The Time Regulation Institute (33 page)

“Perhaps I went a bit too far. But the man did deserve it.”

“He did indeed. Very much so, I would say!”

Once again Halit Ayarcı was looking me over as if deciding whether to buy me.

“Hayri Bey, just where did you learn about watches and clocks?”

“As a child—when I was still a child—I met an esteemed religious time setter by the name of Nuri Efendi. He was a friend of my father's . . .”

I was unable to finish my story as a procession of ten or more people poured into the restaurant. Everyone turned to watch them. At the head of the party was a lavishly dressed, large man—the kind whose photograph often appeared in the newspapers; from across the room he waved to Halit Ayarcı, who returned the greeting by half rising to his feet in a most dignified manner. Extra tables were pulled out and chairs swung into place. Waiters ricocheted about the restaurant like billiard balls. Then the lavishly dressed man came over to see us, while the others in his party stayed behind, talking and joking among themselves as they waited for their table to be set. Though they seemed reasonably relaxed, they each kept an eye on the man approaching our table, while giving the same attention to the seat he would soon occupy at theirs, as if resigned, on such occasions, to suffer split vision.

The newcomer placed a firm hand on Halit Ayarcı's shoulder, as if to keep his friend from standing, and in an affectionate voice, he said: “So how are things, Halit Bey?”

Now this was a voice! Powerful, confident of its authority, deep with suggestion—it was far superior to Halit Bey's. It was a voice both personal and distant, a voice that embraced you while keeping you at bay, towering over you even as it took you by the arm and walked beside you. It took the man no more than three or four words to work his magic. This was the moment when we grasped Halit Ayarcı's true importance, for here was a man of even greater importance paying his respects: this alone made him a hundred times more important in our
eyes. It wasn't an ordinary conversation we were witnessing but a mounting multiplication of regard and respect.

“So kind of you to ask, sir.”

“Who are these friends of yours?”

And with this gesture we were born anew. Dr. Ramiz and I cowered in shame and wonder before this Adam newly created in God's image. But Halit Ayarcı showed no surprise. After introducing Dr. Ramiz, he turned to me.

“One of my dear friends, Hayri Irdal Bey, our country's most renowned master of watches and clocks. An unrivaled individual indeed.”

From the manner of his introduction I understood that Halit Ayarcı was the kind of man who saw both his future and his past through the prism of the present; he had presented me as an old friend. And the grandee seemed delighted to have made my acquaintance. His face lit up with a childish smile. It was while he was preparing to express his delight that the dish of red mullet on our table distracted him. I could wait, but red mullet could not. They'd go cold, and cold red mullet was of no use to anyone. He picked one up with the hand that had been resting on Halit Ayarcı's shoulder and with that same childish smile he popped the entire fish into his mouth. But he hadn't forgotten me, and by way of proof he put his left hand on my shoulder to direct the same smile my way. Clearly he had taken a shine to me. His attention and respect drove me an inch and half deep into the wooden floorboards beneath us. He kept staring at me, and with such tender constancy. There was no need to talk; we understood one another. He had taken to me, and I to him. Oozing confidence, he extended his right hand to the table as if to caress a lock of hair, and soon another mullet was nothing but a pile of bones casually tossed to the wooden floor. He repeated the operation two or three times. There was no need for a fork—a fork would have been far too cumbersome. He was not a man to put on airs. He beamed at me with genuine sincerity. Why should he not give the red mullet the same consideration? Who could expect the man to mediate his affection with a fork? Besides, a fork was for real food, not for simple snacks like red mullet!

He looked at me after his fifth red mullet and I could see that his compassion for me was now a hundred times stronger, as if I had created those fish with my own hands or at least caught or cooked them; with his eyes still locked on mine, he said:

“Divine, absolutely divine . . . and cooked to perfection. Height of the season, you know!”

Applying his full weight to my shoulder, he gave his final order:

“But please, help yourselves! It's the season for red mullet.”

