A Mind at Peace (49 page)

“But all revolutions aren’t this way. Take ours, for example . . .”

“Our revolution is of another variety. In its natural form, revolution occurs when the masses or society transcends the state apparatus. With us, the masses and society, that is, the collective in question, is obligated to catch up to the state. Even including, more often than not, intellectuals and statesmen . . . Walking down a path blazed by an idea! At least since 1839 and the Tanzimat it’s been this way . . . That’s why our lives are so tiring. Not to mention that there’s an enormous legacy of socialization looming over us. Customs and moralities impeding all our efforts and virtually condemning us . . . We’re quick to relent: the prevailing characteristic of the Muslim East. The East relents. And not just in the face of hardship, it relents in the face of time, natural time . . . But how did we get onto this topic?” He shook his head. “That unfortunate, lamented gentle man ...”

Mümtaz quickly recognized the change in İhsan’s tone. “What’s happened? Who?”

“An old friend. You remember my schoolmate Hüseyin? He passed away last night. The funeral and obsequies are today . . .”

A deep well yawned open before Mümtaz. His own elation, İhsan’s ideas, Sabiha’s multi-hued, crisp laughter rising from below like fireworks, and a few steps beyond them all: mortal remains being cleansed and shrouded for interment.

XII

Rainfall, having begun the previous night, now turned to snow. Nuran adored the Bosphorus under snow. During the summer she’d spun a phantasy about the winters they would spend in Emirgân, and didn’t leave it at that but had Mümtaz buy two ceramic tile woodstoves that she’d happened upon at the Bedesten. On another occasion she’d insisted on a portable gas heater: “This should be available in case of any eventualities!” After having delivered their papers to İhsan and having informed Tevfik by letter of the new developments, she inquired, “Mümtaz, we have a week before us, can’t we head off to Emirgân? But we’ll freeze from the cold, won’t we?”

And Nuran shivered before the stove.

“Why should we freeze? We’ve got all that wood and those twigs. Or have you already forgotten about the stoves you had me buy?”

“Not at all, we’re rich in stoves, but . . . who’s going to light them? I mean, that large tiled one? The one we purchased in the Bedesten. I wouldn’t be able to figure it out for the life of me.” Here in the study, they’d set up a stove salvaged from a former pasha’s estate.

Mümtaz, ponderously: “As soon as we’ve decided to marry, without even waiting to see it through, the first thing we do is change our plans!”

“Don’t forget about Sümbül . . .”

“Sümbül will be staying at İhsan’s tonight!”

“We’ll drop a letter and she’ll come tomorrow. She’s been pining madly for Emirgân.”

“Fine, but what about tonight?”

“I’ll light the damn stove . . . C’mon, let’s go.” He, too, yearned for the Bosphorus. Though it didn’t please him in the least that Suad had learned the whereabouts of his apartment.

Nuran, half teasing, insisted, “You’ll always rise to the occasion, won’t you, Mümtaz? You’ll see to the things that I’m unable to, won’t you?”

“We’re not even married and you’re designating chores . . .”

Nuran responded solemnly, “For the sake of our comfort and future peace . . .”

Mümtaz didn’t want to let a careless aside slip his lips. He hadn’t been able to get used to this apartment building. He’d suffered so much within these walls.

“Let’s go! We’ll just take what food’s available here. Tomorrow, when Sümbül comes, everything will return to normal.”

“You light the stove. Food is no problem. I like to improvise in the kitchen. It’s a skill that runs in the family.”

By the time they descended to the ferry landing, nightfall loomed. Within the span of a few hours, snow had accumulated along the Bosphorus, which was shrouded in mist.

Nuran, gleeful as a child, hadn’t been in Emirgân since the evening of Emin Dede’s performance. “I wonder what state the garden’s in?” The first day that she’d come to the house, Mümtaz had introduced yet-blooming fruit trees to her as “your handmaidens . . .” Thereafter it became an in-joke, and together with Mümtaz she’d given them traditional Ottoman servant names. Presently, recalling each by name, she wondered how they were faring.

It astonished Mümtaz that Nuran hadn’t forgotten these sobriquets amid the countless episodes that had so distressed him this winter. Even worse, he didn’t conceal his surprise. Nuran said, “How peculiar, you actually think I’ve been estranged from you! Next you’ll thank me for not inquiring after
your
name!” And she continued listing the trees vociferously. “I wonder what state head maidservant Razıdil is in? She’ll have a bit of a chill, won’t she, now? Poor little dear, Razıdil, she’s the solitaire of the garden.”

