The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  Poor scandalous Ethel! It must have been the curse of all the lovers she had frittered away. As she listened flabbergasted to the dazzling words of the Mawlawi, she kicked me under the table, throwing me despondent looks begging for help. Though she sure could manoeuvre around all the ins and outs of the language of the mundane, when confronted with these spiritual abstractions she was as inexperienced and helpless as a child. After a while, she started to blame herself. She should have known this language. How she repented now turning her nose up at her grandmother’s attempts to teach her the basics of Jewish mysticism. To make up for her shortcoming, she started to read in a frenzy, devouring first the books given to her when she was a child and then others. Her increasing interest in the Kabala was a bridge she hoped would lead her to all those things her dear ney player kept prattling on about. She wouldn’t go around without at least a couple of books to hand, including, for sure, a copy of the Mathnawi. Frequently stopping by a senile bookseller in Beyazit, she parleyed with the man behind the counter in whispers, as if tracking down an arcane hand-written manuscript, and each time emerged from the store with bags full of books. So seriously had she let her heart be captured that she was ready to go anywhere and even settle wherever her lover wanted. Ethel the ugly crow, while gliding guilelessly in the sky, had all of a sudden spotted something shiny down on earth, and now wanted to grab it, whisk it away and make it totally hers. Why didn’t they wander, say for a couple of years, around the most mystical cities of the world, like Jerusalem, Tibet and Delhi, or go in search for the lost tomb of Shams? I have seen people mess their minds up but Ethel had literally lost her identity. Yet however much she tried, she could not convince her beloved to go on these exotic trips. The serene Mawlawi was as inclined towards the idea of taking a trip as a cat to the activity of taking a bath.

  Be that as it may, this young man who was so unwilling to go anywhere turned out to be too much in a hurry to change worlds. A week before New Year’s Eve that year, he was one of the four victims claimed by the bomb that had exploded in one of the garbage cans on Istiklal Avenue – an explosion for which no revolutionary organization would claim responsibility. I do not think Ethel cried so much for anyone, not even her own mother and father, though perhaps with the exception of the older brother she had lost to suicide when she was fourteen…he was the only person she might have loved so intensely…

  I got married to Ayshin two months and two weeks later. Ethel attended the wedding alone.

  A day before the wedding, she was lying down stark naked. Parading in front of my eyes all of her fat body, so big, belligerent and bulky. When her body turned into a heap of raw white meat, that hairy reddish birthmark spreading from below her neck to the top of her breasts was even more pronounced. She could have had this removed if she wanted. Just as she could have gotten rid of her body fat, fixed up her nose or nipped and tucked parts of her body like everyone else. Women as ugly as Ethel and just as rich spent everything they had on plastic surgery, cosmetics and clinics to become beautiful. As for Ethel, she had put her entire wealth into the service of her ugliness. Not only did she not try to beat her ugliness, she did not even care to spruce it up and hide it away either. The doors of the wardrobes taking up two of her bedroom walls were covered with full-length mirrors. After making love, she had the habit of stretching out on the bed lost in watching herself. At times she looked at her reflection with such desire that I wondered what she saw there. As she displayed her body, she acted less like a woman who wanted to be desired than a man desiring what he regarded. It was as if being admired meant nothing to her; her aim was simply to display with the intent to startle. Even so, while the victims of a flasher ran away screaming, those of Ethel kept coming back to her bedroom with their own two feet. There were, of course, exceptions: the Mawlawi ney player was one and so was I.

  ‘Oh sugar-plum, you’re making a gross mistake. You’re gonna regret it. I’ve sullenly accepted the very fact that from here on life won’t bring me anyone better than you and that’s precisely where your problem lies. You haven’t yet realized I’m the best you’ll ever get. Well, what’s there to be done, except to wait for you to see the truth? Keep roving around, fondle a few more asses, crumple a couple more times. Then you’ll finally pull in and admit I was right from the start,’ she had glibly stated. ‘Sooner or later you’ll hit your head against the wall, lamenting, “Why didn’t I get married to Ethel then?” Look, I mark it right here,’ she had flashed a grin as she marked a jagged thin line on the side table, making it screech with her long fingernail painted in glittering cobalt. Affixing a cigarette on her jasmine wood cigarette-holder, which she constantly lost only to replace it with a new one, she had then waited for me to light it up.

