The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  Gaba’s barks accelerated in folds, getting louder each time, he was probably upset by something. It was the ‘If you are not going to give me any more simits, could you please leave me alone!’ bark.

  ‘As she was so fastidious, she married very late. Her husband was an eye doctor, had an office in Sisli. They truly loved one another. Didn’t have any children. Then the poor man unexpectedly died; simply crossing the street, must have lost his foresight or something, stepped on the road without even looking. The car ‘hit and ran’ in plain daylight. I’ve seen many a person’s hair turning white with grief, but with my sister it was her body that shrivelled from grief. Before long she had shrunk into an elfin, doleful woman. She gave up everything, went off food. Hung her husband’s pictures all around the house. Just like she used to talk to her diary as a young girl, she started to talk to those photographs. I made a grave mistake then. I thought if I removed my brother-in-law’s belongings out of her sight, it would be easier for her to forget. One day, I secretly gathered the photographs, all of them, and gave them away to friends and relatives. Just as she had never forgiven mother, my sister did not forgive me either. That was when she moved to another house. You see, I had presumed it would be hard for her to live in a house surrounded by my brother-in-law’s memory. To the contrary, it was hard for my sister to live there the moment those reminiscences were gone. She moved somewhere else. After all these years she still doesn’t let me into her house. She didn’t get re-married either. All this time she stayed single like that. Whenever we get together, we meet at a patisserie. Do you know anything about dream interpretations? My sister sure does and her dreams always come true.’

  ‘So how did she interpret this dream?’ Sidar wondered.

  ‘She said she might die before waiting for her time to come. That’s why my mother was angry at her like that.’

  ‘You mean suicide?’ Sidar exclaimed with a tinge of a thrill in his voice.

  However, blinking his bluish-grey eyes the old man looked deadpan, as if never before had he thought of such a word or even heard of it.

  Gaba sounded far more distraught now. He was using the, ‘If you so insist on not leaving me alone, then I will leave!’ bark. Sidar scurried to his feet though he had more questions to ask. At the entrance of the cemetery, he found Gaba, just as he had predicted, barking in distress in the middle of a circle of affection and attention formed by inquisitive onlookers. Before he ran to the rescue of his dog, he stopped for a second to wave to the old man, but the latter had turned to the other side still murmuring, as if he was unaware that he was now alone on the bench.

  Flat Number 9: Hygiene Tijen, Su and Me

  6:54 p.m.: Dangling from the armchair, her stick-thin legs covered with myriad mosquito bites each of which she had turned into an abrasion from scratching non-stop, Su thrust her hands into the pockets of her shorts and fully concentrated her gaze on the minute hand of the clock on the wall, as if by so doing she could make time run faster. Her tutor was always prompt. To this day he had never been late, not even a delay of few minutes, but such punctuality had recoil of its own. He always ended the lesson right on the dot. He had never stayed longer, not even for a few minutes. The instant he started the lesson, he placed his watch with the leather strap between the two of them on the table and though he did not keep glancing at it as a bored man would, he still jumped to his feet as soon as the hour was up.

  6:57 p.m.: She sprung up with the ring of the doorbell. Three minutes early!

  Hygiene Tijen was by the kitchen sink, scraping off the sediment that had collected at the bottom of the teapot. Drying on her snow-white apron her hands with fingertips creased from having stayed in hot water for hours on end, she headed to the door. Upon opening it, she inspected her daughter’s tutor from head-to-toe. The man looked neat and trim as always. He submissively took off his shoes before entering and put on his beige-socked feet a pair of sanitary slippers from the basket. The mother and daughter meanwhile watched his gestures with deferential courtesy. Then all three of them moved to the living room, making squishy noises as they walked. On one end of the rectangular dining room table there was, as usual, especially prepared for the lesson ahead of time: coconut cake slices lined up on two porcelain plates with white napkins on the side, the notebook with the white lilies spread open, pencil tips carefully sharpened, the ashtray laid ready. One could smoke in this house. Neither smoke nor ash fell into the realm of Hygiene Tijen’s conception of ‘filth.’

