Part 13 (2/2)

'Dead,' croaked the Blue Mistress.

I looked at her face in perplexity, unable to figure out who on earth she was talking about. My eyes slid of their own accord in the direction of the television screen. The singer looked alive but perhaps paler now. She blew a kiss toward the camera. I turned off the TV. Not knowing what to say, I sat next to the Blue Mistress. I held her hand. She did not hold my hand. She went to sleep. So calm... Too calm...

I sat alone in the living room trying to collect my thoughts. I hadn't realized how much I had drunk tonight. A bulky lethargy swathed my movements. I could not think fast, act agile. Not only did I not know how to comfort my little lover, I did not feel a wee bit of sadness. The only thing I wanted to do was to go home and pa.s.s out.

Still however, I headed not towards the door, but to her bedroom. In the darkness, I laid next to her, p.r.i.c.king my ears up to all sounds to try and work out whether she was asleep or not. She was awake. 'He couldn't get over the attack,' she whispered. 'He died at three in the morning.' I touched her cheeks: dry. She was not crying. I snuck closer to her. She neither pushed me away nor responded to my touch. She kept lying down like an empty sack. The bed was warm. We embraced. I fell asleep.

I woke up during the night burning up with thirst. Glugging down all the water in the gla.s.s on the table, I shuffled to the bathroom. As I peed, I gazed groggily at the perfumed soaps in a gla.s.s stilt, the papaya shampoos lined up at the corner of the sink, the delicate perfume bottles s.h.i.+ning in front of the mirror, the turquoise bath sponges, body lotions and minutely detailed middle-aged supplies. I flushed the toilet. Amidst all these knick-knacks I caught sight of two razors. One had fallen on the ground and the other in the sink.

This was enough to sober me up. I dashed to the bedroom. I turned the light on, drew the bedspread away from her. As she tried to sit up from her sleep, I pulled up her aquamarine nightgown extending down to her knees. There was nothing on her left leg, nothing new, but the top part of her right leg was wrapped up with a towel covered with wide, brick red stains. This loose wrap was so bulgy I could not understand how I had previously failed to notice it. As I hurried to untie the thin, long towel, she simply, patiently waited without resistance.

Five scarlet cuts emerged from under the towel, each one almost the length of a hand span. Three of them did not seem that deep. It was as if they were opened accidentally or reluctantly, as if they were the rehearsal for the other two. For those were awful. I ran back to the bathroom. Unable to find anything useful in the cupboards, I scampered to my house. As I ran from one end of Bonbon Palace to the other with hydrogen peroxide and cotton b.a.l.l.s, the entire effect of all the alcohol I had consumed tonight evaporated.

She watched me mutely, as I cleaned and wrapped up her wounds. Then, thanking me, half-bashful, half-glum, she pulled over her the aquamarine nightgown that had somehow not been stained during this period of time, and once again curled up as round as a ball. I turned off the light. I waited for her to cry, blab, snuggle, seek shelter. In the dark, when she curled up into herself leaving me alone by her side, I had to admit to myself that I did not know her at all. It is such an inexcusable gullibility to think that by cracking open the v.a.g.i.n.as of women we make love to we can see through their body and, upon entering them, reach into their depths...

Flat Number 10: Madam Auntie and the Garbage.

The first garbage trucks and garbage company in Istanbul started work in 1868. Before them, the same job was inc.u.mbent upon the Guild of Seekers working under the control of the Litter Superintendent. Just like today's garbage men, the seekers of old times were in charge of getting rid even if only partially of what the inhabitants of Istanbul wanted to get rid of entirely, eternally. However, when the issue came to how they did so, there was a grinding difference between the contemporary garbage men and their predecessors. The foremost purpose of the Guild of Seekers in gathering what was to be thrown away was to find among the gathered what should be saved from being thrown away. Before they discarded the waste, muck and debris they had collected into dumps, they would carry it all to the seash.o.r.e in their haversacks and there they would sort, rinse and rummage through this pile over and over. There were times when they encountered copper plates, steel rods, nails that could be reused, clothes not yet threadbare, non-oxidized silver or gifts that had been unappreciated. If lucky enough, they could even hit upon lost jewellery.

The Guild of Seekers visited the sites of fire frequently. Whenever a house turned into ashes in Istanbul, the city of fires, they carried away the wreckage. Just like from the garbage, from the ashes too, they collected items. The seekers would gather to sift through. Yet the garbage men collected to throw away. For the city to modernize the order of things had to be capsized. Once what was thrown away on all sides was gathered in one place by the seash.o.r.e, now what was gathered on all sides was thrown away in one place by the Garbage Hills.