That week constituted the last of Mümtaz’s halcyon days. From the gloom of winter, they’d reemerged into sublime days of summer. During this week he tasted of the full zest of that initial seasonal fruit called satisfaction, of all things that filled human existence with poetry and enchantment, forging nothing less than a
pièce de résistance
out of life. Both of them had succumbed to ennui over recent months. For this reason their pleasure resembled a fever of recuperation. As if they’d returned to health and vitality after long illnesses, they clung to each other’s presence.

Within the quieting of nerves fostered by his reunion with Nuran, Mümtaz again began to occupy himself with the Shaykh Galip. He again outlined the entire novel. He discarded everything he’d written beforehand, starting anew.

On the third day of their assignation, he said, “I can clearly see the book now!”

“And I can see the missing button on your blazer.”

“Are you doing it on purpose, for goodness sake?”

“Why should I be? I’m preparing for married life. Haven’t we divvied up the chores?”

Through the window the evening twilight cast a faint and nostalgic pastel blush over the snow-covered hilltops above the Asian shore. All things out there swam in dreamlike buoyancy beneath a tulle-thin hue. Fog had descended. Snow was in the forecast. Ferryboat horns occasionally sought and found them in the corners of their seclusion, filling them with the mournful
hüzün
of shores abandoned to desolate waves, empty seafront
yali
s, wind-lashed public squares near ferry landings, and roads as gloomy as a catacomb and abstracted from active life.

The panorama made for a rare Istanbul snowscape. Winter, which had ever so lackadaisically squandered its entire season, duped by the faux summer of southerlies, broke out at the end of February in true Eastern-style haste and, determined to make up for all its shortcomings, paralyzed the city within a few days, using every means at its disposal from storms to fogs and snowfalls to blizzards. The previous day, everything had frozen, up to and including the water in the pipes of the pump. The trees in the garden, large icicles hanging from their branches, resembled, in the emptiness of evening, grave and aged apparitions belonging to a realm of absolute difference.

This
âlem
had overtaken them. For two days Mümtaz couldn’t get his fill of the panorama that recalled an unwritten poem, a truth as of yet untainted by the poison of doubt, a totality that hadn’t been fragmented by life’s shortcomings. He existed in an immaculate dimension of Creation that had overwhelmed his own perceptions and abilities. The couple lived in a world bleached white, as if in the center of a brilliant diamond. Rare silence: Everything, the entire summer, their own lives, their acquaintances, their thoughts, all of it lay beneath a shroud of silence. On pure white pages of silence, each memory could be detailed and each gesture could be described; from whiteness, every description might issue forth without tainting the gesso or disturbing the measured peace of the totality. They passed half their time reminiscing about summer. Mümtaz, half of whose life had been spent in quest of bygone days, was surprised that Nuran resembled him in this diversion, and he asked, “Are you just imitating me?” Oddly enough, since they’d stepped foot in Emirgân, Mümtaz had been preoccupied with Suad rather than their recent past. Mümtaz couldn’t forget his words, disposition, laughter, and bizarre point of view from that fateful night.
What had he meant to say?
he asked himself perpetually. About eight or ten times since, he’d been in Suad’s company for a few hours. Yet Suad hadn’t revisited such dire subjects.
Had he actually recounted what he believed, or . . .
Whenever he brought the matter up to Nuran, she grew livid.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do, go down and get some breadcrumbs for the sparrows.”

Mümtaz plodded toward the door. But thoughts of Suad didn’t leave his head.
Why is he in pursuit of Nuran to this extent? I’m certain he doesn’t love her. What is it? What’s he after?
The entire episode recalled the vagaries of fate. And for this reason he was afraid. At the kitchen table, as he broke apart the soft white insides of bread loaves, he continued to ponder such questions.

The first morning of their arrival, they’d noticed a graceful teeming around the windows, as elegant as lace, inviting, and atwitter. Nuran cried, “Oh my! The sparrows have arrived ...” From that moment onward she’d assumed responsibility for feeding them. Not the slightest is known about the sense of taste of these birds. Nuran, were it within her power, would have had special meals prepared for the little creatures. That day, toward nightfall, the population of the old house was augmented by one. The snowy, icy weather must have been unbearable and tedious for Emirgân’s black bitch, seeing as Mümtaz’s previous invitations, toward which she displayed excessive demurral, were now met with great delight as she entered. She cleaned herself beside the stove and cast desirous glances toward Nuran’s winged companions, preparing – within the comfort of a dream – to taste this twittering bounty that all but mocked her from its protective sanctuary.

