Part 4 (1/2)

Whenever I fall asleep here, my legs spill over from the couch but this time I seem to have forgotten to take off my shoes to boot. My head had slipped from the pillow, my neck was sore. In the dent extending from the side of my mouth to my ear, I detected a bubbly, pasty spittle befitting a dog gone rabid or a baby regurgitating the food just consumed. My s.h.i.+rt had wrinkled up on me, the pain of lying down lopsided had hit my back and my mouth was parched. I had also thrown up on the corner of the rug. At least I had thought of taking off my trousers, but as 'Ethel the c.u.n.t' likes to articulate in yet another aphorism of hers: 'To be without pants while in socks and shoes can make a man only as attractive as a candied apple with the exposed parts all rotten...' or something like that. When viewed from this angle, perhaps I should consider myself lucky for waking up alone this morning, just like I had done for the last sixty-six days.

It is all because of this house. It has been two months and five days since I moved in here. I have come to realize that for all its abstractness and vastness the terms in which time is measurable are no more concrete and no less pet.i.te than mere driblets. I count up every day that has pa.s.sed, every drop of it. By now I should have fully settled down and established some sort of an order in this house. Yet not only have I failed to settle down, I live as if I might pack up and leave any moment. As if to make moving out easier, the flat is still not much different from the way it was the day I moved in, with boxes piled up on top of one another, some opened but most only roughly so: a perfunctory, transitory dwelling amidst parcels yet to be opened...the fleeting order as evaporative as room sprays...a 'Lego-home' constructed of parts and pieces to be dissembled at any moment... When single, one lives amidst 'belongings-in-a-house'; one's past, trajectory, personal worth all contained in possessions that bear symbolic value. Upon getting married, one starts to live in 'a-house-of-belongings', established more on a future than a past, more on expectations than memories; a house where it is doubtful how much one personally possesses. As for divorce, depending on whether one is the person leaving or the person staying behind, it is like camping out all over again, only this time one either stays behind in a 'house-with-belongings-gone' or departs, carrying 'belongings-without-a-house'.

My situation is both, because of this house and because of 'Ethel the c.u.n.t'. The day I had to move in here, no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince her to stay out of it and not mess things up by helping. When I had finally perched myself in the front seat of the truck belonging to the moving company that had agreed to transport the books, clothes and knick-knacks I had deliberately refused to let go from the tastefully decorated home of my marriage (as well as some cheap and simple furniture I had recently bought for the dingy apartment that would be the base for my post-marriage era); there right next to me was none other than Ethel. As if her presence was not alarming enough, she teamed up with the dim-witted driver, utterly stunning the man with the premium quality cigars she offered, preposterous questions she asked and the absurd topics of conversation she came up with which included making a list of the most difficult neighbourhoods in Istanbul to move in and out of. When we had finally reached Bonbon Palace, Ethel meddled with the porters, running around excitedly in that hard-to-believe skirt of hers, which was no bigger than the size of a beggar's handkerchief, on that huge, hideous a.s.s she so much enjoys exhibiting.

Shooting orders left and right, she instructed the porters where to put each box, how to arrange the book parcels and where to stack the common, slipshod packages of shelves of what was supposed to turn into a self-made library, which she herself had forced me to purchase from one of those huge stores in which families paid homage at the weekends. The porters were wise enough to know that it is the woman who has the last word in these matters and in their wisdom unashamedly ignored me, the real owner. All day long I do not remember them even once paying attention to what I said, except when the time came to pay them. It was only then that they favoured me over Ethel. Even when they accidentally banged the cardboard box packed with all kinds of gla.s.ses, cups, and goblets, the authority they addressed and the person they apologized to was not me, trying to mildly dismiss the incident, but Ethel who gave them h.e.l.l about the probable damage they might have caused.