  ‘Why? Is it because you are the richest woman I’ll ever encounter?’

  I probably could not have fathomed how well-off she was even if I had the inventory of her worldly possessions. Though the rich are never able to get this, there is, in the mind’s eye of the non-rich, a threshold at which wealth gets riveted. Once that threshold is surpassed, no matter how much you go over it, it is bound to remain the same amount: a lot! Just as the folk tales of the penniless fix the wealth of a merchant in the chimerical cornucopia of the number ‘1000’, Ethel also, if you had asked me, owned a ‘thousand’ properties.

  ‘No sugar-plum! Not because I’m the richest woman you’ll ever encounter but because I’m bad. Of course, not any worse than you, but with badness there can’t be an amount, can there? Wickedness is no flour we can measure by the cup. Let me put it like this: you and I are of the same breed but poor Ayshin isn’t one of us. Okay, she may not be a good person, but she isn’t bad either. She is at most a capricious young lady; the one and only daughter of her elite family, a little too much of a straight arrow and, I should confess, at times a bit too boring and all, but certainly not bad. And do you know what the saddest thing is? As you rough her up, she’ll try to defend herself. She’ll first compete with you logically, strive to make a case; then frustrated she’ll burst into tears and end up believing she’s suffered terrible injustice. Whenever you make her miserable, shred her self-esteem to pieces, she won’t even realize that the issue at hand isn’t really what you are arguing about. You know as well as I do that Ayshin too is one of those types. The type eager to bow down before God without getting to know the devil first…’

  Ethel loved this remark and uttered it repeatedly. I suspected she had stolen it from one of her bright men – maybe it belonged to the ney player – but it suited her well. Those who were eager to bow down before God without getting to know the devil first; those who never wondered about the source of the gale of destruction breaking the fruit-filled branches and destroying the flower beds of the garden they had fortunately been born into, never to get a glimpse of the world outside; were outrageously confident that they lived in the most habitable place on the face of the earth. Not once did they worry about how many rooms or exits there were in the house they lived in, and did not, in spite of the noises they heard day and night, find it necessary to go down and unlock the old, musty door on their pantry floor. The types who think they are right basically because of the rights they were granted… Ethel was not mistaken. Ayshin was indeed one of those.

  What is so distressing is that I had frequently remembered these words during my marriage, but had not confessed them to Ethel so as not to further stroke her ego that already wandered onto the summits. Last night while we drank together, however, I was careless enough to let this already stale confession slip out. She listened to me with barefaced pleasure. When she got up I watched her huge ass sway as she wobbled to the bathroom, suspecting all the while she was aware that I was watching her big ass sway as she wobbled to the bathroom. She has the ugliest ass I have ever seen. No way can it be groped; there is no shape that it fits into. Like a gooey, soggy jelly, Ethel’s ass is less solid than fluid, if you just let it flow, it might just as well drain away. I have seen much fatter ass
es and more formless ones as well, with cellulite, pimples, wounds, hair that has grown more than necessary or in wrong spots; but all had something, one thing that turned me on. Ethel’s had not…none whatsoever…

  Once back at the table, luckily Ethel seemed to have overcome the delight of my confession as she delved again into the topic of upmost interest to her these days: the university project. At long last she let out the morsel of information she had all this time hidden from me. They had made an offer to Ayshin as well, and she had accepted. Though she knew I would never ever, even if I were desperate for money, work at the same place as Ayshin, she continued to insist as she kept looking right into my eyes: ‘Come on sugar-plum, why don’t you have faith in my word once in your life. Join us, come to this university. You can philosophize as much as you want; no one will meddle. We are ready to serve your brain professor.’

