The Time Regulation Institute (27 page)

But for a long time life would stand in the way, for life had endowed Atiye Hanım with a wealth of material. Her tireless consumption of men had given her enough to fill sixteen rapid-fire romance novels; her current novel in progress dealt with events that had occurred ten years before. Over the last decade she'd gone through at least as many men again, and having suffered dearly for it, she was now bloated with sadness and a profusion of sensitivities. Life for her meant loving, making love, changing lovers, and suffering: she'd need at least another sixteen novels to recount all her new adventures. So her Kösem Sultan
novel would just have to wait.

It wasn't that she couldn't believe Sabriye Hanım's various narratives. In fact she was quite convinced of Aphrodite's aunt's need to exist in spirit form. But if it did not, then she had no objections to the young diplomat. As a novelist, she was more
than clear on the necessity for at least so much. Moreover, she knew all too well that a person doesn't just up and travel to Italy without a good reason, even if all the aunties in the world—dead and alive—were assembled in one spot. Of course she felt there was no need to relay any of this to Sabriye Hanım. The helpless creature was condemned to suffer lifelong jealousy.

Quite unlike Atiye Hanım, Mme Plotkin, the granddaughter of a Jew who had emigrated from Poland to Turkey during the constitution years, believed everything Sabriye Hanım said. But she was never one to gossip, only voicing her opinions on the matter when the subject came up naturally and even then only among her intimate circle of friends. Moreover, Mme Plotkin valued the truth, and she never withheld any detail she knew to be relevant. A case in point: on a trip to Czechoslovakia a year before, she and M. Plotkin had met the young Italian diplomat and the Brazilian widow he'd married. By her account the diplomat had been very fond of Aphrodite but had in fact found the Brazilian widow more beautiful, more comme il faut,
and frankly much wealthier. Speaking of Aphrodite she cried:

“The poor girl has such bad luck. Now she's in love with Semih Bey. But Semih Bey's madly in love with Nevzat Hanım.”

Sabriye Hanım sighed and began to explain:

“Poor Semih Bey's swimming against the current. Nevzat will never again love anyone on this earth. Not him, not anyone. But that's just the male mind for you!”

And with her proud and ever pejorative smile, she flashed her eyes at Cemal Bey, who happened to be eavesdropping. Sabriye Hanım's cheeks paled as a strange light flickered in her eyes; then she bit down on her paper-thin lips, shutting them like the lid of a box. But under no circumstances did this mean she'd remain quiet, for surely at such times in her heart she'd say, “Forgive me, my love, but I had no choice but to avenge myself!” Sabriye Hanım was in love with Cemal Bey.

This was why she never succeeded in becoming a medium, though it wasn't for Cemal Bey that she'd joined the Spiritualist Society. The fact is that Sabriye Hanım had joined to indulge her fascination with human affairs. She frequently made the claim—her eyes stretching as wide as her little mouselike face
could bear—that from the age of five she'd done everything in her power to uncover the truth behind whatever domestic saga was unfolding at home. Her heightened curiosity was perhaps a byproduct of the jealousy she felt for her stepmother, or perhaps it was simply congenital. And as she grew older, her passion for sleuthing grew and grew: stretching first out to her street and then to her neighborhood and the city and every other aspect of her life. But in thirty years she had learned everything there was to know, and, having set into place a reliable network of informers, she began to take a keen interest in the world beyond.

Just as science had shifted its focus to the stars after fully acquainting itself with the workings of earth, Sabriye Hanım now set her sights on the world beyond. For her, the séances and the Spiritualist Society were windows to its mysteries. And Sabriye Hanım loved windows. At home she always sat at one of the two windows that looked out onto the street. Now she stood before a window that looked out over the vast landscapes of infinity.

Yet it would be untrue to say that any of this caused Sabriye Hanım to sever her ties with the material world. She believed the world beyond was but a continuation of the one we currently inhabited. She claimed hundreds of acquaintances there. Undoubtedly she knew at least one person on the other side (sometimes several) who had something to tell her about whatever affair she was investigating on earth, either through direct involvement in the affair or by witnessing it firsthand. Indeed the two worlds were remarkably close. For instance, in the matter of her neighbor Zeynep's suicide, consultations with those in the world beyond proved vital.