All day long, I had to stand at a corner and be content with watching what was considered appropriate for me. My exclusion reached its peak during the installation of the 180 200 cms, golden bow, system-orthopedic king size bed one of the two hearty spoils I had wrested from my former house. When, after six tries, it had become only too evident that the bed would not fit the shapeless s.p.a.ce of a room that Ethel had decided to make into my bedroom, an argument broke out among them. Ethel wanted the bed to be put in sideways and would sacrifice the showy headboard, if necessary. As for the porters, they were all for locating the bed head-on, even though there would then be no s.p.a.ce left to move around. Meanwhile, no one asked my opinion and if someone had, I would not know what to say anyhow. When they finally agreed to put the bed in sideways, still leaving no room to move, I did not object. That bed was too big for me at any rate. Accordingly, I have not slept on it once since I moved here. I am pretty much consistent in sleeping on this narrow couch that torments my posture and tortures my back. In the past, during her lengthy Masnawi season, Ethel had once lectured me about how Rumi had to reckon with his body. Though not in such a mystical manner, in these last two months I too have probably shown little grat.i.tude to my frame. Still, like a desperate lover ever more attached to his oppressor or a despicable apprentice inured to scorn, I too cannot break away from this cruelly uncomfortable sofa. Before the end of the term, I should a.s.sign 'The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude' to the Thursday section.

The television opposite is, no doubt, the main reason for my preferring this couch. These days, having given up regular sleeping hours, I seek refuge in television and can only sleep with it turned on. Likewise last night, back home so late and high, I must have turned on the television. Now on the screen some madcap of a young girl with a short, multihued s.h.i.+rt with tropical birds, a crimson rosebud tattoo almost as big as a fist on her bare plump belly and orange-coloured hair tied-up in handfuls with phosph.o.r.escent green ribbons, chirps with a glee not many people are bestowed with this early in the morning. Though the girl does not move her body around that much and talks with simple hand gestures, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s keep wobbling in that way particular to women scurrying to catch a bus at the last minute. This is not to my taste though. I have always gone for contrasts; I like them either as small as the palm in a big frame, or huge in a pet.i.te body.

Ten days later, when Ethel came to inspect the house and saw everything was as she had left it, she kept her comments to herself. Nothing had changed by the third week. Still not even a single package had been unwrapped, not even a single shelf mounted. When she stopped by one month five days later, I wished she would keep silent once again. However, with a disagreeable smile on her face and whilst clicking her long, brightly polished fingernails together, she blurted out in that particular manner of hers intended to stress the importance of whatever she was going to say, 'Look, sugar-plum! It's none of my business but you'd better stop treating your new house like you've treated your ex-wife. You neglect your house a.s.suming it's all yours and will never go anywhere, but G.o.d forbid it too might be taken away from you, just like your wife was.' I did not respond. I have always hated long, polished fingernails.

Ethel uses her tongue the way a frog catches a fly. Whatever comes to her mind she blurts out and before the victim has even had a chance to get the message, catches with her harsh pink tongue the momentary bewilderment on the latter's face and then gulps it down with great pleasure, without even bothering to swallow. Although following the divorce I had barely hesitated in ending numerous friends.h.i.+ps in my life, I do not know, and frankly do not want to know, why I am still friends with her. Not that I make any special efforts to see her, but I do not take any steps to stop seeing her either. The issue is not that I do not like her any longer, for I have never liked her more or less than I do now. If a bond has kept us together all this time, I do not think it is one of love, companions.h.i.+p or trust. Ethel and I are as compatible as each single wing of two different b.u.t.terflies positioned side by side under a collector's magnifying gla.s.s. We are very much alike in our incompleteness and yet it is two different halves, with utterly distinct designs and colours that we eventually pine for. As we waft along with the wind, we have been coming together, even sticking together, but never in such as way as to complete one another. If I don't see her for a month, I barely miss her and am sometimes hardly even aware of her absence; yet, when we meet after a month, I do not feel the slightest distress next to her or ever think about cutting short the time we spend together. Ethel is Ethel, just as some things simply are what they are. In spite of this, or maybe precisely because of this, I see her more frequently and share more things with her than with anyone else. That is how it has been for many years. This loose relations.h.i.+p of ours may persevere as such or brusquely unravel one day like the nail of a haemorrhaged finger. At times I wonder, if such a thing happens, which one of us will be the first to realize and how long after the fingernail has fallen?

As I was getting up from the couch, my foot got caught on the phone cable. The receiver emerged from under my pillow, as if I had tried to squeeze the life out of the phone last night. It is so annoying, all the data at hand indicates that I was not able to resist calling her last night before I pa.s.sed out.

n.o.body would object to the fact that it is dangerous for drunks to drive. Making phone-calls whilst drunk, however, could produce even more deadly results than driving whilst drunk, and yet there are no legal procedures for dealing with this particular danger. Drunk drivers. .h.i.t random targets, like an unfortunate tree that suddenly appears in front of them or an unrelated vehicle moving on its way...in these accidents there is neither purpose nor intent. Yet those who use the phone when drunk always go and hit the ones they love.

It is enough of a torment to realize that you've called your loved one when drunk, but it is even worse not to remember whether you called and, as you force yourself to remember, to try to convince yourself to the contrary. Since my divorce, this scene kept repeating itself at almost regular intervals but I had not yet called Ays.h.i.+n on her new number. She probably does not even know that I managed to get this number. That is, of course, if we did not talk last night... I had to be certain. I pushed the redial b.u.t.ton. One, two, three...it was answered on the sixth ring. There she was herself! In the morning, her voice always sounded as if it had come from the bottom of a deep well. She likes to sleep. Highly unattractive upon waking up, she cannot possibly come to her senses before having her filtered coffee. No sugar, no milk. Her second 'h.e.l.looo' sounded even more furious than her first. I hung up.

I tried to collect my thoughts. In spite of everything, there was still some hope. The fact that I called her did not mean that we actually talked. Maybe the phone was not answered. If Ays.h.i.+n had answered the phone last night and said a few good or bad things, I would have at least remembered bits and pieces of what had been said. As I did not recall a single word, probably nothing worth remembering had occurred, but there was no way I could find solace on the bosom of this slim chance. The most plausible explanation for Ays.h.i.+n's not answering the phone last night was that she was not home at the time. At that time, outside... Outside, at that time...

On the bathroom floor lie two dead c.o.c.kroaches half a metre apart. This must be two of my accomplishments last night but I cannot, in the doubtful records of my memory, come across any explanation regarding this matter. I take my s.h.i.+rt off. It is suffused with a sharp smell: an unbearable smell jointly produced by the smells of the deep-fried turbot, lots of side dishes, the rak I drank and the premium quality cigars I smoked, all mixed up then totally dredged and made unrecognizable by my stomach acid. The was.h.i.+ng machine is a divorce gift from Ethel. She has always been a practical woman, handy and generous. I throw my navy-blue linen pants into the machine as well. I have learned by now that for linens one uses the 40 temperature and the second short cycle, but even if I succeed in purifying myself from the unpleasant sediments of last night, it is amply evident that I will not be able to free myself from the disgusting garbage smell engulfing this apartment building. I am extremely regretful about acting so hastily during the divorce process in my search for a house. For the same amount of money I could have been living in a much more decent place if I had not, with the intent of getting away as soon as possible, attempted to land the first relatively cheap and adequately distant flat. I miss the comfort of my old house. The issue does not solely consist of my yearning for the lost comfort and the lost heaven from which I personally arranged my own downfall. The house actually belonged to Ays.h.i.+n or, to put it more correctly, to Ays.h.i.+n's family, but after a three and a half year long residency, I had thought the house was mine too until that unfortunate moment after gathering my underwear, books, lecture notes and razor blades when I went back for a last look to check if I had left anything behind. Such a puny little word: 'too!' Like a child enthusiastically expecting that what his brother has received will be given to him too:'Me too, me too!'Yet it seems that in marriage, just as in sibling relations, one side gets more than the other, while people's traces can be removed from the places they lived, or sometimes even thought they owned, as easily as the string off of a string bean. What I find hard to take, what thrusts pains into my stomach, is exactly the part about the string. It upsets me to think that now Ays.h.i.+n has a great time by herself in the house that was once mine too. One should of course be always grateful, for there is worse than the worse imaginable: she could be having a great time not all alone...