As for Madam Auntie, being a seeker she didn't belong to this age. Just like the bygone members of the Guild, she too was rummaging around in the garbage for objects that should not have been thrown away. To this day she had never failed to find them.

Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress and Me.

In spite of sleeping only in dribs and drabs, I woke up early this morning. As I tucked the hair stuck on her sweaty forehead behind her ear, the Blue Mistress stirred slightly. I let her sleep. Lighting a cigarette I headed to the kitchen. She had crammed the refrigerator with food, as usual. All of the things the olive merchant would have liked. In our happier days with Ays.h.i.+n, I had become used to getting up late during the weekends to have lengthy, lazy breakfasts. Now she is probably breaking that old badger in to her own rhythm. If the man is as Ethel describes, I have to meet him. Not that I expect to change anything, but I still want him to see me. I could trigger the fuse of the inferiority complex in him. I may even succeed in embedding in his mind the tiniest louse of suspicion. Let him then struggle with sifting through the sourness of the possibility that the woman he is about to marry might go back to her old husband one day.

I must have awakened the Blue Mistress with my clatter. As she stood by the kitchen door wrapped up in her speckled shawl, she looked much better than the night before even though her face was still pale and her eyes miserably baggy.

'I hope you are not blaming yourself anymore,' I said, as I filled up her teacup.

She does...and I blame her too...I blame her and everyone who acts as if they are the G.o.d of their squat universe. There is no way I can comprehend those who first pray with all their heart that harm be given to someone they cannot reach otherwise and then, when fortuitously their wishes happen to come true, simply breakdown in guilt and shame. I cannot stand those who, on the one side, delegate all the problems they cannot handle and don't even lift a finger to resolve, to some otherworldliness purportedly purified of all evil and, on the other side, yearn for receiving a slice of otherworldly evil to purify their most mundane problems. It enrages me to see what people are capable of doing to themselves when they fail to distinguish their limits. Not because they overestimate themselves way too much but because they underestimate evil way too much. The world is full of people who watch from afar for a chance to hurt someone and, when by chance that happens, do not hold Fortuna responsible but the thoughts and wishes that had once crossed their minds. I did not want the Blue Mistress to join their ranks. I did not want to lose her in this way and instead hoped to spare this lovely naive creature who believed that this G.o.d of hers who created the universe by p.r.o.nouncing 'BE!' could likewise destroy with the p.r.o.nouncement of 'DIE!'.* So I decided to explain what I had done.

'Will you please get this saint's tale out of your mind? There's no truth to it,' I said, as I slid onto her plate half of the best omelet I had made in a long while. 'The holy saint Meryem talked to you about most likely emerged from the writing on the garden wall but it was I who wrote that.'

If I could only have grasped what she was thinking right at that instant. If I could only be sure that I was doing the right thing by disclosing this.

'Look, I'm sorry about the olive oil merchant and don't get mad at me for referring to him as the 'olive oil merchant'. I hope you're aware of the fact that even if there were a saint lying under the garden wall with his bones crumbled to dust, the outcome would not have been any different. Sim-ply-be-ca-use-my-litt-le-one-your-guy-pa.s.s-ed-a-way-not-be-ca-use-you-wan-ted-to-get-rid-of-him-but-be-ca-use-he-had-a-he-art-at-tack.'

There it was again. Her looks became cast in shadow. Once again in my life, I witnessed that dusky phase wherein I started to awaken hatred in a woman whose loving eyes I had been accustomed to.

'Basically my sweet, if you are going to blame yourself for every calamity and keep slicing up your body, there is no way I can stop you, but if you intend to give this habit up, I'll do everything to help. Now, if you'll see me not as your enemy but as your friend, let's sit down together and talk about what's going to happen from now on. After all your life won't be like it used to be. But maybe, why not, it can be more beautiful.'

'Why did you lie?' she maundered.

'If you mean the saint business, I don't consider myself as having lied. The only thing I wanted was to get the apartment building rid of this awful smell. I just wanted to make those who dump their garbage here feel uncomfortable. It didn't even cross my mind that anyone would take that silly writing seriously.'

Her face clouded up, as she once again got immersed in a th.o.r.n.y 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. G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed. Nevertheless, there is a limit to this stationary phase whereupon it has to cease. If the inappropriateness of the surrounding circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d'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.

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