The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  When making this arrangement, however, I had simply overlooked the fact that everything has a life cycle of its own – a hint my father knew all those years. The morning hours were not apt to hide secrets away. Not only because we mingle with others all day long or have duties to perform in full view of everyone, there is something else in daytime, intrusive and insidious, transforming the city into an open forest of unseen creatures. The moment I placed a few crumbs of secrets into a tree hollow, somebody would snatch it away. Wherever I turned my head, I saw among the branches, twigs and leaves that surrounded me hundreds of eyes dazzled by the sun; a harsh beam of light which made it impossible to comprehend who was looking from where and with what intent. In that suffocating brightness of daytime, I wobbled amidst whispers, unable to distinguish the faces behind the voices. I could sense that others caught the smell of liquor on me, and every so often my tongue stumbled at words or my mind was distracted. I could sense it all but never could I discern who around me knew of my secret and to what extent.

  It was precisely at this juncture that Ethel came and perched amidst my life with all her weight. We had not been seeing each other for two years. After losing the Mevlevi ney player and hurling enough poison to last me forever over my decision to get married to Ayshin, she had gone to the United States to settle down there with a bright, versatile Pakistani brain surgeon. Then she returned, just as suddenly and impetuously as she had departed, barging into my life fortuitously at a moment when I needed her or someone like her the most. I had forgotten that Ethel’s greatest pleasure in this life was walking with her muddy feet on the priceless carpets in the spotless living rooms of women like Ayshin. She was quick to make me remember that. It didn’t take her long to discover my addiction and when she did, she neither disparaged me, nor put me on trial, nor suffocated me with questions that already had the answers within.

  Instead she handed me an expertly drawn map – created in how many years on what kind of a life experience I still cannot fathom – so that I could wander around in the forest of bodiless eyes and faceless sounds with minimum damage. This chart of hers was so technical. It included short liquor breaks adjusted to my work hours, one shot of hard liquor hidden in fancy thermoses, tiny clues about what would suppress the smell of the particular drinks, reinforcing drugs that would help me collect my thoughts, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, artichoke tablets to appease my liver… With the seriousness and perseverance of a seasoned trainer coaching for the international games a young athlete with measly means but boundless dreams, she prepared the best possible program available under the circumstances. In fact, she did much more than that. All during those years, at every single opportunity she kept me company and drank with me.

  One of the gravest strokes of misfortune a married woman could face at a time when her husband is searching for ways to trample on the rules and prohibitions set by her is for life to present him with an accomplice in the guise of another woman. Once such a chance event occurred, I instantaneously found myself in a room filled with contorted mirrors that made Ayshin appear far more distant and Ethel much closer than they actually were. Perhaps, however, the outcome was not as clear-cut as I believed it to be. After all, when Ayshin initiated divorce months later, the reason behind this decision was neither Ethel nor my infamous addiction.

  Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress

  The Blue Mistress had been sitting without taking her eyes off the thin, crimson stripes of peppered oil oozing from the half-eaten, half-messed-up chicken with ground walnut. There was nothing she could do. She did not even want to talk, let alone raise objections. There wasn’t much to say anyhow. She had been caught in the ultimate trap of mistresshood: children!

  Being the mistress of a married man is to know too much about what should remain unknown but not know what to do with this surplus knowledge. Mistresses are cognizant of the most hidden, most shameful secrets of certain members of the same sex who they have never met before and are probably not at all likely to meet hereafter. While spouses know little about them and are most probably not even aware of their existence, mistresses have long since gathered by the armloads all sorts of information…thorny, meaningless, morbid details… If the aforementioned have the habit of plastering their faces with cream before going to bed at night, for instance, a mistress will even know what this cream smells like. Likewise they would know the latter’s taste in clothes, their devotion to make-up, the type of mothers they were, the sort of jewellery they wore, at what time they went to bed and got up, their eating habits, unceasing curiosities, hideous obsessions, frigidities, hypocrisies, complexes, and also, what their possible reaction would be if they learnt the truth. Mistresses know all the answers without having asked the questions about these kinds of things. They do not seek confidential secrets, rather secrets come to them. They come because in order to provide their mistresses with evidence of the kind of pandemonium they live in, men who are ‘Long Time Complainers of Marriage Who Still Don’t End Marriage,’ and ‘Want Change Without any Loss’, throw about headlines each more blatantly provocative than the last, like a crummy, popular daily newspaper ends up goading itself while trying to inflame its readers’ emotions. Contrary to what spouses suppose, those who grumpily, maliciously gossip about them are not the mistresses but their husbands in person. Mistresses are just good listeners. Not only do they not make the slightest effort to learn more, but also, as long as they are confident about their power and content with their privileges, they do not even touch these armloads of unpleasant knowledge heaped onto their laps. They get to probe, pardon and protect their foes who in the meantime would not hesitate in drowning them in an inch of water.

  However, even Achilles has a heel and even on satin sheets there is a mothhole at some spot, an air hole that deflates all the power of mistresses with a hiss. From the moment they have a mistress, men who are ‘Long Time Complainers of Marriage Who Still Don’t End Marriage’ and ‘Want Change Without Any Loss’ start to love their children as if they have never loved them before. It is a sincere love and just as pathological. Just like Adam has covered his nakedness with a grape leaf, so too do the ‘LTCM’ men of the ‘SDEM’ team and ‘WCWL’ sub-team cover all their shortcomings with their love of children. As years move along and the number of mistresses increases, their fondness for their children spreads far and wide. Just like Eve was obliged to obtain herself the same grape leaf, so too are the mistresses bound to appreciate their lovers’ attachment to their children, an attachment that steadily increases in folds, getting more sensitive with each fold and acquiring immunity in the process.

  The Blue Mistress lifted the gaze she had fixated on the thin, crimson oil stripes oozing from the chicken with ground walnuts, half-eaten half-messed-up, and looked at the olive oil merchant with a weariness bordering on fury. The man’s twelve year old daughter had taken to bed with a fever. He had been snapped at by his wife when he had attempted to scold her for neglecting the child: ‘If you love your daughter so much, try not to go to your mistress tonight!’ Having been until that point confident of hiding his illicit affair from his wife, the olive oil merchant had been truly flabbergasted. A dreadful brawl had then erupted in the house and the sick child had heard everything.

  The Blue Mistress got up from her chair and gave the man a warm hug. She told him in a cruelly soft voice there was nothing to worry about, his daughter would get well soon, and her broken heart could be easily mended since the kid loved her father very much. She had uttered exactly what was expected, not a word more or less. The olive oil merchant looked at his mistress with a sour gratitude. He seemed more comfortable now that he had heard exactly what he expected to hear.

  As the Blue Mistress saw him off all the way to the door, the olive oil merchant smiled for the first time in hours. ‘Well done,’ he murmured just when about to go out, pointing at the table left behind.

  ‘It wasn’t I who made them,’ shrugged the Blue Mistress, ‘I bought it all from the market.�
�� From her voice, it was hard to tell whether she was enraged or not.

  The olive oil merchant stood still for a moment. From his stare, it was hard to tell whether he was surprised or not.

  Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba

  In the lassitude canopying Flat Number 2, entirely severing it from the world outside, Gaba snored away, each paw pointing in a different direction. Since he had curled himself not only within the serenity taking over the house but also on top of his housemate, there was no way Sidar could budge until Gaba woke up. Not that Sidar minded that. He loved to stay still without achieving anything, not even trying to, with barely any energy, feeling slightly zany and slovenly, embraced by aimlessness, next to the being he loved the most in this world…to stay just like that, simply and purely stay… He too slid into sleep.

  In a wide, weed-filled garden framed by an ornate steel railing, Sidar stood gazing at an amber-haired young girl who had wrapped herself in silvery tulles and stretched out on a chaise long. The girl looked astonishingly like one of his sisters but was more beautiful. She had been motioning him to come hither. Sidar checked Gaba sleeping away at the entrance. Though he knew only too well that Gaba should not be left there alone, he pushed open the humongous entrance gate without taking his eyes off the girl and plunged in. Though the garden was greener than it appeared from the outside, the pool at its centre was for some reason bone-dry. Bugs the size of fists wandered around in it. The girl got up smiling and Sidar suddenly saw that she was much, much taller than him. What’s more, the girl did not stop growing, as she stretched toward the sky. The shoes she wore had towering heels. The girl suddenly stumbled and while trying to recover her balance, she stomped her foot on the ground, making a noise that sounded like ‘Tock!’. ‘Don’t!’ Sidar exclaimed, but this plea of his created just the opposite response from the girl, for she started to stamp her feet like mad: ‘Tock, tock, tock!’

  ‘Stop doing that. Are you nuts? Stop it!’ Sidar yelled, worrying that Gaba might wake up. He turned back to check him, but the humongous gate with the steel railings that only seconds previously had been cracked open was both closed and now very far away. As the girl kept hopping, ‘Tock, tock, tock,’ what Sidar had feared happened. Gaba started to bark, tearing himself apart. Throwing the girl a bitter look, Sidar ran hurriedly toward the gate. At the same moment he found himself running dazedly toward the door in Flat Number 2 of Bonbon Palace. There was an ear shattering noise all around. While Gaba barked, the door jolted; while the door jolted, Gaba barked some more.

  When Sidar had finally opened the door, standing in front of him was Muhammet, proud to have made his kicks talk. The child gave him a once over from top to toe and held out a napkin-covered plate: ‘Madam Auntie sent you this.’

  Sidar rapidly rid himself of his grogginess and smiled brazenly. A joke had come true. The traditional halva that old women neighbours distributed from door-to-door had reached him just at the right time, just when he was yearning for sweets after an acid trip. Sidar and his friends had termed this among themselves: ‘Tradition infiltrating the unconventional.’ He thanked the child, stumbling over his words in delight, grabbed the plate and slammed the door on him. Having caught the smell of the recently delivered food, Gaba had stopped barking, waiting eagerly with his wet nose in the air. Sidar winked at him teasingly, lifted the napkin and stood dumbfounded. What faced him was not halva, but two floured cookies. Floured cookies with the ends slightly crushed and the powdered sugar on top spilled. Sidar’s face paled.

  He had remembered.

  Flat Number 7: Me

  As I sat on the balcony sipping my drink, ‘Why don’t you think of something to stop these folks?’ Ethel asked, grabbing the railing with fingernails painted a hue of dried apricot. Where she pointed, I spotted a headscarfed woman throwing her garbage by the side of the garden wall.

  I shrugged. It doesn’t make any difference anymore if I open or close the windows. With the weather warming up every passing day the garbage smell gets worse. If exposed to this malodour on the street, one walks faster, if in the car, one rolls the windows up. However, if the house you live in, the morning you wake up into, the night you sleep through, the walls, the windows, the doors and every direction you turn to stinks, then you are trapped. There is no way of stepping outside the yoke of smell. Every night when I return home I encounter yet another warped garbage hill by the side wall of the apartment building. Every night a brand new garbage mound awaits me comprising of stuffed plastic bags of all sizes marked with the emblems of the grocers and markets in the neighbourhood, bags with their tops tied but for some reason always with a hole or slit at the bottom, cardboard boxes tossed here and there, items that once belonged to godknowswhom, and black clouds of buzzing flies landing on and taking-off from the leaking watermelon juices and scattered scraps. Cats too… dozens of cats loom hither and thither…some skinny, some chubby, all indifferent to passers-by, bedridden in their foul-smelling kingdom, basking all day long over, inside and under the garbage bags, as their number increases incessantly, alarmingly…

  I watch the garbage hill at various hours of the day. Before noon there already is a substantial pile, which mounts further during the rest of the day. Close to dusk, two gypsies, one juvenile, other elderly, arrive with their handcarts and pick at the garbage. They load tin cans, newspapers and glass bottles into separate sacks to take them away. Life down there seems to be based on endless repetition where each part complements one another: the cats dig up what the flies have set their eyes on, the gypsies pick on what the cats have dug up, the garbage truck that enters the street every evening at the rush hour takes away what remains from the gypsies, what the garbage truck scatters, the flies, cats and seagulls swipe at once again. Within this ceaseless rotation whatever diminishes is speedily replenished, never letting that sour smell fade away.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. ‘Should I stand guard by the wall?’

