The Time Regulation Institute (44 page)

Now, if such an interview didn't put both my wife and I in jail for perjury or pack us off to the mental asylum—irrespective of judge or court of law—it was sure to lead to a hasty divorce. I could not believe my eyes. “He works at night, goes to sleep toward dawn, and sleeps but half an hour.” But this was only when there was a pressing job to finish. Other times I'd sleep for twenty-four hours. But I just couldn't fathom why I would enjoy sleeping naked on the floor. Now that my rheumatism restricted my equestrian activities, I was limiting myself to gymnastics. I had been cruelly treated by my relatives, but Pakize didn't linger for too long on this. She was even open about not wishing to speak of my aunt. “Hayri forgave them for everything some time ago.”

The following morning Halit Ayarcı read the interview to me in the office. Ignoring my rage, he burst out laughing at every sentence.

“This is wonderful,” he cried. “Wonderful! There couldn't be a more perfect interview. The first thing for me to do now is to bring out a paper with your wife as editor.
Tea Time
! Yes the name shall be
Tea Time
. Can such a talent be ignored? She's captured you perfectly! Exactly as you are.”

“Better to say she made an absolute fool of me. What has she captured? It's nothing but drivel from start to finish. I've been disgraced for the entire world to see.”

His face suddenly darkening, Halit Ayarcı assumed a seri-ous air:

“She has reformed you, reorganized you, and recast you as a loveable person. Why must you always see the dark side of things? She's done this out of love for you. She's given you your true identity.”

“But it's nothing but lies from top to bottom!”

“That's what you think. Everyone will love this. Take just
this part here: ‘He puts my shoes on for me. It's just his favorite thing to do!'”

“She doesn't even own a decent pair of shoes!”

“Well then, that's your fault now, isn't it? The husband of such a woman should, above all, consider her happiness and comfort. So go out tomorrow and buy half a dozen pairs of new shoes. Then there's this trip to Switzerland! “My husband's never traveled. Last summer he sent me to Switzerland, to visit the factory that had offered him a job. And to be honest, the idea sounded wonderful. I love traveling, but—what can I say? I just can't leave my husband. I asked him, ‘Why don't you like traveling, Hayri Bey? It'd be such a shame if indeed you really don't. Perhaps it's because you get a bit woozy on the ferry or train . . . But, then, you do ride horses . . .'”

I stood up and cried:

“This woman is a raging lunatic. What's more, she's a liar. How could we have loved each other in our childhood? She's sixteen years younger than I am!”

“A simple error in chronology. We all make such mistakes! And so what? Let's suppose that all of it, from beginning to end, is untrue. Would you be any better off if it were? Let's say you really don't like walking in the snow, but what do you gain from everyone believing this?”

He stood up and took me by the shoulder.

“You're changing, Hayri Bey, you're changing. And this should be a source of happiness. A new life, a new man . . . And there's no other choice, as you won't be coming back a second time. If I were you, I would try to be the man my wife wants me to be. Consider the interview a road map and follow it devoutly!”

“So I should sleep naked on the floor, is that right?”

Halit Ayarcı thought for a moment, stroking his chin:

“I suppose there's a slight slipup there. How can I put it? A simple fantasy! Don't worry about that one.”

“But I should take up playing the banjo and singing American folk songs?”

“Well, why not? I've got one at home. I picked it up when I was in America. I'll send it over to you this evening. On second
thought, I'll bring it over myself. You can start practicing. Not a bad idea at all in fact! And you do have a nice voice . . . Get cracking! Haven't you had enough of your Eastern
makams
, the Acemasiran and all that? Don't you feel for anything beyond a longing for the things of our past?”

I picked up the phone before answering his question, but he stopped me.

“No,” he said. “There's no turning back now. What's done is done. It wouldn't be right to upset such a thoughtful woman. Don't you see how much she loves you? Now it's time for you to be worthy of her love.”

Just then Zehra came into the room, holding that day's paper. She threw her arms around me.

“Oh, Daddy!” she cried. “I always knew you were a man like this! But you kept it all a secret from us. Could there be any other explanation? God bless Mother.”