Sabriye Hanım's distress following the suicide was genuine. She'd truly valued Zeynep as a friend. That a woman of Zeynep's noble and courteous bearing could take her life proved that she had been doomed by her fate. She hadn't gone to a good school like Sabriye Hanım, and she had lived a sheltered life, but she was nevertheless an intelligent woman. Her rich husband had loved her. There had been no apparent problem between them. But still, one day she took her life; she found a gun and shot herself. Citing a nervous breakdown as the cause of suicide, the police closed the case. But Sabriye Hanım, who was of the view
that women experienced nervous episodes when they were trying to pester someone into doing something, could never bring herself to accept the verdict. Two years after the tragedy, Zeynep Hanım's husband still hadn't remarried. Though Sabriye Hanım followed his every move, she couldn't uncover a single romantic affair. He remained the same quiet and well-mannered man. He didn't seem overly relieved by his wife's absence. If such a tragedy ever happened to Selma Hanım—God forbid!—I'm sure that cold-hearted Cemal Bey would have been rather pleased. But no one seemed in any way relieved by Zeynep Hanım's suicide, and no one seemed to grieve for her save, of course, her husband. As for her female friends, they seemed neither to relish the situation nor to exhibit signs of a guilty conscience: Nevzat Hanım, though she lived in Zeynep's apartment building, still assumed a childlike air and a bewildered expression, while Atiye Hanım merely added a suicide to her current novel—wouldn't any other author have done the same? Selma Hanım managed to affect only a few tears, for her makeup had been carefully applied that day, in anticipation of an engagement later that evening (she'd recently grown concerned about the wrinkles rapidly gathering around her eyes). Seher Hanım got word of the tragedy only months after the fact, and Mme Plotkin had been so preoccupied with the imports arriving from the factory her husband had commandeered in Czechoslovakia that she wouldn't have registered the event in the first place. So . . .

What was the reason behind poor Zeynep Hanım's death? Why did she take her own life?

Countless other affairs remained as unresolved as her suicide. Hundreds, even thousands, of people in that great warehouse that was the world beyond had wrapped themselves up in their own secrets as they waited in envious silence.

Sabriye Hanım wanted to communicate with them and encourage them to speak. This was why she was interested in spiritualism: she wanted to close the unfinished cases in the banks of her mind, release their mysteries to the light.

But her situation was soon complicated by an unfortunate
decision. Once the séances had begun, it was quickly agreed that Sabriye Hanım was the perfect medium. This, however, was the last thing she wanted. Even in the comfort of her own bed, she always remained, throughout the night, alert to the slightest sound. Now she was going to be hypnotized, and this made her very uneasy indeed.

A medium is never free. And can never ask questions. She is under someone else's control, with yet someone else's thoughts bubbling out of her mouth like water bursting from the spout of a public fountain. The operator-hypnotist asks the questions, and the spirit answers. Sabriye Hanım, however, wanted to ask the questions herself. It was for this express purpose that she'd joined the association. Now the roles were reversed.

But Sabriye Hanım, through force of will, achieved the impossible: she broke the rules. Instead of directly answering questions posed by the spiritual mentor, the spirits speaking through her preferred to address the more mundane issues of the world beyond. If the hypnotist happened to question Sabriye Hanım on the purification of souls, a matter thoroughly discussed by the medium Hüsnü Bey, son of the old sheikh Kadiri, the tenor of a conversation changed dramatically. According to the spiritualist lexicon, the word “purification” described a soul's deliverance from evil passions and its return to innocence, but Sabriye Hanım took the word to mean “liquidation.”

“Oh come on!” she cried. “Liquidate the company? Not at all! It's more prosperous than ever before. Company shares have only gone up and will continue to do so!”

But then if the hypnotist asked Hüsnü Bey, “Have you ever connected with a higher being?” The medium might give the following answer:

“It would take at least ten thousand years of suffering to attain that height. And besides, if I ever reached a higher being, I'd have nothing to do with any of you.” But if the mouthpiece for that very same spirit was Sabriye Hanım, she might say:

“No, I've never tried. Truth is, I've never even thought of trying. I've been too busy following Rudolph Valentino's latest love affair! If you like, I'll tell you all about it!”

Several times, in the midst of a deep trance, she'd suddenly interrupt the spirit to cry:

“I can't find her. I can't find Zeynep Hanım. I suppose there's an isolated wing for those who've taken their own lives.” And apologizing, she said, “I'm new here. Forgive me.”