  That obscene association the word ‘brain’ assumed in the Cunt’s mouth aroused me. Bizarre as it is that even though during my marriage to Ayshin, Ethel and I had been screwing regularly, we had not once slept together since my divorce. I do not remember why we returned apart last night. I don’t even know how I got home. Maybe Ethel played a game wheeling in at the last minute, but I don’t think so, that wouldn’t be her style. At the most, she must have seen I was too crocked to wind her up and decided to drop me off home. That is more Ethel-like.

  I stretched my legs to the rails of the balcony and lit another cigarette. The brick-coloured bug remained under my foot. It had had a chance to escape but it did not. Down below on the street I noticed a skinny, swarthy woman throwing garbage bags onto the pile in front of the garden wall. Just at the same time a fuming voice roared from somewhere in the lower flats. The woman stood still for a couple of seconds and then, heedlessly, absentmindedly, as if in a dream, scampered back and hared away. This place pisses me off. I have to get out of here one way or the other. Perhaps I liken Bonbon Palace to myself – a disgruntled apartment that bitterly misses the prosperity it was once accustomed to. I need to move somewhere else but do not have the money. All throughout my marriage, Ayshin and I had maintained a division of labour, the absurdity of which I can only now comprehend. Since the house we lived in belonged to her parents and therefore to her, I paid all the other expenses. How scatterbrained of me! I do not have any money saved ‘on the side’ either. When faced with unexpected expenses and the need to pay rent, my salary shrivelled ridiculously. I could no doubt borrow some money from Ethel, but that I won’t do. Such a move would only upset the symmetry in our relationship. I’d better start making some money soon.

  Flat Number 6: Metin Chetinceviz and His WifeNadia

  ‘That’s none of your business Loretta. I tell you, none of your business.’

  ‘You are wrong honey!’ bellowed the woman with the daisies, narrowing her eyes with rancour. ‘Everything that concerns him concerns me too.’

  ‘Everything that concerns him concerns me too,’ repeated His WifeNadia, trying to pronounce the words in Turkish exactly as she had heard. The soap opera she watched was called ‘The Oleander of Passion’ and it had been broadcast every weekday afternoon for the past two and a half months. At the outset it was broadcast before the evening news, but once it had become indisputably obvious how slim its chances were of becoming a hit, the scheduling had been altered in a flash. Now in its place was aired some other soap opera, one far more ostentatious. Unlike its precursor, this soap opera had been so successful and drawn so much media attention from week one that quite an uproar revolved around it, especially when the leading actors were flown to Istanbul to sign photographs for their fans after a glitzy press conference. However, His WifeNadia was not interested in either this or indeed any other soap opera. It was only ‘The Oleander of Passion’ that mattered to her. Every afternoon at the same hour she took her seat on the divan with the burgundy patterns on a mauve background, the re-upholstering of which she constantly postponed, and watched the soap opera while simultaneously doing some other work. Depending on the day, she would have a tray full of rice or beans on her lap to sort and shell, look at old photographs in old albums, try to do crossword puzzles with her limited vocabulary in Turkish, reread the letters from her great aunt or write her a response. Yet every so often the tray would become weighty, the puzzle unsolvable and the sameness of the photographs and the dullness of the letters depressing. At such times, His WifeNadia would scurry to the kitchen to get a few potatoes and, as she watched the soap opera, would craft yet another potato lamp. Though the whole house was filled up with these lamps, she still could not keep herself from making new ones. Anyhow, given the frequency of power-cuts at Bonbon Palace, one might need a potato lamp any time.

  As to why she could not watch ‘The Oleander of Passion’ without doing something else at the same time, there were a couple of reasons behind that. Firstly, she found the soap opera so mind-numbing that she could barely bear it without some sort of a distraction. Secondly, when she kept herself busy with another task at the same time, the hidden discomfort of having become a hackneyed viewer of a hackneyed soap opera tended to diminish. Perhaps most importantly, however, by keeping busy with other things she could prove to herself how much she disparaged not only the soap opera, but also that leading actress of it, namely Loretta.