I took stock in the bathroom, freezing at times or getting scalded at others under the shower that either heated up so much that it then suddenly turned icy, or turned cold and then became boiling hot, managing never to end up lukewarm. Even though it was unclear how I had found my way home last night imbibed, it was certain that I had called Ays.h.i.+n with my drunken jellyfish-head. Okay, what then? If we had talked, a memory, a moment should have been left behind. A sentence... As I soaped my face, the headquarters of my brain sent the news that a sentence fitting the description of the sought suspect had been observed wandering around and been arrested: 'Don't you see that I will totally cease to care about you if you keep calling like this? Before we lose our respect for each other...' I did not see anything. Even though I tried to open my soapy eyes for a moment, I again shut them when they started stinging from the soap. No, the information proved to be groundless. This was not the sentence I was searching for. I remembered. I had not heard this one last night, but earlier, sometime before Ays.h.i.+n had tried to change her phone number.

I stepped out when the manic depressive shower started to push my endurance. The pain in my stomach was unbearable. The kitchen was not too small, but became rather narrow after the installment, right in the middle, of an impressive burly refrigerator more or less the size of the cottages that low-income holiday-makers perch along sea sh.o.r.es and fill up with their families. Rather than insisting on taking from my old house this American bullock, designed to satiate the tribal appet.i.tes of consumer society's nuclear families with their hangar-like homes, I should have gone and bought myself one of those box-like, knee-high refrigerators used in either hotel rooms or flats in Tokyo. I probably would have done so if Ays.h.i.+n had not objected by stating 'It's too big for you.' I had heard this remark twice in a row: firstly, for the king-size bed and secondly, for the refrigerator. It was only then, upon realizing that what was too big for me was not that big for Ays.h.i.+n, had I been able to surmise that there was another man in her life and my place would be shortly filled up. So even though I did not cause any difficulties on any matter and was more compliant and docile than necessary so as to hurry along the divorce process, no one, Ethel included, could make out my uncompromising stubbornness concerning the bed and the refrigerator.

My loot might have been substantial but it was totally hollow. It looked pathetic empty like that. Large refrigerators are distant relatives of those old locomotives who gobble-up coal all along the way; they are, just like them, never full and as they get filled, constantly want to be filled some more. Forget sacks of coal, mine is bereft even of a shovel full of coal dust. On the top shelf there was a box of opened cream cheese coated with a thin layer of mould, inside the door are five cans of beer and half a large bottle of rak, in the vegetable container sat three tomatoes and wilted leaves of lettuce. That was all. Then, on the bottom shelf there was the mushroom pizza slice sent by that elderly woman neighbour. I had seen many who send puddings and the like, but had never before encountered one who made pizza and distributed it slice by slice. I was going to throw it away but forgot. Now, however, as the alcohol particles left over from the night slowly gnawed on the membrane of my stomach, I reached for the pizza slice with grat.i.tude. It took three minutes to heat it up in the microwave oven and approximately thirty seconds to get it down my stomach. It was a bit stale but so what: it was great considering the conditions! Having thus appeased my stomach, just a tad, I embarked on preparing my medicine. This included a pot of skimmed milk with two heaped spoonfuls of Turkish coffee, one spoonful of pine honey, a generous quant.i.ty of cinnamon and a little cognac. This is my miracle medicine for hangovers, its curing power proven through experience. It may not suit every const.i.tution. Actually every const.i.tution should, through trial and error, develop its own cure. That is how I found mine. That day I made the proportions more generous than usual, as I needed to sober up as soon as possible. It was Thursday and since the beginning of the term, every Thursday afternoon I have taught the course I love the most to the cla.s.s I love the most.

