The Time Regulation Institute (17 page)

This was of course for my benefit. I was speaking directly from the heart and only could think, “Oh, if he shows enough interest, we'll go back to my home where I'll fill my eyes with the sight of Emine pumping water from the well in the courtyard, and I'll wash my face with its waters and sing children's songs with Zehra . . .”

“Didn't you say it was broken?”

“Broken? Just in need of a little repair!”

He thought for a moment:

“Yes, of course, that must be it . . .”

But what was it that must be? I couldn't quite understand what he meant. Nuri Efendi said a watch or clock should always be in working order, in fact it should never stop at all. I shrugged my shoulders. When would our conversation return to my present situation? Perhaps never. After many hours had passed, Dr. Ramiz moved the subject to my father. And after my father, it was my mother, and after my mother, Nuri Efendi. He was curious to know about all my acquaintances. And then he zeroed in on the story of the mosque that Ahmet the Signer had never found the wherewithal to build.

“Was this mosque discussed often at home?”

“No,” I said. “Or at least not very often. Whenever my father had the slightest hope of a little money coming his way, he might bring it up. Otherwise he'd never let anyone even mention it. Actually the clock reminded him of the mosque, so he harbored rather hostile feelings toward it.”

“Which clock?”

“The big one.”

“You mean the Blessed One? But why don't you use its proper name?” he scolded me. “When something has a name, it should be addressed with that name.”

Saddened that I had overlooked this simple truth, and delighted that he had discovered a new aphorism, I let the
discussion return to the Blessed One. The doctor presented me with a steady stream of questions, and I explained everything as best I could remember, innocent of what lay ahead:

“One night we were all sitting together at home when suddenly the clock began to chime. My father flew into a rage. ‘Enough!' he shrieked. ‘You know just like everyone else that I'm broke. It's simply impossible right now. We can barely get by as it is. Things are not like they used to be. Why do you keep harassing me?'”

“He said all this to the Blessed One?”

“Yes, I mean, I suppose so . . . I don't know!”

“Yes, it must be . . . A very interesting case indeed . . . Extremely typical, but, then again, just as rare. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed . . .”

The man was thanking me for having gotten myself into this sorry state.

“And those were the man's very words, right?”

His attentions and intentions were evident from head to toe as he peered into my face. “I will most certainly write a report about this for the congress . . . Now, tell me again what you just said a moment ago?”

I went over the episode again.

“This is a rare case of tremendous significance—one might almost call it a taboo encircled by a web of complexes. But similar cases have been documented.”

And he told me how infertile women on a Javanese island, or some such place, were in the custom of visiting an ancient cannon that their people venerated as a prophet, tying strips of cloth to it in the hope of curing their condition. Hoping to change the subject, I said:

“We have similar stories too. The old war ship
Mahmudiye
was like that. You know, the one that supposedly had three hulls? At night the ship sailed by stealth across the Black Sea to attack Sebastopol, unloading its cannons on the bastions and returning before morning. My father remembers it well. The inside was as large as the Selimiye Barracks—”

“It was inside your house?” he asked me.

Was he daydreaming, or did he just assume I was completely out of my mind? Or even more terrifying . . .

“No, no!” I cried. “In our country. I mean, it was in Istanbul.”

And so I tried my best to articulate my thoughts clearly so as to prove I was sane.

“How could such a battleship ever fit inside a house? You would need something the size of Hagia Sophia to hold such an enormous vessel.”

“Hagia Sophia?”

I saw now where I had gone wrong.

“I mean, these are merely figures of speech,” I said. And without allowing him a chance to speak, I returned to my story.

He listened with grave attention, all the while taking notes. Then, thanking me once again, he offered his opinion:

“This, too, is extremely interesting, but rather different. Which is to say, it's something else entirely . . .”

At various points in our discussion he stopped to clean his fingernails with the pocketknife he'd taken from his briefcase. When he finished the job, I was sure he'd pass the knife to me, which really wouldn't have been all that bad, seeing as the best thing to do would be to fiddle with something, anything to keep my mind off the absurdity of my situation. But he didn't offer me the knife, instead placing it back in his briefcase before we doused ourselves in more lemon cologne. Then out came the cigarette pack all over again, and I could bear it no longer.

“Doctor,” I cried. “Why not just keep all these things out on the table?”

For a moment terror overtook me, but then he smiled softly and said, “It's easier this way.”

The doctor's conception of ease was no different from my stepmother's conception of happiness. Ah, humankind . . .

“You are quite a wonderful fellow, Hayri Bey. If only we had met in Vienna.”

And of course we went right back to talking about Vienna—Dr. Ramiz's beloved city always took precedence over my case. Then we turned to a more inauspicious topic of discussion.

“The Blessed One was quite important for your mother, wasn't he?”

“I suppose.”

“Try to remember.”

He was looking me straight in the eye again.

“Perhaps what I mean to say is, it was a quirky old clock with its own strange moods. It had a whimsical—or, rather, idiosyncratic—way of working, though perhaps that was only because it was broken. And the things it would do in its different moods—well, we found them rather strange.”

As I spoke, his face radiated joy, and he nodded eagerly as he listened. Then he read over his notes.

“Strange, quirky, odd, strange moods, idiosyncratic, whimsical, the things it could do . . . That's right, isn't it? Very interesting . . . And then?”

“That's it.”

By then I had had enough. What about my examination? He had made absolutely no mention of it.

“Yes, I'm listening. And your mother?”

“In the end she was terribly frightened of the clock. You know the type, from the older generation—she was a superstitious woman.”

“There's no such thing as old or new in our field. The most primitive person is no different from ourselves. Conscious and unconscious lives are the same anywhere. Psychoanalysis . . .”

