. When her shadow disappeared at the bend in the road, Mümtaz shuddered not knowing what he would do next.

That summer was the apex, the pinnacle, the crowning jewel of Mümtaz’s short life. Nuran wasn’t only becoming, affectionate, and the object of his attentions, she was a friend and confidant. She displayed uncanny skills of perception and tried new things with grace and discernment. She understood music well and had a voice filled with swaths of sunlight, lucid and nearly bass.

Beyond these qualities, Mümtaz was enraptured by her peculiar shyness and purity of spirit which no sin or sybaritic pleasure could undo. At the end of the season, even when she most assuredly belonged to him, their love remained as novel as during initial days, and the particular embarrassment of couples who’d just become acquainted still entered into their intimacy. Mümtaz spared no effort to prevent the dissipation of her bashfulness and innocence.

Not to say that Nuran recoiled before life or exhibited timidity in the true sense. On just her second visit, she’d learned about his research interests. Mümtaz enjoyed debating every aspect of life with her. This same graceful reticence, along with the sense of measure that constituted one of Nuran’s main attributes, was also at play here. Nuran hadn’t tried to manage Mümtaz’s existence in any respect. She didn’t want affection to be a violation of freedom. As Mümtaz made a gift of his life and presence, she, like benevolent Abbasid caliphs of yore, accepted them promptly before returning them in turn. “It belongs to me but shall stay with you ...” Meanwhile, the possessor of this elegant restraint had relinquished her entire existence to Mümtaz, as she had her days, without even mentioning it or raising the issue. Even so, Mümtaz sensed that accompanying this generosity was an inner fortress that no force, not even love, could breach: a notion of independence, or at least a desire to be true to oneself and to avoid hypocrisy.

From the first days of their acquaintance, adoration transfigured her open and simple countenance, with its hermetic contentment, into something of a riddle for Mümtaz. Without giving it much thought, trepidation of sorts mingled into the awe, the sense of worship he felt toward Nuran, recasting his existence as the tempest of a starry night.

VII

Adile hadn’t stepped foot outside of her Taksim apartment that summer. She didn’t want to ruin her select and newly assembled inner circle, nor to lose the men and women she’d gathered with such difficulty. Not to mention that Istanbul, even if it was summer, still seemed exceptional. Everybody went away, ventured out and about, yet always returned. And they even came around more frequently, because resorts and outings broke urban habits and forced those who couldn’t go anywhere closer together. Even one such as Mümtaz, who hadn’t shown himself for months, rang Adile’s apartment door around four o’clock one afternoon. As soon as she saw him, she was overjoyed. A smile appeared on her lips that nearly resembled a cry of victory. He’d returned at last. The lambie that had strayed from the flock had wandered and returned. But how transformed and reticent. Beneath his reserve rested a bewildering sparkle, as if ecstasy itself were being suppressed. He all but evoked entertainments of the harem after the premises had been shuttered tight and the windows had been draped with swathes of brocade to prevent the intrusion of unwanted eyes and ears. Not to mention that Adile wasn’t able to ascertain anything, that is, until such time as Nuran’s arrival. When she entered, the matter changed. Perhaps for the first time, Mümtaz saw the outfit of the lady of his affections appointed with such care. Though they’d belonged to each other for more or less a month, he hadn’t assumed that Nuran could transform through dress and attire alone. How everything had changed with her entry! And they’d been together only yesterday; yesterday he’d been in her embrace. While wearing her usual colorful blue summer dress cut from inexpensive cloth, she seemed to say, “I’m at the end of my means; this is all I can afford.” Presently, with her carefully collected hair, made-up face, and white linen dress, she assumed a different persona. Mümtaz feared receiving a greeting fit for a distant relative. With the calmness of one who plays her hand openly, the young lady asked him, “I’m not too late, am I?” In this way, she’d all but announced their involvement. Adile seemed to be oblivious to this blow.

Sabih, simply beside himself, hadn’t cornered anybody of late with whom to debate political issues. His modus operandi resembled the way predatory animals stalked and hunted. He didn’t begin a diatribe immediately; after sizing up his kill, he crouched and withdrew to a corner, giving his prey its liberty in order to increase the effect of surprise. When the unsuspecting victim was most comfortable within an illusion of freedom, Sabih pounced, not allowing his prey to move a muscle. One after another, ad infinitum, he began to explain everything he’d read about world affairs in European papers over the entire week or, perhaps, month. His interests encompassed the whole of the globe like longitudinal and latitudinal lines. Everything from China to America, from British petroleum politics to the schemes of Hungarian landowners, from Hitler to King Zogu of Albania and Reza Shah Pahlavi, from Central Asia to Gandhi’s fasts, everything having to do with man’s fate interested this keenly perceptive mind. As Mümtaz listened to Sabih talk, he mused ponderously,
What monstrous state would we be in if our digestive systems worked this way?
Only if one turned orange by eating carrots and red from eating beets, only if people who ate rice, drank milk, liked fried mussels, assumed the smell, hue, or characteristics of these blessings of Nature in the most obvious places like an incriminating mark, only then might an entity emerge resembling these commentaries that were the very fruit and essence of Sabih’s long immersions of research. Tonight Sabih appeared quieter and more comfortable than usual. When Mümtaz arrived, he took the opportunity to gather up the newspapers and put them on the shelves. Such portents could never bode well. Mümtaz knew perfectly well that Sabih would soon fall into a convoluted web of incidents and a tangle of contradictions to which he would have to resign himself without recourse.

“You’ll be spending the evening with us, isn’t that so, my dear sister?”

Pleased at having lopped eight or ten years off her own age through her use of the word “sister,” Adile awaited Nuran’s answer. Nuran tried to explain that she’d only planned to stop in for a short visit and that she had to leave but neither Adile nor Sabih was having any of it.

“In any case, you and Mümtaz are friends from over Bosphorus seas. Even if you’re going to leave, you’ll leave late. Let’s have a
rakı
.”

“It’d be better for us to leave early. İclâl and friends will be coming by tomorrow ...”

Only after he’d received assurances that they wouldn’t go did Sabih begin to delve into his repertoire about recent developments in Germany: In his good opinion, the German economy was in shambles. War was a forgone conclusion. Yet his austere and perhaps truthful judgments depended upon such long-winded proofs arrived at by such convoluted means!