By the time we had agreed on all these details it was midnight. It was not without trepidation that I asked my son:
“Do you realize what time it is?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied. “What’s so important about it?”
“It’s the hour of your birth . . .”
Suddenly he blushed and smiled. It was clear that he was pleased. But then he furrowed his brow and looked down at his feet. I understood from this that he was afraid I might be hurt by what he had to say, but he couldn’t keep quiet for very long.
“Father,” he said. “There’s no need to be overly sentimental. We’re not yet at the point where we’d give up on each other over a difference in opinion. And I speak for all of us. But I do feel much more comfortable with how we are now.”
Perhaps it was the fear I felt hearing these words that led me to ask what was missing in the design. What was I going to do with this 720-square-meter central hall? All night I racked my brains. Toward dawn I hit upon the idea of dividing the space with a balustrade like the one from the cemetery of the Kahvecibası Mosque that I still kept at home—then at least the hall would not seem quite so vast on first seeing it. But this wasn’t enough. I needed something else to break up the space. I was flipping through one of the architecture magazines that Ahmet had borrowed from his classmates, when I chanced upon a few pictures that suggested the perfect solution. Halfway along the balustrade I would erect four large columns—as large as those enormous funnels that one saw on oil tankers facing north, east, south and west. But the hall’s glass roof had no need of such pillars. Then came my moment of sublime inspiration. If we had to have pillars, then we would also have to have a second floor. A second floor would appear to reflect the Time Regulation Institute’s very essence. We had founded the institute to generate employment for ourselves, and now, having created pillars to soften the look of the vast hall, we would give those pillars a purpose. In the early hours of the morning I was struck by the idea that allowed me to perfect the hall’s composition. The four pillars would stand in a row with a passageway running through them. To go from the right to the left side of the hall, you would pass first through the door in the Morning Pillar; then passing through the door in the Afternoon Pillar, you would climb the stairs inside the Evening Pillar; and when you at last descended through the Night Pillar, you found yourself on the other side of the hall. A visitor wishing to cross from the right side of the hall to the left would pass through Night, Evening, and Afternoon before finally exiting through the latticed door of the Morning Pillar.
After consulting Ahmet over breakfast, I was able to crystallize my idea. Ahmet reminded me of the minarets on the Üç Serefeli Mosque. Everyone knows how the muezzins at Üç Serefeli walk up three separated sets of stairs without ever seeing one another. Our pillars would achieve the precise opposite.
People moving up and down either wrought-copper staircase would be visible, as they would be encased in glass. I now saw I could arrange them diagonally across the center of the hall to disrupt the traditional four leaf clover formation. Of course all the pillars—each one a little higher than the next—would be connected by little bridges so as to allow those moving up and down them to cross.
So far so good. But I still felt uneasy about the upper-floor lounge. Far from solving our original problem, the pillars and the balustrade had resulted in our transferring it to the upper floor. Once again past experience, or really something I had picked up from all those newspapers I’d read out of boredom in the coffeehouse during the years I was unemployed, came to my rescue. Rather than create another hall, why not a roof garden of the type seen on skyscrapers? After settling on the garden, I realized I could illuminate the hall with natural light by putting a glass roof over the top of the columns and running two long, thick panes of glass along the full length of the courtyard. True, we would already have ample gardens around the building and most skyscraper gardens are on the thirtieth floor and higher, but at least our friends would be able to see a few flowers when they took a break from work, and if nothing else second-floor windows overlooking the courtyard would let in some natural light. I decided to landscape the garden in the shape of a clock, just as I had done with the garden at the front gate and the one located at the six o’clock pavilion. There would be just one difference—the roof garden would be adorned with a bust of Ahmet Zamanı. Thus our hall would be a fusion of both the traditional and the modern. Indeed this hall went on to become our crowning achievement.
I determined that only four of our pavilions would have more than one floor. The front pavilion with its large gate represented twelve o’clock, while its two neighboring pavilions, representing one and eleven o’clock, respectively, would have two floors each. Then I envisioned the twelve o’clock pavilion’s counterpart, the six o’clock pavilion, with three floors. I left the first floor of this pavilion open and undivided, just one large room graced by two broad windows that let in light from both sides. Having designed the second floor as two overlapping circles, I thought it only natural to divide the top floor into separate rooms as in the other pavilions. But instead of designing internal stairs leading from one floor to the next, I arranged for the stairs leading up to the second floor to come from the five o’clock pavilion, with those leading up to the third floor originating from the seven o’clock pavilion. Thus two sets of stairs encased in glass—one relatively shorter than the other, which was less direct—connected the six o’clock pavilion to its neighboring pavilions. And its ground floor was linked directly to the main hall.