While waiting for the milk to boil, I looked through the brochures Ethel had thrust into my hand. Another private university was being founded in Istanbul. I had been aware of some of the details for a long time, like the long preparation process for example. What I did not know was that Ethel the c.u.n.t was involved as well; she was actually at the very centre of it all and told me more than I ever wanted to learn at dinner. Only two minutes after we had met, she introduced the topic with a 'plop' and talked of almost nothing else until the end of the night when, under the weary looks of the skinny Kurdish waiter who could barely keep his long black eyelashes open, we wobblingly departed from the restaurant that had no other customers left except us. She kept talking continuously about how this university was not a financial investment but a moral one; how she had not so wholeheartedly believed in a project for quite a long time; she personally knew the founders and that she herself was actually one of the eight investors behind the scenes; she had enjoyed life much more since she got involved in this and that she was sure when she looked back in her old age this would be the job she would be most proud of in her life; about how they would educate a group of youth much more conscious and knowledgeable than their generation within five years at the most; how the size of this group of youths would increase from year to year and how they would altogether affect the fate of our haggard country. As she kept speaking, I kept on drinking. If I had drunk less, or more slowly, the summary of the night would have been something like this: Ethel talked, I laughed; Ethel got angry, I burst out; Ethel shouted, we fought. So in order not to cause a scene, not to muddy the waters for no good reason, and not to spoil the night, Ethel talked and I drank.

What upset me was more the perpetrator of the words than their content. Of course, Ethel the c.u.n.t could go and talk about this bulls.h.i.+t with anyone she wanted, anywhere she wished, but of all the people in her life, she should not have acted like this to me. Not that I take it personally. The issue is not personal, but rather 'linguistic.' At dinner yesterday, for whatever reason, Ethel either decided to break our tradition or simply forgot the language we have been speaking when alone for as long as I can remember.

'Language' is one of the most nonsensical words in a language. It is by definition something more than the sum of all words but in the end it, too, is a word. Should there be the need for a connection with another word, you could say that the word 'language' is like the word 'meal.'There is just as little sense in labelling everything a 'meal' which totally overlooks very different food mixtures with differences in taste, nutritional value and calories as there is in labelling as 'language' all the expressions that play totally different tunes, talk about different words at random and emerge in different styles. I should of course add that in making this observation, 'linguistic' differences such as the Chinese cuisine, Turkish cuisine, Spanish cuisine and so forth are not even taken into account. Otherwise, I would have to multiply all these with a global coefficient. In short, hundreds of 'languages' reign even within a single 'language'. Just as we do not all eat the same 'meal' in a restaurant we also do not and can not speak the same 'language' with everyone all the time, and just as meals have residues, languages have remnants. A garbage dump language comprises words we not only do not use everyday but are reluctant to even p.r.o.nounce, words we silently pa.s.s over, nonsensical words we keep to ourselves because they would not be proper, criticisms that come to the tip of our tongues but we lack the courage to voice, innuendos we slice into thin strips at the tip of our tongues to then gulp back, curses that blow up in our palate before we can take out the fuse and throw them away, expressions that are too loaded or jokes too light for our milieu. There might also be a remnant left over from the attention we pay, the tact we demonstrate and the care we take when we talk or write to others. We can call this a recyclable language of 'Solid Acc.u.mulated Waste (SAW)'; acc.u.mulated, if not in the bas.e.m.e.nt or the attic or under the pillow, then on the nasal pa.s.sage, in between the palate and under the tongue; a language which, once adequately acc.u.mulated, we fill into a bag, tie up and throw away to stop the smell and the stink.

I should say right out I never leave evidence of this language lying around and not only do I not use it in front of my students in cla.s.s, I do not like to hear it from them either. Yet just like a teenager secretly smoking in a secluded spot without his parents' knowledge, I too am occasionally thrilled to 'sa.s.s' as Ethel and I call it in this language as I open my cache in a dark and dingy corner, unbeknownst to my moral principles and conscience. It is exactly at this point that Ethel's presence acquires significance. For 'sa.s.sing', just like making love or quarrelling, requires that someone else be there with you at the same time. You might smoke alone but to speak in this kind of garbage-language you definitely need a companion.

For years, whenever left alone, Ethel and I would speak, or used to speak until yesterday, in SAWish. Whenever we got together, without stating that one needs to be serious to call the other silly, without making any claims to be just or equitable, we loved to recklessly and coa.r.s.ely belittle everything and shower this or that person with insults. Just like a bully brus.h.i.+ng off an attack to then plunge into a fight by randomly pruning the noses and ears of his adversaries, we attacked social life with our cutting tongues and did our best to prune the maladies and blunders of whomever chanced to appear in front of us.