  ‘I hope it won’t be impolite if we keep working inside as you lecture here?’

  She always asked the same question before every lesson. I always gave the same response: ‘Not at all, Mrs. Tijen. Please continue with your work.’

  The new cleaning lady showed up at that instant scuffling out of the bathroom, in one hand a pail filled with soapy water and in the other hand a doormat with tassels so messed up it looked trodden on. Behind her trundled Meryem with her sharply protruding belly. She had dangled a longish, snow-white towel from one shoulder like a boxing trainer or a Turkish bath massager. Both women seemed to be waddling with the discomfort of wearing sanitary slippers.

  ‘How come you are still working?’ I asked her.

  However, before she could respond, Hygiene Tijen jumped in. ‘No, no, Meryem isn’t working really, she stopped doing so last week, but I was in dire straits without her assistance. So this is the solution we came up with: Meryem says what needs to be done and Esma Hanim, thanks be upon her, does it.’

  Upon hearing her name mentioned Esma Hanim tilted her head and gave a lackadaisical greeting, apparently not as enthusiastic as others about her share in the division of labour. Then all three women squished on their slippers back to their respective chores, leaving the tutor and student alone.

  7:00 p.m.: As Su pulled her chair closer to the table, she threw a distressed glance at the wristwatch with the leather strap stretched like a barrier between them.

  Flat Number 7: The Blue Mistress and I

  Back home after the lesson, I found the Blue Mistress still there. What’s more, she had put in place a number of the boxes that had been waiting to be opened since the day I moved in and had also straightened the place up. However, she told me she would soon leave to go cook for the olive oil merchant. I refrained from delving into that story – it being no news to me that things were not going well between them lately.

  ‘Tell me,’ she cooed. ‘What sort of food do you want?’

  ‘Pasta,’ I grumbled. Despite her initial frown, she found the idea practical. As I boiled the pasta, she set out to prepare a tomato and thyme sauce with the limited ingredients in the house. I guess that is why she loves me. Unlike the other men in her life, I demand from her far less than what she is willing to give. In return, I receive far more than what I had demanded initially.

  The doorbell rang just when we had sat down at the table. Su was such an odd little girl. With her book in her hand, there she was, telling me I had forgotten to give her homework for the weekend. The Blue Mistress invited her to the table. She did not want to come. While they talked, I chose a number of exercises way above her level. If ruining her weekend with extra homework is what she pines for, so be it.

  ‘Well, it turns out I am not the only neighbour to have fallen for that handsome face of yours, Mister,’ snorted the Blue Mistress when we were able to sit down again to eat.

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, she’s just a child.’

  ‘So what? Can’t children fall in love? I swear to God, I know I could when I was about that age. Weren’t you in love with anyone as a child?’

  It suddenly felt so awkward. The Blue Mistress talked about her childhood as if referring to a distant past whereas she must be at most ten to twelve years past it. Come to think of it, there was only eleven years between Su and the Blue Mistress.

  ‘You didn’t answer! Have you ever been in love as a child or not?’ she insisted, apparently annoyed with my silence.

  I indeed had,
except that it had never been a memory worth recording. There was a flighty, freckled, loud-mouthed girl I went to school with. I recall being attracted to her. To this day I have never met someone so naturally inclined to theft. All that mattered was that an item belonged to someone else, there was nothing on earth she would not enjoy stealing: fruit from the neighbouring gardens, slippers from the thresholds of homely homes, pencils and erasers of classmates…she would embezzle them all and share her loot with me each time… Every now and then she lurched into the foul-smelling store of a hideous, glue-addicted shoe repairman we passed by on our way to school. While I chatted up the man, she would fill her pockets with handfuls of nails and soles. God knows why, we would then hammer these onto all the fences, benches, cases or doors we came across. After all we shared, however, my beloved played dirty for no good reason and ratted to my parents. My father was barely shaken upon receiving the news of his son’s thefts but with my mother it was a completely different story. She blew her top, exaggerating her parental punishment out of proportion. Ten days later, however, my father died, thereby erasing off my mother’s agenda the scandal of my offence forever.

  ‘What was her name?’ asked the Blue Mistress, shaking the salt-mill for the umpteenth time, as if determined to find its bottom.

  Hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember her name – just as I can’t remember what the majority of my childhood friends were called. I confessed to her how hard it usually was for me to remember people’s names but I did not reveal how this habit of mine used to infuriate Ayshin. The Blue Mistress asks little about my ex-marriage anyhow. Perhaps because she is sick of hearing about the marriage of the olive oil merchant or perhaps she is one of those people who are all ears when it comes to hearing about still enduring childhoods but not immediate pasts. I told her I was much better with nicknames – those I don’t easily forget.

  ‘Then find me a nickname as well,’ she said finally able to let go of the salt-mill and dizzy from all that shaking.

  ‘You already have one,’ I confirmed. ‘You are “The Blue Mistress.” ’

  She did not say anything but I could see it in her eyes all the same. She liked the name I had given her.

  3:33 a.m.: I woke up, she was not by my side.

  I found her on the balcony. She looked pale, as if she had woken up in the middle of a nightmare so daunting that it had robbed her off the longing to go back to sleep. I sank into the chair next to her and lit a cigarette. Under the coffee table in between us, there were armies of ants circumambulating a piece of melon that had started to rot where it had fallen. As they toiled we sat still, watching the empty street.

  ‘I bet that girl didn’t rat on you,’ she murmured absentmindedly. ‘It must have reached your mother through another route. Why would she do it? You two were accomplices.’

  I went in and fetched two double rakι for us. She took hers with a smile but only slightly sipped, evidently not a drinker. Yet she evidently didn’t want to display this, probably because she had always run into men who drank like sponges. On second thoughts, I decided that I was perhaps wrong about this, after all she was not the type to fool others. Perhaps she herself was unaware of her dislike for alcohol in the first place.

  ‘Maybe it is just the reverse,’ I said. When I finish my rakι, I will drink hers as well – as long as she does not smear the glass with lipstick. ‘Being accomplices might connect people to one another but that union is bound to be fleeting. In reality, if you are accomplices with someone, you will try to get rid of then at the first opportunity. If you don’t, they will. A wrongdoer might indeed return to the scene of crime but not to the partner in crime.’

  ‘Oh, blessings to you, my teacher, you sure know how to talk.’ She placed on the table the glass she had been fiddling with. Good, no lipstick. ‘Do your students enjoy listening to you?’

  ‘Come to a class with me one day, sit among the students and decide for yourself.’

  ‘What if someone asks, “Who is this person?” What’ll you say?’

  ‘You’ll be a student from somewhere else coming to listen to the lecture. You’re so young, they’d buy it,’ I muttered while caressing her face. The scar on her left cheek is not at all visible in this dim light. ‘But I can, if you want, tell them instead that you’re a friend of mine.’

  ‘That would be blatant lie!’ she frowned, suddenly riled. ‘How could I ever be regarded as your friend? It would take them only a minute’s chat with me to fathom the lie. I haven’t the foggiest idea about many of the things you talk about. I didn’t go to college. It’s too evident that I’m not going to do so at this age.’

  What age? At times I doubt if she is really aware how young she is.

  ‘Friendship is based on compatibility,’ she volleyed upon realizing I was about to object. ‘One can fall in love with someone incompatible but one can’t be friends with them. For one thing, when you talk the other has to get it in an instant. To do so one has to be at the same cultural level. You and I can’t ever be friends. We can’t be married either or be lovers. We tried to be neighbours but made a mess of that as well.’

  ‘And why on earth can’t we be lovers?’

  Instead of answering my question, my little lover with no lipstick and no serenity, took a large sip from the drink I thought she had long abandoned. Her face soured right away. Why does she force herself to drink when she does not like alcohol at all?

  ‘I think if we ever could be anything together, we’d be accomplices,’ she blurted out all of a sudden, the harshness of her words incongruent with the indolence of her moves as she reached for the stale nuts to get rid of the taste in her mouth.

  A white car with black windows ploughed through Cabal Street, its cassette tape turned on full blast. The Blue Mistress jerked her head over the railing and swore without any reservations whatsoever. I gently pulled her towards me, kissed her. The piercing music of the car decreased bit by bit. In that stillness, a hurried mosquito slyly made a dive, buzzing. The wind came to a standstill, filling the air with the sour garbage smell. The Blue Mistress finished the pistachios in the bowl and I the rakι in my glass, continuing on to hers. In the next attack of the mosquito, my applause echoed in the air. I opened my hands hoping to see it dead. They were empty.

  Flat Number 10: Madam Auntie

  ‘Are you upset about something Su?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Su grunted a jagged response, constantly squeezing the English exercise book she had rolled up.

  ‘Why don’t I make us a nice cup of coffee with milk and you go choose two coffee cups from the glass cupboard honey,’ Madam Auntie said, trying not to fret over the child’s bitterness. Despite having solemnly pledged to herself to send the girl away with an appropriate excuse if and when she appeared at her door again, seeing her in such a sullen state today, she had not been able to keep her word.

  Su heaved a pompous sigh as she followed the old woman inside. In this warm weather coffee with milk was the last thing she wanted to drink but what difference would it make, things were ‘crappy’ anyway – ‘crappy’ being in fashion in their circles nowadays instead of ‘awesome’. What difference would it make if she had a crappy coke or a crappy coffee with milk? Scratching her scrawny legs, droopily and indolently, she walked into the living room, opened the glass cupboard at the corner and peered inside in deep wonder. There were so many things in here! Lined up on the shelves were inverted porcelain cups, liquor cups, champagne flutes, crystal pitchers, embroidered frames and all kinds of tiny carved boxes the function of which she could not fathom. After a quick survey, she honed in on two amethyst cups with intertwined ivy handles. Right behind them was a round, glazed, illustrated tray: a robust man with a moustache and raven-black hat was carrying a woman down a ladder in his lap, her tulle dress flowing to her heels. The woman had put her head on the man’s shoulder, dreamily gazing into the horizon, as if she were not on top of a ladder from which they could topple down any minute but on an idyllic hill with a magnif
icent panorama. It was as if they were fleeing the fairy tale to which they belonged. One could distinguish a few houses and behind them a forest in shades of green. Su turned the back of the tray as if hoping to see there the fate awaiting this dignified couple, but there was no other illustration at the back, only an inscription at one corner: ‘Vishniakov’.

  Placing the amethyst cups on the tray, she closed the cupboard door shut with her foot. Just as she was about to go back, her eyes caught a spot further down. The living room door leading to the hall was partly open and the interior…the interior looked somewhat uncanny…

  Without really thinking she approached the door, opened it all the way and stood almost petrified. As if lured, she started to advance step by step down the hall of Madam Auntie’s house. With every step, her uneasiness gave way to utmost incredulity.

  ‘How much sugar would you like?’ Madam Auntie called out from the kitchen but when there came no response, she turned down the heat under the milk and went back to retrieve her guest. Finding the living room empty she first suspected the child had left, but then she noticed the wide open hallway door. In escalating panic, she involuntarily brought her hand up to her neck. It was not there. Her bluish-grey eyes fretfully scanned the living room until she spotted the velvet beribboned key sitting guiltily on the coffee table at the corner. Colour drained from her face. Her heart pummelling hard, she dashed into the hall after the girl.