In time these rather architecturally redundant innovations—created as an homage to Dr. Mussak, though perhaps I had in mind the allegorical house that my dear friend Dr. Ramiz had used to explain the workings of the human mind and its subconscious when I was undergoing psychoanalysis—became as celebrated as the pillars I’d designed for the main hall; and as I mentioned earlier I was made an honorary member of the International Society of Architects and was even awarded some of its medals, and if my memory serves me, I was in fact awarded medals from two different foreign governments.
Needless to say, the first floor of the six o’clock pavilion was to be our conference room. And the smaller rooms of overlapping circles on the floor above would be used for smaller meetings. The top floor was reserved for Sabriye Hanım, as a tribute to her complex involvement with the public. Indeed there was no other way to free ourselves of our friend’s relentless curiosity or her determination to subject all our affairs to needless scrutiny.
It should come as no surprise that I designed the overlapping circular rooms on the second floor to represent a clock’s inner wheels and cogs. I also designed the large round room in the four o’clock pavilion to suggest the minute hand on the face of a clock. So in the end I paid the full price for my addendum of the words “inside and out” to the competition conditions—this despite the fact that I had added these words only to challenge Halit Ayarcı and force him into an awkward situation, only to be forced to invent a compendium of absurd architectural innovations to suggest the inside and outside of a clock.
The only good thing that came out of all this was the time I got to spend with my son, Ahmet. I had truly missed having my son in my life. And so I was sad as our collaboration came to a close. We were destined to live apart. Ahmet loved me dearly but detested the way I lived and the work I was doing. We spent our last night together in front of the strange models we’d constructed out of hundreds of matchboxes, thinking of Dr. Mussak. We were making the final changes.
As my son teased me about the building and its pillars and stairs, I looked at his eyes, which were dark like grapes, and his thin lips and his stubble of a mustache slowly altering his face. I thought of all the things that made him so different, this fragile little man who was a part of me, who helped me as a friend, yet never fully opened himself up to me as he glided over so many of his thoughts. It did not upset me in the least that he d
idn’t take after me, that in his mind he rejected me. I harbored no resentment. I knew that his only salvation was in being unlike me, and that was fine by me. Indeed it even made me happy. But I wondered where he found his strength. Here was the last man in the line of Ahmet Efendi the Some Timer—what had driven him to this point? I was, nevertheless, truly surprised to find no anger or hatred between us. I took this to mean that my son had not just overcome close family ties and the comforts that came with our new wealth and prosperity but that he had also taken on a far more difficult challenge: he had overcome himself.
Suddenly my mind went back to the years after Emine’s death, when Ahmet and Zehra would wait for me on the front stoop every night, fighting tears as they embraced each other in desperation. I felt the tears well up in my eyes. If I’d had the courage, I would have told him everything and asked for his forgiveness. But Ahmet had become that lycée student who, after completing his studies with due seriousness, erases all problems from his mind, and so he left me no opening. At one point, I asked:
“How are you getting on with your sister?”
A beautiful light shone in his eyes.
“I love her very much,” he said.
Then his hand rose to his chest and gently tugged on his sweater.
“She knitted this for me.”
We fell back into our usual silence. I thought that although my son was right there before me, we had again drifted far apart in our thoughts. With the end of our shared project, the chasm between us reopened. Once again I became a man he would only visit if I was ill or by appointment.
What a terrible thought, and what an impenetrable maze. “Perhaps to become his own person,” I told myself, “he has no choice but to forget about me, yet only through him do I feel remotely like the person I should be.” Perhaps this was something he’d never understand. He’d guessed that my run of good luck would soon be over, and he was right. But I could only tremble helplessly as I watched his life unfold.
There would always be a chasm between us. Every so often we would extend our hands to each other, only to return to our separate worlds; meanwhile my heart filled with bitterness and his with hope. Such were the poignant thoughts that weighed on me during the night we spent together. When morning came, I would be a different man, as I stuffed the matchboxes into a basket and marched off to work. And perhaps the very next day I’d meet with thundering applause. Halit Ayarcı would have to pay through the nose for the pleasure he’d taken in angling for the upper hand. And that wasn’t all. Tomorrow night was my night with Selma. Once in her arms, I’d forget everything. And in two or three weeks’ time, I would perhaps sleep with that young girl Sabriye Hanım had offered me as a gift; Sabriye had been holed up in the institute for three months and was keen to cause trouble for Pakize and Selma. This was yet another way to forget, and to change. And just the other day I had quite an interesting talk with Seher Hanım over afternoon prayers. I’d left knowing I’d not be able to neglect that woman any longer. I was doomed, therefore, to sink into the bog of forgetfulness I’d claimed as my own, and to forget. Never again would I experience such joy as I did over the three months I spent working on the clock building.
All this had come of a single event. None of this would have happened had Emine not died. As if hearing my thoughts, my son stood up slowly:
“There’s no need to worry,” he said. “I’ll come visit you more often. I’m strong enough now.”