Mümtaz desposited the bread crumbs on the windowsill and shut the window. Then he turned to Nuran. “Would Tevfik really agree to live with us?” He sincerely desired this. He was nearly as bound to the old man as Nuran was.

“He’s hard to fathom ... But now he probably would. He’s even picked out a room.” She fell silent and looked out the window: The sparrows jostled on the sill as they pecked at crumbs.

“Mümtaz, d’you really think we’ll manage this marriage?”

Mümtaz took his eyes off the Arabic
amentü billâhi vahdehü lâ şerike lehü
calligraphy wall panel – “I believe in Allah alone, who has no peer.” He stared at Nuran for a time. “If you want to know the truth, no.”

“Why? What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing, or rather, whatever you’re afraid of, that’s what frightens me as well.”

This dread had been with them since the day they’d come to Emirgân. Nuran stood and went to him.

“Let’s go back to Istanbul . . . tomorrow! Can’t we?”

“Okay, let’s head back!”

It was the fifth day. That morning Mümtaz spoke by telephone with İhsan, who said that everything was going to plan and instructed them to be at the Fatih district marriage bureau at four o’clock sharp. “Without stopping back home, go to the marriage bureau! That’s how this will get taken care of. Come down from Emirgân and go directly to the license bureau . . .”

Later, Mümtaz would profoundly regret not heeding İhsan’s advice.

The next day they returned to Istanbul. Sümbül was to follow behind toward evening, after having straightened up the house. Beneath rain that fell in torrents, the pristine and eternal façade of winter scenery melted away in fragments. Overnight the winds had turned southerly. The ferry forged ahead, virtually tossing and rolling. The surrounding scenery lay behind an ashen shroud. Strangely, through a peculiar play of memory, this shroud further reminded them of the past summer. From time to time the view opened up so that woods, a mosque, or an old
yalı
would descend upon them. A black ship crossed their path as if to declare, “I, too, exist within the framework of your lives . . .” Next everything took on the same washed-out pallor, and the hard rain caused whatever it contacted to meld and merge.

As they churned past Beylerbeyi, Nuran suddenly took hold of Mümtaz’s hand. “I’m afraid,” she said.

“But why? I don’t understand. Not yet an hour ago we spoke to your relatives in Bursa. All of them are fine. Everything’s going to plan.”

“No, I’m not thinking about them. I’m afraid of something else. Last night I dreamed of Suad.”

Mümtaz regarded her with astonishment. Suad had also entered his dreams. Furthermore, it was an agonizing vision. Suad had taken the crystal lamp out of the hand of Mümtaz’s father before embarking on a caïque along with the village girl from his childhood. As Mümtaz flailed his arms frantically from the quayside – although he knew not where precisely – worried whether they had or would capsize, he awoke. Few dreams could be so terrifyingly vivid. Even now, on this ferry bench, he could clearly see the same pitch-black bargelike caïque, Suad’s long, bony face, the girl’s expression, and amid rough seas, the lantern dimming to the verge of going out.

“Pay no mind, for five days we’ve talked of nothing but him!” Then he changed the subject: “Will you have a coffee?” He lit the young lady’s cigarette and began to make plans for coming days.

But Nuran wasn’t listening. Finally she couldn’t restrain herself. “For God’s sake, let’s not build castles in the air! Once it’s all done and finalized, then, afterward . . .”

They stepped out of the taxi before the apartment. Holding their bags in one hand, Mümtaz allowed Nuran to walk ahead through the door. The solitude of the building and the street had settled her nerves. The wife of the doorman mopped the tile floor in the foyer. Nuran briefly exchanged a few pleasantries with her. Before they’d left for Emirgân, Mümtaz had helped procure a treatment of diphtheria serum for her child. She learned that the boy had improved. Mümtaz, bags in hand, waited for Nuran on the bottommost step of the stairs. The surroundings had faded in the sepia light that fell in the wake of snowy weather. The foyer’s blue tiles appeared black beneath such illumination. A cat pressed its head to the casement window opening onto the air shaft and letting light into the stairwell, gazing at them with eyes so near the color of dried straw that they all but crackled. In the backyard the doorman’s eldest son sang his usual song in a feverish voice: