A Mind at Peace (35 page)

He answered as he wiped his forehead with the backside of the pack, “You never know ...” With him leading, they exited and vanished into the downpour.

Mümtaz stared from where he sat, the cheapest variety of eau de toilette cloying his nostrils. The windows opposite had begun a new dance beneath hard rain; they spun, centripetal force drawing everything toward them as they jeered at the scene through reflections of death.

The estimations that he’d been making were correct: it was Suad, Suad who’d been in love with Nuran since before the beginning of time!

Out of fear of making eye contact, Mümtaz only fleetingly looked into Suad’s face. Fate cast this instant as a revelation. The moment Mümtaz glanced, Suad cackled slyly, wringing his hands as if to say, “We’ve dispensed with that noise, haven’t we now?” His laughter preoccupied Mümtaz for days. To fathom it fully, he’d have to search beyond human will and even conscientious life. This laughter was the suppressed chortle of a beast. No matter how much Suad praised and admired himself, boasting of graceunder-pressure by declaring, “An intelligent man knows how to get out of a tight spot!” his cackle and its bestial gratification belied an instinct less cunning than the fabled fox who purported to be wily though its pelt was to hang in the furrier shop, and this instinct seemed superior and successful because it only addressed what appealed to it directly, as a ready-made solution. No, this instinct was neither a dark temptation around which supernatural mysteries congregated nor a rarefied and rapacious appetite that caught its prey, regardless of the level of the heavens, to tear feather from feather and bone from bone. In Suad, there existed not a single fable or a single wingèd ascension toward decency, the sublime, or loftiness. The way she had resigned herself to defeat demonstrated that she was a bird of the same feather. They’d grappled and she’d lost. Tomorrow they’d separate, each on a distinct path, she in pursuit of dreams of marriage, Suad longing to forget through other conquests the vagrancy he imagined in his soul; in short, they’d entertain various encounters and possibilities before one day meeting again, and amid bygone dreams and dread, they’d reunite, frolic one atop the other, perhaps pay a visit to the doctor again, and by and by another embryo in the nighttime of formation, eyes yet sealed, would be tossed to the city’s sewers without having seen the rays of the sun ... and so on and so forth, till the end, till the woebegotten fruits of the tree of death rotted fully and fell away, they’d live out their fate.

He stood, paid his bill, and stepped out into the street. He walked slowly. His previous vertigo and nausea had ceased; now, another strain of agony rose within him. He thought about the fetus. Tomorrow the fetus would be plucked from its mother’s womb with a fine set of forceps. It, too, had been appended to Mümtaz’s life through its brief misadventure. Tomorrow it would perish. Tomorrow evening a quivering, bloody clot of being, an anomaly resembling a skinned frog, would float in a cesspool of the city.

Tomorrow the central operator on Heybeliada would hear a bell. A voice from Istanbul would exclaim, “Sanatorium!” and the operator would plug the cable into the appropriate slot. A conversation would transpire; Suad would be roused from his bed: “Hello, hello, is it you, sir?” He’d ask, “Is everything in order?” and until he received an answer, his brows would furrow, and briefly with his entire being he’d swing between two extremities, before the lines on his face softened, and the perspiration on his forehead dried. “Thank you, good brother, thank you so much. Send her my best regards, I’ll go and see her myself later.”

It was the last venture of an unborn fetus as would be experienced by other people tomorrow. Later a taxi would be summoned, and a sallowfaced, afflicted woman would return to the home of a relative or a friend as elsewhere the doctor’s attendants sterilized the instruments and washed the basins under copious amounts of water.

He wiped his brow. He walked from Galatasaray up to Taksim Square along İstiklâl Boulevard neither gazing at the shops nor the throngs inundating him from either side.

A tiny fetus, an unborn child. This, too, had been appended to Mümtaz’s life. Over a period of forty-eight hours, his life had grown and expanded. What else and who else would yet enter into it, all due to the fact that he loved a woman who loved him in return? A day in the life. Living meant being besieged by others and slowly suffocating. To exist ...

But the tiny fetus, the children conceived by Suad and that woeful subservient woman wouldn’t live. Tomorrow evening it would perish.

An urchin begged for alms, his feet, face, eyes, and hands covered in mud to such an extent that his voice seemed to come from a swamp.

“For the sake of Allah ...”

Mümtaz verged on asking: “But how quickly you’ve emerged from the cesspool into which you’d been tossed? How have you managed to grow like this?”

“For the sake of Allah ...”

His hand went to a pocket. When the mass of dirt and mud before him saw this, it became a bit more animated; its twitching hand closed over the money, and without saying thanks, it went on to approach the man behind Mümtaz.

“
Allah rızası için
,” he pleaded again.

He would die. For the sake of Allah. He would die, tomorrow evening. The perplexing vertigo had begun again. Everything was spinning around him. It spun like a hoop spinning at the speed of light, and as it spun, everything blurred and lost color and shape.

“
Allah rızası için
...”

A child was to die. Tomorrow she’d have to call him. She’d have to say, “It’s all taken care of, it’s over!” This was living. All of it was part and parcel of life. All of it constituted existence: the sea bass marinating in mayonnaise displayed in the window of this restaurant, its membranelike skin before him, the saltfish whose rather frigid eyes lit up like a varnished yellow tin canister – whose extinguished eyes glared with the sheen of unpolished zinc – and the white-frocked waiter stepping on Mümtaz’s toes.

They surrounded him as if they’d long awaited the moment of Suad’s entrance into his life, and they gradually constricted him in that bizarre vertigo, closer and more firmly, without giving him the chance to move a muscle.

“What should I do? Allah, how to escape?” A small beam of sunlight shone suddenly. Like the soft angel hair of children, a treetop was illuminated by an iridescent light. Mümtaz stood stark still. He’d undergone an abrupt and astounding transformation. Neither the prior revulsion nor the constricting pressure remained. He looked around as if he’d awoken from a deep, extended sleep. With a feeling of satisfaction foreign to him and in a state of profound longing, he remembered Nuran. His eyes fixated on the radiance atop the tree, as if the wet light led to Nuran, emanating from lands where she resided; staring, he pined for her. Nuran was also part of his life, and as a result, the remainder, the confounding faces that filled the dark side of the medallion of life, had simply vanished.

But he wasn’t at peace. The torment that had incapacitated him for two days hadn’t dissipated but had only transformed. A profound yearning for Nuran and the dread of having lost her forever rose within him. He felt her absence viscerally as if he hadn’t seen her in ages and he believed that he’d insulted her in unknown ways. He was convinced she despised him. Though he wanted to pursue her, the distances between them were impossibly vast, and it drove him crazy.

By the time he’d reached Beşiktaş, evening had fallen. The sky had cleared behind him; only the eastern sky was enshrouded in deep purple clouds. Within their shadows, the hilltops, buildings, and gardens receiving the last of the sunshine assumed unrecognizable, grotesque forms that stuck in one’s imagination, as if they’d sprung from a spell or séance.

A dark and dank ferry landing: within a bizarre shiver, a fever of sorts, he awaited the Bosphorus ferry. Like a prisoner of fate, his face pressed to the iron bars of the pier fence, as if maintaining contact with his world through bars and interstices, he stared at the Asian shore, toward haunts of Nuran’s habitation. In that state, Mümtaz might have recalled each prison
türkü
that had embellished his childhood with sorrowful
hüzün
.

Perhaps through this remembrance and through his own enduring efforts, he’d descended into a phantasy that would prepare the way for an episode of psychosis, or hysteria of sorts. Beset by delusion, he stepped back from the fence and sat on one of the wooden benches in the waiting room.

The waters before Üsküdar embraced an opaque night. This was no longer a summer’s or September’s night exposed like a daisy, whose charms laughed with open abandon. A few days of rain had drawn an impermeable shroud separating the
yali
s and seas before which the ferry passed and the summer diversions and iridescent, languid hours that howled in a mother-of-pearl seashell, hours that had lasted till a day beforehand. Nuran, behind this shroud, gazed at him in remorse brought on by fathoms of separation, as if through a maddening lack of possibilities. Everything remained behind the shroud. His whole life, what he admired and believed, fables, songs, hours of intimacy, riotous laughter, unions of intellect, and even his own self, languished there, beshrouded.

Tonight a faded and feverish shadow consisting only of desperate memories and vague intimations remained exiled along with Mümtaz; instead of paving stones, the sidewalks were covered with memories reviving at first contact and assuming the form of reminiscences of days-past; tonight resembled a passageway from whose walls seeped melodies of nostalgic songs instead of water, Mümtaz could do nothing but roam, seeking out and searching for his former self by striving to sidle up to familiar sources of light one by one so as to warm his bones – yet whatever light he approached simply sputtered out.

From the lowered shades of
yali
s filtered fuller and more woeful lights different from the radiance that had caught them so unawares on nights of the bluefish; street lamps sparkled through denser haze, and gardens and copses – like massive flowers with withered petals and faded colors – persisted as shadows that coiled around a name or a memory.

Things withdrew farther into the nether reaches, to an inner realm from where they sparkled like the scattered traces of ancient lives or legacies removed from anything personal, isolated and atomized. Just like the fiery glimmer of jewels in the old Topkapı Palace that he’d visited in Nuran’s company, with their own particular astral shine in protective glass encasements, displayed without any recollection of the luminaries who’d once borne and worn them – numerous white hands and slender, straight fingers – without any recollection of chests and necks that were the matron and mirror of all desire. The ferry passed before each, as if wanting to acknowledge them one by one; and Mümtaz, from the corner into which he cringed, watched the deserted streets twisting and winding down beneath street lamps until reaching the Bosphorus and the ferry dock, whose boards yet glistened, and the small public squares and humble coffeehouses recalling the solitude congregating under oil lanterns in Anatolian train stations, coffeehouses living sequestered lives behind misty panes of glass in a state of introspection; each its own presence, they were satisfied to conjure this autumnal night at a complete remove from all other things. Mümtaz frequently murmured to himself, “As if they’re part of another world,” astounded that the life he’d lived up until yesterday had exiled him overnight; and he wanted to be beside Nuran so he could simply ask, “This isn’t really true, is it? I’m mistaken, aren’t I? Do tell me I’m mistaken. Tell me that everything is just as it was, that everything is actually the way it’s supposed to be ...”

Part III

I

Stepping through the garden door, İhsan exclaimed, “I saw the pair of them, they’re on their way!” Then, in genuine elation, he quickly approached Tevfik, who was resting in one of the wicker armchairs beneath the large chestnut tree, his legs extended, feet resting on another chair: “The pleasure of your company, my dear sir ...” His jacket and hat were in hand, his breathing labored.

The old salt said, “You’re getting old, İhsan!” Tossing away the small throw that he’d placed over his knees, Tevfik gathered his legs and invited Macide, “my fair lady,” to his side. Macide, tossing her sandy hair so it shone in the sun, kissed the elderly man’s hand. He smiled silently at Mümtaz and Nuran as if to say, “You’re a fine couple!” İhsan seated himself before Tevfik.

Mümtaz observed İhsan. He had worn the signs of age for some time. His hair had grayed and a slight paunch drew his torso to the fore. Large circles marked his eyes. But his arms were still sprightly and his body athletic. An expression of inner strength radiated from his face.

“Exquisite weather.
Allah sizden razı olsun!
May Allah be pleased with you lovebirds.” He closed his eyes tightly against the penetrating autumnal light, turning his face squarely toward the sunshine.

“What’s Sümbül prepared for us, Mümtaz?”

Mümtaz, smiling: “Today Sümbül is but the sous chef. Today’s offerings have been prepared by Nuran herself.”

“Under my supervision,” Tevfik quipped in his sonorous voice. The childlike defiance of a gentleman of refined habit flowed from his face. He was pleased to see İhsan. In fact this invitation of Nuran’s had consumed him. When Nuran announced that she and Mümtaz would be inviting İhsan, he said, “In that case, I’ll prepare the food!” He’d made the list of offerings and selected the ingredients himself.

İhsan uttered effusively, “Oh ... !” He hadn’t partaken of Tevfik’s fare for some time. “But is it only your fare? How long has it been since I’ve had the pleasure of your song?”

Tevfik raised his eyes to the firmament before gazing at the garden, the crimson-leaved trees, the tree trunks and branches turning purple in the distance, and the last of the grasses. His eyes traced the path of a bee to the garden gate. A peculiar and chilling warmth passed through his aging body. “D’you suppose anything remains of that voice, İhsan?”