The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  ‘I am sure they got married and then strangled each other in next to no time,’ Ethel bellowed, jerking her head toward the driver while launching another attack on the buttons of my pants.

  ‘No sister, it’s even worse,’ the driver grimaced, shaking his head wisely. ‘Two years later, winter time, during such a blizzard, you couldn’t see a damn thing. Doesn’t this man get into my cab again? Only this time with a different woman! Was she his wife or lover? There was no way to tell. I instantly recognized the guy. He recognized me too. We both felt awful. He looked away, I looked away. The woman next to him had no idea what was going on. She was blubbering and blubbering to deaf ears. Before we could move even ten metres, the man stopped the cab and jumped out. The woman dashed straight after him flabbergasted.’

  Joining her hands on her lap, Ethel heaved a doleful sigh. If I could only have a wee bit of an understanding of when and why the Cunt is moved. An unwieldy silence engulfed us. No one uttered a single word until we turned the corner of Cabal Street, but as soon as we came to a stop in front of Bonbon Palace, embracing her stunted joy Ethel bolted from the car. Unable to resist her pushiness, the driver too got off. At 1:30am, there we stood, the three of us lined-up reverentially, and gaped at the writing on the garden wall.

  ‘UNDER THIS WALL

  LIES A HOLY SAINT

  DO NOT DUMPYOUR GARBAGE HERE!’

  ‘How does it look?’ I asked the driver.

  ‘It’s OK, I guess, but off centre, brother,’ he said with an expression so subtle it was hard to tell whether he was joking or not. ‘I don’t like the colour either.’

  Ethel doubled up as if about to throw up. In a flash, she let go of herself, bursting into laughter until she was in tears. She caused such a ruckus that the lights of a few flats in the apartment block went on. The driver on one side and I on the other, we pushed the Cunt back into the cab. On the way, her steadily decreasing chortles were replaced by steadily escalating sobs. It had been a long time since I had last seen her go to pieces like this. When we reached her house, I did not feel like staying with her. She passed out the moment her head touched the pillow anyhow. The cab waited downstairs. On the way back I sat in the front. The cab fare had shot up. Ever since my divorce, half my salary goes on rent and the other half on such nights of carousing. I offered the driver a cigarette. He first lit mine, then his. Now that the garrulous, raucous female had got out of the car, a brotherly silence echoed around us in her absence.

  ‘Sorry about the fuss,’ I muttered.

  ‘No problem, brother,’ he shrugged, ‘I wish things like this were our only troubles.’

  While waiting at a red light, right out of the blue, anguish began to surge within me. A police car sped by. Ahead of us ran a garbage truck with two lanky garbage men holding with one hand onto the back of the truck, their other hand swinging free. As they passed under a streetlight, their pale faces emerged from the dark, if only for a few seconds. The two garbage men were quizzically smiling at each other, or so it seemed to me. There were no other vehicles around. The moment the light turned green, my anguish really took off. I asked the driver to steer in the opposite direction. Ten minutes later we were in front of Ayshin’s house. I did not get out. The curtains were drawn, the lights off. As I stood there staring at my old house, the smooth-faced driver waited patiently, without a word.

  On the way back, we turned on the radio. Oddly enough I enjoyed every single song that was played. Finally, as the cab-fare gained another zero, we reached Bonbon Palace. Under the headlights, we jerked our heads out the windows on each side, feeling the need, for some reason unknown to us, to look at the writing on the wall once again.

  ‘Hey brother, now that you’ve written this thing, have you ever wondered what’d happen if someone believes it?’ the driver asked as he gave me the change.

  ‘Oh, come on, who would believe in that?’ I chuckled. ‘Even if they do, so much the better. Hopefully they’ll stop dumping their smelly garbage here.’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ he slurred, his fingers tautly rubbing his upper lip as if pulling on an invisible moustache. ‘It’s just that this city’s folks are a bit bizarre. Especially the women, they are truly wacko brother, you’ve seen it yourself. Basically what I’m asking is this: what if someone earnestly believes in this writing of yours?’

  Flat Number 1: Meryem

  Faith, like a train schedule, is essentially a matter of timing. The grand, rounded, ivory clock at the train station chimes at various specific hours of human life. The train leaves at specific hours. There is only one run before noon: those who have internalized a belief system while they are still children get on this one. There is another train that leaves in the afternoon, carrying along the troubled passengers of teenage years. After that there is no other direct run until night. Only then, when the first pressing regrets crop up in one’s life and the unfeasibility of redeeming past wrongs is acknowledged; when even the most strongly built nests begin to topple and the first serious health complications occur; the train leaves for the third time. For some unknown reason, the passengers of this train get on it at the last minute. Then as midnight draws closer, after critical surgeries and on the verge of near-death experiences, there are two more runs, one right after another. These happen to be the most crowded runs. Without stopping at any station, they go directly to God on the intercession express. Unlike the daytime passengers, the nocturnal ones, so as not to miss this last chance, appear at the station way too early. Then, after a long wait when the clock finally strikes midnight and the circle is complete, from that swarming crowd only a handful of non-believers are left behind.

