The Flea Palace (44 page)

‘No!’ thundered the big and burly man with the hooked nose, shaking his head vehemently. ‘We made a bet, didn’t we? Since I lost the bet, I’ll face my punishment like a man. If I were scared of three stitches and one injection, I’d have to wear a skirt, isn’t that so? Since we are here to drink, drink we shall! We will drink to my thumb. For if I weren’t an honest man, if I hadn’t kept my word, this thumb of mine would still be in one piece, isn’t that so? But what did I do, I kept my word. So this knife wound is proof of my honesty, isn’t it? Therefore if we drink to my thumb, we’ll be drinking to honesty, isn’t that so?’ As the others reluctantly raised their glasses, a chill swept over the table.

If it were any other time, afraid of a row, Cemal would have
left the place, but today he felt like drinking. So he stayed and continued to drink in spite of the provocations of the drunk at the table across from him, the mayonnaise on the fries and the thumb terrorizing the next table.

Unused to alcohol, his eyes turned bloodshot before he was halfway through the second beer. Fixating his glance on the stains and cigarette burns of the tablecloth, he heaved a deep sigh. Why was his twin so different from him? They did not have one single thing in common. Why were they not alike in any way? And if they were so very dissimilar, why did they still work together? By the time the third beer had vanished, he had reached the decision to part ways with Celal.

When the doorbell rang, Madam Auntie was busy emptying out the bags she had brought in from the street. She stood still, completely startled. No one rang her door except Meryem who distributed bread every morning and collected the apartment maintenance fees once a month. At first she thought the bell might have been accidentally pushed downstairs, but when it rang again, this time even more tenaciously, a gnawing worry grabbed hold of her. She thrust into the bags everything she had taken out and then carried them all to the small room. Panting hard she closed shut the white door with the frosted glass separating the living room from the rest of the house and double locked it just in case. As for the key hanging on a purplish velvet ribbon, knowing too well she would lose it otherwise, she hung it around her neck. Giving the living room a last once over, she headed to the outside door feeling hesitant and anxious.

‘Oh, was it you, Su?’ she marvelled, relaxing visibly, as soon as she had opened the door. ‘How are things my dear, are you comfortable with your hair short?’

Su, three and a half centimetres taller than Madam Auntie when in sneakers, nodded with a beaming smile. The old woman once again felt ill at ease with the exuberant joy of the child. Her discomfort gave way to considerable anxiety upon realizing the other was there to be invited in. Warily she threw a glance back at the living room. For years not a single visitor had stepped into this house. Not even her brother whom she
loved so much. They would instead meet at a patisserie adorned with stained glass and famous for its age, where they would, every time without fail, have a piece of apple pie and drink two cappuccinos amidst the scent of cinnamon and whipped cream. Though still thinking of excuses that would send the child away without breaking her heart, she was drawn into the depths of the latter’s large, black eyes. In spite of the cheeky smile stuck on her face, this child was extremely unhappy. She did not find it in her heart to send her away. Besides, she had taken all the necessary precautions, what harm could it cause to invite her in?

‘Come, let’s have coffee with milk,’ she said, moving aside to let the child in.

‘I don’t like milk,’ Su exclaimed.

‘I’ve never met a child who liked milk,’ Madam Auntie nodded. ‘But since you’re grown up enough to be a fifth grader, I thought you might enjoy drinking it.’

Faced with a line of reasoning she could barely object to, Su took her shoes off without a sound and unable to see a basket with disposable sanitary slippers at the entrance, realized in wonder that this was a house where one could walk in her socks.

‘It smells worse here than at our house,’ Su exclaimed, as soon as she entered the living room, and with an effervescent smile as if proud of making this observation, she started to scan her surroundings whilst whistling a song she heard on the minibus on the way to school every morning.

As he watched the items the girl took out one by one from her backpack Sidar felt a tension descend upon him: a turquoise toothbrush (so now there were two toothbrushes in the house), an unpalatable mug with popped-out eyeballs on it, some open and others shut (so now there two mugs in the house), one jojoba shampoo for frequently washed hair (so now there were two shampoos in the house), one box of tampons (there was none of these in the house), one towel (so now there were two towels in the house), a lot of books and CDs (so now there were a lot of books and CDs in the house).

