A Mind at Peace (23 page)

The elderly matron’s appropriately timed observations, which she didn’t withhold, her almost childlike interest in current events, her distaste for frivolity, her love of politics, and the coterie of luminaries she knew – much later Mümtaz realized that she’d traced the careers of almost every high official in the Committee of Union and Progress and was a repository of forgotten facts retrieved with astounding memory – represented the changes that the 1908 revolution had forged in women of a certain class. That day, Mümtaz learned what a harmonious synthesis these distinct identities made in Nazife. But the manner of the matron’s speech really drew his curiosity. Only after hearing her did he understand why Nuran occasionally resorted to antiquated words, even delighted in doing so, and why she lengthened and stressed certain syllables. For instance, Nuran pronounced the word pajamas “pa-
jah
-mas”; in this way, after a very long note, she was able to follow with the slightest of denouements. Known as the “Istanbul inflection,” this equated to one’s being raised within the politesse and refinement that the eighteenth-century Ottoman poets Nedim and Nabî had so admired; what in part constituted the charm of established middle-class families and large households, whose progeny were more often than not married off to one another.

Nuran’s uncle Tevfik had quite a different disposition from her mother’s. As a young lieutenant colonel, he’d marched into Istanbul along with the Army of Action to put down the 1909 Islamic counterrevolution against the Union and Progress government. During the Union and Progress era, he was able to capitalize on some opportunity or other that had arisen and entered into business; he’d faced bankruptcy numerous times; finally, he managed to extricate himself with enough capital so as not to be beholden to anyone. When he’d lost his wife twelve years ago, he moved into his sister’s house, together with his son, who hadn’t succeeded in arranging a marriage. In particular, the last dozen years of Tevfik’s life under his father’s roof were truly bizarre in light of the notorious name he’d made for himself as a gambler, a carouse, and a philanderer during the armistice years after 1918 in the bustling Beyoǧlu district. Indeed, he’d dedicated these last dozen years to the memory of his father, whose name he couldn’t have recalled previously without stopping to think. He’d collected all his father’s calligraphy, imperial insignias, the books he’d had bound, the plates he’d embellished at the Yıldız ceramics factory, and the glassware he’d helped decorate. Tevfik confided various personal details about his father and brother-in-law Rasim to Mümtaz. He showed him ornamental plates, explained the stories behind candelabra and confectionary bowls, and, surprisingly, had managed to collect these objects in just a decade. Tevfik, meanwhile, found it quite natural. “The whole of Istanbul is on sale at the bazaar, my dear boy,” he said. Thereafter, passing through the Bedesten or perusing antique shops with İhsan, Mümtaz better understood how he’d often blindly passed before many exquisite pieces, thanks to the objects Tevfik had shown him that day, like calligraphy panels, tapestries, and “menageries of glass” – a phrase Nuran had uttered unexpectedly and that Mümtaz couldn’t recall without a chuckle.

As Tevfik sought out his father’s objets d’art embellished with the aid of his gilding jar, hair-tipped pen, fine brush, and his search for a palette of colors that resembled a kind of anxiety and escape, he’d become a small-scale collector. Mümtaz was astounded that this final and intricate renaissance of Turkish sensibility had remained so obscure. Neither the poets nor novelists of the fin de siècle Edebiyat-ı Cedid movement of modern literature, nor the newspaper collections that he’d combed at one time while doing research for İhsan, could convey the era of Sultan Abdülhamit II as much as these “menageries of glass” – where had Nuran found this phrase that was yet another facet of her girlish imagination? Whenever he recalled the phrase, he’d conjure his beloved among subtle and pastel-hued glassware: antique, spiral-patterned “nightingale’s nest” vessels of indigo, terra-cotta red, and robin’s egg blue; rococo, hull-shaped fruit bowls or plates covered with the ornamental designs of leather-bound tomes; and Nuran would appropriate the refractions and timbre of all these delicate and fragile pieces requiring an infinitude of care. Doubtless, they contained hints of
a la franga
modernity. But they still represented a distinct aesthetic.