And for the first time he gave me a genuine kiss. He had accepted me for who I was. I watched him as he left the room. And I thought of the girl he might have been in love with then, or perhaps the one he’d fall in love with in the future. I thought about his fate and fortune. Every child breaks with his father at that age. But my child had done so twice. That night, as I lay in bed, I thought of our old, humble home. I kept remembering the geranium that a tiny Ahmet had planted in a broken-rimmed pot that hung from our crumbling bay window. Every now and then I shivered in my bed, but I was pleased to know that I would see him one more time, at breakfast, in the morning.
II
Halit Ayarcı greeted my project with much enthusiasm, or rather he welcomed the strange architectural model made of empty matchboxes I had constructed in accordance with my son’s entirely unprofessional designs. With each new detail I explained, his delight rose to new heights. When I finished, he leaped to his feet to offer me his heartfelt congratulations. On several occasions, I reminded him:
“But let’s not be too rash! There’s still so much to do, and so many flaws in the design. We have twelve large meeting rooms and forty smaller rooms—how shall we ever fill them?”
He wasn’t even listening.
“My good friend,” he said. “There is no need to disparage your wonderful work. You’ve done a sterling job. The hardest part is behind you. This central hall has been bothering me for the last two months now. And here you have hit upon a capital solution!”
“But that’s not at all what I mean—”
“By now we should no longer need to share all our thoughts—we should understand one another implicitly! We each made the same mistake, basing the building’s design on a pocket watch. But then we remembered the Blessed One instead and presto! Everything changed. But you have surpassed me. As for the meeting rooms and offices, there’s no need to worry. We each have plenty of relatives and then, of course, there will be the others who come recommended, not to mention the people in the regulation stations who will wish to be promoted. What I’m trying to say is that an empty office or meeting room will find its own function, much in the way that a civil servant’s function is guided by his title. And this spot you’ve set aside for Sabriye Hanım—it couldn’t be better. How happy I shall be to see our dear friend perched at the top of the building, in her very own eagle’s crag! But we’ll think about these things later. Our next step is to arrange a press meeting, to alert the public to your achievement.”
Of course a good many of my readers will remember those pictures of me posing before the outlandish and frankly grotesque model I had made out of detachable and expandable matchboxes—for why not admit now that the game was up. Even as I was applauded so vigorously for my building and its model, I was being subjected to criticism just as loud: it was perhaps fitting that I became known as something of charlatan, a cross between an amateur genius and a fraudster. But by then I’d become used to such things; those who looked kindly on innovation were enthralled with the novelty of the main hall’s four ornamental pillars and the entirely original way in which different stairs ran in and out of the different floors of the six o’clock pavilion. One friend of mine praised me lavishly in the paper almost daily: “Innovation! From top to bottom, unfathomable innovation beyond our wildest dreams! Three cheers for innovation!” Another friend praised us for “our departure from dusty classical forms.” And to quote a third commentator, who had earlier heaped me with praise for my unusual staircases and the two unnecessary bridges connecting them to the main building, the ample space left between three pavilions was only to allow for these: “As a new era of Turkish syntax dawns, a new architectural language has been given voice. Let’s see what those opposed to inverted syntax will say in the face of Hayri Irdal’s resounding success!” The fourth critic was even more ebullient. In his view I had not just designed a building worthy of inverted syntax: I had also created a work of abstract architecture. As for my matchbox model, it had a clear effect on the market. As the new architectural language took root, the state monopoly of matchmakers struggled to keep up with demand. We issued regular statements to the press that only served to add heat to the debate. And when I declared that I’d paint each pavilion a different color, the discussion lit up like a bonfire.
But still professional architects rejected my work out of hand. Such was their opposition that we had difficulty finding anyone willing to oversee construction or do so much as calculate the required amount of reinforced c
oncrete.
As I mentioned earlier, I was very much indebted to Dr. Mussak, be it for his modeling techniques or the matter of my stairs. I’d now like to pay tribute once more to this dear friend of mine, a kindred spirit; indeed I never could understand why he’d not been born in our part of the world. Surely he would congratulate me when the building was finished. He would have been proud to see the way I avenged myself against those who refused to see daydreaming as a virtue. Indeed I felt I was atoning for him, with every round of applause I received. I was more than willing to share with him the bonuses I received from the Timely Banks and the institute for my work on the new building.
So how strange it was, when it came time to begin work on our Clock Houses, and Halit Ayarcı suggested I should draw up the plans for our residential neighborhoods; despite my brilliant success with the institute building, he could not find a single friend, even among those who had formerly admired my work, who thought I was the man for the job. Even our closest friends, who for months had claimed the institute to be the pinnacle of innovation, who had seemed so very pleased with it, who had come, if not every day then at least once or twice a week, to watch the new building go up, these dear friends of mine who had dropped by on the way home to push and shove outside my office door, just to offer me their congratulations—they all protested. The most levelheaded of them cried: