The Time Regulation Institute (22 page)

Although I cannot say I ever fully accepted Halit Ayarcı's many ideas about work, I can concede that his diagnosis of the people at the coffeehouse was quite astute. For indeed here life was suspended. And the people inside never considered unlocking the door and stepping out; they stood forever with one foot on the threshold. The tiniest disturbance could serve as an excuse to escape, or to maintain a sense of freedom. But what were they running away from, and why? Did they not have the power to resist? Or were they truly estranged from the world around them, detached from life itself? No, the coffeehouse offered something more along the lines of a sedative, something akin to opium.

But without a doubt, personal interests were always the first priority in the coffeehouse, and when personal interests came to the fore, all the rules changed. There were daily scuffles over money, endless calculations and clandestine conversations that could last for weeks. We didn't need to witness such things to understand what was going on. We could get a clear idea of the situation just by talking for half an hour to the owner, or to a party who was directly involved, or to someone who knew the truth behind the affair. These schemes, conspiracies, and misunderstandings most often finished in ferocious quarrels that cast even our most mild-mannered friends in a different light. Thus illuminated, they reminded us that they were people
obsessed with the petty calculations of their personal accounts, who could follow the journey of a ten-lira bill with peevishly rapt attention—supremely avaricious and terminally conniving.

Among the patrons were two friends as inseparable as newborn twins, who always ate and drank together; but one day they would come to blows over a money matter, and suddenly all pretense of brotherhood and equality would vanish as one became the master and the other his slave: this unfortunate shift in the balance of power would last for days, even months. Sometimes it would happen without so much as a dispute. One of the two would have a windfall, and the new dynamic would drop into place without fanfare. Or some other grueling episode would effect a new balance. But then something unexpected would again disrupt the new order.

Once we watched as the two regulars tucked themselves away in a corner of the coffeehouse where they remained for days. The second time we saw them, they were with a shabbily dressed man. And on the third day a rather smartly dressed, well-heeled gentleman joined the party, and from that day on these four were inseparable. They convened in the coffeehouse several times a day for private discussions, or one would drop in to leave a message for another. Then each began carrying a briefcase. This all started toward the end of winter. With the arrival of spring, the shabbily dressed man appeared in flashy new attire. He was now a suave and sophisticated Efendi, his gaze perspicacious and his smile firm and steady. This man who just a few months before had slipped almost like a ghost through the crowd now paraded about the coffeehouse, greeting everyone left and right as if he were selling radios or refrigerators. It was around then that he took to coming and going in a private car. He spoke of his “chauffeur,” or rather “our chauffeur,” sometimes softly and with deference, and sometimes with impatient rage, depending on the occasion, but never without reminding us of his social class and its attendant privileges or drawing our attention to the status that only vast expense and a great many cylinders and miles per hour could confer.

Every age, every way of life, has its own disposition, its turn of mind and hard, undeniable truths. An example, without a doubt, is the word “chauffeur,” a word that speaks of refinement, superiority, society, civilization. Have you ever noticed how the first syllable is like a kiss while the second seems to retract what those pursed lips have left hovering in the air? It is one of the most prized acquisitions in the Turkish language. Say it with whatever accent you like: its meaning remains unmistakable.

By the beginning of summer these three had finally disappeared. And then the rumors began to circulate: it seems that with the aid of a crafty lawyer well versed in financial affairs, these friends of ours had managed to attach themselves to a highly complicated inheritance case initiated by a poor fellow who considered himself the rightful heir. Now they were falling over themselves trying to entertain this man, who had, thanks to their efforts, come into a splendid fortune.

After we learned all this, there was no end to the daily updates, sometimes brief and sometimes elaborate and detailed; from the gravity of our tone, one might have thought we were sending out bulletins on the movements of a star and its orbiting satellites. It was as if all the beaches and secret pleasure spots of Istanbul had been shifted to our very neighborhood, or even our very midst, unveiling secrets through glass doors or windows with their toile curtains drawn. And we would hear of innocent young girls, beautiful girls, the kind known by sobriquets taken from the poetic and imaginary lexicon of the previous generation, to aid their ascent into the middle class; these fair creatures emerged from our lukewarm cordials and lemonades before removing their clothes before our very eyes. Every new day brought cruder and lewder tales of summer revelry; they continued until the autumn rains.

