The mayor had no objection whatsoever. Thus bearing this accepted truth in mind—for he too seemed to have been able to overcome material restrictions through the application of willpower alone—he continued to remind the esteemed personage, in the most amenable manner possible, always acknowledging his interlocutor’s ideas as true, that a project as expensive as this could never be realized without financial support, and that, as it was willpower to be expended in the process, it would be a very expensive project indeed. In my opinion the mayor was right. When unemployed, I’d had to spend so much of this prized commodity—that is to say, my willpower—just to get by, so much so that my reserves had long since gone dry. Perhaps this explains why for months I was like a football bouncing around Halit Ayarcı’s feet.
Halit Ayarcı remained detached throughout this exchange. Perched on the corner of his desk, he looked about the room with calm indifference, as if taking pity on the time wasted in such frivolous debate. I never knew that boredom could be so lofty and noble. He waited for the conversation to finish as another might wait for a cloud of dust blown up by a gust of wind to settle. His look seemed to say, “I know just when to intervene. But first you’ll have to decide for yourselves! I can’t help you overcome your personality flaws. I can but sit here hopelessly and find a way to tolerate them. In any case, you’ll eventually come around to where I’ve been all along.” No one could have displayed such patient understanding with greater poise.
At last the esteemed personage made his decision:
“There’s no need to worry about the finances. We have already taken the first steps, and now we must make all necessary sacrifices. I would only like to emphasize the importance of being as economical as possible.”
The mayor thanked the great man for his simple wishes with a sentence that observed the meandering rituals we had first noted in his exchange with our own leader on the occasion of his first visit. Halit Ayarcı chose this moment to rise from his desk, abandoning his role as observer to say:
“When we do attain greater capacity, we plan to publish a very important work that is already written!”
Oh no, there was no way I could ever be like this man! There was no way I could ever attain such mastery.
“So you have something ready for publication? So fast!”
“First, we have quite a substantial study. A book my friend Hayri Bey has devoted most of his life to. It is a source of great happiness to us!”
The quick-thinking mayor took this opportunity to introduce me properly.
“No one knows more about the history of our watchmakers than our friend Hayri Bey. He has a capital understanding—not just of timepieces but of the philosophy that underpins them.”
Now all eyes were on me. By any legal definition, this was a classic case of deliberate misrepresentation. Caught red-handed at the scene of the crime . . . Oh, good God! If only I could escape. But why? Never before had I been the subject of such rapt attention.
“What is your book called, Hayri Beyefendi?”
The question sent me tumbling down a hill in the dead of the night, grasping anything and everything to stop my fall, until Halit Ayarcı answered on my behalf:
“It is a study of Ahmet Zamanı Efendi—The Life and Works of Ahmet the Timely.”
“Ahmet the Timely? Never heard of him . . .”
“The eminent seventeenth-century scholar. He lived during the reign of the Mehmed IV, our golden age.”
“What was his claim to fame?”
“He was the most important clock smith of his time. In fact they even say he discovered rabia calculations before Graham. Hayri Bey was the pupil of Nuri Efendi, a man who came directly from the school of this clock smith and religious time setter.”
Once again all eyes turned to me.
“Have you finished writing your book?”
Now it was my turn to speak. It was the least I could do. Halit Ayarcı had taken me this far. The rest was up to me. I knew what I had to do.
“To be honest, no, not yet. That is to say, there are a few remaining issues, but it’s nearing completion. In fact it’s practically done.”
Once again Halit Ayarcı shook off his indifference:
“I imagine we’ll have it ready by this coming April.”
Then turning to his guest, he said:
“This April will be the hundred and eightieth anniversary of the death of Ahmet the Timely.”
He did the calculations in his head.
“Yes, that will make exactly one hundred eighty years.”
“That means we could mark the occasion with a ceremony worthy of it?”
Halit Ayarcı left the ball in the mayor’s court.
“That is Halit Bey’s intention, sir,” the mayor said. “Though it could prove difficult for Hayri Bey.”
“An opportunity not to be missed. We can make it part of the institute’s official opening, can’t we, Hayri Bey? It would only add to the magnificence of the occasion.”
Halit Ayarcı rejoined the conversation once more.
“I had anticipated an opening ceremony in the new building,” he said.
For the first time both parties objected.
“Oh no, no, it’d be too late then. Besides, we can always have a ceremony for the inauguration of the new building. The more such ceremonies the better!”
The esteemed personage looked at me again:
“Hayri Bey, this book must be finished by the end of February. I want the completed book from you by then, and this is an order. It’s just not right for us to have neglected such an important person from our past. Recognize the importance of the work you are doing and work accordingly. And remind me of the matter of publication . . .”
“Right away, sir. It’s already in my project submission.”
And Halit Bey added:
“It’s just that the actual name of the work isn’t specified. I’ll add it to a supplementary list.”
I had never known anyone by the name of Ahmet the Timely. In fact this was the first time I had ever heard the name. Oh, dear Lord! Why didn’t you just give me a meager salary instead of turning me into someone else’s lie? Indeed this was what I now was. I had become a confabulation and the term of my sentence was indefinite; my life was presented to me in daily installments like a serial in a magazine.
The great man kept returning to Ahmet the Timely.
“An important discovery,” he said. “But how can it be that he’s still unknown?”
I answered without haste, in the most persuasive voice I could muster, so as not to appear to be making it up on the spot.
“It’s a known fact, sir, that our predecessors perceived fame as a catastrophe. And the sage of whom we speak died at a very young age—he was forty-two or round about there, I suppose . . .”
“Split figures way back then . . . Discovered by one of our own?”
All at once I couldn’t breathe. I was flush out of inspiration. The facts such as they were seemed self-evident. But Halit Ayarcı was in the room:
“And why not, sir?”
But instead of continuing he looked down at the enormous palm of his hand firmly pressed down on the glass tabletop.
“That period, was it an extremely important time? We know so little about our forebears . . .”
“The age—it was an extremely important age. There was of course a tremendous interest in the mechanical. Almost everyone was busy inventing things, in ways great and small. People were flying from one minaret to the next.”
His eminence turned to me once again.
“What kind of man was he?”
Halit Ayarcı was fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. This meant it was all up to me now. I rallied all my courage and strength. “Well, he was a patron saint!” But who was the patron saint of liars? I wondered.
“He was a tal
l man, fair but with a brown beard and black eyes. He had a slight lisp when he was a child, but they say he overcame the impediment with the application of willpower. Well, that is to say, that’s what my late master Nuri Efendi told me. He had a number of peculiar quirks of personality. For example, though he grew a variety of excellent fruit, he ate nothing but grapes. And he didn’t eat either sugar or honey. He was a member of one of the Mevlevi Sufi lodges, the son of a rich man, but very well received in his lifetime, being opposed to the custom of taking more than one wife . . .”
“So he was a modern man! Practically one of us!”
“More or less . . . He loved the color yellow. Indeed my master Nuri Efendi told me he wore a yellow robe and a yellow fur coat, though it was not the fashion at the time. ‘Yellow is the color of the sun,’ he would say, or so they say. I have done research into this, but I still haven’t tracked down the source of his conviction.”
The mayor and the esteemed personage beamed with delight as I said all this. Ah, the magic of little details . . . Just a few personality traits, a few snippets of conversation, and there you have a full life before you. This could explain why our ancient forefathers read only poetry!
“Did he have a profession or something of that sort?”
I couldn’t stop here, and it was too late to turn back; I had to carry on whether I liked it or not, dreaming up new details as I went along.
“He was the muezzin in a little mosque in Çengelköy. But they drove him out because of his ideas about marriage, so he created a selamlik in his own home and invited people to come for evening prayers. He recited the call to prayer directly from his own window!”
Halit Bey turned back to me:
“Didn’t you mention that he corresponded with Western mathematicians through a Venetian contact?”
“That’s right, but nothing has been proven. If only that tome hadn’t been lost by the Nuruosmaniye Library . . .”
The great man was flabbergasted.
“Truly an important discovery . . . A man of such . . .”
In an expert intervention, Halit Ayarcı made the story a little more believable.
“It seems to me that he must have been a disciple in the Çelebi circle—there’s really no other possible explanation.”
This explanation satisfied both gentlemen. Pleased that the matter had been settled so smoothly, the mayor suggested a tour of the office.
This was more or less the same tour he’d taken two months earlier. Yet now our office was a little larger, and as the esteemed personage was far more important than he, the mayor was careful to reflect that fact in his degree of fastidiousness. The tour lasted two hours. The man paused in front of nearly everything in the office and picked up almost every available object, turning it over and over again in his hands, inspecting each piece from all angles before replacing it. He peeked into each and every one of our empty notebooks, almost meditating over the diagrams on the wall.
At one point he turned to me, as he tried to unsheathe one of the typewriters, and asked:
“Do you know how he died?”
“Unfortunately not, sir . . . but . . .”
“Shall I venture a guess? Let’s see if I get it right. Diabetes,” he said. “I’ve got it too, so I should know.”
Of course no one asked why both men should be afflicted by the same illness. Why would we? Indeed why even doubt such a thing at all? Everyone eventually died of some type of mortal affliction, so naturally Ahmet the Timely had died of one too. What difference did it make if he died of diabetes or a bout of boredom? It was much more important that the esteemed personage should show goodwill and a collaborative spirit. All of us accepted his idea as highly possible, without a moment’s hesitation. I even went so far as to give it a mild stamp of approval:
“Yes, sir, it’s highly likely, considering the man ate nothing but grapes.”
Then he looked at his watch. It was a beautiful, gold-encrusted Longines. “I’m tired,” he said. We were all tired, which is why the coffee Dervis Aga brought in for us, as we stepped into Halit Ayarcı’s office, was so well received. In fact the great man seemed not at all bothered that it contained almost no sugar.
