Read Online A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar - Free Book Online Page A

sun. On the ground, at their feet, a street dog that had just befriended them wagged its tail and flattened its ears as it begged. From time to time, it strayed from its spot and roamed about, making the rounds, before turning back.
    Recently arrived swallows frantically prepared nests at a distance. Rapid, twittering exchanges, whose meanings escaped them, passed at the edges of the bridge and in the eaves of the coffeehouse. Now and then, a swallow, hovering with rapid wing flaps, not unlike a swimmer treading water to keep afloat, let itself drop into the void of the boundless cerulean sky, before soaring up to great heights in a vertical maneuver; then, from a point that the naked eye could no longer discern, glided downward; and just when this trajectory aroused the anxiety of its deadly follow-through, the swoop abruptly straightened along the horizon, tracing curves and spirals upon itself, and as if proving an unsolved geometric theorem, a series of abrupt and interrelated maneuvers followed one after the other, and at last, after escaping this web of its own weaving with a final flap, the swallow arrived at its frenetic and merry nest. Mümtaz brazenly observed the broad shoulders of his dulcinea, her neck, which gave her head the poise of a delicate blossom, and her narrowed eyes, which had become a line of radiance. Last May... when his world was more or less intact.
    One of the assembled texts was a divan poetry collection by the thirteenth-century mystic Yunus Emre that had been copied in an amateurish hand; the annotations, however, contained gazels by Ottoman poets from Bâkî, Nef’î, and Nabî to Shaykh Galip. Toward the end, on a few leaves, in various hands, appeared a number of remedies calling for black pepper, cardamom, rhubarb, and the like. One of them written in kermes crimson ink was entitled “Lokman Hekim’s Medicinal Taffy.” Another involved filling an onion with cloves and heating it over an open flame to make an “Elixir of Life.” The other text was a songbook: Melodic makam progressions and composers’ names were penned above the songs; all of them contained the intervals without omitting a single note or syllable; they’d been transcribed onto pink, blue, white, and yellow leaves, with the chalk lines still visible, in an orderly pointed script like tongues of fire. Near the end, some amusing couplets had been recorded. Next came a series of recorded births and deaths beginning in the year of the Hegira 1197, or A.D. 1783. What naïve attention to detail and ceremony. In A.H. 1197, Abdülcelâl, a son of the owner of the volume, after being indisposed for two days, passed away on the seventeenth night of Rebiülâhir toward dawn; thank heavens a few months later his daughter Emine was born. These personal events made for an extensive year; the same man opened a saddle-and-harness shop for Emin Efendi, his “milk brother” breastfed by the same wet nurse; as for him, he was appointed to the Kapanıdakik directorship after being passed over for years. The most significant event in the next year was the initiation of his son Hafız Numan Efendi into the field of musical arts. Their neighbor Mehmet Emin Efendi would oversee his practice. Who were these characters? Where did they live? Before lives he saw no need to pursue further, Mümtaz closed the volume.
    More peculiar was the third volume, most of whose pages were blank, giving the impression that it might have belonged to a child. Toward the middle beneath a title written in an odd and amateurish hand, indicating an illustration of an ostrich or “camel bird” in a tree, was a picture that resembled neither camel nor bird; and beneath it, a convoluted design smudged out by wetted ink. Many dates were listed here as well. But none of the writing made any sense together. Perhaps it was a workbook for practicing penmanship in script; and in all probability it’d belonged to an older man who’d learned to read and write late in