Halit Ayarcı smiled and looked intently at my daughter.

“I'm of the very same opinion,” he said. “Your mother's a wonderful woman! I haven't read anything quite so wonderful in a very long time!”

I was losing my mind.

By the late-afternoon prayers I'd come face-to-face with the first clear reverberation of this wonderful interview. Dr. Ramiz, Lazybones Asaf Bey, Halit Ayarcı, and I were all chatting in Halit Bey's office. Or rather Halit Ayarcı was chipping away at my various points of resistance. Dr. Ramiz had been led out onto the open road by Halit Bey's enthusiasm and was driving his horses into a full gallop. It was no longer just as matter of Ahmet the Timely. Now my reaction to my wife's interview in the paper was a crime in itself.

According to Dr. Ramiz, I was a man in denial of his full powers, stubbornly closing his eyes to the movements of the age, and because I had limited my worldview, I had created a whole range of needless shortcomings, so as to inflict my responsibilities on those around me.

“Others can see you for who you truly are, but you somehow cannot! You've imprisoned yourself in a web of baseless fears and paranoia. How can you tolerate it?”

To him, my continuing doubts about the existence of Ahmet the Timely and my rejection of my wife's picture of me as a banjo-playing equestrian were all symptoms of the same malady.

“Your wife has presented you as the ideal modern man and still you doubt and deny it all!”

“My wife is insane. Since we've been married, she's gone to bed every night assuming that I am the lead man in the film she saw the evening before, and in the morning she jumps up out of bed in a frantic search for the pearl-studded slippers she wore in
The
Thief of Baghdad
.”

I saw Dr. Ramiz's jaw drop, but Halit Ayarcı went on unruffled:

“Of course his wife's crazy, and I'm a liar and a snake charmer . . . Well then, what's your daughter, Zehra Hanım?”

“Zehra has been swept away by the whole thing. Just the other night she said, ‘I'm so pleased with my life. It feels like I'm in an operetta or a vaudeville play. At last I'm getting a taste of life!'”

Dr. Ramiz replied:

“But can't you see? This only means that she too accepts your artist's soul. She even said as much this morning. ‘Daddy,' she said, “I always knew you were a man like this!'”

By now Halit Ayarcı was quite cross with me; addressing the doctor, he said:

“Give up the ghost, good man. Leave him to wallow in his stubbornness and skepticism. Life marches forward. One day, when the caravan leaves him behind,
then
he'll understand. Today we live in what is called the modern world! And look at the state of those who deny it! We can't change them by force. May they be blessed with common sense. We, however, are in pursuit of real life!”

Dr. Ramiz suddenly softened:

“I only pity him because I know his strength. This is why I am speaking in such a way, applying pressure . . . Why else would I bother?”

“I don't pity him at all! I only have time for the institute.”

Roused from his nap, Lazybones Asaf stuck his open hand out into the air as if trying to capture a fly.

“And I was also just thinking,” he said. “We'll have to buy a refrigerator for the summer, don't you think? And a fan . . .”

Halit Ayarcı pursed his lips to keep from laughing out loud.

“The most difficult thing is to work with a man who doesn't believe.”

By now I was truly dispirited.

“I do everything you tell me to do. Isn't that enough? Why must I believe?”

“Don't do, just believe—that's all we ask of you.”

Now it was Halit Ayarcı's turn to be indignant.

“Because what I need above all,” he railed, “is belief—a true belief in the importance of our work here. You people are the run-down, threadbare spirits of another age. It's quite impossible to work with people who have no faith in life. You don't even believe in Ahmet the Timely!”

“Well, that's because there's no such man. He's simply not there. There's not a trace of such a man in all history! Show me one single document, just a mention of the name—that's enough.”

Dr. Ramiz interjected:

“That way of thinking is antiquated. History is at the disposal of the present. I can show you hundreds of papers on hundreds of topics, and they are all lies, so what's the difference? If he hadn't existed, you couldn't have known the name, you never could have spoken of him. It all boils down to this: you see yourself above and beyond your own age. This is intellectually arrogant. In effect you are trying to say, ‘I am in command of all truths!' No, my dear saint, such power is beyond our ken. No man can be omniscient, it's simply not possible.”

