Part 6 (1/2)

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Nevertheless, her effort to become ”superwoman” wore Sylvia Plath down. Before long she noticed that she was pus.h.i.+ng herself too hard. When she made it to one place, she discovered she had skipped over another; when she fixed one thing, something else was falling apart. Slowly but surely, she realized she could not be perfect. That is why her poem ”The Munich Mannequins” begins like this: ”Perfection is terrible, / It cannot have children.”

With the money she got from literary prizes or grants she would pay for a nanny. While writing her first and only novel, The Bell Jar, in an attempt to establish a deeper connection with her past and soul, she deliberately prodded the places of fear in herself-fear of sanity, of being like thousands of others; and fear of insanity, of being so fundamentally different there was no hope of mingling with society. She wrote in detail about mental breakdown, electroconvulsive therapy and the suffocating monotony of modern life: ”To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world is the bad dream.” When the book was published in January 1963, readers were divided and Plath herself was deeply distressed by the tone of the reviews it received.

As she ran out of steam, unable to meet the extremely high demands she had placed on herself, Plath decided that she would rather die than live in the way it had been prescribed for her by others. The creative person with unbridled pa.s.sion that she was, she wanted everything or nothing at all. . . . She had tried suicide before, an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of twenty. Yet at the time she had wanted both to die at her own hands and to be rescued. This time she wanted only the former.

It was a cold morning, February 11, 1963, one that reeked of tedium and induced a sense of isolation. After checking on her two children in their beds, and leaving milk and bread on their bedside table, she closed their door and sealed the cracks. She went into the kitchen, turned on the oven's gas and took a dozen sleeping pills, swallowing them one by one. Then she stuck her head in the oven, and as the gas licked at her face, she fell into eternal sleep. She was only thirty years old.

To this day, Plath's legendary heritage is unsurpa.s.sed. In Turkey, I have met numerous female college students who admire her work so much they organize special reading nights on campuses for her. In America, there is a colorful, intriguing blog called ”Playgroup with Sylvia Plath.” In Germany, I once talked to a Filipino woman who had named her daughter Ariel after her. In France, at an international women's organization, I met a chic businesswoman who asked us all to ”toast to Sylvia.”

No other literary suicide has been talked and written about so much. No other woman writer, after her death, turned into such an icon beyond place and time.

The Midnight Coup d'etat One night toward the end of the summer, I hear voices in my sleep. A door opens and closes somewhere in the house, footsteps on the stairs, whispers in the dark. Thinking I'm having a nightmare, I toss and turn in bed. Then someone pokes me on the shoulder, shouting, ”Hey, wake up!”

I try to ignore the voice, hoping the moment will pa.s.s, as all moments tend to do, but there follows a second command, this time louder.

”Get up! Wake up already!”

I open my eyes and find Miss Ambitious Chekhovian literally right in front of my nose. She has climbed up my shoulder and crawled her way to my face, where she now stands on my chin, legs and arms akimbo. She is looking at me with a kind of triumph I find more puzzling than disturbing in my present state. Her makeup is perfect, her bun of hair is tight, as always. Even at this hour she looks prim and proper. It takes me an extra second to notice she is wearing a military uniform with a badge of rank on her shoulders. Before I get a chance to ask her why on earth she has dressed up like that, she speaks in a tone I can barely recognize.

”There is a matter of great importance. You better get up!”

”Well, can't it wait till morning?” I grumble. ”I was sleeping, in case you hadn't noticed.”

”No, it cannot possibly wait,” she says. ”The best time for a military takeover is the wee hours of the night, when everyone is asleep and resistance is slim.”

I sit up in bed and stare at her, stunned, like an animal caught in the headlights. ”What did you say?”

To my dazed expression she responds with a glacial look. In all these years we have known each other, I have never seen her like this before.

”As of this moment we have declared a coup d'etat,” she says. ”The regime in this house has changed.”

What on earth is she talking about? My hair standing on end, anxiety bubbling up in my throat, I try to make sense of the situation.

”In two minutes we expect you in the living room. Don't be late, the committee won't like that,” says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian, and leaves.

Still groggy from sleep, I put on a shawl, wash my face and go downstairs. A surprising scene awaits me when I step into the living room. The members of the Choir of Discordant Voices are there, all of them frowning. The tension in the room is so thick, I can almost touch it. In the corner the CD player is blasting the kind of songs I have never heard under this roof. They sound disquietingly aggressive, like anthems of a country that has waged war on all its neighbors and all the neighbors of its neighbors.