This was not what he had in mind when agreeing to the girl’s wish to stay here. He had said she could stay once in a while, not move in permanently. If this girl with beautifully solemn eyes and coppery hair wanted to feed Gaba with hazelnut wafers, lie down on this couch to watch the ceiling, make love to him, that was OK. He had no problem with her presence as long as there was only one Sidar, one Gaba and one girl. What disturbed him so much were these possessions of hers. The instant people infiltrated others’ lives they seemed to feel obliged to bring their belongings along.

Yet, whenever Sidar rode the ochre cart of hashish or the chromatic horses of acid galloping into the uncharted maze of his brain, he would stumble at the threshold of the same old question: ‘Which one?’ That was the quandary he most feared when high. Failing to come up with an answer he would each time be catapulted into a bottomless torpor. If, say, there were
two mugs in front of him, he could never decide which one to drink from; if there were two towels, he wouldn’t know which one to wipe his face with; two books, two CDs…any option would be more than baffling. As long as there was more than one, the question of which fork or glass or plate or coffee-pot turned into a daunting enigma worthy of the ones asked in purgatory. Many a time he had been petrified with a sesame cookie in one hand and a creamy cookie in the other, only to realize he had been standing at the same spot without budging for forty minutes or so. Wrestling his way out of this tight bind, he would sink in deeper; whenever he felt inclined to choose one item, his thoughts would get stuck onto the one left behind. The objects would then, just like rowdy baby birds whose mother had still not returned, open their little mouths wide and shout in unison: ‘Me! Me! Me Sidar! Please choose me!’

However, he did not want to choose. Everyone thought he had made a choice between Switzerland and Turkey in coming to live in the latter. That was not true. He had not decided on anything, he had merely arrived and maybe some day he would merely leave. Likewise, the act of suicide, which he had lately started to think about more often than ever, did not mean, as deemed by everyone, choosing death over life. Suicide was like Gaba, the one and only. He would merely commit it.

Of course, that credo was subject to scrutiny when not the why but the way of suicide was considered because in that case he would once again be confronted with the question ‘Which one?’ There was such an assortment of choices presenting so many different ways of committing suicide, and whenever Sidar rode the ochre cart of hashish or the chromatic horses of acid galloping into the uncharted maze of suicide, he got stuck there on the verge of the same quandary. Then the gas oven in the kitchen, the rope waiting to be hung down from the gas pipe crossing through the living room, the pills in the bottles, the razor in the bathtub and the Bosphorus Bridge with its Goliath feet would start to scream in unison: ‘Me! Me! Me,
Sidar! Please choose me!’

‘You cannot stay here,’ he mumbled, averting his eyes away from hers.

‘But I asked before. You didn’t object then.’

‘I know,’ Sidar admitted fretfully as he spotted the spider dangling from the ceiling. ‘But I’ve changed my mind.’

Though Cemal had intended to go home directly after the bar, either because he found it hard to walk straight or came to realize his decision to part ways with his twin meant saying farewell to their joint workplace as well, he soon found himself in front of Bonbon Palace. Trying not to touch the reeking, leaking garbage bags huddled on the sidewalk, he leaned over the pistachio green writing on the garden wall and stared at the beauty parlour with sorrowful eyes, but what he spotted there was quick to replace his sorrow with agitation. There was a candle flickering inside. He had no doubt that the apprentices had locked up the door and left hours ago. With a frown on his face he stood still, staring at the low set balcony of their flat. That must be where the thief had gained entrance.

Though he was hardly experiencing a tidal wave of courage, after guzzling three large beers, Cemal was more than ready to give any thief a black eye. Grabbing a broken hanger godknowswho had thrown in the garbage he rushed into the garden, passed by the rose acacia and managed to land on the balcony on his first try. As predicted, the door was slightly ajar. He rushed inside toward the shadow of a man standing by the candle…and instantly dropped his weapon of a broken hanger…

Meanwhile, the other, faced with such an aggressive silhouette plunging in from the balcony, had scampered to his feet, taking cover behind a hair-removal machine. Celal was hardly experiencing a tidal wave of courage. Had it been any other time, he would have been scared to death but he too had
left three large, emptied beer mugs behind. Nonetheless, probably because compared to his twin, he was either less impervious to alcohol or simply less agile, even though he had indeed unravelled the identity of the encroaching silhouette at the very last moment, he could not withhold his arm quickly enough. By the time Celal’s right arm had processed the ‘Retreat!’ command coming from the brain, it was already too late. In a flash, the hair-removal machine smashed onto Cemal’s shoulder, leaving its heat control button there.

