The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  Celal stole a look at the door and went back to work. At that moment, he was interested in no hair other than the platinum yellow strands of his friend; whoever this young woman might be, she did not look like his type of customer anyhow. Cemal, however, was neither as indifferent nor as ignorant as his twin. On the contrary, from the gossip lavishly dispensed at the beauty parlour from morning until dark, he had distilled ample information about the Blue Mistress. He knew, for instance, that she was only twenty-two years old. He had also heard how a couple of weeks ago, upon being harassed by a man at the entrance to their street, she had poured all the contents of the garbage bag she had taken out to dump over the head of her assailant. Furthermore, he was also informed that she had picked a fight with the exceedingly religious apartment manager, Hadji Hadji, who, when dividing the apartment’s joint water bill among all the flats according to the number of people residing in each unit, had prepared her invoice for not one but two persons, It was scarcely news to anyone that although the Blue Mistress had leased Flat Number 8 by herself stating she would live alone, a sour-faced, olive oil merchant old enough to be her father lived with her at least four days a week. Cemal knew all this and was dying to find out more.

  Turning over his highlighting brush to the pimpled apprentice, as he veered toward the door with a stuck-up smile on his face, he took a full-length shot of the unexpected visitor. You could hardly say that her body was great; though not quite a pear, it was still pear-like. She was wearing a long gauzy dress with straps that covered up too much for a mistress. However, under the sunlight trickling through the glass door, her legs were entirely visible as she had not worn an underskirt. It looked as if she simultaneously wanted to hide and expose her body; or perhaps she was just confused…and her face… her face was the most interesting part. Some people’s faces are like magnets covered with skin. All the ins and outs, ups and downs, core and gist of their personality reside there. They think with their faces; converse, promenade, quarrel, get hungry, feel happy, love or make love with their faces. Their bodies are necessary, albeit unimpressive pedestals, merely added on to carry their faces. Such people are essentially walking faces. Accordingly, they can never hide their feelings away. Whatever they feel gets reflected, totally and immediately, upon their faces. The petite, pale face of the Blue Mistress, adorned with an azure hizma, screamed out that, right at that moment, she was trying hard not to show her distress. Cemal took a step toward her and though this was not at all his habit, shook hands with the Blue Mistress, flagrantly violating women’s hairdressers’ custom of greeting customers. Like all repressed homosexuals who generally got along well with the delicate sex but also somewhat sneered at them, he too was particularly interested in those women who are partly envied, partly hated by other women.

  Trying to ignore the inquisitive, impish stares directed at her from different angles of the beauty parlour, the Blue Mistress moved with brisk, uncertain steps toward the swivel chair Cemal pointed out to her. As she took her place in front of the long, wide mirror with other women, the looks directed at her folded into one another and multiplied. The blonde with a slight cast in her eye, the jittery chain-smoking brunette who kept shaking her pedicured toes with cotton pieces stuck in between each one, the short and plump gingerhead sitting with two thick carroty lines on top of her eyes having her eyebrows coloured along with her hair, and finally the elf-like elderly lady at the very corner; all stared at her as if waiting to be introduced.

  The pimpled apprentice tied the leopard-patterned, plastic smock with dubious stains onto the neck of the Blue Mistress, careful to touch her as little as possible. It was an agonizing misfortune for the apprentice to have to work at a beauty parlour at this sensitive stage of his life, hearing all sorts of obscene jokes from women about the way his face divulged the sins his hand must be committing at nights. As the teenage boy backed off with unsteady steps, he did not notice the cat that had without a sound snuck in through the open window. All eyes were turned toward the animal when it let out a mighty ‘meow’ upon having its tail trampled.

  It was a thick-coated, grim-faced, strapping cat as black as tar: one of those that looked upon every human they saw with narrowed eyes as if there had been a bloody fight between cats and humans from time immemorial. Still, as the round strand of hair starting from the sides of its nose down under its chin looked as if someone had dipped it in a bowl of yogurt, it had a cute side in spite of everything.

  ‘Come, Garbage! Come here, you nuisance!’ Cemal called out when he realized that the Blue Mistress was fond of the cat.

  ‘Why do you call the cat “Garbage”?’ asked the Blue Mistress. The animal had immediately sensed who to get attention from and started rubbing against her feet. The Blue Mistress grabbed it with her two hands and lifted it up, directing the same question this time to the cat in the sugary syrupy voice women use when admiring babies: ‘Why do they call you Garbage? Tell me why, my beauty? How could one call such a beautiful cat Garbage?’

  ‘Perhaps because this Mister Garbage never leaves the garbage dump,’ Cemal remarked with joy. Now that Garbage provided a means for him to communicate with the Blue Mistress, it seemed cuter to Cemal than ever. ‘There is probably no other street cat in all of Istanbul as fortunate as this one. Not that he has an outstanding beauty, look at his face for God’s sake. Have you ever seen a cat with such dirty looks? It is as if he was going to be a snake but could not find the appropriate skin. But he still finds a way to get people to like him. Does he have an irresistible charm or what? How does he manage to wrangle food out of whomever he visits? But do you think he’ll be satisfied? Never! He eats his fill and then ends up in his kingdom: the garbage dump. I swear I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. We had just rented this place, were in the middle of the final preparations, dog-tired from working all day long and hungry like wolves. We decided to order food from the chicken place. You know how huge their portions are, don’t you? Rice, salad, fried potatoes, all come heaped high. Well, let me cut to the chase. There was some mix-up and they had sent an extra chicken. We didn’t return it as we thought we could eat that one as well. Of course, we couldn’t. Everyone could barely finish what they had in front of them. Especially Celal, he pecked at it like a bird. As we were eating, guess who picked up the scent and showed up? I didn’t know then that they called him “Garbage”, but along he comes, begging food so desperately you’d think the poor thing had been starving for days. So we put the extra chicken in front of him and may the curse of God befall me if I’m lying, he gobbled that chicken down so ferociously you’d think a pack of Dobermans were chasing him. Not a single bone was left behind. Can you imagine, he devoured a plate of chicken heaped full right in front of our eyes. Back then the “Cat Prophet” lived in Flat Number 2. Had you heard of him? Another nut! He had some twenty, thirty cats. The whole place smelt of cat piss. Still, even that was better than the stink of this garbage. We were talking about that before you arrived. I was just saying to Celal, we live in so much garbage, we’ll soon start to peck like roosters. Right, Celal?’

  Celal shook his head in agreement.

  ‘After all that he had wolfed down, this Mister Garbage here went after the cat food of the Cat Prophet, but her tribe must have given him a sound beating for he returned with his tail between his legs for our leftovers. We put out the fried potatoes which he pretended not to like much but he finished them off all the same. At that point we all stopped working to watch the animal; we placed bets on when he was going to explode.’

  Not only the women lined-up by the mirror but also the manicurist and the apprentices who had heard this story at least forty times were all ears listening to Cemal. He may not have been as fine a hairdresser as his brother, but when it came to garrulousness, he beat everyone hands down. His linguistic aptitude was amazing. If he were picked up from here and dropped off in a country he could not even place on a map, he would learn their language in a flash just to be able t
o understand what was being spoken around him and then put in his two cents’ worth. Likewise, in just five years he had been able to repair his Turkish, which had lost its lustre during the long years he spent in Australia and had polished it brand new. The only problem was his telltale accent. However, Celal was not certain as to whether his three and a half minutes younger brother actually failed to get rid of his accent or deliberately kept it intact thinking the customers liked it more this way.

  ‘He ate and ate, then got up stretching. The animal had turned into a giant stomach! He couldn’t even walk, dragging along that tummy. We dashed after him, following him outside where he jumped on the wall of this side garden…and what a jump! He had become so heavy that his belly got caught and he almost fell down. We thought he would curl up somewhere and sleep for at least two days. No way! Instead he leaped to the other side of the wall. You know those garbage bags they leave there? Alas, we live in a garbage dump! Anyway this one had found a bunch of fish heads. I honestly have no idea what else he could have eaten that day. We felt sick as we watched him, you know. I swear I have been frightened of this cat ever since that day. We’ve heard a lot about cats who eat their owners when hungry but this Garbage here, he could gobble all of us down even when full. What’s more, I bet he would polish it all off with what he finds in the garbage!’

