The Flea Palace (39 page)

At the corner of the Cabal Street, just when she motioned her older son to hurry up, a swarthy, skinny hand slowly tapped the Daughter-in-Law’s shoulder.

‘My child, how can I get to this address?’ It was an old hunchbacked woman, bent double inside a beige-coloured raincoat worn to shreds. In her callused hands she held out a wrinkled piece of paper. She looked lost.

Taking no notice of the horror on the faces of her two children, the Daughter-in-Law let go of their hands and concentrated on the address on the paper. Unable to decipher the scrawl, she returned it to the old woman, shaking her head.

‘Mom, you couldn’t answer the question!’ the five and a half year old squeaked. Teardrops pitter-pattered down her cheeks. The six and a half year old was no better. Simultaneously sucking the thumbs of both hands, he persistently repeated the same words: ‘How can you not know, how can you not know?’

‘She could not,’ roared the seven and a half year old as he approached from behind, quick to grasp the situation. The instant he reached the end of his words, the other two started wailing.

‘What on earth are you talking about? What is it that I didn’t know?’ the Daughter-in-Law stuttered bamboozled, staring first at her children, then at the old woman walking off. But instead of a response what she got from her children was some more sobs and the squishy sounds of a frantically sucked thumb.

It was hard to find a table at the bar, with the usual Friday night throng. When a table finally did become free somewhere in the middle, I grabbed it, ordering a double right away. I took it easy with the second
rakι
. Only after the third double, did the Cunt show up at the door, with an ear-to-ear grin. There had been a traffic jam, she said. However, this information was offered less as an explanation for her delay than as some useful detail in her account of the soccer game she and the cab driver – fortuitously fans of the same team – had listened to as they inched through the traffic on the way here. Though 2-0 behind in the second half of the game, they had finally won 3-2. Failing to see the slightest indication that Ethel minded being fifty minutes late for her appointment with me, I did not say anything either. In point of fact, I cannot deny how impressed I am with her soccer knowledge (the depth of which had been tested by experts many times over), her endless yakety-yak with cab drivers and her getting to know at each restaurant we dine the names, family trees and topmost worries of all the waiters serving us within the first ten minutes, to then convert every order into an opportunity for a chat…just as I am impressed by her refutation of womanhood on all occasions with an in-your-face attitude… She had always been like this. The high school friendship of Ayshin and Ethel was, to all intents and purposes, thesis-antithesis rapport, and this vivacious essence revealed itself when I came between them. I doubt Ethel’s love for soccer would have reached such
sky-scraping levels if Ayshin had enjoyed soccer the least bit or supported a team just for the sake of it.

‘I’ve come up with the ultimate solution to the garbage problem of Bonbon Palace,’ I muttered as I filled her glass. Then, slowly and assuredly, I told her about the writing I had written on the garden wall. She can’t have been expecting to hear such nonsense from me, for at first she looked dumbfounded, if only for a few seconds, and then she made me tell the whole story all over again, as she tossed out hearty laughs. The more I narrated, the more hilarious I too found the story. Goading me to describe myself as I stood there at the crack of dawn in front of the garden wall with paint and brush in hand, she burst into laughter. She had either got drunk quicker than usual tonight or had come to the appointment already high. We left toward one o’clock. Ethel shook hands with all the waiters one by one and said her farewells. Nor did she neglect, in accordance with the information she had acquired from them, to send her regards to their families, concluding with comforting speeches about their respective worries. When we had finally reached the street and somewhat sobered up with the night breeze, she insisted that I show her the writing on the wall.