With this he released his grip on my shoulder, and as he turned toward his table, his eyes left me too. We had become brothers over red mullet. Was there need for anything more? Then a tray of fresh almonds on ice caught his eye: now here was a new treat. As he sampled the nuts, he exchanged a few last words with Halit Bey, but what a strange conversation. For as he feasted on the almonds, he wasn't really listening to Halit Bey, and naturally he couldn't speak himself, not when he was so busy with those nuts; this was a man who did not like to see time wasted, who left it to his entourage to do the talking.

At one point Halit Bey said to him, “I suppose I'll come and bother you with this one of these days.”

The answer was brief.

“Most certainly, and why not tomorrow? We can have lunch here.”

With some reluctance he withdrew the hand that had found its way back to my shoulder, softening the betrayal with one last tender, heart-shattering glance, whereupon he took his leave, enchanting us with his smile and his sparkling spectacles, and assuming the fatherly air of a man who was, despite his evident superiority, determined to indulge us.

We all sat down. Dr. Ramiz's face was flushed with joy. If not in seventh heaven, I was at the very least embracing Jesus Christ somewhere in the fourth. And why not? Not even a stone could have resisted flattery this sincere. I looked down at my left shoulder. He had gazed down at my shoulder as if it were bathed in light, as if it belonged to one of those Assyrian gods we read about in our schoolbooks. How could it be that I, Hayri Irdal, I, a miserable waste of life, could be showered
with such attention? It was beyond comprehension. Dear Lord! Your glory is truly great!

Only Halit Ayarcı seemed unaffected. The moment he sat down he turned to me, and in a decisive tone of voice that told me an important matter had been settled, he said, “Yes.”

I gathered that he wanted me to carry on with what I had been saying before being interrupted by the new arrival. But I didn't exactly understand what he wanted me to say. And I felt so far from Nuri Efendi.

But as soon as Halit Bey pronounced his decisive yes, Dr. Ramiz began his babbling.

“Truly a great man,” he exploded. “How fatherly, and so noble. I never would have thought of him like this.”

“Is he always like this?” I asked Halit Ayarcı.

“Yes,” he answered absentmindedly. “He is always like that. Always friendly, always hungry.”

Then he shrugged his shoulders and, with a sly smile, continued. I had truly taken to this important man. I had warmed to him, I felt bound to him, I had taken a shine to him, I was soldered to him—or whatever the expression is—and I begrudged Halit Ayarcı's belittling him; but do allow me to add that at the time I had just barely made the acquaintance of my benefactor.

“Of course when he isn't in power . . . He's a little different when he has a position. And I don't mean his appetite; that is constant and never changes. But in this he is not alone: it is the same with his predecessors and successors. That is to say, it runs in the family. I'm referring to his affable manners and easy flattery. In any event, no one ever meets him in person when he's in power; then you're more likely just to see pictures of him in the papers, and when he falls from power you see just . . .

He pulled the evening paper out of his pocket, flipped it open, and pointed to a picture on the first page:

“Here's the man who took his place. I ran into him here a month ago, and because we were the only ones here we sat together and talked for hours. At the time your gentleman's picture was the one in the paper. Strange, isn't it?”

I listened to him with my mouth wide open in surprise.

“But he didn't seem at all bothered to have lost his position,” I said.

“He wouldn't . . . because he's the very embodiment of power. Or, better said, power embodies him. They walk together arm in arm.”

My eyes were glued to the photograph before me.

“It's strange though,” I said. “They look so similar.”

I stuttered a little out of fear.

“Indeed they do. What the two have in common is the power they exude. It is a matter of multiple incarnations: I am in you and you are in me . . .”

He gestured as if to say it was difficult to explain.

Dr. Ramiz winced when he heard this and kept his eyes fixed on the politician's table. He challenged Halit Bey:

“But he is a perfect gentlemen; everything about him speaks of greatness.”

Halit Ayarcı shrugged and raised his glass. “Let's drink!”

“Cheers.”

And we drank. From the moment the politician had placed his hand on my shoulder to look me in the eye, a strange change had come over me. Suddenly my appetite had returned, sending ripples of warmth through my body; swept away by a calm beatitude, I ate and drank and laughed and joined the fun. The drink had opened new doors to my flights of fancy. With each sip, and indeed with each new glass, I saw the woes that had so oppressed me taking flight, as the daybreak call to prayers might startle a murder of crows from the treetops in the mosque courtyard, dispatching them to far-flung lands, never to return.

