A Mind at Peace (46 page)

Nuran said, “My uncle doesn’t much care for Suad . . . He doesn’t even want Yaşar to socialize with him. But say what you will, I wasn’t at all surprised tonight. Suad has been this way from the beginning. I remember one day, a group of us were out along the Bosphorus, and he’d tossed a puppy into the sea because it was too happy for its station in life. We had quite a time rescuing the poor thing. It was so adorable ...”

“For what possible reason?”

“Simply because a dog shouldn’t be that happy. We’re talking about Suad here! In those days he’d say, ‘All living things are my adversaries!’”

İhsan made a suggestion: “Friends, if we want to free ourselves from this conversation, let’s have Orhan and Nuri recite some folk songs.”

Orhan and Nuri were like a folklore duo. Oh, the
türkü
s they knew!

The night, through İhsan’s instigation, took a new tack. Orhan and Nuri first recited that beautiful Rumeli
türkü
made popular by Tanburaci Osman Pehlivan. Their voices were stark and majestic:

Mümtaz listened to the searing, palpable pain of the folk songs as if he’d discovered a panacea. They’d all seemingly stepped out into a bracing, invigorating wind or faced problems which must be overcome; that is, they confronted life itself.

Mümtaz realized that this deep and maddening desire constituted a world separate from his pain. This wasn’t the projection of a bout of nerves, but rather, like warm bread, something full of life, comprising existence.

“You see, this is what we should cherish.” İhsan was content. “All truths are contained here, in this vast ocean of meaning. Our satisfaction is relative to our closeness to the folk and our own lives. We’re the children of these
türkü
s.” Then he unexpectedly recalled Yahya Kemal’s line of verse:

“Does He exist or not? I exist and that’s sufficient. And I desire no freedom for myself that exceeds that of anyone else’s.”

“But a sharp strain of suffering exists here as well, doesn’t it?”

“No, here there’s only expression. If the sorrow of this
türkü
and those like it were real, one’s heart couldn’t endure it for even half an hour. Here we’re face-to-face with the collective. The experience doesn’t belong to one person but to the totality of the culture.”

Orhan and Nuri recited Rumeli and Anatolian
türkü
s one after another, and at times Cemil accompanied them on the
ney
. Toward the end, Tevfik said, “Allow me to sing the Rose Devotional Hymn to you! In Trabzon, more often than not it’s women who sing it!”

Mümtaz was cast into a world that recalled Fra Filippo Lippi’s fifteenth-century Renaissance
Nativity
of the Christ child amid flowers; the roses scattered by the Ferahfezâ’s tempest of desire were gathered up again in this ancient hymn:

The Hicaz
makam
had suddenly transformed into spring. The final vision Mümtaz recollected of that night was Nuran’s face fragmented by scattered thoughts yet reflecting resonances from the deluge of roses, a face that coalesced in an exhausted, mollified, but nonetheless composed smile. Each of his suspicions was no more than phantasm coupled with anguish; he was enamored of her.

IX

During periods of strife between them, when Nuran’s social milieu was occupied with her, she trusted in nothing but Mümtaz’s composure. Yet, Mümtaz was far from displaying the presence of mind to respond to her reliance. Instead of regarding the entire matter with calm confidence in his beloved, he was suspicious, accusing her of neglect and carping through a series of letters.

Neither Fatma’s on-going afflictions, nor Yaşar’s insufferable demeanor, nor the gossip of acquaintances bothered Nuran as much as Mümtaz’s unfounded
tristesse
. The interlopers were a hindrance they’d decided to resist together as a couple. But the very attitude of her lover was another matter entirely.

As long as Nuran complained,
Why doesn’t he understand me?
and as long as Mümtaz thought,
Why is she turning a simple matter into a can of worms?
each of them insisted on misunderstanding the other.

In Nuran’s view, Mümtaz’s situation was quite straightforward. Considering that he was the object of her love, he ought to withdraw to a corner and quietly await her final decision. In contrast, Mümtaz believed that if she loved him, she ought to decide as soon as possible for her own contentment as well as his.