And that was how the word I would hear so often for the rest of my life popped out of his mouth and plopped down before me like a soft-boiled egg.

He got up.

“We'll continue tomorrow. Now let's make sure you get some rest! Has your bed arrived?”

“My wife's sending it over.”

“Well, that's good, then. You'll sleep here in this room. You'd only be bored in the reformatory, and uncomfortable. I'll have a word with the director about it.”

He seemed distraught.

“They don't like me here. They never listen to what I have to say. But seeing that you are now my patient . . .”

“But, Doctor, I'm not ill. Now you know everything. And still you believe I am ill?”

Without listening to me in the slightest, he left the room.

I stood there, thinking for a while as I watched him leave.

I dashed to the sink to splash water on my face. The discussion had worn me out. The doctor had left the door open, and a cold draft blew into the room, carrying with it painful cries, sharper now and all the more horrifying. What was going on? Were these the voices of the truly insane? Or were they just patients? That man who had come in earlier had said something about opening a cadaver. I wondered if they'd started dissecting. Perhaps they were just now closing it up! The doctor hadn't shut the door behind him. Perhaps they hadn't closed the body. But why were they opening it in the first place? Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a desperate desire to flee. I fearfully stepped out of the office, heading in the direction from which I assumed we had come. As I tiptoed down the corridor, the screams grew only louder. This can't be the way, I said to myself. But it was as if the screams were drawing me to them. There were voices behind a half-opened door. I poked my head in and then instantly leapt back, my entire body trembling in fear. No, they hadn't finished closing it up. I turned on my heels, scrambled back to the office, slammed the door shut, and hunkered down in my chair.

Dr. Ramiz returned a little later, his face lit with joy.

“It's done. At first there were difficulties, but I explained that you were a patient with problems that pertain to my field in particular, and they finally agreed.”

“But, Doctor, I'm not ill. Good God! I've told you everything.”

Again he fixed his eyes on mine and stopped me, his voice full of resolve.

“You are ill. It is the fate we all share since the birth of psychoanalysis.”

“Well, then what difference is there between me and the people who are free?”

“That's another matter. I shall be looking after you from now on.”

“Well, then what's going to happen?”

“We'll treat you. Besides, yours is not a very difficult case. In such cases the diagnosis is almost tantamount to treatment. Which is to say that if we follow a tight schedule we should be able to finish in a few years.”

I was beside myself.

“A few years? I need your report, Doctor. My wife is ill. You can see clearly by just looking at her face that she's ill. You must get me out of here as soon as possible.”

“That's another matter, which we've already covered.”

Then he changed direction.

“You'll spend the evenings here, where you'll be comfortable. Don't wander about the building. Try not to think too much. And no cigarettes—they're forbidden. I promised the director there would be no smoking in the evenings.”

Not long after Dr. Ramiz had left, one of my neighbors arrived with my bedroll and some food. Emine had not been able to come herself, but she hadn't forgotten a thing.

From the following day on, Dr. Ramiz occupied himself exclusively with my case. Now he was interested in my dreams. Who knows, perhaps it was just my nature not to have many dreams? But like anyone else, I did occasionally have strange dreams that you might call nightmares. I described everything and anything I could remember.

On the fourth day Dr. Ramiz changed his method of treatment. The curtains were drawn, and I was asked to lie down on a sofa facing the wall. He no longer asked me questions but rather invited me to say anything and everything that came to mind. And so I kept speaking. I kept speaking under the impression that in so doing I was deceiving him. But the hold he had on me slowly began to tighten. It was as if my thoughts had been drawn into a dark cellar, a cellar from which it was impossible to escape. Then suddenly a word, a memory, would light up like a window thrown open in the darkness. I was walking directly toward it. When he pulled back the curtains I'd be utterly exhausted. And we continued like this, day in and day out, until the end.

My despair and frustration were driving me mad, but Emine never forgot me; she would either come to see me herself or find someone to come in her place. All in all, I became quite comfortable. I found a way to fill those previously vacant hours: I began repairing watches for the institute's staff, starting with the director's. And so the man gradually took a liking to me.
From time to time, he'd call me to his office, and we would sit and chat. He was particularly interested in the story of the Serbetçibası Diamond.

“You know, if something like that were in my hands . . . I mean, if the name's anything to go by, the thing must be the size of a walnut. And why not, Hayri Bey . . . ? Just hold on for a few more days until Ramiz Bey finishes his report.”

Just as I was stepping out the door, he called me back and fished a watch out from one of his vest pockets. Handing it to me, he said, “I almost forgot. This is my wife's. It hasn't been working properly for some time. If you could just have a look at it . . .”

The following day the warden brought me a “friend's watch.” Some of these I repaired, but on many occasions I could only diagnose the problem and prescribe a fix, as I didn't have adequate equipment at hand. In the meantime, my psychoanalytic treatment continued unabated.

I was suspicious of the light that flashed in the director's eyes whenever Dr. Ramiz's name came up in our conversations, but I never could muster the courage to ask about my situation. How could I possibly risk saying anything that might compromise a man so good-hearted? But the clock was ticking, and I truly began to despair. Emine became weaker and more desperate every day. Since my detainment, she had been bearing our terrible burden alone. I had to stop work when the trial began, and we were now on the verge of utter poverty. Ten days after I was committed for treatment, Dr. Ramiz cut me off abruptly during one of our discussions.

“So we have finished with stage one,” he announced.

He paced about the room a few times, then stopped in front of me and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Yes. I have determined your illness. What you have is a typical case of a father complex. Apparently you never liked the man. But this isn't too grave. This may in fact provide the quickest path to maturity. But you have succeeded in something far more fascinating.”