After coffee we went on to discuss the matter of personnel, in much the same way we had done previously. Then came the ritual of congratulation. This time the golden platter passed back and forth between the mayor and the great man until Halit Bey abruptly raised his arms and popped it onto the latter’s lap, like a baby boy in swaddling clothes. My dear benefactor then closed the matter:
“Had I not put my trust in your kind favor, I’d never have considered such an undertaking. I couldn’t possibly thank you enough. And I am delighted that you have offered me the chance to serve you in this capacity.”
This was what he did throughout the entire affair: he spoke only at the most crucial moments, coaxing all in attendance to accept his wishes, without actively seeking acquiescence; and now he was saying that the very foundation of the enterprise was in fact the great man’s, thus making it clear that any further discussion was pointless.
But a man of his experience would never be so foolish as to leave this great institute entirely in our hands.
“I’ve had this institute in mind since the very beginning. It’s as much mine as it is yours . . . Of course the mayor will be here to assist you . . .”
He complimented me once more as he left:
“I’d like a copy of the book. You will finish it, Hayri Bey?”
And pinching my cheek, he spoke once again of his high expectations. Leaving the office, he reaffirmed his previous command:
“Distribute those slogans! As soon as possible, and with as broad a reach as you can manage.”
At the top of the stairs, he turned to the mayor, whereupon I heard him whisper, “Just what are these ‘split figures’?”
Halit Ayarcı turned to me after they left:
“I don’t suppose you’ll doubt our work anymore.”
“I suppose not,” I said. “So the institute will be officially established. If only we knew what we were to do.”
“How can you still not know? Why, we’re going to regulate watches and clocks.”
“Yes, but how? With such an overstaffed organization . . .”
“We’ll find a way. Everyone will have to come up with work based on the name of the position we give them. Once we’re all set up, I’ll send a memo to all our friends asking them to do just this. And naturally they will. They won’t just sit there idly . . .”
With his hand on the doorknob he asked:
“When will the book be done? I mean, how long will it take you to finish?”
“How will I ever write such a book?” I cried. “And about a man who never even existed!”
Halit Ayarcı furrowed his brow. It was the first time I saw him truly angry.
“What do you mean, a man who never existed? You were just talking about him. Didn’t he live during the reign of Mehmed IV? Didn’t he like the color yellow? ‘The color of the sun,’ as he used to say . . . You even know that he was a member of the Mevlevi lodge. It is widely accepted that he worked on the Graham calculations and that he died of diabetes. Oh no, my good friend, I will not brook this sort of sabotage. This institute will be a success. Everyone will uphold his responsibilities. And this is your first!”
“That’s all well, but all this is nothing more than nonsense. I made it all up!”
He suddenly grabbed me by the lapel:
“You will write the book! Otherwise you will step inside and write your letter of resignation! I shall not be betrayed by my closest friend at this institute in which I have so much vested time and effort. You yourself were just speaking about the man, and now you’re saying he never existed?”
“I never said the name Ahmet the Timely.”
“But you said Nuri Efe
ndi. What’s the difference?”
Then suddenly he laughed, perhaps because of the sour expression on my face.
“Anything with a name exists, Hayri Bey!” he cried. “So, yes, Ahmet Efendi the Timely exists. He exists in part because we want him to. Indeed our illustrious friend desires the very same. Don’t worry. Just get to work. Now, what progress have you made on the personnel issue? They’re giving us free reign. Where’s your list?”
A little disgruntled, I said, “I hardly know anybody.”
“Well, find them, then.”
“I have no relatives.”
“Everyone has relatives.”
“Perhaps, but none that I know. I don’t know where they are. Should I advertise in the papers?”
He smiled again.
“Ah, Hayri Bey, Hayri Bey,” he said. “You are truly wearing me out. I just haven’t been able to accustom you to these things. No, there’s no need for an advertisement. We’ll just wait a little and see. They’ll come. I suppose it’s time now to invite Sabriye Hanım and Selma Hanım.”
When I stepped back into my room, I saw that Zehra was there waiting for me. She wanted to ask me if she could leave. She looked so happy and beautiful in her new dress. She’d decorated her room in our new apartment so tastefully. At last she was getting on with Pakize. There hadn’t been a fight at home since my wife started treatment for her thyroid gland. Ahmet had put on six kilos in three months. I told my daughter she could leave and that she could take tomorrow off if she wanted to. Instead of thanking me, she simply curtsied and left. I put my head in my hands and began to think things over. No, there’d be no letting up. Even though I was safe now in this labyrinth of lies, I still knew that everyone could see the undeniable and overwhelming truth. The Time Regulation Institute had saved my life.
Halit Ayarcı had brought prosperity to our home. As I was thinking all this over, the telephone rang. It was Halit Ayarcı, speaking in a calm, collected voice that gave no hint of our tense discussion earlier.
“Tomorrow I’ll bring you a few history books—these should help you with your work on Ahmet the Timely. You’ll see just how easy it’s going to be.”