The misadventure of moving house, in itself, had given rise to an array of annoyances for Mümtaz. Eventualities like a second rent and furnishing costs prompted him to seek out opportunities beyond his regular means. Granted, they could see each other more easily now because both lived in the vicinity of old Istanbul, where there was no hill to climb in winter and no inconvenience of crossing the Bosphorus, no small ordeal due to the unreliable ferry schedules. Nuran was to visit Mümtaz almost daily. But as chance would have it, a separate slew of hindrances filled her life. By moving to Beyoǧlu, Nuran was cast amidst old school chums, a rather extended family circle, Yaşar’s endless flood of acquaintances, Fâhir’s kith and kin, and not least of all Adile and her cohorts. Nobody understood her dilemma; all of them, knowingly or not, demanded she take up her old lifestyle, and because she didn’t have the wherewithal, at least until wed, to say no, she felt obliged to acknowledge these friendships, and the invitations and parties came thickly in turn, to the degree that toward February, when Mümtaz realized that most of the time she’d set aside for him had been usurped by others, he, too, was astounded.

If not for the gossip flying around Fatma’s malaise at summer’s end, Nuran wouldn’t have been so malleable as to reject her own inner life. Meanwhile, all these visits, invites, and friendships gave rise to a web of intricacies. The couple had mutually decided, at least for a time, not to be seen together in public. In a certain regard this was wise. But living separately wasn’t easy for Mümtaz. Nearly every day, from near or far, an account of Nuran’s appearance at last night’s, or the previous night’s, invitation, gala, or dance reached his ears. Even worse, under the desire to dispel accusations that she’d neglected her child for Mümtaz’s sake, during said soirées Nuran changed and felt obliged to cavort, laugh, and partake of trivial indulgences.

On another front, Yaşar, in his jealousy of Mümtaz, sicced a number of youthful suitors upon Nuran. Yaşar had in effect declared, “Let it be anyone, as long as it isn’t Mümtaz.” He harbored bewildering enmity toward him. In his consideration, there was neither “good” nor “bad” but simply Mümtaz and the rest.

Within this animus, Yaşar had also forgotten his resentment toward Adile. Practically every day he visited her apartment. They cooperated together without making an explicit pact. Both felt that Nuran would incline toward Adile before long. On their first parlor visit, after having mutually agreed – “Yes, this unfortunate girl must be saved ... or else she’ll be ruined!” – simply by acknowledging each other’s opinions, they took all manner of safeguard to distance Nuran from Mümtaz. Whenever Yaşar sent word, “Tomorrow evening we’re coming over with a group of friends!” or whenever he said so in person during an impromptu visit, Adile, in response would automatically suggest, “You’ll be sure to invite Nuran, won’t you? Do insist that she come!” and in this way the date that Nuran and Mümtaz had made a week prior would meet with an unforeseen obstacle.

These measures and ploys slowly began to have their effect. Nuran sensed that her thoughts, at least during these fetes, had shifted away from Mümtaz. The more she feigned composure to escape the prying of her circle and the gossip that tattered her life, the more she acclimated to this new milieu and whatever it tossed her way. Besides, foreclosing consideration of Mümtaz and Fatma amounted to liberation from an array of regrets that had encroached upon her over the last six or seven months. This somewhat resembled the external pressure of a siege felt internally. And toward the end, Nuran realized that she was pleased by the things being imposed on her, that she was satisfied by these swarming hordes, by a life filled with adulation and amusement. Albeit, to silence the plea Mümtaz perpetually made, she frequently told herself, “Wherever I might find myself, I belong only to Mümtaz!” But as she said so, she didn’t fail to notice the difference between her surroundings and being with him. “Were I in China even my thoughts would be his!” she insisted. Yet her smiles, conversation, and excitement, that accompanied the thoughts that were always only his, belonged to others; she danced in the arms of other men, she discussed matters that didn’t at all resemble what interested Mümtaz, and she didn’t think or live as she did when they were alone or when she focused on him. So much so that by the middle of winter she found that she’d truly grown accustomed to this frenetic mental state. At least she wasn’t at her family house. At least she didn’t witness her mother’s surreptitious tsking or Fatma’s overt glares of resentment. At least, amid the horde, she didn’t listen to herself. And she’d begun to understand how she’d made a mistake by not nipping the whole matter in the bud and marrying him at summer’s end.