  Being a passenger of the earliest train, Meryem’s faith was not only far less calculated than that of others but also less ‘by the book’. It’s hard to tell, if she would have done the same thing had she not been pregnant at the time when the writing appeared on the wall. Since pregnancy rendered her a bit bizarre, early that morning she went out into the garden with an empty jar in hand to collect from the soil of the nameless saint. Not that she really believed there was a genuine saint buried in the garden, but as that university professor had stated, given the fact that under all these Istanbul sidewalks rested ancient graves, one could not predict what would emerge from where. If the writing turned out to be bogus, she would be left with just a jarful of soil, that was all. However, if there really was a saint under the rose acacia in the garden of Bonbon Palace, then there was only one request she would like to make to him: to infuse Muhammet with courage, even if it were only a morsel.

  Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba

  When the doorbell rang, Sidar scurried to answer it, hoping that Muhammet had once again brought them something to eat. However, when he opened the door, there in front of him stood not the little emissary of Madam Auntie but the nutty girl with the coppery hair. Either the girl had drastically changed since they had last seen one another or Sidar’s memory of her had gone awry, but her eyes were just like he remembered, so beautifully solemn. She barged in with a bewildering smile and without waiting to be invited. As if tired she tottered unsteadily towards the couch and asked her host, still standing fixed on the spot, for something to drink. Sidar shuffled to the kitchen scratching his head. He opened up the only bag of coffee in the cupboard and poured the water heated up with the only pot in the house into the only mug on the shelf.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have one too?’

  ‘Later,’ Sidar shrugged. ‘There is only one mug in the house anyhow.’

  Three hazelnut wafers emerged from the girl’s backpack, immediately arousing Gaba’s interest. Still, however, he refused to move an inch.

  ‘What was the dog’s name?’

  ‘Gaba,’ Sidar grumbled, suspicious of having already told her this in their previous meeting.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Gaba is the abbreviation for gamma-amino-butiric acid – which is an inhibitor nerve transmitter, something to do with the anxiety centre of the
brain. Anti-convulsants, anti-anxiety pills and of course alcohol slows the Gaba receptor down. Consequently, you feel less anxious.’

  ‘Cool! So you can speak German like your mother tongue, right? How long did you stay abroad?’ the girl enthused before lying back on the couch. Upon seeing the ceiling, she fluttered her eyelashes in astonishment; then not knowing what to say, she fluttered her eyelashes some more.

  ‘French,’ Sidar corrected her tensely. Apparently the girl did not remember a word he had told her before. If she didn’t care for the answers why on earth did she ask these questions? Besides she looked too sleepy to grasp a word. Her eyes were on the verge of closing while listening to the second, at most the third response. For what reason did she pose one question after another when it was all too obvious that the answers would remain incomplete, and that even if she learned the most that she could in the least time possible, she would have only attained straggly parts and smoggy pieces, not even the dimmest silhouette of the entirety of his life. The simple desire to get to know a person is a hollow pledge and a life-size burden! It requires that a person listen and observe, poke and sense, unwrap and amass for nights, weeks, years; to be able to peel off scabs and endure seeing the blood ooze from underneath. If a person is unable to put up with all this, it is much better, and certainly more honest, to throw in the towel straight off.

  Not that I am a hitherto unappreciated treasure, locked in a chest awaiting exposure to sunlight. The answers to all the questions you ask about me are more or less already hidden inside you. I do not want you to desire to discover me or to even think you can do so. We do not have to know one another when we know so little of ourselves. Collecting information about others is like gathering food from garbage. What’s the use of rotting the supplies in our brains if we are not to savour them in time?

  A clipped snore interrupted the course of Sidar’s thoughts. The girl had fallen asleep with her mouth agape. Taking a last puff from the cigarette he had rolled up at noon, Sidar curved up next to his guest. Watching them fretfully from where he had crouched down Gaba must have been finally convinced that nobody was out to get him for he hobbled closer. In a single breath, he wolfed down the hazelnut wafers, then, still licking away, he too came and curled up on the couch. As the headlights of the cars outside penetrated the petite windows spurring shadows on the wall, all three of them drifted off into three separate dreams.

  Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress and Me

  Tired of criss-crossing a path between the kitchen and the living room, the Blue Mistress threw a last look at the table. Everything seemed ready. She lit the lily-shaped candle floating in the water-filled glass bowl and placed blue napkins next to the blue plates. They had agreed to meet at seven. The doorbell rang at ten to seven.

  ‘Welcome,’ she chirped. Though she was already wearing high heels, she instinctively felt the need to rise up on her toes. ‘Do you always arrive early like this?’

  ‘I tried hard not to, but it turns out that it takes three and a half steps to get from my flat to yours,’ I said smiling.

  ‘Of course, your legs are so long,’ she cackled, blushing at the end of her sentence, as if she had made an erotic remark.