A sudden scuffle outside the door kept me from answering. First I heard Dervis Efendi. The poor man was frantic:

“Impossible, madam, impossible without asking first! They're in the middle of an official meeting!”

A sharp voice responded in a barbed retort:

“I know all about their meetings—out of my way!”

Apparently Dervis Aga was imploring her.

“I said out of my way, you brute!”

Now there was no doubt left in my mind: It was my aunt. It'd
been twenty-four years, but I still recognized her voice. I was pinned to my chair. There was no way out.

The door flung open and my aunt stormed into the room, clutching a pile of papers and a great suitcase of a purse under her arm, furiously brandishing her umbrella above her gray head, itself embellished with such extravagant black plumes that it was more ostentatious than an eagle. She seemed more awesome and otherworldly than when she returned from the cemetery in Merkezefendi. Her heavily powdered face was contorted by rage, and her kohl-lined eyes flashed like lightning. Jewelry dangled from her wrists, her fingers, her neck, her ears. Her beige raincoat—an Ottoman cloak by another name—billowed as she entered, as if she were flying. If not for the circumstances, I would have burst out laughing. We all rose to our feet—that is, all but Halit Ayarcı, who remained calm and still in his chair, blinking at her as if to say, “Well, what have we here?”

“A meeting, now, is it? A meeting about what, then?”

Then she saw me.

“You miserable good-for-nothing! You slovenly bag of bones! As if what you'd done before was not enough, you let them claim in the papers that I am a relative of yours? Hah!”

I dodged the first blow of her umbrella, which crashed down instead on Lazybones Asaf's shoulder. The second smashed the enormous crystal top of Halit Ayarcı's desk, breaking the umbrella, too.

“You shameless, impertinent trickster! So your strumpet of a wife says she forgives me, eh?”

“Please, Auntie . . .” And before I could say “for the love of God,” the lower end of the umbrella landed directly on my nose.

I felt warm liquid run down over my upper lip. Inspecting it with my fingers, I saw it was blood.

“Serves him right! Oh, just you wait and see. Oh, that's nothing . . .”

And just as she was about to descend upon me, she stopped—shaken, perhaps, by the sight of blood, or maybe because she had used up all her strength. She was trembling and seemed on the verge of collapse.

Halit Ayarcı slowly rose to his feet. Quietly he stepped around the table, as if receiving a newly arrived guest, and, placing his hand on my aunt's shoulder, he gestured for her to sit down in the seat next to his. He placed her purse and papers on the table whose glass top had been shattered into a million pieces.

“May I assume I at last have the honor of meeting Zarife Hanım?”

My aunt was deathly pale. But her anger had not yet abated. With spittle spraying from her lips, she barked, “That's right. Zarife Hanım, aunt to this good-for-nothing!”

Maintaining his cool and genial air, Halit Ayarcı said, “And I am Halit Ayarcı! The director of this institute.”

This was enough to send my aunt back into a rage.

“Aha! So all these tricksters have a ringleader, eh? And tell me, then, what exactly does this institute do?”

And looking me straight in the eye she added, “Not that it surprises me to see a slovenly creature like my nephew involved in such nonsense!”

Halit Ayarcı turned to me, and my aunt continued:

“Like father like son. The man did nothing but scrounge after this and that. But what more could you expect from a man addicted to gambling? And now he rides horses and plays tennis! Oh please, he can't even tell a horse from a donkey! And then you go and allow them to print my name in the papers! Since when has this oh-so-forgiving man been married?”

She turned to Halit Ayarcı.

“But you, sir, you seem like a decent human being. How did you get mixed up with a lowlife like him?”

Still exuding graciousness, Halit Ayarcı replied: “You are speaking out against an official organization! What a shame! We are working to the best of our abilities to provide a public service.”

“Service? And just what kind of service is that? You're going to regulate clocks, now, are you? You think I'll believe that? I am Zarife the Veil Shredder, not one to be so easily deceived by such words!”