Trysting with Mümtaz once or twice a week was sufficient for her, as it was for him, but she hadn’t at all considered what this measure of satisfaction exacted from him.

Mümtaz’s days passed in a stupefying state of anticipation. The apartment in Taksim was small and humble. He’d transferred a portion of his books to this second residence. On the nights that he didn’t go down to Istanbul, he stayed there. According to Nuran, Mümtaz was now set up where he could work, in a room of his own. Whenever she went to see him, she did so in the midst of her other business and errands.

By conceiving of the arrangement in this way, Nuran didn’t consider the existence to which she’d condemned him. Even had she, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Her feminine soul, whose momentum faltered in the face of what she deemed too laborious, had long since instilled in her the notion that she maintained the relationship only to avoid hurting Mümtaz.

Consequently Mümtaz’s days passed in solitary anticipation, confined within two rooms and a hallway. More often than not, Nuran didn’t arrive on time, and when she did, the visit was limited to the character of a drop-in. To avoid missing her, he’d wait at times the entire day, and at times three or four days on end, excluding those hours when the chance of her arrival was nil.

His torment was genuine. Working or occupying himself with this or that until the promised time was one option. But as the appointed hour approached, the state of waiting commenced, that fragmented and purely agitated existence by the threshold, the doorbell, or the clock. Mümtaz couldn’t recollect these hours without experiencing something approaching a headache and sensing in his nerves the remorse caused by living confined to four walls. Over a period of weeks and months, he experienced the passing of the day in his frayed nerves through the intermittent cries of street hawkers. Before now, he’d paid them no mind. Amid everyday thoughts, these cries, familiar to all, had a way of appearing and passing without distinction, like an unnecessary comma or period in a text. Later, when the rational mind entered the realm of anticipation, these sounds gradually became augurs of the phases of the day, and finally, when the appointed hour came and Nuran failed to arrive, they’d be reduced to bitter memories. Toward ten o’clock the call of the yogurt seller simply informed housewives of nothing more than a first-order shortcut, but toward noon the same cry would remind Mümtaz to focus his thoughts on Nuran’s arrival, and at two o’clock the same yogurt seller, in the same cadence, would shout, “The hour of Nuran’s arrival is at hand,” and at three or three thirty he’d declare, “Today will be like last week’s cancelation, she won’t be coming!” and when he cried out amid the early twilight toward dusk, within the cadence of the call was an admonishment of sorts: “Didn’t I tell you so?”

On such days when Mümtaz futilely awaited Nuran, the hours became a creature whose aspect transformed gradually from anticipation to remorse. During the morning hours it grinned with smiling intimations of hope; toward noon it worsened to a mood between doubt and excitement; in the midafternoon its face folded; and toward evening it became a pallid, meaningless miasma, an odd and absurd simulation of Mümtaz’s existence.

Meanwhile, within the building, doorbells were rung, conversations transpired before neighbors’ doors, in the adjacent apartment preparations began for an evening meal, and the clink of forks and knives mingled with radio broadcasts; afterward the stairs were hastily climbed and descended before finally the entire building sank into silence. Then, willingly or not, all of Mümtaz’s attention focused onto the street.

At three thirty the wicker basket of the Greek family on the topmost floor descended by rope to the vegetable peddler, and a conversation began in a pidgin tongue from upstairs to the street and from the street back upstairs; the manicurist in the hairdresser’s shop opposite darted out to the street as the hour to make her rounds arrived; as if not wanting to leave the street without absorbing the complete neighborhood news bulletin, she engaged in endless chatter with the laundress – whose Levantine madame, for her part, divulged intimate secrets, while she in turn only expressed her astonishment; and in the next apartment the echoes of a piano lesson would direct the secret ciphers of Cs and Es of every octave toward Mümtaz’s solitude. It amounted to an existence through the ears and somewhat through the eyes. More often than not Nuran’s arrival put an end to such sorrows. On days she didn’t come, however, the night grew terrible under the torment of its passing without having seen her. At such times Mümtaz ran to his beloved’s house, and if he couldn’t find her at home, he’d exchange pleasantries with Tevfik and her mother in an attempt to await her return. Other times, resentful of everything, he remained captive in his apartment.