Who says you cannot make fun of other people's defects? With spears in our hands and waterproof goggles on our eyes, we would dive headfirst into the seven depths of the sea of flaws-faults-failures and bring each defect captured to land, with the intent of examining it at great length and tearing it to shreds. Sometimes, not content with this, with an appet.i.te befitting calamari-lovers we would lift our catch up in the air and hit him against this or that rock for hours on end. In the final instance, no one escaped our tongues but some received from our shower of generalizations more of their share than others. Peasants, the lumpen proletariat, advertisers and academics, housewives and lawyers...all were a target, albeit for different reasons. Yet the diameter of our net was rather wide, enough to easily contain all sorts of people. There was a place for everyone there.

We pitilessly and coa.r.s.ely belittled those we saw to be unsteady or those who attempted to look smart. We were irritated by those who cared about their appearance but totally drowned in derision those who dressed tastelessly as well; had no respect for the masculine heroes of the 'have-nots' but were beside ourselves with anger at the prima donnas of the 'haves'. We turned up our noses at those who feared death to then merrily trample on those who had no concern about death. We could not bear to read a poorly written article, story or novel but also slung mud left and right on those well written ones. We did not even take note of those who turned religious in the aftermath of a serious surgery or trauma but also carelessly cast aside the ones who remained at exactly the same level of belief either with or without religion, all through their lives. We did not forgive the decent ones because of their decency but also took the crookedness of the crooked and danced around with it. We threw on the ground and trampled on those guilelessly naive secularists who thought Christianity was less interventionist or Judaism less patriarchal than Islam; gleefully gnawed on those who were unaware of the variations within Islam but also bruised with cannon salvoes those who imagined themselves privileged for happening upon mystical movements; and tore to pieces those who, in the name of the trinity of 'Being, Becoming & Transcending Sainthood', sought alternative Indian, Chinese, Tibetan messiahs for themselves. We rammed into those breeders married with kids but laughed our hearts out at those who regarded not getting married a form of political resistance. We also covered in tar and paraded naked before us both those who perceived their heteros.e.xuality to be a socially given 'for once-and-always' yet craved to take at least a pet.i.te bite of the apple of sodomy, as well as those who regarded their h.o.m.os.e.xuality as entirely an individual choice to then sluggishly sit in the oases of isolation, closing themselves off to all. We did not like those we knew personally but also expended recklessly those we knew intimately.

We did not feel the need to express all of these att.i.tudes and beliefs at length and were content with using codes instead. With the meticulousness of the archivist, we one by one cla.s.sified and filed everyone and everything. We were deliberately, recklessly unjust, to everyone and everything. In any case, if you combed through the section covering the letter 'J' of the basic ill.u.s.trated dictionary of the SAW language, you would never come across either 'just' or 'jurisprudence', just as you would not be able to find under 'S', 'sacred or sacredness', or under 'E', 'exalted' or 'exaltedness'. As for injustice, the definition given in this dictionary is as follows: To do wrong to that which is wrong (example: to take the fur coat off of someone in a desert or to take the wine gla.s.s in front of a pious person) Indirect attribution that produces no harm (example: to spit at someone's photograph).

Whenever Ethel and I spoke SAWish, we committed injustice against this or that person in the second meaning of the word. We'd never sugar-coat our words when alone. Yet last night at dinner while Ethel the c.u.n.t talked about her grandiose goals in relation to this private university to be founded in Istanbul, it seemed as if she had checked our mutual language into the cloakroom at the entrance.

'Don't you realize? Your all-time dream is finally becoming a reality,' she exclaimed as she held her jasmine cigarette-holder tightly between her teeth. No more political appointments from above, or the usual sterility and similarity that budgetary restrictions produce in state universities. Instead they will gather the highest calibre faculty in Turkey, recruit the most brilliant minds s.n.a.t.c.hed away by the universities abroad, and bring to Istanbul lots of foreign experts from different corners of the world. 'Just think, we'll put a stopper on this chronic brain-drain, and within the first five years we will even reverse the current. Then Western minds will be at our service. We'll cure the inferiority complex of the nation,' she added with a giggle, as if she had made a witty, naughty remark.

