by Elif Shafak
She felt her dress with her hands. It was a great relief to her, that she was wearing the dress her grandmother had bought her, and therefore wasn’t naked in front of this strange man. The floor of the coal shed was completely covered with broken glass. She was afraid that if she wasn’t wearing her dress, the glass would cut her body. But she was even more frightened of sewing needles. A sewing needle entered a person’s flesh, wandered through the veins until it reached the heart and pierced it.
‘Twoo!’ said the man. ‘Open your eyes!’
As soon as the child opened her eyes she was in the light. She looked straight into the light and saw the number Two. Two was not a run-of-the-mill number. It was extraordinary. It resembled a forked road; it had split itself off from the route of its main road. It was easy to see where it began, but its length was unknown, and it was impossible to determine where it ended. The child was struck with terror as she looked at Two. She had to flee this place right now, without waiting another moment, before it was too late to act on her decision, before she saw where Two ended. On top of this, her eyes were not closed, but unfortunately her eyes remained fastened on Two. And wherever Two was, there was always another.
That other was a piece of pink flesh. It was surrounded by very curly, very black hairs. It hung down from among these hairs like the tongue of a thirsty animal. The piece of meat must have liked being looked at, because as the child looked at it, it raised its head in a dignified manner. Very slowly, it was changing. It was becoming bigger, and longer, and thicker. It was becoming fat, with bulging veins. These veins didn’t resemble the purple cables on K1ymet Han1m Teyze’s legs one bit.
Just as the child was thinking that if it continued to grow it would no longer fit in the coal shed, the piece of flesh stopped suddenly. It stopped and waited. Outside they must have stopped playing hide-and-seek, because there was not a sound, and not even a leaf moved. The child felt that somewhere in the depths of this deathly silence, a pair of eyes was watching everything. They belonged neither to her nor to the strange man; neither far nor near…watching from somewhere else. She was being watched; by someone or something unknown. No matter how much she wanted to find the source of the eyes that were on her, she couldn’t ruin the game, and didn’t take her eyes off the piece of flesh.
Just at that moment the man began to approach. The child told herself that there was nothing to be frightened of. Anyway, the next number was Three. And since Three always came right after Two, it had to be nearby somewhere. Because it was never late. Indeed it came so quickly that anyone who hadn’t succeeded in hiding by the time ‘it’ counted to Two would definitely be caught out in the open at Three. That meant it was not long before this unpleasant game came to an end. She would finally be able to leave when Three arrived. She would leave the coal shed and never step foot in it again. She would never again play games with strangers in coal sheds. She already regretted taking part, and was waiting for Three to liberate her. Just a little longer…she would be free in just a little while.
But before Three, the piece of flesh arrived. It arrived and entered her mouth. It advanced step by step into her mouth. The man was wheezing heavily. This wheezing reminded the child of Elsa. When you stroked her under the chin she made sounds just like this. But the wheezing was continually growing faster. Now the child remembered the retired history teacher who lived in the house across the way. The retired teacher had asthma. Whenever he climbed stairs he wheezed exactly like this. A while later, the wheezing was so fast and so heavy that the child couldn’t determine what it resembled. The piece of flesh was moving back and forth in her mouth, but the child couldn’t see it now. She didn’t see anything now. She didn’t even know if her eyes were open or closed. She felt nauseous.
Suddenly, just as her stomach was about to raise the flag of rebellion and she was about to loose hope; just as the cosmos was stubbornly beginning to gather speed to emerge from its motionlessness of a short while ago and the man’s wheezes were turning into hoarse moans; just when, like any number that lives out its life and any number that is living out its life, it imitated the next number. Two finally came to an end.
The piece of flesh left her mouth. A strange liquid flowed in the emptiness it had left behind. It was very sticky. It had a terrible taste. The child couldn’t bear it, and opened the door to her stomach. She began to vomit. She vomited out what the piece of flesh had vomited into her mouth.
When she realized that she was vomiting nothing but bitter liquid, she lifted her head and made an effort not to cry. She looked directly into the nothingness and saw that the absence of Three was worse than One and Two and even than Three. Because the man had gone.
He’d gone.
He’d left without saying ‘Three.’
There was a coal shed in the neighbour’s back garden; with a zinc roof, and two doors. A child was stuck inside.
It didn’t matter whether she closed her eyes or opened them. Whether she opened her eyes or closed them, all she saw was the blackness of the coal shed. Everything and everyone was painted in the same colour of blindness. The whiteness she’d vomited, the cherries she’d eaten, the veins on K1ymet Han1m Teyze’s legs, and even Abdullah’s Red Show-Off were coal shed black.
‘Aren’t you tired of telling fairy tales yet? Because I’m fed up. Do you understand?’
The young doctor was pacing about irritably. Finally he grew tired, threw himself into the armchair across from the child, and moaned, ‘Enough!’ At the same moment a snapping sound was heard. A snapping sound that was reminiscent of a breaking heart. The doctor jumped to his feet in panic; he turned and looked at the place where he’d just sat. He’d sat on his glasses.
She was swimming in a lake that was coal shed black. The lake was warm. She wasn’t cold. Before there hadn’t even been a puddle here, let alone a lake. This meant that she must have created the lake herself. This meant that the lake must have been created from her tears. ‘It seems I’ve cried a great deal,’ she whimpered. She felt a great sense of relief at having cried so much. Perhaps if she managed to cry some more, her tears would cover everything, and the door of the coal shed would open by itself. Then, without having to worry about anything, she could swim straight to the exit, and be free of this place.
She was just about to abandon herself to the currents of the lake when an incriminating smell reached her nose. When she smelled it she understood that what she had thought was a lake was in fact a puddle of piss. It seemed she’d pissed herself. In alarm, she touched her eyes. They were completely dry. She hadn’t cried, not at all. She felt a deep shame at not having cried. She felt a sharp pain in her stomach. As she twisted about, she felt once again that she was being watched. But this time she was determined to find who was watching her. And she did. Standing right in front of her: Elsa!
Elsa was sitting in the window with the broken glass, watching the child with fixed eyes. The raw green of her eyes was insolent; the eyes of insolence were a raw green. It was as if she had been there since the beginning of the world; there was no secret she had not discovered, no sin that she had not recorded. She was a witness to everything that had happened in the coal shed. The child jumped to her feet trembling with irritation. She picked up a lump of coal and flung in at the cat. She missed.
She looked angrily at the retreating Elsa. There was no reason to stay in the coal shed any more. The cat had been watching from the very beginning with her eyes that saw everything and missed nothing, and had long since recorded what she had seen, while the child, having consented to take part in evil, and not having shed a single tear in spite of this, knew that all she had done was to piss herself while she was waiting shamefully and in vain for the arrival of ‘Three.’
Elsa had seen everything; everything she shouldn’t have seen.
When people commit sins, they can’t stand to be in the same place with someone who has witnessed this. Witnesses and sinners can’t face each other. Even if they want to forget, their memories are
refreshed when they look into each other’s eyes.
The best thing was to leave as soon as possible; just like the cherries that left the branches. The world was big. It had to be big. There had to be a place, in the East or in the West, where she would neither see Elsa nor be seen by her.
The house she wanted to leave behind was the colour of salted green almonds.
The house the colour of salted green almonds was her paternal grandmother’s house.
‘Now I want you to colour in this picture. You can use any colour you like. But you have to colour in the whole picture. You mustn’t leave any of it uncoloured. Come on!’
There was a box of crayons on the table. The child looked at them. Every colour reminded her of something to eat. It made her hungry to look at these colours. But she didn’t say this to the doctor who was watching her so carefully.
There was a family in the picture. The father was in the armchair; he was reading a newspaper with his legs crossed. The mother was on her feet; she was ironing on an ironing board. The grandmother was on the sofa; she was wearing her glasses and she was knitting. A boy and a girl were on the carpet; toys were scattered around them, and they were playing a game.
One by one, the child coloured the father’s slippers, the mother’s iron, everything from the grandmother’s wool to the children’s toys. She coloured the slippers spinach green, the iron pudding white, the ball of wool candied-apple red, and the toys egg yellow.
‘What about the floating balloon?’ asked the young doctor. ‘Why didn’t you colour that?’
The child was bewildered. There was no floating balloon in the picture. It only showed the inside of a house. But when she bent down and looked carefully she saw that the doctor was right. From the window in the room where the family was sitting you could see a tiny patch of sky. There, among the clouds, was a floating balloon. While the child was trying to choose a colour, she kept her finger on the balloon so she wouldn’t loose it. At the same moment the young doctor bent to look at her finger. When she realised he could see how chewed and torn her cuticles were, she was seized with fear. In panic she hid her finger behind the crayons.
The child’s face was grim. How could she not have thought of this before? She looked up reproachfully. There was a broken light bulb in the ceiling of the coal shed that she hadn’t noticed before. Neither this cobwebbed ceiling nor the zinc roof above it could prevent God from seeing what Elsa had seen.
In hell there was a steep hill. Sinners were stripped naked, and after their sins were loaded into baskets on their backs, they began to climb the hill. The baskets were heavy, the hill was steep and the ground was slippery. They all struggled and perspired. Their feet would slip. They would roll back down. The sins in their baskets would scatter on the ground. But each sin knew who it belonged to, and would go stick to its owner’s feet. Towards the top the hill became even more slippery. Way below, at the bottom of the hill, cauldrons burning with the fires of hell had been lined up. The sinners would start climbing again to escape the flames. But the hill was sheer ice; even if it was pure fire below. That’s what grandmother used to say. That’s what she said, and every time she had to climb a hill, she stopped first, and prayed that she wouldn’t slide down. That’s what she said, and she warned the child to stay away from hills. Hills opened onto hell. Hell was as terrible as its name.
She looked at the ceiling of the coal shed with eyes full of fear. The only help she could hope for was night. Because if it was night, if it was dark enough, that is if this coal shed was coal shed black enough… God might not have seen anything. And if it hadn’t been seen by God, she wouldn’t roll down the hill, and she wouldn’t end up in hell.
She looked at the ceiling of the coal shed with eyes full of hope. If the light bulb was broken and the coal shed was dark, how was it different from night? She became confused. If only she could find a way to climb above the clouds, she could ask God whether or not he’d seen what happened in the coal shed. If only she knew whether or not God had seen.
As she went into the house through the back door of the kitchen, she heard her grandmother’s voice. They were looking for her; in the garden, in the streets, at all the neighbours’ houses, under Red Show-Off, in front of the Far Butcher’s, in the upper neighbourhood… It was clear that the game of hide-and-seek was long over, and her absence alarmed everyone. Now everyone, all of the children and neighbours, was looking for her.
She went to the bathroom. She washed out her mouth. She took off her dress. She washed out her mouth. She soaped the sponge. She washed out her mouth. She sponged herself. She washed out her mouth. She shampooed her hair. She washed out her mouth. She rinsed out her hair. She washed out her mouth. She dried herself with a towel. She washed out her mouth. She combed her hair. She washed out her mouth. She put on clean underwear. She washed out her mouth. She took down the suitcase from on top of the closet. She washed out her mouth. She took her favourite shorts out of the suitcase. She washed out her mouth. She put on the shorts and a t-shirt. She washed out her mouth. She put on one of her hats. She washed out her mouth. She took a biscuit. She washed out her mouth. She was ready to leave now. She washed out her mouth. She opened the outer door. Her grandmother was standing in front of her.
When grandmother, who had been searching the neighbourhood frantically and didn’t know how she was going to tell her mother and father she was lost, saw the child, she couldn’t control her irritation. She gave her a resounding slap. The child got up from where she’d fallen. She stepped on the biscuit that had fallen from her hand. She went to the bathroom. She washed out her mouth.
‘If you continue to eat this way you’re going to become a very fat lady in the future. Then no one will like you. You know that, don’t you? Do you want everyone to call you fatty?’
Ever since he’d broken his glasses, the doctor had squinted and blinked his bright blue eyes when he looked at the child. The child was looking at him too, with a hidden smile.
She washed out her mouth. She went into the living room.
When she went into the living room, all of the women of the neighbourhood were there.
All of the women young and old, feeling it was rude to remain standing, had squeezed themselves into armchairs and onto chairs and cushions; waiting there together as if they were uneasily mourning the untasted death of someone they didn’t know. The child stood right in the middle of the living room and looked carefully at the women. When she looked at them she saw sacks and sacks of potatoes, tins and tins of oil, combs and combs of honey, barrels and barrels of pickles, cones and cones of sugar, strings and strings of onions, baskets and baskets of fruit, packets and packets of biscuits, wheels and wheels of cheese, boxes and boxes of chocolate, jars and jars of chockella. She was hungry; very hungry.
She was so hungry that, after being raked by the unbearable looks of these unbearable people, she began to chew at the bunches of grapes on the oilskin table-cloth. She was so hungry that, turning purple like a bleeding fingernail, her hunger started eating at the deathly weight that was pressing down on her. But she still couldn’t get rid of the terrible taste in her mouth. She urgently had to eat something else.
Grandmother was in a panic. She hadn’t made dinner yet. What she’d eaten wasn’t even enough to fill the holes in her teeth, she planted her hungry and now lustreless eyes on the wall. Since the house was the colour of salted green almonds, it might taste good too. However, before her hunger had to resort to becoming fond of the walls, one of the neighbour women rushed home and came back with a large pot of food. The woman’s pilaff had just a little too much salt and oil.
On the television there was Tom and Jerry, and in the pot there was pilaff.
(Jerry was very hungry.) She was very hungry. (He has his eyes on a jug of milk.) She pulled the pot towards her. (But Tom was sleeping next to the jug.) She lifted the lid. (Tom’s eyes opened slightly.) The pot was full to the top. (Jerry escapes the cat’s claws at the last moment.)
&nb
sp; ‘May I have another plate?’
‘Of course, my dear. Did you like my pilaff?’
(Jerry had changed his appearance.) One of the women brought a carafe of ayran. (He had disguised himself as a female cat.) The ayran was frothy. (The jug of milk was only a step away.) She pulled the carafe towards her. (Tom was standing guard before the jug.) The women were watching her out of the corners of their eyes. (The milk was very white.) The ayran was very white. (Tom was very polite.) Everyone was very polite. (Jerry, dressed as a female cat, drank all of the milk in the jug in one go.) She drank a carafe of ayran in one go. (Tom has fallen in love with the female cat.) The women were bewildered.
‘May I have another plate?’
(A thread was hanging from Jerry’s costume.) It seemed as if they’d put a little less pilaff on her plate this time. (The costume was unravelling quickly.) She was eating quickly. (Tom understood that he’d been tricked.) The plate was finished very quickly (Snarling, he leaps at Jerry, who still thinks he’s a female cat.) She reached her hand into the pot. (Jerry managed to escape at the last moment.) The grains of rice had no place to hide. (Tom is chasing Jerry.) She began to eat the rice, which had been finely crushed, by the handful. (Both the cat and the mouse are out of breath.) She was out of breath. (Still the chase continued.) The more she ate the hungrier she got.
(While fleeing, Jerry fell into the jug of milk.) She leaned into the pot. (In order not to drown, he started to drink the milk he was sinking into.) She was eating handful after handful. (Jerry was so bloated from having drunk all the milk that bubbles were coming out of his mouth.) Her stomach began to ache. (Jerry had become a balloon and was starting to rise.) She had become very heavy. (Tom catches the mouse’s tail at the last moment.) Still she doesn’t stop eating. (They both start rising into the sky.) Now she could see the bottom of the pot. (There were snow-white clouds in the sky.) The bottom of the pot was pitch black.
