“Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you ...”
“Has İhsan come?”
“Yes, and he’s with a relative of yours!”
“Who?”
“Somebody named Suad. A peculiar fellow. He’s staying at the sanatorium here!”
“He resembles a horse ...”
Mümtaz said only, “I know him,” then turning to Nuri, “It’s true, he does look like a horse.” Though in his mind’s eye he conjured the way Nuran’s hair slipped frequently from her temples toward her eyes.
Orhan completed the analysis, “He’s something of a cannibal!”
“No, he’s only an assassin, or a frantic assassin, that is to say, suicidal!”
These terms referred to an in-joke that had begun at the university. One day at the Küllük coffeehouse, they learned how a renowned historian, Mükrimin Halil, had separated people into three main categories – “Lackeys of the Orient,” “Regulators of the World,” and “Thugs.” Then they’d furthered the categorization. “Cannibals” were fanatics of any ideology, whether on the right or the left. “Assassins” had certain hang-ups and discussed them with whomever they saw. “Frantic Assassins” subjectified these hang-ups to an extreme and were filled with feelings of revolt. And as for “Suicidals,” they turned these hang-ups into torturous double binds.
Arm in arm, as they had been years before, they occupied half the road and walked along laughing and talking. None of them noticed Mümtaz’s state of distraction.
At this afternoon hour, the restaurant filled with the presence of the sea. Suad and İhsan sat at a corner table. Light reflecting off the sea appeared to gather on Suad’s face. Since the last time he’d seen Suad, Mümtaz found him to be thinner and paler. His bones seemed to protrude.
İhsan said impatiently, “Don’t waste any time, come sit down.” İhsan drank quite infrequently. Rather than from any concern about health, he abstained in order to give alcohol its proper due in life. He’d say, “We shouldn’t let the secrets of alcohol lose their effect within us.” As for the times he did partake, he’d grow as impatient as a child. He’d picked this restaurant because it was near the ferry landing, and he’d eagerly awaited Mümtaz’s arrival. He abruptly turned to Mümtaz: “Your eyes are alight ... What’s going on?”
Surprised, Mümtaz said, “Seeing Suad is quite a pleasure ...” In fact, he hadn’t been pleased to see Suad, although he admired his intelligence and conversation. But there was something he couldn’t put his finger on that disturbed him about Suad.
“What a joy ... There are people in this world who are pleased to see me.”
In response to his laughter, Mümtaz thought,
You see, this is precisely why I like you!
Actually, Suad’s laughter had a force that came from the heart yet negated everything. He laughed and his face abruptly appeared to be alien and antagonistic.
Is he fed up with his own life or is he mocking me?
Fahri grinned at İhsan and said, “I told you he’d come. You didn’t believe me.”
“But he’s two ferries late.”
“No, I only missed one.”
“When did you get up?”
Mümtaz again recalled the great triumph of his evening, and said, “I finished the book last night. I went to bed late and couldn’t sleep. No matter what I tell her, I haven’t managed to get Sümbül to wake me at the right time!”
Sümbül was the maid who saw to Mümtaz’s domestic affairs in Emirgân.
Suad asked, “What have you been reading these days, Mümtaz?”
Gravely, Mümtaz examined the plates of appetizers being placed before him. He’d seated himself opposite the door despite knowing full well that the young lady whose acquaintance he’d just made wouldn’t appear. “Practically everything Turkish ... Ahmet Cevdet’s
History, Sicill-i Osmanî
biographical entries, Taşköprüzade’s
Şakâyık . . .
”
Suad responded dismissively, “Disaster! Now how are we supposed to converse? Mümtaz and I used to discuss things easily enough in the past. First I’d ask him which writer he was reading, then I’d begin talking from that author’s perspective or through those concerns.” His inscrutable face cracked open with an abrupt, puerile laugh. Completing his earlier thought, Mümtaz mused,
You see, this is also why I like him.
“Isn’t everyone more or less reading this way?” Nuri interjected. The four of them, inseparable friends from Galatasaray, were immensely fond of Mümtaz and couldn’t tolerate any innuendos made against him.