I see Miss Highbrowed Cynic first. She is sitting inside the fruit bowl on the table, dangling her legs as she puffs away on her cigarette. I don't usually allow the finger-women to smoke indoors, but something tells me this is not the right moment to remind her. There is an unusual flicker in her gaze, an odd furtiveness, which I can't quite put my finger on. She is wearing a military-style jacket over her hippie dress, a wacky combination that makes me dizzy.

Behind her, leaning against a tissue box, is Little Miss Practical, wearing a parka, black, bulky boots and commando-style trousers with a matching green hooded top. Her arms crossed over her chest, her brows furrowed, she sighs loudly. For some reason unbeknownst to me, she is staring at the wall, clearly avoiding any eye contact.

Next to the potted petunia under the window, her knees drawn up to her chest, sits Dame Dervish. A clump of her reddish hair has escaped from her turban, and is casting a shadow on her face. Upon closer inspection, I notice she is chained to the radiator with handcuffs.

”What is going on here?” I ask, a trace of panic creeping into my voice.

”Tonight, while you were sleeping, we had an emergency meeting,” says Miss Ambitious Chekhovian. ”We reached the conclusion that it was high time for a s.h.i.+ft in the regime. From this moment onward, I have changed my name to Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and I have taken charge of the Choir of Discordant Voices.”

Suddenly Miss Highbrowed Cynic coughs.

”I beg your pardon, we have taken charge,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. ”That means, Miss Highbrowed Cynic and I. Together, we have performed a coup d'etat.”

This has got to be a joke, but all the finger-women look so serious and intense that it's better not to laugh.

”As the chairwoman of the executive committee,” Miss Highbrowed Cynic joins in, ”I am pleased to announce that we will soon introduce a new const.i.tution that, for the next thirty-five years, will make it impossible to overthrow us. After that, our children will start to reign.”

”Hey, that is a far cry from democracy,” I object.

But Miss Highbrowed Cynic pretends not to hear. She is extremely agitated tonight and tries to conceal it, which makes her anxiousness even more p.r.o.nounced, causing her to look as if she were high on amphetamines. ”I am proud to announce,” she says, ”that as the new government our first act has been to consolidate peace and order in the house.”

”I don't see any change,” I say under my breath.

”Now that peace and order have been consolidated,” continues Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, ”our second act will be to send you away from this city.”

”What . . . Why . . . Where am I going?” I ask, dumbfounded.

”To America,” roars Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, enjoying her newfound power. ”We are going to the New World, all of us.”

”Okay, girls, that's enough,” I say. ”I am not going anywhere until you explain to me-in clear and proper terms-why you want me to go to America.”

They go quiet for a moment, as if they were not expecting this reaction. Do they really believe they are army generals and cannot be questioned?

”This is not about America, it is about you. It could well have been anyplace, like Australia or j.a.pan,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian. ”What matters is that you need to leave Istanbul at once.”

Miss Highbrowed Cynic smacks her lips approvingly. ”We are going to America because it just so happens that we applied for a fellows.h.i.+p in your name. Congratulations! You have won. Now get packed!”

I feel a lurch in my stomach, only now realizing how serious they are.

”We have decided that you should take this trip in order to grow as a writer,” Miss Highbrowed Cynic adds. ”It will be inspiring for you to get away for a while. We are doing this for your own good.”

”For my own good,” I repeat.

If she heard the scorn in my voice, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian doesn't seem to be bothered by it. ”I will be honest with you,” she says. ”We have been planning this coup d'etat for a while. But it was you-with your recent irrational behavior-who accelerated the process.”

”What irrational behavior are you referring to?” I ask as calmly as I can manage.

”Lately, your state of mind has not been well,” says Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, her voice shaky with emotion. ”All these years, we have slaved away so that you could excel as a novelist. We never took off, we never fooled around. People might think novels pop off an a.s.sembly line, but they don't. Behind every book, there is toil. There is sweat and pain.”

”All right,” I say. ”Why do you bring this up now?”

Milady Ambitious Chekhovian raises her chin and straightens her shoulders, like the military hero she has become. ”Did we do all this for nothing? How dare you throw away the years of sweat in one fell swoop?”

”Wait a minute, I am not throwing away anything,” I object. ”Where are you getting all of this?”

”From your behavior, of course. I have been watching you for some time. Don't think I haven't noticed!”

”Noticed what?” I bellow. I am not calm anymore, and don't try to be.