Sometimes when the spiritual mentor asked the same gracious, pious, kindly spirit what needed to be done to make people more immaculate and pure, she would cry:

“Are you all fools? Forget about all this and look at what's right under your noses. Over the last few days, someone among you has been preparing for something that will surely make you quake!”

Sabriye Hanım's success as a medium lay in her ability to leave her body behind and travel only with her thoughts. Once given a task, she would cast off her corporeal form like an old dress and stare blankly, blissfully out the window, running her eyes up over the walls as she described everything she saw in sumptuous detail. This was of course only the most natural manifestation of her curiosity. Once she found the opportunity to quench it, she used every trick in the book to avoid coming out too early, and to avoid returning to our world she would beg and badger the spiritual mentor: “I'll just have one more look to see what's happening on the opposite building's third floor. I thought I saw Suat Hanım, but it wasn't her. The woman was blond . . . and tall. I didn't recognize her.” Describing to us everything she saw, this normally unprepossessing woman was transformed: her face lit up as if she had just awoken from a happy dream, and she seemed almost beautiful.

Sabriye Hanım put forward just one condition before she engaged in these séances, and that was that the hypnotist wasn't to wake her up before she took a quick look around Nevzat Hanım's home. Awake and fully compos mentis, she'd exclaim, “What did I say? Did I see anything? You let me have a look around, right?”

The truth was that Sabriye Hanım believed Zeynep Hanım had shot herself after uncovering a secret love affair between her husband and Nevzat Hanım. She also believed that Murat, like Aphrodite's aunt, was a fiction—a fiction invented to cover
up a love affair, a criminal love affair that had resulted in the death of someone she dearly loved.

The association did not merely disagree with Sabriye Hanım; it rejected her theory wholesale. Murat was nothing like Aphrodite's aunt. He wasn't the kind of spirit that could be knocked out in just one blow. So much of the association's quaint warmth came from this churlish and outspoken but loveable spirit. Who will ever forget that sudden rush we all felt the evening when a capricious Murat cut the electricity and we all huddled together in fear? The following week the association was compelled to ban new members, if only to protect this dearly loved creature from exposure.

So the promises the hypnotist made to Sabriye Hanım were never honored: he made every effort to keep her far from Nevzat Hanım's home. Though she probably could have indeed conversed with Nevzat Hanım, no one could be sure to what extent she could actually converse directly with Murat. And no one wanted to offend him.

Sabriye Hanım's skepticism and her affinity for tragedy were not entirely unappreciated. But it was never forgotten that she was a naturally inquisitive character, with a formidable grip on affairs of the heart.

She was well aware of all this and so reluctant to partake in hypnotic séances, preferring homelier ways to communicate with the departed. She often led séances at home or at the club during which she treated those spirits who'd accepted her invitations to lectures on the nature of the true torments in the world beyond. It was hard not to be taken aback by her questions. In séances of this nature she preferred not to call those spirits who were already accustomed to the operating styles of the hypnotist or the sheikh. This was why she chose to fall in league with Seyit Lutfullah, whose story I had shared with her, undertaking a momentous collaboration with him, of which more later. I arranged for Seyit Lutfullah to attend Sabriye Hanım's lecture “Spiritualism and Social Hygiene” at the association the following week; in the talk she fervently declared her commitment to her art, going so far as to explain under what conditions a secret service of spirits might be assembled, and expounding on the many benefits such an
assembly would afford. We all knew that
Taflan Deva Bey was lending her tremendous support in her efforts. This refined and learned man of no small means indeed had an overwhelming passion for social hygiene. I often think how different—and more wonderful—our lives would be had our country's more gifted individuals succeeded in finding their rightful places. I cannot imagine a person among us who, after listening to him for just ten minutes, would not be swept away by the overpowering desire to have Taflan Deva Bey made mayor of Istanbul, or of any other province in the country, for life and to spend every penny he had to make it possible. He was aided by his insight and good manners and his ability to attract individuals from all social strata. What a pity that Deva Bey was only concerned with the social and moral manifestations of hygiene. For him, streets, homes, and the entire cities were themselves always secondary and tertiary points of considerations. What was most essential for him was a society's ability to purge itself of deviant thought.