The gentleman Tevfik most admired after his father was his sister’s husband. He’d kept almost everything belonging to Rasim, conserving in a state of timeless preservation pictures, notes made in his own hand, Ottomanscript penmanship workbooks, and all variety of full-size
ney
-flutes and half-length
nısfiye
flutes. Opposite a calligraphy panel of his father’s, hung a photograph of Rasim taken with his uniform of distinguished rank and his decorations. Mümtaz read the calligraphy first:

“In the year of the Hegira 1313, or A.D. 1895, a lengthy secret police file on my father was submitted to Sultan Abdülhamit II. He was detained at the Yıldız Palace for ten nights. When he was freed he made a calligraphy panel of this verse by Nâilî. Look closely, among the ornamental arabesques is an image of the divan upon which he’d slept for ten nights.” The depiction of a broad divan appeared repeatedly among the roses and vines that bordered the couplet like a garden wall. The arabesque designs and geometric shapes, the ordered roses and flowers against the gilded and pale red background, had been calculated and arranged with such skill and precision that without being told so, the divan motif wasn’t at all obvious.

Mümtaz later dwelled upon this element of realism that amounted to the marring, in a respect, of late Ottoman calligraphic art.

Tevfik had attained a profundity of sorts in this passion to which he’d succumbed. The objects among which he’d lived unawares for fifty years had suddenly come to life and taken on meaning for him. This was no anomaly for Tevfik; he was made to persevere. Despite his seventy-four years, he was possessed of quite a mellifluous baritone; he still took his drink each evening, enjoyed the friendship of young and becoming ladies, and on some autumn nights even went out to catch swordfish with the neighborhood fishermen. “The traditional Zeybek dance that I dance, any old
efe
militiaman couldn’t do. Especially your top-hat-and-tails
efe
s, never.” He’d made this quip as he recollected the Zeybek dance that two MPs had done together in 1926 at a ball: “I immediately signaled the orchestra and stood up. Everyone was stunned. The Zeybek is an altogether dramatic performance; if it doesn’t clear the dance floor, it hasn’t been successful.”

“I’ve seen it once. In Antalya, but I was little. Two
efe
s from Demirci had made a wager. Lamb and baklava was prepared. People feasted on the street, then under the light of torches ...”

Tevfik, gesturing to Nuran, said, “This one has a knack for it.”

“You don’t say? I had no idea.”

Nuran, her expression belying annoyance: “Hadn’t I mentioned it to you, Mümtaz? I know most Anatolian folk dances.”

But Tevfik wasn’t only the faithful warden of things past or the best Zeybek dancer of his circle. One of his greatest qualities or pleasures was preparing an assortment of delicacies to accompany
rakı.

As Mümtaz regarded Tevfik, his admiration grew.

“Isn’t it astounding how my uncle resembles my father in many aspects?”

Toward evening, Tevfik disappeared. But when he reappeared an hour later, the spread on the
rakı
table constituted a spectacle of indulgence.

“Above all,
rakı
must be drunk slowly... over a considerable duration of time, only then will the bouquet of its essence emerge.”

The everyday comfort and joie de vivre of this old Istanbul effedi were quite rarely seen today. For the sacrament of food alone, he had a special calendar. No one knew better than him which fish was best caught in which season and locale, and what dishes could be prepared with an early seasonal offering or with seafood during such and such a month.

“Ebuzziya, may his soul rest in peace, used to put out a calendar when we were young. You couldn’t imagine a more intricate undertaking. It was full of recipes translated from the French and procured from small Beyoǧlu restaurants. When I saw two or three copies, I was mad with envy. Later my interest was sparked.”

On gastronomic subjects Tevfik was methodological. For him the essence of gastronomy lay in the ingredients. For this reason,
sine qua non
was a calendar for each season and month, even a daily almanac that indicated the Bosphorus southerlies and northerlies,
lodos
and
poyraz
.

“Red mullet is the world’s most delectable fish, but it’s a different story if it isn’t caught in season, and especially if it isn’t caught off the Princes Islands, or in the southern mouth of the Bosphorus. South of the Dardanelles, mullet is a tasteless sea creature beyond any categorical description.”

Tevfik’s epicurean interests had attained the level of a philosophy of history.