With our flannel vests stuck to our sweat-drenched backs, we rubbed this way and that against our chairs to soothe our summer rashes, but once inside these stories we bathed in cool, moonlit waters, made love in dimly lit beach cabins, and locked horns like billy goats among the trees on windswept hilltops. Then there were the stories of the bars in Beyoglu: now we
were treated to half-naked women driven out of all parts of Europe by a succession of financial crises, peeling off their bathing suits and underclothes to the heartrending wail of a saxophone solo and dolling themselves up in jewels and fur coats—which is to say that they put them on after stripping themselves of all other attire for our benefit.

There was one night when Emine relinquished all concern for frugality, agreeing to step out for an evening of entertainment without first considering the state of Ahmet's shoes or Zehra's blouse, and it was then that we heard of the fair-skinned blondes and brunettes about whom, Emine exclaimed, in her eternal naïveté, “Good gracious! They're angels, not humans.” Like pureblood Arab mares they pranced into the little domain of our coffeehouse, dancing the fox-trot or writhing their way through a tango, their loosened hair thrashing against their hips, and cried out in breathless triumph as we uncorked imaginary bottles of champagne in our minds, thus drowning out the slap of backgammon pieces in the background.

By midwinter these extravagant parties came to an abrupt end. And the camera swiveled back to our coffeehouse. One night the four men met in the coffeehouse. They looked exhausted and rather agitated. First they had a hushed discussion in a corner; title deeds and receipts were pulled out from dossiers and promptly returned. Then, without warning, their voices rose and words like “disgrace,” “cretin,” and “trickster” cracked in the air like a coachman's whip. Fists were shaken menacingly and threats delivered: “I'm going to show you, yes I will!” Then all at once they were on top of one another. Eventually the heir and his two friends drove the lawyer right out of the coffeehouse. Pompous and supercilious, the lawyer had shown little interest in making our acquaintance when he first came onto the scene; now he could drag himself out of the mud without our help. As he wiped the blood off his cheek, he cursed like the unsavory brute he was. His spectacles had been smashed in the scuffle, so I had to pick up his hat myself and stuff it back onto his head.

Two weeks later the very same dispute sprung up between
the heir and the two friends. This time it was the benefactor's turn to be relegated, in similar fashion, to the curb. Yet the result of that evening's fracas was not what we had expected. The following morning the two remaining friends decided to air their troubles to the entire coffeehouse, and within a few days their complaints had traveled so far as to reach the highest star in heaven. No doubt they had had quite a jolly year together, but now there was nothing left to show for it. Somewhere along the line the heir had managed to divest the two friends of all their legal rights via a rather complex business arrangement; he had even succeeded in appropriating one friend's family home as well as the profitable business that the other friend owned somewhere—who knows where. Both were now penniless. And to top it all off, the friend ousted from his profitable business had fallen madly in love with one of the girls who'd been coaxed into their pleasure dens, thus ensuring her fall from grace.

None of this stopped the heir from sitting down with us one day, wearing the world's most serene and cloying smile. He spoke in private with the coffeehouse proprietor for nearly two hours. As he listened to the heir, the proprietor grew increasingly angry, the blood racing to his head. The very next evening there was an extended backgammon game with the former owner of the profitable business. The heir shook the dice ferociously in the palm of his hand before hurling them onto the board, and then, his face as innocent as a child's, he leaned over the board as if he might actually dive in after the bouncing dice and clapped his hands in delight every time he rolled double sixes. Two weeks later we heard that the bankrupt former owner of the profitable business had married his paramour. Then three months later—miracle of miracles—a baby was born. The joyous news sparked raucous discussions in the coffeehouse, and with a majority vote the child was given the name Potpourri.

