The Time Regulation Institute (46 page)

For a moment I wondered if Zehra and her mother would have gotten along this well if her mother were still alive.

“You're not angry, right?”

I couldn't believe that my children still loved and respected me. Even Ahmet wanted to protect me from needless pain. This
was undoubtedly something he had inherited from Emine. I felt a jolt of pain in me. If Emine had lived, I wouldn't have found myself in such a predicament. How wonderful it would have been to pull the burden of life together, like two carriage horses harnessed side by side, one forever keeping an eye on the other. I remembered my elation upon stepping into the courtyard of our old home on the day I was released from the Department of Justice Medical Facility.

I sat alone in my study until late that night, at a loss for what to do. I just didn't want to go to bed. The memory of Emine was so overwhelming that I couldn't bear the sight of Pakize, even though she was asleep. Still, I knew I was being unfair.

That evening the weather was oppressive. At around half past one, thunder and lightning shook the sky. The curtains in the room billowed dramatically, one after the other, before fading into the green glow beyond. Then the sky was rent asunder and released a violent rain. Pakize was afraid of thunder. So with a heavy heart I crept into the bedroom and lay down beside her. Sensing my presence, she instantly awoke. Mumbling coyly, affecting a voice she must have assumed intimated tender compassion, she said:

“Up working late again? Hayri, you really should go easy on yourself.”

Not even the stilted female voices in radio commercials were as cold as her voice. At first I thought she was making fun of me. If only that were the case, but, no, she was serious, even though she knew very well that I hadn't actually been working, that I didn't do any work. She was merely playing the role of the sensible, well-intentioned wife thinking only of her husband's health. She threw her arm over my neck, and my body went cold. How was she any different from a wind-up clock or an automaton? I considered how steadily her interest in me had grown since I'd started work again. Indeed her attention made me feel as if I'd been living in a refrigerator for half a year. I almost missed those days when Pakize thought me spineless and slovenly, indolent, moronic, and clumsy, only acknowledging my existence when she was sexually aroused. At least then she seemed more herself.

At first I felt an overwhelming urge to leap out of bed. But then she'd wake up and start talking. The best thing was to stay in bed but entirely still. Slowly I extricated my every limb from hers, shrinking up against the wall where, eyes still wide open, I listened to the rain and thunder as I waited for morning. I kept asking myself, is she an idiot or just a liar? She was both. Perhaps she lied out of idiocy. Or perhaps it was something far more horrible than just that. She simply didn't have a personality. Occasionally the rain subsided and I heard her breathing. “If nothing else,” I thought, “I hope she's more herself in her dreams.” At one point I sat up and stared at her face. Her lips were parted and she seemed to be smiling. Her face seemed contracted, as sometimes happened when she was emotionally overwhelmed. As if she was no longer of this world! Yet how beautiful she was like that: with her eyes shut, lips slightly open, her breathing shallow and—most emotive of all—her selflessness. But why was she always so happy in her sleep? Why and for whom was she smiling? This was no ordinary smile. It spoke of bliss. So she was happy, like Zehra. Perhaps she had attained this peace of mind because she felt she was doing her part. Or perhaps in her sleep she could escape everything and everyone, to take refuge in a corner all her own. So she too had a secret. She was happy and she was beautiful, even though she was absent from her body. For a moment, I felt envious of her wholeness. I was about to disturb her, break the spell. But what would that do? Within minutes she would have become the person I knew, the same old stone statuette.

With this thought in mind, I shrank back against the wall. Toward morning, I drifted off to sleep. The dream I had then may go some way to illustrating my frame of mind.