We jumped into a cab. Ethel’s convulsive laughter, which had rolled out back in the restaurant and shot up a notch while we were walking on the sidewalk, turned utterly hysterical in the cab. Giggling non-stop, she launched attack upon attack, all the while attempting to undo the buttons of my trousers while my hands struggled in vain to shove hers away. I soon stopped resisting. As her fingers wiggled to fondle me, I kept under surveillance the driver who looked barely of driving age. The man’s beardless face being devoid of any expression whatsoever, there was no way of telling whether he could see what was going on in the back or not. In the meantime, Ethel had reached her target, having enough of an opening to insert one hand once the third button was undone. I was just about to cover with my jacket what her hand was up to when a hoarse yelp escaped my mouth. How I hate those razor-sharp
fingernails of hers. At the same instant, a crooked smile dawned on the driver’s face, revealing his awareness of what was going on. Brusquely grabbing Ethel’s hand, I freed myself from the Cunt’s claws. She flinched, grumbling and grimacing, and instantly lit a cigarette. The driver, who now seemed to be a close observer of all the attraction and repulsion going on at the back, intervened with perfect timing and asked us where on earth we were heading. Blowing a circle of smoke from her jasmine
chibouk
, Ethel cheerily exclaimed:

‘We are going to pay a visit to Bonbon
Dede
! The holy saint of the broken-hearted, of all those separated from their beloved and notorious for screwing everything up!’

The driver, whose youthful appearance I realized stemmed more from a lack of facial hair than age, shot both Ethel and me a nervy glance as if weighing-up how grave things could get. However, Ethel would not leave the man alone. Offering him a cigarette, she catapulted questions at him, asking where he came from, if he believed in saints or not, if he was married or not, if at some time in the future he had a daughter whether he would educate her, whether he would renounce his son if the latter ever turned out to be homosexual, and finally, asking which soccer team he supported. As luck would have it, they supported the same team.

‘Once I picked up a couple, no less nuts than you two,’ the driver said the moment he found a lull amidst the deluge of questions. Ethel released another chain of guffaws, accompanied by wheezing coughs as if she had a fish bone stuck somewhere in her throat.

‘Back then I was new to nightshifts and wasn’t yet familiar with the night-time customers. So these two get in, quarrelling non-stop. The woman keeps yelling and hurling insults. The man doesn’t do zilch to appease her. Instead he too slurs back, and they utter such slanders, I’d better not repeat those now! Still, it is obvious they are in love. It turns out the man is going abroad to work. The woman doesn’t believe he’ll ever come back. “If you go you won’t ever return!” she says, weeping
hard. Then, before I know what’s happening, she starts punching him. Dead drunk no doubt. Anyway, we head to the address they gave. The plan is to first drop the woman off and then the man. So we go to her house but she doesn’t budge, she doesn’t want to get out of the car. “Come on,” she shrieks all of a sudden, “Let’s go visit Telli Baba!” Glued onto the seat, “I am not going anywhere before I see Telli Baba!” she insists. In the end the man gives in, as for me I am already convinced. Telli Baba is a long way out from there, but does she care? Back in those days I used to say, “No way, I’ll never work at night.” So you see how one changes his mind in the fullness of time. Anyhow, they didn’t want to take another cab, instead they offered me twice as much as the normal fare. So we sped off in the middle of the night. Once there we pulled over, the woman got out, opened her purse, groped for something and then got lost in the dark. The man and I, we’re waiting in the cab. After ten minutes or so, the woman comes back crying, says to the guy, “Bend your head!” The guy obeys and she pulls out a handful of hair. The guy hollers, in pain, they then have another fight. Thank goodness the woman leaves again, finds a piece of cloth from godknowswhere, ties the man’s hair to the tree, prays, sits down, prays, gets up. So we let her do whatever she wants. In the end she calms down a tad. “Next time I’ll come to Telli Baba with my wedding veil,” she murmurs. The man softens. They embrace. They ask for my name and phone number to invite me to their wedding.’

‘I am sure they got married and then strangled each other in next to no time,’ Ethel bellowed, jerking her head toward the driver while launching another attack on the buttons of my pants.

‘No sister, it’s even worse,’ the driver grimaced, shaking his head wisely. ‘Two years later, winter time, during such a blizzard, you couldn’t see a damn thing. Doesn’t this man get into my cab again? Only this time with a different woman! Was she his wife or lover? There was no way to tell. I instantly recognized the guy. He recognized me too. We both felt awful.
He looked away, I looked away. The woman next to him had no idea what was going on. She was blubbering and blubbering to deaf ears. Before we could move even ten metres, the man stopped the cab and jumped out. The woman dashed straight after him flabbergasted.’