  ‘I swear he’s understood all we’ve been saying about him,’ exclaimed the plump gingerhead with a frozen face, afraid of getting wrinkles on her forehead if she laughed.

  ‘Let him understand. Is it all lies? He has a trash can instead of a stomach! Hence the name: Garbage!’ grumbled Cemal as he shook the hairdryer in his hand towards the cat carefully watching him behind narrowed eyes.

  The hairdryer! Knowing that being subjected to the breath of this howling monster was worse than falling into a bucket full of water, the cat took off in a blink from the lap of the Blue Mistress and leapt onto the open window. After staying there for an instant to give those in the beauty parlour a final and unhappy once-over, he jumped towards the nearest empty space like a stuffed toy filled with swagger instead of stuffing. However, before his paws reached the garden, something weird landed on his head: a cerulean child’s dress, adorned with many tiny mermaid figures ruffled all around and a starched collar, which descended like a dry leaf or a piece of paper with an almost surreal slowness from the top floor of Bonbon Palace, for approximately five seconds, landing just moments away from the soil right on top of the cat who had cut across its path. Both landed on the ground at the same time.

  ‘Oh, look, look! It’s raining clothes from above!’ shouted the manicurist in excitement, having been rummaging through the shelf in front of the window to find the Number 113 burgundy nail polish.

  Cemal, the plump ginger-head, the blonde with a slight cast in her eye and the apprentices all dashed over to the window in an instant. A little later, upon their insistence the Blue Mistress came also with reluctant steps and the jittery brunette limped over trying not to step on her pedicured feet. Clothes were indeed raining from above; children’s clothes in all types and colours. Judging by the crowd of eight to ten people gathered on the sidewalk, there were other spectators of this unexpected show. All had turned their heads up and were fixated on a single point trying to see the person throwing the clothes. Yet the perpetrator of the incident refused to reveal themself. Just a naked, unadorned, snow white woman’s arm appeared at regular intervals from the window of the flat at the top floor of Bonbon Palace, on each appearance dropping yet another piece of clothing.

  As the clothes rained down one after another, the manicurist stretched out of the window to catch the falling clothes with the happiness of someone trying to touch the first snow of the season. From among the dresses, socks, sweaters, shirts, pullovers, she managed to catch a resin yellow ribbon.

  ‘Don’t do that, it’s not proper,’ said Madame Auntie who had maintained her composure through it all. Her lifeless voice raised and lowered like a knobby wall or a jagged piece of paper.

  The manicurist grumbled with the deep disappointment of being forced to be virtuous just as she had started to savour being witness to another person’s insanity. With a long face, she threw the ribbon on top of the mound of clothes in the garden. It did not last long. After a minute or two the rain of clothes stopped by itself. The concluding act of the show was a royal-blue school uniform. Like some sort of coy parachute it opened up to land quietly on top of its predecessors. The windows of the top floor were noisily shut and the snow white arm retreated inside. As the spectators on the sidewalk dispersed one by one, the ones inside returned to their places as well.

  ‘Sonny, make all of us coffee,’ said Cemal to the apprentice without pimples. ‘God knows, our nerves are on edge.’ He collapsed onto the large couch, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘We’re sick of it. Ever since we moved in here, things have been raining on our heads. The cracked woman has not left a thing in the house, she opens the windows whenever she loses her temper and “whoosh!” whatever there is comes down. One of these days she’s going to throw down a TV set or something like that and whichever one of us gets it in the head will die for nothing.’

  Though he remained pensive for a moment, it would not take Cemal long to collect himself together. He was always somewhat scared of sadness settling in with no palpable reason.

  ‘So inventive! Never have I seen her throwing the same thing twice. Celal, do you remember, she once threw down her husband’s ties and they remained stuck on the rose acacia tree for days.’