I dreamt I was in the living room of our old home. I was studying my reflection in a vast mirror, muttering to myself as I studied my face more closely: But this isn't me? Could this be me? It's simply impossible . . . And indeed the face before me wasn't mine. Every moment it changed—changed so dramatically that I could hardly capture it in my gaze. Then I heard my aunt cry, “Come on, we're late,” as she tugged me. We were hurrying quickly through narrow backstreets. But with every step one of us lost a
shoe, and we had to stop and put it back on before racing off again. “At last, we're here!” she cried. And I found myself all alone in a rather large square where some kind of celebration was underway. I could hear horns and drums, and suddenly I was on an enormous merry-go-round made of layer upon layer of overlapping rings. With every turn, I saw someone I knew, and we waved to each other as we laughed and laughed. Then slowly the rings started to turn faster and faster, and the ring I was riding together with Halit Ayarcı, Selma Hanım, Cemal Bey, and my aunt snapped abruptly off its axis, and, still spinning, rose up to the heavens. Terrified that I might die, I threw my arms around the neck of the animal I was riding: it was Seyit Lutfullah's turtle. Holding on for dear life so as not to fall, I fixed my eyes on my aunt. She was no longer mounted on one of the merry-go-round animals. She was flying all by herself. I woke up to Pakize saying, “Come on, wake up! It's nine o'clock! You'll be late to work!”

VI

Snug in her armchair, my aunt was telling her entourage what sort of man I was.

“Sister, you have absolutely no idea. He's completely unpredictable. My late brother should have named him Misfortune, and not Hayri. He didn't pay me a single visit in twenty years. But I always wondered what he was doing, what would become of him. Was it easy for him? He's the last in the family. And of course I love him. If not for him, the dynasty of Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer would vanish from earth. Then at last I saw his name in the paper, and I said to myself, well, at the very least, I said, I should go and see him. Not a small feat for a woman at my age, I'd say.”

With a black shawl over her shoulders, a petite Japanese fan fluttering in her hand, and her entire person shimmering in a sea of jewelry, she thus aired her complaints to Selma Hanım and the other ladies. I sat on the other end of the sofa, a mere
ornament to the scene. I had fallen into a jar of jam; I was sinking in a swell of sweet reproach never before tasted.

“At one point I heard that he had lost his life in the war. For months, my late husband and I mourned his loss. For three years, we went to his grave on the anniversary of his death and said prayers and recited passages from the Koran. But somehow I always felt that he was still alive—that one day he would come back to us—and that's exactly what happened.”

She was telling the truth. Just around the time I was discharged from the army a friend of mine went round to see my aunt and found the house teeming with people; and to his surprise he heard my name recited in their prayers. And so my friend had said to my aunt, “If you're praying for Hayri, your nephew, why, then you have the wrong man, for that Hayri is alive and well.” And in response she had cried, “So yet another lie from the scoundrel, eh! I could only expect as much from the son of that good-for-nothing! He's never to set foot in this house again. Never! Oh and if does, there'll be trouble!”

Now the very same woman smiled as she sang my praises and spoke of my late father. No doubt she would have feigned shock if someone tried to explain how my father had died of hunger while I was serving in the army and how I was nearly locked up in a madhouse after her husband's exploitation of my story about the Serbetçibası Diamond; she would have denied it all.

But she knew I wouldn't bring up such things, that I wouldn't remind people of the past. I was now a reserved and well-mannered man, who towed the line. Now I had a good friend, Halit Ayarcı, who had turned my life around, and I had a serious job.

It was the first time my aunt had come to visit us at home. The Clock Lover's Society held its first public meeting that day and this was the reception. She continued:

“What more can you expect from someone in this day and age? Families will look after their own, won't they? So be it. But my dear Hayri isn't like this at all. God bless his wife and daughter! They came to me and . . .”

Just then I heard Zehra flirting with three young men on the
sofa near the hall. Pakize was in the inner living room with another group, Halit Ayarcı and Sabriye Hanım. My older sister-in-law was playing the celebrated artiste, stomping around like a restless racehorse as she waited to be summoned to show off her renowned musical talents. My aunt continued:

“But to tell you the truth, I never expected the Hayri I knew when he was a child to become such a modern man! And his job is so pertinent in this day and age. It seems that he is the one who came up with the idea! He was a calm and quiet man. But oh, how he loved watches and clocks! Do you remember how you went to work on my dining-room clock when I was ill? And then you lost the pendulum!”

For a moment, I was afraid she might say, “Now you will either find that pendulum or never let me catch sight of you again!” But no, she was too busy rewriting the past, indeed even embellishing it. And why not? What more can we do than create the environment for ourselves to live in? Especially as we can't just accept the sharp blade of the present.