Suad gestured with his hand, “I meant to make a joke. I always needle Mümtaz this way. Of course, I know what he’s all about. We’re relatives. But to tell the truth, I often wonder whether everyone reads as much as we do.”
Fahri’s opinion took a different tack: “Europe reads much more than we do. And a number of languages at once. That’s not the point, but ...”
“There’s another problem still. We’re not comfortable with what we read.”
İhsan was examining the transfiguration of ice in his glass, how the clear liquid slowly became clouded as if being enhanced by veins of marble. Now the glass was full of a less benign liquid.
“Bottoms up!” he said. Then he answered Suad. “The issue is this: The things we read don’t lead us anywhere. When we read what’s written about Turks, we realize that we’re wandering on the peripheries of life. A Westerner only satisfies us when he happens to remind us that we’re citizens of the world. In short, most of us read as if embarking on a voyage, as if escaping our own identities. Herein rests the problem. Meanwhile, we’re in the process of creating a new social expression particular to us. I believe this is what Suad is saying.”
“Indeed, with one leap to shake and cast out the old, the new, and everything else. Leaving neither Ronsard nor his contemporary in the East Fuzûli . . .”
“Is this even in the realm of possibility?” And Mümtaz succumbed to Nuran’s locks again.
Does her hair always fall that way, slightly ... Does she always brush it back with her hand while lifting her head?
Suad listened, none the wiser about Nuran’s tresses. “Why shouldn’t it be a possibility?”
“It’s impossible because ...” But what was impossible was his discussing such matters at present.
I’m on this island and she’s here too ... How distant we are from each other. It’s as if we are in the same house but in separate rooms.
“Because, to begin with, we’d be creating a tabula rasa in vain. What do you think we’ll gain through such refutation besides the loss of our very selves?”
With a beatific look, Suad said, “The new ... We’ll establish the myth of a new world, as in America and Soviet Russia.”
“And do you think they actually cast aside everything, all of it? If you ask me, neither our denial of the past nor our resolve to create can establish this new myth. If anything, it rests in the momentum of the New Life itself.”
“Then what d’you expect us to do?”
But Mümtaz didn’t answer. His mind was preoccupied with the episode between Nuran and her not-husband – it had to be Fâhir.
How her face fell. She was upset enough to burst into tears herself.
And suddenly, through a compassion that rose up within him, he promised to bring her happiness, for as long as he lived, to bring her happiness. And immediately at that instant he was ashamed of his childishness.
So infantile!
He acknowledged for the first time how sentimental he could let himself be.
“Don’t lose sight of the fact that both the United States and Russia are extensions of Europe.”
“Okay, then, what is it that should be done?”
İhsan raised his glass, “First we drink,” he said. “Then we partake of these fish that this sea of splendor has bequeathed to us. And we give thanks that we are before this sea, at this spring hour, in this restaurant. Later we’ll try to establish a new life particular to us and befitting our own idiom. Life is ours; we’ll give it the form that we desire. And as it assumes its form, it’ll sing its song. But we won’t meddle with art or ideas at all! We’ll set them free. For they demand freedom, absolute freedom. A myth, solely because we long for it, doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. No, it erupts from social life. But to cut our ties with the past and to close ourselves off from the West! Never! What do you think we are? We’re the essence of Easterners of taste and pleasure. Everything yearns for our persistence and continuity.”
“Once you’ve let the past persist like that, why even bother with a New Life?”
“Because our existence still hasn’t found its form, that’s why! In any case, life’s always in need of organization. Especially in our era.”
“In that case we’re purging the past?”
“Of course ... but only where needed. We’ll cast out dead roots; we’ll engage in a new enterprise and foster new people and society ...”
“Where will we find the initiative to do this?”
“From our own necessities and our own will to live; at any rate, we don’t need initiative, we need instruction. And reality itself will provide this, not vague notions of utopia!”
Suad wiped his brow with his hand. “I’m not talking about utopia . . . but I want to hear the sounds of unadulterated folk songs. I want to look out upon the world through new eyes. Not just for Turkey, I want this for the entire world. I want to hear songs of tribute sung for the newly born.”
“You want justice, you want rights.”
“No, not like that! Those are meaningless words. The New Man won’t acknowledge a single remnant of the past ...”
