The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  Flat Number 5: Hadji Hadji and his Daughter-in-Law and Grandchildren

  ‘Keep walking,’ the Daughter-in-Law bellowed. ‘Keep walking or I’ll break your legs!’

  Upon hearing these words, the two children tugged along by their hands started to cry even harder. The seven and a half year old walked behind languidly, tranquilly. Though he had indeed had lots of fun today, it had been a rather awful time for his mom. Probably as a result of the other box office worker complaining, the big boss who usually showed up once in a blue moon had appeared at the movie theatre around noon. ‘Do you think we run a daycare centre here?’ he growled, scowling at the five and a half and six and a half year olds who were standing in the corner, mouths agape at the huge Aladdin and the big-bellied genie sitting cross-legged on the 1 × 2 metre cardboard carpet hanging from the ceiling to promote the film. Both had been crying non-stop from that moment on.

  ‘If you could only manage for a couple of days, I’m sure I’ll sure find a solution by then,’ the Daughter-in-Law had pleaded crestfallen, though she knew only too well how unlikely that would be.

  As they approached Bonbon Palace, the kids’ crying dwindled and their bawl transformed finally into a barely audible buzz but as soon as they plunged through the door of Flat 5, like a watch with its spring loose, both ran screaming to their grandfather’s lap. At that moment, Hadji Hadji was having a little snooze on the divan with one of his four books slipping off his hand. Bowled over by this unexpected deluge of love, blinking in bewilderment he struggled to get to his feet.

  ‘Father, I’m entrusting the kids to you,’ said the Daughter-in-Law, averting her eyes. ‘I have to get back to work.’

  Hadji Hadji pulled the heads of the little girl and the little boy into his beard. Thus encouraged, the kids started another round of crying. The Daughter-in-Law stood silently, forlornly watching this scene whilst she heard herself mumble:

  ‘But I beg you, please have some mercy and don’t poison their infantile minds with those fairy tales of yours.’

  The door closed. The three young children and the old man were left alone. As the little kids, feeling drained from all that crying, sighed deeply and their grandfather collected the hair shed from his beard during that uproar, a prickly silence settled among them. They did not know what to do next. Before long, the seven and a half year old threw his big head back and smiled with a glint in his mossy green eyes. In point of fact, he too had enjoyed coming back home. Being outside had indeed been fun, but he had also felt himself as tiny as a flea and just as alien among all those people who watched his every move with pity. Unlike the outside world, here in this house he was the sole commander of his little kingdom and the only undisputed sovereign of his cocooned life.

  ‘Come on, grandpa,’ he proclaimed solemnly. ‘No need to dilly-dally. You can tell us whatever story you want!’

  Flat Number 10: Madam Auntie and Su

  ‘You have so much stuff in here Madam Auntie?!’ exclaimed Su, bobbing her head in escalating amazement.

  When the old woman had caught up with her, the child had already reached the end of the hall; reached it and seen inside the three rooms opening up to the hallway.

  ‘It isn’t all mine.’

  ‘Really, then whose is it?’

  ‘It belongs to different people. I’m looking after their things,’ said Madam Auntie, without taking her eyes off the tray carrying the amethyst cups. Her mind was pullulated with the fear that they would break, but she was so stunned that could not make any move to snatch the boyar and his lover from the child.

  Yet at this particular instant, Su was the one who was most astounded. Brought up in a house with white as the dominant colour, where everything was incessantly cleaned and polished, swept and purified, relentlessly whitened and yet never whitened enough, the child now felt as if she had been dropped into a magical garden she could not have even fathomed to exist upon earth. There was plenty of every colour, except white. The belongings, piled on top of one another, one inside the other, had seeped into each and every nook and cranny so that all three rooms were jam-packed up to the ceiling. Amid this multihued jumble it was impossible to separate the valuable from the useless. All was inextricably mixed up. With so much stuff, Su couldn’t help but suspect this place was way bigger than their flat. Never mind their flat, it was much bigger than all the other flats in this apartment building, even larger than all the flats she had hitherto seen put together! In fact, it seemed that Number 10 was not a flat at all, but a convoluted contraption with heaps of different pieces and hundreds of different buttons. If even one piece pulled out, the whole structure would break down and become inoperable.