“I always wished my stepdaughter had been more like Zehra! But, oh no, she turned out to be a strumpet.”

There was a glimmer in Selma Hanım's eyes. She had divined my aunt's reason for joining our coterie. Her situation was the opposite of mine; while I was now inundated with activity, she was lonely. My aunt wasn't getting along with her stepdaughter and son-in-law. But how could Halit Ayarcı have known this? And why did he have to arrange for her to come in such a roundabout way? How could he have been so willing to risk everything for such a person?

And my aunt finished her monologue, confirming my thoughts.

“I'm so pleased with myself for not giving Hayri her hand in marriage. Of course my relationship with my poor late husband, Nasit, suffered dearly for this.”

What could anyone say? Everything had changed, and I had no choice but to accept everything as it was, or, rather, however it was on any given day.

“Oh, my son! You certainly are a lucky one.”

Ekrem Bey appeared, and my aunt quickly moved on.

“Aha! Here's another unreliable one. This one doesn't even
come to the meetings, even though he's a member of the board. Come now, dear Ekrem, shall we not mingle a little and see how the other guests are getting on?”

But poor Ekrem was looking at someone just behind us. And Nevzat Hanım, squirming to free herself from Cemal Bey's clutches, also stepped away to mingle with my aunt. A few others tagged along in hope of finding more amusing company.

I asked Selma Hanım what she thought of my aunt. Instead of answering directly, she only said, “She loves you very much. She talked about no one but you for the past hour!” I told her about my various adventures with my aunt. At first she laughed and laughed but then she turned serious, murmuring:

“Men of greatness rise out of strange circumstances.”

I looked at her in complete surprise. What could I say?

A little later Sabriye Hanım came over to us. She had spent the entire day working at the regulation station that was soon to open in Taksim. “Those three girls have been trained exceedingly well,” she said. “We've been rehearsing since morning! Everything is just the way we want it to be. It's just that we still don't have the uniforms.” Selma Hanım said she could start work herself whenever we wanted. A little later Cemal Bey came over to collect his wife. I asked Sabriye Hanım:

“Did Selma Hanım ever ask Cemal Bey if she could work with us?”

“There's no need. They're getting divorced,” she said. “But that's between you and me, for the time being. Cemal Bey was caught embezzling, and the company is on the verge of bankruptcy. It's a terrible mess. Haven't you heard?”

“But Cemal Bey doesn't seem worried at all.” He'd been comfortably carrying on with Nevzat Hanım.

“Cemal would keep his composure on his deathbed,” she said. “But none of this really matters. How is your aunt? Wonderful, isn't she?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I don't understand any of this. Did she really make peace with me? And why? Was all that nonsense my wife spouted to the paper just a setup, to attract her to the institute? I can't be sure of anything anymore.”

“You don't understand Halit Bey, that's why. You assume
that he acts according to some master plan and that he ensnared your aunt because she's rich. But no, he merely wanted to promote the institute through you, and just then your aunt turned up and so he seized the opportunity. Halit Bey's a casual fellow, but he's clever. And he plays fair—he's no opportunist!”

The Clock Lover's Society boasted a whole host of beautiful young women and handsome, courteous young men. It became quite an attraction in its own right. Yet most of these people were from the Spiritualist Society, the coffeehouse, or Halit Bey's own circle of friends. At one point we were visited by the exalted politician I'd first met at the restaurant in Büyükdere. I was with my aunt when he stepped in. When I told him I was her nephew, he was all the more delighted with our enterprise. He showed a keen interest in the institute.

“How is work?”

I was preparing my answer when a waiter stepped in between us, offering caviar canapés. The politician looked me in the eye, and then down at the tray. With a great show of indifference, he told the waiter to set the tray on the table beside us. A while later whiskey was served. With a tumbler of whiskey already in his hand, Halit joined us. “We're creating quite a substantial cooperative, sir,” he exclaimed. “To our personnel!” As usual, I was catching up with plans I'd not been told about. Moreover, Halit Bey informed me later that evening that I was also going to be involved in a project to establish Timely Banks. So whether I knew it or not, I was now enjoying a certain success in life. But what had I really achieved? Save my frustration with this strange and incongruous crowd, what else had I achieved?