With all its unexpected developments and digressions, this episode kept us entertained for months. But then something else happened, and it was quickly consigned to the shadows. Two Bulgarians had come to Istanbul in search of a treasure
that had been buried in some village in Thrace during the Balkan Wars. Who had given these men the address of our coffeehouse? What had led them to us? Needless to say, a committee was formed that spring, after which camping supplies fit for a North Pole expedition were procured and a little steamboat rented for the journey. Within two weeks, the area in question had been subjected to an exhaustive search. Those who stayed behind followed each new development in eager anticipation. The size of the fortune changed from day to day. It began at ten thousand pieces of gold, descended to five, then shot up to twenty before finally peaking at a hundred thousand. Quite possibly the entire summer would have carried on like this had it not been for the local council, which finally intervened, thank God, putting an end to the search. When the expedition returned, an argument broke out over the costs incurred. But calm was soon restored when one of our acclaimed historians began a riveting recitation of the
battle of Holy Ali, a performance that lasted nearly three hours. That was one of the most emotional evenings the coffeehouse has ever known. Though Emine was unwell at the time, I accepted, instead of going home, Dr. Ramiz's rather uninspiring offer of rakı and a few simple mezes.

That night we lost the two Bulgarians, but a Swiss-German orientalist arrived to fill their shoes. How happy the miserable man was to have stumbled upon a community as high-minded and intellectual as ours. His face was as yellow as a potato, and a broad smile split it into two halves that seemed incapable of ever reuniting. His poor Turkish prevented him from following discussions and becoming a close friend, but he certainly found us at just the right time: a week after his arrival his money ran out, and the community took him on as its ward. Then he decided he could earn a living as an architect. So he set up his office at a table on the right side of the coffeehouse, where he negotiated with customers and constructed scale models with matchboxes, making the necessary alterations before offering the final plans, all under the attentive eye of the regulars. There couldn't have been an easier or more practical way of running a business.

He carried on his work like this for four whole years. No architect could have been more patient, thoughtful, or attentive to the needs of his clients. If a client asked, “Now, what if we place these two boxes here?” Dr. Mussak would close his eye and think for a moment before knocking down his model building and starting again from scratch. It was then that I understood the vast difference between designs drawn up on paper and those realized in solid materials of three dimensions. As his work was conducted out in the open, for all to see, it was not just the coffeehouse proprietor but also his customers and even the waiters who were involved in the process; we all offered suggestions, and Dr. Mussak would hear us out with unflagging interest, on many occasions even agreeing with us. I don't really know who invented cooperative housing, but clearly this friend of ours had discovered cooperative architecture. Sadly, a freak accident put a sudden end to his work: Our dear friend forgot to install stairs in a three-story house he had constructed near the Ibrahim Pasha Fountain in Süleymaniye. Once the scaffolding was taken down, it became clear that the three floors were not separate so much as completely cut off from one another. Even the enormous villa that Dr. Ramiz used to illustrate the configuration of the conscious and subconscious minds in his lectures on psychoanalysis at the Department of Justice Medical Facility seemed somehow more logical and correct—and while its cellar and attic were complete, the first floor was either empty or unfinished.

But allow me to say this: these two buildings—which at the time utterly confounded me, being beyond my comprehension—these two buildings, along with the models Dr. Mussak built out of matchboxes, later proved extremely valuable to me, for when they decided to commission a new institute building, I rejected all proposals and took on the job myself. Drawing on what I had learned from these two men, I created the acclaimed institute building so admired by the public. In due course I shall discuss the building in more detail; after all, for three years it was a topic of intense debate all over the world. But for now suffice it to say that this building, whose second floor was left unfinished like some kind of covered terrace—it contained
nothing but structural pillars, an elevator, and a cavity where the staircase should have been—was directly inspired by the house in Süleymaniye and the aforementioned villa as described to me by Dr. Ramiz.