This lightness of being, this ebb and flow of the heart—as my troubles scattered, as I drifted without fear in a most peculiar sea of bliss, I did not for a second forget that I owed it all to the weighty and glorious hand that had rested upon my shoulder, to those eyes that had latched onto mine like magnets.

It was beyond my comprehension. In my childhood I had been taken to see so many holy tombs and mausoleums of Muslim saints and to meet countless holy men whose very breath could remedy all ills. From Eyüpsultan all the way to Yusa Hill, and on to Selamiefendi in Kısıklı and Fatih, Aksaray, Hırkaiserif,
Edirnekapı, Ayvansaray, Topkapı, Yedikule, Kocamustafapasa, Türbe, Sirkeci, and Eminönü, I knew where every tomb, grave, or mausoleum of any saint or miracle worker could be found in almost any neighborhood in all Istanbul, both within and outside the old city walls, and from time to time I'd visit them to pray and implore and collect stones from their graveyards, and if I couldn't find anything better than cloth to tie to the tomb, I'd rip a piece of lining from my coat and tie that to the fence. Yet never had I been as deeply affected as I was now.

Each time, I'd return from my visits to these tombs a little more despondent and distraught and deeper in despair. Neither
Bukagılı Dede, nor
Elekçi Baba, nor Üryan Dede, nor
Tezveren Sultan, not one—not even those who slept in the coolness of holy springs, nor the Christian saints drooling in their sleep on the high windswept hilltops of Heybeliada, Büyükada, and Kınalıada among the Princes' Islands—not one offered any balm for my wounds, not one ever lifted a finger to ease my pain and suffering as I struggled to put food on the table.

Yet these sacred men are far removed from worldly affairs, and for them material possessions are of no value whatsoever; they gave away all they owned, to live in circumstances more abject than my own, and there to discipline their minds and strengthen their souls.

Seyit Lutfullah lived in his run-down
medrese
and Yılanlı Dede, who supposedly had been mentored by Seyit Lutfullah, though I never saw them together, lived in a cellar in Çukurbostan;
Karpuz Hoca took refuge in a derelict house in Sütlüce; and Yekçesim Ali Efendi spent all his time wandering around the cemetery in Edirnekapı. The eminent
Sheikh Mustafa of Altıparmak, Deli Hafız, Sheikh Viranı—they were all the same way. While I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't have a clean shirt to put on in the morning, Dede the Shirtless was busy violently tearing up his in the middle of the street—shirts that had been given to him as gifts.

Clearly such personalities could not help me solve problems that stemmed from my worldly concerns. Furthermore, the dead ones never even looked me in the eye, and the ones who were still alive only counseled patience and contentment.

Among these people there was Emine of the Seven Brides, one of our neighbors; I hounded her for three years, begging her to intercede with her blessings for my lottery tickets, when finally one day she reached out and touched my ticket with her blessed hand and said, “All right, then, you've begged me for so long that you've made my heart heavy. I have prayed for you and, yes, you will win a little money back! But don't ever ask this of me ever again. Don't force such sins upon me!”

Yes, but why was it a sin for a miserable creature like me to win back a few of the pennies I had gambled away on the lottery? I just couldn't make sense of it.

I pleaded with Emine of the Seven Brides so passionately that I threw myself at her feet: “Just a little more than what I've put in, oh blessed one!” I cried. “If nothing else, just refund me the total that I've lost over the last ten years playing this useless invention.” Was that so much to ask? I didn't think so. “Well, then just give me back everything I lost this year! That comes to about ten kurus. Please, that's the least you can do for me!” I begged. But she was stubborn as a rock. It was the intractability of a saint, simply said. So I returned home in utter despair. I waited out the entire month, thinking, “Maybe she's right, but certainly after so much groveling she'll work something out for me!” But no use—the holy woman's prophecy came true. Amid the big money prizes that literally drowned their recipients with sums as staggering as the fortune showered upon sultans during their accession to the throne in olden times, a single lira coin, dry as a bone, meandered back to me like a goat let out to graze.