“Just consider, if you will, the centuries-long labor of fate enabling us to eat this mullet together tonight. To begin with, as the poet Yahya Kemal explains, the waters of the Danube, the Volga, and the Don had to reach the Black Sea. Our forefathers had to up and travel from Central Asia and eventually settle in Istanbul. Furthermore, Sultan Mahmut II had to exile Nuran’s great-grandfather from Istanbul to Manastır for being a Bektashi, where he would in turn marry the daughter of a wealthy major from Merzifon. My grandfather had to buy this manor house with the money earned from a Koran that he’d copied out to console himself after his wife left him and that he’d offered for sale to who knows which pasha ... My young boy, you understand what I’m saying, don’t you? The whole of an exalted Koran for the price of seven hundred fifty gold pieces ... that is, equivalent to this building and the land out back ... Then, Nuran’s father had to fall ill as a child and his mother had to bequeath him to the good graces of Aziz Mahmut Hüdai Efendi so when he grew up he’d initiate into that patron master’s dervish lodge, where he’d befriend my father. Nuran had to be born ... You, too, would come into this world ...”

Mümtaz adored this ethnosocial history of red mullet.

Tevfik’s son, Yaşar, laughed at his father to the degree sanctioned by him, within the incurable heart disease that he assumed had afflicted him of late. Tevfik represented the nineteenth-century Tanzimat era of reform, which set to work with lofty intentions and finished simply with a weakness for everyday pleasures – he lived in the ease, nonchalance, and pilfered delights of that age. Yaşar was more like the second constitutional period after 1908, and bore all of its instabilities. He displayed a bewildering idealism, fleeting feelings of inferiority, and rebellions that cast both off like a wave taking another’s place; in short, he vacillated between ecstatic enthusiasm and immobilizing despair.

At the table, Mümtaz assumed this man of about forty-five would enjoy himself more than anyone. He filled his glass in a state of complete excitement and, raising it toward Mümtaz, said, “Welcome,” before downing it in one gulp. Tevfik, as if reining in an unwieldy horse, greeted this eagerness with an extended “whooooaaaaa.” Yaşar paid no heed to the warning. The machinery of his body was working well; all day the house had been as hot as a small furnace; furthermore, he’d be going to Ankara in three days time; while
rakı
on the rocks and his father’s eggplant salad, along with other appetizers, awaited them, why show restraint? Yaşar would more or less enjoy himself like everybody, but only until he recalled his physiology. At the first signal from his delicate constitution, there began a state of affliction, fatigue, overall disgust, and withdrawal. No lack of jocularity existed between son, who lived more or less through the recent yields of science, and father, who over the span of his entire life knew nothing of medication – apart from the senna plant he had Huriye the maid pound on occasion as a purgative and the galingale root that he himself boiled on the brazier when a winter’s cough pestered him. As far as Tevfik knew, aspirin was but a version of the tango.

Tevfik wasn’t overly complaining about his son’s pharmaceutical obsession. Despite poisoning himself each day by recommended or excessive doses, for better or worse, Yaşar forged through life. Moreover, since he’d succumbed to hypochondria, he’d been liberated of many exigencies related to his career. He no longer grew out the nail of his right pinky “a length of four elifs,” and he no longer discussed the young contessa and her very
charmante
mother he’d met in Toledo, the straight, pristine boulevards of Bucharest, or the extraordinary beach at Varna. He neither boasted of his second secretariat in Paris, when he’d been honored to make an evening visit to that exquisite pied-à-terre of French singer-actress Mistinguett accompanied by her maidservant, nor the boardinghouse right behind Wilhelmstrasse where one midafternoon he’d suddenly come nose to nose with Swiss actor Emil Jannings, cigarette in mouth, a large canine behind him, as he stepped from his front door. He’d even forgotten about the large-eyed blonde at this boardinghouse, whose pointed eyelashes dripped blue mascara, about her mad infatuation with Wagner, the way her voice trembled when she recited Heine by heart, the incredible trip they took to the Tyrolean Alps, the folk songs they listened to beneath moonlight, and all the rest, forgotten. Likewise, the weeklong vacation he’d passed in the château of an old countryman of ours located a few hours from Budapest, those high-backed armchairs, horses, thoroughbred hounds, and threshing sites that resembled sets prepared for Marta Eggerth’s operetta-like films rather than a real harvest; in short, the thousand and one delights of pleasant music and cheap sentimentality, Viennese cafés, ladies of delicate comportment, and cocktail-party trivia about Mozart had all been elided from memory. Nowadays, Yaşar returned to the house every evening with a tightly wrapped, elegant parcel, undid its packaging as if removing a fruit from its rind, unfolded its thin prospectus, and within a radiance but seen shimmering on the lips and in the eyes of full-fledged devotees of the faith when they beheld the ordered workings of Creation like clockwork, read, stunned and grinning.