The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  Her face clouded up, as she once again got immersed in a thorny silence. I made a last effort to win her heart.

  ‘The truth is, if the smell had indeed been coming from the outside, my writing might have helped to overcome this problem but we’d been suspecting the source of the smell to be in the wrong place all this time. It turns out the smell was coming from the inside, from within Bonbon Palace.’

  It worked. Now she was looking at me with less hatred and more interest. I shovelled the breakfast plate toward her. Seeing her take the fork into her hand I felt a childish joy. She was going to taste the omelet I had made. She was going to make love to me again.

  ‘I’m announcing our Garbage Commander. Hold onto your seat!’ I rasped. The thrill dribbling from my voice disturbed me for a fleeting moment but I did not mind. ‘Flat Number 10! Our respected neighbour, the widow.’

  ‘You mean Madam Auntie?’ whispered the Blue Mistress. ‘No way, I won’t believe that. You must be mistaken. She wouldn’t do such a thing!’

  ‘She has indeed, my beauty. She’s filled her house with garbage all the way up.’

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked, narrowing her chestnut eyes.

  ‘Forget about where I’ve found out about it. I’m telling the truth. God knows that’s the reason for all those bugs infesting your house.’ Oddly enough, I had not thought about this link previously, but all of a sudden all the bits and pieces of events interconnected in my mind.

  ‘I don’t believe you. I won’t believe you any more,’ she said, putting down her fork.

  ‘Oh really?’ I repined, feeling no need to hide my loss of composure. ‘What if I prove it, my sweet?’

  Flat Number 6: Nadia

  ‘Let’s throw a big party, nurse. Let’s invite everyone, even our enemies!’ hollered Loretta, as she slid at the clinic door away from the arms of the faithful elderly woman crying tears of joy. Standing by her was the husband-physician who had been struggling for so long to treat her, so that she could remember being married to him. Before they got into the car that was waiting for them, they turned around and waved simultaneously to the continuously crying wet nurse and the continuously smiling clinic personnel.

  His Wife Nadia turned off the TV. Then, inspecting the contents of the smelly, amber suitcase for the last time, pulled the zipper shut. The shadow puppets looked at her offended from the corner in which they had been thrown. She could easily have picked up another suitcase, but for some reason unknown to her, she wanted to take this one in particular. His Wife Nadia was leaving. The State of Dormancy had ended.

  Just like bugs, humans too, have an ecological potency, that is, an endurance limit. When and where they run into negative circumstances, they react by limiting their life functions. Their bodily mechanisms thus function less or perhaps differently and, thanks to this ability, they adjust their metabolisms to the new conditions they are subjected to. Within the circle of life, such a state of consecutive dormancy could emerge at any time, at any phase, and could be repeated many times over. Certain types of bugs, for instance, survive through winter by going through different stages of larvae as an egg. They minimize their material change by either stopping or slowing down their transformation until the cold weather has passed. Nevertheless, there is a limit to this stationary phase whereupon it has to cease. If the inappropriateness of the surrounding circumstances continues way too long, irreparable damage could be done to the metabolisms of the bugs.

  In order to be able to really know what we already know, every now and then we insist on waiting for a sign, if not a messenger, but who says the messenger has to be in a certain form and of a certain proportion? What matters eventually is not the guise of the messenger but our very ability to decipher the message. As Nadia Onissimovna pouted at the bugs infesting the cupboard where she kept her potato lamps, she had abruptly been swept by the thought that this ‘His Wife Nadia’ state of her life had been a state of consecutive dormancy. All though this period she had limited her life functions, dropped down below her capacity and frozen her transformation, and if she did not get out of this shallow stage as soon as possible, irreparable damage would be done to her personality.

  She was going back to the Ukraine. Taking with her the Blatella Germanica that had come all the way to her feet to give her the message, to remind her that she was something else in addition to and beyond being baffled and lonesome, a bewildered soul searching for difference within sameness, a foreigner out of synch with the city she lived in, a spouse openly cheated on, a housewife incompetent in making ashure savoury enough, a victim of the domestic violence of a wine imbiber even the grapes of Leon the Sage could not satiate, glum enough to expect help from her monotonous correspondence with a religiously strict aunt who heard God’s voice in the bubbling of soup cauldrons, a dispirited person whose every day was just like the previous one and blind enough to expect enlightenment from potato lamps… In addition and beyond all of these things, the bug had helped her remember, she was a scientist who loved the world of bugs way more than that of humans.

  Number 88: Bonbon Palace

  On Wednesday May 1st 2002, at 12:20 p.m., a white van – in need of a wash and decorated with the picture of a huge rat with needle-sharp teeth on one side, a hairy humongous spider on the other and signs of various sizes all over it – stopped in front of Bonbon Palace. The ginger haired, funny-faced, flap-eared driver who did not at all look his age was named Injustice Pureturk. He had been fumigating bugs for thirty-three years and had never hated his job as much as he did today. As he parked close to the sidewalk, he suspiciously eyed the gathering at the entrance of the apartment building. He checked the address his chatterbox of a secretary had handed him in the morning: ‘Cabal Street, Number 88 (Bonbon Palace).’ The chatterbox secretary had also put down a small note below: ‘The apartment building with a rose acacia tree in the garden.’ As Injustice Pureturk wiped off the sweat beads covering his forehead, he inspected the tree in the garden with pinkish flowers on some branches and purplish ones on others. This must be, he thought, what they called a rose acacia.

  Still, since he did not trust his secretary, whom he planned to replace as soon as possible, he wanted to see personally what was written on the door with his near-sighted eyes. He could easily have asked the people gathered in front of the apartment building but having become so terribly, immovably used to taking care of his own business and as he never trusted others, he left the van askew in the middle of the street and jumped down. As soon as he had taken a step, however, the small girl among the three children standing within the crowd screamed in horror: ‘The genie is here! Grandpaaa, grandpa, look, the genie is here!’ The older man with the round, greying beard, wide forehead and a skull cap on his head whose trousers the kid tugged, turned and eyed with a displeased look first the van, then the van driver. He must not have liked what he had seen, for his face turned even more sour as he drew all three children toward himself.

  Trying not to be offended, Injustice Pureturk plunged into the crowd with determined steps. He shoved the people aside, got near the apartment block and succeeded in reading the sign, relieved to see he had arrived at the right address. After removing a business card squeezed in between the lined up buzzers and putting his own in its stead, he jumped back onto his driver’s seat and put his van in reverse. Just then a female head popped in.

  ‘You came with only one van? It won’t be enough,’ hooted a cross-eyed blond woman with a plastic bib with leopard patterns tied to her neck. ‘They had said they were going to send two trucks. Even two trucks could barely pick up all this garbage.’

  As Injustice Pureturk tried to decipher what the hell this woman was talking about, and manoeuvre his van amongst the trucks plunging into the street from two opposite ends on the other side, he lost his control over the wheel, crushing the garbage pile by the garden wall.

  That day, other than the van driven by Injustice Pureturk, two other trucks turned up in front of Bonbon Palace as well as
the car of a private television channel. They left Bonbon Palace at the end of the day, the trucks jammed with garbage and the vehicle of the television channel with all the shots it required. Rather than the neighbours who were eager to be interviewed, the anchorman had wanted to interview the woman living in the garbage house, but once her apartment had been emptied out and fumigated she had sealed the door of Flat Number 10, refusing to open it to anyone.

  Flat Number 4: The Firenaturedsons

  Zelish Firenaturedsons panted as she closed herself up in her room and hurled her little suitcase onto her bed. As she tried to regain her balance by holding onto the side of the bed, she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She had chosen the wrong day to run away from home. As soon as she had stepped out to the street, she had found herself in the middle of an insane mayhem with two bright red trucks approaching from either direction. It was unbearably red out there in the outside world. Amongst all the colours, the streets of Istanbul were closest to red.

  ‘Why am I so disconsolate? I should have known I’ll never be able to get out of this house.’

  She picked up the mirror. The rash had covered up her entire face. The rash too was red as hell. She cried, first noiselessly and then howling increasingly. All of a sudden she heard a chirpy sound. Someone was answering her from inside. Though her head still swam and her sight fading out from seeing too much red, she followed the sound with wobbly steps. The canary in its cage by the window in the living room was merrily chirping.

  ‘Why are you so joyful? You’ll never be able to leave this house either.’

  Flat Number 7: Me

  No matter how hard I try not to, I recurrently recall everything we talked about that day. As to what happened afterward, I’d rather entirely erase it from my memory or at least only rarely, vaguely remember. However, Su’s curse seems to be working. Even if my body didn’t, my memory did turn into a louse. Like a fleshy louse wedged tightly onto my head, my memory has become menacing, procreating every passing day. In my mind’s eye I see my memory wandering around my head, sometimes on top of it, inside it at other times, making squeaky sounds as it lays its invisibly small, innumerably many, white eggs all around. Out of these eggs thousands of damned and unabashed hungry mouths come out, feeding on me, in spite of me. In tandem with their number, their appetite also escalates. Voraciously they bite through my flesh, numbing my head from pain as if thousands of pins have been stuck on it. I do not mention this to anyone. As I can no longer stand the person I am when with others, I try to stay alone as much as possible and seek out the answers to the same unanswerable questions.

  If I had not written that nonsensical writing on the garden wall and had not babbled away, if I had used the intellect which I prided myself on so much and so unreservedly to fathom the consequences of my act, to foresee the damage I was about to cause to another person, would all this still have happened? If I had never moved into Bonbon Palace and had not mixed with these people or learned their secrets, if I had succeeded for once in my life in being someone other than my typical self, would this tale still wind through the same routes toward the same ill-fated end? I can think of two different answers. One belongs to my mentality and the other to my heart. My mind says: ‘Don’t worry, sooner or later this catastrophe would have occurred anyhow. You are not as significant as you think or as malicious as you fear. What difference does it make whether this tragedy happened because of you or for another reason, as long as the end result is the same? If it makes you feel better, call it “Fortuna”. In any case, what else but Fortuna can account for the fact that every secret eventually ends up in the hands of the one who will divulge it?’

  I console myself. I need to believe in the righteousness of my mind. ‘The issue is neither this incessant failing nor that flawed willpower of yours. Whether you like it or not, you are not the one making the impossible possible.’ There is an offensive consolation in what my mind claims. ‘The human being is so vulnerable and primordial. It is coincidences rather than the consequences he causes that make an imprint on his life. Given that humankind is so weak, to what extent could you be blamed for what you did?’ The more I am degraded, the more I get acquitted.

  My heart instantly protests. ‘Even if there is a Fortuna, weren’t you the one who deemed its whorishness doubtful? Are we to own up to all victories but blame adversities on the vileness of an uncanny feminine power? Wasn’t the individual supposed to admit right out that he himself is the maker of his own fate rather than attributing the course of events to hollow superstitions?’ There is an honouring indictment in what my heart claims. ‘The human being is so complex and capable. What we consider to be chance only marks the results we personally cause. Given that humankind is so capable to what extent could you be absolved for what you did?’ The more I am elevated, the more I get besmirched.

  I do not drink more than before, but these days, I do sleep more than I used to. As my anguish swells, I seek refuge in sleep to then wake up even more anguished. It does not matter anymore if I leave or stay. However far I move out, never will I be able to step outside the range of the stink emitting from Flat Number 10. At my every awakening, the smell has become even more sour.

  No smell in life, even that of garbage could be as venomous as this one.

  Occasionally I overhear the neighbours. They are planning to break down her door. I do not want to be here when they break into Flat Number 10.

  The Boyar and His Lover

  The boyar and his lover on the wooden ladder leaning against the wall fretfully snuggled closer. The house smelt of death. They no longer dared to breathe. Averting their eyes from one another, they stared at the half-emerald, half-obscure forest extending languorously yonder.

  When the door was broken, men with masks fully clad in white dashed inside. They placed the stinking corpse on a stretcher and carried it away. The old widow’s corpse was so light, so petite…the residue of a body that had refused for days to eat-to drink-to take its pills… Madam Auntie had not been half as resistant to thirst and hunger as cockroaches.

  As soon as the men departed, the flat was fumigated once again. The insecticide spray drizzled on the eggs of the bugs, as well as on the one hundred and eighty-one objects from the past, but fortuitously the boyar and his lover managed to escape at the last minute. They went down the ladder, ploughed into the woods and walked out of the round, glazed, delicate tray of Vishniakov.

  A shadowy forest, half-emerald, half-obscure remained behind on the tray. The forest smelt of neither death nor garbage, but solely of cinnamon and cream.

  Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba

  Back in his house, Sidar threw himself on the couch, gasping hard. He had been brooding on suicide for so long, but that old widow who in all likelihood had never contemplated it as much, perhaps not even considered it until the last moment, had committed it much faster. When he got up, he wrote on small pieces of paper the nine factors he had deduced that day and stuck them on whatever empty spot could be found on the ceiling:

  Just like civilizations, suicides too, have an East and a West.

  The progressive mentality focused on rendering life meaningful through reason and reason alone, and expecting each day to be more advanced than the preceding one, feels the need to weigh suicide meticulously, reasoning it soundly. Such people, regardless of where they happen to be living, commit suicide in the West.

  The suicides of those in their early-to-middle, middle and late-to-middle ages usually fall within this category.

  Since the close relatives of those who commit suicide in the West cannot find comfort until they get a satisfactory answer to the question, “Why?” they follow the same line of reasoning to make an analysis of cause and consequence.

  There are also those who commit suicide at the least expected moment, the very last minute, without having organized the details. Such people, regardless of where they happen to be living, commit suicide in the realm of the East.

  When children and
the elderly commit suicide they do it in the East.

  There is nothing as mind-boggling as the suicides of the elderly who-were-so-close-to-death-anyhow and children who-were-yet-so-far-away-from-death.

  The suicides in the East, unlike the ones in the West, are in essence a mystery, or ‘esrar’ as the Istanbulites say.

  Esrar should not be given an explanation.

  Flat Number 7: Me

  At the beginning I used to draw circles around Bonbon Palace, brief walks that did not end up anywhere. Step by step the circles started to widen. Over time I started to veer, sometimes on foot, sometimes by car, into the far-flung neighbourhoods of Istanbul. It was the writings on the walls on the streets I was after.

  When Ethel told me she wanted to keep me company on these urban trips, I did not object. While I took notes on the writings, she filmed them one by one with her digital camera. With the honey Cherokee, we snaked the rugged streets of destitute quarters, steered through the middle-income vicinities flickering with the ambition of opportunities long lost, toured around mansions, derelict grasslands, sanctums and dens. At squares, courtyards, construction sites, squat houses, places of worship: far and wide the writings were everywhere. Most had been written on the walls with paint but there were also some written with chalk, pencil, coal and brick on doors, cardboard and assorted signs. Just like garbage, the writings about garbage had also been scattered everywhere in the city.

  At the places we went, we were immediately noticed. Children followed us curiously. Women suspiciously spied on our every move from behind the lattice tulle of windows. The most inquisitive among the artisans surrounded us each time and showered us with questions. When forced to offer a plausible explanation, we told them it was our school project to gather the ‘Garbage Writings’ of Istanbul. Despite the absurdity, it made sense to them. It did not at all stick out that both Ethel and I were too old to be students. In their eyes somehow school was deemed untouchable – a place where every absurdity was considered permissible.