  A hearty response from his brother being one of the last things he expected to get at this moment, Cemal turned not to him but the customers instead: ‘Celal got out and brought the ties down. He didn’t let the young ones out fearing they’d break the branches of the rose acacia. He climbed himself. Had it not been for him, the stupid man’s ties would have been hanging out for days.’

  Celal smiled with a visible distress. ‘I hope someone will gather the clothes up. It’s getting dark, God knows someone could steal them,’ he mumbled to escape being the focus of the conversation.

  ‘She’s gathering them up. The new cleaning lady is down there gathering all of them up. What a shame, the poor woman is red with embarrassment as if she’d thrown them down herself,’ blurted out the manicurist.

  ‘It won’t be long. This one will soon quit as well,’ mumbled the jittery brunette as she puffed away, examining the permanently waved strands of hair that had started to appear from under the thin rollers that the apprentice with the pimples had started to undo.

  ‘Oh, can any cleaning lady survive Tijen? Whoever comes runs away,’ remarked Cemal.

  ‘Hygiene Tijen! Hygiene Tijen!’ giggled the blonde with a cast in her eye. ‘The woman hasn’t stepped out of her house for exactly four months. Can you imagine? She hasn’t been able to go outside for fear of catching a disease. She’s utterly mad these days.’

  ‘Come on, what do you mean by these days, for God’s sake? Those who are in-the-know will tell it straight, she’s always been nuts. Madam Auntie’s known them since day one. Isn’t it so, Madam Auntie?’ shouted the manicurist. Like many of her peers, she too felt the need to raise her voice when talking to an elderly person.

  All heads turned to the old woman. Actually no one knew why she was called, ‘Madam Auntie’. Neither had they hitherto wondered whether she was Muslim or not, though if asked, chances are they would affirm that she was a Muslim and a Turk just like everyone else. The reason they could not help but call her ‘Madam’, was not because they had any doubts about her religion or citizenship, they just felt deep down that she was different, though they were unable to explain why. It was not because she was so advanced in years (though she certainly was) or because her manners were unusual (though they certainly were) that she differed from others; her oddness was less visible and yet was easily detectable. Since her nature little resembled that of the others, ‘Madam’ she remained. Besides, having been here for so many years
she had much older roots than anyone else, she was the only one among them who was born and raised in Istanbul. While most of the neighbours were immigrants, her entire life had been spent in this neighbourhood. Unlike the others, she had not popped up out of nowhere, turning her back to a future that never came and a past that was never left behind. Here she was, neither dragged along by others nor having dragged others behind her. Her name was ‘Auntie’ because her very being was a residue of a past none of them had lived.

  Madam Auntie lowered her head with a withered smile. She looked at her blue, purple and burgundy hands with brown spots drizzled over them. The same spots, only smaller and more faded, had been randomly sprinkled from her temples to her cheeks. If these had been the loudest colours on her skin, she would have looked, like many women her age, too old to age further. Yet the orange of her lipstick that seemed less spread on than glued on, the sunny yellowness of her leaf-shaped gold earrings, the rouge on her cheeks that made the concentric wrinkles stand out line by line, the purple tones of eye shadow that collected on her eyelids layer upon layer, the navy, blue and grey twinkle of her turquoise eyes, and then of course, the platinum yellow of her hair, had opened up wayward passageways to the unknown, behind her far from sombre appearance. Her putting on so much make-up regardless of her age had bestowed upon her a grand ridiculousness. Like all grandly ridiculous people, she too had a scary side.

  As such, she was a live-wire that added extra spark to all chats. When she was around, it was hard to talk behind people’s backs or get any pleasure from the art of slander or exaggeration, but the opposite was also true. The air of sobriety of Madam Auntie made the women in the beauty parlour recall the mixed pleasure they had last tasted during their high school years when they took a common stand against a very righteous teacher, while craving to impress her at the same time. Their convoluted chats were tidied up so that they reached the right consistency as they trod around and penetrated from many directions the principles she voiced and the values she defended. In addition, the pleasure they received multiplied when they were at times able to include her in their aspirations. For great is the pleasure of drawing the pure to slovenly ways, to then see how they are like everyone else, worth only as much.