Mümtaz, with an eye on the customers entering through the door, said, “Do let us invite Suad to provide a description of this New Man!”
“I can’t! He has yet to be born. But he will be born, of that I’m certain. The entire world is moaning from the labor of his birth. Take Spain for example!”
İhsan: “If all you aspire to is that, rest assured, soon all of Europe, even the planet, will resemble Spain. But do you really think that some type of New Man has been born in Spain or Russia? To me, it seems rather that the ground is being prepared for human catastrophe.”
“Are you making a prophecy?”
“No, just an observation ... an observation that could be made by any reader of your average daily paper.”
Suad fiddled for a while with his empty glass, then extending it to İbrahim, he said, “If you would, please.” Topping the
rakı
-filled glass with water, he took a first sip. “If this happened, what of it, anyway? It’s not that I oppose its occurrence. Humanity can only rid itself of obsolete life-molds through such a conflagration ...”
“So it can be reduced to even more inferior molds. We all know the outcome of the last world war.”
But Suad wasn’t listening: “Not to mention that war has become unavoidable now. Such convoluted accounts could only be settled through war.” Then he suddenly glanced toward İhsan. “You don’t actually hope for anything new from humanity, do you?”
“Could one ever lose hope in humanity? I just don’t anticipate anything good from war. It’ll spell the end of civilization. I don’t expect anything worthwhile to emerge from war, revolution, or populist dictators. War means an absolute catastrophe for Europe, and maybe the world.” And as if speaking to himself, he continued: “I haven’t lost faith in humanity, but I don’t trust individuals. To begin with, once their ties are broken, they change completely; they become like programmed machines ... and suddenly it seems as if they resemble deaf and senseless forces of nature. The terrifying aspect of war and revolution is that it amounts to the sudden unleashing of a rudimentary force, one that we’d assumed we’d tamed through centuries of discipline, socialization, and culture.”
“That is exactly what I want, revolution.”
İhsan sighed, exasperated.
“Meanwhile, we could hope for better. But what good is hope when humanity is this frail? Yes, it’s hard to trust humanity, but if we consider its fate, there isn’t a creature as pitiable as man.”
“I admire mankind. I admire its power to fight constraints. Fully aware of its fate yet engaging in life nevertheless, I admire that courage. Which of us on a starlit night doesn’t carry the weight of all Creation on our backs? Nothing could be as beautiful as the courage of humanity. Had I been a poet, I would have penned a single work, a grand epic describing the venture of humanity stretching from our first ancestors who stood on two legs to the present. Initial thoughts, initial fears, initial love, initial stirrings of intelligence gradually becoming cognizant of Creation, the integration of everything that had once existed independently, the myriad innovations with which we’ve augmented Nature ... our act of creating Allah around us and within us. Indeed, I’d write only one piece. I’d describe how I longed to sing the praises of humanity awakening matter from its sleep and subduing Creation with its own spirit. Oh language that embraces all exalted things! Oh words, come to my aid!”
İhsan eyed his food skeptically: “That’s quite a display of exuberance there, isn’t it, Mümtaz? You sound just like one of those nineteenth-century disciples of civilization.”
“No, on the contrary. Because I don’t believe that these problems can ever be resolved. We’ll always kill and be killed. We’ll always live under some type of threat. I admire tragedy itself. True greatness resides in the courage we display despite our consciousness of death.”
“Mümtaz yearns to write a poem on evolution from gorilla to homo sapien.”
“Yes, the evolution from gorilla to human. Thank you for reminding me. Meanwhile, the war you crave is the obliteration of this notion. Now, are we to revert from human being back to ape? Dostoyevsky best understood the predicament in which we find ourselves.” İhsan returned his glass to the table without drinking from it. “The war that you desire will take us there. After two more world wars, nothing will remain of culture or civilization. We’ll lose the ideal of freedom for all eternity.”
“I know that much as well. But the bankruptcy of spirit within us and the misery surrounding us, our penchant for expending men like so much fodder and the environment of fear this gives rise to ... then just think about the calamity of people’s realization that this is an obligatory part of life! All of it foretells the approach of the end of an era. We expect it, even if it proves to be an apocalypse.”