  There were ballpoint pens everywhere…and burnt-out bulbs, used up batteries, torn tulles, burst balloons, expired medicine, used clothing, buttons with no two looking alike, stickers that had lost their adhesive, empty cartridges, lighters without gas, glasses with broken lenses, jar-lids of all sizes, money no longer in circulation, torn pieces of cloth, cracked trinkets, photographs turned yellow, pictures with no frames left, torn tassels, tattered wigs, keys that had lost their key chains, mugs with broken handles, baby bottles without the nipples, threadbare lampshades, worn out books, boxes of all sizes (some plastic, others wood), lustreless mother-of-pearl, cardboard, empty milk bottles, candied apple sticks, ice-cream sticks, food bowls, dolls with missing heads or limbs, umbrellas with wires sticking out, strainers turned black, doorbells that even themselves could not recall which doors they used to make ring, pantyhose with runs stopped by nail polish, wrapping paper, door knobs, broken household items, filled out notebooks, journals turned yellow, empty perfume bottles, single odd shoes, shattered remote-controls, rusty metals, stale candy, rings with missing stones, macramé flower-holders, shoe liners, rubber bands, bird cages, typewriters with missing letters, mildewed tea in tin boxes, tobacco parcels, bracelets of all colours, barrettes each more beautiful than the other, binocular lenses… As Su looked around in bewilderment, her eyes caught a large fishing net hanging over a pile of objects.

  ‘The sea brought that,’ Madame Auntie said, her voice lilting with pride.

  ‘You said the sea brought it?’

  ‘The sea becomes so generous when the lodos blows hard, carrying piles of items by the shore. With all these the waves playing the way children do with balls, passing these items back and forth to one another, they bring these to the shore. Waves, like human beings, quickly tire of things and you know, I’m not the only one there by the shore. Many other Istanbulites are also after the items the sea conveys.’

  However, Su was no longer listening to her, she was instead eyeing-up a child’s hat of purple velvet. It was beautiful and looked brand new:

  ‘Madam Auntie, where did you get this?’ she asked as she thrust the tray into its owner’s hands and shot off to touch the soft surface of the hat.

  The old woman hesitated for a split second but what was done could not be undone. What could she now hide from her little friend who had already gone too far, and for how long?

  ‘It was in the garbage,’ she replied. ‘I don’t know why they threw away such a beautiful hat.’

  Su caressed the hat absentmindedly. In her mind’s eye, the hobo who had boldly confronted their bullets gave a dirty smile, waving a bag of chickpeas he taken out of the garbage. His yellowed teeth became all the more visible.

  ‘What about these. Why did you take them?’

  ‘Are they bad?’ wondered the old woman, throwing a cursory glance at the empty pill bottles. ‘One always needs empty bottles. It’s not right to throw them away.’

  Su inspected the old woman’s teeth. Oddly enough, they were white and clean. Just like her mother’s.

  ‘If you like the hat, do take it. It’s perfect for you.’

  ‘Really?’ Her large eyes glimmered as she eagerly reached out for the mirror she had seen among the empty tin cans piled up by the wall. As soon as she donned the purple velvet hat, she burst out laughing
. It turned out to be a magnifying mirror.

  ‘Oh, no, we forgot about the milk!’ bellowed Madam Auntie at the same moment. ‘Run! Run!’

  With Su in front and the old woman rattling the amethyst cups behind, both raced into the kitchen. The milk in the small pot had long boiled over and spread everywhere over the oven, putting out the gas fire.

  Once they had cleaned the oven and moved back to the living room, Su took another look into the still ajar hallway door, exclaiming at full blast, ‘Heavens dubetsy!’ – ‘heavens dubetsy’ being in fashion in their circles these days instead of ‘crappy’. Perching on the nearest armchair, she started to swing her scrawny legs. ‘This is the Castle of Garbage. If only the boys saw this, they’d be thrilled.’

  ‘But the boys shouldn’t know about this place! No one should…’ the old woman stammered as she handed the child the coffee with milk. She then offered white chocolate from the crystal candy bowl on the coffee table. Su threw one into her mouth without thinking only to tense up right away. What if this chocolate had been dug out of the garbage as well? Su gaped fretfully at the old woman as if the answer was written somewhere on her forehead. Yet, before the chocolate melted in her mouth, a new question struck her mind.

  ‘Madam Auntie,’ she hooted, her voice instantly, inadvertently dwindling into a whisper. ‘Is this why Bonbon Palace smells so bad?’

  Flat Number 3: Hairdressers Cemal and Celal

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter with you? Did the cat get your tongue?’ asked the blonde with one eye cast, there yet again to have her hair dyed, never persuaded that she need not have this done so often.

  Cemal paid no heed to the woman’s teasing, preferring instead to fully focus on the strand of her hair he was about to highlight. Though determined not to respond to his customers, by now the pressure of each word squelched on the tip of his tongue had so much inflated that in an urge to speak, he turned around and yelled at the pimpled apprentice for no reason. Being wound-up in front of all these women the apprentice, who was already hapless enough to have to spend this delicate pubescent stage of his life working in a woman’s beauty parlour, blushed crimson. As soon as the gaze he averted from everyone accidentally met the Blue Mistress’s, he blushed even more, turning a darker hue. He didn’t know it, but when he flashed this particular shade of red his pimples almost disappeared.

  ‘What’s wrong with Cemal?’ whispered the Blue Mistress to the manicurist next to her. She had never had a manicure before, but today was no ordinary day as, after a lengthy hiatus, she was going to meet the olive oil merchant again. He had sent a text message to her mobile phone in the afternoon saying he wanted to stop by and have a heart-to-heart. Not that the man had any special interest in manicured hands; if the truth be told, it was doubtful whether he would even be able to tell the difference, but as she sat there with one hand pleasantly numbed in a bowl of lukewarm foamy water, the Blue Mistress still believed she was doing the right thing. Why they remain oblivious to the fact that they are getting prepared for men who will remain oblivious to their preparations is a riddle germane to women.

  The manicurist, now concentrating on a broken nail, answered in a hoarse whisper: ‘We have no idea what’s got into him. He’s like a powdered keg, ready to blow his top off. He hasn’t uttered a single word to the customers but keeps lashing out at us. You’d think he’s a chain-smoker who quit cold this morning. That touchy! It’s as if he’s got PMS.’

  Cemal frowned at the manicurist and the Blue Mistress giggling between them. Afraid of another rebuke the pimpled apprentice held out four aluminium folios at once. ‘Sonny, why don’t you hand them out one at a time?’ growled the other with the thrill of having found another excuse to scold the hapless apprentice. It was precisely then that a hand tapped on his shoulder.

  ‘Could you come to the kitchen for a moment?’ said Celal, careful not to draw attention to himself or his brother.

  There they stood in the kitchen, with the persistently, passionately boiling samovar in between them. Celal stared with compassion at the man who today looked more like himself than his twin, solemn and almost stock-still inside his sage green shirt.

  ‘I surrender,’ Celal said with a weary smile. ‘For God’s sake, please just go back to being your old self. Just be like you used to be. I had no idea how unbearable you’d become when solemn.’

  Before the other found a chance to bear a grudge, Celal put his hand on his shoulder, giving an avuncular squeeze. ‘Frankly brother, when you don’t chat and make these women cackle, the beauty parlour becomes dull.’

  In a few minutes, the twins drew open the curtain separating the tiny kitchen from the parlour. All heads popping-out of leopard patterned smocks turned toward them. Celal gingerly pushed his brother to step forward as if encouraging an actor afraid to get on stage. Then, with a smile, he winked at the apprentice without the pimples: ‘Sonny, make some nice foamy coffee for us all so that we can slurp away at it whilst gazing at the holy saint.’

  His edginess thawing visibly upon hearing these words, Cemal at long last gave the smile he had been withholding since early morning.

  Flat Number 7: Su and I

  At first I thought the kid was lying. Children make things up. I checked my watch. It had been fifteen minutes since the end of the lesson. We had been whispering since then. Just as I was about to leave, she said, ‘Sir, I need to tell you something.’ Hygiene Tijen, Meryem and Esma Hanim were all in the next room busily putting up the curtains they had just washed. From the way they were talking, one could tell that Esma Hanim was up somewhere high, probably on top of the ladder, and Hygiene Tijen was holding her steady from down below. Meryem seemed to be the one giving out instructions. As for us, we talked in wary whispers so as not to be heard.

  ‘I swear to God I’m telling the truth,’ Su groaned, miffed at my lack of faith.

  I feigned being convinced but this time it was her turn to doubt. She wanted me to give my word that I would never ever let slip the secret she had entrusted me with. My word must not have been enough for she then made me repeatedly swear an oath – first on my honour and after that, one by one and name by name, on all my loved ones. Just so that the angst in her big black eyes would abate, I obeyed her every demand. Yet it was as if, far from comforting her, each of my promises rendered her even more anxious. At one point, she went inside swishing around on her slippers and came back carrying a miniature Qur’an with an emerald green cover, the type that people carry in their wallets and handbags. Just so she could be soothed, I swore with the Qur’an in my palm. When I finished, realizing there was nothing else left to do except trust me, she breathed out a final sigh. Demanding as she is, how could I become annoyed by her demands? Love makes all and sundry miserable, even a child.

  ‘Come on, let’s put an end to this topic,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. My lips are sealed. I won’t tell anyone.’

  Seeing her smile cheered me up. ‘If I do tell your secret to anyone, let God turn me into an ass!’

  ‘Not an ass, not an ass!’ she objected in a voice that sounded like a chirp.

  ‘What should I be then?’

  By now she had shrugged off all her anxieties and regained that galling glee of hers. She walked around me talking pedantically, listing all the repulsive creatures she knew, in order to find the worst beast ever on the face of the earth. Owls were macabre but not sufficiently wretched; rats were dirty but not gross enough. Cockroaches were nauseating, spiders bloodcurdling, alligators chilling, jellyfish odious, scorpions poisonous, wasps dangerous. Pigs scrabbled in dirt, vultures fed on carrion, bears could devour their own offspring, bats sucked blood. Sea urchins pricked, frogs gave us warts, centipedes snuck into our ears. The worm that emerged from the soil after a rain, the caterpillar that writhed in lettuce, the grasshopper gobbling up the field, the lizard running away leaving behind its tail, the fly not giving anyone peace, the mosquito sucking blood…all had an unpleasant side to them but none were malicious enough. Even th
e leech, which looked more disgusting than all of them put together, could be of use to humans and was thus disqualified. What she searched for was something much worse than all of these creatures: something that was of no use either to itself or to others, something incompatible with any kind of benevolence, whose existence was apparently without any real purpose and one comparatively worse than all those absolutely useless but just as harmless creatures God had created with leftover clay. Such was the sort of creature she needed to scare me with turning into if I did not hold my oath one day.

  ‘If you’re searching for the worst creature, you should pay attention to the eyes. Those whose eyes you can look into are usually not as bad as those whose eyes you can’t see.’

  This she liked so much that she instantly ripped out a page from her lily adorned notebook and started making a list of creatures whose eyes could not be seen. So seriously she took the task that it wasn’t possible to change the topic or to get up and leave. While she tried to pick up a punishment among an assortment of punishments for my potential betrayal, I tried to help her as best as I could.

  ‘Let me be a rattle snake,’ I hissed, squeezing my tongue in between my teeth.

  ‘Nooooo!’

  ‘Let me be a piranha,’ I rattled, opening my mouth wide.‘Come on, noooo!’

  ‘I can’t get you to like anything,’ I pretended to be disgruntled.

  I guess until that moment, I was having fun, but all of a sudden an abstruse distress descended upon me. I put on my watch. This preposterous game had gone on too long and I don’t know why but it had started to get on my nerves. Just as I was thinking about leaving, ‘I found it, I found it,’ she cackled her voice lilting with delight. ‘There was no need to search after all!’