  ‘The Oleander of Passion’, like all other soap operas, was broadcast on weekdays only. However, despite the fact that all the other soaps were constantly in the public eye, via fragments from upcoming episodes and gossip from the real lives of the actors saturating the papers, not a single line – good or bad – had yet appeared about either ‘The Oleander of Passion’ cast members in general or Loretta in particular. It was not only the newspapers that remained so indifferent on this matter. Among the acquaintances His WifeNadia had made in Istanbul, there was not a single person who had heard of the programme, let alone become a regular viewer. It was as if the entire country had unanimously pledged to feign ignorance of ‘The Oleander of Passion’. The fact that nobody took the soap opera seriously did not by any means please HisWifeNadia. After all, for the vilification of anything to have any value whatsoever, the thing sneered at should at least be of some value for some people in the first place. Under these circumstances, it was neither gratifying nor consequential to vilify Loretta. Thus, HisWifeNadia kept her thoughts to herself. No one knew anything about her obsession with this soap opera: not even her husband…least of all him…

  Be that as it may, the fact that the papers mentioned nothing about the future episodes of the ‘The Oleander of Passion’ did not seem that awful to HisWifeNadia. There wasn’t much to pry into anyway since almost every forthcoming event, including the most imperative secrets, were already revealed in the early episodes. As such, perhaps the real riddle was less to find out what the ending would be than to find out how the already proven ending would be eventually arrived at. If there was anyone who still did not know the mysteries woven in the soap opera it certainly wasn’t the viewer but rather Loretta herself. In the fire that had erupted in episode five, she had lost not only the mansion she lived in, along with her title of a lady, but her memory as well. Ever since then, she had been struggling to recall who she was and mistaking an unknown woman for her mother. She could not even fathom that the famous physician whose photographs she kept seeing in the newspapers had once been, and actually still was, her husband. Since her condition had worsened in the ensuing episodes, she was now about to be checked into a clinic – a move destined to complicate things further given the fact that her physician-the-husband/husband-the-physician happened to work there.

  Deep down HisWifeNadia was fond of being so well informed about all these things that still remained a mystery to Loretta herself. Whenever the latter made a wrong turn failing to spot the truth behind the intricacies she faced, HisWifeNadia was secretly thrilled. At such moments, her life and the one in the soap opera would sneak into one another. Between these two entirely dissimilar universes it was Loretta who stood
out as the common denominator, the passageway from one to another. Physically, she was there in the life of the soap opera; and vocally, she was here in the life of HisWifeNadia. Ultimately, there were two distinct women around: the Latin American actress who played Loretta on the one side, and the Turkish speaker who voiced Loretta on the other. Though none of them was named Loretta in real life, in her mind HisWifeNadia had identified both with that particular name. She had no problem whatsoever with the first Loretta, the Latin American actress being of no concern to her. Her foremost target was not the Loretta she watched but the one she heard. It was that voice that she had been after for so long; a voice with no face…a velvety, dulcet voice that came to life in a knobby, peach-puff kneecap… Nonetheless, since every voice required a visage and every visage a voice, as she stood watching ‘The Oleander of Passion’, the voice she heard and the face she saw would so easily blend into one another that HisWifeNadia would soon miss the target, shifting her focus from the woman doing the voiceover to the Latin American actress on the screen. Then she could do little to prevent herself from watching the soap opera with a twisted gaze; taking pleasure in the scenes where Loretta was in pain and feeling distressed whenever things went well for her.

  The Loretta on the screen was a slender brunette with jade eyes and long legs. When she cried, tears round as peas rolled down her cheeks. As for the woman who did Loretta’s voiceover, HisWifeNadia could not quite surmise what her body looked like since she had not been able to eye-her-up thoroughly on that ominous day when the two had run into each other. She must be one of those ephemeral beauties, HisWifeNadia guessed, as fleeting and frail as a candle flame. Shine as she might with the freshness of youth at the present, her beauty would be tarnished sooner or later, in five years at most. When that day arrived, she would have to pull herself together and stop going after married men. Still, five years was a long time – long enough to cause HisWifeNadia anguish, as she had to face the prospects of all the things that could happen until then.