Why she giggled like this was no mystery to me. I am actually used to Ethel's ascription of an erotic connotation to the word 'brain.' She was not much different back in our college years, harbouring a layered hatred of other women and a boundless pa.s.sion for intelligent men... Now that I think about it, the large number of male students outnumbering the females and the 'brains' surrounding her must have played a considerable role in her decision to major, though she never intended to practice, in such a difficult field like civil engineering. In those days at Ethel's house, there was the pick of dozens if calculated over the years perhaps more than a hundred of exceptionally intelligent male students from different departments. One could even argue that the c.u.n.t made a substantial contribution to Turkish education if one considers the fact that this place operated like a kind of soup kitchen where these male students could feed themselves, or a kind of club where the members could utilize the library as they wished. Even though we may, as regular customers of this alms house, have appeared at first glance to be rather different from each other, we were very much alike concerning one matter: the way in which we invested in our intelligence. In those days, no matter which department or cla.s.s they belonged to at Bosphorus University, all the male students who, in order to escape the complexes induced by the unjust distribution of life, successfully pushed their brains to the limits; would have definitely heard of Ethel's name and most probably touched her body. The overwhelming majority were those who had devoted themselves to read, study and research, having put their demands from life away into the deepfreeze of their expectations, not to be thawed out until the arrival of 'that big day.' Some of Ethel's aphorisms addressed this point: 'Just as the blind man perfects his other senses, so too the ugly male who goes unnoticed develops his brain.'

Among Ethel's favourites, in so far as they succeeded in developing their brains, were those male students who were either unable to establish relations.h.i.+ps with women or were rejected by all the women they were interested in, subsequently giving up on love, practicing love and even making love. After those who were broke in terms of looks, came the chronically shy whose relations.h.i.+ps with the fair s.e.x had soured for one reason or another and others... These others included: as.e.xuals who composed panegyrics, praises and poems to a life without contact; avant-garde marginals; overt or closet h.o.m.os.e.xuals; highly dignified critics; asocials who hated exams but whose greatest thrill in that period of their lives consisted of taking exams; those who came from the provinces and lost their way in Istanbul; those who could not leave their sh.e.l.ls let alone Istanbul; valedictorians who managed to get an education despite coming from the wrong families, as well as those 'hidden talents' getting an education in the wrong departments because of their families; the rare geniuses of the natural sciences; the pa.s.sionate orators of the social sciences...all the hopeless, unhappy, maladjusted, extremely intelligent young men who struggled to cope with society for various physical, financial, psychological or incomprehensible reasons were within Ethel's field of interest. If she had her way, she would not let any female brain enter her house...although somehow, sometimes, upon realizing that a male she cherished happened to have a girlfriend, she would not let on and invited them both. In spite of all this, for some reason, exempted from her notorious hatred for her s.e.x were a few girlfriends left over from private school. One among these frequently stopped by the temple-house. She was so attractive that a comparison with Ethel could not even be considered: with long shapely legs, flawless milky skin, pearly teeth and b.r.e.a.s.t.s kneaded in accordance with the laws of dialectic: vibrant within the context of her large body yet tiny enough to fit into the palm... Yet she had one flaw. Like all women who lose their naturalness as soon as they become conscious of the admiration they arouse in others, she too a.s.sumed a forced toughness and made the common mistake of thinking that keeping a guy waiting in purgatory, neither too much at a distance nor needlessly close, would render permanent the attention she received. Even when telling people her name she sounded as if she thought she was doing a favour: 'Ay-s.h.i.+n!'

Oddly enough the other men in the house fell in love not with this arrogant fairy but instead with the hideously ugly Ethel. Actually many among them obviously liked Ays.h.i.+n, yet 'like' is a flimsy verb. As expressed by a contestant in a highly-contrived contest, while listing his hobbies: 'I like to read books, listen to music, take walks and also long-legged, tight-hipped Ays.h.i.+n.'Yet when the name of Ethel, the ugliest one of all time, came up, they would go full throttle beyond the liking phase and, burning up with desire, fall in love headfirst: either with her or her house or both.