  ‘Do something so drastic that they’ll never again want to dump garbage here. Come on sugar-plum, use your brain! You’ll think of something,’ she said once again finishing her rakι before I did.

  I leaned back lighting a cigarette. Oddly, there are no ants tonight. As the smoke coiled like gauze in the air, out of the blue, an idea as tiny as a louse crossed my mind.

  Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba

  Watching Gaba lick the crumbs of the floured cookies with his rough, rose-pink tongue, Sidar couldn’t help recalling a particular day of his childhood. It was a snowy Saturday. They had paid a visit to grandma, as they always did on Saturday mornings, but this time for some reason their visit had been shorter than usual. Ever since they had left the old woman’s house, his mother and father had been walking arm-in-arm, murmuring reticently. Sidar, whom no one expected would grow up to be so tall and lanky back in those years, was covered in layers of clothes, lolloping like a cabbage; his reindeer-motif wool beret pulled down to his ears and the same coloured scarf wound around his neck. As the distance between him and his parents who were coming at a snail’s pace from behind extended, Sidar took the liberty of tramping through all the puddles on his way. He could thus estimate the graveness of the quiet quarrel between his parents. The only thing adults need to do to make their children sense the inauspiciousness hovering in the air without explicitly declaring the news is simply to not get angry at things that always anger them. Accordingly, Sidar had fathomed something was wrong. For him to be convinced this day was like any other day, he first had to find a deep, dirty mud puddle to march in, and upon doing so, be rebuked by his mother and conceivably slapped by his father.

  Before long he came across what he wanted, a russet, murky hole full of mud, the depth of which he could not possibly estimate. Doggedly, almost blindly he stomped in it and would have simply spurted ahead had he not heard an indistinct growl right at that instant. He flinched, checked the surroundings but couldn’t see anyone. It was as if the voice had come from under his feet…as if the mud had
been hurt… Perhaps it was a warning urging him to stay back. Perhaps this hole in front of him was one of those infamous death holes the municipality dug up to then forget to refill: a brown, bottomless dirty death hole… It frightened him, but the fear of death, Sidar sensed for the first time, was not that frightful. He moved forward.

  His heart pounded wildly. How deep was the hole, where was its bottom? Perhaps in a step or two he would be swallowed up… In his mind’s eye he visualized his death, the hole gulping him up, leaving behind nothing but his red deer patterned beret. He imagined his mother and father passing by the hole, still talking fervently, then returning down all the roads they had passed searching for their only son. The more he thought about it the more he took pleasure in making everyone pay for past offences: slanders that had hurt him, squabbles that had injured him, the injustices he had been subjected to… It felt good to envisage how his friends and relatives who had been separately responsible for each one of these slights would repent upon learning he had died.

  Yet before he was able to arrive even at the midpoint of his dreams, he had reached the end of the puddle. He grudgingly stepped out and still stomping his feet, dropping burly mud drops, he turned the street corner only to stop there flummoxed. Right across from him, by the sidewalk, lay a puppy. Those blaring sounds had emanated not from the death-hole of the Istanbul municipality but from this puny, black-eyed puppy. It had no blood on its coat, no visible cut or wound. The wheel tracks of the minibus that had sped over it were not detectable. Sidar’s face paled. Realizing that the death he had lavishly dreamt of a minute previous was now so close and yet so external to him, he felt stupid. All these visions that carried him away were incongruous and all the aspirations he set up futile. The only things that were real to him at that moment were the mud left on his trousers, which was already drying up, and the pain tormenting this puppy. The rest was entirely meaningless. He had a family but was lonely; he was constantly belittled by everyone and he in turn constantly belittled everyone; he did not know how to be happy and did not think he could learn it either; he had turned eleven but was still a child in everyone’s eyes; no one asked his opinion on anything and even if they did, he did not have any opinion anyway.