Joining her hands on her lap, Ethel heaved a doleful sigh. If I could only have a wee bit of an understanding of when and why the Cunt is moved. An unwieldy silence engulfed us. No one uttered a single word until we turned the corner of Cabal Street, but as soon as we came to a stop in front of Bonbon Palace, embracing her stunted joy Ethel bolted from the car. Unable to resist her pushiness, the driver too got off. At 1:30am, there we stood, the three of us lined-up reverentially, and gaped at the writing on the garden wall.

‘How does it look?’ I asked the driver.

‘It’s OK, I guess, but off centre, brother,’ he said with an expression so subtle it was hard to tell whether he was joking or not. ‘I don’t like the colour either.’

Ethel doubled up as if about to throw up. In a flash, she let go of herself, bursting into laughter until she was in tears. She caused such a ruckus that the lights of a few flats in the apartment block went on. The driver on one side and I on the other, we pushed the Cunt back into the cab. On the way, her steadily decreasing chortles were replaced by steadily escalating sobs. It had been a long time since I had last seen her go to pieces like this. When we reached her house, I did not feel like staying with her. She passed out the moment her head touched the pillow anyhow. The cab waited downstairs. On the way back I sat in the front. The cab fare had shot up. Ever since my divorce, half my salary goes on rent and the other half on such nights of carousing. I offered the driver a cigarette. He first lit mine, then his. Now that
the garrulous, raucous female had got out of the car, a brotherly silence echoed around us in her absence.

‘Sorry about the fuss,’ I muttered.

‘No problem, brother,’ he shrugged, ‘I wish things like this were our only troubles.’

While waiting at a red light, right out of the blue, anguish began to surge within me. A police car sped by. Ahead of us ran a garbage truck with two lanky garbage men holding with one hand onto the back of the truck, their other hand swinging free. As they passed under a streetlight, their pale faces emerged from the dark, if only for a few seconds. The two garbage men were quizzically smiling at each other, or so it seemed to me. There were no other vehicles around. The moment the light turned green, my anguish really took off. I asked the driver to steer in the opposite direction. Ten minutes later we were in front of Ayshin’s house. I did not get out. The curtains were drawn, the lights off. As I stood there staring at my old house, the smooth-faced driver waited patiently, without a word.

On the way back, we turned on the radio. Oddly enough I enjoyed every single song that was played. Finally, as the cab-fare gained another zero, we reached Bonbon Palace. Under the headlights, we jerked our heads out the windows on each side, feeling the need, for some reason unknown to us, to look at the writing on the wall once again.

‘Hey brother, now that you’ve written this thing, have you ever wondered what’d happen if someone believes it?’ the driver asked as he gave me the change.

‘Oh, come on, who would believe in that?’ I chuckled. ‘Even if they do, so much the better. Hopefully they’ll stop dumping their smelly garbage here.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he slurred, his fingers tautly rubbing his upper lip as if pulling on an invisible moustache. ‘It’s just that this city’s folks are a bit bizarre. Especially the women, they are truly wacko brother, you’ve seen it yourself. Basically what I’m asking is this: what if someone earnestly believes in this writing of yours?’

Faith, like a train schedule, is essentially a matter of timing. The grand, rounded, ivory clock at the train station chimes at various specific hours of human life. The train leaves at specific hours. There is only one run before noon: those who have internalized a belief system while they are still children get on this one. There is another train that leaves in the afternoon, carrying along the troubled passengers of teenage years. After that there is no other direct run until night. Only then, when the first pressing regrets crop up in one’s life and the unfeasibility of redeeming past wrongs is acknowledged; when even the most strongly built nests begin to topple and the first serious health complications occur; the train leaves for the third time. For some unknown reason, the passengers of this train get on it at the last minute. Then as midnight draws closer, after critical surgeries and on the verge of near-death experiences, there are two more runs, one right after another. These happen to be the most crowded runs. Without stopping at any station, they go directly to God on the intercession express. Unlike the daytime passengers, the nocturnal ones, so as not to miss this last chance, appear at the station way too early. Then, after a long wait when the clock finally strikes midnight and the circle is complete, from that swarming crowd only a handful of non-believers are left behind.