  We stood up by the entrance in a daze germane to people who, after long desiring each other, come to a sudden halt the moment they notice how close they actually are to obtaining what they have so badly craved. Though the intensity and frequency of our acquaintance had been limited to running into each other now and then, and chatting about this and that, I had long been aware of how deeply attracted she was to me. Hers is a face that cannot mask secrets. Still however, I hadn’t been expecting this ‘thing’ between us to run its course so speedily, so effortlessly…

  Taking her face between my palms, I caressed that tiny, azure hizma. ‘I’ve made chicken with ground walnuts,’ she breathed when she drew back, trying to urge me to continue not from where we left off kissing, but where we had been reservedly conversing. ‘I hope you’ll like it.’

  Oblivious to her forged reticence, oblivious to the dinner table, I steered her inside into the bedroom. To my surprise, she was at ease. So was I. Couples wise enough not to harbour future expectations from one another keep little back when making love. Nevertheless, late at night when we sat down at the table, it felt as if, though devoid of a common future, we might have shared a common past, as if we had been living together for a long time, sharing the same house…and it seemed to me we both enjoyed this illusion deep down… For regardless of where you stand on the matter, a man abandoned by his wife and a mistress unhappy with the husband of another have a communal need in the worst way; to be assured that their constant disappointment with the marital institution does not stem from their failures, and that they could make it work with another person.

  Flat Number 1: Muhammet

  There were seventeen steps on the stairs at the entrance gate of the school. Upon reaching the sixteenth, counting out loud, Muhammet turned back with a wee bit of hope…but once again the miracle he ached for failed to happen. His mother did not disappear. Instead there she was waiting tenaciously at the same spot, leaning against the bolted garden gate with her swollen belly and all her weight, looking after him with the touching melancholy of someone at the dock saying farewell to her beloved on the parting boat. The moment she saw Muhammet looking at her, Meryem’s face lit up with a smile compounded from a third each of compassion, pride and tenderness. She flapped both arms simultaneously, gesticulating with some sort of a peculiar athletic motion. Seeing that much of an effort there one would think she were trying to grab her son’s attention from amidst an immense crowd. Yet, since the last weeks of the second semester, she was the only mother among all mothers of the eight hundred and forty-eight kids in the elementary school who insisted on bringing her child to school in the mornings and waiting at the gate until the bell rang – a policy she had been pursuing since receiving the news that Muhammet played truant. This, in turn, meant there would from now on be a twenty-five minute delay in the distribution of newspaper and bread to Bonbon Palace. So far nobody had complained. Madam Auntie did not buy bread anyhow, she seemed to nibble like a bird. As for Hygiene Tijen, every morning from her window she lowered a basket into which the grocer’s apprentice left one of those breads that came wrapped-up, touched by no one. The Blue Mistress did not eat bread, so as not to gain weight, and the bachelor professor at Number 7 did not seem to be expecting consistent service since even he himself did not seem to know when he would come in or go out. Sidar, because he had no money, and the hairdressers, because they had set up their own system, would not mind this delay. That left only two flats and Meryem was definitely not going to risk her son’s education for the sake of those two.

  Shrivelling more and more with every wave of his mother, as if he was being hammered on the head, Muhammet finally reached the seventeenth step and billowed through the pitch black door of the primary school. The lunch bag in his hand got heavy, his backpack even more so. He looked around in vain for something to kick. As the ring echoed in the hall for the last time, he entered into his classroom to take his place among the thirty-two students.

  Contrary to his fears, the first class passed without a single incident. The bully of a bench-mate in front had turned his back at him, fully concentrating on the writing on the blackboard, looking utterly unruffled; as if it wasn’t him who had made a habit of slapping Muhammet at least twice a day. Muhammet eyed gratefully this back that was twice the size of his. He just wished it could always stay like this. If only he could be bench-mates not with this overgrown child but with his back instead. Dropping his shoulders, he crouched behind the sturdy back and, with the comfort of knowing he would not be spotted from this angle, surveyed his surroundings. The windows of the classroom were painted grey halfway up to prevent the students from looking outside but from the fissures and flakes on the painting one could still spot the blue sky. Then he turned his gaze to the puffy ribbons of the girl at the boar
d and the sharp, pinkish fingernails of the teacher whose veins would swell up whenever she yelled. He thought that the girl at the board and the teacher matched well. After all, if the girl failed to give the right answer and the teacher yet again stuck one of those long fingernails of hers into the unsuccessful student’s earlobe, there would be no big difference: the girl’s ears were pierced anyhow. In spite of this, the ones whose ears were pulled the most happened to be boys. Until now, Muhammet’s ears were pulled a-plenty, and each time he cared less about the pain than ending up with his ears pierced against his will. Having lived the first six years of his life on earth long-haired like a girl, he did not want to spend the rest of his life with his ears pierced like a girl. Hoisting his fears up the flagpole, he inadvertently flinched and it was precisely then that whatever happened happened. The back next to him abruptly turned around, now transforming into a chubby, beet-red, sulky face. Grinning insolently, his bench mate bulldozed Muhammet.