The twins were ten years old when their father had returned from Australia where he had emigrated many years previously. In united awe they had listened to the stories the man they so much admired told them. He had worked hard, made heaps of money, and had now returned to take his family back with him to that land of prosperity. Awaiting them there was a house, vivid yellow like boiled corn, with a tyre swing in the backyard. While the twins had listened to their father with bated breath, their mother had been busy packing, bidding farewell to the neighbours and doling out all their belongings, since they weren’t going to take any of these things with them.

The day before their departure, while Celal and Cemal tossed and turned in their beds on the floor, their father had sneaked into their room. Patting their heads, he had taken out from his chest-pocket one photograph. There was a house in the photograph which indeed looked huge and corn yellow; and the backyard was just as he had described. There was a swing there as well and on that swing sat a plump woman with a smile blooming on her face. She had ginger hair with a strand curled, thickly braided and loosely fastened into a bun at the nape of the neck. ‘What do you think of her? Beautiful, isn’t she?’
their father had asked. The twins had nodded shyly. She did not at all look like the women they had hitherto seen, especially not like their mother. Putting the photograph back, their father had once again patted them on their heads. ‘Tomorrow, we three are gonna leave,’ he had whispered. ‘Let your mother stay here for the time being. Once we get to Australia and settle down there, we can come pick her up.’

Though their age was small and their admiration of their father only too deep, both boys had instantly grasped that this was a lie. When left alone in the room they had shunned any further word on this matter. Both had feigned ignorance, as if by doing so they could manage to somehow unlearn what they had learned. When they had finally fallen asleep that night, both had beckoned to the ginger-haired woman in their dreams. The following morning, however, neither could tell for sure if she had come or not.

‘I was so thrilled to hear the things daddy had told us then…’ Cemal murmured to his twin whilst still on his knees and searching for the heat control button.

‘That vast country, that pretty woman,’ Cemal droned on broodingly. ‘I sold my mother in exchange for those. That’s what a despicable person I am. In return for these, I peddled the woman who had given birth to me, suckled and raised me. God damn it, one can become a materialist in time, so you’d think life made a person one, but how on earth could one be a materialist when still a child, at that age?!’

The following day, once having sent their mother away on a pretext, the three of them had loaded the suitcases into the car.

‘But you? You did not peddle our mother for these things!’ Cemal sighed, as he watched his brother crawl under a swivel chair to dig out the heat control button. ‘You didn’t put your soul up for sale or your very humanity! Fuck the money, fuck the luxury, you decided, and jumped off the car. You chose to stay with our mother and you tried to persuade me too. You were running so hard behind the car as dad and I drove away from the village. That poignant scene was seared forever in my mind. You were yelling so hard: “Stop! Stop!” You ran after us all the way to the end of the village.’

As Cemal folded a handkerchief into two, four, eight, sixteen
folds, blowing his nose on the last fold, the power came back. Celal ran to the kitchen to fetch his twin a glass of water. Before handing him the glass, he put in five drops of lemon cologne.

‘Thank you,’ Cemal said.

‘I had lost my shoe,’ Celal replied.

Staring with lustreless eyes at the candle flame, which looked so rickety and flimsy now that the electricity had come, Cemal tried to make sense of what he had just heard.

‘I had lost my shoe,’ Celal repeated. He would rather have remained silent but his mouth talked without consulting him. How he wished he had not had that third beer. ‘Just as I was getting into the car, one of my shoes fell off. That’s why I got off the car, to put on my shoe. However, before I had the chance, mother showed up. As soon as father spotted her coming, he started the engine. I ran after you with one shoe on but the car careered away. I kept yelling at the top of my voice. I ran after you all the way to the end of the village.’